Obliging Yemeni Terrorists Provide Timely Excuse For Keeping Airport Security Checks

A terror cell of operatives working for al-Qaeda or something have kindly given Western governments a spurious argument against airlines who want to see an end to excessive US-style passenger security checks, by obligingly sticking some inert plastic explosives inside a couple of toner cartridges, sellotaping a few wires to them and posting them airfreight to America labelled ‘BOMB - HANDLE WITH CARE’ .

One of the curiously inept bombs was miraculously discovered on a UPS cargo plane during a stopover at East Midlands Airport, while the other was fortuitously intercepted in Dubai.

“We have yet to determine whether the package we found is a viable explosive device,” announced home secretary Theresa May this morning. “We’ve tried dropping it a few times, but so far it hasn’t gone off. Next we’ll try sticking 240 volts through it, and if that fails we’ll give it a minute or two with a blowtorch. That ought to do it.”

Long-suffering passengers, meanwhile, are already pointing out to singularly unimpressed security officials that even if they were all subjected to vivisection during check-in, it wouldn’t exactly be an effective deterrent to a terrorist putting an airmail bomb in a postbox somewhere in the Middle East.

“I’m afraid such cavalier attitudes to security are missing the point,” responded Mrs May huffily. “The important thing is that if people start thinking too much about things like this, then the terrorists win.”

A dedicated suicide bomber could easily cram one of these up his arse, say experts

Meanwhile, the Yemeni government has promised a full investigation into the matter, right after it finds some way of establishing its authority beyond the walls of the parliament building.

Better Start Wiping Pensioners’ Bums If You’re Planning On Getting Old Yourself, Suggests Government

Mr Parsons can't wait to introduce you to his runny bottom

The government is studying with interest a plan to blackmail people into looking after the elderly in their free time, it was announced today.

The voluntary scheme would give people the freedom to decide whether to clean shit off the senile on a regular basis for the whole of their working lives, or die of neglect once they retire.

In Japan, where the scheme has been in operation since 1991, volunteers are entitled to ‘bank’ the hours they spend caring for the elderly in the hope that a future government might in some way take care of them in return when they reach old age.

“UK life expectancy is currently 80 years,” said care services minister Paul Burstard. “For most people, that’s going to mean well over 100,000 hours of retirement. Therefore, on a pro rata basis, today’s 18-year-olds should probably plan on spending about 40 hours a week of their spare time hauling dribbling senior citizens in an out of the bath, just to be on the safe side.”

Charities have given a cautious welcome to the general principle of encouraging people to volunteer, but also pointed out that this was “the stupidest fucking nonsense” they’d heard since the repeal of the Poor Laws in 1948.

Horrible Middle-Class Parents Demand Their Qualifications

Mr Fellows would like his GCSE in Media Studies now, please

Pushy parents - who, according to researchers at Leicester and Leeds universities, are largely responsible for their children’s academic achievements - are now demanding that any qualifications be awarded to them instead of the thick, bone-idle children whose Xboxes they had to physically remove from the house before they finally made a token attempt at a bit of homework.

“This report says my input is worth more than the combined efforts of my layabout son and all his teachers combined, am I right?” said insufferable twerp parent Marcus Fellows, 41. “Well, if it was all my hard work that was responsible for twelve GCSEs, kindly explain to me why they have that whiny little shit’s name on them and not mine.”

“They can sack those lefty waste-of-space teachers while they’re at it, and pay me their enormous salaries,” demanded the awful Mr Fellows. “And you can take it as read that I won’t be wasting any of it on a lifetime subscription to the Guardian.”

“Somebody had better bloody well sort out my three-month summer holiday, too,” he added.

Defence Review Criticism Unjustified In Light of Revived Hitler Clone Threat, Insists Defence Secretary

Just one of these aboard a nuclear submarine could have been catastrophic

Dr Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has angrily refuted a Royal United Services Institute survey of 2000 defence experts, in which the majority said the recent Strategic Defence Review represented a lost opportunity for a more challenging rethink.

“These so-called ‘experts’ can say what they like,” riposted Dr Fox from his new command centre, the long-disused Aldwych tube station, “But the only thing stopping an army of cloned Hitler cyborgs from goose-stepping down Tottenham Court Road right now is the very real threat of an independent British Armageddon.”

“Only this week, HMS Astute detected a determined Hitler clone with an aqualung trying to prise open one of its torpedo tubes with a giant Swiss Army penknife,” he warned. “Fortunately, the captain acted quickly to avert the danger by squashing this dangerous genetically-enhanced madman against the nearest sandbank. I’m sure you don’t need me to outline the dire consequences, should even a single Hitler have got loose aboard our most advanced nuclear strike submarine, but I will anyway.”

The defence secretary then spent several hours acting out one of his many doomsday fantasies, oblivious to the fact that the press centre had swiftly emptied.

Meanwhile, Admiralty chiefs were gamely attempting to explain how Britain’s defence capabilities will be enhanced by an empty aircraft carrier.

“Er… imagine a scenario in which the army is trying to mount a counter-attack against an invading army of genetically modified Hitlers, who are encamped on the other side of a ravine,” began the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, with sweat running down his forehead. “But the only bridge is miles upwind, which would undoubtedly give the Hitlers their scent. However, if our new toy – er, carrier – were to stealthily back up and turn - hey presto! Instant crossing.”

“That’s the last thing they’d expect,” he added, before theatrically examining his watch and suddenly announcing that he was late for an urgent meeting.

Meanwhile, the RAF confidently announced that they would be alert and ready to deal with any conceivable threat to UK airspace - whether or not a Hitler clone was involved - as long as it took the form of a fifty-year old propellor-driven Tupolev.

Survey Shows Regan and Goneril Unwilling To Support Lear and Cordelia

According to a realm-wide survey heralded today, two-thirds of the former King Lear’s daughters do not see why they should support either their retired father or their jobless sister Cordelia.

“This lack of support for a welfare state among the younger generation will come as a shock to many of the king’s faithful retainers, such as Kent,” proclaimed a herald. “Regan and Goneril object rather strongly to their father’s quaint notion that the state should continue to pay for his upkeep and his hundred knights. And they aren’t too hot on their unemployed sister, either, after they usurped her third of the kingdom. They don’t see why they should keep giving her handouts, just so she can raise a huge brood of feckless brats with her partner, the bone-idle King of France.”

“I’m not happy,” howled the elderly King on receiving the news. “I work bloody hard all my life to build up a decent kingdom and give my kids the best start in life, and this is the thanks I get? All I asked of them was a measly hundred knights to keep me in my declining years, and now I’ve had them taken away all I’m left with a blind old Earl of Gloucester to look after and some bloody Fool who’s no help at all. He just sits there making sarky comments.”

Stop your bloody whingeing and get a job, say under-25s

Regan and Goneril were unrepentant, however.

“This kingdom belongs to us now, yeah, and we got these big plans,” said Regan. “I don’t wanna sound like really harsh, right, but dad’s just a burden, frankly, and if he in’t got the decency to lie down quietly under a bush and die then that’s like totally not our problem.”

Goneril had equally harsh words for her weak sister Cordelia: “Mate, it’s a dog-eat-dog world right? If you’d like followed us into Canterbury Business School instead of doing some noddy Courtly Romance degree at Lindisfarne Uni, see, you might have learned to look out for yourself. You can’t just expect to live comfortably, right, on a handout from an irresponsible dad who didn’t give a shit about making financial provisions for his retirement.”

“As for that malingering bloody Earl of Gloucester,” added Regan, “I read somewhere that most so-called ‘blind’ people have like 20% vision actually, or something like that. There’s loads of jobs he could do, prob’ly, the sponging bugger, if he got up off his arse and looked.”

China Demands Arrest Of Nobel Prize Ringleaders

The Chinese government is still at something of a loss to understand why their Norwegian counterparts have still not rounded up the ringleaders of the Nobel Foundation, after they outrageously awarded the Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.

“This award is an obscenity,” shrieked foreign minister Yang Jiechi. “If - as the racist Norwegian authorities claim - the Nobel Foundation is truly an independent organisation over which they exert no control, why on earth have they not locked them all up and thrown away the key?”

Lucy Liu is not related to Liu Xiaobo, says China, so there's no need to bother yourselves about him

Fears are growing in the world’s democracies that, if the Chinese do not obtain satisfaction from the Norwegians, they may react against this overt act of bigotry by switching their vast industrial capacity to making things that actually work.

“The only thing keeping Western economies in business is consumer knowledge that the products they manufacture might very well continue to function satisfactorily after 366 days,” warned the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “If the Chinese should break into that market, frankly, my advice is to start planting rice fast.”

The US and UK governments are in urgent talks with the Norwegians, pointing out that all that give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death crap is really rather passé nowadays.

US Special Forces’ Tactical Manual Now Available As T-Shirt

US special forces carry their tactical manual with them at all times, in case they have trouble remembering the finer points

Following the unfortunate death of British hostage Linda Norgrove at the hands of the American forces who were supposed to be rescuing her, Pentagon sources have taken the unprecedented step of publishing in full their elite forces’ hitherto-classified tactical training document in the form of a 100% cotton t-shirt, to fit all sizes up to XXXL.

The sad demise of kidnapped aid worker Ms Norgrove, who appears to have been killed by a grenade thrown by one of her supposed rescuers, is covered by Part I of the machine-washable manual, which covers the assault doctrine of ‘KILL ‘EM ALL'. Part II, which contains detailed instructions for the mopping-up phase, advises troops to ‘Let God Sort ‘Em Out!’

Meanwhile, reports are emerging of a rift between the unit, who mounted the operation in a part of Afghanistan nominally under US control, and the British SAS advisors who accompanied them. MoD sources are privately saying that the SAS team would have been keen to implement their own expert tactics, claiming that the best chance for victory lay in openly daring Ms Norgrove’s captors to kill her if they were hard enough. They were, however, overruled by the US strike team, who instead placed their faith in small-unit tactics learned the hard way by their counterparts in Vietnam forty years ago.

“We had to destroy the hostage in order to save it,” confirmed a Pentagon source.

Alan Johnson Now Fully Conversant With ‘%’ Button

Newly-appointed shadow chancellor Alan Johnson announced today that he is now fully conversant with all of the functions on a basic calculator, including the difficult ‘%’ button, and expressed the hope that Treasury officials will allow him to start learning how to use a big scientific model on Monday.

Mr Milburn says a 10-digit calculator will be much better for getting to grips with the economy

“Mr Miliband says he’s very pleased with my progress,” beamed Mr Johnson, “Especially when this time last week I didn’t have the foggiest idea what an economic was, coming from a trade union background and that.”

The former postman amazed reporters with his grasp of numbers, explaining that you can add, subtract, divide and multiply them as many times as you want to make new ones. The pinnacle of his press conference was Mr Johnson’s slow but determined demonstration of compound interest.

“Apparently you can work it out backwards, too,” he assured hacks, “But my advisors assure me that’s just like really geeky and nobody’s ever found a use for it.”

“What I want now is a really, really good scientific calculator,” he added. “That posh Mr Balls and his wife, Mrs Balls, invited me round to dinner last night and - over a hoity-toity entrée of raw puffer fish and crisps they said they made especially for me - they showed me their really nice one. It’s a Sharp, with a line playback feature in case you get lost in particularly hard sums, and two stats modes – I suppose that’s for if you don’t like the answer you get from one mode, you might get a better one from the other. I like that. I’m going to ask Mr Miliband to get me one.”

“And it’s got a brilliant slidey cover, too, with a slot for a crib sheet,” he added. “So when I stand up in parliament with my shiny new calculator, I bet I can make that smarmy nerd George Osborne look really stupid with that. Or, if I’m like really bored, I can have fun trying to put it on back to front.”

“Excuse me, but I feel just a teeny-weeny bit sick,” he concluded. “When I come back from the bathroom, let me tell you about my really clever idea - which I worked out all by myself - that I can prove the damage the government’s cuts will cause, using something called a cosine.”

Serbs Celebrate Tolerance, Freedom Of Expression And Assembly With Anti-Gay Riot

Serbia demonstrated its readiness for EU membership today by holding the first Gay Pride march in the capital, Belgrade, for nine years. Its citizens then demonstrated why the saying ‘as unbigoted as a Serb’ has not yet gained common currency, by bombarding the marchers with petrol bombs before setting fire to the headquarters of the Democratic Party.

Serbian Orthodox Church patriarch Irinej Gavrilovica had earlier urged his deeply religious countrymen to exercise restraint.

“I beg all good Christian Serbs to show tolerance and respect for these perverted, unnatural abominations,” he told the faithful in an address on Friday. “Don’t kill them. Ask yourselves what Jesus would have done, and content yourselves with just kicking the evil gay crap out of them.”

Serbs hope their quaint national custom of murderous hate will flourish in the EU

Just before the march the head of the EU mission in Serbia, Vincent Degert, addressed 1,000 gay activists in downtown Belgrade.

“We are here to celebrate the Serbian values of tolerance, freedom of expression and assembly,” observed M. Degert, before sending them out beyond the safety cordon of riot police and armoured vehicles with his best wishes for their survival.

“I’ve been good. It’s been fifteen years since I last slaughtered anyone,” explained protester Petar Demonić moments later, as he hurled a blazing bottle at the marchers. “And even then it was only a couple of dozen Muslims. Can’t I kill some queers just this once, for old times’ sake?”

“I’m really looking forward to the EU,” he added cheerfully, as he headbutted a policeman. “Five hundred million people. So little time.”

Humourless Woman Relaxes In Empty Office After Hectic Week Of Third-Party Harassment Complaints

Hatchet-faced office killjoy Rosemary Milquetoast, 51, says she is looking forward to finally getting some work done this afternoon, after a busy but rewarding week in which she has managed to get all of her co-workers suspended for breaches of the new Equality Act which came into force a week ago.

Mrs Milquetoast is looking forward to holding up every claim personally from now on

Mrs Milquetoast, a housing benefits delayer for Reading Borough Council, submitted her first formal complaint at 09.03 on Monday, after irritatingly chirpy temp Martin Green airily blamed his rushed arrival on the time his girlfriend Emma took in the bathroom.

“I’ve never met this Emma person, and frankly I don’t want to,” Mrs Milquetoast told her line manager three minutes later. “Nevertheless, I feel deeply offended on her behalf. Send this evil bigot back to the agency, please.”

“Now,” she added, producing a clipping from the Daily Mail outlining the ramifications of the new law, a legacy of the Labour government which was championed by Harriet Harman.

Before lunchtime, Mrs Milquetoast had instigated disciplinary proceedings against two other colleagues for causing her to take secondary offence on behalf of a teenage son and a neighbour.

“By this morning, there was just Terry Peters on the front desk left to deal with,” grimaced a thin-lipped Mrs Milquetoast. “So I invented an excuse and went downstairs, claiming to be conducting a pencil audit, and instigated a conversation about housing benefit claimants. He chuckled and said that some of them could be a bit stroppy at times. Bingo. I clicked the tape recorder off and hurried back upstairs with the damning evidence. I can’t stand people on benefits myself, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be mortified for them at this uncalled-for assault on their reputation.”

“And there was an unexpected bonus,” she crowed. “When I presented him with yet another complaint form in triplicate, Mr James, the office manager, had the bare-faced cheek to tell me to my face, ‘You know, Rosemary, I’m just a simple sort of chap. I don’t know how I’ll cope, having 26 staff on indefinite suspension.’ How dare he deprecate himself like that, the poor man? I really felt for him. Naturally I was on the phone to Personnel right away, and I was most gratified to see security escort him from the building at lunchtime.”

Mrs Milquetoast’s peaceful afternoon of proceeding unhurriedly through a growing mountain of housing benefit claims was, however, shattered when she went to make herself a green tea and overheard somebody in the parking permits section telling a colleague ‘that bum-faced old trout next door is having a field day, moaning about whatever anybody utters.’

“It’s a disgrace,” she told a cowering personnel assistant two minutes later. “I don’t have to stand there in the corridor and listen to shocking slanders against poor innocent fish.”

“But from now on,” she added darkly, “I’ll do it anyway.”