Category Archives: United Kingdom

Education, Health, United Kingdom

Convenient database of all children launched

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CLIMBIÉ, Hackney, Tuesday (NNN) — ContactPoint, a detailed database of all 11 million children under 18 in England, has become available to childcare professionals for the first time and definitely not to anyone else.

Robot PedobearThe government says it will enable more co-ordinated services for children and ensure none slips through the net. “Our outsourcers estimate five million billion hours of professionals’ time and a billion trillion zillion pounds in duplication of services can be saved by giving them lots of money,” said England children’s minister Delyth Morgan. “The database is essential to the protection of the most vulnerable members of our society: the bureaucrats and politicians.”

The 390,000 child care professionals, local council bin inspectors and NHS janitors with access will all have gone through stringent security training and vetting by EDS Capita Goatse. “What could possibly go wrong?” said Morgan. More than 51,000 children deemed “vulnerable,” “famous” or “related to a politician” will have their identities and information shielded.

Security issues have been a perennial concern, with aspects of the system possibly being illegal under data protection laws. However, the system will initially be tested in 17 local authorities in the north west of England, because it’s not like their children matter anyway. Public review of the transparency of the system will be available with the release of a complete dump of the system database on CD-ROM and USB memory stick, to be left down the side of the seat on a train service yet to be specified.

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Health, United Kingdom

Food Standards Agency makes everything taste worse again

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THE STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA, They Sent It Back Too, Monday (NNN) — The Food Standards Agency has announced new mandatory voluntary targets for food manufacturers to cut the amount of salt in bread, bacon, breakfast cereals and soup by 2012.

Cardboard burger, fries and shakeThe FSA says reducing daily salt intake to 6 grams from the present 8.6 grams could prevent twenty thousand deaths from high blood pressure. “The best way we can achieve this is to make food taste as much like cardboard as possible. Sugar’s out too. This will also allow us to meet obesity targets, as no-one will be able to face eating and will merely have to drink themselves to death. ’Cos they can’t smoke any more either.”

McDonald’s has complained of people bursting in off the street, grabbing handfuls of those little salt packets and running out again. Police have warned of gangs of youths shooting each other with knives over contraband seasoning and speaking something that sounds like English but would probably be better transmitted by SMS.

Cardboard manufacturers looked forward to a windfall, with Ryman’s announcing a new line of pre-salted notebooks and filofaxes in salt and vinegar, cheese and onion and crispy bacon flavours. “Just quietly, sir, we’ve got some juicy pens in too, since you’re a regular and all.”

Media, United Kingdom, United States

Murdoch: the free Internet is over

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ISENGARD, Wapping, Monday (NNN) — Rupert Murdoch, speaking out on the news business, stated today that “the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don’t make enough money from it.”

Rupert Murdoch as GollumMedia commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. “How can we hold governments’ feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?” Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.

Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.

“We have to educate people that free doesn’t work, particularly for us,” said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. “I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis — HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! — so we’ll see if we can make that one fly too.”

Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its “fair share” for so parasitically leading people to newspapers’ websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. “We feel this is completely unfair,” said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, “as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss.” Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.

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Finance, Technology, United Kingdom

UK economy to be revived through lure of the forbidden

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CYBERSPICE, Brass Eye, Saturday (NNN) — Children’s charities are backing a private member’s bill proposed by Baroness Massey to make Internet-based retailers run age verification checks.

Lord PedobearA check on twelve sites found that thorough checks were not being done. “You can buy a case of vintage Burgundy online from France without supplying fingerprints, driver’s license and a DNA sample!” said Baroness Massey. “This sort of thing is clearly responsible for juvenile delinquency and teenage knife crime, as heated discussions over the best pinot noir of the last decade come to blows.”

The move is expected to boost the economy. “It is too easy for children to buy alcohol, knives and violent video games online. If we make it harder, this will make it enticing.”

In a supervised test, a 16-year-old boy bought pre-paid credit cards and then went online to see if he could buy knives, drink, age-restricted DVDs, games and pornographic website subscriptions. The youth cautioned that insufficient data had been gathered and they definitely needed to do another six to twelve months’ testing before he could give any reliable conclusions as to what he had managed to obtain. And a two-terabyte USB hard drive. And a faster Internet connection.

“Our efforts to keep children safe are being seriously undermined by these ‘internet’ arseholes,” said Zoe fucking Hilton, publicity-with-menaces advisor for the NSPCfuckingC, weighing in as usual. “Any retailer we don’t like is a pack of fucking paedos and I hope they fucking die horribly. Cunts. But they can reassure us of their bona fides by giving the NSPCC money. Usual bank account, thanks. That’ll do nicely.”

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Technology, United Kingdom, United States

Twitter twavels twemendous twaumas to “twubs”

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666 FOLLOWING, 0 Followers, Thursday (NNGadget) — Users of the inane antisocial networking, bodily function documentation and terrorist tool Twitter can now index their spurious 140-character babbling with “twubs,” Wikipedia-style “hub” pages for Twitter “hashtags.” The “hashtags” are made from a Class C controlled substance and induce lethargy, overeating and carpentry.

Osama bin MobyTwitter “hacktivist” Ravenwoo Granola commended the advent of “twubs.” “Hash in tags is a fantastically effective way to keep track of swine flu, airport demonstrations and police brutality. I can get activists, or ‘tweeple,’ into action at a moment’s notice. In an hour or two,” she said, picking up a bong made from an at-sign. “I’m pretty mellow here.”

Users can exchange cool Twitter user names on “Twee Exchange.” I wish I were making this up.

“Trapped in a lift again,” said Stephen Fry. “Scottish ‘food’ vendors find way to deep-fry swine flu snot, Scots expected to be extinct in six weeks,” said Warren Ellis.

Other popular indexing tools for Twitter posts are “twonks,” “twats” and “turds.” The Twitter posting software includes “Tweep,” “Twinkle,” “Twiddle,” “Twidiocy,” “Twurgid” and “Twasturbator.” Twitter users now gather in “twibes.” Regular Twitter users are known as “twunts.”

Media, Technology, United Kingdom

Phorm phights phoul phreedom phighters

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W 40th STREET, New York 10018, Tuesday (NNN) — Beleaguered Internet advertising phirm Phorm is hitting back at critics with StopPhoulPlay.com, in an attempt to lure Internet activists into herniating from laughter.

Abort the fetus and win a Playstation 3! *“It is clear that the campaign against Phorm originates in the sinister manipulations of Alex Hanff and Marcus Williamson,” said Kent Ertegun, CEO of Phorm, “who have used mind control lasers and the killer robot armies of the Open Rights Group and FIPR to deceive millions of Britons into a Communistic fervor of hatred against the engines of the free market and customer demand, the salesmen and marketers, the true creators and enablers of objective value.”

The website, designed in Microsoft Word, uses the infallible public relations format so successfully put into play by the ReligiousFreedomWatch.org site of the Church of Scientology, an upstanding community institution of similarly flawless repute. StopPhoulPlay.com reveals how:

  • At the age of five, Hanff REFUSED to share his crayons with the little girl next to him, saying she was “poopy” and would only draw a picture to be used against him.
  • At age twelve, Williamson accepted MONEY from his mother to buy sweets, but not to tell schoolmates in case they wanted some.
  • Hanff and Williamson may have attempted to access POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL images blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation.
  • Hanff and Williamson have used WIKIPEDIA at least once in their lives.
  • Hanff and Williamson INVADED POLAND in 1939.

“Given the persistence with which they propagate incorrect information, we cannot rule out the possibility that a competitor is involved,” he said. “The competitor goes under the name ‘reality.’ Needless to say, we have no tolerance for an entity of such limited possibilities.

“These people are privacy pirates — people who steal privacy online, off the coast of Somalia. With Internet guns! And drugs! And child pornography!”

Mr Hanff and Mr Williamson said they were unsure whether to sue Phorm into atomic dust for gross defamation or just to let them continue with their infallible public relations work. Phorm shares have dropped from 405p to being rated a “serious infection risk” by the World Health Organization.

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Politics, United Kingdom

Home Office dismisses asylum children report

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HAPPY FIELDS, Langeweile Macht Frei, Monday (NNN) — The Home Office has dismissed Sir Al Aynsley-Green’s report condemning the conditions for children of refugees seeking asylum in the UK.

Prison camp in Taylor, TexasJacqui Smith stressed the importance of immigration services to national security. “It is vital that we remain the sort of country that sends a dozen police officers to haul sleeping children out of their beds, pushes them into stinking caged vans, drives them for hours while they wet themselves and locks them up for months with no medical care or prospect of release. We asked a Daily Mail reader survey.”

Phil Woolas dismissed reports that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are selling sex to pay for legal representation due to restrictions to legal aid funding. “That’s ridiculous. We’d be monsters to let such a thing happen, so obviously it can’t be. But we’ve denied HIV-positive refugees AIDS medication on the NHS, which will discourage them from such lifestyle choices.”

Article 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the detention of a child “shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” “That would be 42 days,” said Ms Smith. “Then we let them out for a walk and lock them up for another 42 days. It’s for all our safety.”

Mr Woolas counseled caution. “We have reason to believe the children may be secret Gurkhas, trying to inveighle their way into the country in order to fight to the death for it. Trained killers!”

The UK will remain a thriving democracy whose citizens, residents and visitors can live “confident of their freedom in a just society,” said Ms Smith, except if they’re brown or use a camera in public.

Health, Technology, United Kingdom

Bacon: the viral killer

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OVER 60 MILLION GOT SERVED, Mexico, Friday (NNN) — A new strain of swine flu, H1N1, has killed up to 60 people in Mexico.

The original bacon braThe virus is a mixture of swine, bird, human and computer viruses. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, lack of appetite, popup ads, coughing, sore throat, a slow connection and an urge to throw one’s computer out of a high window. The disease is thought to have started as a Windows virus on 4chan, a CIA entrapment message board for online activists, and can spread using the current Windows 7 beta.

Center for Disease Control officials looked at their huge stockpiles of H5N1 bird flu vaccine and said, “… shit.”

Citizens have panicked at the prospect of bacon being put into quarantine and substituted with some soy-based garbage. “Damn that Conficker!” shouted R. McDonald of San Bernardino, California. “Damn it all to Hell!”

“This comment from me looks Photoshopped,” said Bruce Schneier, an American computer security expert safely employed over in the UK. “I can tell by the pixels and having seen a lot of ’shops in my time. I suspect this is the work of a viral botnet spider agent replicating Trojan comments across news services until their functionality is completely destroyed. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T LOAD OR READ MY COMMENT. p.s.: I love you.”

Insufferably smug Macintosh user Arty Phagge was sanguine. “We know how to use condoms. And I’m a vegetarian.” The Free Software Foundation announced the launch of OpenSwine, a disease generation and detection kit available for all to use and develop in perpetuity.

Britain will be protected from the swine flu virus by comprehensive filtering of the British internet, shutting it down entirely as needed. “Would you want your husbands, your servants, accessing the Internet?” asked Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. “I put it to you that you would not.”

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Entertainment, United Kingdom

Senior thugs reduce cinema to rubble

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INCOMING!, Chelt ‘Nam, Saturday (N! News) — The Odeon in Leicester has been forced to issue warning letters to the elderly customers of its cheap Wednesday morning sessions following claims that they have been displaying “juvenile” behaviour.

Captain Mainwaring disapprovesPatrons were reprimanded for threatening, pushing, poking, bullying, harassing and intimidating staff, dealing drugs, shooting each other and stealing mobile phones. They also played Vera Lynn on their mobile phones at earsplitting volume on the chartered coach to and from the cinema.

Some Senior Screen regulars were also known to “line multiple pockets of clothing and Tupperware boxes with biscuits” from the complimentary tea service, reselling them afterwards cut with rat poison at a street value, according to police, of twenty-two million billion zillion pounds.

Police blamed hooded cardigans. Retired nurse Brenda Busybody, 77 (IQ), shouted a string of obscenities, mashed her ice-cream into the seat, punched staff and vowed to boycott the cinema. However, the owner managed to grab and wrench back her hood, upon which the increased oxygen to her brain caused her to come to her senses.

“Hoodies” are a Class A drug, only available on doctor’s prescription to Olympic boxers and suicide bombers.

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Entertainment, Europe, United Kingdom

Sound copyright extended into perpetuity

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TALKIN’ ABOUT, Degeneration, Thursday (NNME) — With the conviction of The Pirate Bay administrators having immediately abolished all filesharing, the EU has approved an extension of sound copyright to seventy years past the point of theoretical death, and death to seventy years past actual death.

The mouldering corpse of Cliff RichardThe media industry sponsored move is intended to properly suppress the very notion of the production of unapproved works of art. The major record companies’ value proposition has changed from being the only people you can get music from to being the only people who will stop you getting music. “We own all the back catalogs we’ve been buying up,” said Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfmann, the luckiest sperm in the whole USA, “and YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM! And we’ll sue your grandmother’s ass if you try going around us!”

Without an extension of copyright, the dead might never record again. “If I’d known in 1958, when the copyright in ‘Move It’ was due to expire in 2008, that the copyright in ‘Move It’ would in fact expire in 2008, would I have bothered? I don’t bloody think so!” said Sir Cliff Richard (died 1961). “I can rest safe in the knowledge that my mouldering corpse will not feel ripped off by this turn of events, and that my many, many descendants can continue to live off ‘Summer Holiday’ for the term of their rather unnatural lives. Remember that I am a born-again Christian and non-drinker, so beer and hookers mean and meant nothing to me. Money, however, is next to Godliness.”

Feargal Sharkey of UK Music stressed the necessity of the move to his never having to write another song after “Teenage Kicks.” “I urge you to picture a world in which Girls Aloud and Jason Donovan have no motivation to record.”

The government’s Cowell Report recommended that copyright should be reduced to one year, software patents made a hanging offence, Mickey Mouse declared an unperson and musicians told to stop whining and get a real bloody job like the rest of us. “It’s not like there’s some sort of national shortage of bad pop records,” said Sir Simon, “although a world in which Jive Bunny recordings irretrievably disintegrate into dust before they could possibly enter the public domain does have a certain appeal. Nevertheless, we desperately need to demotivate surplus pop star wannabes. I urge you to picture a world in which Girls Aloud and Jason Donovan have no motivation to record.”

Richard Dawkins spoke in favour of the perpetual unavailability of music, as per his new book The Art Delusion. “‘Music’ appears to be an entirely subjective phenomenon with little or no objective measurements possible — much like any other brand of snake oil or balderdash. Music seems to be a sort of virus on human consciousness, parasitically sapping the collective intelligence of the human race.” He defended his own attendance at his local church’s Christmas carols: “I’m only putting them at their ease so they let their guard down while I work on plans for mass re-education camps for the sufferers of musical appreciation.”

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