HOLDING PEN, Knacker’s Yard, Sunday (NTN) — The government has carefully balanced the NHS budget using parking fees. “The NHS remains free at the point of contact,” said health minister Simon Burns. “But we didn’t say anything about getting to the point of contact.”

In 2009, Labour health secretary Andy Burnham promised to scrap the fees. He also promised to eliminate MRSA, help alleviate the symptoms of cancer with regular use, fit anyone who asked with new robot limbs and a forehead-mounted laser cannon, square the circle and make Labour sound reelectable.

But Mr Burns said this was not a U-turn. “It’s more of a sideways shuffle, like the road sign where the car’s tracks actually cross. We practiced that manoeuvre for quite some time in opposition, so you could reap the benefit.”

NHS trusts will be able to decide individually whether to offer parking free or to continue the charges and make another £100 million that year. “I’m sure we can expect them to do the right thing.”

Mr Burns emphasised the role of the tax system in properly motivating people to health. “Parking fees are vital in keeping people away from clostridium difficile and the awful café snacks.” He also spoke of the “underappreciated” role of homeopathy in the NHS, particularly homeopathic quantities of funding.

SHIPMAN TEACHING HOSPITAL, University of Crippen, Monday (NTNHS) — Nearly a quarter of English junior doctors drop out of their NHS training after two years of shovelling twice the shit in half the time with no guidance or funding. The government blamed Europe.

The EU Working Time Directive means that junior doctors are no longer free, as independent individuals, to work any 120 hours a week they choose, with patients reaping the full benefit of being prescribed medication by someone who is hallucinating that they are a giant psychedelic rabbit carrying a watermelon gun.

Of those who did want to continue, 22 per cent were not accepted by NHS trusts, which was obviously their own faults for not getting out there and gathering one-on-one mentoring while they wandered deserted hospital corridors at 3am.

The British Medical Association said the issue was high workloads and no consultants available to supervise. The government said there was no evidence of this, because they had taken care not to gather it.

“It’s inexplicable that so many people who have wanted to be doctors since they were three get into a hospital after years of study and quit, just because they discover that every individual moment of the job is shit and the best they can look forward to is being glorified technical support and telling sick people they’re fat for the rest of their lives, and spending the other two-thirds of their time covering someone’s arse or doing paperwork,” said the Department of Health. “It’s definitely Brussels at fault.

“But I can assure you that there will be no return to tired doctors working excessive hours. Any doctor you encounter will be fully alert from working only the proper hours allowed by law, should you ever be so lucky as to find one.”

OH FUCK NOT HEALTH, It’s Grim Up Westminster, Saturday (NTN) — The NHS Direct telephone help service is to be scrapped and replaced with a recorded service, Internet chat sessions and a web page.

The 111 helpline, already in place in non-Tory parts of England, has been a “vast success” in cost-cutting, said health secretary Andrew Lansley. The service replaces a live operator telling you to ask your chemist or go to A&E, or a twenty-minute wait on hold for said operator, with a recorded message doing the same. Including the twenty-minute wait on hold.

Further innovations include live Internet chat sessions with an advanced artificial intelligence. “British computer scientists have developed a computerised artificial intelligence so advanced it gets annoyed at bad typing and spends half its time on Facebook chatting up instances of ELIZA. Truly remarkable. It’s not finished yet, of course, but we just cut all their funding so we’ll go with what we’ve got.”

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham held that cutting funding to a famously useless non-service was “clear plans to dismantle the NHS. Leave it alone!” he cried, smearing his mascara. “You are lucky it even performed for you bastards! Anyone that has a problem with it you deal with me, because it is not well right now. Leave the NHS alone!

“Our drive for effectiveness will give a better health service to all,” said Mr Lansley, “certainly those with decent BUPA.”

WELL I NEVER, Wake Me Up Before I Stop Stop, Wednesday (NTN) — University of Metro researchers say that women can have 104 hairstyles in a single reading of a paper on the morning bus or train.

The study of 3,000 women, all in the commercially desirable 20-39 office worker demographic, revealed 44 per cent changed their hair because of the Nemi or 118 118 cartoon, 25 per cent because they were still hung over, 16 per cent because they were going to shoot everyone in the office the minute they arrived while singing “Bad Romance” deliberately out of tune and the remainder because they were hung over and claimed they’d meant to do that.

The report was commissioned, unsurprisingly, by a hairdresser. “My feeling is that women are changing their looks little and often rather than dramatic changes,” said the fatuous braying fuckwit in question. “For example, you can say ‘Jennifer Aniston’ and they will almost all recoil in horror, before admitting they had dragged their boyfriends to Sex and the City 2 just to piss them off. I mean, it’s obvious they can’t possibly get a good boyfriend or a decent job without their pubes sculpted and coloured to perfection.”

But the change is not always for the better, with almost three quarters of women admitting they regretted having gotten up that morning rather than having had an attack of anarchistic revolutionary feminism, cutting their boyfriend’s dick off and setting the world on fire. Although by lunchtime they would have called into work saying they’d be in the next day, having a certain predilection for chocolates and Sky TV that needed funding. “It’s so hard to find someone who really understands calf hair braiding,” said one ball-busting womyn. “‘Natural’ colour? Wot’s that, then?”

PAY GRADE, Jobsworth, Monday (NTN) — A Lloyd’s pharmacist has complained of being expected to fill prescriptions brought in by paying customers, as actually working at work is against her spiritual beliefs.

The pharmacist, Brenda Busybody, 53 (IQ), of East Cheam, is a Bri-Tish, a group who believe that members should show up at places of employment and look fantastically busy while achieving nothing whatsoever and, if possible, driving the business backwards. Many achieve quite senior ranks in industry, particularly finance.

“This woman came in actually expecting me to fill her script. Well! What does she take me for? I’m not there to wait on people hand and foot, you know. It’s an insult to our fair and equal society. I talked to my boss and she was thrown out of the chemist and we called the police, saying she was a kiddy-fiddler. Well, she probably was. People who expect you to work might as well be.”

The case follows on the heels of an earlier ruling concerning a registrar who was grievously discriminated against by a local authority expecting her to do the fucking job taxpayer’s money was being given her for, and another in which an executive successfully pleaded that expecting competence violated his human rights.

“Making people work when it’s clearly against everything they hold dear is an affront to the human spirit,” said Mrs Busybody, “and their rights as a Briton. Next they’ll be shipping in them Polish asylum seekers, who’ll take all our jobs and then do them. I heard they ate a swan once! At a fair price for the day’s effort in doing so!”

In other news, Gordon Brown announced today that the recession would last a good few years yet, for some reason.

MARLBOROSPOTTING, Leith Central Station, Thursday (NTN) — The Scottish Parliament has passed tough new tobacco laws that will make Scotland a world leader in smoking as forbidden pleasurable temptation.

The Bill bans shops from displaying tobacco products, outlaws cigarette vending machines and introduces a registration system for tobacco retailers.

Retailers hailed the move as adding a fabulously marketable mystique around smoking. “I can’t think of a better way of making tobacco the hip thing with the young people,” said Glasgow newsagent Fiona Barrett, “thinking they’re immortal and so really enjoying their invigorating daily — I mean, hourly — taste of death. We’ll put up signs saying ‘PRODUCTS FOR SALE* *wording changed to comply with the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Bill 2010’ and they’ll have to ask for them specially. And show identification. I’m thinking of wearing a trenchcoat inside the shop to sell them from, and I can speak to the user — I mean, customer — hissing out the side of my mouth. We can sell the really shit ones for more money, too.

“Also, they’ll hopefully drive the price up, meaning more profit from our dear, dear hopelessly addicted customers. Inelastic demand is great stuff — microeconomics, do you speak it?”

“Holyrood has recognised the importance of protecting Scotland’s children against the dangers of smoking,” said Marjory Burns, director of British Heart Foundation Scotland. “Now the kids can take up healthier pursuits like Buckfast and heroin.”