In the middle of the night he worries: ‘What if there is a god?’
As yet more steelworkers’ jobs are about to be axed, Business Secretary Sajid Javid has confirmed that the Northern Powerhouse is ‘just pretend’.
“All right, all right… Look, we came up with the expression one evening, after a very fine dinner. It was only ever meant as a joke, but Continue reading
A fitting tribute to Pat.
Concerned employees at Amalgamated Holdings Ltd have been mystified by a growing collection of soiled cups.
Initially, minor queries were raised with each other about whether the cleaning contract had been renewed, not realising that for the last 15 years the dishes had been done by Pat in accounts.
“I do like a cup of tea first thing” said managing director Justine Hostage, “and I never gave a thought to how our mugs got clean and put back in the cupboard. It was Mike who said he’d seen Pat doing it before, and then we realised no-one had heard from her for three weeks.” Continue reading
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The environmental damage wrought by the diesel emissions cheating scandal has been rectified by the hanging up of a hotel towel, according to VW chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch.
“I thought of the environment and hung up the towel” beamed Poetsch.
“As soon as I put the towel on the rack, I could sense all those emissions vanishing into thin air. I felt the melting iceberg refreeze, and tears welled up in my eyes as I realised that starving polar bear would see his family again.”
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“Emissions? No, this cigar has a catalytic converter.”
Rogues have come a long way from the fifties and sixties, where they were marginalised into cheeky but loveable roles on the fringes of the economy; think George Cole as Arthur Daley.
You now find rogues occupying important roles in industry, finance and the public sector. But there is still “much to do” say leading rogues, as they continue to be blamed for many of societies ills.
From institutional racism in the police, to systematic greed in the banking sector, the finger is often pointed at a rogue.
And now VW, who find themselves engulfed by emissions test fixing scandals, are suggesting that rogues working as engineers at VW are to blame.
“We just do what they allow us to do,” writes an anonymous rogue in a book that promises to ” lift the lid ” on rogue culture, breaking their strict code of silence.
“Or we just do what everyone else is doing…but with a naughty glint in our eye, and a cheeky smile.”
However rogue community leaders have distanced themselves from the new book, dismissing it as the work of a rogue rogue.
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Need no batteries
In a surprising move, Harold’s largest book retailer is to stop selling electrical goods and replace them with books.
James Daunt, the managing director of Musty Books, said: “We were told that paper was old hat and the future was in stuff that could be plugged in, especially from Amazon”.
“So we shifted out the paperbacks to the local Oxfam, and stocked up on microwaves, irons, kitchenaids and nutribullets Continue reading
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Starbucks executives are furious after an incautious purchase of a plastic bag resulted in the multinational making its first ever contribution to the UK Exchequer.
“5p doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a matter of principle” said Starbucks UK head Mark Fox.
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Near-spherical insect repellers.
A global decline in the demand for mothballs has caused a local factory to be closed, but left in a state which would enable it to be reopened if future circumstances allow.
The job losses will only add to the village’s employment woes. Last month, three scrapheap workers were made redundant, and put on a list of people who would definitely never work again in the recycling industry.
“I feel as though I’ve been discarded, figuratively speaking”, said Linda Bleak. “You could say my future earning potential has been severely reduced.”
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Trust me, I’m in Big Pharma
Martin Shkreli, boss of eye-watering price-hikers Turing Pharmaceuticals, says they’ll drop the price of Daraprim, which they acquired in August, after Aids patients got a bit too loudly.
“Look, they’re Aids patients – always whining about something. OK, if going from under £10 to almost £500 in a month was a bit sudden, we’ll drop it a little. We can crank it up again later. Because we’re shits.”
Waitrose have added a level of sophistication to parking enforcement with the introduction of artisan traffic wardens.
Waitrose spokesman Clive Edmonds says its artisan traffic wardens will issue bespoke parking tickets catering both to people new to parking infringing and also to the serious connoisseur of overstaying.
“Our artisans will hand craft parking tickets in silver-rich pewter, individually forged according to a centuries-old formula, and then put them on customer’s windscreens when they are one minute late” said Edmonds.
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Just because someone’s right it doesn’t mean they’re not also terribly annoying
Boycotting Amazon has officially become the new bullseye on the middle class morality dartboard finally ousting claiming not to have a TV.
“It’s taken years,” media and trend analyst Lizzie Philips told us. “But at long last not shopping with Amazon has become the single greatest source of conversational smugness.” Continue reading
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Terrorists could soon benefit from some very, very, very small savings.
Airport shops have suffered a crippling blow in their battle
to deny terrorists travel pillows, cologne and big sticks of Toblerone.
With passengers now refusing to show their boarding cards to
ever-vigilant shop assistants, it’s only a matter of time before an islamist acquires a very, very, very slightly cheaper pair of Ray-Ban Aviators.
“It’s demoralising”, said Sharon Hostage, who works at Luton Airport’s duty-free shop. “For the last 3 years, I’ve worked tirelessly to stop some nutjob buying the latest Maeve Binchy novel.”
“I need to see their boarding pass to do some rudimentary background checks (and reclaim the tax), but now even a blatant Jihadist could waltz out of here with a copy of the Daily Mail, and some Stugeron.”
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“Trees, I see lots and lots of trees”
The eBay seller crackdown is expected to be followed by an HMRC campaign to tax beggars collecting money in Starbucks cups.
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May as well be.
Mobile calls to liars and idiots with an 0800 number are now free, Ofcom has announced.
From today, consumers can listen to the same sentence being read out 14 times by a man in Bangalore called ‘Martin’, ‘Fridge’ or ‘Stevenage’, no matter what question they’ve asked, and all for the princely sum of nothing.
“This is good news for consumers”, said Ofcom’s Shapi Patel. “No that’s not my real name, you’re right; I just use it to sound more diverse.” A freedom of information request later revealed that their real name was Nigel Wilberforce.
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Blatter auditions for ‘Call My Bluff’.
Sky and BT are locked in a fierce battle for the the rights to televise Sepp Blatter’s trial.
Sky are promising to debut their slow-motion car crash technology, and a resolution that could see their new star locked into a 20 year contract, excluding parole.
“This is an exciting event that everyone has been looking forward to for years”, said Rupert Murdoch.
“Trust me, we have a lot of experience in how the court system works. My son James is going to head up this bid.”
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Filed under Business, Entertainment, Sport
Lest we forget.
Thomas Cook has at last expressed remorse over the death of two children, and the devastating effect it’s had on their profits.
Despite a £3 million payout from the hotel to try and bring them some closure, the travel agent is still trying to come to terms with a 20% drop in bookings.
“It seems incredible that in this day and age, a faulty boiler can cause such appalling sorrow”, said chief executive Peter Fankhauser.
“You’d think someone in a position of responsibility would have checked it, although I now realise that wasn’t the parents’ job. Particularly as we didn’t check they were CORGI registered.”
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‘If it was cruel, they wouldn’t let people use caravans.’
London media executives who spend their weekends in Cornwall are lamenting the decline of the fishing industry, in the pretty villages they’ve all bought holiday homes in.
But now, thanks to advances in large hutch technology, they can maintain a permanent link to the past. A few simple Cornish are being kept as pets, in spare rooms or out the back by the bins.
“They’re easy to look after, they just need some old nets to play with”, said Cornish owner Cordelia Fotheringham. “You chuck them the occasional pastie and spray them with a brine mist. Before you know it, they’re shantying away.”
The floor around the cage is littered with crusts. “They don’t eat that bit, I don’t know why”, said Fotheringham. “Mine keeps shrieking ‘the tin! the tin!’ when I poke one back in. But it didn’t come in a tin: we don’t promote convenience food.”
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Sir Alan embraces his first love.
Ruthless capitalist and renowned heartless bastard Alan Sugar has just realised he shouldn’t be in the Labour party.
“I don’t really make anything these days, I just rely on my assets to generate money’, said the ex-Labour peer. “Which is why I have so much more in common with the SNP.”
Sugar is best known for surrounding himself with idiots and then firing them one-by-one: a management model much admired by UKIP.
He is one of Britain’s greenest entrepreneurs, with fewer than 5% of his products being switched on by customers, after the first twenty minutes of ownership.
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Following a disastrous loss of over £6bn, Tesco could face being nationalised by the chancellor.
George Osborne insisted that the store was ‘too big to fail’, particularly in towns where the ‘scum’ might end up in Waitrose.
“If there’s an Asda down the road, then it’s hardly a problem”, said Osborne. “There’s plenty of room for more of the little people in there.”
“But what if they neighbour a Booths, Marks and Spencers, or Waitrose? Let me assure you, I won’t let them eat brioche.”
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A carrot
A greengrocer in Harold has angrily denied that he’s quitting, and instead vowed to continue in his role.
Defiantly operating his till and a sort of weighing contraption to the left of it, Dominic Evans of ‘Evans Vegetables and Sons’ faced up to a string of customers, one at a time.
The move to stay put comes quickly after the departure of Cllr Ron Ronsson: he brushed past our reporter carrying a melon and some carrots.
Despite the ‘cash for fruit’ controversy, no-one has actually called for Evans to leave. But they will do, once a journalist gets to the front of the queue. “What on earth are talking about?” demanded Evans. “Where the f*** would I go?”, before adding “do you want those potatoes or not?”
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Campaign ‘left bad taste in the mouth’
A tea shop in Harold has been vilified on Twitter, after a racial equality promotion descended into farce.
Mick Clarkson, owner of the ‘Brew-ha-ha Tearoom’, claims he was trying to create a utopia when he gave his staff some permanent markers.
Unfortunately, police were called and two Moldavian workers arrested, after racist slogans were spotted on customer’s cups.
“We are not racist, we like at least one person from other side of village”, claimed Nikolai Spitz. “And we do not hate everyone else as has been suggested.”
The row erupted after Ron Ronsson was served a latté with the phrase ‘Some Kosabians wipe properly’ written roughly where his lips would have been.
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