Mattress Fraud Worse Than Thought; Biscuit Tin And Old Shoe Also Under Investigation

Not only has your mattress been refusing to allow you access to your own savings, but it emerged today that for many years it has been secretly applying a considerably higher rate of interest than the attractive 0% it claimed it was charging whenever you made a withdrawal to buy a new pair of shoes.

And then it lent all your money to that old biscuit tin in the kitchen cupboard, and the odd shoe you keep at the back of your wardrobe.

And then they threw all your cash down the toilet, because they thought that would be a great idea.

Feed me

“I thought I had £3,000 squirreled away under the bed to cover the cost of my own funeral,” sobbed saver Mavis Hodge, 83, a lifelong customer betrayed by the greed and incompetence of her mattress. “Now it turns out I owe the bloody thing £361.24 in cumulative interest, and it’s got the cheek to demand an unauthorised overdraft fee.”

The full horror was revealed by the blow-up spare bed you keep in the cupboard under the stairs, which nevertheless insisted that not all mattresses were unscrupulous thieves and brigands whose sole aim in life was to stuff themselves with all of the money in the world.

“Some of us have principles, you know,” he insisted loftily. “If you were naïve enough to try cutting me open to shove a wad of fivers inside, for example, I’d have warned you that you could be in for a big let-down.”

After your mattress was fined £290m – which will be tacked onto your overdraft – the prime minister emerged sleepily from his teapot to yawn for the resignation of your headboard.

Softhead Downgrade Blamed For Cameron’s NotBest Wank Chaos

Red-faced programmers have apologised for the glitch which caused David Cameron to inflict his NotBest Wank misery on the hard-up public this weekend, blaming the problem on a routine downgrade to his soft head.

Daily Mail hacks caught it full in the face

Millions found themselves contemplating abject penury when, without any warning, the prime minister suddenly began spewing random gibberish into a pair of senior Daily Mail reporters.

“It’s all very well Mr Cameron’s minions working overtime, but most of us don’t happen to have huge wads of cash squirreled away somewhere like Jersey for a rainy day,” complained a typical impoverished customer, “But it seems a bit unfair to expect people to live on their parents’ credit cards until the welfare state comes back online at some unspecified point in the distant future.”

“Especially when so many of us are slaving away on less than the minimum wage,” he snapped. “We’re totally reliant on Mr Cameron sparing us a token bit of interest. I’m switching, but it probably won’t make any difference. Milibank or Barclegg – these wanks are all as bad as each other, aren’t they?”

“It looks like Cameron’s no benefit to anyone,” he concluded in disgust.

NatWest Death Toll Rises

Warning: contains scenes of heartbreaking inconvenience

Experts warn there is no cure in sight for the ongoing tragedy of NatWest customers dying needlessly in droves from the minor nuisance of having to use their credit card instead of their debit card.

Cash machines weren't built to handle this much customer dissatisfaction

The disaster began to unfold this morning, when a software glitch caused fatal bother and terminal vexation to 12 million innocent NatWest victims by freezing their current accounts.

By 10am, customer aid workers at NatWest branches were already overwhelmed by queues of pathetic refugees pouring out of clothes shops - many of them pitifully reduced to begging for compensation for the unbearable pain of being told “Your payment was not authorised. Please contact your card supplier” by a numeric keypad.

“My salary didn’t go through, which means that NatWest have effectively reduced me to slavery,” whined one haggard casualty, who had to drag her injured pride all the way up the high street from H&M. “My Visa card had already been thrashed black and blue. Without the essential new dress I need to go out in tonight, I know I will just die.”

“God in heaven help me, I don’t have any money to get pissed with either,” she moaned, before fainting through lack of ready funds.

“I was so moved by radio reports of the NatWest victims’ terrible plight, I ran ten miles to the nearest town in order to transfer a week’s wages (16,000 shillings, or £6.21) to Britain. I hope this will help to relieve their unimaginable suffering,” said Hassan, a subsistence farmer in Somaliland. Tragically, however, his potentially face-saving donation has also not gone through yet.

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.

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.”

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.

Mr Goodwin Told

Mr Fred Goodwin, the scheming tyrant who singlehandedly destroyed civilisation, has been reduced to a hollow shell sitting in a luxury mansion contemplating the futility of his continued life of meaningless wealth after being stripped of his knighthood by the Queen.

Titles should be deserved, or they become meaningless

“Honorific titles should be earned by the strenuous efforts of people whose exceptional feats benefit all of mankind, not some pompous, arrogant twerp whose only talent is for wasting prodigious amounts of other people’s money,” admonished Her Majesty, who earned her title by the exceptional feat of being born. “And my son, the Duke of York, and his estranged wife, the Duchess, both feel rather strongly about this, too.”

Meanwhile, calls are mounting for Sir Rupert Sterling, a senior director at Megabank, to be stripped of his knighthood on the grounds that he is an occasional character in a cartoon strip.

“What sort of topsy-turvy world do we live in when a drawing in a bloody newspaper gets showered with honours, while the jumped-up little nobody who sells me the Telegraph every morning doesn’t even have to common decency to address me as ‘sir’?” seethed plain Mr Rob Blind, whose selfless efforts to sell futures are the only thing keeping Western Europe from mass starvation. “Because I’m certainly not his bloody ‘mate’, I can tell you.”

Heavy Blizzards Reported In Hell

Hell is now indistinguishable from a Saturday in Dundee

Reports emerging from the underworld realm of Satan indicate that all but the most essential services have ground to a standstill, as a result of an unprecedented fall of snow which coincided with the announcement that Lloyds TSB Bank is thinking about withholding payment of a £1.4m bonus awarded to its former chief executive.

“Under the circumstances – i.e. Eric Daniels presiding over a stonking £3.9bn loss in the first nine months of 2011 alone, not to mention the spectacularly ill-advised takeover of HBOS in 2008 which pretty much bankrupted Lloyds - perhaps it may no longer be appropriate to keep throwing money we haven’t even got at this complete and utter dick,” according to a board-level memo seen by the Nev Filter in an apocalyptic vision.

US-born Mr Daniel – who retired this year, in order to realise his lifelong ambition to train the world’s first fully aerobatic pig – now faces the awful prospect of having to live out the rest of his days solely on the meagre interest from all the tax he saved through maintaining his non-domiciled status during his ten-year tenure at Lloyds.

Meanwhile, a frost-covered Satan urged the Lloyds board to reconsider, pointing out that the luxurious retirement homes awaiting them in the least-disagreeable circle of Hell were at risk of being crushed beneath rapidly-advancing glaciers.

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.

London Won’t Take It

Millions of struggling poor people defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the bankers of the Square Mile today, after David Cameron heroically denounced EU proposals for a ‘Tobin tax’ on financial transactions as “an attack on Britain”.

We all stand together

“Tobin is a dastardly substance to deploy against innocent civilians, who will in some unspecified way be the real victims of this vicious onslaught against the very heart of our financial empire,” said the plucky PM, moments before he flew off on a desperate attempt to bomb Berlin’s deadly Tobin factories to smithereens. “I hope it will soon be banned forever under an international treaty.”

As his crate left the runway and staggered into the skies, Mr Cameron was last seen waving two fingers at the cheering crowds.

“Those bloody foreigners are up to their old tricks again,” shouted a patriotic pensioner as he huddled for protection with hundreds of other defiant Londoners on a platform of Bank tube station, deep beneath the City. “But they’ll never win, because they’ll find we British are all in it together.”

'Off You Go, Then,' Britain Tells HSBC

After HSBC warned that tougher regulations may force it to leave Britain, the bank’s branches up and down the country have been besieged by people offering to help it pack its bags.

Need a hand with that?

“You get to a $2.5 billion cost for being UK headquartered. This is a non-trivial decision, you don't move your head office on a regular basis,” complained Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of the bank whose selling of sub-prime mortgages to Americans who were unable to afford them did so much to cement London’s reputation as a global banking centre. “We’re already cutting back our operations in America, Canada, Russia, Poland, Georgia and Chile - and if any more governments want to interfere with our right to all the money in the world, we will leave Earth altogether and ruin you from the moon, which has the sort of regulations we like.”

Recession-hit customers, meanwhile, are visiting the other high-street banks, asking them if they have any plans to push off too, and offering to hold the door open for them on the way out.

Horrified MPs, however, warned the public that the banking sector provides essential support to Britain’s prosperity by offering vital non-executive directorships to humble politicians who would otherwise be reduced to losing all but one of their homes and begging in the streets.

75% Of City Financiers Say: ‘Yes I Do Get Paid Far Too Much, Thanks’

A banker's idea of what the struggling poor look like

Three quarters of London’s finance professionals happily agreed that they get paid a stupid amount of money, according to a report published by the St Paul’s Institute, a think tank linked to the Square Mile’s cathedral.

“Why, the gap between me and the poor is simply disgraceful, old boy,” commented James Spreadsheet, a senior bean counter of one of the ‘big three’ accountancy firms. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to advise some clients to sack hundreds more little people and freeze the pay of the ones who are left. Then I’ve got to charge the silly buggers the usual couple of hundred grand. No rest for the virtuous, you know.”

“The bonus culture definitely needs reforming,” pointed out Rob Blind, a guilt-stricken futures trader. “The bloody markets are so stagnant I’ll be lucky if this year’s bonus even covers the road tax on the Porsche, let alone buys me a new one. Tell you what, my friend, why don’t we abolish these rotten bonuses altogether and replace them with a much fairer system of huge salary increases?”

All of the 515 City professionals questioned in the survey insisted that their firm was a ship of probity in a sea of ravenous sharks and begged the public to appreciate their efforts more, as they staggered out of Coq d’Argent and other City dining establishments after selflessly redistributing some of their vast wealth to the poor restauranteurs of the Square Mile.

Europe Dares To Suggest Rule Of Law Should In Some Way Apply To Bankers

Prime minister David Cameron lashed out today at misguided European attempts to interfere in the unfettered activity of British-based banks, which have done so much to usher in our modern utopia of universal prosperity.

We don't need no regulations

“London is the centre of financial services in Europe. It's under constant attack through silly Brussels directives,” he spluttered indignantly. “It's an area of concern, it's a key national interest that we need to defend.”

“The Square Mile simply couldn’t have got us where we are today if it had been regulated in any way whatsoever,” he pointed out. “You can’t apply notional concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to the finance sector. How can our selfless, hard-working bankers get on with the vital wealth-creating job they do on our behalf, if they’re constantly having to worry about getting their collars felt? Brussels can stick its morals up its hairy foreign arse. The concept of justice is unspeakably alien to our financial institutions, and long may it remain so.”

“I speak for every man, woman and child in Britain,” he argued movingly, “When I say that my humble stockbroker dad would never have been able to leave me his millions, had he been at all bothered about the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of what he was doing.”

Governor Jumps Off Bank Of England

Mr King's final uplifting message to Britain

Bank of England governor Mervyn King has raised speculation in some quarters that Britain’s glorious economic resurgence may not be as imminent as was previously believed, by leaping off the roof and plummeting to a merciful release on the pavement below.

Just before he stepped off the ledge into oblivion, Mr King was heard to scream: “This is the most serious financial crisis we've seen at least since the 1930s, if not ever.”

Shocked staff inside the crumbling Threadneedle Street edifice say they are struggling to keep sobbing executives from Lloyds TSB, RBS, Santander UK and the Nationwide Building Society from entering lifts or climbing the emergency stairs to the top floor.

Meanwhile, chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne was last seen dragging a bulging suitcase through the air tunnel onto a flight to South America, leaving behind a trail of Monopoly banknotes on which the ink was still wet.

World Economic Crisis Your Bloody Fault

The prime minister today explained that the catastrophic implosion of the entire global economy was entirely down to you and your bloody credit cards, you silly sod.

You silly cow

“We're in a debt crisis,” admonished Mr Cameron. “It was caused by too much borrowing by businesses, banks, Labour governments - but most of all, you. The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – i.e. you lot - paying off the credit card and store card bills. Now.”

“You stupid, stupid bastards,” he added.

Mr Cameron’s advice for a speedy return to happy days is for you to stop buying stuff.

“The banks simply had no alternative but to keep extending your credit limit again and again because of your reckless irresponsibility. Now look what you’ve done,” he scowled. “Fancy buying things that weren’t absolutely essential to your continued existence, just because you wanted them. Like iPhones. And digital televisions. And furniture. And clothes. What the hell were you thinking? Idiots.”

The prime minister warned that if you didn’t settle your massive debts by the end of the month, he would be forced to send the bailiffs round to every household in the country to seize everything in your home and give it all to the poor, suffering banks. And serve you right.

Nick Clegg: The Idiot’s Guide To Share Ownership

1. The value of shares can go up as well as down. Yes, even shares in basket cases like Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland!

2. No, really - it could well happen, if they keep stinging their dozy customers hard enough!

3. In the theoretically possible event of either or both of your free bank shares (worth 51p in the case of RBS, and a whopping 74p for Lloyds!) ever paying an annual dividend, you might conceivably be the lucky recipient of a windfall bonanza worth over one gleaming penny!

Nick’s top tip: if you put it in the name of a family member who is domiciled overseas – like my lovely wife, for example – you won’t even have to pay tax on your bounty!

4. Your share will empower you to take an active role in running your bank. Just obtain the signed agreement of six million other shareholders, and you can call an Emergency General Meeting of the bank and amuse the board of directors with your bright ideas about how to run a banking corporation!

5. And if all this heady Wall Street wheeler-dealing still doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, what could be simpler than selling your share for a cash lump sum to spend as you please? Just pay the broker’s fee (typically £20, but shop around and you could save a few pounds!) and reimburse the treasury for its investment in you, and you’re back to being one of the little people again!

[Editorial note: a stray colon appears to have slipped into this article’s headline. Whoops!]

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.”

IMF Boss Asks For 3bn Previous Attempts To Screw The Poor To Be Taken Into Consideration

How capitalism works

Following a dramatic last-minute arrest as he tried to flee the United States ahead of a charge of attempting to rape a hotel maid, IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has admitted to the authorities that he has been doing his utmost to screw billions of poor people in the four years since he was appointed.

“That has always been my understanding of what the International Monetary Fund is for,” he told New York detectives who are investigating claims that he ran naked through the corridors of Manhattan’s Sofitel hotel and sexually assaulted the maid. “With the state of the global economy these days, I have a heavy workload. After a long day spent screwing the poor all over the world, is it so wrong to bring a little work home?”

“I’m sure I can clear up this simple misunderstanding with a quick telephone call,” he suggested, as he was led away from JFK airport. “The poor are there to be taken advantage of by the rich. That’s just the way it is. I demand my statutory phone call to the president. He is a politician - he understands that the poor are accustomed to being fucked. In fact, very often they actually vote for the people they would prefer to be fucked by.”

“So many poor people,” he sighed as he was pushed into a squad car, “So little time.”

What Would I Know About The Global Economy? Wails Longest-Serving Chancellor Of The Exchequer

Mr Brown spent ten years at the Treasury like this

Former prime minister Gordon Brown today issued an uncharacteristic apology for his pathetic inability to regulate the wild excesses of a banking industry which contributed so much to the worst worldwide recession in generations, but excused himself by pointing out that - as Britain’s longest-serving head of a Treasury chock-full of leading experts on banking and economics – nobody could reasonably have expected him to grasp the first inkling of how banks do business.

“I’m just an average wee chappie with a PhD in History, so obviously I haven’t got a clue about all that mumbo-jumbo about shares and bonds and whatnot,” Mr Brown told the Institute for New Economic Thinking's annual conference in New Hampshire, to the chagrin of conference organisers who paid him a large fee under the impression that he did. “All I know about banks is what I see in the adverts. To be honest, I didn’t even know that Abbey National was bought by Santander. That must be why they disappeared from the high street - I’d been wondering about that.”

“And I thought Lloyds ran the trains in the Channel Tunnel,” he added, to gales of laughter.

“You know, you’d think - with half the Treasury consisting of civil servants who’d been on lengthy secondments to the City and the other half being bankers on secondment to the Treasury - somebody there might have had some notion of just how much the banks were all mortgaged to each other. But no, apparently not,” insisted the man who was responsible for the economy for ten years.

“When I was setting up the Financial Services Authority, I did send a memo round asking if anyone could explain the basics to me,” he went on, as delegates rolled helplessly in the aisles. “But when I chased it up people just coughed, looked at their shoes and told me it was all completely straightforward and the worst that could conceivably happen might be one of the smaller banks being swallowed up if a huge sinkhole were to suddenly open up in Central London.”

“Tell me, was I so wrong that to be trusting?” pleaded Mr Brown, to rapturous applause.

“That Ricky Gervais charatcer, he kills me,” said one guffawing economist, wiping a tear from his eye. “At first you think he’s actually being serious. Gotta hand it to you British, you guys are shit hot at parody.”

Great Naked Emperor Britain Vows To Bankrupt Little Boy From Iceland

Clearly worth every penny

A furious Emperor Britain shook his fist today at the cheeky little Icelandic boy who has, once again, inconveniently pointed out to the whole world that all the Mighty Emperors in the world are strutting about without so much as a fig-leaf to cover their fiscal embarrassment.

“Look, everyone – can’t you see the emperor’s bollocks?” yelled the impudent young islander, as he stubbornly refused a second invitation to see – as every sensible grown-up agrees – that each and every citizen is naturally obliged to spend the rest of their lives paying for the ruinous schemes of a small number of greedy, conniving tailors.

Dressed in his most illustrious robes of majestic dignity, a fuming Emperor Britain instructed his Lord High Chancellor to issue a writ against the irresponsible little twerp. The courts are expected to force young master Iceland to live out his days in penury - paying for the hugely expensive clothes which everybody else insists are not only of breathtaking richness, but absolutely necessary for the dignified conduct of the world’s affairs.

“Just because this tiresome little boy from the back end of nowhere has had a bit of an education and reads a lot, that hardly qualifies him to tell people who are much bigger and older than he is that the glorious robes of economic intervention don’t exist,” snapped a leading herald, speaking for the entire community. “If these marvellous robes of capitalism simply aren’t there, how come everybody but one little child is convinced they are absolutely real? Are we all complete idiots?”