Recession Definitely Caused By Jobless Scum

The unemployed have finally admitted that the current economic disaster is all their fault and nobody else's, after it was revealed in several tabloid papers that they are all raking in an absolute bloody fortune.

"Yeah, it's all thanks to us, innit?" confessed a typical bone-idle dosser as he climbed into his Aston Martin for his fortnightly visit to the Jobcentre. "I claim Jobseeker's Allowance and I get Housing and Council Tax Benefit, which gives me an income of, oh, about £12m every two weeks. Then there's the Child Benefit for the nipper -he's taken the helicopter to Eurodisney this week, with the live-in nanny - which is worth another £20,000 a week. On top of that I've got Big Car Benefit, Exotic Pet Allowance for the tiger and a low user rebate on the phone bill. I'm bloody quids in, mate."

"Listen, I'll tell you straight, sunshine - I wouldn't get out of bed for any job offer lower than director of a multi-national," he added. "Wouldn't be worth my while, see? OK, James, take me to the Taxpayers' Bank, there's a good chap - I've got to sign my name on the dotted line at 11.40 sharp. No rest for the wicked."

The decent, hardworking folk of England were outraged by the frank admission of responsibility from the unemployed, however.

"I knew it. I bloody knew it," said one estate agent in Islington. "Well, fuck 'em. They won't get any more sympathy and understanding from me, let me tell you. They ought to be bloody strung up, all of them."

He then shouted at his crying neighbour, who had just lost her job at Woolworths: "Oi, scrounger! Yes, you! Because of you, I'm going to have to spend my summer holiday trudging round the Lake District up to my arse in sheepshit, instead of sunning myself on the glorious beaches of Thailand. Happy now, you greedy, thieving cow? Well, are you? You deserve all that's coming to you. I hope Gordon Brown fucks up your life. You lazy, fiddling bitch."

Pay Restraint for Kettles, Urges Chancellor Pot

Alistair Darling has urged pay restraint, following the settlement of the Shell tanker dispute by the offer of a pay rise thought to be in excess of 7%.

On the day after consumer inflation leapt to a ten-year high, the Chancellor said: “We have got to be vigilant in relation to all pay settlements, public and private. If we get back into that spiral, it will take years to get out of it.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Express claims that senior backbench MPs are demanding a 21% pay increase in order to “catch up” with other professionals, according to a memo it attributes to Sir Stuart Bell, Tim Harvey and David Maclean. The increase would give MPs a £75,000 salary. The story was only slightly spoiled by the fact that there is no such MP as Tim Harvey.

“If you don’t pay MPs the same rates as, say, company directors, then people will choose to be company directors and not MPs,” said the fictitious Mr Harvey. “Of course, some ignorant people might think that you need skills and abilities to become a director, rather than simply pinning on a rosette once every few years, but this is a gross oversimplification. You certainly do need qualifications to join the board of a merchant bank, defence contractor, IT supplier or consultancy firm – and, in my experience, the best qualification you can possibly have is to be an MP. No MPs - no company directors. If we don’t get our pay rise, then every business in Britain will stumble swiftly into oblivion. Is that what you communists want?”

Mr Harvey later accepted that there may have been some minor flaws, contradictions, leaps of faith and bare-faced lies in his logic, but argued that he wasn’t doing badly for an imaginary character.

“Of course, I would probably have come up with a better argument if I was better paid,” he claimed.