credit: Swamibu

SHEFFIELD. A local couple have been making the most of the cold weather by enjoying low prices on a variety of ice cream brands at  local supermarkets. David Hogg, 34, and his wife Hannah, have reported a huge increase in their consumption of the frozen desert, despite the fact that it is more commonly associated with hot weather.”There are plenty of half price boxes of ice creams”, David explained earlier today. “Sometimes you see ‘buy one get one free’ too, which is not quite the same, but it is still pretty good. I guess we just use the special offers to help tell us what to buy – that’s probably why we eat lots of puddings and root vegetables in summer.”

For her part, Hannah Hogg revealed that the couple always felt a twinge of excitement in waiting to see which brands were on special offer. “We’re always hope to hind Haagen Dasz on offer, that’s no secret,” she explained. “Ben and Jerry’s is good results too. Mars bar ice creams, Magnums and Soleros are all par for the course. Anything less – I’m talking about supermarket own brand, I guess – would be a little disappointing. But the cheap ice cream season runs for three of four months, so most years you have time to get them all in.”

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.

photo credit: Alan in Belfast

WESTMINSTER. Conservative leader David Cameron today unveiled his plans to rebrand human rights legislation following the next election. Under “Conservative Rights ©”, a name he later translated as “rights for nice people like me”, Cameron announced that burglars would be the first to lose the inalienable freedoms which were granted to “all members of the human family” in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Sometimes you just have to be pragmatic”, Cameron said at a press conference this afternoon. “We’re going to be withdrawing basic rights and freedoms, to which all humans are entitled, from anyone we don’t like.”

Despite revoking human rights from people who break into private homes, a crime which usually carries a prison sentence of less than three years, Cameron indicated he currently had no plans to remove human rights from murderers or other violent offenders. “Whether bad people get human rights is a matter for the tabloid press and public opinion”, Cameron explained. “When it’s time, they’ll let us know whose rights we should be taking.”

photo credit: atomicjeep

LEEDS. Local man Philip Butterworth, 41, was tonight facing a difficult future after a “must see” film left local cinemas before he was able to see it. Despite being repeatedly told by his partner, friends, work colleagues and national newspapers that the film was a “must see”, Butterworth, 38, today told reporters today that “to be honest, I’d forgotten it was on”.

While Butterworth accepted that the film “looked like it might not be too bad”, when offered the chance to see the movie, Butterworth chose to stay at home and play video games instead, saying that he “didn’t really fancy going to the cinema”, adding that he was “a bit knackered”.

This is, of course, not the first time that Butterworth has flirted with danger, having previously failed to read a “must read” book and repeatedly failed to watch “must see” programmes on television.

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.”

credit: Lionoche

LIVERPOOL. Residents in the north of England were tonight warned to be on the lookout for around twenty professional footballers who escaped from Anfield this afternoon. While details of the breakout are still emerging, it is believed that the players were briefly left unsupervised and escaped through a nearby transfer window that had been left open.

Officials, however, are confident that the players can be contained and returned to the club in time for Wednesday’s home fixture with Tottenham. “We believe that they may head for Arsenal, Chelsea or even Europe”, police told reporters at a press conference at the ground this afternoon. “They will almost certainly be looking for flair, creativity and freedom of expression – to find that they will be trying to get as far away from Liverpool as possible.”

A brief statement was also read by Jamie Carragher, a Liverpool player who decided against joining the escapees, allegedly claiming that “he had nowhere else to go”. Carragher issued an impassioned plea to his fellow players, telling them to “come back and concentrate on the Europa League, before it’s too late”.

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.
Continue Reading

photo credit: eb0la

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.”
Continue Reading

credit: sebilden

ENGLAND. Football games were cancelled right across the country today as football clubs took swift measures to ensure hapless football fans wouldn’t fall over and hit their headie-weadies and need to go crying to their mumsie-wumsies. Despite the fact that fans have had been successfully commuting to work all week, and have had no trouble getting to pubs, restaurants, shops, gyms and schools up and down the country, the clubs sensibly decided that the fans shouldn’t be such silly-billys and should instead go home and wrap themselves up in a nice warm blanket.

“The safety of the fans is our primary concern”,  a Premier League chairman told us today. “The postponements are totally unrelated to our current form on the pitch, our injury crisis, the expected low attendance and the amount of money we’ll lose from lost sales and merchandising. “