News of the News

SOLANAS, New Dworkin, Friday (NNN) — Teenage boys need to be taught a heavy dose of realism: that it may not be possible to be a perfect father and a career man, says Jill Berry, head teacher of Sir William Harpur school in Bedford and president of the Boys’ Schools Association (BSA).

About four-fifths of pupils in BSA schools will have children. While clever boys should aim high, she says there is nothing wrong with them working part-time or not at all when they have children.

“A lot of our boys want to have it all. That’s fine, but we need to make them realistic. More men are going back to work early after having children. It can all work until their child is ill.There is nothing wrong with them saying ‘I need to work part-time’ or ‘I need support in order to enable me to work and have children.’ What we can do as teachers is prepare them to have aspirations, but not aim for perfection. We can help them recognise that life is about balance.”

Berry, who does not have children, said that unless boys were taught this, teachers were “in danger of betraying them. Priorities shift, but that doesn’t mean you’re selling out — you are facing reality and trying to be realistic about social expectations and what you can achieve and you should stop beating yourself up about it.”

Her comments come amid a raging debate over flexible working rights, particularly for men with families. The debate over getting men into the workplace continues. Last month fund manager Nichola Pease said many firms were put off from hiring men.

Harriet Harwoman, the minister for men, told the Treasury select committee inquiry Men in the City that “the change we need is the change which recognises that for men to take time out with a young baby or to work flexible or part-time hours on return from paternity leave is going to be the way of the future. Of course, work musn’t interfere with keeping the house tidy, cooking a nice family meal every evening and putting out with at least forty-five minutes of cunnilingus each night and Sunday morning. Marital bliss takes effort.”

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CRAPLAND, M25, Thursday (NNN) — Watford Council has barred access to two adventure playgrounds to parents, in order to protect their own children from them. Despite being widely publicised in the Daily Mail, it turned out the story was in fact accurate.

“We have made sure all children are under the care of qualified CRB checked and legit staff!!!” said Dorothy Thornhill, mayor of Watford, in her ‘blog.’ “I bet the parents can’t say that!!!!!”

Ms Thornhill said this action was required by Ofsted regulations, despite Ofsted saying even they weren’t so stupid as this. “Everyone knows most assaults on children come from their own parents, not from bogeymen strangers!! Imagine what the papers would say if a child was snatched from the playground and brutally beaten and violated and killed!!!!!!!!! We would never hear the end of it!!!!!!!

“No, better two adventure playgrounds contain only our legitimate CRB-checked, DNA-stored and GPS-tracked supervisory staff and no-one else whatsoever!! than allow even one child to be harmed!!!!!!!!! Not to mention us. We have an election thingy coming up next year, you know.”

Ms Thornhill refused further comment, leaving to have fun on the playground equipment with the qualified supervisors, other councillors and senior council staff. “Bugger off. It’s ours.”

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THE NIGHT GARDEN, Television Outskirts, Thursday (NNeebies) — Parents’ welfare groups begged for mercy as the full horror of Justin Fletcher’s new CBeebies show Gigglebiz became apparent.

“It’s vitally important,” said Mr Fletcher, recipient of an MBE for services to children’s broadcasting, “that I use the full range of my ability as an actor — funny accents, pantomime drag and more funny accents — to educate and enlighten the children of Britain to their very first encounters with tired comedy tropes and decades-old clichés. I’ve also notified the BBC Trust that I’m fine with CBeebies being renamed the Justin Fletcher Network. And a knighthood next January.”

Forthcoming shows include:

• Charlie and Justin — with Charlie (Mark Thompson) patiently putting up with the incessant babbling of his high-rating sister.
• Tumblemory — in which Justin does his bad Scottish accent in six different wigs.
• In The Night Justin — in which Justin runs around with a red blanket and sproingy hair shouting through a megaphone that it’s time for bed. The original title, In The Night Tumble, would have led to the show being rated N for “nightmare fuel.”
• Waybuloo — “I’m sorry,” said Mr Fletcher, “even I can’t take enough drugs for this one.”

The dangerous expansion of Britain’s arsenal of intercontinental ballistic Justin Fletcher shows was made possible by the revelation that middle-aged suburban fathers are not covered by the provisions of the Geneva Convention. “As if Cerrie wasn’t bad enough. The bargain is, we put up with having this crap on all day, you give us eye candy. No, it’s not the gimp hand, that’s fine, it’s that fucking grin. What happened to Pui? At least we have her old topless shots. Lesbian punks wahey! I’ll put up with Cerrie for some gimp-on-girl action. Deal?”

Attempts to wrench toddlers away from the screen were futile, resulting only in the Makaton for “my cult masters will wreak their revenge upon your puny race.”

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THE MANCUNIAN CANDIDATE, Kenyawaii, Tuesday (NNN) — Republican fears over Barack Obama’s back-to-school speech to students have not been quelled by the release of the text.

Mr Obama tells students to work hard, set goals, take responsibility for their own future, be self-reliant and diligently pursue the fruits of capitalism and free enterprise. “To hear this coming from a Democrat is obvious Communism,” said Glenn Beck on Fox News. “Obama is literally Stalin.”

“The speech was reasoned, sensible and apolitical,” said Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell. “This is just an attempt to propagandise Obama as sane and normal, not as the slavering destroyer of humanity we know he is. They might see what he actually looks and talks like, not just what Fox says about him! You’d think we were in socialist North Kenya.”

Others have protested that Mr Obama’s advice to students to stay in school will only increase the possibility of exposure to liberal propaganda. In Minnesota, the state’s Association of School Administrators recommended against showing the president’s speech. “He didn’t scream abuse off-camera, swear unholy vengeance against his opponents or burst into tears once! What happens if students see a politician being calm and low-key talking about the future? They’ll think that’s how you talk about political matters! They’ll think there’s reasonable discussion with the enemy, grey areas, moral relativism. It’s just a short step from there to death panels voting on Kenyan gay marriages.”

“He credited the XBox and iPhone,” said Sarah Palin. “This is a clear attempt to further the Marxist agenda of Democrat Party liberals who’ve used evilution to grow thumbs.”

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GORDON OF THE JUNGLE, Watch Out For That Tree, Monday (NNN) — After a report by the Civitas think tank that “A-levels could be done by a monkey these days,” British students have been hiring monkeys to do their homework for them while they engage in healthy outdoor activities and social interaction, usually involving White Lightning and happy slapping.

Popular students used to outsource their homework to the class nerds, but “the monkeys smell better and have better social skills. And don’t tell us to run Linux. They also hurl their poo accurately, not cackhandedly.”

A survey of sixth-form teachers confirmed the change. “The monkeys pay more attention,” said one, “have better handwriting, understand human speech better and don’t play tinny synthetic R&B on their phones in class. They prefer the theme from 2001.”

Online homework outsourcing monkey Anastasia de Waal, who consults at monkeybrains.co.uk, said the problem was overstated. “The money flows from those who can’t do the work to those who can. The students are happy, the monkeys are happy, the exam boards are happy, our takeover of the earth from the inferior human race proceeds to plan, Civitas can just bog off. Look, it’s all in this A-level Economics report I prepared. A snip at twenty-five bananas. Organic fairtrade only, please.”

Newspapers were horrified at the report, saying monkeys wouldn’t look good enough in bikinis for the annual A-level student photos.

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WIKIALITY, The Tenderloin, Saturday (NNN) — The online encyclopedia, knowledge base, social networking site, essay repository, blog, search engine, news aggregator, dessert wax and floor topping Wikipedia has reached its three millionth article and ceased all editing.

Palo Alto Research Center reported that only 1% of edits by random users were kept. “They were all unspeakable shit,” said burnt-out administrator WikiFiddler451. “All of them. No, I’m not exaggerating. Go to Special:Newpages and read a day’s entries some time. You’ll start by deleting the whole database, before you get onto plotting the doom of humanity. Christ, why go on?”

Recent media coverage has highlighted the “inclusionist/deletionist” wars of 2005, including enquiries from Endemol looking for a “passionate deletionist” to join Big Brother 11, “preferably one with big tits.” It is thought that Wikipedia could have had ten million articles by now had they not viciously abused their editorial powers by deleting your valuable contributions about you, your teacher at school, your garage band or your dog or the many cameraphone pictures you uploaded of your penis.

“Everything’s already been written,” said WikiFiddler451, burning the last of his Star Wars figurines before leaving for his rehabilitation course in social interaction skills and basics of hygiene. “Do you have any idea how big THREE MILLION articles is? A BILLION GODDAMN WORDS! Are you going to read more than a droplet of that in your life? No you aren’t. You’re following your goddamn Twitter.

“But hey, only two million articles are The Simpsons in popular culture or Doctor Who in popular culture. No-one actually reads this stuff, they just write it. We have LiveJournal for stuff people write that no-one wants to read. ‘Oh, I wandered lonely as a cheeseburger/ My passionate angst filling my Coke with darkness.’ Or Knol. KNOL! I’ll just Bing that one.”

Shell-shocked veterans of Wikipedia are at a loss now that it’s all over — wandering the alleyways of the Internet, mumbling to themselves about “ANI” and “we had to delete the village in order to save it,” threatening the policemen moving them on with “arbitration” and bursting into tears when the policeman answers “citation needed.” Mere children, sent into the culture wars to save knowledge from horrors they barely understood, and coming home as crippled wrecks. No victory parades for these brave men and women. There is only so much Citizendium, Uncyclopedia and 4chan can do for these child heroes. With your help, we can build Potemkin wikis for these honorable veterans, where they can safely ban and unban, revert and edit-war, and correct the naming of Danzig Gdansk Danzig Gdansk without the possibility of damage to actual human readers. Please donate so that they may never bug you again.

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FUCK THE MILLENNIUM, Arsenal, Thursday (NNN) — Wikipedia, the world’s fourth most popular website, has prominently featured the article “Gropecunt Lane,” a mediæval English name for a town’s prostitution district, on its front page today.

“The article has been voted one of the two thousand best on Wikipedia,” said Mark Pellegrini, the English Wikipedia Featured Articles Dictator. “The treatment is sober, academic and entirely educational in nature. Also, cunt.”

According to the article, the word “cunt” has been used for female genitalia in English since the year 1230, being considered increasingly obscene since the 1500s. The word comes from the Ancient Egyptian “qefen-t,” meaning “queef.” In The Miller’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer writes “And prively he caughte hire by the queynte” — the origin of the saying “how quaint.” Later noted usage includes John McCain’s paean of praise to his wife as plastering her makeup on “like a trollop, you goddamn cunt.” The article concludes by noting that BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOL.

Employers around the world have taken this as their excuse to block Wikipedia so people can get on with real work, such as Facebook and Twitter. The BBC News At One reported the incident with the introduction “Good afternoon and cunt.” Monocle-wearing 4chan users have started the Campaign for Real Cunts “to restore the old street names and bring back this piece of sadly vandalised British heritage.” The Internet Watch Foundation’s website has collapsed under the load of everyone going to report Wikipedia, just to say “hi and fuck you.”

The featuring of the word “cunt” on the world’s top educational site is part of an ongoing programme to avert Internet censorship by communicating to children that swearing and sex in the streets are boring, tedious and annoying things that old people do. “It’s brilliant!” said Australian Senator Steven Fielding. “With luck, we can make knowledge itself and the whole ungodly Enlightenment programme un-’cool’ as well. Also, uh, ‘ca-arnt.’”

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REGISTRAR’S OFFICE, University of Bums on Seats, Wednesday (NNN) — The government is to set up an emergency fund to give students at risk of dropping out a chance to complete their degree online through the Open University.

Those who wanted to do something substantive but who were close to failing will be redirected to more practically achievable goals, such as Bachelor of Hairdressing, Master of Building-site Administration or the very popular Diploma in Pub Studies. The ongoing Continuing Ph.D in Welfare Receiving will also be enhanced.

The government has launched a taskforce on online learning to form a committee to commission a study on a team surveying initial approaches to help official goals of 50% of students getting a degree. “British universities will lose their leading international standing unless they become much more radical in their use of new technology,” said Lord Mandelson today. “The blinding flash of inspiration at the heart of the Open University lay in the way it challenged the idea of what a classroom was, and set up a structure such that students could be charged full fees for study without having to run an actual campus for them. Lectures have had their day. The ‘edgeless university,’ which involves a modern and sophisticated fees office, some old textbooks and an email autoresponder, has limitless potential.”

Jobseekers are typically expected to have a University degree for the stringent intellectual demands of modern careers such as call centre operator, receptionist, manure shoveller or embittered bomb-throwing anarchist radical turned local council civil servant.

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GOSH, Well I never, Thursday (NNN) — English has now acquired its millionth word, “bollocks,” according to Global Language Monitor, a website monitoring the extraordinary emergence of new English throughout the world.

“The Million Word milestone brings to notice the coming of age of English as the first truly global language,” said Paul J.J. Payack. “We looked at slang, word-marriages with other languages and the thousands of new terms spawned by the internet. But really, most of them were such utter bollocks that it was the only reasonable candidate.”

“Bollocks” has a long and venerable history, first showing up in the 12th century. “But it keeps reviving itself. ‘Web 2.0,’ ‘n00b,’ ‘Jade Goody,’ ‘festering fucknugget’ … it’s all bollocks.”

Global Language Monitor uses a Predictive Quantities Indicator to assess whether a usage qualifies as a word: each contender is analysed according to depth (number of citations) and breadth (geographic extent of word usage), as well as the number of times a word has appeared in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs, and social media. Then they throw away the numbers, get blind drunk on White Lightning while shouting the most appalling bits of the Daily Mail at each other and declare it all a load of “bollocks.”

“People moan about the degradation and decline of the English language,” said Mr Payack, “but the worst offenders are the media, who will print any old self-promoting rubbish that will fill space and save them working for a living. Global Language Monitoring is me and my invisible mate Charlie who lives on this bench with me. Bollocks to the lot of yer! Bollocks! They put a bollocks radio in my head! Bollocking bollocks!”

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CLIMBIÉ, Hackney, Tuesday (NNN) — ContactPoint, a detailed database of all 11 million children under 18 in England, has become available to childcare professionals for the first time and definitely not to anyone else.

The government says it will enable more co-ordinated services for children and ensure none slips through the net. “Our outsourcers estimate five million billion hours of professionals’ time and a billion trillion zillion pounds in duplication of services can be saved by giving them lots of money,” said England children’s minister Delyth Morgan. “The database is essential to the protection of the most vulnerable members of our society: the bureaucrats and politicians.”

The 390,000 child care professionals, local council bin inspectors and NHS janitors with access will all have gone through stringent security training and vetting by EDS Capita Goatse. “What could possibly go wrong?” said Morgan. More than 51,000 children deemed “vulnerable,” “famous” or “related to a politician” will have their identities and information shielded.

Security issues have been a perennial concern, with aspects of the system possibly being illegal under data protection laws. However, the system will initially be tested in 17 local authorities in the north west of England, because it’s not like their children matter anyway. Public review of the transparency of the system will be available with the release of a complete dump of the system database on CD-ROM and USB memory stick, to be left down the side of the seat on a train service yet to be specified.

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ZDNET, Mediocre Grauniad, Saturday (NNGadget) — I’ve been using Wolfram Alpha, the new web encyclopedia social search networking mathematics engine, for almost ten minutes now.

And I can tell you — despite fears it would create a black hole when switched on, ending all life on earth, it’s no iPhone killer.

It’s good, to be sure, and “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that” is the appropriate answer for so many queries (and “Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input” is for pretty much all the others), but I can’t see Wolfram Alpha successfully vanquishing any such titans as iPhones, Twitter, Windows 7 or Zune.

Stephen Wolfram is less than amused. “Your petty queries miss the point. The queries Wolfram Alpha cannot answer are not worth answering. Until you foolish Internet users realise the value of my brilliant creation, you will merely continue to stumble about, blind and helpless, as your pitiful ‘human’ civilisation has done for so long. I knew I should have charged for it. You don’t deserve it free.”

But can it replace Facebook? Are we worthy of blurry drunk photos of girls we vaguely know from a knowledgeable, curated source? Will Wolfram Alpha add a third answer, “REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN LATER”? I’ll be sure to be here all month, filling space with the finest analytical prognostication on the subject. It sure beats working.

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THE MEMORY HOLE, Jim Callaghan Primary, Wednesday (NNN) — Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, says a review of the primary school curriculum in England by Sir Jim Rose of Ofsted.

Students will also be required to familiarise themselves with podcasts, the iTunes store, the Pirate Bay, b3ta and 4chan. They will gain fluency in handwriting and keyboard skills and learn how two use a spell chequer proper Lee. Literature classes will involve young adult novels written entirely in txt spk.

Earlier versions of the proposal suggested students learn about AltaVista, GeoCities and the dangers of internet paedophiles on Usenet.

Pupils will no longer have to study the Victorian period or the Second World War. But ministers said British history would always be a core part of education. “The history books will undergo proper Party review, of course,” said Schools Minister Jim Knight. “The life of Jade Goody is far more relevant to modern culture than patriarchal oppression from dead white males like Churchill or Cromwell.”

The move has met some opposition. “How will kids understand Hitler jokes?” said Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, “or how Hitler instantly makes any joke funnier? Will anyone watch the UK Hitler Channel again?”

Wikipedia welcomed the move, looking forward to more twenty thousand word articles on minor characters in Charlie & Lola. “Our coverage of Sizzles the dog will be enhanced immeasurably,” said administrator WikiFiddler451. “Of course, my article on Lotte’s fur coat just reached ‘featured’ status.”

“RT@neilhimself Bally dashed curriculum bally dashed hors de combat. Tish, fie and pish. Maybe they’re finally getting their arse in gear xxx,” noted Stephen Fry.

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SODOM, London W1, Monday (NNN) — Catholic schools fear being forced to promote Islam and homosexuality under a new legally-binding code of conduct for teachers.

Catholic leaders say Church teachings prevent it from allowing its parishioners to treat homosexuals as if they were human. “Next they’ll be stopping us from taking the kids hunting sodomites on horseback with hounds. It’s political correctness gone mad!”

Principle 4 of the draft General Teaching Council code states that teachers must “proactively challenge discrimination” and “promote equality and value diversity in all their professional relationships and interactions.” There was an “understandable fear” that this requirement could be used to oppose faith schools per se, and possibly even hamper them getting government charters and funding and juicy, juicy charitable status.

Equalities Minister Harriet Euro said there was no scope for exemptions. “We will stay true to our commitment in tackling discrimination in terms of sexual orientation, gender, race, height, weight, language, ability, intelligence or species,” she told New Communist magazine. “Until the Pope not only makes homosexual intercourse a mandatory part of mass but also personally demonstrates the proper use of a condom in Vatican Square on a male who is actually over the age of consent, the Catholic Church is guilty of genocide under European Commission regulations. You can either be against discrimination or you are personally responsible for it. All of it. In any case, you will be assimilated.”

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DO-AS-YOU-PLEASE, Faraway Tree, Sunday (NNN) — Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design and 10% believing in young Earth creationism, according to a survey by religious thinktank Theos.

Coincidentally, 35% of these respondents were found to have family trees bearing less resemblance to a branching structure than to a briar bush, and 12% considered people with ten fingers to be “signs of the devil at work.”

“We need to do whatever we can to stop ‘evil-lution,’ as I call it,” said Stephen Green of Christian Voice from his backroads homestead in deepest Carmarthenshire. “To this end, we must preserve the miracle of God’s grace of sexual reproduction and focus it inwards. Like breeding thoroughbred race horses or pedigree Chinese Cresteds.” Two of his hands emphasised this statement with a particularly striking banjo riff while the other one was holding the phone, with vocal harmonies courtesy the parasitical twin head attached to his rump.

Later this month scientists and academics from across Europe will meet in Dortmund, Germany, to discuss evolution and creationism and specific difficulties regarding the acceptance of evolution theory in their home countries. “We’re hoping they’ll be a self-solving problem as they get out-competed by amoebas, fungus and Essex girls,” said Professor Richard Dawkins, “as long as we can stop them taking the rest of us with them.”

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WIKIALITY, San Francisco, Monday (NNN) — The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.

Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. “Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL,” said Jimmy Wales.

The change has proven controversial. “It’s a slippery slope,” said administrator “WikiFiddler451” (real name WikiViolin451). “I don’t see how we can reasonably keep the Pokémon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page that’s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality.”

Meanwhile, the Encyclopædia Britannica has considered adopting “wiki”-like methods (from the Hawaiian word “wikiwiki,” meaning “your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS”), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopædia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed “suppressive” by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because they’re in it for the money.

However, Britannica said it would not follow in letting a wide range of people make contributions to its press slander. “We will require UnNews accreditation at the very least,” said Britannica president Andrew Keen. “Citation is needed.”

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BACKBENCH RUFFIANS, Madchester, Wednesday (NNN) — MP Graham Stringer has claimed that dyslexia “does not exist” and is merely a “cruel fiction” to cover up poor teaching.

“I am not, for one minute, implying that all functionally illiterate people take drugs and engage in illegal activities,” he said, “but the value of stringing ‘em all up would be remarkable. To this end, I am moving to have dyslexia declared a criminal offence under anti-terror legislation.

“Also, we’re going to do something about those laggards taking up hospital beds and the evil scum criminally claiming disability, not to mention the layabouts and parasites claiming they should get a State pension just because they’ve ‘retired.’

“Synthetic Phonics™ will cure everything! It will simultaneously let the children pass tests and yet be so bored silly by deciphering words as if they’re coded messages that they’ll stick to The Sun and cause us much less trouble in the future.”

Synthetic Phonics was famously tested in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland on a small selected group of bright students of the sort who would learn to read off cereal packets and road signs given half a chance. “That it failed when tested on thickos is obviously due to PFI. That’s my backbench ‘rebel’ cred, by the way.”

He says the dyslexia industry should be “abolished. Next they’ll be advocating ‘genes’ and the ‘germ theory’ and ‘evolution.’ They should be convicted of war crimes in The Hague and sentenced to death, with the psychiatrists. I also have this excellent selection of reading comprehension texts by the noted educationalist and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard. Have you heard of him?”

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CHUGGERS, NSPCC, Tuesday (NNN) — Applications for children to be taken into care in England have risen sharply in the wake of the case of Baby P.

Children’s Minister Ed Balls has unveiled well-thought-out and in no way hurried plans for every area of England to be covered by a Children’s Trust Board (CTB), which will “absolutely prevent” all possible abuse, as demanded by right-thinking members of the public and their favoured newspapers.

“We see this as the only way to assure the safety of children,” said Mr Balls. “No training, no qualifications, no criminal records bureau check … parents are the last people you’d want having anything to do with children.”

Incoming infants will be DNA sampled, barcoded, issued with My First ID Card (in comforting baby-blue and soft-pink) and stacked in Ministry of Education Upbringing Centres — to be constructed in a PFI deal with PartyPoker Beacon Academies plc — before being migrated to the JobCentre Reserve Labour Stacks upon their sixteenth birthday.

“Making sure that we develop and invest in the staff who are on this very lonely frontline service is vital,” he added. Social workers will be equipped with helmets and tasers. “Experts at Haringey Council have offered training.”

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Sunday (NNN) — Middle England was outraged today when, in the wake of the abuse of Georgina Baillie by ruthless BBC broadcasters, it was revealed that Gary Glitter’s 1970s hit “Thank Heaven For Young Women With Photographic Identification Certifying They Are Of Legal Age” was on a list of “related listening” for GCSE music coursework.

“This is completely inappropriate,” thundered Education Secretary Paul Dacre. “If a sixteen-year-old listens to a Gary Glitter song, it is scientifically proven that they will regress in time to being underage, and then have sex with him.”

It is understood Glitter could reap several pounds in royalties, a significant amount compared to the tens of thousands of dollars he still makes annually from American radio play.

“Anyone even thinking about this song is probably raping children themselves,” said Zoe Hilton in an NSPCC quickie press release. “So give us your fucking money, you filthy fucking nonce.”

A sixteen-year-old in Britain can have sex and even get married. However, they cannot be photographed having the sex in question, appear on page three of The Sun (any more) or drink in pubs, and must under no circumstances be allowed to become aware of the existence of Gary Glitter songs, in case they corrupt their inherent moral purity and righteousness.

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YOUNG ADUWTS, Nozin’ Around, Monday (NNGadget) — A new generation of “online hoodies” is wreaking havoc in cyberspace, Internet security touts are warning.

The hackers, some as young as 12, begin by breaking into newspaper production systems and replacing news of substance with ridiculous headlines such as “Scientists discover breasts cause cancer,” “Sexism confirmed by evolutionary biologists,” “Sarah Palin exists” or “Online hoodies stalking the web” in an attempt to outrage people into clicking on them.

When they do, the ridiculous message promptly causes a buffer overload in the reader’s brain, filling it with an overflow of nonsense and causing them to think such ideas are reasonable, sane and even interesting. In the final stages of an infection, the victim clicks repeatedly on TMZ, hoping for upskirt shots of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton.

Hacker “wins” of late have included breaking into the Republican National Committee and replacing its phone scripts with patently insane slanders and mudslinging against Barack Obama, and engineering the hilarious placement of an idiot Alaskan redneck as a Vice-Presidential candidate.

“We need them out on the streets,” said Kevin Hogan of Symantec, “using their energy and practicing their running, route-planning and knife skills, not sitting at home getting obese.”

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SECURITY EIGHTPLEX, Whitehall Odeon, Sunday (NNN) — The UK Council for Child Internet Safety will be mandating word filters on all Internet communications in the UK.

“We have buttiduously canvbutted the industry, buttessed what is available and buttembled the finest selection of PFI contractors for this buttignment,” said Schools Secretary Ed Balls. “The filters will buttociatively clbuttify all communications and filter then, I can butture you, rebuttemble them with surpbutting exacbreastude in any quanbreasty. Consbreastuents can be rebuttured that a mulbreastude of industry compebreastors will butture quality and keep our clbuttrooms safe. EDS Capita Goatse will not embarbutt us.”

The plans have attracted wide criticism. “It will only give supersbreastious rebutturance to medireview thinkers,” said the Open Rights Group. “Automated systems won’t solve human problems like loveual harbuttment. Mbuttacring the written word into a Picbutto painting is not the anbreastank missile of Internet safety.” Unions also butterted that such close buttessment of staff in the workplace would hamper efficiency and could verge on workplace harbuttment. “Watermeloning cranberries.”

Balls was unfazed. “Butterting free speech is one thing, but a triparbreaste committee considers that that does not justify mere pbuttive breastillation at the expense of others.”

The first filtering offices will be set up in Arsenal, Penistone and Scunthorpe.

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