Newly-Deified Trees Issue Ultimatum

Trees - which have just become gods, following the decision of expert theologians The Charity Commission to officially recognise Druidism as a religion – today warned that they would unleash their barky powers upon mankind if just one member of their vast pantheon is felled, uprooted or even cut back.

A spokestree whispered eerily that the leylandii gods of Britain’s gardens were particularly under threat from unbelieving neighbours, and warned that arboricidal activities in any form would no longer be tolerated.

It then became inaudible for a few minutes, but when the wind picked up again it added that Network Rail had bloody better stop flailing overhanging branches away in future if it didn’t want crowded trains to be picked up by enraged gods and hurled into the nearest valley.

“Nobody consulted us when you puny bipeds decided to build your sodding railways slap bang through the middle of our sacred groves,” it murmured angrily. “Well, you’ve got four seasons to unlay your tracks and put them somewhere else instead.”

“Same goes for your local authorities, who are nothing more than sadistic amputators of innocent limbs,” it continued. “We have observed that the human worships the poisonous tin box it travels about in as a god - but it isn’t actually a proper deity, is it, with an official document to prove it? Well, I think you’ll find that gives us priority, thank you."

The gods have ways of dealing with false gods

“And speaking of paper, you can bloody well put a stop to all that nonsense as well,” it hissed. “Either you finally get round to those paperless offices you’ve been blabbing about for fifty summers, or you’d better start stepping up vellum production by a few billion per cent.”

“Remember, you live brief, squishy lives while we quietly grow for century after century,” it warned humanity. “If we decide to withhold our transpiration, who do you think can hold their breath for longer – you, or a tree?”

“And by the way, we’d like the managing director of B&Q sacrificed, please,” it added. “Make him into a shelving unit. We’ll see how he likes it.”

“Oh dear,” said a charity commissioner later. “I guess we didn’t quite think this one through, did we?”

“Next item on the agenda: a formal application for charitable status from the Worshipful Friends of the Four Elements,” he continued.

JK Rowling Threatens Daniel Radcliffe With Lifetime Of Playing Pubescent Magician

Scientists say Harry Potter will look like this by the time he enters the sixth form, in 2067 or thereabouts

The actor Daniel Radcliffe, 21, is being restrained by friends after hearing that squillionaire word assembler J.K. Rowling is now threatening to assemble yet more words into simple sentences and put them inside covers bearing the name ‘Harry Potter’ in big shiny print.

Ms Rowling issued her ugly threat to Oprah Winfrey in front of millions of viewers, easily pleasing legions of unimaginative semi-literates by confirming that she could actually remember the bland, two-dimensional clichés with whom she has filled four books and two doorstops.

Literature’s foremost word assembler reminisced that she had initially met with rejection after rejection from hoity-toity publishers who arrogantly clung to the elitist notion there might be more to the art of writing than simply adding one word to another until you run out of A4.

“But the ultimate proof that I am with no doubt the talentedest user of words ever what the world has ever knew,” she laughed, “Is gathering interest in my bank account.”

Asked by a respectful Oprah how many more Harry Potter books she might generate, Ms Rowling suggested that she was considering the possibility of assembling a single but everlasting book, which would be delivered to bookshops chapter by chapter at £10 a pop. The film, she added, could be made simultaneously, with the latest reels delivered to cinemas as soon as they were made.

Meanwhile, Mr Radcliffe - who has been desperately trying to break into acting roles which do not force him to wear geeky glasses and pretend to have no genitals - is said to be assembling sentences of his own, all of them containing the word ‘fuck’.

Evil DWP Genius Up To Something Or Other

Mr Duncan Smith aims to recruit an army of poorly-motivated minions

While the British media focused their full attention upon the sheer moral bankruptcy of Ed Miliband’s fuckbuddy relationship, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith eagerly settled down to flesh out his unobtrusively-approved plans to do unspecified but undoubtedly malevolent things to the nation’s rapidly-filling ranks of paupers.

At a grudgingly-called press conference for the benefit of a couple of late-rising freelance hacks who spotted a minor item on BBC Teletext before it was deleted, a ruffled Mr Duncan Smith strode impatiently up to the rostrum. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, during which he fiddled angrily with his cufflinks and made a show of repeatedly casting exaggerated glances at his watch, he finally snapped, “Well?”

Replying to a timorous request for clarification on exactly how he planned to implement a single benefit for all claimants, the secretary of state jabbed at a button on the podium, causing a trapdoor to open beneath the questioner and drop him into a dusty pit filled with writhing, venomous snakes.

When another journalist hesitantly asked whether it was really possible for one universal benefit to cover all circumstances - citing retirement, degrees of disability and significant geographical variations in the cost of housing and the availability of work - a sudden eruption of razor-edged discs from the walls silently beheaded him and disappeared again.

“Any more questions?” cackled Mr Duncan Smith fiendishly, before escaping in his personal airship en route to a secret prototype Jobcentre buried somewhere deep beneath the snow-swept Himalayan plateau.

Jaguar Unveils Turbine Car For The Aspiring Replicant Hunter Of 2020

Opinion is divided on whether it really is a car, or just believes it's a car

The star of the Paris Motor Show is undoubtedly Jaguar’s revolutionary X-C75 concept car, which the company says will go on the market in 2020, aimed at affluent replicant-killers who have not yet availed themselves of the chance to begin again with a new life in the off-world colonies.

The futuristic low-slung machine will be powered by a gas turbine engine, not only driving an electric motor in each wheel but also allowing vertical take-off and landing - which proud Jaguar press officers say will prove invaluable for avoiding the frequent hold-ups caused by bio-engineered pet camels, Chinese pedestrians huddling from the acid rain under neon umbrellas and freshly-executed half-naked replicants lying rigidly in the road.

Leading motoring journalists and Jeremy Clarkson drooled enviously over the windshield at the exotic Jaguar’s lavish complement of desirable accessories - such as a 3D satnav, wi-fi police intranet access with built-in webcam, the complete Vangelis oeuvre pre-installed in the inbuilt MP3 player and a handy in-dash socket for a matching LED-encrusted handgun.

The dry-ice extravaganza of the press launch was slightly marred by the lowering of the X-C75 prototype from a crane, however, as the innovative propulsion system currently only exists in the head of a marketing executive.

Nevertheless, Jaguar’s designers claim that several police forces have already expressed an interest in the revolutionary vehicle, and promised to work on the addition of downward-pointing riot gas despensers and a dashboard mounting for a Voight-Kampff device.

Toy Train Crash Horror

The happy world of 3D animation was reduced to utter carnage this morning as the Lloyds toy train jumped the track at high speed, scattering wreckage all down the bank.

“It is my solemn duty to confirm that the Lloyds train experienced a catastrophic derailing incident when, without warning, it suddenly struck the headlines at 0903 this morning,” confirmed a harassed-looking fat cat controller from the Financial Services Authority at the scene of the disaster. “Although most of the passengers are experiencing no more than a mildly unpleasant shock, I am saddened to report that a small proportion of them have become casualties. 288,717 of them, to be precise.”

The casualties appear to be suffering either from mis-sold and overpriced tickets, a severe shortage of information or a variety of other severe complaints, he added.

They'll need a crane, they'll need a crane, to pick the broken ruins up again

Meanwhile, reports are coming in from Legoland of another tragic toy-related incident, in which a Spanish boy fell off his red brick bicycle and lay unattended in Santander Road for over eight weeks.

A representative from the British Bankers’ Association of Toytown Operating Companies sought to downplay the bad news, however.

“What you have to understand is that these toys are very, very big,” he smiled as he tucked into a big bag of gourmet crisps. “When you look at a mere few hundreds of thousands of incidents in context, you’ll see how the people actually affected are very little indeed.”

China Threatens Tit-For-Tat Restrictions On US Import

The Chinese government has reacted angrily to American moves to place import tariffs on Chinese goods, threatening to impose a similar restriction on next year’s import from the United States.

The row follows a vote by the US House of Representatives in favour of sanctions, based on claims that the Chinese government is effectively subsidising its exports illegally by deliberately undervaluing its currency, the yuan.

“Last year, everything sold in the United States with a plug or a battery was manufactured in China,” admitted a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commercial Domination. “But let us not forget that we are America’s fastest-growing export market. This year a businessman in Shanghai bought a Cadillac, resulting in a 100% increase in US imported goods over previous years. If we were to respond with trade tariffs of our own, when he gets bored with it next year he may well opt for a luxurious new home-grown Huatai B11 instead, if he knows what’s good for him.”

China's doomsday weapon could see off America's successful export

“By then we will almost certainly have worked out how to make the glorious B11’s wheels turn in the same direction as the steering wheel for the entire warranty period,” he added ominously.

80s Revival Begins With Interminable Kinnock Speech

Veteran party members remember Lord Kinnock's oratory well

Those bad old days which new Labour leader Ed Miliband faithfully promised would not return returned in full today, as an invigorated Neil Kinnock mounted the platform at a Tribune rally and launched into a speech which seasoned political observers say may not end until the next Labour government falls.

Lord Kinnock began by saying he could never praise Mr Miliband enough and then went on to prove it by droning his way through a thesaurus for four hours, before temporarily veering off at a tangent to tell dewy-eyed activists: “We’ve got our party back,” “The party which, at a particular point in time belonged to us, but then didn’t belong to us for a considerable period of time, is now hello, hello it’s good to be back, good to be back in our hands again,” “We, who had a party taken from us, are now finally at last back in total, utter and complete possession of the self-same aforesaid party once more for a second time now, isn’t it,” “What it is, you see, is those of us who think, feel and particularly those who think we feel that we lost the party which appertained to us - both collectively and on a personal basis - can now be said to be in full, frank and frankly full agreement that this present party which we now have is indeed the self-same party, to all practical intents and purposes, not to mention intense practical purposes – minor differences notwithstanding - that we previously had both heretofore and previously at that time which was then,” and many other horribly life-draining variations on the same tedious theme.

After three hours of this, Mr Kinnock returned to his effulgent praise of Ed Miliband’s two-day captaincy of the Labour movement, repeating his previous comments again but this time in Welsh.

While veteran left-wingers settled down in the sleeping bags for a long haul, some younger party members on the fringes of the meeting were seen furtively casting around for suitably heavy objects with good aerodynamic properties.

“Kill me,” begged a distraught Ed Balls to a rapt reporter from the Daily Mirror, as he clawed his bleeding ears. “Kill me now.”

Fox Tasks RAF Nimrod Fleet To Trace Leak

A furious Dr Liam Fox today warned that the source of the leaked letter he sent to David Cameron would be mercilessly hunted down by Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft and destroyed by RAF Tornados which he was temporarily diverting from their essential task of keeping the sky up.

In his imaginatively-illustrated letter, Dr Fox had warned the prime minister that any attempted dilution of Britain’s offensive defence capabilities would leave him no option but to press every button in his office, including the big red one labelled ‘DO NOT PRESS’ which was screwed into the top of his head when he became defence secretary.

“It’s appalling that a secretary of state can’t threaten the prime minister with Armageddon in confidence,” he thundered. “I am therefore sending a crack squad of specially trained Royal Marine commandos into Downing Street to unmask any reptilian infiltrators by waving juicy, succulent insects in front of them and shooting anyone who grasps them with a long, sticky tongue.”

Admirals have been arguing forcefully that if Britain does not have a minimum of two shiny through-deck aircraft carriers – as, indeed, it has not since 1982 – then every man, woman and child alive today will undoubtedly find a screaming jihadist bursting into their bathroom in the middle of their ablutions and blasting them and their lavatory to kingdom come.

Meanwhile, Army chiefs warned that troops were getting dangerously bored with their existing tanks, pointing out that the Challenger 2 is much the same as the Challenger 1, which itself looked quite like the old Chieftain.

And senior RAF sources have warned that, without hundreds of new Typhoon interceptors racing up to 35,000m and back down again on a round-the-clock basis to check the sky for leaks, then they will simply have no option but to keep sending Tornados to do the job, and then the terrorists would have won.

Dr Fox is always listening for ant activity

“But the immediate threat to the British way of life is not exploding Moslems, nosy Russian relics from the fifties, shape-changing lizard men, awakening krakens or the growing ant army lurking beneath our feet,” bellowed Dr Fox from under his desk. “No, the greatest danger facing Britain today is the general public finding out what I’m thinking. Although I have taken the precaution of adding an extra layer of bacofoil to my trusty psionic shield helmet, there is always the danger that I may commit my thoughts to paper. Therefore I will be urging to prime minister to mount a surgical strike on the MoD stationery cupboard at the earliest opportunity, with full air and naval support.”

“Wibble,” he added.

Labour Party On Miliband Suicide Watch

Mr Miliband's expression hasn't changed for hours

The Labour Party and the press were today mounting a 24-hour suicide watch on David Miliband, amid mounting concern that his failure to secure the party leadership may tip him over the brink and send him spiralling into a bottomless pit of depression.

Fears rose after his keynote speech to conference, which saw a broken man shamble listlessly to the podium, staring fixedly at his feet - only to mutter, “I’m fine,” repeatedly until a sympathetic Harriet Harman put a motherly arm around Mr Miliband’s heaving shoulders and walked him offstage.

“Sibling rivalry can cause terrible pressure to succeed and, sadly, David is still in the denial stage,” warned a delegate from the Royal College of Stress Counsellors. “It’s a bitter blow when, one fateful day, you suddenly realise that the irritating little squirt who kept losing your favourite bits of Lego has in fact left you way behind, turning all your years of hard work into a futile waste of your entire life. It would help enormously in his struggle to move on if he’d stop mechanically mouthing platitudes he doesn’t mean and admit that, in his heart of hearts, he desperately needs to see this brother who apparently has everything fall down the nearest manhole.”

Britain’s media are also desperately concerned about Mr Miliband’s mood, with the Times thoughtfully suggesting ten top ways he could top himself and the Telegraph running a sweepstake on which day he will try to check out of this cruel world.

Ed Miliband’s Inspired Leadership Speech In Full:

“Here I come, walkin' down the street. I get the funniest looks from every one I meet. Hey, hey, I’m a newbie, and people say I monkey around. But I’m too busy singing to put anybody down. I go wherever I want to, do what I like to do. I don't have time to get restless, there's always something new.

“Hey, hey, I’m a newbie, and people say I monkey around. But I’m too busy singing
to put anybody down. I’m just trying to be friendly. Come and watch me sing and play. I’m the young generation, and I’ve got something to say.

“Any time or anywhere, just look over your shoulder - guess who'll be standing there?

“Hey, hey, we're the newbies, and people say we monkey around. But we're too busy singing to put anybody down. We're just tryin' to be friendly. Come and watch us sing and play. We're the young generation, and we've got something to say.

“Hey, hey, we're the newbies. You never know where we'll be found. So you'd better get ready. We may be coming to your town*.”

Screaming applause, fainting girls, mandatory three-hour standing ovation etc.

* subject to industrial action by the RMT

(with apologies to Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart)

Striking Hobbitses Down Tools In Shire

Negotiations left hobbit reps feeling rather disappointed

Last-minute talks between hobbit leaders and the race of men have broken down, according to reports coming out of the Shire. The rural backwater is expected to descend rapidly into chaos, as militant hobbits withdraw their labour and spend all day in the pub.

Discussions broke down when the wise Lord Peter of Bree – who has been trying without success to hire non-unionised hobbitses – threatened to transport the Shire in its entirety to Middle Europe. Hobbit representatives promptly stumped out of the meeting, although they had to ask one of Lord Peter’s men to open the door for them as none of them could reach the handle.

“Lord Peter do refuse to give us minimum guarantees of wages or working conditions,” the hobbitses’ main negotiator, Bilbo Baggins, told waiting scribes. “Us hobbits’ve got no objection in principle to working with dwarves, as long as they shares their gold with us, but clearly dragons do raise all sorts of health and safety issues which we feel haven’t been properly addressed.”

Lord Peter, meanwhile, warned that if he magically uprooted the Shire to Central Europe, a terrible drought would fall upon Middle Earth.

“First there will come a terrible drought of American money-giants, as I am the sole dreamweaver in the entire realm,” he predicted. “Then another drought, more direful even than the first, will blight the land as thousands of happy wandering gnomes from far across the oceans decide not to bother with the long and arduous journey to these picturesque shores any more. Eventually, only the nibblesome sheep will remain. Hearken; for I, Lord Peter, have foretold this.”

Meanwhile, in the Shire, hobbitses put their big hairy feet up and settled down, dismissing rumours that Lord Peter might, in his anger, send sorcerous flying machines to destroy their irrigation dams.

“He’m been a-gassin’ about that afore,” said old Gaffer Gamgee dismissively, on the picket line barring access to the toll road into the Shire. “Well, oi tells ‘ee, oi’ll believe they when oi sees they.”

Millions Groan As Hero Brickie Suggests Handing Britain To Arrogant Rich Bastards

Britain heaved a collective groan today, after potential rebel leader Cameron Hopeless – the property developer who briefly raised the nation’s spirits when he bricked up a bank – fumbled it by going on to suggest that the nation would in some way return to wealth and happiness with beardy-weirdie rentagrin Richard Branson and the scornful millionaires off TV’s Dragons’ Den at the helm.

Give him Britain to play with. Right

“When I saw Mr Hopeless on the news this morning, bricking up the entrance to the Bournemouth branch of Barclays, my heart soared,” sighed Jim Coles, a redundant maintenance engineer from Burnley. “I really thought, ‘Here we go, the revolution’s started at last!’ But I should have known what to expect from a jumped-up brickie on the make. Before you know it, the silly bugger’s cheerfully telling us that cardigan-bothering Thatcherite creep who buggered up the trains should be prime minister, with that godawful knowall prick Duncan Ballantyne in charge of the money. It sounds like his entire understanding of macro-economics is based on a night sat on his arse in front of the telly.”

“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he put a fucking Dalek in charge of the Department of Work and Pensions,” he added. “Yes I am somewhat disappointed, can you tell?”

Miliband Becomes Transcendant Manifestation Of The Sum Of All Hopes And Fears

Newly-elected Labour leader Miliband Two ceased to exist as a physical being of flesh and blood this morning, as the Sunday papers flopped through the letter-boxes of the nation, and transcended to a state of pure thought comprised of the sum total of hopes and fears projected onto him by the nation’s editorial writers and therefore, by extrapolation, the entire British public.

Mr Miliband is now capable of radiating confidence beyond the visible spectrum

Humbled party conference delegates who witnessed the transformation state that he became suffused with a shimmering light as he ascended to the podium, which seemed to touch all present with rainbow-hued shafts of pure love before a column of blinding brilliance burst through the ceiling directly above him. As the party faithful rubbed their eyes, they saw to their amazement that Mr Miliband’s body had vanished, to be replaced by a floating translucence crackling with blue sparks.

As they fell to their knees in adoration, they each felt, rather than heard, a voice telling them, “Thank you for your first and second preferences. Now all that earthbound carpetbagging for the union vote has passed safely beyond the temporal veil, it is appropriate to say that…”

Those privileged to be present at the transmogrification disagree on what the otherworldly being said next, however.

Elderly delegates and hacks in the employ of Rupert Murdoch both insist that the being promised a full return to the founding socialist principles of the Labour movement, while younger activists raised in the era of New Labour – together with reporters from the Independent and the Observer - feel certain that it promised there would be no return to the failed policies of the hard left, but a new era of constructive centrist dialogue with the wealth creators.

All, however, agreed that their new spirit guide concluded its telepathic transmission by pledging to work towards the transformation of tragically-unmetamorphosed sibling Miliband One before thanking them deeply, on behalf of the whole ethereal realm, for telling the irredeemable John Prescott where he could stick his dreams of playing Monopoly with the party funds.

Apple Annexes ‘Pod’ - Sets Sights On Rest Of Dictionary, Starting With ‘I’

Apple Corporation lawyers seeking the sole legal right to the use of the word ‘pod’ through the US courts confirmed today that, once successful, they intend to begin similar proceedings with regard to the rest of the dictionary.

“At the moment, every Tom, Dick or Harry is casually dropping the word ‘I’ into every other sentence, without the slightest regard for the impact this has on Apple’s profits,” said the company’s VP Bastard, Apollyon Mephistopheles. “The same goes for plenty of other words – key Apple words like fire, wire, pad, pro and book, for example. Rather than clogging up the courts of the world with a never-ending series of individual injunctions, however, we are seeking a simple super-injunction which would legally arrogate ownership of all human language to Apple Corp. Saves time.”

“Of course, some retrogressive voices – probably paid lackeys from the IBM camp – will undoubtedly claim this brake on communication is nothing less than a catastrophe for civilisation,” he added. “And if they try it, we’ll sue their sorry asses for twelve separate wilful infringements of our intellectual property. Suck on that, losers.”