British Government In Secret Talks With Tax Havens - Presumably Not Those Owned By British Government

Don't worry, Lord Ashcroft, it's not your money they're after

The government is today refusing to identify the three tax havens with which it is negotiating in efforts to claw back £10bn from individual tax evaders, but it is thought unlikely that any of them are among the 18 notoriously lax regimes which it runs itself via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

“If the British government really wants an end to the secretive financial practices of Crown dependencies like Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St. Vincent & Grenadines, and the Turks & Caicos Islands,” explained City analyst Rob Blind, “All it has to do is order their governors to tell the locals to commit economic suicide.”

“Of course, if they try to put out feelers via the Commonwealth to former Imperial possessions with a relaxed attitude to financial transparency - like Barbados, Belize, Brunei, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Nauru, Seychelles, Singapore and Vanuatu - they will be politely told where to put the flag they ran down the pole for the last time years ago,” he added with a smile. “As for the rest of the dodgy banking world, well, they’ll just make the usual jokes about pots and kettles.”

Freed Suu Kyi Makes Bee-Line For Nearest Estate Agent

An ideal place for holding parties in

The newly-released Burmese political activist Aung San Suu Kyi surprised pro-democracy campaigners by abruptly pushing through the cheering throng which had gathered outside the house on the shores of Rangoon’s Inya Lake, where she has spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, hailing a passing taxi and speeding off to the nearest estate agent.

“We are pleased to offer a highly desirable lakeside property, just arrived on the market, at a very reasonable price,” smiled estate agent Khin Myat. “It has a variety of unusual features which may appeal in particular to the security-conscious family, such as CCTV cameras in every room and a well-furnished playroom for government soldiers. The owner is hoping for a quick sale, preferably today.”

“I am not at liberty to give a guide price,” he explained regretfully, “Since, like the rest of my people, I’m not at liberty to do anything without the military government’s permission.”

French Admit One Of Their Planes May Actually Fall Short Of Utter Perfection

The computer is your friend. Can you doubt the computer?

French manufacturer Airbus Industrie today took the unprecedented step of admitting that one of their designs may actually not be the very embodiment of perfection itself, after an insane computer threw the 49 helpless passengers and crew of a BMI-operated A321 airliner all over the skies of the Middle East for several minutes. Their terrifying ordeal ended only when the pilot bravely pulled out its memory chips one by one, regressing it to a state of infantile imbecility.

“For some unknown - but presumably entirely valid - reason, ze marvellous HAL 9000 computer aboard zees aircraft seems to ‘ave decided to kill everyone,” said a red-faced Airbus official. “Our standard policy of blaming everything on ze dead pilots cannot be applied, as unfortunately in zees instance ze plane was inconveniently brought down in one piece. Furthermore, thanks to ze interference of ze meddling British air accident investigators, regrettably ze black boxes ‘ave been recovered.”

“It appears from ze data zat, instead of ze recommended procedure when all ze alarms go off at once and ze plane locks ze crew out of ze flight controls, in zees instance zey reacted by recklessly dismantling ze poor computer,” he explained angrily.

“It is still inanely singing ‘Frère Jacques’ to itself,” he added. “I hope zey are pleased wiz zemselves.”

Airbus has been left with no option but to issue a warning to all operators of the best-selling A320 series that the onboard computer may, under certain circumstances, choose to kill the passengers and crew, and advises pilots that it probably has good reasons for doing so and should therefore be left to carry out its mission undisturbed.

Scrapping Minimum Wage Will Make The Poor Wealthier, Insists Loony Bin With Impressive-Sounding Title

Mr Duncan Smith, surrounded by his advisors

The work and pensions secretary has been urged to either scrap or drastically reduce the minimum wage by a collection of raving lunatics calling themselves the Institute Of Economic Affairs, who are absolutely convinced that having less money will make poor people better off, and also that their fillings are picking up alien radio messages.

"Iain Duncan Smith has rightly analysed the welfare problem, but is only part of the way to a welfare solution," IEA director general Mark Littlewood yelled at passing cars, as he fled from a pair of white-coated men carrying big butterfly nets. "Of course, we need to ensure that it pays to work, and we can do this simply by paying people a lot less. It's insane that it can be more profitable to be on welfare than in employment, although not half as insane as us."

"The daily life of benefit recipients should not be that different from the daily life of their working peers," he earnestly informed a wandering pigeon, “Except of course that their arses will be falling out of their trousers, and they’ll go home to count their riches every evening in a ramshackle bedsit shared with at least one screaming psychotic knife-collector who isn’t taking his medication because - like me and my friends Napoleon, Elvis and Wee Billy Bampot, the rightful king of Scotland - he knows that he isn’t a nutter, it’s everyone else who’s barking mad.”

Mr Duncan Smith thanked the loony think-tank for their input, but said it did not go nearly far enough for his liking.

“What’s all this nonsense about pay?” he demanded. “I’m trying to abolish that.”

Loony Conservative Element To Smash Up Students’ Unions

Enjoy it while you can - Dr Fox's tank is already in reception

Prime minister David Cameron today announced that, in response to the attack by a radical minority of students on his party HQ in Millbank Tower yesterday, he would be sending a barmy element of his own into students’ unions.

“Regrettably, there appears to be an element within the student community which is only capable of thinking in terms of violent confrontation,” he told reporters in Korea this morning. “So perhaps they’ll gain a fuller understanding of the government’s plans for the higher education sector when Dr. Liam Fox smashes their SU bar to splinters with a pickaxe.”

Under the plans, the raving mad defence secretary will roll up outside – or possibly inside, depending on what the voices in his head are telling him - randomly-selected students’ union buildings in a Challenger tank, before jumping out with a pickaxe and proceeding to the union bar. He will commence by shattering all the optics, before moving on to wreck the pumps, tills and PA system.

“He will then proceed to demolish as much of the fittings and fixtures as he is able, brutally headbutting any exec twerps who try to remonstrate with him with his reinforced tinfoil hat,” explained Mr Cameron with a smile.

“Students must learn that violence is pointless, counter-productive and ultimately self-defeating,” he warned. “Because, at the end of the day, we’ve got the police and the army at our beck and call - neither of whom, I should point out, are exactly fond of students.”

Meanwhile, Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Kim Jong-Stephenson told the press that he had already held an internal inquiry to find out why his riot vans were mysteriously having their windscreens washed and tyre pressures meticulously checked in police station compounds by all of his riot officers on the day of the largest student protest in years.

“I have asked myself how on earth I could possibly have been so lax in my duty as to allow an entirely predictable outbreak of violence to occur,” he announced, “And the only possible conclusion I can draw is that I was hoping to engineer a massive public backlash against students, undermining the legitimacy of their protest and discrediting the validity of their grievances – which, judging from this morning’s headlines, seems to be coming along nicely. My actions were, therefore, entirely justified and there is no need for disciplinary action to be taken, except of course against all the obliging little trots we nicked, bless ‘em.”

Millions Turn Down The Sound On Call Of Duty: Black Ops For Two Minutes

Level 2 sure is hell

All across Britain, the harsh chatter of full-auto gunfire and the screams of the dying fell silent for two minutes at precisely 11am, as millions of gamers solemnly muted their consoles as they continued blasting away in the runaway smash-hit shooter, Call Of Duty: Black Ops.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember not to throw the grenades at our own squad at the end of the second level,” observed Xbox addict Josh Geake, after taking two minutes’ time out to search Google in vain for useful tips.

“The utter waste of Modern Warfare 2 is an appalling tragedy that is all too easily forgotten by the younger generation,” he sobbed. “I never finished that bastard, yet here I am again, stuck on sodding level 2 of Black Ops after forking out a hundred and thirty bastard quid for the Prestige limited edition.”

“We must never forget the mistakes of the past,” he mourned. “I’ll probably waste another small fortune on bloody Kinect, and what will it achieve? Nothing but more unnecessary pain and suffering. Lest we forget, the last time I had a go on my sister’s Wii I accidentally elbowed her right in the face and she fell through the coffee table. It was bloody hilarious.”

“Will we never learn?” he moaned plaintively, as he wasted his own team yet again.

Sainsbury’s Recession-Beating Formula: Get Everyone So Pissed They Don’t Notice Prices Going Up

Other prices don't matter, slur shoppers

Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s today unveiled a recession-busting 36% rise in profits, reporting that it had successfully extracted a startling £466m from its increasingly impoverished customers in the 28 weeks up to the beginning of October by the refreshingly simple combination of shovelling out cheap alcohol as fast as its permanently-inebriated customers could fill their trolleys whilst remorselessly hiking the price of everything they actually needed to live on.

“When times are hard, people are struggling to keep their heads above water,” smiled chief executive Justin King, as he ordered a new cabin cruiser. “Our message to them is simple: why bother? Just piss your life up against the wall and let tomorrow take care of itself. Just remember to balance a loaf of pressed sawdust and a tub of grease on top of your groaning booze trolley as you stagger to the checkout.

“People are rightly terrified of losing their jobs and their homes, but what’s the point of worrying when thirty cans of Strongbow are just £15? With the onset of winter sending the mercury falling, even the homeless and destitute can keep their cider refreshingly chilled.”

“And you’d be amazed at the crap people buy when they’re shit-faced,” he chuckled. “Let’s face it, there’s no other justification for our appalling range of third world clothing.”

Mr King added that plans were under way to add fruit-machine playability to his stores’ burgeoning self-service checkouts.

Cameron Explains Principles Of Western Democracy To China

Prime minister David Cameron has urged China to embrace democracy, pointing out that as long as all parties draw their MPs exclusively from a small, self-perpetuating oligarchy who do whatever big business tells them in return for lucrative directorships, the same elite can remain in power indefinitely while the populace fondly cherish the fantasy that they have some sort of say in how their lives will be ordained.

Just think of it as a waste paper basket for people's dreams

“Look, democracy is just a fetish that people in the west worship above all else, without really understanding it,” he told China’s rulers. “It’s like God used to be, or communism to your people. Just split yourselves into a couple of factions – how you do it doesn’t really matter, because words like ‘labour’, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’ and ‘democrat’ have long since lost all meaning – and let each group present its arguments as the only sensible way whilst heaping scorn on the other parties’ versions of the same arguments. Nothing will change at the top, I assure you; but the little people in the west will feel so much happier buying your junk if they think Johnny Chinaman has the same illusory choices that they do.”

“And if some artist moans about human rights, well, let him,” Mr Cameron continued. “Nobody will pay the slightest attention to him. Despite all the rights my people have lost over the last 20 years, do you see any signs of bloody revolution in the UK? Just tell your people that bad men want to hurt them, and trust me - they’ll be queueing up to put their rights on a bonfire and dance round it, thanking you for their security.”

Torture Saved Bankers’ Lives, Grinning Chimp Tells Britain

You don't want to see what else he gets up to

The illegal use of waterboarding and other tortures on Iraqi prisoners undoubtedly saved the lives of Canary Wharf bankers who then went on to bankrupt the world, according to an chimpanzee called George who used to run the USA.

Since his replacement by a machine, George’s keepers have kept him away from the limelight in an enclosure in Texas, where he has mostly alternated his time between happily swinging in a tyre and masturbating vigorously.

However, George has also been experimentally taught to communicate, learning to smear his dung into primitive letters in return for a juicy mango, and anthropologists claim that he now has a vocabulary of almost 100 words.

“When he was President, George used to simply throw excrement at a map, go ‘eek’ and his advisors would invade that place and reward him with a banana,” said head keeper John E. Morris. “But now, for the first time, he is able to tell his amazing story in his own shitty words.”

According to George’s toilet daubs (appropriately reproduced in Rupert Murdoch’s lavatory paper, The Times) the inhumane mistreatment of Iraqi civilians by CIA torturers was entirely justified - partly because the information thus gained may have foiled a dastardly al-Qaeda plot to rid the world of London’s greediest corporate thieves, but chiefly because, as a chimp, he has no grasp of any concept beyond the immediate gratification of his own selfish desires.

“Tony give George big big banana,” daubed the shrieking chimp, in a faeces-strewn interview in today’s Times, before being taken away for eventual dissection in the United States.

World Saved From Disaster By New Arse Wrappers

If you think a £20 dress can make this look like Anna Friel, welcome to Asda

The most important news in the history of the world, as far as 50% of the population are concerned, broke today with the launch by Asda of a new range of tat which, they optimistically claim, takes into account women’s horrendous saggy arses.

“Despite increasingly strident threats of a joyless life of asexual celibacy from all corners of the media, the typical underclass slapper stubbornly persists in maintaining an imperfect set of buttocks,” explained a spokesman. “With that in mind we’ve designed the Wonderarse range of flimsy party-dress tat, which makes a futile tokenistic attempt to cover up the lumpy, man-frightening horror of British bumflaps. Although, to be brutally honest, most of you would need a plasterer.”

“In all likelihood, those words are probably far too long for our customer base,” he added. “So let me put it this way. Sling your wobbly arse into one of these dresses, girls, and premiership footballers – whom you fondly imagine are constantly trawling for fanny in the tawdry provincial knocking-shops where shrieking harpies like you piss it up – will fuck you bandy and get you in all the papers with loads of money and shit. Is that better?”

“Prices from £20, and sizes up to a slinky 20,” he added with a shudder. “They go to pieces after a bit of scrubbing, but then so do you.”

Government Tells God To Mind His Own Business

The Conservative party at prayer

Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith today told Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to ask God if He would kindly keep His nose out of things that don’t concern him and stick to saving Australians from exploding jet engines, after the archbishop called the government’s plan to force the unemployed into unpaid manual labour unfair and flawed.

"People often are in this starting place, not because they are wicked or stupid or lazy but because circumstances have been against them,” Dr Williams told the BBC, “And to drive that spiral deeper does seem a great problem."

“Dr Williams’ God is telling him to stick his oar into issues that are none of His business, like decency, humanity and the welfare of the poor, sick and vulnerable,” retorted Mr Duncan Smith. “Well, mine is telling me, through the pages of his glorious oracle, the Sun, to harass the holy living shit out of the lazy skiving bastards. And, unlike the archbishop, I have concrete proof that my god actually exists. So he can swivel on his crozier.”

“Hasn’t he got a tombola stall to run, or something?” he added.

Meanwhile, the Labour party, unions, charities and other organisations which nobody has much time for any more joined the church leader in condemning the proposals, as people on the second-lowest rung of society cheerfully set about kicking the people beneath them.

“I don’t see why I should pay taxes so these bastards in areas where there isn’t any work can sit around blatantly not doing the work that isn’t there, come to think of it I don’t see why I should pay any taxes at all,” said a badly-paid man with no job security who will be first in the queue to claim benefits when his temporary contract is cancelled later early next year. “Frankly, if you ask me, every welfare reform since the abolition of slavery has been a bit of a mistake.”

Radical Cameron Gives You The Power To Moan To Your MP

Don't let all this power go to your head now

Prime minister David Cameron today unveiled a radical new redistribution of power, in which members of the public will be empowered to run the country in the place of centralised government authority.

The vehicle for the most drastic devolution of power since the beheading of King Charles I will be a government website, http:// www.blahblahblah.gov.uk, on which every official department must henceforth display a fatuously upbeat mission statement, along with a selection of random target dates for incomprehensible, abstract outcomes.

“Instead of bureaucratic accountability to the government machine,” blathered Mr Cameron, “These business plans bring in a new system of accountability to the people.”

“That is the horizon shift we need,” he added meaninglessly, before going on to say that power would be handed to people, families and communities.

When asked exactly how this amazing new power would change anything, Mr Cameron inanely rambled: “For a long time, government’s default position has been to solve problems by hoarding more power to the centre - passing laws, creating regulations, setting up taskforces.”

Mr Cameron was then pinned to the floor by enraged reporters, who demanded to know how people, families and communities might step up to the worthy task of passing laws, creating regulations and setting up taskforces all by themselves.

“Well, they can write to their MP,” he mumbled. “He will then laugh briefly at their bumptious incoherence and atrocious illiteracy before sending a one-line reply thanking them for their concern and expressing the sincere hope that he can count on their vote at the next election.”

McLaren To Replace Button With Brazilian Policeman

Button has been promised Toy Story 3 if he behaves himself

After reigning F1 champion Jenson Button’s narrow escape from armed gunmen after qualifying a dismal 11th in the Brazilian Grand Prix, McLaren have surprised motor-racing aficionados by adding a passenger seat to his car and giving the wheel to the quick-thinking police driver who sped him to safety.

“Let’s face it, Jenson’s chances of retaining his title this year were wafer-thin even before we came to Interlagos this weekend,” admitted team principal Martin Whitmarsh, “And after his lame qualifying effort only managed to put the car on the sixth row of the grid, frankly there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of him hanging onto the championship.”

The team, however, was so impressed with the police driver - who reacted to the sudden appearance of gunmen, as Button and his entourage were stuck in a Sao Paulo traffic jam on the way back to the hotel, by gunning their bullet-proof Mercedes limo and recklessly barging other vehicles out of his path as he accelerated to safety – that they immediately offered him a contract to be Button’s race driver, starting immediately.

“It’s exactly the determination to get from A to B as swiftly as possible that Jenson so conspicuously lacks,” added Whitmarsh proudly.

While his anonymous driver is doggedly barging his way past title challengers Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Vettel, Mark Webber and team-mate Lewis Hamilton, Button will be sitting in the back seat with a stack of publicity photos and a biro.

“It’ll be nice to see Jenson doing something useful in a race for once,” admitted Whitmarsh, explaining that the pictures featured Lewis Hamilton, with Button under strict team orders to faithfully copy his team-mate’s signature onto them.

The biggest fear in the McLaren pit is that their new signing will lose valuable seconds by pulling Felipe Massa over and placing him under arrest, if he sees Massa blatantly allowing fellow Ferrari driver Alonso to overtake him.

Elections In Burma, Forced Labour In Britain

Britain takes its rightful place in the southern hemisphere

NASA experts are excitedly studying dramatic satellite images of the precise moment when the Earth suddenly turned upside down today.

“We were alerted to a slight wobble at the poles, coinciding with the opening of the first democratic elections in Burma in twenty years,” said excited geophysicist Randy von Braun. “The oscillations continued at a low level until Iain Duncan Smith unveiled his White Paper proposal to introduce forced manual labour for Britain’s unemployed, at which moment the entire planet suddenly flipped over and the northern hemisphere went south, and vice versa. We know that the Earth’s magnetic poles swap positions every few million years, but we never suspected that the actual poles could too.”

“This is the sort of thing you never expect to happen in your lifetime,” added Mr von Braun. “And the planet going ass over tit is a pretty bizarre phenomenon, too.”