Category Archives: United Kingdom

London gay tourist bureau opening

SEVENTH HEAVEN, London WC2, Saturday (LNBT) — The first London tourist office specifically for LGBT (which stands for “Young, White, Gay, Male and Middle-Class”) tourist needs will be opening later this year.

Gay Pride! Diversity!The idea is the brainchild of a gay bar owner, who plans to run it out of the ground floor of the bar in question. “All people of all sexual orientations, cultures and diversity should be able to come to London and know where to go to feel fully free to be their young, white, gay, male and middle-class selves. We take diversity seriously in the gay scene. And, er, B, L, T. We do serve sandwiches. Yep.”

The service will provide young white middle-class gay men of all colours, ages, gender identities and backgrounds with the important nuances of local information: which bar in Soho playing deafening techno has selfish, two-timing prick tease bastards, which bar in Soho playing deafening techno has miserable, bitchy queens and which bar in Soho playing deafening techno will leave you feeling generally depressed, fucked over and ripped off. It hopes to expand to bars in Vauxhall playing deafening techno by early next year.

“We will of course take the ‘L,’ ‘T’ and ‘B’ seriously. Lesbians are welcome in the bars as long as they don’t try to get in on Fridays or Saturdays, and those trannies are welcome provided they have the proper paperwork certifying their claimed gender. We’d happily cater for bisexuals if they existed and weren’t just fooling themselves.”

Plastic surgeons warn against not giving them money

PAGE 3, Channel 5, Sunday (NNN) — The British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons (BOOBIES) has put out a concerned press release claiming to be about competition from overseas surgeons in an attempt to market man-boob reductions.

“Unethical clinics in other countries continue to offer obscenely superfluous surgery cheaper than we do in Britain,” said the press release, “and it remains legal for people to give them money instead of us. This is unacceptable to patient, and particularly surgeon, welfare. Also, did you know that your unsightly and disgusting man-boobs can be discreetly removed surgically?”

Shocking results include:

    Gordon Brown as Nicola McLean, blackwashed

  • 100% of clinics surveyed did not offer refunds via BUPA.
  • 100% of overseas clinics failed to be based in Britain.
  • 100% of overseas clinic surgeons did not also consult for the NHS.
  • BOOBIES members can do you a great deal on man-boob reduction.
  • Over 90% charged more than British surgeons did for equally superfluous surgery. Did we mention that bit?

“In addition,” said the press release, “we’re doing better business in man-boob reduction surgery. It is vitally necessary to patient, and, as we mentioned, surgeon, welfare to issue a piece of press release journalism advertising the availability of authentic British man-boob reductions.”

BOOBIES stressed that they offered the finest value in man-boob reductions and hardly any of them would accidentally install DD silicone inserts instead. “But if we did, it would certainly get the chicks. Probably.”

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Dan Brown cries self to sleep on huge bed made of money

PRIORY OF SION, All The Way To The Bank, Friday (NNN) — International best-seling author Dan Brown is in tears over the critical reception to his latest book, The Last Symbol.

Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code“Renowned author Dan Vinci staggered through the pile of reviews,” said Mr Brown, snapping his fingers to signal one of his several oiled and naked houseboys to refill his cognac, “smelt burning flesh, and knew it was his own. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.”

Critics have reviled Brown’s books, famed for their implausible plots, flat characters, bogus exposition and talking down to the reader. And the squillions of copies they sell.

“Vinci was heartbroken,” said Mr Brown. “The critics’ snobbish jealousy was like a splinter in his soul. A line of italics appeared in this conversation.”

The latest book deals with a Freemason conspiracy to control what appears on the review pages of major newspapers. A heroic author, Dan Vinci, attempts to break through the conspiracy through sheer force, detailed italic exposition and a battering ram made of pulp.

“It was so hard to cope with the hatred,” said Mr Brown, sobbing into his Dom Perignon and staining his bank statement with tears. “Didn’t the critics know how bad things could be? People could have been reading Jeffrey Archer.”

Women unable to keep a secret, particularly when pissed

WELL I NEVER, See I Told You, Friday (NNN) — Low-level shitkickers at a crappy public relations agency knowingly and with malice aforethought abusing the title “researcher” have found, on the spec sheet listing the official desired outcome for their “research,” that women — all women — are overcome by a burning desire to share gossip as soon as they hear it, particularly when plastered on the fine Chilean plonk being promoted by the agency’s client.

Drunk Facebook girlThey will spill the beans to at least one other person within (precisely) 47 hours and 15 minutes, typically in between declaring the recipient their best mate ever and emphasising how they really should keep in touch better.

The study of 3,000 women aged between 18 and 65, some of whom were not fictional, shocked and appalled public relations staff and free newspaper journalists by openly naming the client who had paid for the puff-piece to be inserted into the paper, accompanied by a stock photo of one woman saying something into another woman’s ear while both were wearing low-cut cocktail dresses and leaning slightly forward to emphasise eye-catching cleavage.

Michael Cox, seller of a cheap petrol-flavoured substance apparently intended for near-human consumption which occasionally comes with a plastic cork instead of a screw-top, said: “It’s official — disgusting drunken slatternly trollops can’t keep secrets, as any reader of [INSERT NEWSPAPER NAME HERE] would realise about the subhuman distaff species after their daily commuter-time scientific revelation concerning female inferiority.

“We were really keen to find out with this survey how many secrets people are told, particularly after a refreshing glass or six of our unsurpassed products. No matter how precious the information, it’s often out in the public domain within 48 hours. Thankfully they’re usually too pissed to remember it the next morning when they’re cleaning their own puke out of their knickers. Filthy fucking whores, the lot of them.”

Men were adjudged vastly more able to keep a secret than women, mostly by virtue of not knowing what constituted one and not caring.

Millions made redundant as Facebook automated

MONDAY MORNING, In A Human Face Forever, Monday (NNGadget) — Millions of British workers are to be made redundant as companies install robotic Facebook readers, with F5-clicking robot arms, in the workplace to save human time interacting with social networks.

Automated robot Facebook browser“Computers are in the workplace to improve our economic efficiency,” said killjoy researcher Chris MacKenzie. “We thought companies would really go for something that would give an actual reason to lay off complete wastes of space without all that tedious waiting for them to post their tits or publicly slag off their boss.”

Additional functionality includes posting to Twitter through that page someone made that looks like a spreadsheet and looking up the anatomy photos on Wikipedia so IT won’t flag it trying to go to porn sites at work.

“The next model is showing great promise — it talks about football and last night’s telly in the breakroom with the other computers, automatically drinks tea and never tells Facilties about the tea bags running out, and nips off to the bogs for a sly tug over porn on its iPhone when things are quiet. And do you think you’ll get a drop of work out of it on Friday afternoon after it’s been down the pub drowning its peripherals with the other ’bots? I don’t bloody think so.”

The only barrier to adoption may be the threat of redundancy for large swathes of senior management should the software be adapted to 19″ Sony Vaio laptops. However, many workers who actually work at work were clamouring for a version that would automatically translate scientific papers from English to Faeces-Flinging Monkey and back and find funny videos on YouTube, thus enabling it to both write and read Metro and London Lite and saving everyone else the trouble.

Alan Turing apologises for Gordon Brown

BLETCHEROUS PARK, Milton Springsteen, Sunday (NNGadget) — Today, on Programmer’s Day — September 13th, the two hundred and fifty-sixth day of the year — it is time for deep reflection on who we are and how we reached the current state of things.

Economics textbook warning stickerAfter breaking the German Enigma Machine codes during the second World War and inventing computer science as we know it, I started work on my next and greatest project: to build the ultimate politician.

We would put together a force of bright and shining intellects, prominent academics of brilliance and perspicacity, but adept in the rough and tumble of practical day-to-day politics. A simulated “Max Headroom” smiling face as the frontman, and only a small amount of unearthly, unspeakable eldritch horror as the directing node behind the cluster.

It’s hard to say what I was thinking at the time. A thriving, computer-mediated economy, where machines would do the hard work and hard thinking for the benefit of all humanity. The prospect of a chancellor-bot singing “Daisy, daisy” as I removed his competence boards one by one to turn him into a Prime Minister. The sheer epic spectacle of huge mecha-politicians fighting it out with laser cannons over the smoking ruins of London. At least we got that one.

So on behalf of British technologists, and to all those who live under the CCTV’s watchful eye thanks to my work, I am now free to say: I am so very, very sorry. You deserved so much better.

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Jordan drunk-texts her old shag

OOMPA LOOMPA VILLAGE, Silicone Valley, Friday (N! News) — Katie Price has reportedly sent Peter Andre late-night texts claiming that she is still in love with the publicity she got with him, telling him the magazine covers were her “farytaele” in one message and that “I <3 ur pblicty & wnt 1 mr chnce” in another. A third message referred to the custody battles over the pair’s paparazzi.

Breasts and their real ale JordanShe sent the messages two weeks before the pair’s quickie divorce, as covered in all papers on Tuesday. The Sun ran a cover shot of Ms Price in her finest orange, the Daily Star ran an old topless shot, George Monbiot in the Guardian praised the ecological soundness of her idea-recycling (though Hadley Freeman fatuously compared her and Andre to people with actual talent) and the Economist reported on the value of ghostwritten novels, autobiographies and autobiographical novels as mass-produced commodities, with its Intelligent Life supplement detailing the advances in computerised text generation.

The news is sure to devastate Ms Price’s cagefighter side of beef Alex Reid. “There is no way she would be sending those kind of messages with Alex in the room with her,” said an unnamed source at her public relations agency, “and I doubt he’ll be pleased. Until she explains to him in grunted monosyllables and a few pokes of the cattle prod the whys and wherefores of getting on front covers.”

Meanwhile, the now-uncovered news areas of politics, health care, world news and financial news have been swooped upon by the gossip magazines. The cover of Closer features the bags under Gordon Brown’s eyes over time, while Heat features the lesbian Icelandic prime minister’s old bikini shots. Both magazines said they were continuing to turn down paparazzi shots of Tony Blair, no matter how many he sent in.

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CRB checks expanded to entire UK population

WHITEHOUSE, Whitehall, Friday (NNN) — The Government has announced that Criminal Records Bureau checking will be extended to every resident of the UK, for the urgent protection of the children and the relief of the national budget deficit.

“Statistically, the overwhelming majority of harm visited upon children is because of a relative,” said Ed Balls, Minister for Thinking of the Children. “But admitting that’s not electorally viable, so we have to blame unnamed predators. Preferably brown ones.”

The latest stage of NonceCheck™ will lead to 11 million people needing a certification that they have not, for example, been booked by a policeman for urinating in public or being gay or something. Giving children lifts to sport will also require certification.

“If the vetting and barring scheme stops just one child ending up a victim of a paedophile, then it will be worth it,” said Mr Balls. “Every council worker in the country being able to look up every detail of your life at their convenience and a general atmosphere of paranoia are just bonuses.”

The scheme will be extended into other areas. Obtaining a bank account will first require paying £64 to the CRB to prove that you are not and have not in the past been a bank robber, with only three to six months’ delay. Going to the supermarket will require a CRB certification that you do not inflict perversions upon vegetables. Buying a computer will require a CRB certification that you have never even heard of 4chan.

Further planned innovations include requiring a CRB check for breeding, with uncertified children to be put into care, and sex to be deemed consensual only upon the filing of a CRB check before each act of intercourse.

“We fully subscribe to the doctrine of ‘innocent until proven guilty,'” said Mr Balls. “We’ve just made it mandatory for you to buy certification of your innocence in advance.”

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Placebos more effective than most new drugs

CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Goldacre, Monday (NotScientist) — The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the news that more and more new drugs do no better than a placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in research and development, the FDA approved only 19 new drugs in 2007 and 24 in 2008.

Homeopathic Bullshit Nitricu 30CThe placebo effect has been little-understood. Trials in different countries and cultures can show different results. Ratings by trial observers can vary significantly from one test site to another. Advertising has conditioned people into thinking a little branded pill will make them all better.

“This throws R&D spending into significant doubt,” said Cylon Number Six of GlaxoSmithPfizerMonsanto. “It’s clear that marketing has always been the way to go, and that spending four times as much on marketing as research was the best thing we could possibly have done for humanity.”

Researchers are now going full steam to discover new forms of nothingness to apply to new diseases. Explorers have been sent into the Amazonian rainforest to find new plant species to dilute to the point of no molecules of the original being present. Traditionally ineffective tribal remedies from around the world have been patented in Western countries. “If ‘4’33″’ can be copyrighted, we can patent the placebo gene!” The treatments will be publicised in the new Elsevier journal, The Australasian Journal of Nothing Whatsoever.

Homeopaths are up in arms at the pharmaceutical industry “muscling in on our territory,” said Ravenwoo Granola of the Specialist Homeopathic Institute of Technology. “We developed the finest, most refined and provably harmless snake oil in existence! There’s nothing homeopathy can’t cure! Er, there’s nothing that isn’t brought to us for consideration and helping the patient trigger the placebo effect themselves. A snip at £5.99 a bottle and fifty quid a consultation! And we absolutely proved it harmless! We did double-blind tests against placebo … Bugger.”

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Designers prefer websites designed by designers

PAGE 3, Channel 5, August (NNN) — Men prefer websites designed by men, women prefer those designed by women and designers prefer those designed by designers, according to a new study by Gloria Moss, a lecturer in Press-Release Science at Bucks New University.

Elle Macpherson reading the Financial Times upside-down, nude“It’s August, so the differences spring from our … caveman ancestors!” said Professor Moss. Men’s eyes are slightly further apart than women’s, giving them better stereoscopic vision for ogling large breasts. Men prefer websites with straight lines, unfussy detail, regular typography and tits. “Digs in Lascaux in the south of France show the original version of nuts.co.uk, which was painted on the walls of the cave.”

Women prefer websites about cooking, cleaning, housework, submissive workplace behaviour and gossip, particularly the sort in free newspapers you glance at on the train. Pink flowery decorations are also favoured. Also, they need to show more cleavage in the workplace and waggle it around at after-work drinks to get ahead in their careers.

Designers write blog rants about typefaces and kerning, under the delusion that anyone gives a shit. “Everyone else uses Comic Sans specifically to piss them off. Wind ’em up and watch ’em go!” They also spend inordinate amounts of time trying to put in penis logos to amuse their mates on b3ta.

Professor Moss’s research is to be published in the Journal of Metro in September. “Free newspapers count as publication credits these days. Had you even heard of Bucks New University before this article? Me neither.”