News of the News

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, Blind Idiot Heaven, Sunday (NNN) — Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, says that “banks are doing God’s work,” comparable to Hurricane Katrina, the eruption of Krakatoa and the Tunguska event of 1908.

“There is a balance to all things,” said Mr Blankfein. “God created Heaven, and He also created the banking sector.”

Mr Blankfein points out that there are always business opportunities, even in the hard times. “The blood, the frogs, the lice, the flies, the livestock diseases, the boils, the hail and — of course — the locusts came about after the deregulation we lobbied for. But market efficiency has been increased, which is good for capitalism and therefore good for everyone. The darkness is strictly temporary for the duration of the mortgage on your firstborns unto the seventh generation.”

Goldman Sachs is set to pay a record £12 billion in salaries and bonuses this year. “It rewards our good work in creating investments so complex that not even we understand them. No blame, no shame! Past Avarice and through Wrath and Sloth, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treason! The suffering will wash away your sins! Praise the Lord!”

Recovery is expected through 2010. “The financial system led us into the crisis and it will lead us out. We have opened the Seventh Collateralised Debt Obligation of the Covenant and a mere one-third of the globe has collapsed, far less than our forecasts. What could possibly go wrong now? The way out is the way through! So if you could spare just a few billion dollars’ spare change, sir, for a latte and a burger, that would help us greatly, and God bless you sir, God bless you.”

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YOUR DESK, Work, every day is like Monday (NNN) — It’s five minutes past nine and the workplace economy is in the doldrums. Everyone is present but no work is flowing. Economics is, after all about the flows. How to stimulate industry?

While workers’ in-trays remain thin, the rate of decline across the office is slowing as people face up to the task of opening Outlook and getting their twitching right middle finger away from the delete key. Wordless grunt output rose 0.5% between 9:05 and 9:10, the fastest pace of growth since the start of business according to your boss who cycled in at 8am and looks like he’s about to run a marathon around the desks. You look up bleary-eyed and wonder if he has an amphetamine gland but conclude the fucker’s just like that.

The recovery formula is complex. Your arsehole co-worker wants his tea bag contacting water for thirty seconds, your nice co-worker wants Earl Grey which takes longer, your boss wants some herbal hippie rubbish and you want yours boiled orange in a boot with four sugars. All this takes five minutes away from your desk during which you don’t have to do complicated things like work a keyboard at this hour, merely pour boiling water all over the place with gay abandon.

But a successful quantitative teaing should see better flow of fingers on keys, increased word count in looking-productive emails, a break from reading the b3ta message boards and a risk of actual effort returning. Followed by a handy break to piss like a fountain and coincidentally play several rounds of Snake on your phone before walking quickly back to your desk as if you’re in a hurry to get there.

While there are tentative signs that quantitative teaing is working, there remains more to be done. Some work would probably be an idea. Additional tea can help the flow of work about the office, help you try to pretend your co-workers are in any way shaggable whatsoever and help you look forward to drinks after work with your nice co-worker where you can both hold forth with detailed discussion of your excess competence and productivity and chronic deficit of pay, despite the complete absence of any evidence whatsoever that either is the case.

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HECK, Pennsylvania, Friday (NNN) — Leaders of the world’s biggest economies have announced that they have won the financial crisis fight. “It worked,” declared the Group of 20, “and will keep us in power long enough.”

The April G20 meeting declared that the world economy was “facing its greatest challenge in our generation. We must do whatever it takes to shore up the system that has worked so well for our donors and very good friends. And get re-elected.”

Today’s draft statement says that “our forceful response helped stop the dangerous, sharp decline in our credibility and that of the financial markets. The people are still living under bridges and eating boiled shoe leather, but they think we’ve got a plan to get them out of it. God bless ’em and their cute little dreams!”

But there is much to be done. “A sense of normalcy should not lead to complacency. There are 2010 mid-terms to think of as well as the 2012 Presidential election.”

The programme is expected to continue. “As we face the current global and economic crisis, the G20 has proven its effectiveness and usefulness by bringing together leaders of both developed and developing countries in the quest to save their own skins. Gordon’s still totally screwed, of course.”

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THE MEMORY HOLE, London EC1, Monday (NNN) — Barclays and HSBC have passionately defended the City’s culture of bonuses barely a year after the government bailout of the financial system.

“I am shocked, shocked — oh, my cheque? Thank you! — that such bonuses have had to be paid again,” said John Varley, chief executive of Barclays. “Naughty, naughty traders! What can you expect, they’re like kids, they are. They’re like Premier League footballers or Hollywood rock stars or something else that sounds cooler than ‘rapacious scum.’ And we just have to be Roman Abramovich to compete. There are other oligarchs to impress, you know! I mean, there’s a financial system to keep pumping. Capital flowing efficiently to where it’s most needed, or will grow fastest anyway. We’re the arteries of the free market and the traders are the aneurysms. I’m sorry, I’ll start that again.”

A jump in profits for both banks led to speculation as to huge pay deals, with details to be published on Wikileaks later in the week. Barclays Capital has profits of half the British Isles, while HSBC has options on half of Hong Kong.

But criticism of the banks came from across the political spectrum. Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the Financial Services Authority needed to show “real teeth” rather than the false ones that worked so well from 1997 until 2008. Minister for Women and Equality Harriet Harman said they needed more women in the boardrooms of major banks. Shadow chancellor George Osborne replied that Mrs Thatcher was getting on a bit, but did so well last time that they were sure she’d still do a better job than the current government.

Stuart Gulliver of HSBC explained: “If a trader makes a deal, they know two days later how much they made. If it’s a five million profit, that is something we can count, we can see it, it’s real. If it turns out a couple of years later to be a hugely leveraged disaster requiring trillions in government bailouts to avert the total collapse of the world economy, how were they to know? It’s most unfair and disrespectful of artistic genius. We’re putting the 2008 crash in for this year’s Turner Prize.”

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WINDOWSGRAD, Seattle Oblast, Thursday (NNGadget) — Microsoft has reported spectacular results for the April to June quarter, say completely independent tech journalists.

“With profits allegedly down by a third,” said Rob Enderle, “Microsoft is absolutely poised to make a brilliant recovery next quarter. Windows 7, man!”

Revenue came in at $13.1 billion, down 17% from the same quarter last year. Net profit on this revenue was $3.1 billion, down 29% from a year earlier. Microsoft shares fell 7% in after-hours trading.

“Wall Street analysts claim these numbers don’t match their expectations,” said Mary Jo Foley. “What do they know about business? They should be grateful that Microsoft made their so-called numbers twenty-two years running, and not whine because they haven’t made any of them in the last year. It’s their patriotic duty to raise Microsoft’s stock price. Wall Street are a pack of un-American communists.”

The world’s largest software maker said it had been affected by weakness in the global personal computer and server markets, particularly by having to sell Windows XP for $5 to keep netbooks from going entirely Linux.

“Some manufacturers were going to release netbooks with ARM processors, which would run Linux or Chrome OS at twice the speed, half the heat and ten-hour battery life, but wouldn’t run Windows 7. Microsoft assures us this is a crushing blow for ARM,” said Michael Silver of Gartner. “ARM didn’t have anything to say to that, just a guffawing sound down the phone. Obviously they’re upset and hysterical.”

The one bright spot was the company’s cost-cutting measures. Five thousand employees were laid off in January, with another thousand to go in August. Further, all management staff have been given bonuses to ensure their continued excellent performance.

“Microsoft’s future is absolutely assured,” said Michael Gartenberg. “Windows 7 will be completely unstoppable! Look at it on this laptop Microsoft, er, lent me! Hold on, I’ll just get out of Ubuntu and boot it into Windows … uh, don’t print that bit.”

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BAGHDAD, Seattle, Wednesday (NNGadget) — Microsoft is discontinuing its Microsoft Money personal finance management product.

In a press release touting the third annual MSN Money “Customer Service Hall of Shame and Hall of Fame,” Microsoft was first place for shame, followed by XBox at number two and Windows Live Search at number three.

“It’s a mix of what’s going on in the market,” said marketing marketer Adam Sohn, “what makes sense for long-term for us and a little bit on consumer behavior. We have of course notified both customers.”

Other Microsoft products discontinued this year include OneNote, MSN Groups, Office Accounting, Office Live, PerformancePoint Server, the Origami netbook, the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference, the company picnic and five thousand employees. Though they’re still spending $100 million to advertise the Microsoft Bob Hope search engine.

The associated MSN MoneyCentral site provides Web content to help users manage their personal finances. “The site will continue,” said Mr Sohn, “as a resource for customers looking to manage their finances. We’ll be including lots of tie-in information from our Encarta encyclopedia.” A staffer frantically tried to get Mr Sohn’s attention at this point.

In keeping with the Great Recession and Microsoft’s financial prospects in the last year, the software will be rebranded and reissued as Microsoft Debt.

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CYBERSPICE, Brass Eye, Saturday (NNN) — Children’s charities are backing a private member’s bill proposed by Baroness Massey to make Internet-based retailers run age verification checks.

A check on twelve sites found that thorough checks were not being done. “You can buy a case of vintage Burgundy online from France without supplying fingerprints, driver’s license and a DNA sample!” said Baroness Massey. “This sort of thing is clearly responsible for juvenile delinquency and teenage knife crime, as heated discussions over the best pinot noir of the last decade come to blows.”

The move is expected to boost the economy. “It is too easy for children to buy alcohol, knives and violent video games online. If we make it harder, this will make it enticing.”

In a supervised test, a 16-year-old boy bought pre-paid credit cards and then went online to see if he could buy knives, drink, age-restricted DVDs, games and pornographic website subscriptions. The youth cautioned that insufficient data had been gathered and they definitely needed to do another six to twelve months’ testing before he could give any reliable conclusions as to what he had managed to obtain. And a two-terabyte USB hard drive. And a faster Internet connection.

“Our efforts to keep children safe are being seriously undermined by these ‘internet’ arseholes,” said Zoe fucking Hilton, publicity-with-menaces advisor for the NSPCfuckingC, weighing in as usual. “Any retailer we don’t like is a pack of fucking paedos and I hope they fucking die horribly. Cunts. But they can reassure us of their bona fides by giving the NSPCC money. Usual bank account, thanks. That’ll do nicely.”

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REHABILITATION PROJECT FORCE, Hemet Gold Base, Friday (NNN) — Ten of America’s largest 19 banks have failed the stringent economic “stress tests” based on the teachings of Dianetics.

Senior investigators from the Office of the Treasury (”Big OTs”) found that, considered as thetans, the banks were too weighed down with engrams, from this and past lives, and the engrams of the many “sub-prime thetans” still attached to them.

The test involves financial executives holding the “cans” in a firm grip while answering questions such as:

2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?
8. Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people?
23. Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do?
24. Is it normally hard for you to “own up and take the blame”?
30. Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates?
59. Do you consider the modern prisons without bars system “doomed to failure”?
76. Do you sometimes give away articles which strictly speaking do not belong to you?
124. Do you often make tactless blunders?
125. Are you suspicious of people who ask to borrow money from you?

“The economy’s been like a volcano that’s about to blow,” said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “Our hope is that banks can get back to the business of banking, staying upstat and producing Valuable Final Product, to lift the cloud of uncertainty.”

Analysts broadly welcomed the results of the stress tests. “The IQ test seems to have been very accurate,” said Eric Kuby of North Star Investment Management. “The fears of entheta and the influence of suppressive persons have more or less disappeared.”

The current Federal Reserve system was set up in the 1950s as the result of a bet between Alan Greenspan and L. Ron Hubbard.

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KEEP SHOPPING, And Avoid Panic Buying, Wednesday (NNN) — After weeks of police warnings about the smelly hippie anarchists coming to the City to destroy your entire way of life, tens of protestors descended on Liverpool Street Station yesterday to save the world from capitalism.

Although the demonstrations were quiet, police reported sudden tremendous violence from the protestors after the mainstream media had given up and gone home. “There were distorted reports and completely faked phone videos in the troublemaker blogs that the police were starting stuff,” said Metropolitan Police chief Luckless Cipher, “but it was just us protecting civilisation from these scum. Acting up when they thought no-one was watching. Fake blood and stuff. Terrible.”

The most danger was apparently from an anarchist group known as the Space Hijackers who had come to make their feelings felt through the medium of street theatre. “We dealt with that quick smart, let me tell you. One minute street theatre, next minute dirty bomb chemical jihad attacks! You mark my words.

“And we got these really cool trucks, too. They’re big and black and armoured and have speakers on the top. Fantastic! You can blast away these bloody hippies, er, violent and vicious anarchist attackers.”

Property damage included a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, although the burning effigy of Sir Fred Goodwin appeared to be being hoisted by a group of normal suburban families on a day out.

Sir Luckless reiterated the need for strong policing. “Forget these ’statistics’ showing crime going down year on year for the last two decades. Read your Daily Mail. It’s a jungle out there! You need us! More of us! To serve and protect!”

In the meantime, the G20 meeting has decided to leave the environment for a later meeting and France and Germany won’t agree with the US and UK on the economy, so the most important matter left to deal with will be how to keep the ACTA treaty secret and arrest all the filesharers.

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BIG BLUE DONG, Mars, thirty-five minutes ago (NNN) — Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, said the global financial crisis was caused by “blue people with white eyes.”

He made the remark after the nuclear annihilation of major financial centres around the globe by people who thought they were glowing superhumans made of pure energy.

“This is a crisis that was caused by blue people with white eyes. And before the crisis, they looked as if they knew everything about everything. A crisis that has come from the United States and Europe, but is affecting our country.”

Following the meeting, incredibly handsome, intelligent, pretty and noble international finance reporter Robert Peston Veidt sighed and said he would solve the crisis. “I’m going to ask the G20 summit next week to support a global expansion of trade finance of at least $100 billion to help revive trade in all parts of the world,” he said. “I can throw in about half myself out of pocket change, manufactured from nothingness by my truly remarkable IQ.”

Rumours of an odd-looking fellow in trench coat and hat seeking out Sir Fred Goodwin in order to break his fingers one by one could not be confirmed.

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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, London EC1, Wednesday (NNN) — Sir Fred Goodwin’s house and car in the Grange, Edinburgh have been attacked by vandals.

Revelers queued for several hours for the opportunity of a piece of the action. Two scenes-of-crime officers from the Scottish Police Services Authority kept the crowd orderly. Neighbours, who said Sir Fred had not been seen there for weeks, did a roaring trade in rotten tomatoes and cabbages and bits of wood with a nail through the end.

Sir Fred is assumed to be overseas, reportedly hiding out with a false beard under an assumed name in a market stall in Marrakesh.

Lothian and Borders Police said that officers were acquiring CCTV footage and carrying out door-to-door inquiries in the neighbourhood. “Our inquiries are at an early stage and we are appealing for anyone with information about this incident to contact us. We’re looking at OBEs for the participants and recommending a knighthood for the organiser.”

The attack is considered likely to presage similar activity in the London G20 meeting protests planned for early April. Barack Obama, who will be attending, called on protestors to take action in an orderly and civilised manner. “Torching houses and smashing cars creates a horrific waste in spent carbon. All these materials can be recycled and used again. The same goes for the bankers — reusing their organs is a lot more socially responsible than tearing their guts out and hanging them from streetlights. What would Al Gore do? I beg you, think of the planet.”

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THE MEMORY HOLE, London EC1, Monday (NNN) — The ringleaders of a gang of bank robbers who operated with impunity for years have been brought to account before a Treasury Select Committee.

Tom “Orange” McKillop, Andy “Pretty Boy” Hornby and Fred “Nosecutter” Goodwin of the “RBS Massive” led a vast criminal conspiracy dedicated to skimming off huge amounts of dosh through veiled threats of “dat’s a very noice small business you got dere, shame if its cashflow got buggered, innit,” “loans” to shadow “property” and “construction” companies they owned large chunks of, and a twisty maze of Excel spreadsheets.

They and their lieutenants took for themselves more “bonuses” every time they destroyed more economic value from their hideout in the industrial wastelands of London EC1.

The gang members were severely tutted at by Alistair Darling and the Financial Services Authority. The criminals having apologised, this is expected to be an end to the matter, as is standard for jawdropping bank heists. They have also undertaken not to leech off any more cash. This year. Probably.

“Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea!” said Gordon Brown at Davos last fortnight.

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THE RABBIT HOLE, Isengard, Tuesday (NNN) — The National Republican Trust will be financially supporting primary opponents of any Republican Senator or Congressman who votes for President Obama’s $800 billion economic stimulus package.

“We can’t have people passing bills just because they’re a good idea,” said director Scott Wheeler. “Working with others goes against everything we were elected for.

“Giving people money like this rewards failure. Taking away bankers’ bonuses turns this crisis into a catastrophe for them. We need to keep them trickling down on people.

“You have to remember, this bill’s backed by the gay-married Muslim Kenyan Frenchman who stole the Presidency from us in a liberal media conspiracy landslide. Who’s to say what the stimulus package is really for? ACORN, birth control advocates and Hollywood, that’s who! Who’s the real Stimulus Package?”

“People are hurting right now,” said Mr Obama, “but we hope to hold off the worst with targeted spending, keep the money flowing around and build up infrastructure for the future. You don’t want to think how bad things could get.”

“You betcha!” said Governor Sarah Palin, preparing for her 2012 run at the Presidency.

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The World Economic Forum in Davos is discussing a Cthulhu-led financial recovery.

“Britain is uniquely placed to lead this effort,” said Gordon Brown, “with the horrifying necessities being explained to the public by such televisual works as In The Night Garden. Adults will be driven to spend more time at work to get away from the mind-twisting horrors and their children will be properly indoctrinated in the cult of the Great Old Ones.

“Yes, my name is Great Cthulhu
Ia! Ia! Fhtagn gruh R’Lyeh!
Come to eat your mind and dreams too
Ia! Ia! Fhtagn’nagl gruh!”

sang Mr Brown.

“As their souls are consumed,” he said, “the workers’ semi-animate bodies can continue to go through the motions necessary to keeping the economic machinery fed. The surplus unemployed will make fine appetisers. You cannot kill that which has no life.”

Peter Mandelson then started a video showing strange multicoloured puppet creatures assembling and dancing frenetically, their incomprehensible eldritch chanting in an unknown tongue to a chorus of unearthly tritone-filled music growing faster and more anguished for three full hours until ending in a long, terrible chorus of howls, while brightly coloured lights flash on a gazebo and a toy train and farting blimp circle about. “Ipsy, upsy, Daisy Doo!” he added.

Nicolas Sarkozy objected, stressing French post-modernist philosophy’s powers to exterminate all rational thought. Angela Merkel offered up German porn. The Japanese merely smiled quietly.

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SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday (NNN) — Microsoft Corporation is headed for swingeing layoffs in mid-January after the failure of its stock buyback program, and has called for a government bailout in the face of the credit crunch.

“Vastly popular operating systems like Vista just aren’t selling,” said marketing marketer emeritus Bill Gates, “and it’s all because people aren’t confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn’t start buying it in 2007 because they were expecting this even then. A subsidy to buy good, honest American computer operating systems is essential to the health of the economy, or my part of it.”

Should the Big One of American virtual office supplies fail, economists predict that it could free up millions of dollars in business spending and provide a devastating boost to an economy reeling from the impact of the credit crunch.

Hiring in most Microsoft divisions has frozen in the last six months and 30GB Zunes are already on suicide watch. “The workload’s impossible to keep up with,” said blog technical evangelist Gary M. Stewart. “I’ve even been answering Slashdot comments on Boycott Novell. It’s impossible to keep track of! Anyway, you’re just another Twitter sockpuppet. Or Mini-Microsoft. Admit it.”

Additional bailouts have been hooked on the bill as riders for HD-DVD, eight-track cartridges, 78rpm gramophones and Babbage analytical engine gear manufacturers.

Senators have stated they will only bail the company out with a change in top management. “What the shit,” said Linus Torvalds as his draft notice arrived.

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DOWN T’ PIT, London EC1, Wednesday (NNN) — Business leaders were unanimous in their protest against the European Parliament vote to scrap the UK’s opt-out from the Working Time Directive.

“Workers should be free to work any seventy hours they choose. There is of course no element of coercion whatsoever in any workplace we could find, and we actually asked the proprietors of as many as two or three.”

They also noted the terrible effects such a ban would have on the hospitality industry, with the normal British worker no longer needing to down six pints in their three spare hours a week in order to regain the power of speech.

Alejandro Cercas, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party MEP who brought the vote, said the parliament’s 421-273 vote to end the opt-out would help create “a social Europe,” where all workers, jobs and pay packets would be interchangeable and indistinguishable and everyone could live in clean and spacious grey concrete blocks just as good as everyone else’s.

The NHS cautioned against the possibility of junior doctors no longer working 72-hour shifts, as having enough time off shift to be aware of their surroundings might lead to them realising what a hellhole they had signed up for.

Alan Duncan, the Shadow Business Secretary, attacked Gordon Brown for failing to control Labour’s MEPs. “The only way out of the recession is to allow workers an unimpeachable excuse to get the hell away from their families. British business will be unable to compete if individuals do not have the free and untrammeled choice to choose to slurp heartily at the anus of their undoubtedly charming and personable line manager for seventy hours in a week while being paid for forty.”

When it was pointed out that business leaders had said this about the five-day week, every health and safety rule ever written, the abolition of child labour and the abolition of slavery, he said “British business will be unable to compete if it has to spend time thinking up new excuses.”

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MENEZES, London EC1, Friday (NNN) — The jury has returned an open verdict at the inquest into the death of Woolworths, which people mistook for a viable company. It rejected the administrator Deloitte’s account that Woolworths was killed lawfully by two auditors who shot it seven times in the High Street.

Neville Kahn, a partner at Deloitte, said they had only been seeking to get the best value out of the stock and assets, and certainly hadn’t just been looking for a whacking bonus on selling the patient’s organs off, no no, with deep discounts on the last of the insufficiently cheap though quite nasty plastic crap, Irish pork, Haringey social workers, lesser Geldof daughters, copies of Virgin Killer and behind-the-counter cigarettes. And bloody pick and bloody mix.

THE JURY’S KEY ANSWERS

Did receivers shout ‘armed accountants’? NO
Did difficulty in identifying the point of the company under surveillance lead to its death? NO
The pressure on auditors after the financial suicide attacks of late 2008? CANNOT DECIDE

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Commons the death had been a “most terrible mistake, which we deeply regret … Oh, we’re not talking about banks or financial services? Right-o, carry on then, blow the buggers’ brains out. I’m busy saving the world over here.”

The bullet-riddled corpse of the company will be sold off for parts. The stores have attracted the interest of Asda, Morrisons, Lidl, Poundland and Dixy Authhentiic Fired Cihcken. The name will, with economic deflation, become Wlths.

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GOSPLAN, Whitehall, Saturday (NNN) — Chancellor Alistair Darling has outlined future plans to subsidise the economy per Labour’s 1983 manifesto. “We can’t of course just seize control — we’ll entice them in. I’m sure we can come to a suitable synergy between the state and the chosen corporations.”

Peter Mandelson graciously accepted the request to manage the operational aspects of the new command-and-control economy. “No company or sector can expect automatic bailout. We must evaluate likely winners. And see if they’ve been good boys and girls this year. I’m making a list, and I’m checking it twice.”

The lists are confidential. “No-one could leak the lists and not expect, say, an arrest by counter-terrorist police under the Official Secrets Act and a day or two of questioning while their home and office are searched. I speak entirely hypothetically, of course.”

Lord Mandelson clarified his earlier quote about becoming “filthy rich.” “What I said was that New Labour don’t care if you become filthy rich, as long as you pay your taxes. And remain dear, dear friends of ours.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government was “working very closely with Barack Obama’s economic team,” producing a July 2008 photograph of himself with Mr Obama as evidence.

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WINEHOUSE CASINO, 11 Downing Street, Tuesday (NNN) — Prime Ministerial glove-puppet Alistair Darling detailed Labour’s economic stimulus package today. “We must keep the economy moving. As usual, we will achieve this by recruiting more civil servants and shuffling taxes around. Quick, which shell’s the VAT under? We will also force banks to lend more without such rapacious antisocial considerations as ability to pay back the loans.”

“The bank bailout was a mere coverup for the Labour government’s gross economic mismanagement during ten years of prosperity,” said David Cameron. “That sort of irresponsible capitalism, let run loose in a plague of free enterprise, would never have been allowed to happen under a Tory government … stop sniggering over there.”

“The Prime Minister is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover,” said Boris Johnson, “and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the pain.”

“Not to worry,” said Mr Darling, “we’re taxing the hell out of drink too.”

“The recession must take its course,” said shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley. “Recession improves the moral fibre of the nation. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families. They sit around the wireless in communal bonhomie, huddled for warmth and filled with the Blitz spirit, listening to the BBC Home Service, feeling reassured that all is right with the world once more and the BBC announcer is broadcasting wearing a dinner jacket.” Mr Darling responded with threats to put Lord Mandelson on Strictly Come Dancing.

The Metropolitan Police rejected plans to order 10,000 taser weapons for police on the beat, but said they may reconsider in the event of a Conservative government.

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PAGE 3, Financial Times, Friday (NNN) — Alistair Darling today admitted that the economy was disastrously seized up, with one in twelve London workers likely to lose their job.

Across town, Nigella Lawson wore a low-cut dress revealing quite spectacular quantities of well-nourished breastage, with photos in all papers.

In the United States, Wall Street is melting away like Belloq’s face after Indy told him not to look in the Ark and Henry Paulson said he would not use the second $350 billion of the stimulus package, leaving the economy unpushed at a critical time and the Detroit car manufacturers on the verge of collapse.

In Australia, Nicola McLean’s breasts, which had undergone hyperinflation, were marvelously decorative and pointy and set off nicely by the other I’m A Celebrity bikini babes, Dani Behr and Carly Zucker, despite the influx of Robert Kilroy-Silk and kangaroo testicles.

Back in the UK, the economy is deflating, the banks have seized up, no-one is buying or selling houses and next week you’ll have to eat your shoes. And John Sergeant is a huge tit.

“But at least we’re not short of massive boobs,” said Mr Darling. “And call and vote on Strictly Come Dancing! Before the telly’s repossessed.”

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