Useless Bank Crisis Could Have Been Averted By Throwing Money At Britain’s Other Useless Bank, Says Financial Wizard

Mr Pants is lining up a new position for himself

“The clear and obvious solution to the collapse of Northern Rock was to flush an eye-watering loan down that other shining example of banking prudence, Lloyds TSB,” explained the incredible glowing brain of Hector Pants, as he prepares for his awe-inspiring jump off the top of the Financial Services Authority. “That would have given Lloyds the wherewithal to complement their own shrewd investments by buying Northern Rock, thereby combining two outstanding portfolios into one. Bingo! Crisis averted.”

In his farewell message to the cruel world, Mr Pants complains that Mervyn King - “that petty-minded little jumped-up cashier at the Bank of England” - just coughed nervously at his flash of brilliance, while “so-called chancellor of the exchequer” Alistair Darling merely glanced at his watch and claimed to be late for an important haggis-eating contest with his boss.

The City of London’s emergency services will be standing by later this month with shovels and buckets, after the high-flying genius rejected their advice against leaping out of the FSA wearing a 2-tonne solid gold parachute of his own design.

Nagging Golf Enthusiasts To Strike For God-Given Right To World’s Best Pensions

The contemptuous prick who lounges behind a desk for an hour or two every morning, ordering you to stop doing everything that gives you pleasure before roaring off for an agreeable afternoon out on the links, will be enjoying an extra round on June 21st because somebody, somewhere, is due for an even bigger pension than him, according to an open letter written by his gang.

St Mellion's fees are a tad dearer than your Age UK day centre, remember

“Listen, scum,” the BMA explained in every newspaper, “The founding principle of the National Health Service, according to no less an authority than that ghastly little Bevan twerp, is that our mouths should be stuffed with gold. The thought that anybody else might get more cash bunged their way, when they retire to Cornwall, than we will fills Britain’s hardworking doctors – and all the rest of us, too - with a deep-rooted moral sense of injustice, indignation and envy. Now for god’s sake stop smoking, you fat bastard. Get out, you disgust me.”

In a heartwarming gesture of goodwill towards the ignorant proles whose taxes rightly line their pockets, GPs promised that the humble lackeys who do all the tedious parts of the job - which would otherwise involve getting up from their expensive swivel chairs and actually touching poor people and their odious bodily fluids – will, naturally, not be permitted to take a day off.

“And if your stupid, ugly head falls off or whatever, don’t shit yourself,” added a BMA spokesman with a yawn, as he practiced his swing. “We’ve hired the usual foreign johnny to prod your flabby guts and scribble you a chit for two weeks’ worth of Prozac.”

Theresa May Urges Citizen Army To Repel Greek Hordes

The time for appeasement is over, says Mrs May

A cigar clenched in her mouth and flicking V-signs in the direction of Europe, home secretary Theresa May today delivered a stirring call to arms to the imperilled people of Britain - inviting them to sign up for the ‘Home Guard’ and defend Britain’s shores against imminent Greek invasion.

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of depressed euros and all the odious apparatus of fiscal rules, we shall not flag or fail,” Mrs May told a cheering Daily Telegraph. “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight Greeks on the beaches, we shall fight Greeks on the landing grounds, we shall fight Greeks in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight Greeks in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

All over Britain, Mrs May’s incompetent but mustard-keen supporters took time out from marching round in circles, manning the barricades and muttering about fuzzy-wuzzies to sew inspiring new ‘Home Guard’ patches over their much-ridiculed ‘EDL’ armbands.

When reminded that the Conservatives had, in fact, surrendered the nation’s borders in 1973, Mrs May retorted that this was not their finest hour.

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?”

Recession Ends As Blue People Win Thing

Shiny thing make it all better

The British public were still dancing deliriously in every street up and down the land this morning after blue-shirted people won a shiny thing and red-shirted people didn’t, causing the recession to disappear forever.

Not in other news:

Europe Reverts To Hunter-Gatherer Existence 

NHS Abolished 

Badgers Awarded Benefits As Disabled Cull Begins

Ramming Speed, Urges Hague

What a healthy economy looks like

Pounding mercilessly on his drum, foreign secretary William Hague today urged Britain’s rowers to stop moaning and row harder if they did not want to go down with their creaking galley.

As pitiless Conservative overseers frantically whipped collapsing small business owners back to semi-consciousness, Britain’s haughty Admiral and Captain were conspicuously absent from the hellish, stinking lower deck - where ranks of sweating entrepreneurs heaved desperately at their oars to relentless beat of the bald percussionist, trying desperately to steer a sluggish Britain to victory before it was consumed by deadly Greek Fire.

As Britain crashed repeatedly onto the treacherous banks and began filling rapidly with seawater, the measured tones of Mr Hague could be heard calmly ordering the stricken ship to make all possible speed for the nearest safe harbour – either India, Thailand or Indonesia.

Ferrari Painter Hired By Government To Create Illusion Of Prosperity

A dab of Dulux, and it's like the boom years never went away

Chris Smart - the doomed call-centre drone who painted the dream car that a lifetime of drudgery will never afford onto his garage door - was today offered a job by chancellor George Osborne, who hopes to use Mr Smart’s deceptively realistic trompe l‘oeil artistry to persuade Britain that the recession is just a dim memory and it is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom which will go on forever, or at least until the paint flakes off.

Mr Smart has already been put to work in Merton’s dilapidated High Street, where a row of boarded-up shops has been transformed into an earthly paradise by the illusion of a bustling wine bar, a Bentley showroom and an exclusive City restaurant.

“Business is booming again, at least for me,” enthused the former art student, as he searched Google for more inspiring images of vanished prosperity. “When I’ve finished with Britain’s shopping centres, the Ministry of Defence has already asked me to paint over the cracks in our naval strategy. That’ll keep me going for a good few years.”

Great Value Activity Holidays On Offer As Bolshevik Revolution Grips Europe

And it's educational, too

The pound in your pocket has never promised so much action-packed fun for your summer holidays, say uncharacteristically cheerful travel agents, as impoverished peasant mobs from France To Greece angrily dust off their rusty tumbrils and rebel against their hated leaders.

“As the eurozone collapses headlong into blood-red anarchy, sterling has finally found some residual value,” gushed the manager of a Thomas Cook in Ruislip. “If you can find someone to parachute you into Greece, right now you can sleep in a five-star hotel bed that’s been hauled out into the balmy streets of Athens for a makeshift barricade for as little as 50p a night. A Michelin-recommended dinner with a bottle of exquisite raki will cost as little as a pound, and then you can fill the empty bottle with petrol and hurl it at a policeman to round off the perfect romantic socialist evening.”

Meanwhile, in revolutionary France, cheap family adventure holidays guarantee fun the whole family can enjoy together, as you and your children are encouraged to hurl abuse and unfeasibly large cabbages at the evil capitalist Sarkozy and his overthrown lackeys before entering a prize draw for the rare opportunity to actually pull the string on the famous guillotine.

“And in Germany’s picturesque Schleswig-Holstein right now,” he added breathlessly, “You too can get a grandstand view with all the excitement of daredevil Angela Merkel tearing around in ever-decreasing circles. You can be there when the wheels finally fall off her reckless plans for Eurozone domination!”

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.”

Born-Again Work & Pensions Secretary Miraculously Struck Kind

On this day, it so happened that a repentant St. Iain Pduncan Psmith did testify before unbelieving scribes that the Lord Jsasus had appeared unto him in a vision as his party was journeying on the road to local election wipeout, demanding: “Smith, Smith, why do you persecute me?” before miraculously striking him utterly kind.

Hallelujah, we're saved

And it came to pass that St. Pduncan Psmith – hitherto feared throughout the land as the scourge of the weak – did henceforth bear witness to the suffering of the poor, the halt and the lame before the Pharisees of the Treasury, sending an inspirational epistle to the Times.

Verily, however, disabled recipients of the former high priest’s ministrations – many of whom had miraculously been declared fit by his Atos Medical minions – yet harboured in their hearts lingering doubts about St. Pduncan Psmith’s phenomenal affliction of kindness; for, in their wickedness, they said unto one another: “Indeed, this is like unto some temporary sort of kindness, from which he might recover just as miraculously on May 4th.”

And they were sore afraid.

Plymouth Puts Shiny New £46m Life Centre On eBay – No Reserve

As Britain’s local authorities agreed today that they could either continue to change your granny’s pissy knickers once a week or run the facilities they were entrusted with generations ago for the public to benefit from, Plymouth City Council leader Viv Pengelly nailed a giant ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!’ sign to its just-opened £46m sports complex, The Life Centre, and posted it on eBay with a starting price of just 99p.

Ikea and Fyffes Bananas have already placed bids

The eBay listing describes the Life Centre as a “Bran new sport’s complexs, including familey lesure pool, fitnes's sweet for 150 janner’s, kid's climing wall. Paint still drieing! Hardley used. Surounded by 250 acers of lush green parkland in prime central location (see my other auction's). Cost 46,500,000 £££’s new. Reason for sale: unwanted gift.”

A spokesman for the cash-strapped westcountry council – which, in recent years, has already divested itself of its buses, its airport, all hope for the future and any pretence at caring – pointed out that all local authorities were being forced to dream up new ways of meeting the staggering cost of wringing stale wee out of your nan’s bedclothes without negatively impacting on their hardworking senior officers’ modest remuneration packages.

“You could say that it was perhaps a trifle lavish of Plymouth City Council to throw money it hadn’t got at a monumental vanity project its citizens couldn’t afford,” he explained. “But you won’t say it in the local paper, because it was their damn fool suggestion in the first place.”

“And, of course, it goes without saying that you’ve long since forgotten that you all said it was a bloody brilliant idea at the time,” he added.

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.

Barclays Demand Taxpayer Bailout For £500m Tax Bill

An aggrieved board of directors at Barclays is hastily putting together a case for a last-minute taxpayer bailout of the bank to cover its dodged £500m tax bill, after Treasury officials finally put an end to the old regulatory system in which multinational corporations took Dave Hartnett, the head of HM Revenue and Customs, out for a most agreeable lunch and he repaid their largesse by obligingly writing off all their tax liabilities.

Dear, innocent little Barclays Bank

“Barclays Bank is widely respected in the City as a paragon of probity,” explained Barclays’ head of corporate social responsibility, Sir Nick Things, “Which is why, when it became obvious that we were about to get done for years of tax fiddling, we immediately put our hands up and told the authorities about our £500m stash of loot. And we’d have gotten clean away, too, with if it hadn’t been for those pesky meddling kids at Private Eye jumping up and down and pointing to kindly old Mr Harnett for a year or two before the papers or the government finally woke up.”

“However, in our defence it should be pointed out that - unlike our competitors - Barclays didn't go cap-in-hand to the government back along, demanding an eye-watering handout and dragging every man, woman and child in the country into generations of unpayable debt,” he added. “I rather think it’s time to call that little favour in now, don’t you?”

Meanwhile, sweating Treasury officials are desperately pretending to be in meetings today as the phone rings and rings, trying to come up with some face-saving dodge whereby further deepening of the dark fiscal hole in which Britain now sits can be hidden from the taxpayer in some way, possibly involving vast, unpayable loans from Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Tumbling PC Sales Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Recession, Insist iPad Nerds

Plummeting revenues at PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell conclusively prove that the iPad is God and all other technology is false, according to media nerds today.

A computer

“People who think these figures might simply show PC-owning luddites making do with their clockwork abacus for a year or two longer are clearly technophobes living in a mud hut who probably have trouble understanding switches and still buy DVDs,” sneered Josh Geake, who genuinely believes he would throw himself under a train if separated for as little as 24 hours from the gadget which rules his life. “In a shop.”

When his geriatric dad pointed out that both HP and Dell make tablets too, Mr Geake fell off his chair laughing at the very idea that anybody could possibly be so crassly ignorant as to think that a black slab with a touchscreen bears the faintest resemblance to the ineffable perfection of his glorious iPad 2, yet remember to breathe.

“Only the iPad has this vital app which enables me to count simply by tapping the screen,” he insisted. “My life would be absolutely meaningless without that.”

Government To Terrorise Cities With Mary Portas

Local government minister Gimp Shitts today unveiled a threat to pull the names of twelve unfortunate cities out of a hat, and inflict Mary Portas on them.

Attack of the 50ft harridan

“The problem facing Britain’s high streets is that there are simply not enough shops selling posh frocks and painful shoes to young women,” crowed Mr Shitts, as he gleefully scribbled the names of every provincial shithole in Britain on a sheet of A4 and tore it into strips with a ruler.

“The key to regenerating these ghastly northern toilets is a thorough bullying from an acid-tongued battleaxe,” he enthused. “In the old days this role was performed admirably by Mrs Thatcher, but she’ll be raving about the inaccuracies in Meryl Streep’s hairdo for the rest of her twilight years. Fortunately, in Britain’s hour of need, another bitter old hag who knows more about everything than anyone else has emerged to save us from ruin.”

“The only way the chosen victims will be ever able to rid themselves of the baleful presence of Mary Portas,” he warned, “Is to give in immediately to her demands. No matter how malicious, petty, short-sighted, counter-productive or self-defeating they may appear to – or, indeed - be.”

Key Points Of David Cameron’s New Year Message

He's back. Did you miss him?

1. There are no invisible countries.
2. Fortunately, we’ve lined up some nice distractions for you.
3. Because this year the shit’s really going to hit the fan.
4. If I fiddle with all the broken stuff a bit - the NHS, education, law enforcement, that sort of thing – you never know, I might eventually be able to bodge something together that works. Well, sort of.
5. I’ve found some jolly splendid words in the dictionary to describe how things used to be, back in the good old days.
6. Did I mention the nice shiny things?
7. Never mind. A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.

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.

Osborne Keen To Borrow Your Pension To Build A Tunnel To Romania, If That’s All Right

They are coming

The government would quite like to borrow your pension - just for a century or two - in order to employ an army of Poles to build a massive trans-European toll tunnel to Bucharest, ready for the day when the government finally bows to the inevitable and lets all the Romanians and Bulgarians in to snap up any remaining jobs, announced chancellor George Osborne this morning.

“Look, we can’t keep stalling these buggers forever,” he grinned cheerfully. “They’ll be here eventually, whether we like it or not. At least, this way, we can charge them a few bob for the privilege of not having to speak to the French.”

“After all, it’s not like you’re actually likely to be needing your pensions,” he reasoned smoothly. “By the time we’ve finished with the NHS, your life expectancy is going to be about 40.”

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.

Businesses Demand Funding To Enslave Young Unemployeds

As youth unemployment soared past a million, Britain’s business community today called on the government to bung its members the necessary funds they need to enslave all of Britain’s teeming young unemployed forever.

And they've all got at least 3 A* grades

“Youth unemployment figures are truly shocking and with more than one million young people unable to find a job, the Government must wake up and realise that there will never be a better opportunity to bring back slavery,” said John Walker, chairman of the Federation Of Small Exploiters. “Otherwise we might very well all have to relocate our head offices to China, where all the crap we sell is made already. Of course, chains, gruel and horsewhips don’t come cheap, and I don’t see why we should have to stump up a penny out of our own pockets.”

“A generation risks being scarred by the devastating effects of long-term unemployment,” warned John Cridland, doomsayer-general of the Confederation of Bastards Industry. “The government ought to be making it worth our while to scar them with the devastating effects of long-term slavery instead.”

“What with the staggering cost of paying the bean counters to show us how to avoid paying our taxes, the only way we can possibly ever become competitive again is to pay our workforce less than the Chinese, i.e. bugger all,” he added. “Come on, Osborne, cough up if you want to keep that AAA rating.”