News of the News

AUSTRALIAN GLADIATORS, Sky None, Monday (Mediocre Grauniad) — In an exclusive interview with one of his employees, Rupert Murdoch announced that it was time to draw a line in the sand in his constant battle to frustrate freeloading consumers by scheduling extensive rhinoplasty.

As the logical extension of his intent to improve monetization of his global media empire, an aggressive research team, led by his own grubby, questing index finger (itself a semi-autonomous publicly traded subsidiary of ArmCorp) had discovered a hitherto unprofitable branch of Mr Murdoch’s own face and immediately set to analysing the potential in the “streaming content” market.

“Thanks to the pervasive and anarchic medium of light and an endemic, unscrupulous approach to photon-consumption,” said Mr Murdoch to a camera he owned, “the public have been stealing — we believe it is theft — visible spectra which carry a representation of my nose. When I consent to an interview, a TV appearance or a personal meeting with an individual, we are entering into a contract in which I am licensing access to me, Rupert Murdoch, a highly lucrative and profitable range of properties and services.

“For too long, people have been content to pay only for access to my thoughts, speech or round-the-clock footage of the contents of my bowels — via the Times, Sky and Fox News respectively — while stealing valuable images of my nose, its nostrils and their contents, then rebroadcasting and shamelessly profiteering.

“When a reporter negotiates an interview with me, as well as broadcasting the material he has licensed legitimately, he frequently steals additional content without permission. Telling another reporter down the pub ‘I just interviewed that arsehole Murdoch, what a leathery-faced, jowly, big-nosed, offensive wanker he is’ is time-shifting and re-disseminating unlicensed intellectual property. Commentary based upon my opinions is legitimate as paid output from the premium outlet of my mouth. Any entertainment derived from the rest of my face is theft, pure and simple. There is no such thing as fair use.”

The interview itself took place on Sky Channel 149, a pioneering venture to broadcast 24-hour footage of the view from Mr Murdoch’s bathroom cabinet. In line with Mr Murdoch’s policy of preferring fewer paying customers and no freeloaders, Sky 149 has precisely one subcriber, with Mr Murdoch himself paying himself hundreds of thousands of dollars each month for access, for the purpose of shaving.

Having successfully franchised out his forehead, jowls and cheeks to a conglomerate representing elephants born without ball-bags, and following a failed attempt to charge a subscription fee to customers prepared to pay to punch Murdoch square in the nose, the decision was eventually made to excise the entire section of the business, rather than allow further illicit exploitation, piracy and copyright terrorism.

When questioned as to what purpose the resulting gap in his cranial portfolio might be turned, Murdoch suggested that he was tentatively considering offers from the adult entertainment market to employ his skull cavity as a giant fucking cunt.

• *pint* to Scott Lamb for the above

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PAGE 3, Wapping, Saturday (Mediocre Grauniad) — Your Super Soaraway Sun! comes out today against DISGRACEBOOK, the vile “social networking” system used by perverts, murderers, paedos, Catholic priests, Guardian readers, Labour ministers and other SICK FILTH.

Your Sun has mounted a FULL INVESTIGATION into the Facebook DEN OF INIQUITY, with an intrepid Sun journalist risking his life and reputation going into the front-line of fire on the site, posing as an ordinary person and yet securing several SERIOUSLY DIRTY afternoon liaisons with previously decent and innocent young ladies (pictures on pages 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12) — all carefully verified as being just over sixteen — so as to courageously root out this CYBER-FOULNESS.

The Sun can reveal that Farcebook has NO flagging mechanism to filter out PERVERTS, MURDERERS and FRAUDSTERS, unlike socially responsible places for friends such as the family-friendly MySpace network.

“Facebook DISGUSTS any decent British person,” says Luscious Lucy, 19, of Sheppey, in her editorial opinion column on page 3 today. “MYSPACE is a much more decent, wholesome and PATRIOTIC place to meet people. I’d never let my family anywhere else. Here’s my perky, puffy nipples on the site, in case you’re not sure.”

Even our NEXT PRIME MINISTER Dave “DAVE” Cameron agrees. “Yes, I saw about Facebook on Sky News. We’ve consulted with relevant senior media figures, and will be looking into severely restricting Facebook’s odious operations in the UK and requiring MySpace for widest possible public access to government services. I’m also told there’s an excellent service called Delphi that the British people should be encouraged to use. Toodle pip!”

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DERAIL REPLACEMENT BUS, Tranniesport for London, Thursday (Mediocre Grauniad) — I love travelling on the tube. Where women are women, men are refuse and transsexuals don’t offend me with their alleged existence. But since the advent of free papers such as Metro, it feels like my reading material isn’t my own. Trannies keep nicking my paper.

No sooner do I put one paper down to browse through another than it gets appropriated by some man with breasts. And when I demand its paperwork proving it’s the gender it spuriously claims to be, it looks at me funny!

I believe in share and share alike, but this morning I put my copy of Transsexuals: The “Women” Behind Hitler down on the seat opposite and someone who looked like a bearded man but was far too pretty to be one by birth — men do nothing for me, so this was obviously a woman — just leaned over and took it. Damned cheek! I called it a penis-wielding misogynist magazine rapist, but it just looked at me oddly, so obviously didn’t have a penis.

Does this happen to you or do I just look like a mug or soft touch? Don’t they know I work hard at discussing serious feminist issues and gender determinism in society?

I believe they do. Transsexuals have been hounding me for years, just because I quite objectively described them as misbegotten scum who should be put out of our ideological misery. Hideous twilight in-betweeners, trying to hijack female privilege from real women. Vile and odious halfling monsters oppressing women and children, particularly me, by their mere existence and interrupting my important journalistic work and committing the misogynistic hate crime of interfering with my speaking fee income. Hell, I bet they’d question Julie Burchill’s feminist cred.

The worst was last night after a few serious feminist drinks at which we resolved that “Andrea” Waddell had logically relinquished all right to be considered human. I woke up in the morning to discover some fucking tranny had puked all down my shirt. Worse than that, one had pissed my pants too. Fucksakes.

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WEB 1.99 RC 1, Oh God it’s nine o’clock, Monday morning (NNN) — Two-thirds of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook during the working day, wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.

The survey was conducted by Morse IT, with no consideration whatsoever of the company’s extensive line of Internet filtering products.

Twatbook was costing the economy £1.38 billion zillion a year, pointless meetings learning to synergise our buzzword growth were costing £65.23 billion zillion a year, MP3 file sharing was costing £12 billion zillion a year, reading the Daily Telegraph was costing £15.25, drinking tea and eating food was costing £17.243154 (recurring) billion zillion a year, blinking on the job was costing £5 billion zillion a year and employees going to the toilet rather than having catheters fitted to stay at their desks 24 hours a day was costing £6.66 billion zillion a year. b3ta was free, for some reason.

The total losses to the economy added to more than the national gross domestic product, strongly suggesting that showing up to work at all, and indeed the capitalist system in toto, was a net loss, and we should all live off farming our back yards and send our tweets via actual carrier pigeons.

Temp agency OfficeAngels disagreed. “As younger generations join the workplace, I believe UK businesses will, inevitably, have to embrace social networks, recognising the benefits of providing staff with potential for business networking. So they can find a job somewhere that doesn’t insult their intelligence by blocking a knitting needle shop as a ‘weapons site’ or something equally twattish.”

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TWITTER CENTRE, Whiter-than-White City, Friday (NNN) — Jan Moir today claimed London had been “ethnically cleansed” of heterosexual people after her appearance on Twitter Question Time last night.

“London is no longer a city my grandparents would recognise. It is changed beyond all recognition. Pooftahs from end to end!”

Ms Moir also complained about the change of format. “We know from the floods of emails from the lurkers who support me that the tweet stream was not shown in its normal format. They deliberately changed the whole format of Question Time in order to deal with me.”

But despite her bumbling delivery on last night’s tweet stream, the British Daily Mail Party claimed the event had sparked the “single biggest recruitment night” in the party’s history, with 3,000 people registering to sign up as members once a recruitment freeze — introduced in response to tens of thousands of PCC complaints over her last column — has been lifted.

By far the most savage account on the politician came from Twitterer Stephen Fry. “At one point, I had to restrain myself from slapping her. I had thought we’d face a formidable orator, somebody who knew her facts and had her ducks in a row, but the woman was a mess!”

Facing angry heckling, and at times looking shaken, Ms Moir:

• Repeatedly refused to give her views on homosexuality;

• Said that her statements that “these bum-burglars should all be killed by hideous torture to cleanse their terrible and sinful deviation” had been grossly misinterpreted and taken completely out of context;
• Was forced to deny she was a pathologist and was better at telling what Stephen Gately had died of than the medical examiner;
• Accused her detractors of an “orchestrated response” based on having completely unfairly actually read the article and conspiring to be revolted by it.

David Dimbleby, who chaired the session, wore a hideously garish green tie that just didn’t go with that suit at all, darling. Honestly.

Nick Griffin sighed in relief that it hadn’t been him. “It could have been disastrous for the cause of white power, I mean, English Aborigines.”

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TELEVISION OUTSKIRTS, Osterley, Wednesday (Mediocre Grauniad) — In a submission to the BBC Trust, BSkyB has lambasted the BBC for using taxpayer’s money to invest in television, claiming the move would “stifle innovation” in the marketplace.

“They shouldn’t go off and do their own thing and use their unique funding to drive a coach and horses through the market development,” said Sky commercial director Stephen Nuttall. “That’s Rupert’s job.”

Rupert Murdoch said that the BBC and Google were conspiring to make all content free. “The BBC model can’t possibly work. You’d think it was good or something. Well, it isn’t, it’s shit. Hardly any tits at all.” He condemned Google blatantly stealing content from news services such as News International, all of whose papers’ websites not merely fail to block Google but actually have a special site map just for Google to index content from. The Independent faithfully echoed Mr Murdoch’s words in Sunday’s editorial, railing against Google despite themselves serving up an index page especially for them.

Google did not comment, but did mumble something about newspaper advertising being down 29% on last year and internet advertising having greater dollar value than television advertising. In other news, the search for a new chairman for ITV is in its sixth month.

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[SUPPRESSED], Wikileaks, Tuesday (NNN) — Carter-Ruck and Associates, the finest libel lawyers in the world, have successfully protected the good reputation of oil and toxic waste company Trafigura by obtaining an injunction preventing the Guardian from reporting the fact of a Parliamentary question on Trafigura dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast, killing and injuring thousands.

“It’s been hard work,” said a source we were injuncted from naming, “but the public repute of my client, who cannot be named, is absolutely protected from these allegations that do not exist, or may as well not exist. British defamation laws remain unequalled in the First World.”

The Parliamentary question relates to Trafigura dumping thousands of tons of sulphurous coker naptha mixed with caustic soda off Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, with full knowledge as detailed in internal emails that doing so would likely cause thousands of injuries and deaths.

Bloggers around the world were unanimous in their praise for Trafigura’s fine public spirit and Carter-Ruck’s fancy footwork, with enough admirers on Twitter to make “#Trafigura” and “#CarterFuck” the top two trending terms for much of Tuesday.

“We at Carter-Ruck are proud to be so effective in protecting such deserving clients, and look forward to working just as effectively for the reputations of similarly environmentally well-behaved companies around the globe,” said Carter-Ruck’s new directors of marketing George Monbiot and Julian Assange.

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TELEVISION EXTREMITIES, Shepherd’s Bush, Saturday (NNN) — After Jeremy Clarkson’s column in the November issue of Top Gear magazine berating BBC executives’ fondness for “black Muslim lesbians,” a crack squad of said demographic has staged a coup and taken over the show.

“The plague of political correctness means that women are allowed to have jobs, ethnic minorities are not discriminated against, and bullying and sexual harassment are not allowed. This would be a disaster to Top Gear,” he said in the column.

In the next episode, airing tomorrow evening, the new team will crash-test Jeremy Clarkson’s ego using a Robin Reliant, a Sherman tank and a spare NASA probe similar to the one shot at the moon yesterday. The climactic finale will involve a clue-tipped nuclear bomb being directed at Jeremy Clarkson’s skull. “We’re fully confident not even that will penetrate,” said Linda Bellos.

Scientific testing suggests that Mr Clarkson is in fact a highly intelligent and knowledgeable man, as is Jonathan Ross, despite the gross implausibility of such a result. The reports are being reviewed by Ben Goldacre. Jonathan Ross has also been found to look better in a miniskirt, and his blackness, lesbianism and Islamicity are under review.

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PAGE THREE, Daily Fail, Friday (Mediocre Grauniad) — From Monday week, the London Evening Standard will compete with freesheet London Lite by paying readers to take the wretched thing.

“We will widen the paper’s audience as a deterrence against corruption,” said proprietor Alexander Lebedev. “To this end, we will engage in widespread bribery to get readers.”

“Sustaining a paid-for afternoon newspaper had its challenges even when we were trying to bribe people with chocolate bars or umbrellas or just quietly give it away free unofficially,” said managing director Andrew Mullins. “Paying people to take a quality newspaper with large scale and reach should transform our commercial fortunes. What we lose on each copy, we’ll make up in volume. OI, GARÇON! MORE COKE AND HOOKERS OVER HERE, TOUTE SUITE S’IL VOUS PLAÎT, MATE! Did we mention our boss is a lunatic Russian billionaire trying to buy respectability?”

“The important thing is to speak to your audience,” said editor Georgie Grieg. “After a day at work, actual sentences just go straight over the head of the typical office worker. So we’ll print fifteen full-colour pages of celebrity cleavages, ten of completely bullshit science stories that are actually marketing press releases, twice as many Sudokus as the Lite and a daily cartoon of a dog turd speaking entirely in asterisked-out swearing. And maybe a bit of news for light relief. I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t accept money to be seen in public holding that!”

The move will raise fresh speculation about the future of afternoon free newspaper London Lite, much of whose editorial content is supplied by the Standard. The Lite managed to avoid the London Paper trap of good graphic design and a decent cartoon, having instead taken the care to look like something that would permanently stain your fingers grey even when printed on good quality paper. In a “truth in journalism” initiative, the new Standard will be printed on toilet paper using actual faeces.

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WELL I NEVER, What Will They Think Of Next, The Future (NNGadget) — The “tech world” is awash with excitement for today’s scheduled release of a hundred thousand invitations to preview Wave, Google’s innovative new website, communication protocol, interactive environment, multiplayer online role-playing game, bulletin board, wiki, dessert wax and floor topping. Experts, all heavily consulted by the media while Parliament is in recess, say it will revolutionise how we do business, organise parties, manage projects, make friends, waste our employer’s time at work, pick up girls we swear we didn’t realise were under sixteen and cheat on our homework.

I’ve been testing the Google Wave Developer Preview. The implications for journalists alone are stunning:

• Collaborative reporting: Using the Google Wave interface, two reporters can take turns at the keyboard of an Internet terminal and “type” both their names at the top of an article. Then they can both write material for the article below the double byline! Incredible!

• Record and archive interviews: We can write down the words actually spoken by an interviewee. The words can then be “saved” for use later. Amazing!
• Timelines: The Google Wave Timeline™ can be used to show a timeline of events — just type a clock time and then note what happened around that time! Punctual!
• Discuss what you read: People who read stories can write “comments” on them, by writing them in their Google Wave interface, then “e-mailing” then in to the editors for due consideration and possible publication on the next day’s edition of the “site”! Interactive!
• Smarter story updates: Instead of adding “Updated” to the end of an updated story, we can use the Google Wave Cursor™ and the Google Wave Arrow Keys™ and edit the story text in the middle! Make those commenters look as silly in their supposed “corrections” as you know they should do!

In conclusion, Google Wave is clearly an absolute boon to the noble institution of the Fourth Estate in its mission to protect the public good, further the dynamism of social discourse and watch the watchmen. And this is why we at News International consider Google a threat and menace to the news media and the institution of journalism that must be reined in by government edict without delay. God bless you all, and please PayPal us 20p for having read this article, you parasitical pixel-stained technopeasant. And now, Tories and tits.

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DACRE, Moron Piers, Tuesday (NNN) — Associated Newspapers today suspended all injections of scaremongering bollocks after a reader seemed to die of stupidity hours after reading the Daily Mail.

Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam, was found dead in his armchair after reading the UK Daily Mail’s campaign against cervical cancer vaccines and the Irish Daily Mail’s campaign for them in the same hour. “The doctor said his brain function had ceased six months before,” said his grieving wife Brenda, “shortly before he started getting the Mail home delivered. It was about then he started smelling funny, too. But only yesterday he was talking about asylum-seeking Poles and house prices!”

Critics of the Daily Mail have said it will encourage promiscuous idiocy, with reports of outbreaks of Richard Littlejohn. “Big Publishing is abusing our grandparents for memetic experiments. It’s all about money for them. A hundred-year-old criminal enterprise targeting our loved ones!”

Associated Newspapers has refused to say whether it would still allow tens of thousands of grumpy old gits across the country to receive the paper in the months ahead. But there were calls for the entire Daily Mail distribution programme to be suspended in the interests of sanity and good taste.

A number of Busybody’s mates down the pub have reported similar side-effects after our reporter paid them for their kind participation in this story.

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TOO FAR DOWN UNDER, Marketers At Work, Saturday (NNN) — In the quarter-final ad break of the Australian Football League grand final, Kraft has revealed the winning entry in the competition to name its new spreadable Vegemite cream cheese mix: Axle Grease Shit 2.0.

The winning name was submitted by Dean Robbins, 27, of 129 Cowle Street, West Perth, Western Australia 6005. “What? Won? Fuck off. Really? Oh Jesus. I just thought it was funny. Look, we were really fuckin’ stoned, right? The big jars make great bongs. It gets really dull in Perth. Just don’t print my name or where I live, all right?”

Acclaim for the new name has been universal. “Lean customer engagement value justification social media benchmarking personalized interconnected sincere voice user-directed market identity,” said Kraft marketing marketer Simon Talbot. “Strategic promotainment visibility ‘wow’-factor network actionable content optimisation wiki analytics B2E brandstorming corporate DNA semantic mapping please dear Lord stop me before I kill again Obama effect synergy ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn research embedding. We even have the theme song:”

I said, do you spikka my language?
He just smiled and chundered Axle Grease Shit 2.0 all over me.

Colin Hay from Men At Work has reprised his most famous song for the commercial, but did want it noted that it was only because he was desperate for the cash and that he would be ritually killing himself immediately after the recording. “I might throw myself into a vat of Axle Grease Shit 2.0. There’s nothing like it!™”

Later ads have licenced an old Shell Oil jingle:

When the going’s hard
Don’t retard
Remember your lubrication.

“Actually, I might wait for Axle Grease Shit 2.0.1,” said Hay. “Dot-zero releases never work right.”

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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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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Sunday (NNN) — The British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons (BOOBIES) has put out a concerned press release claiming to be about competition from overseas surgeons in an attempt to market man-boob reductions.

“Unethical clinics in other countries continue to offer obscenely superfluous surgery cheaper than we do in Britain,” said the press release, “and it remains legal for people to give them money instead of us. This is unacceptable to patient, and particularly surgeon, welfare. Also, did you know that your unsightly and disgusting man-boobs can be discreetly removed surgically?”

Shocking results include:

• 100% of clinics surveyed did not offer refunds via BUPA.

• 100% of overseas clinics failed to be based in Britain.
• 100% of overseas clinic surgeons did not also consult for the NHS.
• BOOBIES members can do you a great deal on man-boob reduction.
• Over 90% charged more than British surgeons did for equally superfluous surgery. Did we mention that bit?

“In addition,” said the press release, “we’re doing better business in man-boob reduction surgery. It is vitally necessary to patient, and, as we mentioned, surgeon, welfare to issue a piece of press release journalism advertising the availability of authentic British man-boob reductions.”

BOOBIES stressed that they offered the finest value in man-boob reductions and hardly any of them would accidentally install DD silicone inserts instead. “But if we did, it would certainly get the chicks. Probably.”

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WELL I NEVER, See I Told You, Friday (NNN) — Low-level shitkickers at a crappy public relations agency knowingly and with malice aforethought abusing the title “researcher” have found, on the spec sheet listing the official desired outcome for their “research,” that women — all women — are overcome by a burning desire to share gossip as soon as they hear it, particularly when plastered on the fine Chilean plonk being promoted by the agency’s client.

They will spill the beans to at least one other person within (precisely) 47 hours and 15 minutes, typically in between declaring the recipient their best mate ever and emphasising how they really should keep in touch better.

The study of 3,000 women aged between 18 and 65, some of whom were not fictional, shocked and appalled public relations staff and free newspaper journalists by openly naming the client who had paid for the puff-piece to be inserted into the paper, accompanied by a stock photo of one woman saying something into another woman’s ear while both were wearing low-cut cocktail dresses and leaning slightly forward to emphasise eye-catching cleavage.

Michael Cox, seller of a cheap petrol-flavoured substance apparently intended for near-human consumption which occasionally comes with a plastic cork instead of a screw-top, said: “It’s official — disgusting drunken slatternly trollops can’t keep secrets, as any reader of [INSERT NEWSPAPER NAME HERE] would realise about the subhuman distaff species after their daily commuter-time scientific revelation concerning female inferiority.

“We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told, particularly after a refreshing glass or six of our unsurpassed products. No matter how precious the information, it’s often out in the public domain within 48 hours. Thankfully they’re usually too pissed to remember it the next morning when they’re cleaning their own puke out of their knickers. Filthy fucking whores, the lot of them.”

Men were adjudged vastly more able to keep a secret than women, mostly by virtue of not knowing what constituted one and not caring.

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OOMPA LOOMPA VILLAGE, Silicone Valley, Friday (N! News) — Katie Price has reportedly sent Peter Andre late-night texts claiming that she is still in love with the publicity she got with him, telling him the magazine covers were her “farytaele” in one message and that “I <3 ur pblicty & wnt 1 mr chnce” in another. A third message referred to the custody battles over the pair’s paparazzi.

She sent the messages two weeks before the pair’s quickie divorce, as covered in all papers on Tuesday. The Sun ran a cover shot of Ms Price in her finest orange, the Daily Star ran an old topless shot, George Monbiot in the Guardian praised the ecological soundness of her idea-recycling (though Hadley Freeman fatuously compared her and Andre to people with actual talent) and the Economist reported on the value of ghostwritten novels, autobiographies and autobiographical novels as mass-produced commodities, with its Intelligent Life supplement detailing the advances in computerised text generation.

The news is sure to devastate Ms Price’s cagefighter side of beef Alex Reid. “There is no way she would be sending those kind of messages with Alex in the room with her,” said an unnamed source at her public relations agency, “and I doubt he’ll be pleased. Until she explains to him in grunted monosyllables and a few pokes of the cattle prod the whys and wherefores of getting on front covers.”

Meanwhile, the now-uncovered news areas of politics, health care, world news and financial news have been swooped upon by the gossip magazines. The cover of Closer features the bags under Gordon Brown’s eyes over time, while Heat features the lesbian Icelandic prime minister’s old bikini shots. Both magazines said they were continuing to turn down paparazzi shots of Tony Blair, no matter how many he sent in.

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I’M A BLIGHT ON HUMANITY, Get Me Out Of Here, Saturday (NNGadget) — It’s August, the best of times when you’re a space-filler generator in IT journalism, as every other media outlet turns into a gaping void at least as bad as ourselves. This leads to the inevitable debate: which is the best operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard?

Operating system name: Windows 7 gets lots of page hits and comments from individual Microsoft fans who, it’s true, just happen to be employed by Microsoft’s PR company, but are completely independent in their thinking. Snow Leopard attracts Apple cultists, freshly charged from reading a novel-length apologia at RoughlyDrafted and all set to refute perceived calumnies and smite the unbeliever. Either is great for the ad banner exposure. Tie.

Upgrading: Windows 7 has an insanely complicated upgrade graph, whereas Snow Leopard’s is: “put the disk in the computer.” The former is way better for extended articles on how it’s even easier to do a complicated Windows upgrade process by hand than it was going from XP to Vista and saves us lots of work thinking of things to write. Apple just fail to provide us material. Advantage: Windows 7.

Presentation: Windows 7 has the thoroughly reworked taskbar and the beautiful fonts and polish of Vista. Mac OS X has minor variations on the same interface it’s had for eight years. Windows 7 looks just way more exciting in screenshots in tech press articles. Advantage: Windows 7.

Improvements: Microsoft made Windows 7 as backwards-compatible with Vista as possible, down to application performance and memory usage. They did dazzling things with the presentation of all this functionality, putting everything you use every day into exciting new places, with helpful new names. Apple, on the other hand, focused largely on internal plumbing and security. It’s just dull, boys. How are we supposed to puff this up? C’mon, meet us half way here. Advantage: Windows 7.

Price: The Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is $120 on Amazon, whereas Snow Leopard is $29. Apple just aren’t putting enough value on their products. Do you want people thinking it’s just cheap garbage? Advantage: Windows 7.

Enterprise readiness: No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. If you get a Mac, however, your co-workers will conspire against you and probably steal it. With Windows 7, you can be sure no-one else will ever want to touch your computer. Advantage: Windows 7.

System configuration: Microsoft gave me this laptop with only eight CPU cores and 16 gigabytes of memory to show just how good Windows 7 was on such low-end hardware. We had to buy a Mac to do this test on, because Apple just didn’t understand the promotional advantages of giving me a shiny new 17″ MacBook just because I wanted one. So I got a second-hand Mac Mini for a fair comparison. It’s clear that Microsoft understand the needs of modern information technology journalism perfectly. They also sent over their PR people Candy, Brandi and Bimbi to help me with my Windows setup all last night. Apple just completely don’t get it. Advantage: Windows 7.

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, August (NNN) — Men prefer websites designed by men, women prefer those designed by women and designers prefer those designed by designers, according to a new study by Gloria Moss, a lecturer in Press-Release Science at Bucks New University.

“It’s August, so the differences spring from our … caveman ancestors!” said Professor Moss. Men’s eyes are slightly further apart than women’s, giving them better stereoscopic vision for ogling large breasts. Men prefer to design and use websites with straight lines, unfussy detail, regular typography and tits. “Digs in Lascaux in the south of France show the original version of nuts.co.uk, which was painted on the walls of the cave.”

Women prefer websites about cooking, cleaning, housework, submissive workplace behaviour and gossip, particularly the sort in free newspapers you glance at on the train. Pink flowery decorations are also favoured. Also, they need to show more cleavage in the workplace and waggle it around at after-work drinks to get ahead in their careers.

Designers write blog rants about typefaces and kerning, under the delusion that anyone gives a shit. “Everyone else uses Comic Sans specifically to piss them off. Wind ’em up and watch ’em go!” They also spend inordinate amounts of time trying to put in penis logos to amuse their mates on b3ta.

Professor Moss’s research is to be published in the Journal of Metro in September. “Free newspapers count as publication credits these days. Had you even heard of Bucks New University before this article? Me neither.”

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NO MICROSOFT WAY, WebTV Centre,Wednesday (MSBBC) — Microsoft has unveiled new technology that will allow the BBC to completely outsource its technology news section to Microsoft.

This cements an informal relationship that has been in place since BBC News slimmed down surplus staff such as subeditors, proofreaders or most of the journalists. “Tech news is a brutally competitive area,” said Ashley Highfield of Microsoft, formerly of the BBC. “It’s a race against time to be first with the rewrite of the press release. I must point out, by the way, that my current job is in no way related to the Microsoft-based technology I put in place when I worked for the BBC.”

The new technology will automatically pull in Microsoft press releases, add grammatical errors, talk down to the reader, substitute technical terms with inaccurate synonyms and then misspell them and put them in quotation marks. Articles will be padded with analyst quotes computer-generated by an expert system describing how Google will destroy rainforests and Apple phones cost too much.

Recent output includes articles on Microsoft’s Zune, Microsoft’s collaboration with Nokia, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s copy of the Nintendo Wii controller, Microsoft suing Windows pirates in China, long articles on Bill Gates’ charitable foundation and medical evidence that Google causes cancer.

The system is guaranteed robust. “In fact, we’re running it on a refurbished Xbox,” said Highfield. “Absolutely nothing can go wr E74 ◉ ◉ ◉

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PAGE 3, Channel 5, Friday (Mediocre Grauniad) — The collapse of Murdoch evening freesheet The London Paper has thrown the vapid fishwrap industry into turmoil.

News Group Newspapers had already been reeling under the impact of even a 20p Sun only being bought by people too thick even for Metro. “Celebrities!” said London Paper editor Stefano Hatfield. “Train strikes! Viagra ice cream at Selfridges! Half-naked black women as well as white ones! Science from the University of That’s A Bit Bloody Convenient! Politely-phrased middle-class suburban fascism, none of your unsubtle Daily Mail-isms! Not even the Em cartoon was enough! What did we miss?”

The paper will be much-missed by the Lumber Cartel and the binmen division of Unite. The London Paper single-handedly made up a quarter of all the rubbish in the streets of Westminster and low-cost housing was under construction using remaindered copies of City Boy.

The London Paper could move behind the News Group paywall. “It works for the Wall Street Journal! There’s got to be a fantastic market for bad fashion, annoying non-celebrities, tedious City non-gossip, gay dating non-tips and indisputable scientific proof from cosmic ray measurements that women need to drink like fish and bathe in semen to grow and uplift their breasts and succeed in business. ‘Down-load’ it to your iTouch Kindle 360 today!”

“You’ll never go broke underestimating public taste,” said Rupert Murdoch, fresh from the triumpant news that MySpace had lost $500 million in value since he bought it. “Well, usually.”

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