Business Leaders Keen To Build On Jubilee Legacy Of Forced Labour

Easier on the eye than some lardy PCSO

The Institute of Directors today urged Britain to capitalise on the legacy of the Royal Jubilee, demanding a bill to repeal the abolition of slavery.

“This glorious national celebration has demonstrated to the world that the great British public really doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the unemployed,” crowed the business forum. “While they were proudly draping their tits and arses with their national flag, dolescum rounded up from the arse end of the country were shivering under London Bridge, prior to being frogmarched out to supply the illusion of security free, gratis and for nothing. What a stirring reminder to the world of the glory days when Great Britain used to dominate the lucrative slave trade.”

“Also, we’ve put 10,494 miles of bunting on eBay, starting at 99p - perfect if you’re planning a bit of a do,” it added. “Bit damp, but it’s got nine days to dry out - it’ll be good as new.”

Meanwhile, scowling killjoy Lord Prescott insulted the Queen and threatened the future prosperity of the nation by sulkily demanding some sort of wishy-washy, hand-wringing inquiry into why the slaves were left huddling under the bridge in the chill of the night - but not into why they were forced to work for nothing, because that was introduced by Labour.

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.

Public Delighted To Support Business Recovery Through Self-Impoverishment

Ecstatic members of the public are dancing in the high streets today as retailers, betting shops, oil companies, banks, train operators, car manufacturers and the software industry continue to report ever-increasingly healthy profits.

“I’m proud to play my part, however small it may be, in returning the business community to the salad days they’ve come to expect as their divinely-ordained right,” one overjoyed Oxford Street shopper told reporters as she spent the last £140 of her card limit on a pair of sandals which are not quite the same colour as any of her other sandals. “Could the media industry do with a few quid? Here, take my purse.”

“We could have hung onto the SUV for another year, of course,” smiled her husband. “But Audi have just bought Ducati and running a top superbike racing team doesn’t come cheap, so I reckon they could do with a bit of a cash injection. I’ve just signed the kids over as deposit on a new A1. It’s a step down, of course, but with the kids off our hands we really don’t need a tank any more.”

“Of course, I’ve promised BP that I’ll rev the new car at every set of lights and drive it in the wrong gear whenever I can,” he added reassuringly. “After all, I wouldn’t want to dent their profits.”

“If we all just keep bankrupting ourselves for the greater good of the world’s boardrooms, I bet Britain will be booming again by Christmas,” cheered a bag-laden bystander. “And, you know, William Hill were more than happy to take that bet.”

British Weapons ‘Just The Thing’ To Speed Up Peaceful Transition To Democracy, Say Burma’s Generals

With sanctions against the military-backed Burmese government due to run out at the end of the month, British arms salesman David Cameron and his employers are in Rangoon today outlining the many delightful ways his hosts’ security forces could deploy top-quality British-made weaponry to ease their nation’s smooth transition to a fully democratic system of government.

Only FH70 offers multicoloured smoke as an option

“Look, you don’t want cheap Chinese rubbish,” insisted Mr Cameron greasily. “Their batons are notorious for breaking the first time you direct some ignorant peasant to the nearest polling booth.”

Mr Cameron also used his legendary charm to persuade the Burmese authorities that Britain’s firework launchers, whilst perhaps not quite as attractively-priced as French or American models, keep on deploying their pyrotechnic amusements long after their competitors have been returned to the depot for a re-bore.

The leading but shy British businessmen who are keeping Mr Cameron company on his statesmanlike Far Eastern beano insisted that each and every weapon sold to the Burmese government will be supplied with a really important sticker marked ‘CAUTION! May choke small Aung San Suu Kyi’ on the packaging.

Cameron Slated For Flying Dinner Guests To Japan On Non-British Plane

The jet-setting prime minister is facing mounting anger today for not using a British airline to take his friends to dinner in Japan.

Your return flight has been booked, prime minister

David Cameron rode into a storm of criticism as he flew out - along with representatives of 35 British businesses – on a chartered Angolan jet, hoping to put a little Japanese trade their way as a thank-you for their generous party donations.

“We’re bloody furious,” said a spokesman for the British air-travel industry. “All those brown envelopes our members have handed to Peter Cruddas seem to count for nothing. Sure, the pudding was exquisite, but we want a refund.”

The airlines were not mollified by Mr Cameron’s desperate announcement of closer ties between Britain and Japan’s defence industries.

“For fuck’s sake, Cameron, British Aerospace is an arms manufacturer, not an airline,” commented a spokesman for British Airways. “Pull your bloody finger out, or from now on you’ll be flying third-world class until one of the wings falls off.”

Pope Too Pissed To Read God’s Memo re: Demotion Of St Patrick

Pope Benedict XVI is having such a whale of a time staggering around St Peter’s Square in his ceremonial pint-of-Guinness hat, challenging shit-faced celebrants of the Holy Feast of St Patrick to a fight and then hugging them, that he has completely forgotten about the memo God sent him this morning, red-faced red-robed cardinals admitted today.

According to the ‘Action immediately’-headed memo, God informs His earthly representative that He has finally lost patience with the patron saint of Ireland’s complete undermining of the Christian ethos of pious spirituality, and has busted him down to patron saint of street cleaners and urinal manufacturers.

What in the name of Christ makes you think this is a good look?

God is understood to have originally told St Patrick to rid Ireland of leprechauns, which the hapless holy man misheard as ‘reptilians’ after a heavy night on the fermented peat. The leprechauns subsequently exchanged their pots of gold for Diageo shares and fucked off to London to further their plans for world domination.

“While we’re on the subject,” God advises His oblivious vicar, “Paddy the Snakecharmer is not, and never has been, the patron saint of multinational corporations, so perhaps you could point out that his holy charm is not an enormous fucking hat. From now on, it’s a blue disinfectant cube. You might publicise this by dishing some out at Mass on Sunday, if any bugger manages to roll up.”

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.

Nev Filter Annoys World By Staying Online

As the small, insignificant part of the world which is not the United States somehow manages to bump along for a day without the sum total of human knowledge which is Wikipedia, the Nev Filter proudly announced that it would be joining the heroic struggle to piss off internet users by continuing to shovel the usual rubbish into the worldwide web.

“SOPA – I have no sodding idea what that stands for, because I can’t wiki it – is undoubtedly the greatest threat to freedom the world has ever seen,” railed the horrified editor of the world’s most popular Plymouth-based satire site. “If you don’t contact a random US senator immediately to uphold Americans’ god-given right to steal anything they like off the internet, tomorrow your face will be nailed shut by some malevolent bastard from Sony Entertainment with a hammer. Have I got that right? It’s bloody impossible to check anything.”

While many essential toys – including Wikipedia, Reddit and the unmissable ‘Bobbi-Lee’s Kra-Z Life Of A Minnesota Mom (And Family!)’ blog – have been thrown out of the internet’s pram for 24 hours by their liberty-loving boards of directors, the Nev Filter has decided instead that the best way it can help to force the world’s attention onto this purely domestic US matter whether it cares or not is to adopt Facebook’s policy of continuing to irritate the crap out its long-suffering user base.

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.”

Crapfone Whyhouse To Sell Chinese Phones To China

Even as it shuts down its UK joint venture with US retail giant Bad Buy to sell electrical stuff they don’t need to consumers who can’t afford it, resulting in 1,100 job losses, essential lifestyle toy retailer Crapfone Whyhouse is already making plans with its US partner to sell mobile phones made in China to the people of China.

That thing you make will make your lives complete

“Finally, the Chinese drones who are driven by economic necessity to slave away in latter-day concentration camps like Foxconn will be able to enjoy the fruits of their efforts, neatly completing the circle,” enthused Crapfone Whyhouse CEO and legendary Queen drummer Roger Taylor.

“Imagine how complete their ant-like lives will be once they are compulsorily permitted to spend the tiny portion remaining in their pay packets - after deductions for food, lodging and bus fare from the dormitory part of the compound to the factory area - on the small objects of desire they are banging out for pennies," he explained. "Under China’s wisely restrictive regulations on personal communications, they will be permitted to revel in the daily toilet-break luxury of tweeting to each other just how inordinately happy they feel to be contributing to our profit margins.”

It is also hoped that the labour camps will be eventually spared the expense of playing inspiring Communist marching songs over their factory-wide PA systems, as workers enthusiastically download their personal choice of Communist marching songs at a marginally reasonable price once they have worked enough compulsory overtime to pay for their little pocket friends.

Record Company Bosses Instruct Public To Like Squawking Lesbian Folkie From Taunton Again

Music industry executives strongly suggest that you log onto iPlayer immediately and buy all the MP3s by Taunton folk lesbian PJ Harvey - including all her old stuff which you dutifully bought on CD ten years ago, when she was last given the Mercury Sales Boost - unless, perhaps, you want to give your dinner-party guests the impression that you must be some sort of war-crazed homophobic misogynist.

“Polly Harvey’s seminal new album, ‘Gosh, War Is Really Bad Isn’t It’, offers a unique lesbian insight into the war thing,” explained her proud owner Barry Weiss, CEO of Island Records. “You will be humbled and elated to hear her fearlessly stripping bare your narrow, heterosexual misconceptions about war with the aid of her trusty Les Paul and some sort of tin-plated polygon with strings, opening your complacent eyes to the shocking revelation that, for many people, war is actually quite bad. Now give me your cash, suckers.”

Polly and her special anti-war plunky thing

“Anybody who doesn’t worhsip PJ is obviously a frustrated would-be rapist, what with her heroically ticking the lezzer box and that,” said longtime fan Starchild Moonflower. “I’ve been so like into her since way back, when she sang that one about menstruating Celtic statues – essential subject matter that testosterone-fuelled cock wavers like Justin Bieber wouldn’t dare touch with a bargepole.”

Once her record company has recovered the huge investment it made in hiring a soundproofed warehouse, a Macbook Pro and a couple of microphones for a day or two, the re-crowned queen of the battlefield said she was eagerly looking forward to putting her royalties towards a six pack of Strongbow and a fresh pair of leather pants.

Kraft Boss Admits Being In Contempt Of Parliament, Asks Who Isn’t

Irene, to his friends

Kraft chairman, CEO and insatiable god Moloch today accepted that he was totally in contempt of Parliament, after pointedly ignoring requests to turn up and answer questions from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee – pointing out that if contempt of Parliament was such a heinous crime, the government had better start arresting pretty much everyone in the UK and issuing extradition orders for the rest of the world.

The committee today stopped short of actually charging Moloch with the offence, stating feebly that his company’s complete refusal to be held to account - for promising to maintain staff levels at Cadbury’s during the takeover, and then promptly eating them and switching production to the famed chocolatiers of Poland – showed a “regrettably dismissive attitude” which “steered close to a contempt of the House”.

Experts have suggested numerous ways in which the Kraft god might actually goad the committee into actually invoking the contempt law, ranging from selling a range of novelty chocolate willies with MPs’ names stamped into them to simply hiring a blimp painted like a Crème Egg to hover over Westminster flashing “Business, Innovation and Skills Committee - PAEDO RING” out across London.

Moloch replied by pointing out that he was Moloch, and invited all to bow down and worship him.

The Untouchable

Today’s newspapers are filled with praise for Sir Terry Greedy, who announced yesterday that he would stepping down from his post as chief executive of Tesco.

“Every little bit he did helped us,” simpered the Sun in a glowing editorial, adding that in his 14 years at the helm, he “showed competition could make the consumer the winner.”

“The PM should phone Mr Tesco,” it concluded.

“If I was to draw up a list of ten people who had most helped the poor in the past few decades,” concurred Tim Montgimmegimmegimme in the Times, “Near the top of my list would be Terry Greedy.”

And the Daily Sieg Mail heaped further praise on the outgoing supermarket supremo, with Alex Bummer maintaining that “if our leaders had one iota of Tesco boss Sir Terry’s drive and flair, Britain wouldn't be in such a mess.”

Impoverished customers who have had to give up their cars to make ends meet, meanwhile, continue to hand over their meagre incomes in densely-packed inner-city Tesco Metro stores to cover the stealthily-increasing cost of the bare necessities required to keep themselves and their families alive.

“Gawd bless yer, Sir Terry,” croaked ragged Zimmer-frame enthusiast Madge Butler, 90. “It warms me heart to know that, thanks to you, I kin buy two loaves of pressed sawdust for juss thirty bob, an’ enjoy the simple pleasure of watchin’ one go all mouldy before I ‘ave time to eat it.”

“And to fink it contains no added sugar, eeva,” she smiled toothlessly. “Cor, juss fink wot ‘e could of done wiv the NHS.”

Independent Think Tank Sidelines Obvious Solution In Criticism Of Parties' Sidelining Of Deficit

A think tank has sharply criticised all three main parties for pretending that the yawning £850bn chasm in Britain's finances will fix itself somehow.

According to the Counting Institute, neither chancellor Alistair Darling, shadow chancellor George Osborne nor the man with the Lib Dems' calculator, Vince Cable, have adequately explained how the gaping black hole will be magically filled overnight by a bit of playful tinkering with the inheritance tax threshold. A spokesman for the think tank said that the only viable option was to sack all public employees, sell the NHS and raise both income tax and VAT to 75%.

However, the statement was swiftly followed by a press release from the Institute for Institute Studies, which pointed out that the reason the Counting Institute had avoided the alternative route of giving the banks a bloody good kicking was that most think tanks receive their funding from large business organisations which like to express their self-serving opinions through their puppet groups, which operate under a paper-thin facade of 'independence'.

This was immediately countered by the independent Institute of Institutes, which said that think tanks were simply philanthropic organisations whose influential members spent their free time working selflessly to bring about a veritable heaven on earth - a view challenged by the Institute Studies Institute, however, which claimed that a survey of all 61m men, women and children in Britain conclusively proved that think tanks were merely a handy mouthpiece for political parties to float ideas which they could then adopt or denounce, depending on how Rupert Murdoch reacted.

Conscience-Free Hatchet Man Selected To Ease ITV's Assisted Suicide

ITV has finally abandoned all pretence at being a TV network and appointed the godawful Archie Norman as its new - and, in all probability, final - chairman.

The former Tory party chief executive is known in business circles as a 'turnaround specialist'. Meanwhile, in the real world, he is known as 'that smug prick who comes swanning in with a big shit-eating grin, then rips the guts out of the company and legs it down the fire escape with fivers threatening to burst his trouser seams.'

Mr Norman was in charge of running down Asda before it was flogged off to Wal-Mart, and also took an axe to telecoms firm Energis before palming its bloody corpse off onto Cable and Wireless.

"It is an irresistible challenge," said the 55-year-old suit. "Most of the hard work has already been done for me with the removal of quality drama, arts programming, documentaries, children's programmes and anything else that costs more than five hundred nicker to make. All that remains for me to do is shut the few remaining regional newsrooms, then I can get on with the fun bit - namely auctioning off the primetime slots to Simon Cowell or Ant and Dec for as much lucre as I can stuff into a suitcase, before buggering off to hack some other once-great organisation to bits."

"ITV has no quality of life left," said an industry analyst. "Let's face it - ITV has had no quality at all for some time now, and a swift death would be a merciful release from suffering for all concerned. Especially the viewers."

Calendars Command Fun-Loving Families To Celebrate Commercially-Debased Festival By Cheerfully Terrorising The Quiet Guy Down The Road

Childless adults are tonight barricading themselves inside their homes as best they can, ready to face the annual festive Halloween celebration of the brain dead.

"This is a solemn Christian festival, sanctioned and sanctified by Hallmark and countless other devoutly-minded multinational corporations and humble pound shops, in which simple God-fearing churchgoers pay reverence to the dear memory of their departed friends and relatives by dressing themselves up in plastic tat, covering themselves in fake blood and victimising vulnerable, lonely people in their own homes," said a man dressed imaginatively as a zombie.

"It's their own fault, the weird bastard perverts," he added. "If they get dogshit pushed through the letterbox, it bloody serves the miserable freaks right for turning milk sour, molesting small children and animals and not being out on the streets themselves, besieging other isolated, vulnerable recluses like all decent folk do."

Halloween - or Arse Holes' Eve as it used to be known - is a much-loved children's tradition dating back to 1978 and the release of John Carpenter's original film, in which American teenagers are hacked to death by a masked maniac in a fairly obvious metaphor for the taboo subject of sexual awakening.

"Before then, it was a case of going along to evensong and singing a few boring hymns," said Archbishop Walter Mart, as he prepared for his sacramental duties by dressing up as an undead pirate bearing absolutely no resemblance to Johnny Depp. "But today it is a fun event for all the family to teach their children to treat the elderly with no respect whatsoever - and that extortion with menaces is perfectly acceptable behaviour, as long as it is sanctioned by the popular media and printed in diaries."

Card retailers and supermarkets are hoping to build on Halloween's successful marketing exercise next year, by promoting the populist debasement of another obscure date in the church calendar, Michaelmas.

"It is a tragedy that so many days in the year condemn people to the misery by having no corporate-approved means of enjoying themselves at other people's expense associated with them," said a family fun-loving spokesman for the British Retail Consortium. "We've gone for St Michael's Day primarily because September is traditionally a bit of a lean month in the pointless, throwaway crap market sector."

"What nicer way to celebrate the feast day that marks the archangel St Michael's pious founding of a high-street food-and-knickers chain than by rampaging through residential areas dressed as fucking enormous daisies?" he added. "Preferably with bloody great scythes, or some kind of modified strimmer or flymo that can be rammed into an old git's face."

'I Am Bloody Useless', Admits Tesco Boss

Speaking through his arse, Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy admitted today that, while he may be very good at sitting back with his feet up on his executive desk as he watches profits piling up as a result of gradually raising the price of essential foodstuffs, when it comes to his other job of advising the government on education issues he is about as much use as a triangular wheel on a unicycle.

The unexpectedly frank confession occurred about halfway through a speech to the Institute of Grocery Distribution. As Sir Terry was enthusiastically berating the illiterate, grunting dullards he employs for being thicker than fossilised dinosaur excrement, it suddenly dawned on him that, as a senior advisor to the Labour government on education policy, the poor standard of school leavers might in some way reflect badly on him.

Up until the moment of realisation, the captain of industry had been cheerfully outlining the "woefully low" standards in schools, which he blamed squarely on the government's policy of allowing too many agencies and bodies to interfere in the day-to-day running of schools.

"What kind of blithering fuckwit could possibly commend such a monumental balls-up of an education system to ministers?" he demanded, before pausing and turning red in the face.

"Bollocks," said the sheepish Sir Terry, as delegates coughed diplomatically to cover the embarrassing silence. "I wish I'd thought of this yesterday, while I was writing this little rant."

"Crikey," he concluded, after another pause for reflection. "If I wasn't wearing this expensive Ralph Lauren suit, you might be forgiven for thinking that I look like some kind of brainless twat."

Ladder-Hauling Graduate Servant Reliev'd to Hear That CBI Masters Are All Right

A lately-graduated Labourer by the name of Jack told your humble Journal-writer of his great relief at hearing that his rightful owners in the Grand Con-Federation of British Industry were all right, as he did gamely sweat and struggle to comply with their Orders to pull their ladder up.

"I be so lucky, my good Master Neville," he gasp'd hopefully, as he strove to stow his Masters' enormous Gold-plated Ladder. "For I do owe Milords only twenty thowsand Guineas after the finishing of my Degree; so it be possible, God willing, that - even allowing for Deductions for my stabling, oates and veterinary costs - I may, one day, be in such a position as to purchase my Freedom from these huge, crippling Debts afore I be call'd to My Maker's side."

The Great and the Good from the Spheere of Commerce have, this day, impress'd upon Her Majesty's Ministers of Government the need to command vast increases in students' Tuition Fees; and, furthermore, to levy punitive interest rates on their Loanes, in order to pre-vent future generations of Jacks from ever harbouring the veriest scrap of Hope that they may one day gain some measure of Control over their worth-less Lives.

"Why, Sir, we can no longer be said to live in the Renaissance Period - much as it paines me to say it - when a fine young Gentle-man such as Myself could swan off to Oxford free of charge to read History, or what-have-you, at Balliol; after Sojourning at his leisure in Foreign climes for a few agreeably pleasant years on a Grand Tour, so that he may be deem'd financially independent; in order that the Father - God bless him - need not trouble himself to loosen his purse-strings for some burden-some parental contribution to one's Grant," smil'd Director General Mr. Richard Lambert, reclining on a couch as a trembling graduate peel'd him a Grape.

"Indeed; for is it not the case, Sir, that the tiresomely-abundant Tradesman classes of today needs must be made to understand that they are put on God's good Earth solely to serve the likes of Us, and our Dynasties?" huff'd his periwigged deputy Sir John Cridland, CBE; who did also study History, at the taxpayer's expense, at Christes College, Cambridge. "And I will go further, Sir! God curse me for a China-man, should I neglect to Vouch this before all here present: that the best - nay, the only - way in which the Enlightenment of the masses may be Fostered, in regard to the Gravity of this Matter, is to prevent the jumped-up Coxcombs from ever threatening to topple Us from Our divinely-ordained positions at the Pinnacle of Society, by forcing the Curs into financial Servitude for ever, God damn their worth-less hides! Huzzah!"

The good and noble gentle-men did further contend that only the teaching of the most profitable subjects - to whit: Science; Algebra; The Invention of Patent Devices; and The Cacophonous Babble of Pecunious Foreigners - ought, in their consider'd Opinions, to be tolerated within the hallow'd halls of Academe.

"Make no mistake, Sir, I caution you," thunder'd Mr. Lambert, "In this glorious era of Progress, there can be no place for such Worth-less Fripperies as Journal-ism, Studiae Mediorum or History; such as can lead only to the idle chattering of the Teeth and the fogging of the Mind. The Pox, I say, on all such Fools and their Foolish-ness!"

UN To Discuss Coffee Republic Coup

The UN is to discuss what measures should be taken, after hearing that the Coffee Republic had been taken over by accountants KPMG.

The mercenary accountants moved swiftly to seize control after the embattled Republic issued a desperate call for help with its crippling national debt. The streets were reported to be quiet, with shops empty save for a few confused Coffee Republicans who face an uncertain future.

"I'm not even sure what a caramel macchiato is, let alone whether I work directly for the Republic or one of its franchisees," admitted one fearful worker in darkest Richmond.

Coffee Republic's rulers have conceded control of their bankrupt state to the mercenaries, but remain holed up safely in their impregnable holding company.

Several western governments have expressed fears that the dreaded 'domino effect' could spread to other vulnerable coffee-retailing areas, including neighbouring Costa, Caffe Nero and the dominant, posturing Starbucks.

"The collapse of the Coffee Republic is a matter of great concern to the British Government," Gordon Brown warned the UN Security Council. "If middle-class shoppers are deprived of somewhere to sit down and overdose on sugar, fat and caffeine every fifteen minutes, there is a very real danger of civil war breaking out in the streets of Great Britain. That is why I urge the United Nations to approve an emergency aid package for the plucky little Coffee Republic, whose parlous financial affairs are in no way connected to the massive recession I caused, which by the way I didn't."

Seasoned observers, however, expect the United States to veto any such measures unless they include substantial injections of capital into Starbucks, its unscrupulous ally which dominates the troubled region.

Brown, Sugar

Sir Alan Sugar has denied that there is any political motive behind his appointment by Gordon Brown as the cabinet's 'Enterprise Tsar' or his associated elevation to the House of Lords.

"I wouldn't join the government," said Sir Alan. "I don't see this as a political thing. I see it as my just reward for thirty years of selling badly-made shit to people too poor to afford stuff that works."

The future Lord Amstrad made his fortune with revolutionary products such as shit hi-fis, shit video recorders, shit word-processors, shit computers, shit telephones and shit set top boxes, all of which were made by cheap labour in anonymous factories on the other side of the world. He says he is "looking forward to working with a shit prime minister."

"I did own a factory in Britain once," reminisced the great British businessman. "When old baldy Sinclair's company went tits up, I bought the rights to the Spectrum. But a quick once-over with the books told me his Scottish workforce was getting paid well over the odds, compared to a bunch of starving Asians. So I fired them all, shut the place down and switched production to my old slave-driving mates in the Far East. I was quids in."

"It's people like me what made this country what it is today," he added. "Gordon Brown recognises that, which is why I'm the obvious choice to advise him on what's best for British businesses. First off, I'll be telling the Prime Minister he could save a packet by sacking all them greedy MPs, moving parliament to China and giving the job of governing the UK to a load of slum kids."

Mr Brown is thought to be considering the appointment of yet more unelected advisors to his cabinet. Westminster is said to be bracing itself for the imminent ennoblement of musikführer Simon Cowell, youth dauphin Gary Glitter, equality kronprinz John McCririck and Mad Frankie Fraser as the emperor of law and order.