Sunday 31 January 2010

Any Any Any Old Iron

Gordon Brown has gatecrashed a jam-selling fundraising event organised by suburban housewife Carol Ann Duffy to announce that he has bought up the nation's entire scrapyard supply of corrugated iron. He also promised to ship it out to the earthquake-hit island on the next returning banana boat.

"What these desperate, starving people need is something to occupy their minds," declared Mr Brown. "No point dwelling on your misfortunes, as Lord Mandelson keeps telling me, you'll just end up getting yourself down."

All that scrap iron only cost £35,000, and I've got a whopping £19.965m that I haven't spent yet burning a hole in my pocket for a Caribbean version of Scrapheap Challenge," smiled Mr Brown, as angry housewives tried to eject him from the jam sale. "I've got cabinet ministers scouring the scrap dealers of Britain for a van with no roof, a compact engine with lots of bottom-end torque and a dumper truck with a leaky universal joint. That's what the people of Haiti are crying out for. Set them the task of building hurricane-proof shelters out of tin - or better, something completely barmy like a vertical take-off submarine - and watch their little faces light up with glee."

Meanwhile, British Nuclear Fuels Limited pointed out that they have plenty of nice, hot reprocessed nuclear waste available to ship out to the ruined capital, Port-au-Prince.

"I reckon we could clear out Sellafield for, oh, say about £19.965m," said a BNFL spokesman today. "That's just covering our costs, you understand."

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