Darling: “I haven’t done nearly enough to the economy”

GOSPLAN, Whitehall, Saturday (NNN) — Chancellor Alistair Darling has outlined future plans to subsidise the economy per Labour’s 1983 manifesto. “We can’t of course just seize control — we’ll entice them in. I’m sure we can come to a suitable synergy between the state and the chosen corporations.”

Peter Mandelson as DavrosPeter Mandelson graciously accepted the request to manage the operational aspects of the new command-and-control economy. “No company or sector can expect automatic bailout. We must evaluate likely winners. And see if they’ve been good boys and girls this year. I’m making a list, and I’m checking it twice.”

The lists are confidential. “No-one could leak the lists and not expect, say, an arrest by counter-terrorist police under the Official Secrets Act and a day or two of questioning while their home and office are searched. I speak entirely hypothetically, of course.”

Lord Mandelson clarified his earlier quote about becoming “filthy rich.” “What I said was that New Labour don’t care if you become filthy rich, as long as you pay your taxes. And remain dear, dear friends of ours.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the government was “working very closely with Barack Obama’s economic team,” producing a July 2008 photograph of himself with Mr Obama as evidence.

Portsmouth gets future-crime predicting CCTV cameras

SKATES, Pompey, Friday (NNN) — Portsmouth City Council is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to “predict” if a crime is about to take place and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.

CCTV epic failAnyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. “Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence,” said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. (“Consumer confidence” is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)

“Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object,” said councillor Jason Fazackarley. “Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays.”

The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible clichés copied from other papers.

However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: “++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol.”

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3D Blu-Ray coming to the home

CURRY’S ANALOGUE, The High Street, Tuesday (NNGadget) — 3D movies could be coming to your home cinema. A standard for three-dimensional content on Blu-Ray discs has been proposed by Panasonic.

Peter Murphy bowled over by 3D Maxell custard pie“Standards wars, patent monopolies and the like would seriously interfere with the widespread adoption of any 3D image standard,” said Panasonic’s Masayuki Kozuka. “So give us your bloody money and don’t argue.”

The systems will require new players, introduced at £500, and new high-definition televisions. Existing high-definition televisions will be rendered obsolete by the proposal, much as the pre-Blu-Ray “HD-ready” sets were. “Another few thousand is a small price to pay for the very latest in gadgetry. If we dub it ‘the third generation of HD,’ it should distract the early adopters long enough from lynching us. We’ll tell ’em Apple’s interested or something.”

To keep the “analog hole” closed, viewing will require an orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and sensory deprivation goggles with the displays in the eyepieces. “Any Vista user should be quite accustomed to this.”

Blu-Ray discs make up a fantastic 4% of the physical video market, as compared to those old, clunky and frankly rather stale-smelling DVDs which only make up 96% of sales and can’t be taken seriously by anyone.

In unrelated news, BitTorrent is now 40% of all Internet traffic, only exceeded by penis spam, while YouTube plays better on 64-bit Linux than Windows Vista.

Children to be taken into care

CHUGGERS, NSPCC, Tuesday (NNN) — Applications for children to be taken into care in England have risen sharply in the wake of the case of Baby P.

Rainbow fashion barcodeChildren’s Minister Ed Balls has unveiled well-thought-out and in no way hurried plans for every area of England to be covered by a Children’s Trust Board (CTB), which will “absolutely prevent” all possible abuse, as demanded by right-thinking members of the public and their favoured newspapers.

“We see this as the only way to assure the safety of children,” said Mr Balls. “No training, no qualifications, no criminal records bureau check … parents are the last people you’d want having anything to do with children.”

Incoming infants will be DNA sampled, barcoded, issued with My First ID Card (in comforting baby-blue and soft-pink) and stacked in Ministry of Education Upbringing Centres — to be constructed in a PFI deal with PartyPoker Beacon Academies plc — before being migrated to the JobCentre Reserve Labour Stacks upon their sixteenth birthday.

“Making sure that we develop and invest in the staff who are on this very lonely frontline service is vital,” he added. Social workers will be equipped with helmets and tasers. “Experts at Haringey Council have offered training.”

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Labour increases taxes for everyone except you personally, honest

WINEHOUSE CASINO, 11 Downing Street, Tuesday (NNN) — Prime Ministerial glove-puppet Alistair Darling detailed Labour’s economic stimulus package today. “We must keep the economy moving. As usual, we will achieve this by recruiting more civil servants and shuffling taxes around. Quick, which shell’s the VAT under? We will also force banks to lend more without such rapacious antisocial considerations as ability to pay back the loans.”

Amy Winehouse gets the drinks in“The bank bailout was a mere coverup for the Labour government’s gross economic mismanagement during ten years of prosperity,” said David Cameron. “That sort of irresponsible capitalism, let run loose in a plague of free enterprise, would never have been allowed to happen under a Tory government … stop sniggering over there.”

“The Prime Minister is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover,” said Boris Johnson, “and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the pain.”

“Not to worry,” said Mr Darling, “we’re taxing the hell out of drink too.”

“The recession must take its course,” said shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley. “Recession improves the moral fibre of the nation. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend more time at home with their families. They sit around the wireless in communal bonhomie, huddled for warmth and filled with the Blitz spirit, listening to the BBC Home Service, feeling reassured that all is right with the world once more and the BBC announcer is broadcasting wearing a dinner jacket.” Mr Darling responded with threats to put Lord Mandelson on Strictly Come Dancing.

The Metropolitan Police rejected plans to order 10,000 taser weapons for police on the beat, but said they may reconsider in the event of a Conservative government.

Women avoiding IT in UK

THE ENTERPRISE, The Federation, stardate Saturday (NNN) — The number of female IT professionals in the UK is falling, according to the British Computer Society, despite similar or superior academic scores and recruitment in the sector as a whole having risen in the same timeframe. The lack of flexibility offered by employers is blamed.

Fat Naked Internet Guy“It’s a free market world,” said Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy. “It’s about competence and getting the job done. Working sixteen hours a day on a project you really love is par for the course. That we’re all eighteen to twenty-five is from the accelerated Internet-based learning of the new generation, not exploitation of young workers who don’t know any better.”

Over a third of women in IT had complained of sexism up to sexual harassment at work. “It’s women who just don’t have social skills,” said Nerdboy. “They object to the guys freely choosing to all go down the strip club after work. They’re just not team players.”

Open source projects have worse figures than industry, with male to female ratios approaching fifty-to-one. Many women cite gross sexism on mailing lists and IRC. “In my experience, women just don’t have a working sense of humour and can’t take a joke. My girlfriend thought it was funny! Even leaving helpful comments on their blogs didn’t work. ‘Political correctness’ is no exaggeration. Anyway, I met my girlfriend online!”

“…,” said his girlfriend, RealDoll Ada.

“And it’s not like you can get the applicants,” added Nerdboy. “We can hardly get any girls to apply for a job here. They’re obviously naturally not good enough geeks. It must be evolutionary. We need more pink computers.”

“This is of course a terrible, terrible state of affairs,” said a spokesman for the Confederation of British Industry. “In the meantime, we need lots more IT workers shipped in from overseas.” He was later heard muttering something about “divide and conquer” and sniggering.

BNP karaoke song list goes missing

BARKING, Utterly, Wednesday (NNN) — The British National Party’s conference karaoke has been cancelled owing to the song list going missing.

Hitler CatTalkSport DJ Rod Lucas has been fired. “Jonathan Ross was only suspended for twelve weeks!” Mr Lucas will be bringing suit, said his solicitor, BNP member Mr Blobby.

Songs from the list include “Keep The White Flag Flying”, “The Story Of The Whites”, “Ivory and Ivory”, “99 White Balloons”, “Lolcat Has Only Got One Ball” and the singalong favourite “Here We Go”, although organisers have to be sure to distribute the lyric sheet first.

Nick Griffin reassured the public they would stand firm. “We swear that we will never give you up. We will never let you down. We will never run around or desert you.” In a later comment, Rick Astley told the twat to fuck off.

The BNP constitution specifies that all singers must be white and the music list must be ethnically cleansed of any funkiness or natural rhythm. Rick Astley still told the twats to fuck off.

The Labour Party’s complete song list has also been released, to no interest whatsoever and a rejection letter from Wikileaks.

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Darling on economy: “Tough titties”

PAGE 3, Financial Times, Friday (NNN) — Alistair Darling today admitted that the economy was disastrously seized up, with one in twelve London workers likely to lose their job.

Nigella Darling or Alistair LawsonAcross town, Nigella Lawson wore a low-cut dress revealing quite spectacular quantities of well-nourished breastage, with photos in all papers.

In the United States, Wall Street is melting away like Belloq’s face after Indy told him not to look in the Ark and Henry Paulson said he would not use the second $350 billion of the stimulus package, leaving the economy unpushed at a critical time and the Detroit car manufacturers on the verge of collapse.

In Australia, Nicola McLean’s breasts, which had undergone hyperinflation, were marvelously decorative and pointy and set off nicely by the other I’m A Celebrity bikini babes, Dani Behr and Carly Zucker, despite the influx of Robert Kilroy-Silk and kangaroo testicles.

Back in the UK, the economy is deflating, the banks have seized up, no-one is buying or selling houses and next week you’ll have to eat your shoes. And John Sergeant is a huge tit.

“But at least we’re not short of massive boobs,” said Mr Darling. “And call and vote on Strictly Come Dancing! Before the telly’s repossessed.”

Virgin Media offers new super-fast Internet at least two days out of seven

HOT-AIR BALLOON, Mid-Atlantic, Thursday (NNGadget) — Virgin Media, operators of Britain’s only cable television network, has launched a new 16 megabit Internet service.

Richard Branson dartboard“That’s sixteen megabits total over the day, usually,” said Virgin Media phone menu robot Mark Schweitzer, “but it’s very fast when it’s going. Plain old ADSL can’t hold a candle to it. You can hit your download limit in minutes!”

Customers will be able to add the boost free for three months, after which they will need to pay an additional £5 per month. The three months will start when Virgin ascertain the customer might possibly have thought about it in passing, probably last June. Should you be in any way less than satisfied, Virgin will be happy to leave you in a phone queue for three days, then disconnect your service entirely and charge you to switch it on again rather than just go back to the old plan like you asked them. And cut the cable outside your house and claim you did it. And pass your address to the record companies so they can send you threatening letters.

Virgin Media will also be releasing a new 50 megabit broadband service before Christmas. “We’ve heard that you can use things called ‘computers’ to send messages and even pictures. That’d be a good service to offer! We have this bloke in facilities who knows a bit about computers, we could get him to run it between refilling the coffee machines. If we tried, we could probably make it as reliable as our telly. Nobody really minds when the football drops out ten minutes before the end, do they.”

Virgin Media (“We’ve Never Done It Before, And We Don’t Really Know How To”) was founded as an experiment by ethically challenged psychologists to ascertain just how abusively awful customer service could get and still have anyone giving them money. The company is sponsored by British Telecom to make them look good by comparison.

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Terrorist computer virus infects hospitals

OH FUCK NOT HEALTH, Farringdon Road, Wednesday (NNN) — A terrorist attack on the NHS has brought three London hospitals to a halt.

NHS computer with Red Ring of Death, er, Arrested IndicatorsThe terrorists, representing an organisation calling itself “Microsoft,” apparently used insecure third-party contractors to put a virus-running platform called “Windows” into critical systems in the hospitals, in order to extort money from them on an annual basis.

It is understood that a large percentage of all businesses are infected with the virus, wasting up to 25% of employees’ working time and opening the companies to further attacks from related criminal organisations demanding to see all their licenses.

The virus in question, W32.SHILL/SCHOFIELD, takes over the host’s IT systems, leading to aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, pumping out prodigious quantities of faeces and a terrible compulsion to spread the infection to others. The patient also walks with a shuddering stumble and asks for their hospital meal to include tasty, tasty brains. Recovery has commenced when they have an overwhelming urge to throw their computer out of the window. “Getting this stuff out of the system makes MRSA look like a walk in the park,” said one cleaner, waving his shit-encrusted hands about for emphasis.

When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. “We have maintained a safe environment for our patients throughout the incident,” said a spokesman for Barts NHS Trust, “keeping them in the Clostridium difficile culturing lab rather than risking exposing them to ‘Windows.'”

“Healthcare staff should not share smartcards,” said a Connecting for Health spokesperson, “and if smartcards are used without a condom then disciplinary procedures should follow.”