"I have nothing to offer you but doom, gloom, sleaze, cronyism, mismanagement and war," Vice-Prez Blair told the nation in his new year message.
   "There is a huge black hole ahead -- I know because I helped to dig it. No doubt I will offer a grovelling apology for it in due course, but I am too busy enjoying the first of my winter hols to bother at this moment in time."
   The government's advice to all New Labour's customers is to wrap themselves up in aluminium foil and brown paper, and hide in their fall-out shelters until Prez Bush has finished buggering about with Iraq.
The plum-suited Vice-Prez is denying responsibility for the above doom and gloom message. It was allegedly knocked out by his chief spin doctor when the poor sod was feeling a bit miserable.
A Quote from Chancellor Schroeder of Germany:
"Someone said I was supposed to meet the British prime minister, but all I got was Tony Blair in some desperately dodgy gear."

"The Chancellor is ready for penalty kick practice, Mr. Vice-Prez!"

Retailers Fall Into The Mugger's Black Hole

The proprietors of the nations big stores have calculated that there was a £15billion 'underspend' before the Xmas holiday. They're hoping to make it up in the post-Xmas sales.
   Fat chance!
   The man who dug the £30billion black hole in the nation's pension expectations with his stealth taxes is sitting on the retailers' cash and there's no way that he will be releasing it. The Mugger has unbalanced the economy with tax and spend plans based on bogus economic forecasts, so he needs that money. And anyway, how is he going to pay for his boss's part in Prez Bush's war with Iraq if he lets the punters waste their dosh on shopping?

London Closed On New Year's Eve

The Aussies and the Ruskies and all sorts of foreigners may have greeted the new year with massive parties and extravagent firework displays but the UK on the brink of war isn't going in for any of that stuff. Especially not in London, where Mayor Ken Livingstone closed Trafalgar Square to make sure that none of his customers ran the risk of enjoying themselves.
   Ain't life grand?

Romiley Author Jon A. Gored

Romiley author Jon A. Gored has decided that the time has come for him to form a political party and take over the running of the country while there is still a chance of saving it.
   "New Labour has brought us only New Ruin," Mr. Gored said at a preliminary rally held at Romiley's internationally celebrated conference venue The Forum.
   "The Tories are a busted flush at the moment and the Trivial Democrats have their set their sights no higher than becoming Her Majesty's Opposition," he added. "And as the country is crying out for a Regime Change, I intend to step in to the top job at the earliest opportunity."
   When asked about his previous political experience and his qualifications for running TheUK.co.uk, Mr. Gored responded with a simple truth.
   "Being Prime Minister can't be any sort of a big deal," he said with a confident smile. "If Tony Blair can do it, any one can!"
   Asked about his policy on Europe with a euro referendum in prospect (if Vice-Prez Blair thinks he can fiddle a result in his favour), Mr. Gored said: "The thing about the EU is that it's just a vehicle for producing arbitrary and pointless regulations so its legions of stooges can pretend they're doing useful work when they're not grabbing freebies and lying about their expenses. Very much like the Westminster parliament and the talking shops in Wales and Scotland, in fact.
   "Our first objectives in Europe are to restore the British Veto and our 200 mile exclusivity limit for our territorial waters, and to get the EU's finances under control. We shall achieve these objectives very rapidly by combining a policy of non-involvement in their nonsense with a blank refusal to pay one penny piece into the EU's coffers until the financial systems are overhauled.
   "Our next policy for Europe is to go beyond the Single Currency to a much more useful concept -- the Single Language. There will be cost savings in the squillions -- pounds sterling or euros -- if all records are kept in English instead of the multiplicity of languages spoken by the EU's expanding membership. English is the major language of world commerce and communication -- and the obvious choice for the Single European Language.
   "It makes sense to drag the EU into the 21st Century and introduce the Single Language without delay. This we shall achieve once the poisonous Blair Regime has been ousted from these shores and we have restored an element of national pride."
   The Black Flag wishes Mr. Gored well with his noble ambitions.

Glacier Weather Grips Romiley

A Romiley resident reported that his bird bath froze solid during the first week of the month -- producing a block of ice which was two inches thick. "Any little vultures who tried to hack their way though it," he added, "will still be flying around with bent beaks!"
   Exactly the same thing happened in the last week of the month but Romiley was spared the 2" of snow which brought the South-East to a standstill.

... against Mayor Livingstone's Congestion Charges. The master plan is to take him to court on the grounds that he broke the law by failing to consult everyone affected by his scheme. Trade unions and other concerned citizens are joining forces to swamp the mayor with charges of committing offences against the European Human Rights Convention. Mayor Livingstone is unlikely to perform a prompt U-turn when the writs crash onto his desk, but the conspirators expect the matter to drag on and on and on in the courts until his term of office expires and the lawyers involved all become disgustingly filthy rich [or even disgustingly filthier & richer].
An RAC survey has shown that 40% of motorists are violently opposed to Mayor Livingstone's road tax and 33% believe that it will have no reducing effect on traffic jams. In addition to the legal challenges above, motorists are planning to fight back at an individual level. They will be fitting liquid-crystal number plates, which can be made unreadable for the benefit of the congestion zone's spy cameras, and using global positioning systems to avoid entering the fringes of the zone.
   Borrowing cars, fitting a bogus number plate (a clone from a car of the same model and colour) and not supplying updated details to the licensing bureau in Swansea when a motorist moves out of the zone are also expected to become popular.
   More radical action is expected in the form of bombarding Transport for London with emails and phone calls to clog up the system and stop anyone from paying the tax; refusals to pay the tax; bogging down the administrative process with frivolous queries and outright disinformation; and criminal damage to the cameras.
   Things should get quite interesting in central London on February 17th.

More Things Vice-Prez Blair Has Given Us More Of
In The Last 5 Years:

• Litter -- up 29%
• Rats -- up 33-45% according to area
• Council Tax -- up 56%
• Burglaries -- up 62%
• Murders -- up 80%
• Robberies -- up 88%
• Crimes involving firearms -- up 103%
• Violent crimes -- up 138%
• Fiddled hospital waiting lists -- up 206.23% [estimated]
• Bugging, phone tapping and interception of post and email by the police and the security services -- up 250% [the number of warrants issued in 2001 alone was double the number issued in the whole of World War Two!]
• Criminal damage -- up 277%
• Drug offences -- up 458%
• Stealth taxes -- up 47,184,201.630% [estimated]
• Plus : Waiting on a hospital trolly -- the Guinness Book of Records has given official world-record recognition to Mr. Tony Collins, who spent 77.5 hours on a trolly at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Swindon.

Mobile Phone Murders

Domestic cats, pesticides, changes in farming methods, lead-free fuel, changes in building methods, loft insulation, Saddam Hussein, grey squirrels and global warming have all been blamed for the decline in the numbers of sparrows in British cities. This month, however, the finger has been pointed in a different direction. Mobile phones are to blame.
   London's sparrow population has fallen by 75% since 1994, the year when mobile phone masts began to appear, and researchers in Spain have found that birds avoid areas with high levels of electromagnetic contamination. EM radiation could also affect the sparrow's ability to navigate and lay eggs, say some 'experts'. "Rubbish, there's no proof," say the sceptics. And so the prize available for a proper scientific proof of why the urban sparrow population is in decline remains unclaimed.

Bung City, UK

New Labour's corruptibility has become one with the Laws of the Universe -- so much so that the entrants for the World's Favourite Despot competition have been queueing up to offer Vice-Prez Blair's shoddy gang all sorts of bungs.
   Libya, for instance, (according to the Grauniad) has offered cash to the financially challenged Labour Party as well as a multi-billion pound arms deal and a publishing deal for UK companies. New Labour's customers are now wondering what the likes of Prez Mugabe and World's Favourite Despot Saddam Hussein have offered in the way of bungs. And just what has been accepted and kept quiet about ...

CRIME NEWS

Scotland Yard Hunts Feng Shoowy Killer

Scotland Yard's Peculiar Crime Squad is hunting a man whom they have dubbed The Feng Shoowy Killer in view of his peculiar habit of arranging the body party of his victims 'to maximize chi', according to an email received by the PCS. Wheely bins in some of the capital city's more elegant districts have been the subject of dawn raids by detectives intent on defining the exact number of the killer's victims. [The current score is believed to be six.]
   A spokesman for New Scotland Yard said, "This demented individual must be stopped. Mocking an ancient Chinese cultural belief is a clear infringement of that community's human rights and we utterly condemn the person concerned."
   Sceptics have raised the possibility that the body parts are, in fact, nothing more sinister than medical specimens, which were distributed around the capital by drunken student doctors, who would have been bathing harmlessly in Trafalgar Square's fountains had Mayor Livingstone not been overcome by a bout of Scrooge-mania. The police are reluctant to go along with such a pedestrian explanation and continue to hunt their hypothetical serial killer.

The Judges Were Right

Nobody in Britain's crime industry gives a hoot about burglars -- it's official! Following the infamous announcement by the country's senior judges that burglars are not to be locked up, the police have made their decision irrelevant. "The British police are not going to bother investigating burglaries any more, so no such cases will come before the courts and everyone will be happy," a spokesman for New Scotland Yard said.
   A spokesman for New Labour's customers suggested that the police and the judiciary might be willing to take a pay cut in recognition of the responsibilities which they are shedding. The Black Flag approached the skivers concerned for a comment but we're still waiting for them to come back to us on that one!

   Painting the GM Lily

GM Trials Contaminate Surrounding Crops was the shock horror headline last month. But how?
   Finally, the truth has come out. The contamination is spread by the merry bands of GM protestors, who've been going around trashing GM crops. They want those involved in the GM industry to be seen as the ultimate bad guys, and they decided to turn their dire warnings that Genetically Monstered genes would be found in surrounding areas into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-styled good-guys have been giving the chain of evidence a helping hand and they've been caught at it.
   We don't expect integrity in the protest industry but a bit less stupidity would be nice.

A Generation Of Wrangling

The EU has taken 30 years to make up a definition of chocolate and enforce it. Spain and Italy, the last foot-draggers, have been quelled at last and British-style milk chocolate is now a universally legitimate product. The sheer time scale of the process leaves those in the real world in a state of despair. If the EU has to take a generation to sort out something as simple as a definition of chocolate, what hope is there that the Eurocrats could ever achieve anything worthwhile?
   p.s. A little dark chocolate is now officially good for the heart.
The latest brainwave from the EU is to redefine an island from 'a body of land completely surrounded by water' to the above plus a permanent population of more than 50 people. Oh, yes, and it can't house a nation's capital city. This comes to us from the same outfit which decreed that bananas and cucumbers have to be straight and carrots are a fruit!

McDonald's Are Innocent, OK!

To the surprise of just about everyone, a US district judge has thrown out of court, a claim by the parents of fat American kids that their obesity was caused by the failure of McDonald's to tell their customers that eating too much of their grub could pile on the pounds. It was obvious to the rest of us that greed and a lack of parental control were to blame but we remain totally gobsmacked by the news that an American judge is actually in touch with the real world.
   Sadly, it's too much to hope that the Reality Plague will be transmitted to British Judges, who remain resolutely determined to empty the prisons and shirk their duty to punish the evil.

   New Government Plan For Bogus Asylum Seekers

The government's big new idea is to abandon its failed policy of deporting bogus asylum seekers and let them stay in this country if they are willing to do useful work. Consenting economic migrants are to be concentrated in Kent and used as flood defences. Inspired by the 'human shield' concept evolved by the World's Favourite Despot in the First Gulf War, rank of boguses will be deployed along the banks of the rivers which are threatening to overflow 'for as long as it takes to contain the danger'.
   Mr. Albert Hussein, the principal spokesman for Downing Street's Public Enlightenment Executive, described the scheme as 'a new partnership between the British countryside and migrants'. Many more similar schemes for migrants are envisaged in the immediate future if this one achieves the expected level of success.

Just Another Homeless, Friendless Refugee ...

Not trusting Prez Bush's offer of immunity from prosecution if he steps down, the World's Favourite Despot seems to be planning to apply for asylum in the UK. His minions, under the supervision of his nephew Albert, are currently scanning estate agents in the Home Counties for a suitable estate, where he hopes to retire to a life of 'quiet contemplation' while he works on his political memoirs.
   Thirty-Five Years of Dodgy Dealing in the Middle East is believed to be Mr. Hussein's provisional title. His agent is already describing the book as 'The Mother of all Cans of Worms' and touting for bids. The smart money is going on a consortium of his political adversaries, and their descendants, clubbing together to buy up all rights to the book so that it can be suppressed. Either way, the World's Favourite Despot seems to be doomed to a luxurious retirement.

FOREIGN NEWS

EU Mass Heating Project Comes On-Line -- In Southern Italy!

The United Kingdom was clad in snow and ice as this month began and the population was shivering like mad to stay warm. So where did the European Union install its first major public heating project? Hundreds of miles away in Italy!
   Thanks to another dirty deal between the 'usual suspects', the island of Stromboli was chosen as the test-bed for the pilot project. The island is bathed by the warm, if polluted, waters of the Mediterranean, and not really in need of supplementary heating, but logic never has troubled the administrators of the EU. And what did the Luddite locals do when things began to hot up for them? The ungrateful sods only gathered at the administration office to moan!
   But their protests soon turned to panic when the heating project's control system got slighly out of line and the island's volcano began to erupt rivers and fountains of lava. Even worse was to come. An earthquake shook a large chunk of the island into the sea, triggering a tidal wave which crashed ashore on the Italian mainland and caused extensive damage.
   "It's back to the drawing board for a rethink," the EU's Energy Development Commissioner said when the island of Stomboli had been evacuated 'as a routine precaution'. Repairing the damage caused by the unscheduled volcanic eruption is expected to cost 14 billion euros, of which 73% will be stolen as bogus claims, if the usual pattern for compensation in the EU is followed.
   It has been rumoured that the recent eruptions of Mount Etna on neighbouring Sicily were a result of 'thermal transfer experiments' being conducted by the European Union's Energy Development Commission. The silence from the Commission on that subject is telling its own story.

The Next Story Is In Extremely Bad Taste -- Be Warned!

A woman in Alaska opened a parcel thinking it was a Lobstergram. But she found herself unwrapping her dead father's leg instead. The parcel came from a DNA testing company, which says it was ordered by a judge to return the remains to the next of kin. Ms Lane, the unfortunate recipient of the judge's bounty, is planning to sue the company for $100,000 for stress, trauma and mental anguish.

Oriental Cunning

Inventor Shin-Chang Wang has come up with the ultimate development in flat-pack furniture -- his offerings can be zipped together, eliminating hunts for dropped screws, glue getting all over the place and frustration over plans which are not written in any human language. The idea sounds so useful that it will probably never catch on. Or the manufacturers of conventional furniture will buy it up and suppress it, which is alleged to be the fate of all really good ideas.

WAR NEWS

No Need To Panic -- Official

The government responded with evident relief to reports that the amount of the toxin ricin found in the London council flat of terrorists posing as bogus asylum seekers was 'vanishingly small'. Unfortunately, New Labour's customers were less than impressed by the inital 'don't panic' message. The general suspicion was that if this government is saying that there is no danger, then fear and trembling is the order of the day.
   What tipped the balance, however, was the subsequent announcement that the target of any Al Qaida ricin plot is likely to be a politician, such as Vice-Prez Blair. On hearing that, everyone heaved a sigh of relief, said to himself or herself, "Nobody important, then," and got on with what passes for normal life in the 21st Century.

Marching To Victory

The Grand Old Duke of Blair wishes it to be known that he has marched his troops down the hill again to give the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq more time to find a smoking gun.
 
Pres Bush has told his Vice-Prez to shape up and stop dithering. The troops are now on their way back up the hill.

War Speculation

In 1982, Vice-Prez Blair was a typical wishy-washy Labourite, who opposed expelling the Argentinean invaders from the Falkland Islands by military force. 20 years on, is his desire to kick ass in Iraq some sort of apology for his earlier weak-headedness and lack of patriotism? Or is it just another part of his campaign to become Mrs. Thatcher?

Will This Do, Mr. Prez?

The UN weapons inspectors haven't found a smoking gun in Iraq but they have found some non-smoking empty warheads, which are designed for use with chemical weapons. How long is it going to take them to realize that the Weapons of Mass Destruction are no longer in Iraq, one might ask? On the other hand, perhaps the weapons inspectors have realized they're on to a cushy job for life, looking for something that ain't there!
Prez Bush has vowed to 'persecute' all Iraqi war criminals. And Vice-Prez Blair reckons he's going to sort out North Korea after he's settled Saddam Hussein's hash. [He should be in office that long!]
LATEST NEWS : War is only 6 weeks away, say the Prez and his poodle the Vice-Prez.

Slammer Virus Makes The Internet Even Slower

Website designers have long been lambasted for wrecking the World Wide Web with fancy gadgets, which take an age to download and deploy. If things seemed even more impossible over the Super Bowl weekend, it was due to a worm virus, which was attacking servers rather than home computers and making a great many websites unobtainable. The FBI detected the virus on Saturday, 2003/01/25, and there was some speculation that the world was under attack by a Virus of Mass Destruction released as a protest against the up-coming war with Iraq. The smart money is going on some nerd with no political agenda and too much time on his hands.

The Oakland Raiders brought the No. 1 offense to Super Bowl 37 in San Diego but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had the No. 1 defence. Lots of people were wondering about a replay of the Ravens versus the Giants from 2 years ago -- with a better offense strapped on to the killer defence. And this is just what we got. The Raiders scored first but then the Bucs asserted themselves. They were 3-20 up at half time and the Raiders were left struggling to catch up as they took more and more risks, the Bucs' defence punished them more and more, and the hole got deeper and deeper.
   The Buccaneers, the former joke team of the NFL, ran 2 interceptions back for touchdowns in the last 2 minutes of the match and achieved final score of 21-48 in their favour in their first ever Super Bowl. Tony Dungy built them up after 14 straight losing seasons, John Gruden made them into champions.
   The Buccaneers' time at the top is likely to be brief, if the recent experience of the Rams and the Patriots is anything to go by, so they'd better enjoy it. As for the Raiders, with an ancient team and facing horrendous salary cap problems next year, this year looks as if it was their only shot at the Vince Lombardi Trophy for a while. Pity, because the American Crunch fans in Romiley wanted them to win.

The Strategic Rail Authority has come up with a brilliant plan for making the trains run on time. The reason why so many trains are late is that too many of them are trying to squeeze on to the rail network. So the Authority's answer to the problem is fewer trains making fewer stops in unimportant places. It makes a sort of sense -- as long as you're not bothered about leaving people waiting on stations for trains that never come and unable to get onto packed out trains when they roll up exactly on time.

10 Year Transport Plan Revised

The Strategic Rail Authority has revealed that New Labour's grand plans for the railways have hit the buffers. Too vague, based on assumptions as bogus as the Mugger's economic forecasts, and no money forthcoming from central government -- these excuses and more have been given for reducing Vice-Prez Blair's 10 Year Plan to about a One Week Plan, if we're lucky.
   Maladministration seems to be yet another of the things New Labour is giving us more of.

'Wrong Sort of Air' stalls Eurostar

Trains barrelling into the Chunnel from the frozen surface ran into warm, humid air underground. The result? Condensation, which shorted out the electrics and stopped the trains dead in their tracks.

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