Facebook Starting To Regret Jumping Without Parachute

So long, Zuckers

As it plummets earthward at increasing speed, Facebook is showing signs of having second thoughts about the wisdom of leaping heroically into the stock markets without the benefit of a parachute.

“We jumped under the impression that we were going to float off into the wild blue yonder, thanks to the remarkable self-inflating valuation designed for us by thrill-seeking underwriters, Acme Bank,” posted Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg breathlessly, as he rapidly approached terminal velocity. “But the dotcom boom we were hoping to land on is getting closer every second, and now I can distinctly make out the words ‘Class Action’.”

“It’s looking uncomfortably like we’re about to be splattered messily all over the front pages,” he shared moments later. “Goodbye, cool world.”

Fears That iPhone May Become New Must-Have Chav Accessory Sends Apple Share Price Plummeting

Your iPhone is about to explode, and this time it's not the battery

As struggling Blackberry makers RIM belatedly wise up to their woefully-mismatched user base of corporate suits and ASBO collectors and pull out of the chav market, Apple shares tumbled in value as gloomy investors trembled at the prospect of their favourite toys falling into the hands of ghastly common people.

“The Blackberry brand has become disastrously tainted by its association with scum, i.e. louts and their lawyers,” sneered financial advisor Rob Blind, as he urged his clients to dump their Apple shares and restock their portfolios with Android-based gadget suppliers instead. “The Android platform is widely promoted by many firms in the technology sector, which will confuse the hell out of the stunted chav hive-mind. They’re bound to go for Apple, the other big name they keep hearing about.”

“I’m happy to pay well over the odds every time Apple launch their latest attempt to get it right, then demonstrate my social and aesthetic superiority by constantly bragging that it’s made my life exquisite,” confirmed colleague Nick Stuff. “That doesn’t work quite so well though, does it, if all my friends get the idea that I pass my evenings staggering about town centres in a Primark hoody, off my tits on cider and ketamine, spraying cocks on subway walls.”

“I should have known Apple were making a horrible mistake launching that tawdry little iPod Nano all those years ago,” he moaned. “Is there an app for transferring all my funds into LG?”

Cameron Refuses To Confirm Or Deny That Satan Feasted On His Soul

No evidence whatsoever of dodgy dining

David Cameron today refused to disclose whether Satan, the unholy Prince of Darkness, dropped by for dinner at 10 Downing Street to gorge himself on the prime minister’s immortal soul in return for a £250,000 donation to Conservative Party funds.

“That would be a private matter between me and my Lord and Master,” insisted Mr Cameron, his shifty eyes burning like red-hot coals as gas-masked cleaners struggled to scrub the reek of sulphur from his private apartments.

The Labour Party, meanwhile, is consulting top contract lawyers – claiming that any shady deal with the Tories would place the Devil in clear breach of an existing contract signed in John Smith’s blood by Tony Blair in 1994.

Cameron Finds Last Thing Britain Does Well, Unveils Plan To Ruin It

After an exhaustive search, prime minister David Cameron has finally identified the only thing Britain is still any good at, and announced government plans to fuck it up beyond all recognition.

Speaking at Pinewood Studios, the incensed PM told reporters: “Do you realise that, every single day, irresponsible bastards are blowing taxpayers’ hard-earned cash on making thought-provoking films of quality and depth for that tiny minority who can still think? What a pointless waste. We need to be giving that money to the Hollywood studios who deign to make their mass-market blockbusters here instead because, my goodness, all those big explosions don’t come cheap.”

This, but in colour, is all the gritty realism you need

“I was particularly incensed to think that the Film Council might have thrown your money at that ‘Four Lions’ rubbish, an offensive piece of blatant al-Qaeda propaganda which glorifies terrorism,” raged Mr Cameron. “It didn’t, as it happens - but that’s not the point. It might have, if it felt like it.”

“And, with the government as executive producer leaning over his shoulder, there’s no reason why Mike Leigh can’t apply his talents to a big-budget gorefest remake of Fiend Without A Face, in which the brains and spinal columns are ripped out of manky Northerners by a mad scientist’s experiments, leaving them to flop down contentedly in front of Coronation Street for the rest of their lives,” he added. “That’s the sort of cinematic inspiration you crave, isn’t it?”

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.”

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

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

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

Job done, chaps - you can all go home now

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

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

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

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

Hypothetical Money Vanishes

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

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

You are personally worth more than all of this, apparently

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

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

Britain Suddenly Notices Gigantic Debt After Only 18 Years

The massive accounting scam by which successive governments since 1992 have run up off-the-books debts which you will be paying off for the rest of your life suddenly entered the public consciousness today, after a bored BBC journalist idly asked the NHS how much all those shiny new hospitals were costing.

The answer – “£65.1bn, and it won’t be paid off until 2048” – will come as an complete shock to the average taxpayer, as it involves boring accountancy stuff rather than celebrities or football and therefore escaped their notice for eighteen long years.

A bastard in an Italian suit gleefully pointed out that, although it has been illegal for years for private companies to conceal such offset deals from their balance sheets, successive governments somehow completely forgot to apply the ban to public bodies. The subsequent tendering jamboree has allowed multinational corporates – many of which, by the strangest coincidence, are also major financial backers of the Labour and Conservative Parties - to line their pockets for years to come, with the added bonus of tying the buildings’ occupants to uncompetitive and poorly-implemented maintenance, cleaning and catering contracts.

Turns out it wasn't needed after all, but cough up anyway

“The biggest laugh in the boardrooms is that current NHS policy is to shunt as many services out of hospitals and into the community as possible,” he added with a thin-lipped smile, pouring himself a large Scotch which you’ll get round to paying for in 2025, “So these hideously-overpriced white elephants will be half empty in years to come, and you’ll still be paying full whack for them. Cheers.”

“God knows how taxpayers will react when they find out that just about every new school, university building and infrastructure project for years has been bought on the never-never,” admitted a spokesman for the Treasury today, “Let alone various contracts for things like military training and maintenance. I dare say they’ll roll their eyes, pretend it doesn’t really concern them and get back to sharing a 35-year-old millionaire’s awful disappointment at being released from the tiresome duty of running round every few years for the England squad at a fraction of his normal going rate. Then we can get back to the important business of putting your children and grandchildren in hock for the rest of their lives, too.”

Dubai Proudly Unveils World's Tallest Folly

The world's tallest monument to man's hubris, the 2,716ft Burj Khalifi, was opened yesterday in Dubai - dwarfing the previous record holder, the ill-fated liner RMS Titanic, whose paltry 883ft hull could comfortably fit upright on top of its two sister ships inside the enormous, pointless edifice.

Towering above the tiny, bankrupt state of Dubai, the gigantic irrelevance will stand as a futile, half-empty monument to the horribly-misplaced financial confidence of mankind for generations to come.

"In future, our nomadic grandchildren will be drawn to our deserted city from up to sixty miles away, attracted by its glinting glass cladding. They will shake their heads sadly, as they ask themselves what sort of irresponsible clowns could have spent $1.5bn they didn't have on such a colossal vanity project," boasted Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rash Al-Along. "They will scale its empty lift shafts, and peer out in amazement over the scrub-covered ruins of extravagantly silly artificial islands that look like a map of the world, a stylised palm tree and a huge dollar sign."

"I can only hope, in all humility, that they will also pause to beg Allah to forgive us, at the world's highest unfurnished mosque on the 158th floor," he added.

Mandelson Slashes University Budgets When Nobody's Looking

A huge, cloying air of smarminess covered Central London today, as Lord Mandelson spent the day smugly congratulating himself on the impeccable timing of his announcement of a swingeing £398m cut in university funding, now that all the lecturers are on holiday abroad and the students are too busy feverishly stacking supermarket shelves to notice.

"You know, I'm not normally one to blow my own trumpet - Modest Mandy, that's me to a T - but I am living proof that a proper university education brings out a person's native intelligence," oozed the Business Secretary. "Isn't it absolutely brilliant of me to make sure that this assault on the citadels of learning happens when there is absolutely no one around to kick off about it? Clever, clever Peter."

Lord Mandelson also berated the universities for their naïvety in taking at face value the government's meaningless platitudes about increasing student numbers, especially from less-privileged areas.

"All these chavs from council estates - I don't want to cast aspersions, of course, but very, very inferior types - are now swanning around our educational centres of excellence, lowering the tone terribly," smiled Lord Mandelson. "And some of them, would you believe, actually think they're as good as nice, middle-class children! Costs a pretty penny, between you and me, building all those new lecture halls on the never-never - not that the off-the-books borrowing of PFI is anything but a masterly stroke of sheer unadulterated genius from Gordon, of course, and I'm sure that in ten or twenty years time we'll all give him credit when the interest's due."

The slimy peer also urged universities to cram more three-year courses into two, in order to ensure that going to university was only financially viable for students whose parents were comfortably able to support them when they had no time to spare for a part time job.

"And, of course, nobody will have time to waste on fripperies like extra-curricular activities, such as sports, volunteering or, God forbid, their loony students' union," he beamed. "Middle-class people shouldn't fill their heads with any of that 'well-rounded-human-being' tripe. They should come out of university imbued only with a single-minded craving to make as much money as they can, by whatever means necessary, and devil take the hindmost. Sound Labour principles which my grandfather would approve of with all his heart."

Meanwhile, Herbert Morrison's mould-covered corpse has been sighted wandering the snowy streets of North London, heading in the general direction of Westminster and gurgling Lord Mandelson's name ominously.

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."

Brown Successfully Fooling All Of The People With Credit Card 'Crackdown'

Gordon Brown was actually seen to smile today, as it became clear that his latest scheme to drive the ungrateful population of Britain into abject penury had sucessfully slipped through under the radar.

"By and large, everyone was so busy punching the air and shouting, "Yeah, fuck you..." followed by the name of their credit card providers that they completely failed to attach any significance to the last bit," said a banker, who sensibly never uses the damned things. "Freezing interest rates on existing debts sounded great, as long as nobody remembers that their current rate is quite significantly higher than the rate of inflation."

"Everyone's also cheering the stuff about paying off the higher-rate expenditure first," he went on, "Even though it would probably be news to a lot of them quite how badly they get stung when they use their credit card in a cash machine."

"Of course, what completely escaped their notice as they gleefully hugged complete strangers was the bit about whacking up the minimum repayment to Christ only knows what," he continued with a grin. "This, apparently, will encourage people to repay their borrowings swiftly. Except, of course, that people are feeling the pinch already - so many of them won't be able to afford the higher payments, meaning they'll have to cut their cards up and convert the debt into a loan."

"Result: with fixed-term loans replacing the never-never on our books, the banks' recovery plans will look more financially attractive to investors!" he added, as he opened another bottle of Krug. "Too bad about all the peasants waving bye-bye to any hopes of ever getting off credit blacklists. The important thing is that this should do wonders for our share prices. Cheers Gordon, you bum-faced Scots git - you're not as stupid as you look after all. Keep this up, and maybe we'll change our minds about calling in the Labour Party's overdraft before next year's election campaign."

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!"

Students Told: 'If You're So Bloody Poor, Go On The Game'

As a survey published today in lieu of journalism shows that students entering university this September are likely to graduate owing an average of £23,000, millions of people who went to the university of life instead - after leaving the school of hard knocks with a clip round the ear - told them to stop bloody whining about how they're soooo hard done by and try living in the real world instead of a cosy, alcohol-filled bubble.

"A' didnae mind subsidisen' yon student ponces back in the guid ol' days o' grants, a' tell ye, mon. At least yon posh scunners wid use theer fancy degrees ta help the likes o'me, lak operaten' on ma friggin' piles or getten' me awf wi' a twel'-month suspended," grumbled small pensioner William Bampot of Glasgow, tucked away in a corner of his local, now remodelled as a hilariously-ironic student bar called Twerp's.

"But these idle bastuds nowadays are lucky if they get intae McDonalds or Lidl - lak ma dorta Morag's guid-fer-nothin' bairn Mad Jimmy McGovern, th' wee shite," he mumbled into his cups. "Nae bluidy use waven' his 2:2 in Environmental Science aboot when he's restockin' the shelves wi' fucken' German cornflakes."

"If theer so bluidy puir, they might want tae spend the odd night in wi' a buke instead o' pessen' it up alla time," he suggested, raising his head from the table. "Mind, a' see some o' th' lassies're fit enough, mon, mak' nae mistake. Ah cuid fair see 'em aal right fer a few bob after a night on the lash, y'ken?"

"Aal a'm sayen's: th' offa's theer," he added hopefully.

A spokeswoman for the Russell Group of Proper Universities concurred with Mr Bampot, saying: "Unfortunately, an ever-increasing number of Peter Andre and Kerry Katona clones who slouch into jumped-up polytechnics - most of which were hairdressing schools 20 years ago - seem to think that their noddy degree in Surf History will open the door to lifelong fortune and happiness, living with a gorgeous model in the sort of luxurious house you only see in debt-consolidation and stain-remover ads.

"The reality is that, if they're lucky, they'll scrape their way into the kind of mundane, paper-shuffling, soul-draining tedium that used to be that special layer of hell reserved for those with nothing more than CSE grade 1 in Writing Your Name and Counting To Five."

"However, for nice middle-class children from the Home Counties who sensibly follow in their parents' footsteps by choosing a real university made of stone, the world will still be at their feet as mummy and daddy will already have covered their little financial bottoms," she pointed out with a smile.

"Basically, if you are a student and you're finding it hard to eke out your pitiful loan, you may as well pick your lamp-post, flash your naughty bits from under a two-inch skirt and think of it as work experience for the rest of your life," she explained. "If, on the other hand, you spend your holidays skiing in Switzerland or at the family gîte in France, and your term-time evenings are taken up with planning your placement year with Uncle Quentin's futures team - well, let's say a trifling five-figure sum isn't going to unduly blight your prospects."

A glum-faced member of the National Union of Students' executive committee - whose hopes of being parachuted into a safe Labour seat come the election were rapidly disappearing over the horizon - made some subdued noises that might have been ever so slightly critical of the government's educational policies, but were vague enough to be construed either way.

Police Warn of Upsurge in Royal Begging

The public are being urged not to give money to the Queen, if she approaches them in the street asking for a pound for Buckingham Palace's roof.

Police say they are receiving more and more complaints from members of the public about royal harassment as the recession bites deeper.

"'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. The Queen can often be found sitting outside 24-hour convenience stores with a corgi on a string to elicit sympathy from shoppers," warned community policing spokesman PCSO Dixon. "But she will also shamble up to vulnerable-looking people walking alone, demanding larger and larger amounts of money and becoming increasingly abusive and threatening. First of all it's a quid to repair a leaky hole in her bedroom ceiling; but if you reach into your purse for a pound she's straight in there, asking for another 50p for fresh lead for Windsor Castle, then another pound to unblock the loo at Sandringham - the list seems to be endless."

"The irony is, if only you knew, she lives the life of Riley on public handouts," he continued. "If you follow her, you'll see her unashamedly stocking up on fags and booze, which she liberally shares out to her fellow heads of state when she gets back to her pad - which is rather more fancy than what most of her victims go home to."

"Don't be fooled by the frumpy, dowdy old rags she wears in public," he added. "She's got more fur in her wardrobe than Longleat Safari Park. Evenin' all."

It's In The Beautiful Game

The rights to 46 premier-league football matches have been snapped up by games software label EASN, after the financially-embarrassed Setanta group defaulted on its payments to the Football Association.

"This is a great day for English football fans," said an FA spokesman. "Thanks to the innovative technology of Electronic Arts Sports Network, fans will no longer sit in the boozer merely watching the match. At any point, they can take control of their favourite players themselves and maybe influence the outcome of the entire Premiership!"

"And if they don't like the result, they can play the game over and over again until they do," he added.

F1 Fingers Hover Over The Self-Destruct Button

Motor racing fans are looking forward to the next thrilling instalment of the Formula One legal season, with another exciting courtroom battle between the teams and the FIA looming.

The battle for the championship hotted up as eight out of the ten teams mounted their strongest challenge yet to current leaders Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone.

Up to now, nothing has been able to touch Mosley and Ecclestone's winning partnership of money, arrogance and contempt. However, with determined opposition from such former enemies as McLaren and Ferrari working together on a package of deals with the world's TV companies to run their own breakaway championship, the leading partnership looks set to be overtaken by events and left stuck in the gravel.

"The FIA team is using its tried-and-tested legal threat, as usual," said commentator Martin Brundle, "But it's looking increasingly like old technology. There's just too much money floating round the law courts these days - both the teams and the FIA acknowledge that. But they just can't seem to agree on the answer, which is probably to tell Hitley to stick poison-dwarf Ecclestone up his arse and fuck off to his Nazi dungeon."

South America Teaches Brown About Running A Balanced Economy

Gordon Brown has had financial prudence explained to him by Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, as he continues to jet around the world trying to persuade world leaders not to blame him personally at the imminent G20 summit for completely fucking up the world's economy.

"I held up a 50-peso note and explained to Señor Brown that this was money, and if you get your hands on any then it's worth holding onto for a rainy day," said Ms Bachelet afterwards. "I also told him that if, like him, you recklessly give it all away to your greedy friends, then perhaps it's a little foolish to expect them to reciprocate when you open the biscuit tin to pay the bills, only to find it's all gone."

"He seemed to be struggling a bit with that," she went on, "So I made it easier for him. I gave him ten beans. Then I put on an expensive new suit and said that I wouldn't mind buying his shoes for a bean, if he would just give me two beans to cover my costs. He agreed, and I took his shoes and a bean. He said he didn't quite grasp the idea, so I ran it by him again - only this time I asked for his tie. After half an hour Señor Brown had no beans and no clothes - and when I turned down his request to borrow some beans so he might buy back his underpants, I think the peso finally dropped."

"I look forward to seeing Señor Brown again at the summit," she added. "But I don't think the rest of the G20 leaders will be greatly impressed by his appearance."

Brown Urges Abolition of Tax Havens Not Connected With Britain

Gordon Brown has called upon the world to outlaw tax havens, except for the ones over which Britain has any direct or indirect control.

"We must act to reshape the regulatory system for the new times. Greater international co-operation lies at the heart of all our changes," he told reporters. "And so we must bring the shadow banking system into the regulatory system. Apart, that is, from the British Overseas Territories, which are administered by the British Government through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - specifically Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands."

"This is a recognition that the old tax havens have no place in this new world," he went on, "Except for our very good Commonwealth friends Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brunei, Cyprus, Grenada, Guyana, the Maldives, Mauritius, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, the Seychelles and Trinidad and Tobago."

"We now call on all countries to apply international standards," he added. "With the obvious exception of our close and loyal neighbours in the British Isles, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands."

"Honest British companies such as Tesco do rather a lot of business in these places, apparently," continued Mr Brown. "And they have made it clear to me that if my government should be so rash as to do anything which might interfere with their highly-innovative accounting systems then, regrettably, they would have no option but to move their head offices abroad - which, they assure me, would result in a considerable loss of tax income to the Exchequer."

"So basically, I'm just talking about unspeakably foreign places where French and German are spoken, i.e. Luxembourg, Lichtenstein and Switzerland, the greedy, thieving bastards," concluded the Prime Minister. "Why can't they be more like Britain and be governed by principled, moral leaders with a firm understanding of the ethics of high finance?"