Labour Hails Slight Postponement Of Fuel Duty Hike As Glorious Victory For Communism

The government’s brief suspension of the coming 3% rise in fuel duty proves beyond all doubt that the notorious capitalist running dog, George Osborne, has finally accepted the undeniable truth of revolutionary socialism, jubilant shadow chancellor Ed Balls told a cowed and beaten House of Commons today.

The fleet's lit up! Well, it can afford to now, can't it

“Make no mistake, comrades, this is truly an historic moment in the annals of the revolution,” Mr Balls declaimed exultantly. “When, at long last, even the evil bloated plutocrat Osborne cravenly acknowledges the supreme validity of socialist economics by inserting a six-month pause into the hated fuel escalator inflicted on the downtrodden masses by the vainglorious running dog John Major, the triumph of the working class is complete.”

When asked by reporters afterwards why, during his many years as an economic advisor to Comrade Brown, he had somehow neglected to point out the inherent counter-revolutionary nature of planned rises in fuel duty, Brother Balls solemnly cautioned the press against any further mention of “that non-person”.

Comrade Balls is also understood to be so utterly committed to finalising the long-overdue downfall of the discredited feudal hierarchy that his strange lack of opposition to the tottering elite’s impending downtreading of the young masses, fire-sale of the machinery of state and closure of the people’s hospitals can surely be forgiven, explained his burly commissars.

Osborne Releases ‘Happy Talk’

George Osborne of the Blah Party

Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne is hoping to scale the charts this week, after releasing his own inimitable version of the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein hit, ‘Happy Talk’ under the pseudonym Captain Insensible.

“All of the UK’s woes are caused by silly asses wondering what might happen to the Eurozone when Greece defaults,” smiled the damned Member for Tatton brightly. “Well, I say chin up, Britain! I have a dream that it might never happen! Happy talk, keep talking happy talk! Talk about things you’d like to do ! You’ve got to have a dream ! If you don’t have a dream , how are you going to have a dream come true? Come on, boys and girls, sing along with the Captain!”

“You’re all going around with long faces, moaning about cuts to this and the price of that, and it’s making you jolly glum,” he chirped inanely. “Well, chaps, watch and learn – I just put on a big soppy grin every morning and hey presto, austerity doesn’t affect me at all!”

61 million people joined in with the Captain’s novelty singalong, chanting “Wot?”

British Economy Nothing To Do With British Economy, Explains Treasury

Stunned Treasury officials - who had confidently predicted that official statistics would confirm that Britain has never had it so good – were today quick to blame the Eurozone, the French presidential elections, Mitt Romney, Sudanese border incidents, Syrian ceasefire violations, the Leveson inquiry, drought, heavy rain, Russell Brand’s drug hell, the body-in-the-bag inquest and the Breivik trial in Norway for the economy’s plunge back into recession.

Normal smirkage will be resumed shortly

“The important thing to bear in mind is that the British economy has nothing whatsoever to do with either Britain or its economy,” mumbled a red-faced civil servant, “And, least of all, the chancellor of the exchequer.”

Mr Osborne was sadly unavailable for comment, he added, as he was currently undergoing emergency surgery for a slipped smirk which happened at 10.00 this morning, although he is expected to announce a 100% cut in the National Audit Office’s budget as soon as the paint dries.

Loss Of Tax-Deductible Donations Could Force Us To Use More Chuggers, Plead Big Charities

If chancellor George Osborne presses ahead with his plans to limit millionaires’ cosy little tax rebates on charitable giving, warned Britain’s best-known charities today, don’t be surprised to find a detachment of pushy students camped out on your doorstep every morning, eager to harangue you into signing your family’s entire income away before you can climb into your car and drive to work.

“Our members are faced with the ever-spiralling cost of supporting a growing army of marketing agencies,” pointed out Sir Steven Blubb, head of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. “Without our help, millions of impoverished students in Britain would starve.”

If you think this has no place in your driveway, call 0207 270 4558

“Please, look into Emily’s haunted eyes,” he implored, holding up a heart-rending picture of a photogenic young student, “Her young life has been blighted by not being able to afford basic necessities which you and I take for granted, like a pair of Ugg boots. The agency we work with locally set her up with a commission-based job to help make her fashionable again and rebuild her shattered self-esteem - but her cruel government says it’s wrong for wealthy philanthropists to claim a nice wad of tax back, threatening to send her back to a pitiful life of scavenging in our shop for uncool rags. Can you help?”

“And spare a thought for poor James, a penniless PhD intern slaving away at our London headquarters,” he cajoled seductively. “For months he’s been sweating on a spreadsheet for up to 14 hours a day, just so his uncaring bosses can put out a big press release every year saying how lovely they are. Without large donations from kind-hearted tax avoiders, his computer could be taken away from him and he’d be forced out on the streets to buttonhole you with a disturbing sob story about having to do long division with his bare hands. Please, won’t you help us to prevent this tragedy?”

Finally, Sir Steven urged the generous British public to call Mr Osborne immediately and pledge to vote regularly against the Conservatives - even if it’s just a small amount at a local level.

Movie Review: The Osborne Show

In an world addicted to contrived voyeuristic TV, ratings are dominated by the ultimate reality series – in which an innocent child unwittingly grows up surrounded by hidden cameras and millionaire actors who are only pretending to pay their taxes. Welcome, viewers, to The Osborne Show.

Lovable everyman George Osborne (played by rubber-faced goofball Jim Carrey) enjoys his job and likes everybody inside his artificial bubble until, on day 10919, a strange bundle of used tenners suddenly drops from the sky in front of him in an airmail package addressed to ‘The Cayman Islands’. Later, at his desk in the Treasury, an intrigued Osborne delves into the files – only to find that no such place appears to exist. However, when he checks the tax records, he is shocked to learn that neither he, his friends and family nor anyone else in his entire world has ever contributed a single penny to the economy.

His whole life has been a carefully-constructed illusion

Although the cynical executives who really run the show are initially alarmed, they quickly realise that the fickle viewing public will be easily distracted by Osborne’s emotional turmoil as he descends into fear and paranoia, driven to rebel against everything he has ever known and tormented by the gnawing suspicion that he may be the lifelong victim of a cruel deception.

The film succeeds because, from the very start, the audience knows what Osborne does not, seeing the scheming executives controlling everything for their own purposes, and longs for him to escape his comfortable bubble and break out into the real world.

Ironically, of course, it is only a fantasy. The Osborne Show ultimately fails to drive home the important issues it raises about wealth, the media and the rich men who control our lives, because the audience is too busy laughing to take it seriously.

Big Boys Stole My Budget, Claims Naughty Little Schoolboy

Little George Osporge has told a sceptical Treasury Committee that last week’s budget was the most comprehensively leaked in living memory because big boys threatened to give him a Chinese burn unless he handed it over.

“Then the horrid bullies threw my budget into the papers and ran away laughing, miss,” insisted the crimson-faced chancellor of the exchequer, adding that he had been working so hard to get all the answers right that he completely missed Sport Relief Does Glee Club on CBBC. “I swear, miss, that’s what happened. No, I can’t remember any of their faces, miss.”

The chancellor's Treasury Committee performance

The chancellor went on to suggest that he should nevertheless be given full marks for his budget, as he was absolutely sure that he was 100% correct.

When committee members failed to reward his diligence, Osporge Minor went on to offer other perfectly plausible excuses, including “the dog leaked my budget”, “I left my budget on top of the telly, and horrible old Mr Murdoch grabbed it and pulled it through the screen” and “it’s my time of the month”.

The little liar was then given a jolly good thrashing.

Britain Prepares For Osborne's 2012 Budget

God Banned From Olympics

This is the true spirit of the Olympiad

Tiresome spoilsport God is to be barred from Britain for the duration of the London Olympics under emergency legislation which, sources say, will be pushed through in George Osborne’s budget on Wednesday.

The chancellor is reported to be furious at God’s mulish refusal to permit dedicated sport fans to buy a sofa at 5:30 on a Sunday morning.

“If God won’t let the servant class work all the hours He sends, He can bugger off to North Korea for a couple of weeks and jolly well like it,” snapped a Treasury official. “His pig-headed attitude proves - if proof were needed - that sport and religion don’t mix.”

God may be allowed back into Britain once the sporting event has ended, he added, but only if He gives His solemn undertaking to the Tesco board of directors never again to interfere in their good works.

Government To Sell The Future

Chancellor George Osborne announced today that the entire future of Britain is to be sold off - in the form of government bonds which will not have to be repaid, together with astounding amounts of accrued interest, until we are all safely dead and past caring.

George Osborne's economics advisor

“Last night I was watching the old episode of Futurama where 93 cents in Fry’s bank account grew into $4.3bn, thanks to a thousand years of compound interest at 2.25%,” explained Mr Osborne brightly. “And it dawned on me how irresistible that sort of return would look to any investment fund manager.”

The ‘super-long gilts’ which Mr Osborne is proposing will not be redeemable for at least a century, he smirked, and corporate investors will be encouraged to hang onto them for as long as they like and rack up a truly staggering interest bill - which a generation of unfortunate sods yet to be born will one day be presented with.

“I envisage two possible repayment scenarios,” explained the chancellor. “Either Britannia shall rise again, creating a star-spanning British Galactic Empire which will meet its historic debts through the shameless exploitation of native alien races dominated by our glorious space colonies, or your great-to-the-nth-power grandchildren will be hideous mutants harvested in battery farms for their internal organs.”

“Some may feel this places an unjust burden on future generations,” he admitted. “But if you want to maintain some semblance of a Western lifestyle for a few more years, I’d cordially advise you to shut the fuck up.”

Where’s Wallies?

The only wally anyone's seen for a week is fourth from the right

Yes, it’s the picture-book craze that’s sweeping Britain! Will you be the first player to spot the hidden wallies - including David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague, Theresa May and all the other Conservative cabinet members, who have been completely absent from public view since Christmas Eve?

Features dozens of elaborately- drawn crowd scenes, including:

- Klosters, the posh people’s skiing resort!
- Ladyboy lapdancing club in downtown Bangkok!
- Royal family’s festive bird-slaughtering jamboree at Sandringham!
- Weeping and wailing at Kim Jong-il's funeral!
- Falkland Islands penguin colony!

Osborne To Abolish Jobs, Pensions, Everything

Cannibalism: poised to become a growth industry

In his Autumn Prophecy Of Doom, chancellor George Osborne has outlined radical Treasury plans to stop government spending on absolutely everything, forever, in what City analysts are already hailing as a prudent effort to keep Britain from slipping back into recession. However, he said cheerfully, the rest of your lives are not all bad news:

OUT: Jobs, pensions, growth, hope.
IN: Rail fares to become only slightly more utterly unaffordable.

Tories ‘Consistently Voiced Concerns’ About PFI Ever Since We Introduced It, Claims Twit

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, George

Britain’s top twit, chancellor George Osborne, today announced that the government would be reviewing the Private Finance Initiative, after statistics showed that the future had completely run out of money to pay for all the ruinously expensive buildings cheerfully thrown up during the past two decades on the never-never.

“We Tories have consistently voiced concerns about PFI, which is why we launched it so enthusiastically in 1992,” yammered Osborne’s flapping mouth. “Developers pulling down perfectly serviceable buildings and banging out shiny new ones just to exploit a VAT loophole, then charging the public purse way over the odds for decades to come is plain bloody stupid. Only a party of criminally irresponsible dunces could even have contemplated such a crazy scheme, just because it conveniently keeps the staggering cost off the books.”

The blithering idiot who holds Britain’s economy in his feeble grasp added that he had been absolutely against PFI since taking office in May 2010 - which was why he continued to sign off new projects until the Treasury’s calculator finally exploded, when it generated a final payment date beyond the point in the far future when our planet will be engulfed by its dying sun.

‘Don’t Worry, Clegg Isn’t Running The Country,’ Says Hague

Mr Hague remains upbeat, if incomprehensible

As prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne swan off to the holiday destinations only millionaires can afford, foreign secretary William Hague moved swiftly to allay public fears of a lack of leadership during a rapidly-worsening economic crisis by reassuring the nation that deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was still curled up and sound asleep inside his teapot and would remain there no matter what happens.

The Tory wise man of the north told anxious reporters: “Ey up, fowks - ‘appen things might be a bit ketty raht now, but ‘old yer skrikin’. Reckon t’ PM an’ t’ chancellor o’ t’ exchequer mun be agate raht soon enoof f’r upskittlin’ t’ economy wi’owt recklin’ t’ barn. Let ‘im ligg, now.”

Linguistic experts from the south explained to the rest of the country that the rough gist of what the foreign secretary had said was that, although the present situation may be causing alarm to some, that there was no need to worry as he had every confidence in the ability of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne to restore calm to the markets upon their return and there was therefore no need to call upon Mr Clegg for leadership.

“It’s either that, or he fancies Halifax’s chances on Sunday against the Batley Bulldogs,” they concluded.

Royal Family Still Doing Slightly Better Than The Economy

London’s homeless expressed surprise at the non-appearance of the Queen at any of the capital’s soup kitchens today, after chancellor George Osborne promised that the royals would “do as well as the economy is doing”.

Take it, bitch

Mr Osborne made his unlikely claim as he unveiled plans to repackage the taxpayers’ millions he hands over to the monarchy into something fatuously called a Sovereign Grant.

“So the Queen will have to scrimp and save on only 91% of what she’s getting now? Big deal,” said Bob, a shambling down-and-out who lost his home along with his livelihood when his business folded last year, after his government-owned bank refused him a loan. “If they seriously want the royal finances to reflect the economy then the government ought to make some sort of truly enormous-cocked hat, into which the Queen, Prince Philip and all their parasitic spawn would be royally fucked on a daily basis.”

“That’ll bring in the tourists,” he reflected.

‘Oh – Er – Ouch,’ Say Banks

Britain’s leading bankers clutched their arms today, put on their really sad faces and theatrically clutched each other’s arms for support as chancellor George Osborne announced a massive 0.075% increase in the bank levy.

Let's not overdo it, chaps

The levy, which pre-empts Mr Osborne’s budget, is expected to claw back a less-than-satisfying total of £2.5bn a year from the hundreds of billions by which the banks are in hock to the taxpayer.

“Oh, please, Br’er George, sho’ ‘nuff you can do anything you like to us, but please don’ throw us in that itsy-witsy li’l briar patch,” chorused the heads of the four largest high street banks, rolling their eyes in mock terror. “Just over there, see? That little speck to the left of where the Aston Martin’s parked - that’s the one, right there. Whatever you do, doan’ throw us in that. That would really, really hurt.”

The chancellor played his part of the pantomime by pulling his very sternest face and wagging a reproachful finger at the bankers, who by now were shaking their knees furiously, pretending to bite their knuckles and trying very hard not to laugh.

After the curtain fell, to rapturous applause from the easily-pleased matinee audience, the bankers retired to L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon to drown their mock sorrows, award themselves even bigger bonuses and decide how many more mortgages and loans to refuse with a token shrug.

Dunce Osborne Given Six Of The Best

Davos didn't quite go as well as Mr Osborne hoped

George Osborne has finally limped out of the World Economics Teachers’ Common Room today, tear-streaked and clutching his buttocks, after his prep was unceremoniously given 0/10 and torn up in front of him.

Little George, 13, who says he has put a lot of work into his economics experiment, received a dreaded ‘See us’ note on Friday after handing in his homework project, the transformation of Britain into a pre-Victorian workhouse.

“Cutting your way out of a recession? Wherever did you pick up such nonsense, boy?” roared his form master, as teacher’s pet Barack Obama stood at the door sniggering. “Cuts lead to a sharp increase in unemployment, which reduces the overall amount of money in the system! The correct response to a recession is government stimulus of key industries - Keynes, Chapter 3! Perhaps, Osborne, you were too busy skiing or playing Soggy Biscuit with your dorm chums Cameron and Clegg to read the set text? I’m afraid I shall have to beat you severely, boy.”

Little master Osborne tried to protest, but his lame excuses cut no ice with his irate teachers.

“’I don’t like taxes’?” bellowed the headmaster. “Balderdash! Taxes are the main source of government revenue, and without revenue how are governments supposed to inject money into a stagnant economy to keep it moving? Bend over at once, boy - I can see I’m going to have to administer this beating personally.”

When young George emerged, however, he promptly told his admiring classmates through gritted teeth that it didn’t hurt at all, really, because he’d cleverly stuck all his research notes down the back of his shorts.

His prestige plummeted, however, when sneaky swot Obama set to work with his slide rule and calculated that George’s notes - consisting of a solitary page torn out of an old Reaganomics primer - would only have absorbed 0.007% of the cane’s impact.

The BBC later apologised.

Exasperated God Calls Press Conference

Supreme being God today took the unprecedented step today of holding a press conference, to angrily denounce Chancellor George Osborne’s efforts to blame Britain’s woeful economic performance on the weather.

Smiting the nation’s leading financial journalists with heart attacks, God led each of them through a tunnel of light to his heavenly press suite, and promised that paramedics would revive them in time to file their extraordinary copy.

“OK, so every so often I light a little volcano or shake the ground a bit, just to see if you’ve started loving one another yet,” he admitted. “Hey, if you’d existed from before time began, you’d get a bit bored too. But I want to make one thing crystal clear: I don’t run the weather. That’s part of a complex, self-regulating ecosystem which I designed to run itself. And it ran itself perfectly well, thank you, until you buggers came along.”

Cameras capture the moment God struck

“So now that little worm Osborne tries to wriggle off the hook by claiming that your toytown state’s economy has suddenly thrown itself into reverse entirely because of a little bit of cold weather - and you fell for it!” God laughed scornfully. “Oh, for My sake - I gave you free will. Use it! Up to the end of September, your economy was recovering slowly. Now it’s collapsing by half a percent. Osborne pulls the weather out of his hat and blithely tells you it accounts for exactly a suspiciously-convenient half a percent, and you all clap like bloody seals and miss the blindingly obvious point that, even if his desperate conjuring trick is real, your precious little recovery has just flatlined.”

“OK, so let’s put to one side the rather strange inconsistency in his argument, i.e. that this terrible weather seems to have prevented people from buying stuff, but somehow not from going to work to make stuff,” he explained, as His Son held up a helpful diagram showing a rise in manufacturing output. “It got a bit nippy – that’s all that happened. It’s happened before - the only difference is that, instead of the contingency plans your dull little officials with their bowler hats and umbrellas used to dust off every few years and put into action, these days your tacky little island is run by a gang of thieves in Armani suits exclusively for the benefit of an even bigger gang of thieves in Armani suits, and the only ‘plan’ they have is to shrug and point at me, then go back to counting their loot.”

“Well, they can piss right off, because I’m not standing for it any more,” roared an angry God. “When you wake up, tell them I’ve got their bloody cards marked. Watch Osborne closely from now on. Because I promise you he’s going to be frantically scratching his sorry, boil-infested arse raw whenever he thinks nobody’s looking.”

The BBC later apologised.

Nation Praying For Snow To Keep Osborne Away

No, please, take your time

Britons stopped complaining about the sub-Arctic weather today and began praying for more snow to fall, as long as it keeps chancellor George Osborne stranded in the United States indefinitely.

“I will gladly kip down on the floor of Terminal 2 for months to come, if it keeps that smarmy, bum-faced shit three thousand miles away,” grinned haggard would-be winter holidaymaker Sue Hart, who has spent two days stranded at Heathrow while airport workers wait patiently for God to show them how to spray antifreeze and bulldoze snow off runways. “There’s only so much harm the irritating little tit can get up to in a teleconference.”

Mr Osborne has already missed a vital meeting with top bankers in London today, in which they would have told him that enormous bonuses were vital to keeping their inestimable skill and expertise in the country, and he would have agreed with them completely but asked them to keep jolly quiet about it until he could sneak a low-key press release under the radar on a suitably busy news day.

Osborne Gives Ireland £7bn To Go Away

Clutching his nose to prevent the stench of poverty from filling his nostrils, slum landlord George Osborne today handed the bankrupt Irish Republic £7bn to put its belongings in a supermarket trolley and get the hell out of his neighbourhood.

As the wretched pauper state began arguing loudly with itself, Mr Osborne put on a feeble air of false bonhomie, telling Ireland: “Yah, I’m feeling the pinch somewhat also, mate, I don’t mind telling you. With interest rates as they are, my little trust fund most certainly isn’t ticking along quite as I might wish.”

This is a decent neighbourhood, you know

“Look here, my man, I’m telling you this as a friend,” he added. “With this cash, which I made by kicking out some of my ghastly tenants and selling their furniture, you could start a splendid new life for yourself somewhere lovely and sunny like the Mediterranean, where I’m sure you’ll get along famously with Spain and Greece.”

“I’m awfully sorry, but frankly you’re making the whole area look frightfully shabby,” Mr Osborne called over his shoulder, as he returned to his condemned property overlooking the rubbish tip, next to the rusting gasometer.

‘Hang On, What Did You Just Say?’ Tory Conference Asks Osborne

This wining yummy mummy could be forced to cancel her monthly case subscription

Enthusiastic cheering at the Tory conference in Birmingham suddenly faded to deathly silence this morning when, amid a welter of crowd-pleasing attacks on the welfare state, chancellor George Osborne mumbled something about axing child benefit for families in the upper income tax band.

“Did that little squirt up there just say he was going to stop my wife’s wine budget?” whispered a concerned stockbroker from Cheam to the pensioner sitting next to her. “I must be a bit deaf from all the hollering and clapping.”

“I am at the right conference, aren’t I?” he grumbled, when his neighbour confirmed the proposed cut. “I could have sworn the trots held theirs last week.”

A spokesman for the Independent Schools Council later warned that, with many top earners already feeling the pinch from last year’s brief hiccup in the bonus culture, the universal child benefit payment of £20.30 for the first child and £13.40 per addendum was all that was stood between the nation’s most gifted children and a knife in the kidneys at some hideous state-sector child dump.

“Britain’s valuable public schools are cutting their own throats by pinning fees down to, in some provincial cases, as little as double what some ghastly jobseeker receives in a year,” he announced. “If this essential educational supplement were to be withdrawn in a shortsighted fit of parsimony, why, our members would simply have little choice but to restrict entry exclusively to the offspring of well-rewarded government officials from overseas.”

Mr Osborne later apologised for his overzealous mistake, and promised to make some suitable adjustment, probably in the tax system, in his next budget.

“Er, I was aiming at all those fat oiky breeders on council estates, obviously,” he stammered. “Rest assured, ladies, by the time the budget rolls around, I’ll have arranged something for you in the form of some sort of tax break. Don’t worry, we’ll fill your husband’s accountant in on the details.”