NATO Boasts That Fortified Tripoli Compound Won’t Be Flying Any Time Soon

This must not be allowed to happen

Allied warplanes struck at Colonel Gaddafi’s Bab al-Azizaya compound in Tripoli overnight, according to NATO, ensuring that several fortified bunkers will not be breaching the Libyan no-fly zone in the foreseeable future.

“In strict compliance with the UN-authorised mandate of denying flight capabilities to the bad guys of the Libyan regime, good guys in mean helicopters continue to be actively engaged in an ongoing mission to direct Hellfire missiles into big concrete buildings,” affirmed NATO publicity robot General Cy Lon.

Explaining the very real threat to rebel forces posed by a fortified compound, he continued: “If you squint carefully at this grainy night-vision footage, you can clearly see parts of these buildings attempting vertical take-off right at the very moment of impact. Each and every one of these bunkers contains literally thousands of tons of concrete and steel. If just one of these massive constructions got airborne and dropped itself on the rebels in Misrata, yes sir, you’d undoubtedly be looking at an unacceptable casualty situation on the ground.”

“Be advised that NATO is not, repeat not, conducting a wide-ranging assassination exercise against Colonel Gaddafi,” he added. “We currently envision no scenarios in which the head of the Libyan armed forces might conceivably locate himself within a fortified command bunker, no sir. That is definitely not a part of our authorised mission objective, which remains purely to clear the Libyan skies of any immediate danger from airborne concrete structures.”

Mail’s ‘Slop Bucket In Every Home’ Easily The Least Attractive Reader Offer In Newspaper History

Talking rubbish as usual

Regulator To Help Real Victims Of Bankers’ Greed: The Rich

In Richmond, everywhere you look is poverty

Cheers of relief echoed round the home counties today, as the Financial Services Authority watchdog rode to the rescue of ordinary rich people whose investment portfolios have been blighted by evil, self-serving bankers.

The FSA’s investigation of 16 banks showed that 14 had recklessly exposed 79% of their poor wealthy clients to high or medium-high risk of loss through unsuitable investments.

“I hope my losses will stop all those bloody disableds from whining about about how hard up they are,” snapped corporate lawyer Jocelyn Searle, as he got off the 7:24 from Virginia Water. “They’re only losing thirty quid a week, whereas some bloody twerp at Lloyds may well have lost me a potential £30,000 in dividends. Now that’s real hardship.”

“My heart goes out to the hard-hit suits of the sunny south-east,” said a former incapacity benefit recipient with cancer, whose JSA has been suspended for missing a Jobcentre appointment because he idly stayed at home puking his guts up. “The theoretical losses they could possibly have suffered are frankly staggering.”

World To End On 30 June, Predict Union Fundamentalists

They'll have some explaining to do on 1 July

The world will definitely end on the last day of June, evangelical socialists in the public service unions announced today.

According to their archaic beliefs, a series of all-powerful public sector strikes are certain to herald the end of all things. Much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments are expected as parents vainly seek a place of safety for their children when the gates of schools yawn shut, marauding bands of criminals roam the streets unchecked by absent police support staff and the skies are swept clean of flights by air traffic controllers caught up in the rapture.

Rational minds in the government remain sceptical, however, pointing out that obscure union sects have predicted the end of the world many times before - especially in the seventies, when woefully-misguided forecasts of impending doom were almost a daily occurrence.

“Don’t you worry,” smiled Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude scornfully. “We’ll still be here in July, and for a long time after that.”

Nev Filter Blogger Exposed As Gay Girl In Damascus

The blogosphere exploded in uproar today over the shock revelation that writer of news-based satire blog ‘The Nev Filter’ is not, as claimed, a grumpy old man from Plymouth at all, but a lesbian from Syria called Amino Assid.

You will never trust the internet again

Dozens of duped Nev Filter followers around the world are outraged at the shabby hoax that has been perpetrated against them for several tedious years by a hairy Arab bull-bint, who shamelessly manipulated their trust by making up what they honestly believed to be a mildly amusing commentary on real-world events.

“I am the sole author of this blog and have always been so. Any and all posts on the blog are by me,” admitted Ms Assid today. “I want to apologise to anyone I may have amused or informed in any way. I never meant to amuse anyone. I am sorry.”

“That is me in the photo, though,” she added. “Any hot rug-munching babes in the Damascus area, please get in touch.”

New Study Suggests Poor Have Less Money

Not a pair of designer-ripped jeans in sight

Poor people have significantly less money than the rich, according to ground-breaking new research carried out by the Institute For Fiscal Studies which flies in the face of accepted social maxims long cherished by the tabloid press about benefit scroungers living in palatial council houses.

“Apparently the whopping increase in the price of essentials – food, water, electricity and whatnot – leaves your average pauper with hardly any spare cash for a new handbag every week, or even the occasional impulse-buying of a pair of Jimmy Choos,” said project leader Mary Antoinette. “Would you believe, many of these people can’t even afford a weekend of pampering at a health spa, even though the lucky so-and-sos are hardly inconvenienced at all by the terrible drain of mortgage repayments?”

“We hope this new data will form the basis of further studies into why the poor are so appallingly dowdy,” she enthused. “I mean, look at the state of them. The government seriously needs to invest in personal stylists for these walking fashion disasters.”

Disenfranchised Millions Tell Miliband: ‘No, We’re Over Here’

Mr Miliband shows his followers (if any) the Right way

Ed Miliband - who leads the Labour Party, apparently - has announced that the reason his party was voted out of power was a popular misconception that they were in some way interested in the plight of the poor, and vowed to take his party into new realms of mean-spiritedness somewhere to the right of the Conservatives in his mission to reconnect with the electorate.

“Labour must be a party that rewards contribution, not worklessness,” said a straight-faced Mr Miliband, whose predecessors ennobled party donors such as Lord Sainsbury, Lord Sugar, Lord Joffe, Lord Gavron, Lord Bernstein, Lord Bhattacharyya, Lord Edmiston and Lord Noon whilst appointing Atos to deprive the disabled of their benefits.

“I have made a careful study of the new political landscape of modern Britain by reading the Sun for a week,” he went on, “And it seems clear to me that millions of decent, hardworking families have stopped voting because no political party represents their hopes and dreams of bringing back the workhouse, press-ganging the feckless into the armed forces and reducing cripples to begging in the streets.”

Meanwhile, people walking through Highgate cemetery have reported strange whirring noises coming from the grave of Mr Miliband’s late father Ralph, the noted left-wing academic.

Ark Royal Sale Must End Soon!

You couldn't get that big one in your driveway

There have been so many generous offers for the decommissioned HMS Ark Royal that the deadline is to be extended so that even more potential buyers can come forward, the Defence Equipment & Support Boot Sale announced today.

“Roll up, roll up, ladies an’ gents - once it’s gone, it’s gone!” shouted a civil servant in Camden Lock market. “Yer kint buy an aircraft carrier this compact in the shops! We’ve ‘ad loads of interested parties, I tell yer straight! Go on, make me an offer! It might not be ‘ere tomorra!”

“You just wouldn’t believe how many parties will pay top dollar for an aircraft carrier that’s a couple of sizes too small,” explained swivel-eyed defence secretary Liam Fox. “For a start, an aircraft carrier with no aircraft is the last thing your enemies would expect, and that’s precisely the cunning strategy behind the new ones we’ve got on order.”

Among the shoppers in Camden, one man said he thought HMS Ark Royal would be just the thing for his garden’s ornamental pond, while another thought that if it was hauled up a hill it might make an ideal dry ski slope. However, the general mood among the bargain-hunters was that, if they waited, two bigger ones would be available soon.

Huhne’s Advice To Hard-Pressed Energy Customers: ‘Let Them Switch Cakes’

This is what you can look forward to this winter

As energy ransomer Scottish Power launched another shareholders’ jamboree in the energy sector, cynically hiking its eye-watering prices by up to 20%, energy secretary Chris Huhne took time out from helping the police with their enquiries to remind impoverished customers faced with unaffordable fuel costs that cakes are a cheap and plentiful source of energy.

“One Tesco Value sponge cake will keep a pensioner going for up to an hour a day,” gushed Mr Huhne. “What’s more, we tend to overlook the importance of ‘consumer power’. That’s completely free, you know, and you get it from walking to all the supermarkets for miles around in the middle of January, looking for the best cake deals. All that to-ing and fro-ing will warm you up a treat.”

“”And you get an energy bonus too,” he added brightly, “Because all that time you’re out and about hunting for cheap cakes, it doesn’t matter how cold your house is.”

Government Finally Abolishes The Word ‘Honour’

Enough said

With the award of a knighthood for Brian Souter, the rapacious and homophobic head of Stagecoach, for working harder than anyone else to give Britain a transportation system worthy of the third world, dictionary compilers have accepted that the word ‘honour’ – as in ‘Queen’s Birthday Honours’ - has now officially lost all meaning and will be deleted from future editions.

“Brian Souter is the perfect capitalist bastard,” said a spokesman for the Oxford Dictionary. “He spent £500,000 on his own dodgy ‘referendum’, publishing a stream of misinformation and lies in an effort to stop councils from saying that homosexuality was acceptable whilst strenuously denying that he was in any way homophobic. In the same vein, although he cut his drivers’ wages and broke a strike with scab labour, this didn’t seem to strike him as incompatible in any way with his proclaimed support of trade unionism.”

“But then, this is a man who says, ‘ethics are not irrelevant but some are incompatible with what we have to do, because capitalism is based on greed’, yet firmly believes he’s earned his place in his Calvinist heaven,” he added. “No doubt David Cameron thinks these are admirable values which deserve recognition, in much the same way that he seems to think that we’re all too stupid to notice all the gongs he’s thrown at his thieving City mates, because we’re so happy that dear old Brucie finally got a K for not letting senility get in the way of his earnings. But please, let’s not call this circus of shame ‘honours’ any more. Language has to retain some shred of meaning.”