WINTER OF LOVE, 30 Millbank, Thursday (NTN) — Nick Clegg has expressed his “regret” at having made promises that actually involved testable claims, though not at breaking said promises.

“I’m sorry, I’m still a bit new to all this POWER POOOWEERRR AHAHAHA COWER BEFORE MY MIGHT stuff,” said Mr Clegg. “We thought it was about promising nice things that people would like. Our manifesto is completely applicable in the real world, if you assume a perfectly spherical polity of uniform density in a vacuum at absolute zero.

“But Dave has been very helpful in explaining to us the ineffable theological nature of political promises, which occupy the magisterium of the heart and soul rather than anything that interacts with the crass material world. Apparently I’m supposed to tell you to have faith in our essential Liberal Democrat nature, and do it convincingly enough you’ll think we still believe in these ‘LibDem principle’ things even while we’re putting the most atrocious plans into motion. The way Labour did it.”

The Conservative plan to squeeze students until the pips rattle has been controversial. The evidence to students that voting doesn’t actually work has led to photogenic conduct in the streets, with one photograph being published on the front pages of nine separate newspapers. “The violence was appalling,” said Mr Clegg. “Property damage is of course the same as violence. We are LibDems, you know.”

Alternate plans include making up the deficit in tuition fees with a tax on advertising everyday tedious shitkicking jobs as somehow requiring a degree. “This may include 99% of all jobs by 2015.”

Mr Clegg celebrated six months of POWER AHAHAHAHAHA POWER with a small house party, to which 21,000 people were invited on Facebook and three showed up with bottles of homemade nettle wine, which they left behind unopened while taking home the nice stuff Nick had laid on. “What? No, Dave didn’t show up. The kid’s hair needed washing or something. He was very nice about it, though.”

THE NIGHT GARDEN, Television Outskirts, Wednesday (NTN) — Northamptonshire children heading to London on school trips have been warned that they are at risk from terrorists, monsters, malevolent warlocks, Muslims, for’ners and people who read and have ten fingers.

Northamptonshire County Council issued an alert to all 349 of its schools warning of the memetic evil contained in the slavering pit of depravity in question. The council introduced the measure as the current ambient nonspecific fear level in Britain is “severe,” meaning a terrorist attack has happened in the past ten years.

“It is certain that, should any child be so foolish as to go near London, they shall be lured into a gingerbread house and boiled in the cauldron lickety-spit. Placing their parents in stocks in the village square before their children can be subjected to such horrors is part of the council’s duty of care.”

Head teachers have been ordered to inform the council’s Witchfinder General of any plans for visits to the capital. Parents who fill in permission slips for trips to London will be advised by the Inquisition of the threat of them meeting persons who are not quite our sort of people at all, darling, and given the option to withdraw their children or face the Question.

Mother-of-two Rachel Peace, from Kettering, said the council’s warning seemed “a bit excessive,” and complained of the expense of torches and pitchforks in school uniform colours.

SOLANAS, New Dworkin, Friday (NNN) — Teenage boys need to be taught a heavy dose of realism: that it may not be possible to be a perfect father and a career man, says Jill Berry, head teacher of Sir William Harpur school in Bedford and president of the Boys’ Schools Association (BSA).

About four-fifths of pupils in BSA schools will have children. While clever boys should aim high, she says there is nothing wrong with them working part-time or not at all when they have children.

“A lot of our boys want to have it all. That’s fine, but we need to make them realistic. More men are going back to work early after having children. It can all work until their child is ill.There is nothing wrong with them saying ‘I need to work part-time’ or ‘I need support in order to enable me to work and have children.’ What we can do as teachers is prepare them to have aspirations, but not aim for perfection. We can help them recognise that life is about balance.”

Berry, who does not have children, said that unless boys were taught this, teachers were “in danger of betraying them. Priorities shift, but that doesn’t mean you’re selling out — you are facing reality and trying to be realistic about social expectations and what you can achieve and you should stop beating yourself up about it.”

Her comments come amid a raging debate over flexible working rights, particularly for men with families. The debate over getting men into the workplace continues. Last month fund manager Nichola Pease said many firms were put off from hiring men.

Harriet Harwoman, the minister for men, told the Treasury select committee inquiry Men in the City that “the change we need is the change which recognises that for men to take time out with a young baby or to work flexible or part-time hours on return from paternity leave is going to be the way of the future. Of course, work musn’t interfere with keeping the house tidy, cooking a nice family meal every evening and putting out with at least forty-five minutes of cunnilingus each night and Sunday morning. Marital bliss takes effort.”

GORDON OF THE JUNGLE, Watch Out For That Tree, Monday (NNN) — After a report by the Civitas think tank that “A-levels could be done by a monkey these days,” British students have been hiring monkeys to do their homework for them while they engage in healthy outdoor activities and social interaction, usually involving White Lightning and happy slapping.

Popular students used to outsource their homework to the class nerds, but “the monkeys smell better and have better social skills. And don’t tell us to run Linux. They also hurl their poo accurately, not cackhandedly.”

A survey of sixth-form teachers confirmed the change. “The monkeys pay more attention,” said one, “have better handwriting, understand human speech better and don’t play tinny synthetic R&B on their phones in class. They prefer the theme from 2001.”

Online homework outsourcing monkey Anastasia de Waal, who consults at monkeybrains.co.uk, said the problem was overstated. “The money flows from those who can’t do the work to those who can. The students are happy, the monkeys are happy, the exam boards are happy, our takeover of the earth from the inferior human race proceeds to plan, Civitas can just bog off. Look, it’s all in this A-level Economics report I prepared. A snip at twenty-five bananas. Organic fairtrade only, please.”

Newspapers were horrified at the report, saying monkeys wouldn’t look good enough in bikinis for the annual A-level student photos.