News Round Up

All The News, Rounded Up Newsily

Northern Britain “Mostly Appalling” By Early 2009
As the global economic meltdown continues to globally melt downwards, economically, experts have warned that by the middle of next year all of northern England will be “Absolutely wretched”. Ferris Ebbsfleet, Professor of Economics for Knutsford University warned “The last vestiges of Britain’s manufacturing base will be eroded as the downturn continues, and that will inevitably hit the northern England the hardest. With their aversion to daylight, small, malnourished hands and an average wage that wouldn’t buy half a skinny latte in Buckinghamshire, northerners have always been the ideal fodder for your factory.”

But with companies going out of business quicker than recently-deceased prostitute, the existing financial foundation for many northern towns will disappear, leaving them “Utterly appalling” according to Ebbsfleet. “Most of them will be like one of those dreadful Ken Loach films – all sleet and rickets. Apart from some holiday homes in the Lake District, you’ll be able to walk from Stafford to Berwick without encountering a single glottal stop.” Ebbsfleet predicts that the government will have to relocate Hadrian’s Wall 400 miles south to stop marauding gangs of rugby league-supporting yobs invading Home County towns for supplies of bread and dripping.


Christian Groups Condemn “Assisted Suicide Bombing” Group
Fundamentalist Christian group CACK (Christians Against Christian-Killing) have criticised a website that helps victims of terminal diseases choose the moment of their own death in a hail of explosives and shrapnel. “The Bible is clear on the point that killing oneself is a sin” said a CACK spokesperson. “If you happened to spontaneously explode at a military checkpoint, that’s a different matter. But strapping twenty pounds of C4 and wandering around a marketplace in Jerusalem until it rips you apart like an ADD kid’s present on Christmas Day is an offence to god.”

The creator of the assisted suicide bombing website has defended his work, however, stating “We believe it is everybody’s fundamentalist – sorry, fundamental – right to die with quiet dignity surrounded by hundreds of unwitting tourists. Many of the people visiting our site have suffered years of pain living with a progressive, debilitating illness. To me, denying them the right to tear through the lobby of an embassy like a meat grenade is barbaric.”


Queen’s Speech “A Tirade Of Abuse” Says Palace Insider
The Queen’s 2008 Christmas speech is set to be a litany of four-letter words, sexual innuendoes and graphic descriptions of bodily processes, according to a leaked document. “The BBC is going to find itself in further trouble if it’s broadcast uncensored” said the unnamed insider “Especially the part where she says where she’d stick her mace, and what she’d use as a lubricant, if Russell Brand ever tried to prank call her.”

Audiences for the speech have fallen steadily for years since 1996, which saw a record number of viewers watch the Queen suppress giggles as she talked about the death of Diana. “I think she feels that as nobody’s listening any more, she can basically say whatever she wants” continued the insider.

The Queen allegedly uses this opportunity to call David Cameron “Six foot of jumped-up fuck all”, describes the England cricket team as looking like “Ten spastics trying to shoo away a wasp” and dismisses Gordon Brown’s attempts to deal with the recession as “About as effective as me trying to beat out a forest fire using my clit.” The Queen, who apparently swigs from a Glenfiddich bottle throughout the speech, reportedly ends her address by talking to her son Charles directly.

“I would like to take this opportunity to point out what a disappointment you’ve been, Charles” slurs the monarch. “We go to all the trouble of bumping off your last baggage only for you to marry something that looks like a boiled bagpuss. So if you think I’m abdicating you can throw a cock-shaped dart at the moon and hope it hits a bullseye for all the good it will do you. Right, that’s my ten minutes, I’m fucking off. You can stick Eastenders on now, if you want.”

Entire Christmas Top 40 To Consist Of ‘Hallelujah’ Covers

Festive Rundown “Like A Bleak Groundhog Day” Says Dr Fox

The race to be the Christmas Number One single promises to be an especially confusing one this year after it was revealed by chart experts that all of the top 40 spots will be filled by versions of Leonard Cohen’s maudlin sobfest ‘Hallelujah’.

Shouty tearmonger Alexandra Burke is expected to top the charts with her sandblasting of the song, although health and safety experts have warned the public to listen to her single wearing protective earmuffs, preferably while sat two miles away inside a lead-lined shed. “We previously thought Christina Aguilera stubbing her toe during a bukkake party was the loudest voice in existence” said one H&S official “But after taking meter readings of Burke’s performance in the X Factor final, we discovered that standing next to the singer while she’s in full flow is the equivalent of sticking your head inside a Boeing jet engine while Motorhead albums are flung at the spinning blades.”

Non-buoyant ex-alive crooner Jeff Buckley is expected to take the number two spot with his version and Cohen himself is tipped to be in the number three spot, making the Christmas edition of Top Of The Pops “Downright fucking weird” according to pointless DJ Dr Fox. “Normally on the Xmas TOTP, the bands will have a bit of a mess around, maybe drape some tinsel over their drumkit. This year we’re going to have a walking octogenarian suicide note, a waterlogged corpse and a human loud hailer. Roy Wood dyeing his beard red seems like a blessed relief in comparison.”

Forty seven other performers have jumped onto the Hallelujah bandwagon, including perennial yuletide chart infector Cliff Richard, whose version of the song will be spliced with text from Book II of the Corinthians. “At this time of year, I think that any song that raises awareness of religion is pretty cool, yeah?” said Richard over the sound of a bag being emptied. “But hey, that doesn’t mean we can’t rock n roll, okay?”. A sample lyric of Richard’s version is:

“Well, maybe there's a God above

But all I've ever learned from love

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
And to pass by you into Macedonia,
And to come again out of Macedonia unto you,
And of you to be brought on my way toward Judaea.”

Other bands releasing versions of Hallelujah are to include The Jonas Brothers’ “Hallelujah (I’ve Still Not Got My Cock Wet)”, Coldplay’s version of ‘Hallelujah’ which Chris Martin claims to have written himself and Bob The Builder’s “Hallelujah – Can We Fix It?”

Christmas Toy Bestsellers Announced

British Toy Association’s Top Tantrum Inducers

With the economy wheezing on its back like on 80-year-old ex-miner in a forest fire, many have predicted that Christmas 2008 will not be a bumper year for toy retailers. But Nikon Ebbsfleet, head of the British Toy Association, disagrees.

“There are many reasons for toy manufacturers to be optimistic” said Ebbsfleet. “The housing market has shown a slight upturn, inflation rates have been lowered to combat the recession, but most importantly children are solipsistic, screaming bundles of Id that want their desires met immediately. A parent may as well kick an umbrella at the clouds to stop it raining as get between a bawling infant and the toy it wants.”

Ebbsfleet listed his predicted best-sellers for Christmas 2008.

1: Dubai Island
Following the runaway success of Tracy Island in 1992, Mattel have updated the concept for the 21st century. Dubai Island recreates all the thrills of vulgar, excessive opulence for 8-12 year olds. In the hotel concert room, a miniature Celine Dion belts out “My Heart Will Go On” at the push of a button to a crowd of lovingly-recreated despots, faded rock stars and their marble-eyed model girlfriends.

Kids can have fun trying to smuggle gay hotel guests past the armed guards at reception and jolt with delight as the scale model 15’ high electric fence keeps out those pesky poor locals!
(Accessories, such as jewel-encrusted dolphins for the swimming pool, start at £1.8M)

2: Knifeys
From the makers of Heelys come Knifeys, the fashion footwear that comes with a kick! Available in a range of funky, colourful designs, Knifeys are the comfortable new way to make your mark at school, in the playground or at home. Just shift your weight to your heels and a durable, six inch, Teflon-coated hunting blade will deploy from the front of the shoe, making you the king of the cool kids. Tip your weight forward and the patented design cleans the blade as it retracts back into the sole of the shoe. Your folks, your friends and the police will be none the wiser!

3: Credit Crunch Monopoly
All the fun of the original, with a contemporary twist of global financial meltdown. The Old Kent Road still costs £60, but now so does everything else. You start with houses on every property, and the object of the game is to manage to get around the board three times without having all of them repossessed.

Choose your board piece carefully, too. Pick the car and you’ll soon be in financial trouble as each move costs you an extra £10 congestion charge. Choose the top hat and you’ll find yourself ducking the bricks thrown at you by anti-capitalist rioters.

There a dozens of other updates to look out for, from the “Get Out Of Jail On A Technicality” card to “You Won 2nd Prize In A Beauty Contest – Get Date-Raped By A Portugese Premiership Footballer In A Hotel Room” in the ‘Chance’ pile.

Credit Crunch Monopoly – however you play it, we’re all absolutely fucked!

Shite Christmas Predicted

Britain “To Be Covered In A Blanket Of Despond” Say Forecasters

With the Met Office already stating that a white christmas this year is “As likely as catching Terry Lubbock in a gay clinch with Michael Barrymore”, many experts state that most of Britain will open their curtains on December 25th to “Scenes of unremitting bleakness, bereft of hope, charity or even a hint of rosy-cheeked yuletide jollity.”

Government predictor Tony Ebbsfleet stated “Now the Met Office has had time to collate all the data, it’s clear that this summer was the equivalent of listening to slowed-down Joy Division for a week in a damp bedsit in Clitheroe. This, combined with the unsurprisingly cack weather predicted for winter, means that Christmas Day will be like any other day in December – cold, miserable and dark – with the added negative of all the shops being shut.”

Ebbsfleet fears that other factors will combine to make this year’s festivities “Like being in a Mike Leigh film for three days solid.” With the global economy now more fucked than a dockside prostitute during shore leave, the prospect of some decent gifts seem unlikely, he warns. “I’m on government pay, which is normally a pretty good screw, but the kids are getting frig-all this year. They keep banging on about a Nintendo Wii but the way things are going they’ll be lucky to get a packet of Primark socks split between them.”

Television is unlikely to offer any refuge, as falling ad revenues force broadcasters into making increasingly cheap and tawdry programs. This year’s christmas schedule is set to include:

“Nonentity Love Garage”, in which 12 complete unknowns are incarcerated in an Ilford lockup with 12 crates of Stella and “Ibiza Madness!” on permanent loop, resulting in the dead-eyed contestants circling each other in a sexually predatory manner, like sharks around a blood clot.

“Songs of Condemnation”, a crisis-of-faith program where doubting Christians question God’s need for famine/war/Jude Law through the medium of song whilst weeping uncontrollably. Hosted by Alan Titchmarsh & Richard Dawkins.

“We Can Ruin Your Life”, starring Justin Lee Fucking Collins. An undeserving member of the public is selected at random and the very fabric of their existence is comprehensively dismantled by shady government operatives for no good reason.

“When I was a kid, there were 25 million people tuning in to watch Eric & Ernie” said Ebbsfleet. “This christmas, if over a million people watch some fat pleb crying while a lifestyle expert tells them how worthless they are, it’ll be considered a ratings smash. They’re not even showing The Great Escape, you know?”

When asked how the public can alleviate the predicted awfulness of this year’s Christmas, Ebbsfleet suggested “Getting absolutely Gascoigned as soon as you wake up. Seriously, go to sleep christmas eve with a case of Bells by your bedside. With any luck you’ll be out of it until it’s time to go back to work the following Tuesday.”