Indigenous Brazilian Tribes Delighted To Find Out They’re Worth More Than Me

Remote tribes in the rainforest-covered uplands of Brazil are celebrating their new-found economic importance today, after learning that they are officially worth more than I am now that Brazil has overtaken Britain as the world’s sixth-largest economy.

A Brazilian tries in vain to provide me with motivation

“Eat this, loser!” smirked Amilcar López, a Xucuru shaman with a private practice halfway up a mountain in Pernambuco state. “I’ve just been approved for 0% finance on a brand new Jeep Wrangler. Enjoy your bus journey to the Jobcentre, Nev, you useless waster.”

José Rodrigues, a self-employed parrot hunter who lives in his own tree, told the Nev Filter that - unlike its writer/editor - he will be sunning himself on a beach in Australia next month, because he has a credit card.

“For god’s sake do something productive with your life,” he advised. “Why don’t you get off your fat arse and make yourself a blowpipe?”

I was unavailable for comment.

$4bn Purchase of French Strike Aircraft Will Safeguard Brazilian Way of Life, Promises Sarkozy

Joyful residents of Rio de Janeiro's 800 favelas were dancing in their shit-filled streets today, after President Luiz Inacio Lulu Twiggy da Silva announced that Brazil may soon be signing a $4bn deal to purchase 36 French Rafale fighter planes.

France's President Sarkozy, meanwhile, was enjoying the South American nation's Independence Day celebrations in Brasilia, in a welcome break from his duties as chief salesman for France's huge arms industry.

"The relationship between Brazil and France is not one of supplier and client, but of partners," he told Brazilians who were both literate and lucky enough to have enough spare cash to buy a copy of newspaper O Globo. "In exactly the same way that workers who slog their guts out for multinational corporations are no longer contemptible wage-slaves, but valued associates."

The Rafale has faced stiff competition from Boeing's F/A-18 Killer Bee and Saab's Gripen Trek TNG - but Mr Sarkozy's canny sales technique has already persuaded Brazil to purchase five submarines and fifty transport helicopters, complete with extended warranties and built-in MP3 players.

"When I set off every morning down the hill to haul buckets of murky water back up to my tumbledown shack, I want to know that all those foreign-owned oil rigs off our shores will be defended by state-of-the-art warplanes capable of blowing things up at nearly twice the speed of sound," announced sewage-recycling associate Hugo Neves. "My family's daily gamble with death from dysentery is a small price to pay, if it ensures the safety of these valuable assets owned by BP, Total and ExxonMobil."

"Mr Sarkozy really is a fantastic salesman," agreed his neighbour Severino Calixto, whose photogenically-ragged son scrapes a meagre living for the family by showing camera-waving tourists around the few stench-free parts of the colourful shanty-towns beneath their hotel balconies. "His glib salesmanship convinced me to sell my daughter Fortunata to a brothel to raise the cash for an oxygen-free pure copper SCART lead, so I can connect a DVD player to my TV set. Now all I need is a DVD player, a DVD and a regular electricity supply to take my mind off the never-ending misery of abject poverty."

Cartoons Bad for Children, Rubber Breasts Good

Venezuelan TV channel Televen has pulled The Simpsons from its morning schedules, deeming the long-running cartoon series “inappropriate” for children.

In its place, schedulers are running repeats of Baywatch Hawaii – voted the worst ever TV import by UK television executives in 2004 – which features impossibly-built female lifeguards in tiny costumes bouncing along beaches in slow motion.

“The anti-social behaviour of the proto-terrorist Bart Simpson provides an unsuitable role-model for young boys,” said a station executive in Caracas. “And Lisa Simpson thinks too much for a girl. Women were put on earth to have so much plastic surgery that even a Cyberman would think they were a bit artificial, so that lecherous, shallow goons can salivate over their spherical rubber boobs. Baywatch clearly teaches our young children the important things in Venezuelan life.”

“And this later version doesn’t have that drunk guy in it, either,” he added, “Which is a bonus.”