credit: Sebastià Giralt

WESTMINSTER. Scandal once again engulfed the Labour Government today, following a series of increasingly sordid revelations about the Secretary of State for Transport, Lord Adonis. Documents released this morning by classical scholars at the University of Shropshire implicated Adonis in a series of bizarre events stretching back thousands of years.

The new research, which apparently took the researchers as long as 30 minutes to compile – using a combination of Google and Wikipedia – details how Adonis’ mother turned into a tree, (from which Adonis himself came forth); how he spent time as the lover of greek goddess Aphrodite; and how he is able to act as a member of Her Majesty’s Government despite having been killed while hunting wild boar.

For his part, Lord Adonis insisted it was simply a case mistaken identity, and that he “not the Adonis you are looking for.”  Lord Mandelson was also quick to leap to the defence of The Adonis, saying that the whole thing was “a fabrication cooked up by the Conservatives, no doubt in league with Persephone, who wish to take Adonis to the Underworld, and keep him for themselves for all eternity.”

SHROPSHIRE. When people start a sentence with “I’m not racist, but…”, they generally tend to follow it up with something a little bit racist, it was revealed today.

“It stands to reason, when you think about it”, explained Dr. Nero Sparboom, Professor of Linguistics at Shropshire, who has spent the last ten years studying what people say right after they say I’m not racist, but. “You don’t often hear people say ‘I’m not racist, but I’m just off to the shops to get a pint of milk’. There’s really no need to qualify your lack of racism there. Compare that with‘I’m not racist, but the bloody foreigners are ruining this country’ – clearly a more appropriate use of the phrase, as it helps to deflect the subsequent casual racism.”

The new research will certainly be a blow to casual racists across the country, who had until now been successfully disguising their intolerant xenophonic opinions with the simple four word phrase. “It’s getting harder to be a little bit racist without anyone noticing”, said Bob, 48, a simple minded bigot from Surrey. “I’m thinking of starting more sentences with ‘you people’ or ‘the trouble with this country is’ instead.”

LONDON. A television news anchor from London feels a deep personal responsibility to ask everyone in the entire world tough questions, it was revealed today. In a frank interview with himself, John Gator, 57, made the admission after he backed himself into a corner with an uncomfortable line of questioning.

“I always have to challenge everything anyone says”, Gator explained. “It’s my duty as a journalist. Why is the coffee pot empty? Who in power allowed that to happen? What is the future for that coffee pot? The public have a right to know the answers”.

Gator also questioned himself on the subject of his private life, saying “the public have a right to know who their news anchor really is”. Gator was unrepentant, however, defending his recent decisions, including accusing his friends of “flip-flopping” for not turning up to the pub when they said they would and asking his son if he considered his position “untenable” after he forgot his father’s birthday. “Whenever anyone says anything, anything at all, it must be challenged”, Gator told viewers. “People needs to learn that if they ever make mistakes, everyone in the world will know.”

photo credit: alexbrn

Childrens entertainer Punch today leapt to the defense of so called “Punch and Judy politics”, insisting it had been “unfairly maligned” by opponents trying to discredit him ahead of the general election in May . Speaking in South London, where he is contesting the Croydon North seat on behalf of the Seaside Puppet Party, Punch insisted that Punch And Just politics was exactly what the country needed to help it out of the current ecomomic downturn.

“Some people may call it Punch and Judy politics, but to my wife Judy and I it is more than that. It’s our way of life,”  Punch explained. “Whenever disputes need to be resolved, the most effective way is nearly always to whack someone on the head for the entertainment of others. Laughter and visual comedy are a sound basic for a system of goverment.”

At today’s press conference Punch also unveiled his manifesto for the forthcoming election. Key policies objectives include telling jokes, whacking people with a stick and generally making everyone “Pleased as Punch”.

credit: [phil h]

LONDON. A regular rush hour commuter was left open-mouthed earlier today, after learning the next tube would not arrive at the platform for 6 minutes. Molly Jones, 29, was standing on the northbound Victoria Line platform at Green Park when she received the terrible news. “6 minutes is ridiculous”, Jones told reporters. “1 or 2 minutes is totally fine; 3 or 4 is disappointing; I’ve heard stories of 5 minutes before but 6 minutes is unprecedented. I didn’t even have a book or iPod with me. I was forced to just stare into space and got a little bit bored”.

The delay added as much as five minutes to Jones’ regular 50 minute commute, meaning that she only arrived at work five minutes early, rather than her usual ten.

credit: Tambako the Jaguar

RUSSIA.  Following a high profile and relentless disambiguation campaign, Russian website comparethemeerkat.com has now become the world’s fifth most popular destination for users seeking to compare meerkats. Though the advertisements initially started to help redirect lost Internet users looking to compare car insurance policies, Compare The Meerkat has now itself started to grow in popularity – a welcome surprise to founder Alexandr Orlov.

“We started the adverts because we were seeing lots people looking for car insurance”, Orlov explained. “It was all pretty altruistic to begin with – I wanted to use some of my money for good so I decided to help clarify the confusion. We’ve seen a real boost in our own traffic, though – it’s unexpected but really pleasing.”

LONDON. The jury was sworn in this morning at the trial of the Passive Voice, a grammatical construction which is occused of commiting a string of crimes stretching back to the invention of the newspaper 400 years ago. The charges against The Voice were detailed at length this morning, ranging from murdering people who were murdered and stealing things that were stolen to beating up people who were beaten up and laundering money that was laundered.

There has been a lot of media hype surrounding the trial, the first of its kind since the infamous “subjunctive trials”, and the presiding judge, Donald Kelly, issued strict instructions to the jury. “You will all have some relationship to The Passive Voice”, he said at the start of the trial this morning. “You will all know about some things that are or have been done, but you must disregard them. I must ask you also to disregard the previous good work conducted by the defendant, and concentrate solely on the charges at hand”, he added – referring of course to the many achievments with which The Passive Voice is credited, such as people who were rescued, miracles that were performed and men who were created equal.
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LONDON. A conglomerate of major news broadcasters today came together to announce they would no longer be covering anything that happened more than twenty-four hours ago, branding it “yesterday’s news”. The broadcasters, who include BBC, Sky, ITV and CNN,  revealed they instead intend to focus on real-time breaking news and commentary. The move was widely forecast by industry experts. “The time when viewers wanted news reporting to be accurate and reliable has come and gone”, said Mark Johnson, a London-based media analyst. “What people want is to know what’s happening now. No one cares if it’s important or true – so long as it’s happening now. People who watch twenty-four hour news channels don’t want twenty-five or twenty-six hour news. They want twenty-four hour news.”
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LONDON. Security services have been put on heightened alert tonight fearing mass anarchy after literally thousands of people took literally two minutes to go onto the Internet and purchases a song they literally didn’t even want to listen to. “They said protest was dead– they said people didn’t care– now they have a timely reminder of how people can achieve something really pretty inconsequential if they all come together. It’s a victory for democracy”, said some guy who had been hassling everyone to buy the goddamm song as if it could change the world or something.

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