Pope’s New Year Encyclical: Dissimulavero Moderari Meo Mensam Nefastam

Not what it looks like at all

Just a day ahead of an EU deadline requiring him to clean up his financial act, Pope Benedict XVI has confirmed the moral authority of the Roman Catholic church with a message of hope for the New Year contained in his latest encyclical, ‘Dissimulavero moderari meo mensam nefastam’, (‘I shall pretend to run my crooked bank properly’).

The somewhat belated step towards the moral high ground comes after Italian judges ordered the seizure of £19m which the Vatican had tried to deposit in a commercial bank in St Peter’s Square, without any explanation of where it had come from or who it was intended for, and began a criminal investigation into the sacred bank’s director and his deputy.

The Pope then tried to evade international laws on money laundering by claiming that his bank was not really a bank at all, but an Institute for Works of Religion. Financial regulators then sang the response, ‘Pa aliam filiolus Jacobus in eo campanae’, (‘Pull the other one, sonny Jim - it’s got bells on’), and dismissed him with a demand to clean up his act by 31st December or else.

Successive popes throughout the ages have maintained a tradition of pretending that things are not what they might appear to be to the simple, unenlightened layman. For example, the Vatican is not just a big church with rather a lot of administrative wings tacked onto it, but an important nation state with embassies and a seat at the UN, while a doddery old bloke in a big hat is actually God’s personal spokesman on earth and a Nazi anti-aircraft gun is in fact Christ’s Blessed Finger of Thunderous Mercy.

Northern Ireland Water Goes Into Hiding After Martin McGuinness Says ‘Heads Should Roll’

Down with this sort of thing

Everyone on the payroll of Northern Ireland Water has disappeared today, after deputy First Minister and former IRA deputy commander Martin McGuinness told the Stormont Assembly that “heads should roll” for leaving 80,000 people without water for days.

“We can neither confirm nor deny that the holding cells of every police station in the province are crammed full of water workers demanding protection,” said a spokesman for the PSNI. “Nor can we verify reports that every flight out of Belfast today was standing-room only.”

When it was pointed out to him that NIW is a state-owned utility and therefore, ultimately, the responsibility of the government, Mr McGuinness swiftly excused himself from the assembly chamber, then reappeared half an hour later wearing a reinforced polycarbonate neck brace – much to the chagrin of Ian Paisley, who had turned up outside with a hacksaw.

Clegg Destroys Credibility Of Last Remaining Trustworthy LibDem MP

Mr Hughes will soon get used to his new self-igniting trousers

Simon Hughes, the sole remaining member of the Liberal Democrats with an ounce of public support, was fatally compromised today by his appointment by deputy PM Nick Clegg to sell to a sceptical public the hated tuition fees increase which he alone had the integrity to denounce.

Mr Hughes has already appeared in several interviews looking shifty and untrustworthy, and will soon be doing the same in schools up and down the country – thus ensuring that an entire generation of future voters will never vote Liberal Democrat for as long as they live.

“This is a master stroke by my very good friend Nick,” commented prime minister David Cameron. “Now that twerp Hughes looks even more two-faced than his party colleagues in the Cabinet. At least their craven behaviour is a product of simple human greed, which everyone can understand - but as he won’t get paid a penny extra for casting aside his precious principles, the only possible explanation is that he is gutless to the core.”

“The only way that any LibDem politicians can now hope to ever get themselves elected again,” he giggled, “Is to formally merge their party with ours, and stand as Conservatives. Something for LibDem councillors to think about between now and May, perhaps?”

Charitable Britons Not Exactly Jumping For Joy At Promise Of Patronising Letter From Junior Minister Of Paperclips

+ Citizen transaction detected +

The government’s suggestion that some junior minister’s secretary might post a patronising form letter to members of the public who make large donations to charity has somehow failed to generate the hoped-for dancing in the streets, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude admitted this evening.

“On the one hand, people seem to appreciate that simply having cash deducted from every transaction they make frees them from the onerous responsibility of having to actually think for themselves about which charities they might wish to support,” he said. “Unfortunately, however, people seem to have noticed that a suitable-for-framing letter from a government minister congratulating them on their generosity rather implies that the government will be keeping complete records of every single transaction they make, right down to which cash machines they use, and for some reason they find this rather irksome.”

Charities have already welcomed the scheme, albeit with some reservations.

“We think the scheme doesn’t quite go far enough,” said John Low, the rather well-paid chief executive of some strange and hitherto unnecessary entity calling itself the ‘Charities Aid Foundation’. “What we would greatly prefer to see is a scheme whereby everybody’s wages are automatically paid direct to us, and we can then opt to make the occasional one-off donation of a small percentage of their earnings to people whenever a rare mood of philanthropic benevolence briefly takes us.”

Daily Mail Urges All Right-Thinking Christian Folk To Put Sick Assembly-Ban Perverts To The Torch

The Daily Mail – the nation’s appointed upholder of the timeless Christian values of love, charity, understanding and public burnings – reacted today with Christ-like tolerance to calls from the National Secular Society for the abolition of compulsory religious school assemblies, which are required under the 1944 Education Act, by calling on all God’s children to hunt down every last godless heathen scum and send them all to the purifying flame.

The society’s antichrist-in-chief, Keith Porteous, sowed the seeds for his own richly-deserved consignation to the everlasting agonies of the pit in a shameful letter to education secretary Michael Gove.

They won't be teaching any more of that Darwin nonsense

“We believe that the mandatory daily acts of mainly Christian worship and, in particular, the imposition on children to take part in such acts, represent an infringement of rights,” wrote the brazen tool of Satan. “We recognise that assemblies with an ethical framework have a vital contribution to make to school life. We do, however, object to collective worship in principle, as not being a legitimate activity of a state-funded institution.”

On reading the hate-filled atheists’ wicked diatribe, Mail editor Paul Dacre was sorely stricken with a fit of holy righteousness and commanded his scribe, Neil Sarse, to rouse up the faithful followers of the Lord.

“Jesus never uttered a word about ‘human rights’,” he spluttered indignantly, “Therefore they are not of God, and we shall have no truck with them.”

“Our Lord Jesus Christ preached the blessed virtues of mercy and forgiveness,” he thundered with holy zeal. “This is why all God-fearing Christians must drive out the vile heretics from their nests – you can start with the teachers, all of them black-hearted trots to the core – and put both them and their sinful human rights to the torch. Now that’s what I call a school assembly truly worthy of our Lord and Saviour.”

Western Governments Condemn Russia’s Perverse Determination To Convict Businessman Of Fraud

This would simply never happen in the West

Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, angrily warned the leaders of the Western democracies to keep out of its domestic affairs, as they continued to express grave concerns over Russian justice in the case of incredibly rich fraudster Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Mr Khodorkovsky, a former Komsomol deputy who woke up one morning and decided that all the oilfields in Russia belonged to him, is already serving an eight-year sentence and, in a second trial, has now been declared guilty of stealing oil worth more than $26bn from his own company, presumably to fuel an extremely large car.

The White House has said that it is “deeply concerned” about the “selective application of justice”, pointing out that a string of criminal activities is now a basic entry requirement for Russian politicians, while both France and Germany have condemned the Russian legal system for its backwardness in actually putting a rich businessman on trial at all.

“It is the sign of a healthy democracy that the legal concept of fraud, once the preserve of the wealthy, has long since been extended to the people, and is nowadays only ever prosecuted in the case of dolescum who have a 20-hour part-time cleaning job yet tell the Jobcentre they do less than 16 hours a week,” commented a legal expert. “Nobody expects to see a chap in an Armani suit in the dock any more - and as for a corporate multi-billionaire actually doing time, well, it simply isn’t done.”

This isn’t law,” he observed scathingly. “It’s justice, which has no place in a modern society.”

Mr Putin remains unmoved, however, insisting on Russian TV even before the judge announced his verdict that a “thief must be in politics - unless he dares to criticise me, of course, in which case obviously he must be in prison.”

Warnings About Overexercise And Lack Of Eating Still Strangely Absent From Post-Christmas Headlines

Nothing to worry about

Research not carried out by Oxford University, the British Heart Foundation and the BMA and not published today - or any other day - warns the public of serious health risks posed by too much exercise and not eating enough.

“Exercising too much is the direct cause of a wide range of health issues, ranging from muscle strain and torn ligaments right up to long-term damage to the joints and fatal heart attacks,” said nobody from the Department of Health.

“Not eating enough can lead to a range of debilitating conditions caused by nutritional deficiencies,” added no one, “And it can also lead to potentially deadly mental health problems like anorexia and bulimia.”

Meanwhile, there are no calls from the medical community for a hard-hitting government campaign against rank idiocy, which is one of the biggest problems facing Britain’s increasingly hard-pressed Accident & Emergency units.

“Complete and utter fucktards are not just a major drain on the NHS,” warned nobody. “Sheer crass stupidity is damaging the entire economy. In 1986 only 7% of the British population had shit for brains, but by 2008 that figure had rocketed to 25% - and this winter suggests that the rise is exponential. Whether they’re wrapping their cars round lamp-posts on icy roads or managing Heathrow Airport, it seems this is truly The Age Of The Absolute Fuckwit.”

“If the running of the country wasn’t in the hands of a guffawing troupe of hooray henries, perhaps the government could run a never-ending catalogue of patronising campaigns aimed at making mulish thickery socially unacceptable,” opined one harassed gutbucket. “I, for one, am longing for the day when some witless yahoo feels a pressing need to lean out of a car window and hurl childish abuse at himself.”

But Your Readers Are Middle Class, Government Tells Writers

The government has responded to criticism by some of Britain’s leading writers of its decision to pull £13m of funding from a children’s literacy charity by pointing out that their readers are all middle class and can probably afford to cough up the readies for a book or two a year.

"To put a gift of books into the hands of newborn children and their parents is to help open the door into the great treasury of reading, which is the inheritance of every one of us, and the only road to improvement and development and intellectual delight in every field of life,” complained middle-class children’s author Philip Pullman, while Andrew Motion - who used to write lah-di-dah poetry for the Queen - came out with some airy-fairy effort that didn’t even rhyme

"In these difficult economic times, ministers have to take tough decisions on spending," said a bored spokesman at the Department for Education who was manning the phones over the Christmas break. “And, as usual, they have decided the underclass can take the hit. After all, if the scum can’t read and write, they’ll have a bit of a job claiming benefit. Anyway, all they do with books is draw cocks all over them before tearing them up to make roaches so they can get stoned.”

Rich bastard, Young Conservative, dying peasant - it's the perfect Christmas

“I was fascinated, in the run-up to Christmas, to watch Ian Hislop’s illuminating three-part documentary on BBC2 about the Victorian do-gooders,” explained bloated prime minister David Cameron, as a manservant cleared away the vast quantity of leftovers from last night’s five-course Christmas banquet. “For any Tory, it was a bit like watching a ready-made hit list of all the great reforms that need undoing.”

“It’s understandable, with the French Revolution still fresh in everybody’s minds, why the ruling classes of the day might have felt it necessary to throw a few scraps to the great unwashed,” he admitted, “But now they’re all safely pacified with reality TV, soccer and lager, there’s simply no need for all that rubbish any more. It’s just the middle classes, like the bloody students, that we have to keep sweet.”

“The lower orders used to bump along just fine without literacy, morals, healthcare, rights or freedom before,” he insisted. “I’m sure they can manage again. And I’ll tell you another thing - back in those days, they bloody well knew their place.”

“By the way, did everybody see Doctor Who?” he added with a belch, waving a glazed leg of lamb at his webcam. “In a way that’s just what my Big Society is all about – interfering know-alls taking it upon themselves to make things better for their friends and the rich without wasting a second’s thought on the underlying issues of poverty and ill-health, And if poor people have to die needlessly, well, too bad. That’s what they’re there for.”

Widely-Predicted Retail Bankruptcies Somehow Fail To Materialise

Despite all their gloomy predictions in the run-up to Christmas, in which the nation’s pessimistic retailers warned that the recession and harsh weather were combining to force them out of business, supermarket chain Waitrose today announced with a flourish that it had somehow enjoyed its most profitable Christmas ever.

“Whoever would have thought that reducing the profit margin slightly on outsize tellies and quietly whacking up all the food prices would rake in the cash?” beamed delighted managing director Mark Upp, as he thumbed eagerly through a Bugatti brochure.