News of the News

WELL I NEVER, Do-As-You-Please, Wednesday (NotScientist) — The minister for science and innovation, Lord Paul Drayson, has praised the high standards of science journalism at the sixth World Conference of Science Journalists in London yesterday. About 900 delegates attended the conference to congratulate each other on the remarkable quality of their press release transcription skills.

“The public relies on dependable science journalism to understand the forces shaping the modern world,” said Lord Drayson. “Your work covering the things that really matter, such as pseudo-evolutionary explanations of current fashion trends, what will give us cancer this week, scaring the crap out of people over the MMR vaccine so their kids die of birth defects from measles instead and why fellatio is required for female health helps people make important choices about their lives and builds a vital gap between scientists and the public. I mean bridge.”

He dismissed claims that typical science reporting primarily results in sensationalist and misleading headlines. “I wish more journalists would follow your example. The ones covering MPs’ expenses certainly should have been working the way you do.”

The speech was delivered to a backdrop of A-level students in lab coats. And bikinis.

Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro calculated that Lord Drayson’s speech could power all of Britain for six months purely from harnessing the steam coming out of Ben Goldacre’s ears.

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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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CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Surrey, Monday (NotScientist) — In a revolution for the forces of allopathic hatred and the negation of human spiritual potential, a strike force of rogue sceptics has, using the funding of their pharmaceutical death-dealer masters, negated homeopathy with the proving of a new remedy: homeopathic homeopathy.

The preparation was initially energised using the explanations for Plutonium Nitricu 30C (homeopathic plutonium), Positronium 30C (homeopathic antimatter) and Rational Sceptic 10C (homeopathic exploded brains of people hearing of the previous two). The succussions of the subsequent dilutions were done using a mechanical potentiser based on the arm of Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of homeopathy, which pounds the mechanical arm against a firm rubber pad from a height of five inches twenty times in two seconds. This is also effective when applied to the patient just before presenting the bill.

The provers found they experienced the complete sensations of every ingredient that had not been added to the solution as, like all homeopathic solutions, it was guaranteed to contain no ingredients whatsoever. This gave them complete understanding of all possible effects of nothing but pure distilled water energised only by a £5.99 price tag from Boots on the bottle. They then proceeded to get new jobs doing something actually useful for a living.

Ravenwoo Granola (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine, University of Bums on Seats) countered that hundreds of years of carefully documented study of homeopathy could not be at error. “I dosed myself with a homeopathic preparation from my own anus before considering your question, thus assuring my brilliance and perspicacity on this subject.”

Internet users, however, heralded the results, suggesting pouring the contents of a homeopathic preparation of Scientology into their DSL modems to protect them from blithering stupidity, and homeopathic goatse to protect them from 4chan.

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A344, Gateway To The West, Sunday (NNN) — Thirty-six thousand revellers, hippies, wiccans and general space cadets have gathered at Stonehenge for the summer solstice, throwing astronomical megalith calculations into chaos.

Wiltshire riot police, fresh from the hugely successful G20 operation, kept the fuzzy-brained masses at bay with horses, drug sniffer dogs, an unmanned flying drone and a battalion of level thirty-one family tradition Dawkinsian sceptics, admitting only essential maintenance druids into the fence around Stonehenge itself to handle the load on the ley lines powered by the henge.

“Whooo,” inhaled druid Leatherman Travaglia through his teeth, “yir big-end’s lost cosmic dimensionality and yir astral cabling cannae handle the power. ’S gonna cost ye. I’d try the homeopathic positronium, but the wee glass bottles cannae take it, Captain. Ye cannae change the laws of metaphysics!”

As the druids began their incantations, Wiccan priestesses drew their cowls tight against the damp morning air and half-naked dancers waved their hands in the air and went: “Woo, woo, woo.” “Lookit the fiminine energies on that one!” said Travaglia.

Restrictions were placed on the amount of alcohol revellers could bring in and police said they would not tolerate illegal drug taking or unlawful raves. However, it turned out the most apparently off-their-heads were just like that normally.

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TOYNBEE, Internationale, Saturday (Mediocre Grauniad) — In an interview with The Guardian, Gordon Brown teased and taunted Britain and the Labour Party with claims that “I could walk away from all of this tomorrow. I’m hurt, terribly hurt by the things people have said.”

Cabinet gritted its teeth and stifled the urge to shout “THEN FUCKING GO,” realising there was no-one on hand who was any less rubbish.

“I’m not as great a presenter of information or communicator as I would like to be. I don’t actually think I’m very good at it at all. That thing you do with your face, where the corners of your mouth go up, that Peter does when he’s dancing on skulls … it’s weird and unnatural.”

He also spoke of the “common purpose” between Lord Mandelson and himself. “I must say, his way with the vertebrae of anyone who crosses him is really quite impressive, not to mention his skills with eye of newt and tongue of frog. People in the Labour Party are coming to appreciate his talents, or at least the ones who enjoy being able to walk. There’s great affection for him now, and hardly any garlic or silver crosses.”

Despite the issues his party had faced in the last month, Mr Brown said he was confident Labour could still win the next general election for two reasons: Labour’s huge successes in handling the economy and MPs’ expenses, and truly stupendous quantities of hallucinogenic chemicals in the water supply for 10 Downing Street.

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SHOCKED, SHOCKED, Casablanca, Friday (NNN) — Giving in to public pressure, the House of Commons yesterday revealed all MP expense claims for the past five years, heralded on the front page of every newspaper today with pictures of large black rectangles and all cryptic crosswords and Sudokus being replaced with public participatory efforts to go through the raw data looking for the most jawdropping claims.

“I am shocked and appalled,” said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, “that my government would conceal its expenses from its leader, who knew nothing of this at all, and then attempt to conceal the concealing. Don’t they trust me?“

The results were fed through an experimental Cleanfeed Internet filter, switched on after the Ministry of Defence had asked BT to block all UK access to Wikileaks.org to conceal the documents showing they had accidentally revealed the location of MI5 as oops, it’s slipped my mind.

“Revealing MPs’ expenses will only grant succour to journalists and paedophiles,” said the Internet Watch Foundation. “Trust us on this.”

“I can categorically assure taxpayers that arse feck we’re busted,” said retiring Speaker Michael Martin.

The Liberal Democrats have signaled their intention to seize the day, look this gift horse in the mouth and completely fail to turn it to anything resembling electoral advantage. As usual.

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HEY HEY 16K, What Does That Get You Today, Thursday (NNGadget) — As well as attempting to give the major record and television companies whatever they want until the end of time, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for “culturally British” computer game development.

Planned games include Lard Warrior (“the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player’s avatar on the screen. Rated 18+ for explicit neck beards”), CCTV Panopticon (“take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public, defeat final boss with Doctorow Attack”), Bottled Tan Snorter (“get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence, insufficient nipple slips or words of two syllables”) and Cynical Apathist (“write outraged blog posts and comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running, avoid removal by the Guardian moderator”). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone, with a cassette interface emulator that sends Apple 99p every time you get an “R: Tape Loading Error.”

The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister Ed Vaizey has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. “We’ll keep their passports from them until they reach ‘Achievement Unlocked.’”

Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. “Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I’ve just given everything they’ve ever asked for. And a pony.”

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RATCHED, Westminster, Saturday (NNN) — In a survey of over 600 people working in Westminster, less than half were able to locate their heart on a diagram, less than one third could distinguish the gluteal muscle from the joint in their arm and many could not locate their own posterior under any circumstances.

The researchers said they found little difference in understanding of human anatomy between their survey and a similar one done in April 1979.

The results showed that:

• Knowledge was poor and had dropped back to the same level as thirty years ago.

• Many stoutly asserted that the heart was “propaganda” and “a myth” and that any such organ would be entirely unfeasible in practice.
• Despite inability to locate the gluteal muscle, in many subjects it was 90% of their bodily mass, with a large nerve going directly to the pocket located adjacent to it.
• Those whose hip pocket nerve was most problematic had the most trouble locating it or even admitting to its existence.

“Human anatomy remains a mystery to most of these people,” said John Weinman, who led the study, “though it is questionable how relevant it is to some of them.”

Suggested remedies include radical surgery to remove the most prominently overgrown gluteal muscles, scheduled to be performed no later than 5th May 2010.

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T3.COM, Tellyhouse, Thursday (NNGadget) — Controversy surrounds Connectivity’s new mobile phone directory service “Stalkertivity,” with privacy campaigners denouncing it as invasive.

Connectivity gets the numbers from market research companies, any online business you ever gave your number to, a hacked copy of the Telephone Preference Service anti-telemarketer database and scraps of paper retrieved from the streets outside nightclubs on Sunday mornings. “We are passionate about making the way we all stay in touch even easier,” said Connectivity CEO Raj Raithatha. “Particularly the quid per touch, we’re very passionate about that.”

The service has been ascertained not to be a data protection violation by the Information Commissioner’s Office. “Our official opinion was completely uninfluenced by any prospects of lucrative consultancies with Mr Raithatha’s companies when, in the fullness of time, any of us retire from civil service employment in, say, the next three months.”

The company approached the four mobile network operators for full directory information, but opted not to pursue legal action to obtain it after being told to “bog off.” “They said their customers would far prefer an ‘opt-in’ approach,” said Mr Raithatha. “Quite apart from the implausible and frankly unnatural spectacle of a mobile phone company appearing to give a shit about its customers, we simply couldn’t operate this business on an opt-in basis. Opt-out is far more market-friendly. Just look at the helpful promotional email everyone gets so much of, and how opting-out works so well to staunch the flow!

“We would never, of course sell off the opted-out numbers on in the unlikely event our brilliant business plan hits the rocks, or if we feel like cashing out or anything. Promise.”

Privacy campaigners are also concerned at children being stalkable through the service. “But don’t worry, you can join our 0800 phone queue for two hours or pay a quid to text us an opt-out. We’ll take your child out of the database in only four weeks, promise! How many calls can they get in that time? Really!”

Mobile users hailed the initiative and its opt-out nature, with thousands of people organising to call the 0800 138 6263 opt-out number and the curiously unlisted mobile, office and home numbers of Mr Raithatha and his financial backers at investment firms 3i and DJF Esprit at thirty-second intervals in shifts around the clock. Each individual caller offered an opt-out facility covering calls from that one person, however, and also one for the many pizza, takeaway and marital aid deliveries to Mr Raithatha and his relatives, friends and business associates.

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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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PRIVY COUNCIL, Flush Twice, Friday (NNN) — Lord Peter Mandelson has become deputy prime minister in the latest cabinet reshuffle, one of the highest positions held by an unelected politician in recent times. Joining him is Sir Alan Sugar, to become Lord Sugar, as enterprise secretary.

“Elections are so passé,” said Lord Mandelson, “don’t you think? Look at the EU vote. They couldn’t think of any proper parties to vote for, so the few who showed up and could, you know, work a pencil voted in the Nazis and those UKIP idiots.

“Clearly, elections are an idea whose time has passed. We need to get back to a monarchy with a solid system of courtiers. Thus, only the unelected can join the cabinet and, in due course, become Prime Minister. Or Grand Vizier, as I prefer to call the rôle.”

Lord Mandelson reassured everyone that Gordon Brown had seen off the latest round of attackers with knives for his back and that Mr Brown was safe in his position for at least another week. “But should he take ill or otherwise be unavoidably detained, in a dungeon or tower or similar, you will be comforted to know that strictly temporary succession plans are firmly in place and he has a deputy ready to do the job pro tempore. Just in case it should prove unfortunately necessary.”

Lord Mandelson also reassured everyone that Lord Sugar was not merely waiting for the right moment to break the news to Mr Brown. “Or the cameras.”

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FINDHORN, Astral Plane, Age of Aquarius (NNN) — The New Age spiritually aware around the world are running up against the end of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Mayan date 12.19.19.17.19 will occur on December 20, 2012, followed by the start of the fourteenth cycle, 13.0.0.0.0, on December 21st.

The event was first flagged by megalith scientist Terence McKenna. The end of the thirteenth cycle would break many megalith calculations — which conventionally use only the last four numbers to save on standing stones — with fears of spiritual collapse, disruption of ley lines, Ben Goldacre driving the chiropractors back into the sea and the return of the great god Quetzalcoatl and the consequent destruction of all life on earth.

Megalith programmers from 4000 years ago are being dredged up from peat bogs and pressed into service to get the henges updated to handle the turnover in the date. “It could be worse,” said one. “I could still be programming COBOL.”

Sceptics may choose the Winter Solstice on December 22nd (13.0.0.0.1) to attack, to take advantage of weakened qi. In case vital services are temporarily cut off, spiritually aware persons should stock up on crystals, copies of Sun Signs, a duly blessed tarot deck and other essentials. “They should get as well a suitable selection of blessed Hopi ear candles,” said Y2012 consultant Arkady Rose, DD, 31°, Ph.D (Univ. P.T. Barnum Mail-Order), “unicorn posters, holistic medicines, Silver RavenWolf books, purple clothing, protective pentacles — earrings for the ladies, pendants for the gents — make sure the house is absolutely robust in feng shui, your energetic vibrations are aligned and your Eostre rituals are up to date and keep only homeopathic quantities of money around. I’ll be happy to take on the danger of handling the rest. Here’s a price list. Everyfink for the spiritual survivalist.”

Others dismiss the problem. Sandra Noble of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies considers the Y2012 problem “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.” However, Y2012 consultants deride “2012-deniers” for having their heads in the sand as to the vast and overwhelming spiritual importance to humanity of keeping their consultancies rolling.

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UNLIMITED SUPPLY, There Is No Reason Why, Friday (NNN) — More than seven million Britons use illegal downloading sites that keep billions of pounds circulating inside the British economy rather than being sent overseas to US media companies or obscure tax havens, despite almost everything on offer being appalling rubbish no sane person would pay a penny for, according to unnamed researchers copying a passing number found in a 2004 press release from music industry lawyers trying to drum up business.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report brought home the impact illegal downloads had on the UK economy as a whole. “If we take as read the music industry’s assumption that every download is a lost sale, then billions of pounds are freed up for ordinary people to spend on things of actual economic substance to keep local businesses healthy, rather than chasing phantom pseudo-value from things that have an inherent cost of reproduction of zero. This makes the whole economy more efficient and lets money go where it is actually useful, rather than to Bono’s numbered account in the Virgin Islands.”

The government says it will be hard to change attitudes to free downloading, particularly from the entrenched old media parasites. “Studies consistently show that downloaders buy more music. We have to stop this and get them downloading dodgy rips from BitTorrent, rather than official high-quality versions from iTunes.”

The report also noted that new, faster broadband services could increase file-sharing, which was already more than half of net traffic in the UK. The ISPs modestly declined credit for their part in helping Britain’s financial future, noting that it was their customers, the great British public, who had voted with their browsers to do the hard work of keeping the country afloat.

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BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Brussels, Wednesday — Given the choice of thieves and/or liars, neo-Nazis, palaeo-Nazis and plain gibbering nutters, those voters who bothered with the 2009 European Parliament elections rather than staying home to work on their taste for White Lightning have reluctantly and with great pain chosen the Greens as the gibbering nutters of choice, despite the party’s deep suspicion of any technology or medicine more complicated or considered than banging two rocks together. Sustainably-quarried rocks, chiseled in a free-range masonry with high quality state-funded education.

The party maintains that its position on technology, science and medicine has been grossly misrepresented. “The spiritual colon cleansing over MPs’ expenses has been vastly entertaining for all, for example. Furthermore, bombing — I mean, gently encouraging — Westminster back to the Stone Age is a surefire winner for our national ambitions.”

The UK Independence Party accused Eurocrat electoral infiltrators of having “robbed” it of votes in the design of the ballot paper as its voters could not find it on the ballot, being unable to figure out how to unfold the paper. The party will be mounting a legal challenge on the matter as soon as they find consultants able to explain to them how to work pencils.

The remaining Labour voters have demanded legal protection as a minority cult religion, or possibly a diagnosable mental illness.

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EUROTRASH, Antoine de Caunes, Tuesday (NNN) — The great Scottish British English tennis ace Andy Murray stunned observers with his brilliant moral victory over the Spaniard Chilean Fernando González at the French Open in Roland Garres on Tuesday afternoon, showing these people-who-begin-at-Calais what-for and romping home with one brilliant set to the Chilean’s robotic and soulless three.

“He correctly identified the ‘ball,’ a round object that one apparently hits with a ‘tennis bat’ — or ‘bat de tennis,’ to use the Continental term — over a ‘net,’ at least three times out of every four,” said veteran Telegraph sports commentator Ian Chadband. “With this level of skill on tap, continued and unstoppable British dominance of all known sporting endeavours is absolutely assured.”

The Chilean pretender disgraced himself, his country and the entire Hispanic race with his silly headband, quite ridiculous metrosexual stubble, childish yellow shirt and brutish retreat to mere thuglike physical force and accuracy over the considered, reasoned, subtle planning and brilliance employed by our chap Murray. “His comical hot-blooded Latin fist-shaking whenever he technically ‘won’ a ‘point’ was particularly amusing. One more such victory and they are surely ruined.”

The wily French openly conspired with their South American crony to set up their Open on a primitive artificial clay court, rather than the proper grass field favoured by gentlemen. “Still, educating such backward savages is the white man’s burden and why we have an Empire,” noted Chadband.

“‘Gonzo’! What sort of puffery is a name like that, I ask you? Such foolishness in the noble game of tennis just isn’t cricket.”

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GRASS MUD HORSE, Tiananmen, Tuesday (NNN) — BT, Britain’s biggest broadband supplier, has thoughtfully averted complete congestion of the Internet by throttling all use of the Internet on its cheapest broadband package.

Customers on the I Can’t Believe It’s Eight Megabits package have all Internet data flow cut off entirely under its “fair use” clause during “peak periods,” defined as being between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 11:59pm. “However,” said a customer service telephone voice menu, “the connection itself runs at the full eight megabits the entire time. That we guarantee absolutely.”

BT has recently sold the technology to China, where it was put into operation today, blocking Twitter, Blogger, Microsoft Bob Hope and the live webcam of the coffee pot at Cambridge University. “We will not put up with the drop in productivity social networking sites cause,” said a spokesrivercrab. “After the terrible onslaught of blue screens at the Olympics, we will stop at nothing to protect patriotic citizens from the influence of Microsoft. And they love us for it. Just find one who doesn’t!”

“Besides,” said the BT phone menu, “we’re still better than Virgin. A high bar to aim for, I know. But you get such better fail whales over a phone line than a cable.”

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WIKIALITY, Clearwater, Saturday (NNN) — In an unprecedented move, top-ten social networking site Wikipedia has banned Susanboylists from editing the encyclopedia and claiming Susan Boyle had won Britain’s Got Talent instead of dance troupe Diversity.

At a hearing at Wikipedia’s Supreme Court on Saturday, hanging judges voted unanimously in favour of banning members of the Church from posting or editing any more material on the angel-voiced virgin songstress.

Several anti-Boylist editors were also blocked, including one who said “Simon Cowell is quite a nice fellow, actually, judging quite fairly and decently in the face of some terrible rubbish,” after Mr Cowell threatened to sue.

The court heard from a former member of Susan Boyle’s Office of Special Affairs, a department responsible for running phone banks to dial in votes for Miss Boyle. “The guys I worked with called every day all day. I worked with someone who used five separate phone banks, five separate anonymous identities to refute any statements made about Susan Boyle.”

The Church of Susan Boyle believes all your troubles are caused by the souls of dead space aliens, blown up in volcanoes seventy-five million years ago by Piers Morgan.

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ODDIE, Whitehall, Friday (NNN) — The call of the MP is disappearing from Westminster’s countryside, according to the latest research that adds the little-loved species to a growing “red list” of the country’s most endangered birds for the first time, according to the latest assessment of Britain’s 646 Members of Parliament by the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Bastards).

The MP, which funds its nest-eggs from the nests of others, has suffered a drastic decline in habitat and in the resources of those species it parasitises. The number of MPs considered to be most endangered has risen to over 50%, mostly from the left side of the field.

The MP’s unmistakable two-note call, described by Wordsworth as a “ker-CHING!”, is traditionally known as “the harbinger of Happy Hour.”

“When the RSPB was formed, few would have been concerned about the MP, the family member parliamentary researcher, the moat around the nest,” said Society leader Gordon Brown. “Now these creatures are some of our most endangered species. Won’t someone please think of the parliamentarians! Think of the tedious twats who’d be left without us! Just imagine Frank Field as speaker!”

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GORDON BROWN BLOCK, Brit-Cit, Wednesday (NNN) — The Home Office and the Metropolitan Police are establishing “cyber-courts” at police stations and major shopping centres to dish out “instant justice.”

Launching the scheme this morning, Virtual Justice Secretary Jack Straw said such courts “have the potential to transform how justice interacts with society.” The first court was trialled at Charing Cross police station, where two drink-driving cases were arrested, brought in, sentenced and reprocessed into soylent green in a total of fifteen minutes. “Never mind the quality — feel the width!”

Unnamed experts believe that suspected petty criminals in Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, teenagers in the street, Brazilian electricians and other easily-bullied demographics would be the ideal first candidates, as Westfield already feels like a punishment from a dystopian future.

Senior police officers look forward to greatly increased efficiency as the system develops, with the cool helmet, black leather jumpsuit, huge bike and really cool gun as additional motivational extras. “Halt, perp!” shouted chief constable Sir Luckless Cipher. “Yeah, I could get used to the sound of that.”

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INTERNATIONAL FRONT, Little Britain, 4th June (NNN) — The forthcoming European Parliament elections have been shaken up by the push from the Christian Party, with their simple and direct platform: “Never mind who we are, what we plan or who our backers are — we’re not the BNP!”

British National Party supporters have been keen to post to newspaper comment sites at great length how there is no evidence whatsoever of BNP racism, despite the minor detail of a whites-only policy in the party constitution. There are widespread fears that, should the BNP gain a seat in the European Parliament, they may attempt to organise a drinking event in a brewery.

The Christian Party has been sufficiently well-funded to field candidates across the country and pay for tremendous quantities of advertising and billboards, tastefully decorated with swastikas to show how unlike the BNP they are.

Comparison of the Christian Party and BNP platforms reveals similar or identical policies concerning EU membership, British national interests, ecological concerns, women’s rights, gay rights and express support of Christianity.

“But we’re not the BNP! Look, we’ve got a black candidate! We use the word ‘Christian!’ Vote for us! We’re not neo-Nazis! Just nearly.”

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