Friday 5 June 2009

The Acts of St Purnell

1. In these times there dwelt a Pharisee - a real son of a Pharisee - whose name was James, also known as Purnell, of the tribe known as the Blairites.

2. Now this James was a wealthy man, much loved by the ruling authorities, who did first raise him up to enrich the cultural life of the nation by urging the people to drink themselves stupid all night and to gamble away all of their hard-earned shekels, even unto the last coin.

2. And James did also enrich his own life by cleverly not rendering unto Caesar the capital gains tax that was Caesar's, through the designation of his primary dwelling as being his second home also. And the tax collectors marvelled at this wisdom, and did let it pass.

3. Presently, James was rewarded with power over all things that creep, crawl and otherwise propel their stricken limbs; yea, and also over those lame in spirit and mind who gibber in the darkness, the tribal elders in their homes and the ever-increasing numbers deemed shy of work.

4. And he did set about persecuting them with unholy zeal, for he did make the halt and the lame to jump through many demeaning hoops for their meagre allowance that is called Employment Support; and he did also promise to reward the less of Job with slavery.

5. And there was much gnashing of NHS teeth and rending of charity shop garments across the land; which did bring forth hymns of joy from the scribes of diverse daily parchments - yea, even unto the Daily Mail.

6. Then it came to pass that a glowering darkness did spread throughout the land, and the name of the darkness was Gordon.

7. Now the Blairites did tremble and call upon their Lord to save them.

8. But the Lord did forsake them; for, with a final wave of His hand, he declared his eternal love for the moneylenders of Switzerland and America; adding he would miraculously bring everlasting peace to the land of Israel, without quite specifying how or when.

9. In the meantime, however, James the Blairite did confound his enemies by swearing loyalty to Gordon, the usurper; and Gordon smiled on James, for he too nursed in his breast a deep hatred of the poor.

10. Yet the darkness grew, covering the houses and second houses of the mighty.

11. For James had not been the only one to deceive the tax collectors.

12. And James began to feel sore afraid for his seat, which had once been deemed safe, and became sore vexed, and looked into his heart for guidance as he set off on the road that leads to Deselection.

13. There James did discover a deep and hitherto unknown love for the long-abandoned ways of the Labour Party, which moved him to declare in all of the parchments that he had seen the error of Gordon's ways.

14. As the scales fell from his eyes, so James did call for a government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society.

15. And the poorest in society were sore amazed, shaking their heads and saying unto each other: "Has not this fatherless Purnell been our worst tormentor?"

16. And even the lepers did agree, saying, "Pull the other one - but not too hard; for it hath bells on it ."

17. But James heard them not, for he did turn his face from Gordon and shake the dust from his shoes, writing many epistles to the daily parchments.

18. And the multitude did rejoice; for, if they had not much respect for Purnell, yet their loathing for Gordon was greater by an hundredfold in comparison.

19. And though Purnell did swear that he sought not to wrest power from Gordon, still it was plain to all that it would be an entirely different matter the day after Gordon delivered the nation into the hands of its enemies.

20. And that blessed day did draw ever nearer, as many humble sinners were converted to James' way of thinking and repented; yea, even the shameful harlots who dress in the window.

21. And the Tories saw that it was good, and spoke privily among themselves, praising the Lord and saying: "If the poor thought this Purnell was bad, let them wait and see what we have planned."

Thursday 4 June 2009

Britain To Be Represented by Assorted Loons, Twerps and Would-Be Dictators

Britain's major political parties are preparing for the worst today, as an unprecedented number of voters go to the polling stations to elect absolutely anyone but a Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem candidate - no matter how irrelevant, barmy, or downright dangerous.

The Nazi Party is expected to pick up plenty of votes from people who lie awake at night foaming at the mouth at the thought of a domineering European dictatorship, while many others are expected to send UKIPocrite representatives to Europe to sign for their expenses and jump on the first Eurostar home.

Among the smaller parties likely to represent Britain's interests in the European Parliament are That's Life, the Thirtysomethings Party, al-Qaeda, Solidarnosc, The Big Brother House, the Yakuza, Mebyon Kernow, The Ting Tings, FARC and Slimio Berluscruki's Barely Legal Party.

"At least this year we won't have to worry about postal voting fraud," said a spokesman for the Electoral Commission this morning. "There are 38,249,094 elgible voters in the UK - and, for the first time in history, that's exactly how many ballot papers we're expecting."

Meanwhile, staff at Madame Tussauds are reported to be constructing an exciting new tourist attraction consisting of a tumbrel and guillotine, and have invited all 630 MPs to attend on consecutive days.

Plymouth Now Up To 1985, Say Time Warp Experts

The city of Plymouth - which, following a top-secret scientific experiment carried out by the Navy which went horribly wrong, was sucked into a time warp several decades ago - is reported to have caught up with the 1980s at last, according to reports that the Conservative-led council has just discovered Thatcherism.

Council leader Vivien Pengelly took time out from bleaching her hair to say that her plan to sell the city-owned bus company to a rich friend of a fellow Tory was inspired by Post Office Telephones' amusing Busby cartoon character and the gas board's elusive Sid.

"Sadly, Plymouth is a democracy, and I need to convince the scum that this is in their best interests, rather than just a spurious attempt to make it look like I've single-handedly wiped out a £39m budget deficit when next year's council elections come around," smiled a blue-suited Mrs Pengelly. "Perhaps we ought to spend a few million quid of their council tax on an advertising campaign featuring a lovable cuddly character, possibly called Vivien."

"This new 'privatisation' idea will bring untold benefits to Plymouth," she continued. "A bus company owned by a respectable get-rich-quick taxi operator will reduce fares to zero, run 24-hour services to your doorstep, purchase a fleet of luxury buses with armchairs and topless waitresses and transform this city into a veritable paradise, where everyone will be a millionaire. Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!"

However, Labour group leader Eddie Tudor-Pole expressed anger that he hadn't thought of the idea in the days when he was running Plymouth as his own personal fiefdom.

"Selling off one of Plymouth's few remaining assets is irresponsible, short-sighted opportunism which will come back to haunt the city for ever more," he said. "Mrs Pengelly herself told me when I tried to sell the housing stock. And I told her the same thing when she carried on selling the housing stock."

"Hello, we exist," said a token Liberal Democrat, whose party has no seats on the council.

If the sale goes ahead, Mrs Pengelly plans to use the revenue to buy a small rowing boat and declare war on distant Exeter.

"It's very sad really," said an expert on relativity at Plymouth Polytechnic. "One day Plymouth is going to discover that the British Empire no longer exists, with dire consequences for its entirely navy-centred economy. Although it may take 25 years for them to realise it."

Sir Francis Drake was not available for comment, although he is expected back from his round-the-world voyage any day now.

Wednesday 3 June 2009

World Faints With Delight At Prospect of Smaller Toy

All of the problems in the world evaporated today, after Sony launched a toy that is slightly different to existing toys of a similar nature.

"Forget about the global recession, political meltdown, flu pandemics, climate change, terrorism, nuclear threats, air safety, losing your job or home and reality TV," smiled Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Kazuo Hirai at the E3 games conference in Los Angeles. "The PSP Go has a 4.3-inch screen and Bluetooth, and weighs several grammes less than its honoured ancestor!"

The handheld PSP Go is the latest in a long line of Sony distraction products aimed at insulating the general public from the real world.

"When we attached a pair of lightweight headphones to a modified dictating machine in 1978, we discovered a vast, hitherto-untapped market for electronic devices which would give people a much-needed sense of complete isolation from the harsh realities of life, and save them the bother of ever having to relate to other people," explained Mr Hirai.

"Our designers are working hard to create the ultimate concept in personal entertainment," he continued. "We envisage a vast array of coffin-like tanks, in which people can lie for the rest of their days, their brains directly linked to a complete virtual reality system while life-sustaining nutrients are pumped into their bodies. The power source from this system would be the electrical activity of the users' own bodies."

Until then, Sony is urging customers to spend their last £214 on their latest toy, then beg, steal or borrow the funds to pay for games and batteries to feed their addiction to pointless activities which might briefly distract them from the harsh reality of living on a park bench.

Second Home Alone

Gordon Brown was reduced to tears today, after nobody turned up to a Cabinet meeting but him.

At first Mr Brown thought his ministers were playing hide and seek, and ordered staff to turn 10 Downing Street upside down looking for Cabinet members hiding beneath desks. When it became apparent that no ministers had entered the building all morning, he went next door to seek out Chancellor Alistair Darling - but found the door wide open, with official papers and IOUs floating in the warm summer breeze.

The Prime Minister then spent a quarter of an hour walking up and down the street, calling out, "I give up, come out wherever you are!" to no avail.

He then rang Labour Party headquarters, only to receive a recorded message telling him that the entire Parliamentary Labour Party could not get to the phone right now and inviting him to leave a message as his call was important to them.

When Mr Brown switched on the BBC Parliament channel - resulting in the digital channel's highest-ever viewing figures - he saw an empty House of Commons, save for doomed Speaker Michael Martin who was folding order papers into darts and throwing them around the chamber.

Shortly after, the sound of Scots-accented sobbing was heard coming from an upstairs toilet window.

Tuesday 2 June 2009

Routine Disappearance of Airbus Upgraded to Tragedy After British Names Found on Manifest

The unremarkable disappearance of an AirFrance flight from Brazil to Paris turned into a tragedy of unimaginable proportions today, when it was discovered that five Britons did not know any better than to travel on a French airliner operated by a French carrier.

Another 223 people are missing, presumed dead, after the flying deathtrap vanished in mid-Atlantic - although most of them are likely to be French, and so presumably knew the risks.

Search aircraft are patrolling the vast ocean in the somewhat unlikely hope of spotting the Airbus A330 floating happily on the waves, with the passengers and crew enjoying a picnic on the wings as they wait to be picked up.

Realistically, however, all they are likely to see are a few seat cushions and plastic panels, which may give some indication of where the doomed plane's black boxes are lying on the ocean floor. The discovery of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder would give vital clues about what went catastrophically wrong with Flight AF447, if they were examined by competent air accident investigators.

However, as the carrier, aeroplane and crew were all French, it is widely expected that the crash will be blamed on the weather, terrorist birds or those pesky aliens from the Bermuda Triangle, rather than any inherent design faults in French-assembled Airbuses - whose computer systems have occasionally been known to land aircraft in forests or attempt to loop the loop over Paris.

Non-French experts suggested that an automated radio message from the aircraft, reporting an electrical failure, may not necessarily mean that the plane had been brought down by lightning.

"Funnily enough, we thought of that problem several decades ago," said one non-French aircraft designer. "Although it may be convenient for the French government to try to blame random mischance, it's actually fairly common for airliners to be struck by lightning and carry on flying. It's not as if they're earthed, is it?"

"If and when the black boxes are brought to the surface and properly analysed - by which I mean by a British or American team of properly-trained experts with no political agenda, whose only concern is to prevent the same kind of accident from ever happening again - I wouldn't be surprised if the circuit failure wasn't caused by the frenzied cockpit crew desperately ripping out the wiring from behind the instrument panel in a desperate attempt to prevent the computer from trying to fly the aircraft to the moon," he added. "Unfortunately, however, it looks like the French will be handling this one themselves."

"Hope is not yet lost," a sombre President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters in Paris. "We are investigating the possibility that there may be a plucky band of good-looking survivors on a mysterious, peripatetic island, struggling to outwit its highly-organised, malevolent occupants. It may be a bit far-fetched, I grant you - but no more so than the idea that France may one day place the safety of air travellers above national prestige. Vive la France!"

Australia Not A Racist Nation, Says Inheritor of Murderous Colonial Land-Grab

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has sought to assure New Delhi that Australia is not a racist nation, in the wake of over 70 assaults on Indian students so far this year, including several stabbings in Melbourne last week.

The situation has not been helped by accusations of heavy-handedness on the part of the city's police force in the breaking up of a protest rally.

"I speak on behalf of all Australians when I say that we deplore and condemn these attacks," Rudd told Indian PM Manmohan Singh. "Australia is a country of great diversity, harmony and tolerance. We are a multicultural nation and we respect and embrace diversity, diversity which has enriched our nation."

"Oh really?" commented Aboriginal tribal elders later. "Give us back our country then."

Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull echoed Mr Rudd's statement, saying: "We've managed to create a broad, multicultural society with very little friction."

"Have you now?" said the tribal leaders, speaking from one of their impoverished backwater reservations. "How very interesting."

Monday 1 June 2009

ITV Viewers Continue To Be Entertained By Self-Destruction of Susan Boyle

19.2 million ITV viewers shrugged this morning at the news that their insatiable desire for gratification in the name of entertainment has driven Susan Boyle barmy.

After coming second to a cute bunch of prancing youngsters in the final of Britain Wants To Crucify Talent, the gifted Scots singer was assessed by doctors at her London hotel under the Mental Health Act, before being driven off to hospital in an ambulance.

"If Miss Boyle was misled into thinking that we in any way appreciate talent over good looks, she really must be some kind of nutter," said Joe Public, speaking on behalf of the viewing audience. "I blame Ant and Dec. And maybe Simon Cowell. But not myself, obviously. You haven't got a copy of the Sun, have you? I'm really looking forward to seeing some photos of her in a straitjacket, preferably foaming at the mouth and rolling her vacant, tortured eyes."

The smile was wiped off Mr Public's face, however, when he was arrested - along with the show's other 19,199,999 viewers - for child abuse after ten-year-old Hollie Steel broke down in tears during the semi-finals under the unbearable burden of having to keep ITV audiences amused for five minutes.

'What's That About Vauxhall?' Say Slightly Preoccupied Ministers

After being repeatedly prodded with sticks, Government ministers reluctantly put down their magnifying glasses and turned away from examining their expense claims for thirty seconds to express their full support for whatever deal the German government had done with Canadian car spares firm Magna over the future of General Motors' Europe division.

5,000 Vauxhall and Bedford workers have expressed some concern that the German government's £1.3bn loan to Magna may have strings attached in favour of the 25,000 Germans who work for the stricken US manufacturer's Opel subsidiary.

"I'm sure the German government's number one priority was to safeguard the jobs of British car workers at Ford," said Prime Minister Gordon Brown. "Sorry, Vauxhall. Whatever."

"Anyone know the rules on Capital Gains Tax exemptions?" he added.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, went on the BBC's Politics Show yesterday to reassure worried British workers that, as an unelected member of the cabinet and the House of Lords, he is immune from threats of deselection when it is his turn to be caught fiddling his expenses.

"Let me just say - and I think it's very important to remember the essential facts - that my past record speaks for itself," he said. "I am not worried - not worried in the slightest - about being exposed as a shameless, greedy, self-serving swine. What you must remember is that I'm already well-known for being a shameless, greedy, self-serving swine. But that's not the issue here. What you have to remember is that I'm not an MP, I'm a Lord. You can't get rid of old Mandy so easily, you know."

When asked what the future might hold for the beleaguered British car industry, Lord Mandelson said: "I should imagine that the chavs will just have to get used to burning around the streets in Opels."