Monday, August 31, 2009

Right wing Africans suggest letting California burn

Conservative leaders across Africa have called for the wildfires in the US state of California to be left to burn uncontrollably as a means of solving the persistent problems affecting the region.

“Every year we see the same pictures on television, of homes being destroyed and peoples’ lives ruined by fire,” said Joseph Mebillingsworth a leading political commentator in Ethiopia. “No matter how much money is spent the same thing happens every year.”

Many political commentators point to California, and Los Angeles in particular, as having a history of chronic water shortages and wildfires as evidence that the land is unable to sustain the current demands placed on it by ten of millions of immigrants over the last 200 years.

“It is clear that the population explosion in California is now unsustainable, forcing people to live close to deadly, dry woodland that can only burst into flames,” said MeBillingsworth. “There are just too many people for the Fire Department of Los Angeles to support. Every year millions of dollars is pumped into LA fire prevention, and yet every year we see the same images – people returning to the wreckage of homes only recently rebuilt from the ashes of previous houses. Clearly giving the area money is not the answer.”

Those that wish to leave California to the flames as the only long-term solution insist that California is rich enough to sustain itself and provide for future generations of Fire-fighters to work the land, but that the state is constantly dragged down by unbearable waste, greed and corruption.

“It is the people at the bottom that suffer, not the ruling elite,” said MeBillingsworth. “Even while the people struggle and the State is apparently bankrupted into selling off anything it can on EBay, the ruling elite have enough to buy the finest clothes from their exclusive shops in Beverly Hills and drive around in limousines.”

Others though believe that leaving the people of California to die in the thousands is morally repugnant in the 21st century.

“California is a fabulous land, it is endowed with enormous natural resources and its people are hard-working and skilled enough to be able to come home to a house that is not on fire,” said one aid worker. “They just need some training in the basics. Such as how to draw maps of those areas that have persistent wildfires. And then learning not to build houses in them.”

As the old investment aid saying goes – “Give a man a fire-truck and his house won’t burn down today. Teach him about sensible urban planning and his town will be out of reach of fires for a lifetime.”

Both left and right of the political spectrum in Africa are in agreement about the plight facing the residents of Los Angeles as they try to once again recover from a vicious circle that many believe is of their own making.

“It is difficult for us, sitting in Africa watching the news, to understand the difficulties of the people of California should they be injured or become ill from the effects of the fires, " said MeBillingsworth. “Their health system really is appalling.”

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Riots in the streets after Ikea changes its catalogue typeface from Futura to Verdana

Residents of affluent suburbs the world over were today warned to stay in their homes as middle class areas were consumed by another day of rioting following the news that Ikea had changed its catalogue typeface from Futura to Verdana.

“There is carnage everywhere, I can barely bring myself to look and am shuttered in doors shaking,” said Callum Billingsworth, a graphic designer from Camden in London, via Twitter. “Have you seen page 213? They have used red, bold Verdana, for God’s sake.”

The same story was repeated the world over. In the Mission area of San Francisco the early morning sun rising across the bay shone on rows of burnt out cars and overturned buses.

“It’s worse than the Facebook riots of ’08, and the changed layout,” said one resident who did not wish to be named, since she had not painted her front door to complement her fence. “People were just torching things, and chanting ‘Move this a little bit to the left then!’”

In a bid to bring order to a world ripped apart as another pillar of middle-class society undergoes the inevitable pressure of change, an online petition has been created to allow people to anonymously assert their right to have no absolutely effect on a huge international corporation and its typeface.

“People think we can’t but we can really make a difference with this petition,” said Billingsworth logging into his iMac to sign-up. “We just need to raise the issue above other petitions, like this one about Blood Diamonds, which sounds like a horrific clash of styles.”

Bloggers in the United States of America have been hit hardest by the change as the US economy is extremely vulnerable to changes of style, over substance. One noted sagely that “Ikea, they are Swedish aren’t they? I know that is in Norway so we need to picket the Swiss embassy right away.”

Verdana is a font designed and optimised for display on satirical websites that are only occasionally updated. Ikea is said to be leading the world in using such a font in print but the chaos brought about by the change has forced politicians at the highest level to wade into the debate. And MEPs.

“This issue, whatever it is, is an important issue, and one that I shall go onto Fox News and talk about,” said Daniel Hannan, MEP for Shitting in His Own Bed in South East England. “Ikea is a 60 year old mistake of immigration. Enoch was right when he said ‘Chuck out the Chinks’”

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Record success for "tying a child to something"

News that Tiger Brewer has, at 8 years old, become the youngest person to be strapped to the wing of a plane has been warmly welcomed by “child-tying-up” enthusiasts around the world.

“We are confident that now the sub-ten year old taboo for strapping a child to something has been broken we can perhaps have a crack at the world record for the youngest person to be strapped to a phone box,” said child-tying-up enthusiast, Bill Billingsworth. “Or perhaps strapping them in a car seat using some sort of belt? The exciting possibilities to tie children up to something that is outside of their control anyway are endless.”

Tiger Brewer “walked” a total distance of zero feet from his stationary starting position – strapped in a harness in the middle of the wing - watched on by his sisters, Star and Flame. This equals the current best for modern wing walking since the technical variation “Being Strapped To a Plane” replaced the more conventional “Moving About Untethered” that many lay people associate with traditional wing WALKING.

“Strapping people to the wing is the modern way,” said Tiger’s father Happy Birthday Brewer. “There are only the same forms to fill in for a Health and Safety Assessment as for sitting in a plane. Which is about as risky.”

Tiger has practised hard to get the record for the youngest person Being Strapped To a Plane a task that involves standing up, aided, and perhaps wearing goggles.

“His preparation for Being Strapped To a Plane involved going out on a windy day in just a t-shirt,” said Tiger’s ridiculously named mother, Zoe. “He also managed to watch a whole episode of ‘Road Wars’ standing up.”

Child welfare enthusiasts have expressed their views on the issue regarding tying a child to a large and otherwise immovable object and the effect it could have on long term development.

“It’s great, as a parent you don’t know how great it is to strap a child to something like the 'ClimbiĆ© Pole',” said Bill Billingsworth. “I have really developed my bluffing skills playing Texas Hold ‘em online - whilst the kids are tied up in the garden.”

Saturday, August 15, 2009

US Healthcare – “Best in the country” claims Glenn Beck

Fox News shouter, and part time anal surgery enthusiast, Glenn Beck shattered traditional right-wing stereotypes of insularism after announcing that the United States had the finest healthcare in the United States.

“Only last year I was complaining about the terrible treatment I received from the shocking healthcare system in this country. When I was paid by CNN,” foamed Mr Beck. “However now that I am paid by Fox I am pleased to say what a turnaround US healthcare has had in just over a year!. Now it is star-spangled banneringly brilliant. The US has the best healthcare system in the country.”

Mr Beck, famous for responding to his own contradictions was responding to comments he made in 2008 after undergoing life threatening bum-hole surgery that sadly went wrong. He survived.

Controversy has raged across America after a few people suggested that it might be quite a good idea for the richest country in the world to let a few less of its own citizens die by providing a greater access to healthcare. This has provoked a back-lash from the conservative right who feel that President Obama has taken a step too far along Comrade Bush’s nationalisation programme for the United Socialist States of America.

“I don’t think it is hyperbole to talk of ‘death panels’, we aren’t putting words into the President’s mouth,” said fellow high-octave trainee journalist Sean Hannity. “Death panels are no more a lie than the right’s plan to tow icebergs to the US coast for our ill senior citizens to be cast adrift on. They would be moored, not drifting.”

The mainstream conservative media has fomented screaming mobs in the USSA with horror stories of other countries’ healthcare systems that actually attempt to provide medical care as a basic human right. In particular it has heaped vitriol on the National Health Service of the UK aided by major political figures. And MEPs.

“Over two million people watched the first twenty seconds of my YouTube attack on Gordon Brown,” said Daniel Hannan MEP from his constituency in Victorian England. “They probably got up to the bit where I waved my hands around. Two million views makes me an expert on the NHS which I believe my porter used once when I was at Marlborough College.”

Hannan, whose ego has been a regular on US political shows since President Obama revealed his evil plan to help sick people, recently described healing millions of poor people since World War II as a “60 year old mistake”.

“As I said to the booker from Fox News, I am more than pleased to say how bad everything is on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I can do the radio show too,” said Mr Hannan. “Now, please let me past, I have just been to Walgreens for Mr Beck’s Anusol.”

It has been revealed that the surgery on the arse-hole Mr Beck had was to remove his head from his own ass.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Fears mount over a deadly mutation as Swine Flu contracts a dose of Katie Price

Katie Price’s PR firm, Orange Bandwagon, has announced that the glamour model, known as Jordan, has “so totally, absolutely got that Swine Flu that’s in the papers”.

Medical experts are said to be deeply concerned now that the previously harmless Swine Flu virus, having now contracted Katie Price, could mutate into a much more deadly sickness that could sweep through the nation.

“Our first analysis would be that symptoms would include the development of huge, unsightly swellings on the chest and the ability to project caustic venom like something out of the film Alien,” said Professor J. Scott Billingsworth.

The government said that there was genuine reason to be alarmed as, whilst unlikely to be fatal, the virus could cause people to completely lose all sense of shame. Due to increases in bodily temperature sufferers will also be unable to keep their faces out of a trough of Champagne. Or their vaginas away from fans.

Not everyone is fearing the spread of this toxic, vomit-inducing malady that seems to be increasingly infecting the country. Disc Jockeys facing the end of both their youth and their residency in small clubs in the Balearic Islands were said to be looking forward to “catching a dose”.

DJ Grand-Rider Chill who is facing his final year on the Island of Menorca said that it might do well for local tourism . “I’ll probably be somewhere in a long queue to shag one of these new flu victims. It will be like banging a Space Hopper on a trampoline.”

Balding DJs aside, medical experts were adamant that a Jordan-Swine Flu hybrid would cause widespread sickness on a scale not seen since the outbreak of last year’s Mills-McCartney misery.


“The government will have to react quickly to contain the new strain which we have already named,” said Professor Billingsworth. “We are warning that tabloid newspapers are the perfect breeding ground to spread this new outbreak of Bitch Flu.”

The news of Katie Price’s illness was broken in a press release by Orange Bandwagon announcing the glamour model’s new range of Tamiflu based remedies. The new range is said to have no more ability than common Tamiflu but comes in a range of tasteless packages.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Football legend Sir Bobby Robson dies – The Sun calls on him to resign

Remembering footballing legend Sir Bobby Robson, the nation’s newspapers today mark the occasion by reproducing some of their most memorable quotes from his career that they littered with abuse and even accusations of treachery.

“’In the name of God, Go!’” was one of our headlines from a few years back,” said Harry Billingsworth, thirsty football hack and Donkey Porn aficionado at The Sun. “That was when Robson was at his best for us journalists.”

Pundits were not always so one sided in their treatment of an England manager too much of a gentleman to hit back. Indeed a different approach was taken when England drew with Saudi Arabia.

“Both us at the Super-Soaraway Sun and those guys at The Daily Mirror changed our approach significantly after that,” said Billingsworth. “We went with ‘In the name of Allah, Go!”.”

Over time the press came to further modify its approach to an England manager that many consider the most successful ever, taking England to a narrow defeat in a Word Cup semi-final penalty shoot-out.

“Brilliant doesn’t describe that match,” said Billingsworth. “To take the World Cup winners to a penalty shoot-out was fantastic. Almost made me feel sorry for my massive ‘Plonker!’ headline of a couple of years earlier. But not really.”

But, even as time passes and the same newspapers that heaped so much abuse in death now lead with lavish tributes to Robson, who sadly lost his fifth battle with cancer at the age of 76 this week, the more senior journalists remember him at the peak of his career.

“You can never forget some of the great times that we gave Bobby, we hounded him for years to quit as England manager,” said Billingsworth/ “And when he took the job at PSV Eindhoven we accused him of treachery. Great days!”

Scores of fans made their own tearful tributes to Sir Bobby at Newcastle United’s St James’s Park stadium, with many fans laying memorial tributes of shirts, flowers and banners.

“I were so shocked to hear of Sir Bobby’s passing, like,” said one tearful man dressed as a barcode. “I was having two weeks off work ‘cos some website said I might have Swine Flu and wanted to just lay a momento from the 2003/2004 season when the Toon Army should’ve won the World Cup,” he added laying down a handmade banner reading ‘Sack Robson NOW!’.

Retro memorabilia of Sir Bobby is something that the newspapers are also considering producing. The Sun newspaper said that the timing of Sir Bobby’s death was perfect for them to hand out more “Sack Robson!” badges from 1984.

We've been here before