Consumers Receive New Commandments

The Almighty God Retail - speaking through Its faithful acolyte, the Advertising Industry - today declared the Christmas Quartile officially over, but stressed that a similar Maximum Retail Opportunity would be launched in September 2010.

"Meanwhile, my overlords have instructed me to remind you all that another Maximum Retail Opportunity commenced this morning," said a senior Advertiser in his holy red-framed glasses. "Sadly, however, it has been observed that some Consumer Units have neglected their duties by selfishly remaining at home all day with their Revenue Generators, Development Prototypes and Obsolete Models. This must cease."

The Advertiser added that Development Prototypes at various stages of Launch Readiness were already being heavily targeted, via the new Mind Programmers they received yesterday.

"Attention, Development Prototypes of all sizes!" he announced. "Have you already attained Product Saturation with the pitifully small quantity of Entertainment Modules which came supplied with your Mind Programmer? Pester your Consumer Units, Revenue Generators and Obsolete Models to buy more! Spare no effort in issuing frequent reminders that some Entertainment Modules will destroy slightly less Disposable Income during the period covered by this brief Maximum Retail Opportunity!"

Consumer Units have also been alerted, via their own Mind Programmers, to the availability of strictly limited quantities of numerous Comfort Fixtures and Semi-Functional Domestic Substructures at notionally lower prices than at some unspecified point in time, along with an official notification that this Retail Singularity was profoundly unstable and could not possibly exist for much longer.

Revenue Generators in many Retail Areas of the world were reportedly groaning blasphemously at the prospect of having to double their productivity, in order to support the latest directive of the Great God Retail. Meanwhile, unpaired dual-function Generator/Consumer Units have already been hard at work all day, servicing the demands of obedient Consumer Units and their well-programmed Development Prototypes.

Merciful Pope Kindly Locks Assailant Away Indefinitely Without Trial

The Catholic Church has benevolently decided to lock Susanna Maiolo - the woman who knocked Pope Benedict XVI to the ground - away in a mental institution, without trial, for a very long time.

Offences which take place within Vatican City are normally referred, as a matter of routine, to the Italian legal system for trial and sentencing. However, in a touching seasonal demonstration of God's infinite mercy, Vatican authorities have in this case decided to deal with the incident internally, thus sparing his Italian flock from the trouble of having to listen to the defendant explaining the reasons for her action in a court of law.

Instead, the deeply-troubled Ms Maiolo will receive the loving and attentive ministrations of the Pope's most loyal nuns, and kept well away from the troublesome influence of the temporal world until the Pope's most loyal nuns feel that she is fully cured of her terrible affliction of not regarding His Holiness as the inviolable right hand of God.

"I'll teach that bitch to fuck with me," said the Pope in his traditional Boxing Day address to the faithful. "In nomine patris, filii et spiritus sancti, Heil Hitler."

Historians Criticise Half-Hearted Efforts of Today's Publicity-Seeking Nutters

A day after Pope Benedict was knocked to the ground by a mad woman with a grudge, leading historians issued a joint statement deprecatng the marked decline in standards exhibited by desperate misfits in the 21st century.

"In less than five years the world will be marking the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, which really set the benchmark for how much change can be brought about by one well-placed protester with a pet peeve," explained Simon Schama. "I think that, in a way, it's rather sad that the current generation of stroppy nutters has rather lost sight of that nowadays. Would Serbian independence and the collapse of Western imperialism ever have happened, if he'd just given Archduke Ferdinand a slap? I rather doubt it."

Colleague David Starkey agreed. "A century ago, heads of state were quaking in their riding boots, with stroppy anarchists, communists and free-love advocates lobbing explosives at them from all directions if they so much as opened the bathroom window. As a result, more constitutional powers were devolved to elected parliaments, with the vote given to many previously disenfranchised peasants who actually had some say in their lives for the first time ever. Those home-made bombs changed the world, in a way that a miniature of Milan Cathedral probably can't really hope to emulate."

"By 1980s, though, the rot was setting in," commented Michael Wood. "John Lennon might have had a few trenchant things to say about life aboard a garish cartoon submarine, but even the most ardent Beatles fan would find it hard to claim that he was a pivotal figure in the Cold War standoff between two opposing superpowers."

"Things could have perked up again when Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan were shot and wounded by narky loners," he added. "But in both cases, any potential improvements in our collective lot were foolishly thrown away for the simple want of a couple more hours' practice on a firing range. There's really no substitute for a well thought-out plan."

All of the historians were united in their contempt for the sheer feebleness of this year's token attempts to change the course of history.

"Somehow I don't think that Silvio Berlusconi will relinquish control of the Italian media and surrender himself to the authority of the courts because he was lamped with a mantelpiece ornament," sneered Niall Ferguson. "Nor is the Pope about to relax his hard line on abortion and homosexuality, or indeed harden his views on paedophilia, simply because some silly woman briefly tried to introduce him to the pleasures of the moshpit. You can replay it on YouTube until the cows come home; it's just not going to happen. Look, this is a gun, OK? If you seriously want the world to sit up and notice your imaginary grievances, it really is the tool for the job."

Breaking News: Quick-Thinking Bodyguards Save Queen From Spacehopper Maniac Lurking Outside Sandringham Church

Mandelson Slashes University Budgets When Nobody's Looking

A huge, cloying air of smarminess covered Central London today, as Lord Mandelson spent the day smugly congratulating himself on the impeccable timing of his announcement of a swingeing £398m cut in university funding, now that all the lecturers are on holiday abroad and the students are too busy feverishly stacking supermarket shelves to notice.

"You know, I'm not normally one to blow my own trumpet - Modest Mandy, that's me to a T - but I am living proof that a proper university education brings out a person's native intelligence," oozed the Business Secretary. "Isn't it absolutely brilliant of me to make sure that this assault on the citadels of learning happens when there is absolutely no one around to kick off about it? Clever, clever Peter."

Lord Mandelson also berated the universities for their naïvety in taking at face value the government's meaningless platitudes about increasing student numbers, especially from less-privileged areas.

"All these chavs from council estates - I don't want to cast aspersions, of course, but very, very inferior types - are now swanning around our educational centres of excellence, lowering the tone terribly," smiled Lord Mandelson. "And some of them, would you believe, actually think they're as good as nice, middle-class children! Costs a pretty penny, between you and me, building all those new lecture halls on the never-never - not that the off-the-books borrowing of PFI is anything but a masterly stroke of sheer unadulterated genius from Gordon, of course, and I'm sure that in ten or twenty years time we'll all give him credit when the interest's due."

The slimy peer also urged universities to cram more three-year courses into two, in order to ensure that going to university was only financially viable for students whose parents were comfortably able to support them when they had no time to spare for a part time job.

"And, of course, nobody will have time to waste on fripperies like extra-curricular activities, such as sports, volunteering or, God forbid, their loony students' union," he beamed. "Middle-class people shouldn't fill their heads with any of that 'well-rounded-human-being' tripe. They should come out of university imbued only with a single-minded craving to make as much money as they can, by whatever means necessary, and devil take the hindmost. Sound Labour principles which my grandfather would approve of with all his heart."

Meanwhile, Herbert Morrison's mould-covered corpse has been sighted wandering the snowy streets of North London, heading in the general direction of Westminster and gurgling Lord Mandelson's name ominously.

World's Best Driver In World's Best Car Will Inject Much-Needed Element of Unpredicability Into F1, Say Incurable Optimists

Formula One legend Michael Schumacher has sensationally signed to the new Mercedes team - formerly champion constructors Braun F1 - three years after retiring because there were no more records left to break, in a move which desperate motor-racing publicists are frantically trying to portray as exciting in some way or other.

"Look, Michael Schumacher is really very, very old and decrepit," said a spokesman for Mercedes. "It's touch-and-go whether he'll be able to remember where the starter is, it's been so long since he drove a cutting-edge F1 car."

"Well, not in a proper Formula One race, as such, anyway," he admitted when it was pointed out that Schumacher has spent the intervening years as a consultant and test driver for Ferrari.

Many of the championship's current drivers are young enough to be Schumacher's children, leading the more delusional pundits to claim that the venerable old man of high-speed racing will probably crawl along at a resolute 30mph and not a mite faster, stop at every corner to examine a dog-eared AA map and eventually exit the pits from the entry lane and drive the wrong way around the track until the chase car pulls him over.

But it is the completely unpredictable pairing of Formula One's most successful driver with a world-beating chassis/engine combination which expert PR liars say will add tension and excitement to the flagging championship series.

"It would be a brave man indeed who rushed off down to the bookies and slapped a couple of grand on Schumacher running away with the 2010 title," said motorsport fan and owner Bernie Ecclestone. "Believe me, I've just tried and the odds are bloody atrocious. Even I'd soon bankrupt myself at 500-1 on."

Furious French Demand To Know Why Part-French Company's French Trains Are Rubbish

With the French government angrily asking why Eurostar is complete shit (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), the deeply-embarrassed company announced it would be resuming services on Tuesday, by which time everybody's travel plans will have been comprehensively ruined.

As the useless company launched a probe to find out why it took so long to evacuate six immobilised trains (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), chief executive Richard Brown said he was "very, very sorry" that he was being made to look like a complete dick on national TV in Britain, France and Belgium. He insisted, however, that the problem was entirely due to fanatical suicide snow, and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Eurostar was part-owned by SNCF, or that its rolling stock was designed and built by French power-station constructor Alstom.

"The average pig-ignorant traveller might be tempted to think that a company which builds power stations might have grasped the basic notion that water and electricity don't mix," he told reporters today. "However, the problem seems to have been that snow somehow got inside the power units, possibly by deliberately targeting the huge ventilation gratings. When the trains passed from freezing cold air into the dank, humid environment of the tunnel, the evil snow cynically melted and got into the electrics, causing the train's fuse to blow.

"When our office staff got to work on Monday morning, somebody noticed that rather a lot of trains had apparently failed to arrive at their destinations," explained Mr Brown. "We immediately activated our emergency procedure, which was to send a temp down the tunnel on foot with a wind-up torch. When he found the broken-down trains, he returned promptly, collected some 13-amp fuses from our depot outside Paddington and strolled back down the tunnel to fix things. What's all the fuss about? The system works."

Eurostar (part-owned by SNCF) says it is working as fast as it can to fix the elementary schoolboy error in the basic design of its rolling stock (by French power-station constructor Alstom), by stuffing hundreds of bath-towels around the electric motors and installing vast banks of hairdryers - electric hairdryers - outside both ends of the Channel Tunnel.

Meanwhile, smug railway experts - who point out that Britain happened to make rather good trains, once upon a time - are waiting patiently for the French to shit themselves and gesticulate wildly once they remember that Alstom also built many of their nuclear power stations.

Guinness Factory Burns Down - English Undergraduates Inconsolate

Stand-up comedians across the UK are desperately stuffing their fists into their mouths tonight, in a politically-correct attempt to prevent themselves from making the obvious comment that springs to mind concerning the accidental torching of the Guinness plant in Dublin by inept construction workers who - perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, unwisely - used a blowlamp on felt roofing.

As news of the inferno on the banks of the Liffey spread, millions of comedy Irishmen were left desolate and contemplating suicide - most of their ranks comprising the sub-species of English undergraduate who firmly believes that marking the holy day of St Patrick by drinking themselves inside out on watered-down treacle whilst wearing a stupid great big green hat in some way inducts them into the ranks of Brian Boru's heroic descendants.

Meanwhile, the native population of Ireland consoled themselves with plentiful supplies of the Emerald Isle's traditional tipple - namely, a few drops of chemical cider at the bottom of a glass containing most of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Season's grumpiest greetings from The Nev Filter

Brown Pondering Berlusconi's Post-Assault Rise In Popularity

With Silvio Berlusconi's personal popularity soaring after he was smacked in the mouth with a cathedral, Britain's loathsome prime minister is said to be studying a range of possible bizarre assault scenarios in the months remaining before he is finally forced to call a general election.

Many worried Labour MPs, convinced that their marginal seats will be transformed for decades into unassailable Tory strongholds, have filled Gordon Brown's inbox with helpful suggestions for a poll-boosting rearrangement of the PM's gloomy features, including:

- being strapped securely to a post underneath the London Eye, each of whose cabins has been fitted with giant spring-loaded Dr Martens;

- a weekly televised battering live on Newsnight, in which Jeremy Paxman's forthright questioning style is augmented by Emu with a housebrick clenched in his beak;

- Prime Minister's Decking Time, in which Mr Brown is forced into stocks on the floor of the Commons debating chamber with backbenchers queueing up to pelt him with obscene garden gnomes;

- a Christmas Top of the Pops special, with the hapless PM in the centre of a moshpit seething with over-enthusiastic Rage Against The Machine fans whose elbows have been specially sharpened for the occasion, culminating in a well-aimed stage-dive by a rhinoceros with an anvil strapped to its back;

- an unescorted walk through any city centre in Britain.

Veteran political observers, however, insist that nothing short of a Hellraiser-style sundering by thousands of sharp hooks embedded deep within Mr Brown's pallid, podgy flesh would be capable of delivering the massive swing required for the legion of the damned who now make up 99% of the British electorate to reward Labour with a fourth term in office.

9 Out Of 10 Parents Think Coco Pops Are Some Kind Of Food

A chilling survey published today by the British Heart Foundation shows that nine out of ten breeders are such gullible fucktards that simply carving the words 'Nutritional Information' into a kilo of lard would convince them that it was a perfectly safe substance to cram into the faces of their children morning, noon and night.

"Regrettably, it seems you can print anything - or indeed nothing - after the inscription, 'Nutritional Information'," observed a despairing BHF boffin with a proper qualification. "Most parents in Britain are so pitifully dense that they couldn't tell a vitamin from a saturated fat if you hit them repeatedly in the face with a huge, grunting porker - or, for that matter, one of their own globular spawn, which is much the same thing these days."

Other magic words which instantly disengage any remaining brain cells from ringing alarm bells on sugary cholesterol in a packet include 'wholegrain', 'enriched', 'calcium' and 'unleaded'.

"I'm afraid it's got to the stage where parents would happily tip the entire contents of a 500g box of salt into their child's gaping gullet, as long as the packaging reassured them that it contained 'no added salt'," the spokesman went on sadly. "As a rational scientist I'm not a religious man - but in the face of such staggering idiocy, Christ on a bike is all I can think of."

A grinning, fork-tailed minor demon from the Kellogg's Circle of Hell refuted the scientists' claims by pointing out that one tiny Coco Pops Cereal And Milk Bar "actually contains less than two teaspoons of sugar per bar" - prompting millions of Pavlov-conditioned parents to rush out immediately to buy a multipack of the sickly-sweet crap sticks for their bloated brood.

"While you're down Lidl's, don't forget to grab a couple of sacks of raw cane sugar," it roared, with a maniacal cackle. "Mixed into a bucket of Coca-Cola, it like rilly helps your litto man or princess to develop a healthy brain muscle, or whatever."

"And remember, mums - raw cane sugar contains no added colouring, salt or monosodium glutamate," added the diabolical thing, "Which means it's like rilly, rilly good for your litto darlin's girth - oops, I mean growth."