Mixed Wards Phased Out At Last

Army medics are busy dragging wounded Taliban from their beds at Camp Bastion Field Hospital and dumping them in a heavily-guarded skip, after Britain reacted with outrage on hearing that Our Brave Boys and Girls (TM) in Afghanistan were being forced to recover from their wounds on the same wards as their former adversaries.

"How dare those heartless RAMC doctors tend the injuries of a load of hot-headed Islamic terrorist lunatics?" screamed a man in a pub. "These foreign bleeders ain't never paid a penny in National Insurance in their lives, and yet they just turn up on stretchers and expect to have a load of bullets removed free, gratis and for nothing? We ought to be sticking pencils into their wounds and giving them a bloody good twist."

"All right then, we'll just throw away all the fundamental rules of decency, human dignity and civilised behaviour," said a senior army surgeon at Camp Bastion. "We should have remembered that these ignorant, hate-filled scum yearn to inflict the narrow-minded beliefs of a sadistic bunch of merciless medieval savages upon their own people." 

"If you ask me, we ought to just bayonet these bloody Sun readers and leave them to die," he added.

Britain Now So Unremittingly Awful You Need Therapy Just To Live Here

The government is to introduce group therapy into classrooms, in an effort to help teenagers to cope with the sheer misery of living in Britain. The £1m scheme is to be trialled in Bath, Bristol, Nottingham and Swindon, which have been identified as the four most depressingly godawful places in the country.

The North of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been exempted from the trial, said a minister, since they have been depressingly godawful for so long that their inhabitants have become used to it.

The launch of the cognitive behaviour therapy sessions coincides with the publication of a study by the New Economics Foundation which rated Britons as the most bored, tired and socially-isolated people in Europe.

"Let's face it, life in this country is absolute shit," said Nic Marks of the NEF's Centre for Well-Being. "It's just one tedious, heart-rending slog from cradle to grave, and what's it all for, eh? You're born screaming into this vale of tears, you struggle all your life surrounded by bastards at every turn, you slog your bleeding guts out for your ungrateful kids, and all you've got to look forward to at the end of it all is a whimpering, lonely death. What is the bloody point?"

Although most Britons felt surprisingly content with their shitty lot in life, putting the country sixth for overall happiness, the 18-24 age group came bottom in the whole of Europe for feelings of trust and belonging.

"Well, if I spent my entire sad existence playing World of sodding Warcraft in a darkened room with loads of other dysfunctional hermits I'll never meet, I might feel pretty well cut off from the rest of humanity too," said Mr Marks, adding: "It's only being so cheerful that keeps me going."

BBC's Cherished Reputation To Remain Untarnished By One-Sided Appeals for Aid

The BBC has banned an appeal for aid for Gaza, claiming it wishes to avoid compromising its immaculate reputation for impartiality.

The appeal comes from the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella organisation representing a number of aid agencies, which says there is "clear evidence" that the British public want to help the stricken victims of the devastating Israeli invasion.

"Our reputation for maintaining a completely unbiased stance is well-known and widely respected throughout the entire BBC," said a spokesman. "Obviously, our fond belief in our own godlike impartiality is far more important than the mere welfare of 1,300,000 Palestinians. However, the BBC will continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza, which should provide us with plenty of first-rate, award-winning footage of children dying photogenically in the arms of their weeping parents - as long as these bleeding-heart do-gooders don't spoil it by alleviating their camera-friendly suffering."

"Anyway, ITV and all the other channels have banned the appeal too," he added, "So why don't you piss off and pester them instead?"

The BBC is, however, thought to be considering the possibility of allowing the appeal to be shown if the DEC also runs a balancing appeal for aid to Israel, which is said to be desperately short of munitions following its blitzkrieg on Gaza.

"Please give generously," said a visibly-moved Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. "Did you know that a single 1000kg bomb can remove shelter for an entire street of Palestinians? Just one smoke-marker shell, if fired humanely into a UN compound full of refugees, will guarantee years of hospital care for children suffering from horrific phosphorus burns. But our stocks are running low. With your help we can finally bring lasting peace to this troubled land, by eradicating the spectre of Palestinians forever."

Now It's Official

The Office of National Statistics today confirmed that yes, you do have a nose on your face.

The result of painstaking analysis of a wide range of data compiled over the last six months, the announcement confirmed the widespread fears of financial experts, householders and troglodytic hermits all over the country.

"There's been a lot of talk in the futures trading department where I work recently," said City banker James Hamer-Head. "Everywhere you looked, people were  touching their faces and finding mounting evidence of some kind of cartilaginous proturberance between their eyes and their mouths. You try to ignore it at first, of course, and act like there's nothing there. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I suppose it was staring us in the face all the time."

Meanwhile the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, is urging the public to give his nasal-reduction policies time to work.

"A few million years of evolution ought to do the trick," he assured the Commons, although his voice was somewhat muffled by a heavily bloodstained gauze patch taped over the middle of his face.

Plymouth Footballer Sets New Record Time Between Signing and Public Downfall

Another Plymouth Argyle footballer has been arrested for drink-driving, announced the popular-with-easily-pleased-locals club today - barely three months after the team's goalkeeper, Luke McCormick, was sent to prison for seven years for drunkenly slaughtering two children with his Range Rover.

Eighteen-year-old Wayne Shite - who has spectacularly broken all records by disgracing himself before playing a single game with the first team - was arrested in the small hours of Tuesday morning.

A spokesman for the perpetual also-rans told the press: "We are aware of the shituation but, in keeping with the club's polishy, and as prosheedings are active, it'sh interprope-inapote-bollocks-wrong at thish shtage to make any further comment."

"Hic," he added as he slid off his chair.

Crime Up, Down, Flying Around, Looping the Loop And Defying the Ground, Say Police

Crime may have gone up as the recession bites, or it may have gone down, according to official statistics compiled from police figures. However, since the figures turn out to have been mostly dreamed up by police chiefs randomly cutting a deck of cards, there may actually be no crime at all, or we may all have been murdered by feral terrorist hoodies with knives.

A police spokesman for the 18 forces who submitted false data to the Home Office said: "Evenin', all. Least, I fink it is. 'Ang on, I got the time written down 'ere on a bit of paper wot sarge give me down the station. 'Ere, can you read it to us? Wot, two? Yeah, that's evenin', innit?"

Those crime figures in full:

Murder: UP 10 of Diamonds

Burglary: DOWN Ace of Clubs

Rape: DOWN Jack of Hearts

Knife Crime: Joker

Corporate Fraud: Rules of Bridge

Motoring Offences: Mr Bunn the Baker

Mopery: Snap!

"Make no mistake," commented Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "If you break the law, your days are numbered."

"Er... bollocks," she added.

Microsoft Profits Now Ever So Slightly Less Obscene

Microsoft has stunned the worlds of IT and finance today with the shock announcement that it will eliminate 5,000 of its corporate minions worldwide, as Bill Gates is down to his last $47bn. The hapless drones are the first to be actively sacrificed in the corporation's history.

Although the majority of PC buyers are made to pay for Microsoft's bloated, hectoring operating system whether they want it or not, saddled with their crashy, slow and hack-prone internet browser and rarely taught to use any software not produced by Microsoft at school or work, in the last three months of 2008 the struggling corporation's net profit barely cleared the $4bn breadline.

"Just because we have a near-monopoly in personal and business computing, along with a vast chunk of the lucrative console market, doesn't mean your dearly-loved friend Microsoft couldn't just collapse overnight," warned chief executive Steve Ballmer, wiping away a tear with a piece of the Turin Shroud. "I implore you to consider the dire consequences that would follow. No more bug-fixes for Vista, no more emergency patches for Internet Explorer, no more closing of loopholes exploited by hackers. If we go down, I assure you, we're taking the whole damned world with us. Give us more money. Now."

"And Mac users can wipe those self-satisfied grins off their smug faces, too," he added. "Without our investment propping it up, Apple goes down the pan approximately three seconds after we do."

An angry Bill Gates - furious that any reduction in his net worth could hinder his dream of creating a chart-topping supergroup from clones of Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Mozart - was later reported to be hurling thunderbolts from his mountain lair, in an effort to persuade every man, woman and child on Earth to add to the £153.96 they have each already donated to his company and obscene personal wealth.

Historic Obama Promises To... er...

Today the world witnessed historic history being momentously made, as Barack Obama was sworn in as the first African-American President of the United States.

Washington's historic National Mall - which, strangely, is entirely lacking in retail outlets - was crowded with joyful African-Americans, and there were even rumours of one or two white Americans being present although media footage could not confirm this.

Due to an historic organisational mix-up, African-American warm-up act Aretha Franklin sang the British national anthem by mistake, getting the words momentously wrong and hitting every note but the correct one. Following the historic swearing-in of token non-African-American Joe Biden as Vice-President, Barack Obama took his sacred oath of office - momentously stumbling through it to become the 44th US President.

The momentously historic African-American President then took the stand, and delivered the most historic, momentous and African-American speech in the history of the United States.

"Basically, we're fucked," he told the cheering, weeping, African-historic-momentous-American crowds. "So here's some tough-love guff about our inherent greatness instead."

A housewife, who may or may not have been historic, momentous or African-American, then wandered up to the microphone and read out a poem she wrote for her therapy group, which was the signal for everyone to go back to their imposiibly-mortgaged homes and worry about their threatened jobs and uninsured health.

End of the Line for President Bush

Barack Obama's first duty as President was the customary disposal of the rubbish, and he fulfilled the task with aplomb, swiftly grabbing his bewildered predecessor George W Bush by the arm and frogmarching him out of the Capitol's service entrance to where a ceremonial garbage truck was waiting.

To rousing cheers, the newest incumbent of the White House dutifully delivered the traditional bitch-slap with obvious enthusiasm, and then dumped the discarded First Citizen head-first into the Presidential wheelie bin.

Mr Bush was then taken to the Washington City Dump, mechanically compacted and tipped into a huge landfill site.

Nine Christians Killed By Sulking God

Nine Brazilian Christians have died, and more than a hundred were injured, when God callously allowed the roof of their Sao Paulo church to fall in on them on Sunday.

Estevam and Sonia Hernandez, the God-fearing founders of the evangelical Reborn In Christ Church - who are wanted in Brazil on charges of money laundering, and were arrested for arriving in Miami in 2007 without declaring $56,000 in cash - told surviving followers: "There must be a reason for so much suffering."

"Too bloody right there is," answered a wrathful Lord of Hosts. "I've been busting My ass recently, saving people all over the world from horrible fiery death, and what thanks do I get? A load of buses trundling round saying I don't exist. Well, fuck you. Fuck the lot of you sideways, you miserable bastards."

The Reborn In Christ movement claims that the former cinema's structure complied with building regulations, despite its temporary closure in 1999 after termites were found in the rafters.

"We preached the word of God to the termites," a spokesman told reporters, "And they joyfully accepted Him into their lives and humbly repented their sinful roof-devouring ways."

In an attempt to placate their angry Redeemer, Italian authorities moved swiftly to ban a poster campaign planned along similar lines - but the ex-Saviour of Mankind was unimpressed, saying that Italy was firmly in the grip of the Catholic Church and they would have done it anyway.

"And another thing," fumed God. "Any piss-taking so-called church whose ambassador to the world is a football-kicker called Shit is just plain asking for a spot of traditional Old Testament-style retribution."

Perversely-Naive Cheerfulness Offers Meaningless Respite From Unremitting Litany of Doom

A group calling itself the Optimists Society has tackled 'Blue Monday' - said to be the most depressing day of the year - by unleashing a range of headline-grabbing publicity stunts.

Their main ploy has been optimist-in-chief Alistair Darling's announcement of a spectacularly wishful plan to bail out Britain's reckless banks by chancing up to £200bn of taxpayers' money on a reassuringly-labelled 'insurance' scheme predicated chiefly on the somewhat improbable dawning of a new golden age of prosperity between now and Friday afternoon.

The group also plans to insert a staccato DMX drum-machine break into all public declarations of bad news, hoping that the dynamic dancefloor combination of bass drum and hi-hat will propel disconsolate Britons into a wildly-gyrating defiance of the day's bulletins of woe, instead of reaching for the whisky and Prozac.

So far, the measure has been less than entirely successful in lightening the tone of the day's announcements. Suspended production at tss-tss-tss-tss Jaguar, the collapse of share prices in the Royal Bank of d-d-d-d-dum d-d-dum d- d-d-dum, record pension-fund deficitss-dum-clap, a rise in deaths from tss-tss-tsstabbing, the unstoppable rampage of a dum-clap computer virus, the worstss-tss rip-off train fares in Europe and the return of 1988 remix Ken clap-Clarke to the Tory front bench are turning out to be disappointingly hard for even the most starry-eyed fantasist to ignore.

"Still, it's not all bad news," insisted the society's founder, James Battison. "George W Bush has been phoning round world leaders to say his final farewells. So at least they're happy."

Obama Approaches Presidency With Unprecedented Humility

Astute political observers have discovered that, by an astonishing fluke, Barack Obama's train journey from Philadelphia to Washington happens to coincide exactly with one made 148 years ago by a little-known former president, Abraham Lincoln.

"Well, fancy that!" exclaimed the top-hatted President-Elect, as he waved to crowds of well-wishers from the Adulation Platform at the rear of the regular Amtrak 09.27 service. "I just woke up this morning and said to myself, Barack, why don't you treat the kids to a ride on a chuff-chuff? So I flew the family out to Chicago to meet me - but as luck would have it, an unscheduled toilet break made us miss the train! Luckily for us Air Force One was still at the airport, so we made our connection at Philadelphia. And, would you believe, a friendly ticket-collector tells me that the place seems to have played some small part in the Civil War - and the War of Independence, too! Like I said - just fancy that!"

By another remarkable coincidence, the highlight of Mr Obama's inauguration spectacular will be a star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial - an obscure monumental statue of the long-forgotten president of the same name, which is remembered as being "big - well, biggish" by the few old Washington hands who have seen it.

"I really should look up this Lincoln guy," mused Mr Obama, as he checked his newly-grown sideburns and beard in a mirror. "I wonder if he did anything of historical significance in his term of office?"

Asked how he hoped to relax in his rare moments away from the White House, Mr Obama reflected that he was quite looking forward to some "mind-blowing" drama at the theatre.

Peace Breaks Out in Joyful Gaza

There was dancing in the streets of the Gaza Strip today, as both Israeli and Hamas forces began their independent ceasefires.

Israel was the first to unilaterally declare a ceasefire, when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday announced that all of Israel's objectives had been achieved.

"We have reached our goal of putting at least one large hole in every man-made structure in Gaza," he said. "But more importantly, we have incurred the renewed wrath of the entire Islamic world, stuck two fingers up at everyone on the planet and finally kicked the shit out of the UN for the sixty-six blatantly anti-Semitic resolutions it has passed since 1956 condemning our completely justifiable - and commendably restrained - acts of self-defence."

"Having achieved these aims and then some, we are therefore halting our removal of the Palestinians from the face of the earth for the time being," he added, "Well, certainly until we've bought some more ammo from our totally-impartial suppliers, namely Britain, France and the United States."

Not to be outdone, Hamas today announced that it was having a ceasefire of its own.

"We have clearly won this battle, as everyone can see," said a one-legged Hamas spokesman, speaking with difficulty through the bloodstained rags wrapped around his head. "The reeling Zionist invaders have received serious scuff-marks on their tracks, and their warplanes have suffered badly-scorched paintwork in the vicinity of the rocket-launcher rails. If one Israeli soldier remains in the Gaza Strip a week from now, however, with any luck we'll have put a couple more rockets together out of any spares we can pull out of the rubble."

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip is all smiles, with former enemies hugging in the rubble-strewn streets.

"I guess the Palestinians are just ordinary folks like us, really," grinned Sgt. Daniel Peled from atop his flower-decked Merkava tank. "I just showed some photos of my wife and kids back home to my new friend Khaled, and said how much I was missing them and looking forward to seeing them soon in Tel Aviv. I even invited him to drop by one day, if he's ever in the area. In return, he showed me some photos of his wife and kids buried under their home, and told me how much he missed them and hoped to see them soon in Paradise. He says he's dying to take me with him, too. What a nice guy!"