News Round Up

All The News, Rounded Up Newsily

Government Uses New Synonym For ‘Fucked’
Economy ‘Banjaxed’ If Trend Continues, Says PM

The government confirmed today that a new synonym is to be employed when describing the state of the nation’s economy. As official figures show that Britain’s GDP shrunk between July and September, ministers must now refer to the economy as being ‘in recession’. This replaces the earlier official nomenclature of ‘looking well dodgy’.

Bank Of England director Mervyn King stated “We’ve been monitoring the situation for nearly a year now, ensuring that the proper descriptive term has been employed each step of the way. Early indicators caused us to use “a bit wobbly” which, as things worsened, was changed to “Pete Tong”. During the unprecedented slump in share prices on Black Tuesday, we went through “Oh toss”, “Can’t bear to look” and “Bolloxed” in the space of three hours.

Gordon Brown confirmed King’s appraisal of the economy, saying “We’re throwing as much of your money at the problem as possible, like a madwoman with Parkinson’s decorating a cake in an earthquake.”


Minister Pledges Bouncers At Airports
“Visa? Not With Those Shoes, Pal”

Immigration minister Phil Woolas is to implement a “One in, one out” policy in UK airports and ferry terminals as the population reaches the 70 million mark. In a bid to curb overpopulation, burly men in black bomber jackets will count people entering and leaving the country using those metal clicky things. Anyone popping out of the country for some cigarettes may have to wait in line to re-enter and Woolas made assurances that the offer of a blowjob round the back of Heathrow will not be sufficient to secure entry.

“I’m sure many people would agree with me that the country is in danger of becoming dangerously overpeopled and enough is enough” said Woolas. “Just the other day it took me 45 minutes to find a parking space and I nearly missed my table reservation at Claridges. I don’t think anybody wants to see something like that happening again.”

“In terms of population density, Great Britain is fast approaching the levels of Trinidad & Tobago and Burundi. We cannot allow our country to become the concrete urban hell that those countries are well-known as being.”


Katona Hits Back At Critics
Pig-Faced Tit Carrier Speaks Out Over ITV Interview

Kerry Katona, former not-a-singer with Atomic Kitten, has responded to allegations that she was drunk or on drugs during an interview on This Morning “Wazzafuggin marra wid, wid, eh? What?” said Katona. “Izza not worra I’m sayin, itsa. Itsa, yeah? Ahhahaaa. Fuggin, yerra fuggin. Eh? Scuseme.”

Katona went on to assert “Issa….issa…yerrafuggin FUGGIT! I’mnorra thing widda thing innit snot worra mena like, yeah? Eh?”

Katona’s agent clarified some of the points made, saying “Ms Katona categorically denies being under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs during the interview on This Morning. But to be reasonable, if you were sat opposite Fern Britton looking like a deflated weather balloon in a wig, you’d need a couple of bracers inside you yourself, wouldn’t you?”

Tesco “Now Richer Than Wall Street”

Chief Executive Awarded Norway In Bonus Package

Tesco unveiled their 10% increase in profits for the first half of 2008 by carving their profit & loss balance sheet in letters 300-foot high into the side of Mount Kilimanjaro. This was then followed by a concert debuting a newly-commissioned piece entitled “Tesco Uber Alles”, played by a 4,000-piece orchestra on instruments made from solid strontium.

Chief Executive Terry Leahy, announcing the boom in profits atop a 1,000-foot high Swarovski crystal tower designed by Sir Norman Foster, said “It’s been a very good year for Tesco so far, but we’ve still got a long way to go to fulfil our aims of owning every single electron of matter on this wretched planet.”

“Other ways of purchasing a few bits for the weekend still exist for consumers, and we should not rest until ‘Tesco’ replaces every verb in every language for the purchasing of goods. I dream of a day when a teenager Tescos his first pushbike, or a married couple celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary by Tescoing some pilchards.”

As the hundreds of thousands of Tesco staff massed in the Tanzanian plains, Leahy revealed his yearly bonus, which is set to include “As many pound coins as there are atoms in a rhino’s cock, 78% of the tea in China, and the delightfully picturesque Scandinavian paradise of Norway”. It is believed Leahy plans to convert Norway into an 18-million hole golf course.

Leahy plans to expand Tesco’s empire by buying out every struggling banking institution on Wall Street and forcing the wealthy financiers to gather trollies in Tesco’s Knutsford branch for minimum wage. He then plans to flatten the offices of JP Morgan and convert the land into a Tesco Metro. “We might do chart CDs, I’m not sure yet.” added Leahy.

Shaky Geoff, the current trolley wrangler in Tesco Knutsford, is reportedly devastated at his forthcoming redundancy. “I don’t ask for much” said Geoff “Just enough money to keep me in batteries so I can listen to my Will Young CD on repeat while I shuffle round the carpark in the rain. Being spat on by the local teenagers, smiling at the lady shoppers ‘til I do a happy cry from my naughty place – that’s all I want. You done a bad, Mr Leahy.”

Forbes Release Top 400 Greedy Swine List

“I Could Buy You All” Plutocrat Tells Press Conference

Forbes magazine has released its annual Top 400 Rich List in the midst of a global economic meltdown today, and a surprise entry at 387 was Edna Ebbsfleet, a retired dinner lady from Knutsford. “Eeeh, I’ve never been on any list, me” said Ebbsfleet, adding “I’m 87, you know.” Ebbsfleet’s appearance on the list was due to the £356.27 she has saved in her Post Office account.

Economic expert Ting Fanshaw explained “Mrs Ebbsfleet’s fortune has been built on a sound fiscal model of placing £5 in her savings every pension day. She’s shrewdly avoided the whole sub-prime market and it’s clearly paid dividends.” Mrs Ebbsfleet’s joy at appearing in the Forbes list was short-lived, however, as newspaper columnists quickly condemned her for not sharing her wealth with those more in need.

“It’s disgusting that a grasping old crone like that can sit on her nest-egg while our boys in Iraq can’t even afford straight bullets” said unhinged journo Richard Littlejohn. “Gordon Brown promised a fairer society when he wasn’t elected to number 10, but people like Mrs Ebbsfleet can still sit back and watch the interest on their wealth grow by pennies every year. Oh, and foreigners and poofs are disgusting, in case I hadn’t mentioned it.”

Despite Ebbsfleet’s appearance, the top end of the Forbes list was still dominated by multibillionaires, with Bill Gates featuring at number one with an estimated fortune of $57 billion. Gates recently asked Microsoft advisors “What is this recession thing they keep talking about on the news? Is it a type of cheese? Can you run Windows on it? Can I buy one?”

The number three spot was taken by Hamilton Croesus III, whose personal fortune is an estimated $47B billion. The Croesus family fortune was started in 1848 with “Old Pa’s Slave Emporium”, based in Mississippi. The shop sold items such as the “Old Stripey” whip for the slave trade. They became famous for their slogan “Emancipate Yourself From Troublesome Negras”.

Today, the Croesus business portfolio has diversified into less controversial areas such as the arms industry, South American logging and representing Premier League footballers. At the Forbes press conference, Hamilton Croesus told reporters “Who the hell do you people think you’re looking at? I could have you shot, you know.” When asked his opinion about the current global recession, he replied “We’re all feeling the pinch, my boy. Why, only last week my Lear jet was clean out of ’57 Montrachet.”

Lehman Redundancies ‘Funny As Fuck’

“WoooHahahaaaaaaa!!!!” Says Expert

The sudden redundancies of 5,000 traders, fund managers and financiers at Lehman Brothers Bank has been dubbed “The single most hilarious thing I’ve seen on the news in years” by economist Connaught Ebbsfleet.

Ebbsfleet, a professor at Knutsford University, states that while the bank’s collapse could have far-reaching implications for the world economy, it may also replace Del Boy falling through that trap door as Britain’s favourite comedy clip. “Some of them were actually crying as they left the office with their pot plants under their arms. Classic, absolutely classic.”

Viewing footage of bewildered city workers, whose company BMWs were taken off them, standing in a confused manner at bus stops trying to figure out how public transport actually works, Ebbsfleet commented “The only pity is that Lehman Brothers didn’t get sufficient warning that the sackings were going to take place. Not to implement some kind of structured rationalisation or anything like that. I just reckon they could have made a bit of quick money selling tickets for the exit interviews.”

Ebbsfleet estimates that at £10 a ticket, Lehman Brothers could have recouped £1.5M by allowing the public to sit and watch each smug, greedy, suit full of fuck-all being given the boot. “Imagine it” said Ebbsfleet “Sitting there with a box of popcorn and a sloppy grin plastered over your face as yet another blank-eyed public school monstrosity is told that his second home in the Dordogne is right out of the frigging window. They’d have to Scotchguard the carpets against fountains of hilarity-induced piss.”

The Isle Of Dogs Jobcentre has prepared itself by ensuring their coffee machine can dispense skinny mocha lattes and there are plans to add a sushi bar. Given the sudden influx onto the job market of city workers, Ebbsfleet gave some suggestions as to how they may be gainfully employed. “I think they should continue in their commitment to the companies they gambled away other people’s money on. Maybe they could go diamond mining in Liberia? Nike need more sweatshop drones and given the high mortality rate of the work, Brazilian tree-fellers are always in demand. They pumped billions into these companies, so maybe they should go out there and die of exhaustion and/or malaria if they thought they were such great organisations.”

House Prices Now “Merely Staggeringly Ridiculous”

Property Values Fall From “Obscenely Inflated” For First Time In 16 Years

HSBC reported that in the last three months, the average house price has stopped making first-time buyers want to weep bitter tears of envy and have merely made them vomit disbelief into their upturned hands.

Tim Ebbsfleet of the HSBC Mortgage Advice Centre stated “This time last year, you could literally walk across the Thames on the backs of first-time buyers who’d flung themselves in when they’d realised that studio flat in Penge was going to cost the same as a Faberge elephant.”

“However, market forces are such that anyone currently looking to get onto the property ladder will merely snort derisively about pulling a tinfoil llama out of their arses while trying to stump up the deposit.”

When asked what he meant by ‘market forces’, Ebbsfleet replied “Market forces are, and I can’t stress this clearly enough, the subtle trends, factors and influences that compel banks to make you leap through shit-smeared hoops, while they cackle and light cigars with £50 notes of your money. All because you’ve grown tired of handing over all your wages to a greasy twat in a suit for the privilege of living in a grotty hovel that you’ll never own.”

Ebbsfleet felt that it wasn’t all bad news, however. “We’re still fucking minted, mate. Not to worry. Either way we’re a winner. The old market saw us hand out mortgages like they’re sweets to unemployable dunderheads who wanted million pound homes. They default, we charge ‘em ten grand for fucking up and take the keys off ‘em. Lovely.”

“Nowadays, we spend half our time calling people fuckpigs and telling them to sling their hook for daring to ask for a mortgage. And the other half that do get them from us have to adhere to some ‘special conditions’, if you get my meaning. I’m knuckle-deep in nest-building fanny. Happy days.”

US Stock Market Crash Continues To Make No Fucking Difference

“Price Of Cornflakes Completely Unaffected” Says Economist

Following the recent collapse of Bear Stearns Bank in the US and the consequent stock market slump, leading economist Terry Ebbsfleet confirmed that “My weekly shopping at Tesco still came to about thirty quid. And that was even after I’d bought a twelve-pack of Stella, which normally bumps it up a bit.”

Ebbsfleet explained the chain of events in the US economy meltdown “Some organisation you’ve never heard of still has all the same stuff it used to have, but now that stuff’s worth a lot less for reasons nobody really understands. So the government had to give them a shitload of money. The company didn’t buy any new stuff with it or anything, but they needed that money so the stuff they already own is worth what it used to be. I think that’s right, anyway.”

Ebbsfleet went on to explain the effect this had on the wider economy “Lots of other people who buy parts of completely unconnected companies suddenly decided that this meant those companies were now worth less too. Even though, yes I know, they still had all the same stuff – it’s not like all their office furniture suddenly fell to bits or they lost a building or something. So they told all their mates that the bits of company they owned could now be bought for even cheaper. They weren’t necessarily going to buy those bits of company, mind, but if they were they’d expect to pay less for it. I tend to get a little lost at this point but I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.”

Asked how this would affect people in the UK, Ebbsfleet replied “Not in the frigging slightest. Seriously. Fags & booze still cost too much, you can still get tins of beans in Aldi for about nine pence. It’s all exactly the same. When I heard the news I expected the supermarket to look like 5pm on Christmas Eve, but no. There’s still all the same amount of stuff in the world and it all costs pretty much the same amount to buy. Although Tesco have got some pretty decent two-for-one offers on lager at the moment.”

Describing any positive benefits that could be expected from the US slump, Ebbsfleet said “Well quite a few rich, sneering, cocky twats might end up penniless and blow their brains out, so there’s always that. But ultimately you’re still going to have to go to work, keep up your mortgage and pay over the odds for petrol. Same old, same old.”

Britain To Be Sold At Auction

Great Britain ‘To Be Repossessed’


Following the Northern Rock fiasco, rising mortgage rates and spiralling amounts of people defaulting on their credit cards, a consortium of foreign banks have called in the bailiffs on the whole of the United Kingdom.

“We have tried to be patient” explained Dr Hans Ebbsfleet, Chief Executive of TransInternationalGlobalCorp Bank. “Time and again we have contacted Britain and asked if they could make even a token payment toward the 1.2 trillion pounds they owe us. But they kept hanging up on us or promising to pay £100 into their local branch, only for the money to never materialise.”

It is understood that the consortium met in a darkened mahogany room in Geneva early this week to decide what was to be done about Britain’s mountainous credit card bill. Suggestions ranged from asking Britain if it had any wealthy relative countries who could help make payments, to asking Britain to detail its weekly incoming and outgoing money to see if any savings could be made.

However, such an approach was apparently made in early 2006, with Britain telling the consortium that it was starting a new job in a couple of weeks’ time and would be back on its feet shortly.

“We had no choice but to get the courts involved.” said Ebbsfleet “Britain never turned up on the hearing date so the judge granted in our favour.” A team of 500,000 bailiffs are due to arrive in Britain on January 24th to seize goods to the value of the debt. It is understood that the Crown Jewels will be amongst the items taken to repay what is owed.

“All I would ask is that Britain does not pretend to be out when the bailiffs arrive” said Ebbsfleet. “It’s only delaying the inevitable. If we have to spend the next six months repossessing every iPod, flat screen TV and Wii in Britain to get our money back, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling was defiant in the face of this news, stating “We haven’t got the money, so I don’t know what they expect us to do. And all that stuff in the living room doesn’t belong to us anyway. It’s Ireland’s, so they can’t take it. If they carry on like this we’ll just file for bankruptcy and they can ruddy well tickle for their money then.”

Bank Given Foul-Mouthed Sentence

HSBC Ordered To “Go Fuck Themselves”


In a landmark ruling, the High Court has ordered the high street bank HSBC to “Go fuck themselves, with immediate effect.”

The decision was made during the judge’s summing-up in a test case over bank charges yesterday. Tony Ebbsfleet, a mussel farmer from Cornwall, took HSBC to court over what he felt to be “unreasonable, excessive and frankly sodding ridiculous” deductions from his account over the past five years.

“On one occasion, I’d stepped into my local branch to get out of the rain for a couple of minutes.” said Ebbsfleet. “Well, bugger me if a few days later I didn’t get a letter telling me they were going to charge me £49.99 for the privilege. When I queried it, they gave me some guff about ‘excessive carpet use’ and ‘unauthorised lobby access’. And then they sent me another letter saying they were going to charge me another twenty quid for the explanation letter.”

Ebbsfleet attempted to resolve the situation using HSBC’s standard complaints procedure, which the High Court heard was a four-part system of:

1: Losing the initial letter.
2: Hanging up the phone whenever a complainant called or putting on a funny voice and saying “Me never heard of Mr HSBC. Very sorry.”
3: Claiming the member of staff concerned was possessed by the God Isis and as such not responsible for their actions.
4: Writing to the customer, making vaguely threatening comments about how easy identity theft could be and how flammable their money is.

Ebbsfleet, dissatisfied with this, continued to press on with his complaint only to find that further charges had been levied. These ranged from ‘unauthorised overdraft charges’ and ‘declined direct debits’ to ‘handling of wrongly-shaped pounds’ and ‘Maureen’s leaving present’.

“I finally lost my rag” said Ebbsfleet. “I wrote them a letter saying that if they wanted their money, they could go shit in their hand and toss it at a unicorn. When they threatened me with court action, I decided to take it all the way to the top.”

In his summary, Judge Emsley Fox stated “While Mr Ebbsfleet’s suggestion of hand-shitting may have been unreasonable, it is our finding that HSBC’s actions over the past five years have been unprofessional, intimidatory and in many cases bloody childish. We rule that all charges against Mr Ebbsfleet’s account should be reimbursed forthwith. Furthermore, I order that HSBC go and take a running fuck at themselves, with immediate effect. If they fail to do so, I shall have no hesitation in further ordering that they shove their call centres up their arses.”

Judge Fox also recommended that Natwest should “Fuck right off as well.”