The Chancellor enjoying a good laugh
George Osborne’s attendance at the first of the Monty Python live shows has had an unforeseen consequence.
“I didn’t find the show funny at all,” the Chancellor said. “I don’t like men dressing up as women and talking in stupid voices. I like funny ladies like Mrs Brown. However I did find the contents inspiring.” Continue reading
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Filed under Economy, Entertainment
Very little help.
In an effort to win back market share from budget brand shops, Tesco are taking on Aldi by buying up a range of charity food banks.
With Sainsburys relaunching Netto, Tesco are keen to compete in the shame end of the market. “We’re talking abject humiliation here, not the mild embarrassment of our long-standing ‘Value’ range.”
“We thought of bringing back Happy Shopper, I certainly remember being bullied for having their crisps in my school lunch box”, said Tesco director Alan Soylent. “But our research shows that ‘food banks’ are currently dominating the downtrodden sector. Shame is very marketable at the moment.”
They’re laughing, why aren’t you?
David Cameron has vented his frustration over the majority of the country not feeling the benefits of economic recovery. In a Cabinet Office meeting whose transcripts were subsequently leaked to The Evening Harold the Prime Minister ranted against what he perceives as “profound ingratitude from the masses.” Continue reading
Filed under Economy
What’s for dinner?
A new breed of genetically modified chickens has been hailed a success by its developer, Harold farmer Lionel Garage.
“The new chicken type is featherless from birth,” Mr Garage told the Evening Harold, “pre-basted and also comes with the all-important leg elastic as a built-in feature.”
Farmer Garage claims the new design will result in increased profitability for chicken producers, saving them much of the cost of traditional posthumous poultry processing.
“Standard-type chickens require labour-intensive after-death attention,” he said, “and I’m frankly sick off forking out so much plucking cash. And you wouldn’t believe how long it takes to get that elastic band round its back legs.”
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Filed under Around Harold, DNA, Economy, environment, Farming, Food, Health, Nature, Pets, spam
The competition commission has warned Tesco to stop selling it’s suppliers’ souls for less than cost price.
The warning comes as more and more small and local suppliers who have spent hundreds of years selling their wares to local independent shops sell their souls to the supermarket giant.
One local brewery explained: “We used to sell good quality beer to retailers that knew what they were on about. We put our heart and soul into it.”
“But when the big boys come looking to buy a few more bottles but without the heart bit and even the beer part being optional, who can resist.”
Continue reading
A cold block of stone with an empty tomb for a heart
Jobseekers face losing their benefits for three months if they refuse to take roles as pyramid-building slaves, a letter from a Conservative minister has revealed.
For the first time, benefit claimants are at risk of penalties if they do not apply for and accept zero-hours contracts moving giant blocks of stone on crude wooden rollers under the harsh Egyptian sun, according to the new universal credit system.
Last week, the Office of National Statistics revealed that the number of contracts which do not guarantee minimum hours but do guarantee you having your back ripped open by whips while slowly dying of dehydration has reached 1.4 million. Continue reading
Can you really afford that pen?
Under new rules that take effect on Saturday, mortgage applicants face tougher questions about their lifestyle, to give lenders greater confidence that borrowers will actually have the ability to pay.
Questions from lenders about customers’ regular outgoings – including childcare costs and even haircuts – could be included in affordability checks, along with a range of other lifestyle queries.
At the Evening Harold, we have obtained an early draft copy of the new questionnaire, so why not try it yourself and find out whether, in these difficult times, the mortgage companies will see you as a good risk? Continue reading
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Filed under Economy
Not handed to me on just any old plate. It was solid silver, half an inch thick and this big
Poor qualifications may mean British youngsters losing out on jobs, fears the Prime Minister.
“My own father was good at Maths and English” he said yesterday “He could add up money and read tax law, which meant I had the qualifications to get into Eton College, after which it was onwards and upwards. If I have one question for aspirational young people, looking for opportunities today, it is this – do your parents have pots of money?” Continue reading
Mr Murphy also restocked the paper’s stationary cupboard.
A man with virtually no morals to fall back on posed as a journalist for the Daily Mail.
That’s the claim of a food bank recently cleaned out by the scrounger, who is described as ‘starving of empathy and quite heavily stained with chocolate.’
Simon Murphy walked into the offices of the newspaper and started typing out hate, after discovering that charities were giving out food to families that need it. Not one member of staff spotted that something was wrong, despite the rowdy ‘nomnomnom’ coming from his desk, or his continual complaint that they didn’t have couscous.
Continue reading
Filed under breaking news, Economy, Politics
Happy at last: couple can’t wait to retire to the city.
A Harold couple who grow vegetables on their organic small-holding can’t wait to sell everything and buy an ex-council house in London.
Jeanette and Ted Evans have worked tirelessly on their farm for the last 18 years, sometimes waking as early as 9.30am to tend to their radishes and spring cabbages.
Ted has dreamed for some time of giving it all up and moving to a sink estate, perhaps somewhere pebble-dashed with a shared communal area.
Continue reading
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Filed under Around Harold, Economy, Farming
An expert from Sotheby’s has confirmed that a medieval-looking manuscript he found in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant in Harold is an authentic Chaucerian artefact from the mid-fourteenth century.
Restaurant owner Pippa Delaney was incredulous on hearing the news. “I can’t believe how long I’ve been saying I must sort out that kitchen drawer,” she said.
“Quaint little villages like Harold are full of priceless gems from yesteryear, tucked away in cupboards and attics,” said the Sotheby’s expert. “I just had a gut feeling in Veggie! Veggie! Veggie! although that may have been the lentil and three-bean soup.”
“Well, thank goodness he asked for a rummage in my drawers,” said Pippa, “I would have put that smelly scrap of paper in the bin for sure. The mustiness was bad enough, but the handwriting and spelling were a disgrace.”
Filed under Around Harold, Crime, Culture, Dating, Economy, Law and Order, Politics
Atos will now spend its time smoking fags in front of a big telly.
Atos, a wheezing, fat company that scrounges cash from the government, has declared itself unfit for work.
The decision came after the firm failed to find its arse with both hands, and sweated to the point of passing out when asked to walk past a big pile of money.
“Atos has never really been capable of doing a great job”, admitted its employer Ian Duncan Smith. “But to be fair, that’s never really stopped me.”
Continue reading
Filed under breaking news, Economy, Health, Politics
Orgy of light and warmth
Charities are reporting growing concern that new pension rules will lead to old people recklessly squandering their retirement income on luxuries such as heating and food.
After 2015, people reaching retirement age will be able to use pension pots however they want, rather than having to buy a guaranteed annual income, and the fear is that many will rush out to buy tinned food, which they will then cook using fuel in an adequately-heated apartment. Continue reading
Mornings are not the time to have to cope with George Osborne’s face so here’s a picture of your reporter’s cat instead.
Elderly bigots across the country are enjoying their first full day of gains from a budget designed especially for them.
“This is a budget for the makers, the doers and most especially anyone who was thinking of voting Ukip in 2015,” said George Osborne. “We’re putting Britain further to the right, but the job is far from done.”
Osborne’s budget took 5p off the cover price of both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, put a cap on the top price of World at War boxsets and abolished VAT on golfing equipment as well as on clothes bought at garden centres.
“Both the Tories and Ukip get the majority of their votes from the over fifty-fives,” explained the Chancellor. “This gave the budget a clear goal: appeal to the loons and sod everyone else. This isn’t about the standard of living or safe-guarding jobs this is about my standard of living and safe-guarding my job.”
However Osborne has denied that his budget was entirely focussed on wooing Ukip.
“I took a penny off a pint of beer and halved the duty on bingo. That’s what the proles like, isn’t it? Maybe next year I’ll also include something about football and tanning machines. That ought to do the trick.”
At the time of going to press no Ukip spokesperson was available for comment as they were too busy blaming the first day of spring on the fact that homosexuals can get married and resenting that the countryside is once more becoming bright and gay.
Excited crowds gather as the first concrete egg coin nears completion
A new £1 coin, designed to be the “most secure in the world”, is set to be introduced in 2017.
To combat concerns about the current pound coin’s vulnerability to counterfeiting, The Royal Mint has decided on a controversial new design – the coin will now be a fifty-metre wide concrete egg, which experts say will be almost impossible to copy, even if you wanted to.
The new coin will be made in grey and will incorporate state-of-the-art authentication technology and roughly £800 worth of concrete, at a stroke making counterfeiting non-viable.
In a nod to tradition, the coin’s unusual shape is said to be based on Queen Victoria’s threepenny bits, which were famously large enough to need a pair of courtiers to carry them around.
Such radical changes to symbolic items always cause complaints, and concerns have been raised by consumer groups about the ridiculously massive size of the coins. A government source countered this, saying: “We realise this will cause some inconvenience to shoppers, but expect the public to broadly support the move. The fitness benefits alone will be enormous.”
“This could also solve the housing crisis as you could use the coin egg as a sturdy thing around which to construct a rudimentary shelter.”
However, well-meaning liberals should realise that the housing problem is no simple matter, after eight Big Issue sellers were crushed to death during trials of the new coin in Romford.
A competition will be held to decide the image on one side of the coin, with Eric Pickles already the front-runner, providing they can fit him in.
Volunteers take up to ten minutes out of every shift to have a cup of tea. Is there no limit to their self-indulgence?
George Osborne has vowed to end food bank bonus culture calling the practice “grossly unfair” and “out of step with these times of austerity.”
The Chancellor’s declaration comes after the publishing of a report he commissioned into volunteer behaviour at food banks which saw spies infiltrate food banks up and down the country. Continue reading
Ukraine ‘never got letter from Gazprom about price increase’.
Ukraine has left angry messages on several utility comparison websites, complaining that the boxes for entering annual kilowatt hours for gas consumption are far too small.
“It was bad enough having to convert 55 billion cubic metres into kilowatt hours,” said Ukraine’s Energy Minister Yuriy Prodan, “then really annoying to find the box was too small for all the zeros.”
Uswitch and moneysupermarket.com have both replied to Ukraine, saying they are sorry the size of the boxes did not meet the customer’s expectations. “On the other hand,” said a spokesman for uSwitch, “we did point out that where it says ‘domestic usage’, the box is for a single household, not an entire sovereign nation recognised by international law.”
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Filed under Business, Economy, Europe, International News
“More money for us.”
Under increasing pressure to reduce costs and boost income into the royal household, the Queen and Prince Philip are rumoured to be considering auctioning off some of their assets, starting with Prince Charles.
“The idea came while the Queen was taking in her daily fix of Bargain Hunt,” her spokesman said.
The irony of collecting tax in a Starbucks cup was lost on this tax collector
Corporation tax has long been a contentious issue politically, with HMRC doing their best to get multi-national companies to pay the correct levels of tax owed. These tactics have ranged from taking company directors out to dinner to the more drastic action of asking them really nicely.
Now HMRC have announced they are to try a new approach to collecting the millions of pounds owed to the public purse; begging.
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