PEASHOOTER, Beanotown, Friday (D. C. Thomson) — Zac Goldsmith, 7, of Richmond, has engaged in a furious row over his parents’ investigation into just who got into the biscuit tin, fed chocolates to the dog and wrote ‘ZAC WOZ ERE’ in strawberry jam on the counter.

Mr Goldsmith repeatedly denied he had done anything wrong — insisting he had followed exactly the same practices in declaring his use of the kitchen as every other petulant child. But he only agreed to address the issue after a heated ten-minute spat with his mother and father over whether they had previously refused him a right to reply to accusations of having “bottled out” of bath time the previous week.

Interviewed about the mess in the kitchen, Mr Goldsmith angrily refused to talk about the biscuit, chocolate or jam claims unless his mother first apologised for what he said were “lies” about him declining to appear in the bathroom Friday night. “I won’t talk about the specifics until I get this point across,” he said, accusing his mother of deliberately “misleading” his father by saying he had turned down bath time requests in favour of happening to be playing in the field behind the house. “You knew that was not true at the time, you know it’s not true now,” he told her. Each time he was questioned about the kitchen, Mr Goldsmith instead insisted on pressing her about the non-appearance at bath time, at one point calling her a “charlatan.”

Mr Goldsmith’s father proceeded to tan Mr Goldsmith’s backside a very fetching bright red colour, while commending the boy on his persistence in maintaining his position. “He will go far,” said Sir James. “Possibly to the gallows.”

PROJECT MAYHEM, Westminster, Saturday (NTN) — The 2011 census could be the last held in Britain, as the new government declares it much more cost-effective to ask local councils and credit reporting agencies where you live and what your religion is.

First-world countries almost all use a census every five to ten years to get accurate information for resource allocation and electoral boundary reallocation. “So obviously we need to fix that last one,” said Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude. “Experian should tell us no-one actually lives in Scotland, for example, so we needn’t run votes there at all.” The new Tory seats from the process will be termed “well-matured boroughs.”

Local councils looked forward to the initiative. “We expect several million previously-unrevealed residents to show up in our borough,” said Tower Hamlets council leader Lutfur Rahman, “all postal-voting for Labour, which should get us roughly one MP per street. We should also be able to get Urdu declared an official British language on the strength of our numbers.”

Mr Maude replied that he could use robust political science to disprove the existence of Tower Hamlets, if need be. “The numbers my staff came up with here suggest Tower Hamlets is actually somewhere off Skye, for example. Facts are an annoyance, so I suggest Mr Rahman not cross them.”