Paxman Still Hurling Minister’s Guts From Television Centre Roof

Thrill-seeking Newsnight audiences ran screaming from their televisions last night, as an enraged Jeremy Paxman suddenly broke free from his token restraints and tore a whimpering Shitey Chloe Young limb from limb.

Nothing can survive a blow from the terrible claw of Paxman

The roaring beast – promoted by his handlers as ‘the last of his kind’ – was deceptively docile at first, but the moment the pretty young minister flounced onto the set his mood became increasingly wild and agitated.

The menacing grey gorilla toyed with her at first, prodding her playfully and rolling his eyes every time she tried desperately to soothe his massive, furrowed brow by repeating a quavering song about “households and businesses”. Suddenly breaking free from his restraint, however, he horrified his gawping audience by snapping his unequal challenger’s head off and ripping her to pieces, before rampaging through the emptied Television Centre to clamber onto the roof - from where he continues to shower the BBC car park with gory chunks of the hapless treasury junior.

“I smelt the fear the moment I switched on the telly,” cringed a traumatised eyewitness, cowering behind a back bench. “Why on earth wasn’t the Great Shite Chunterer on hand to shoot down this terrifying monster?”

A sheepish David Cameron today insisted that Mr Osborne had, in fact, fully intended to face down the legendary monster - but explained that the chancellor had unfortunately taken several wrong turns on the way to the studio before finally running out of fuel in a blind alley leading nowhere.

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.

Bank Of England Governor Found Colouring In ‘Textbook’

Arriving early for a meeting in governor Sir Mervyn King’s office after he publicly praised government economic policies - which have caused misery to millions, damaged Britain’s credit rating and plunged the country back into recession - as a “textbook response”, unsuspecting officials at the Bank of England inadvertently surprised him in the act of colouring in a picture of a fire engine with a red crayon.

George Osborne has gone through five copies

“In the light of the discovery that Sir Mervyn’s bookshelves contain nothing but children's activity books, the Bank of England would like to clarify the statement he made earlier,” admitted an embarrassed spokesman, Rob Blind. “Any book which contains words is, technically, a textbook, and a hasty check appears to indicate that every item in Mr King’s extensive reference library does in fact contain not just line drawings, but an accompanying word or two saying what each one depicts. With that proviso in mind, the Bank of England board fully endorses his comments.”

"There's plenty of educational content, too," he insisted. "You'd be surprised how many farmyard animals the governor can name. He's very bright for a 64-year-old."

“Perhaps, in hindsight, we might have sought confirmation that the Mont Blanc pen cap Sir Mervyn proudly displays in his breast pocket when he chairs Monetary Policy Committee meetings was actually attached to a Mont Blanc pen,” observed Mr Blind ruefully. “On the other hand, this does explain a lot of the modern art hanging in our junior executives’ offices.”

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.”

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.

Government Buys Good News From Nissan

Japanese car giant Nissan today officially unveiled £9.3m of feelgood publicity for the government, marking a sharp turnaround in the coalition’s fortunes.

Inviting ridicule

“Thanks to a £9.3m investment from Vince Cable, we are pleased to announce that 400 Geordies will be allowed into our plant to watch our robots building our exciting new egg on wheels,” said Trevor Mann, Nissan’s senior vice-president for manufacturing in Europe, at the Geneva Motor Show. “This will also create another 1600 jobs among our suppliers, so China’s happy too.”

“This is great news for the government and well worth every penny I paid for it,” declared Mr Cable brightly.

Not to be outdone, however, managers at Rio Tinto Alcan gave the government some publicity by announcing, at no cost to the taxpayer, that 500 jobs will be lost 30 miles down the road in Lynemouth when it closes its aluminium smelter.

Democracy Threatens British Way Of Life, Warn Rich People

Listening to the people is the greatest threat the country has faced since Hitler, according to 537 worried captains of British industry who would be losing vast sums to the 50p rate of income tax if they hadn’t got such clever accountants.

Make the bad thing go away

“Penalising high earners through an unfair, politically-motivated tax puts populist politics before sound economics,” cautioned Robert Rawlplug OBE, founder of Bedford’s world-beating Bob’s Discount Rawlplug Emporium. “That grinning little creep Osborne is a card-carrying member of the Socialist Workers, you know. It’s just not British to put the wishes of the many before the need for an extension to my wine cellar.”

“This Bolshevik tax, which is in effect an eye-watering 58p tax after the government’s iniquitous national insurance scam is taken into account, puts wealth creators like us in a very awkward position,” agreed Sir James Yarn, CEO of The Swindon Yarn Centre. “If the budget doesn’t lower it to a more realistic figure – 0p in the pound springs to mind – I may well be left with no alternative but to relocate my entire yarn factory to Eastern Europe, at the cost of up to 5 little people’s jobs. And what comrade Osborne needs to bear in mind is that they actually pay income tax.”

Meanwhile Sir Charles Garden-Ornament, chairman of Gnomes of Bodmin plc, summed up the pain of Britain’s vital entrepreneurs by screaming and screaming and screaming until he was sick.

Which? Magazine To Relaunch as WTF?

MacBook-owning Which? readers are particularly cross

Leading consumer magazine Which? today announced that, in a 21st-century makeover reflecting the financial competence of the British public, it will rebrand itself as WTF? after unveiling this month’s shocking exposé of the widespread scam known as ‘trade’.

“If you sell a lappy to someone yourself, right, you get more wonga than like if you sell it to some dealer what sells it to someone else innit,” explained the group’s chief investigative reporter, Jakey Boy. “Even if it was yours, yeah, and you didn’t like nick it or nothing. I mean, WTF? Random.”

“Seriously, bro, I’m telling you, like check it out,” he added indignantly. “I shit you not.”

A spokesman for the second-hand retail sector later attempted to explain its key concept of ‘profit’ to the baffled public: “Right Baldrick, let's try again. This is called ‘retail’. If the market value of your knackered MacBook Pro is four beans and I don’t want to starve, how many beans should I give you for it?”

Cameron’s Bright Idea For Economic Recovery Involves Mortgages People Can’t Afford

It's a foolproof recovery plan

Britain’s economic future is assured, says prime minister David Cameron, if poor people take out vast mortgages they can’t afford to repay.

According his brilliant plan, the government – i.e. you, the taxpayer – will underwrite their naïvely optimistic borrowing of 95% of their mortgages, and cheerfully fork mountains of cash into the bankers’ gaping maws when their customers inevitably default.

“It’s time to reset the housing market back to the boom years, before the banks collapsed due to lending vast mortgages to poor people who couldn’t afford to repay them,” smiled an upbeat Mr Cameron.

“What? he added.

Greeks To Be Asked If They Fancy Pay Cuts, Slashed Pensions And Mass Redundancies

The bankruptcy of the eurozone now looks certain, with the announcement that Greek PM George Papandreou plans to ask his people whether they like the sound of losing their public services, their pay, their pensions and their jobs.

A typical Greek floating voter wonders where to cast his vote

“What is fuss about, please? Typical Greek men in streets sure to be admirably sanguine about very important issue, and to put greater good of economic survival of European neighbours before own personal finances,” said a cheerful Mr Papandreou as hordes of furious rioters set about systematically burning Athens to the ground, in the traditional Greek way of voting.

Meanwhile, on the borders of Greece, a small army of worried eurocrats is frantically excavating a vast trench linking the Ionian and Aegean Seas, hoping to open the floodgates at each end and claim that Greece is not really a European country at all, but part and parcel of the Middle East.

Europe Would Look Nice On Your Mantelpiece, Leaders Tell China

Eurozone leaders are desperately trying to tempt China into adding Europe to its collection of knick-knacks, pointing out that trinkets of such fabulous size rarely come onto the market at such an attractive price.

The Russians haven't got one of these, remember

“Just $100bn buys you over a million square miles of prime development land,” haggled Klaus Regling, head of the EFSF (Eurozone Fire Sale Facility). “That’s just a hundred grand a mile - and we’re throwing in 857m economic production units absolutely free, so in effect you’re getting a lifetime of work out of them for an initial investment of just over a hundred bucks apiece. Go on, have a fling! You won’t get a better deal anywhere else.”

“Just look at some of the fabulous collectibles you’ll be picking up for a song,” he cajoled. “The Eiffel Tower, Versailles, the Parthenon, Pompeii and a fantastic train set – you’re getting the complete job lot in one bargain deal!”

Mr Regling added that, if he was unable to tempt the Chinese, he would be forced to put Europe on eBay with a starting bid of $1 and see what he got for it.

Shamed Financiers Vow To Be Lovely To Each And Every One Of Us From Now On

As protesters movingly took to the streets of the world’s leading financial centres today, hordes of sobbing money men have been emerging from their corporate towers of glass and steel - begging on their knees for forgiveness, and a chance to put right all of the harm they have selfishly caused to the human race and our suffering planet.

“Mother Gaia, have mercy on my tormented soul,” wailed the head of an international investment bank, tearing off his designer shirt and beating his breast in anguish and remorse. “No more shall the tentacles of my evil global empire subjugate the tribes of the earth. This hippy occupation of the City has truly opened my eyes, and from now on I shall devote my life to distributing its ill-gotten wealth among sustainable local tie-dying operations. Now I beg the joyful face-painting druids of Glastonbury Tor to come forth from this sea of inspirational placards, and paint me humble.”

Job done, chaps - you can all go home now

“I have laid my last disfiguring oil pipeline across the ravaged face of our beautiful planet,” vowed the contrite CEO of a multinational energy exploiter. “Even as I speak, my reformed underlings are dismantling the hated machinery of distribution. From now on, resources will benefit only those in whose sacred ground they are to be found.”

“Pretty soon, I can tell you, there are going to be an awful lot of Eskimos racing round the Alaskan tundra in Range Rovers,” he wept joyfully, as a fellow convert sent word to his Kenyan subsidiary that, from now on, its African workforce would be permitted to gorge themselves every day on coffee beans. “Now, is there a groovy chick here who would like to barter me some henna in exchange for my pointless gold cufflinks? I’ve always harboured a secret yearning for a magnificent mane of bright red dreadlocks.”

Meanwhile, all over the world’s oceans, the crews of tankers, bulk carriers and containers ships were taking to the lifeboats, as instructed by their reformed shipowners, and learning to fish for only their own immediate needs after opening the sea cocks on the hated vessels which have senselessly squandered the world’s dwindling oil supplies hauling goods needlessly from continent to continent.

“Of course, without international trade there will be a billion or so deaths over the course of the next few months,” smiled Bank of England governor Mervyn King, sporting a splendid new set of tribal tattoos on his eyelids as he danced ecstatically around a bonfire of now-obsolete futures and share certificates. “But I know they will pass into the next world happy in the knowledge that the good earth will be fertilised by their cast-off mortal shells, ensuring a fantastic crop of turnips for the survivors to venerate.”

World ‘Not Quite Fucked Yet,’ Cameron Reassures Canadians

Standing statesmanlike with his hands on his knees and naked from the waist down, David Cameron stoically warned Canada’s impassive parliamentarians that the entire Western world was “not quite fucked yet, but the pattern is clear.”

With global share prices in freefall as the unchecked forces of capitalism threw themselves into their final orgy of cannibalistic destruction – as predicted 144 years ago by some long-forgotten oddball with a beard - Britain’s PM issued a stark warning to the leaders of Europe and the United States in which he desperately urged them to discard a century of ill-considered legislation which prevents the remnants of Western industry from regarding you and your children solely as disposable raw materials to be exploited ruthlessly until death.

Western civilisation will be back after this break

With the G20 summit of the world’s former leading economies scheduled for November, the trouserless Mr Cameron expressed a touching hope that the impending sideways shafting by barbarians in suits would at least have the decency to wait until then before laying waste to a thousand years of Western civilisation.

“This is why it is so important for the United Nations to support the embryonic spread of democracy in the Arab world," he added. “Then, after the new Dark Age has reduced us to cooking dung in our mud huts and throwing sharp sticks at the tribe from the next hilltop, we may one day rise up and steal all that we forgot back off them like we did before.”

Trains Fantastically Good Value To Taxpayers, Claim Operators, As Long As They Only Pay Tax In France, Holland Or Germany

Britain’s cash-crammed train operators hit back at transport secretary Philip Hammond’s description of Britain’s trains as “rich men’s toys”, claiming that the services they run offered excellent value for the taxpayer, albeit only if the taxpayer in question should happen to be domiciled in France, the Netherlands or Germany for tax purposes.

It's fast, and it's full of happy taxpayers

“Monsieur ‘ammond, ‘e should look in ‘is underpants isn’t it, as your fonny liddle English saying ‘as it,” said a bloated Gallic spokesman for the Association of Train Exploiting Companies, as a waiter carefully lowered an after-eight mint covered in gold leaf into his gaping maw.

“Ze taxpayers of France, ‘olland and Germany, zey pay ‘ardly anyzing at all to subsidise zair glorious state-run ‘igh-speed rail systems,” he added, pausing only to vomit gallons of paté de foie gras into a platinum bucket. “Not since ze SNCF, NED and ze Deutsche Bahn came up wiz ze, ‘ow you say, ‘wizard wheeze’ of renting ze creaking buckets of rust off ze banks, sending zem on zair wobbly way along ze rickety British tracks, zen ‘itting ze ridiculous British commuters wiz zair silly bowler ‘ats an’ zair peculiar Times crosswords for all ze eye-watering fare increases an’ ‘uge government subsidies zey could get away wiz.”

“Ze glorious taxpayers of France, ‘olland an’ Germany ‘ave never ‘ad it so good,” he added, before exploding. “Zo shot op an’ cough op ze £120 for ze peak-time return from Birming’am to Euston, you stupeed liddle rosbif.”

Vince Cable In Tragically Deluded Appeal To Shareholders’ Sense Of Decency And Fair Play

After much puffing on his best ‘ideas pipe’, everybody’s favourite uncle, Vince Cable, has formed the opinion that the best restraint on the inflation-busting jamboree that is executive pay and bonuses would be to let corporate shareholders rule on the matter.

Mr Cable gets all of his best ideas in here

Dear old uncle Vince emerged from his potting shed to tell his numerous LibDem nephews and nieces that the faceless financial institutions which hold the vast majority of corporate shares are really very sober and responsible indeed, and would certainly never be silly enough to fall for short-term dividend largesse thrown their way by cynical, irresponsible boardroom directors during their brief stopovers in the never-ending game of musical chairs which characterises Britain’s system of corporate management.

“Good heavens, just imagine what would happen if, solely in order to boost their bonuses before jumping ship to another comfy chair elsewhere, the senior management of some unprofitable business decided to pay their shareholders one nice, fat dividend out of essential capital reserves – or worse, simply borrowed the money from a bank!” beamed uncle Vince. “Why, the firm would probably go bust within a matter of years! By then, any shareholders who hadn’t sold their shares in that company at a tidy profit - which would be based solely on the apparent financial health indicated by that handsome dividend – would really have egg all over their faces, wouldn’t they?”

“Just imagine if every business behaved like that!” he went on contentedly. “I should imagine that, before long, the entire financial world would collapse in tatters. My goodness, and where would we all be then, eh?”

European Governments Finally Beginning To Grasp Basics Of Stock-Market Chicanery

Leading stockbrokers are already planning another scheme

The governments of France, Italy, Spain and Belgium have, after only a couple of hundred years, started to notice that the thieves and gamblers of the world’s stock markets may not actually have their nations’ best interests at heart, and have finally banned one of the most blatant cons.

“Imagine you and a friend go into a supermarket, and you pick up a bunch of bananas priced at one euro,” said French president Nicolas Sarkozy. “You bet your friend an euro that you can offload the bananas at a ridiculously low price, and he accepts. You then stop a random shopper, and offer her the bananas at five cents. She asks if you’re allowed to do that - since you don’t actually own a single banana - and you say it doesn’t really matter as you’ll buy them straight back from her at 50 cents, then put them back on the shelf. After she agrees to the transaction, you collect your euro from your friend, and you are now 55 cents richer for very little effort.”

“And that’s short-selling,” he summarised. “We are starting to come to the conclusion that the Anglo-Saxons might have had a point after all, when they suggested three years ago that this particular confidence trick may not be altogether a good thing.”

Demand For US Arms Reduction In No Way Connected To Our New Aircraft Carrier, Says China

Well, that's the take-off bit sorted

Speaking from the huge flight deck of the Shanga Lang, the People’s Liberation Navy’s newly-unveiled 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier, as it began its sea trials, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao assured the United States that his warning to scale back their expenditure on defence was nothing more sinister than well-intentioned budgeting advice from a concerned friend.

“China is the world’s friend,” he smiled, as the behemoth set course toward Japan. “And the only reason we are quadrupling our defence budget is because we have so much of your money that we simply don’t know what to do with it all. Look at this aircraft carrier. Only a nation with money to burn would waste so much money on a vessel of this size without having any aircraft to equip it with. Well, apart from the British, of course, but they are a notoriously inscrutable race whose reasons - if indeed they even understand such an abstract concept – have always been impossible to fathom.”

The former Soviet hulk will begin launching enthusiastic Chinese pilots off its steam catapults tomorrow. After a decade or two, if all goes well, Chinese defence researchers say they may even develop an aircraft of some sort to put them in – possibly a reverse-engineered Swordfish biplane, which they hope to develop using a rusty old Fleet Air Arm Gannet as a starting point.

China Explains Revised Principles Of Communism To Washington

It's what Marx would have wanted

1. Workless of the USA, get a job! You have nothing to lose but your food stamps.
2. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his shareholding.
3. Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, so stop being ill and old.
4. Religion is the opium of the masses. So keep buying into that Protestant work ethic.
5. The theory of Chinese Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all welfare.

Hypothetical Money Vanishes

In the last 24 hours, according to people who are paid lots of money to make this stuff up, hundreds of billions of fictitious dollars, euros and pounds which never existed in the first place have been wiped off notional markets whose reality it suits corporate entities which exist only on paper to collectively imagine.

Although many people are absolutely convinced of the reality of money - because they regularly exchange pieces of paper on which somebody they will never meet claims that, if they only ask him, he would be delighted to exchange each piece of paper for a quantity of stamped discs of useless alloy - the entire monetary system which directly affects the lives of 7 billion people is, it is privately admitted by insiders, nothing but a great big fairy story made up by Sumerian tribesmen thousands of years ago and subsequently elaborated upon by successive generations of imaginative fantasists.

You are personally worth more than all of this, apparently

 “Being entirely ignorant of the magical mysteries of economics, the uninitiated struggle to understand how, for example, roughly four million square miles of real estate – chock full of useful minerals, metals and fossil fuels, covered with edible flora and fauna and filled with hundreds of millions of industrious workers - could possibly be worth vastly less than nothing,” observed a man in a striped shirt who shouts at an array of blinking red lights all day long and is therefore considered a leading expert. “So there’s really very little point in me trying to explain to laymen who can’t even grasp the basics how it could suddenly become worth even less than it was yesterday.”

“Now go away and leave me alone,” he added. “I have lives to destroy.”

Conservatives Still Struggling To Grasp Fundamental Requirement Of Consumerism

As yet another high street retailer, fashion retailer Jane Norman, went into administration due to the ongoing impoverishment of the general population, senior Conservatives are still showing no signs of recognising that the consumerist model of capitalism which operates in Britain depends entirely on consumers having any money to spend.

Think of it as a sort of V&A for this year's tat

With even the consumerist cathedrals of Tesco reporting a fall in UK sales figures, retail industry leaders are said to be struggling to come up with a diagram so simple that even chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne can understand it.

“We drew a picture with a woman holding her purse, and a shop, and her little house and family,” said CBI head Sir Roger Carr. “We simplified it so that the shop is also her workplace - which is how we like it - and drew two arrows marked ‘money’ going to and from it, and another arrow marked ‘stuff’ going from the shop to her house."

"For the sake of clarity, we left out added complications such as energy providers,” sighed Sir Roger, who also happens to be the chairman of Centrica. “But George just giggled and drew a big pair of tits on her, then asked why stuff didn’t go back from her house back to the shop.”

“OK, so he seems to have a pretty shrewd picture of the low-grade rubbish our shops are stocking nowadays,” he grumbled. “Unfortunately, though, he still doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea about money.”