Tuesday 31 January 2012

From Sir to Mr; the undubbing ceremony explained

With news of Soon-To-Not-Be-Sir-Any-More Fred Goodwin's de-dubbing, it's worth reminding readers of the noble traditions of the ceremony which Her Majesty the Queen will perform.

It begins with a letter sent to the soon to be defrocked knight, which is also ceremonially leaked to the major newspapers, summoning him to the palace to unreceive his award. This can happen many months prior to the ceremony and must be kept quiet, apart from those news organisations who are encouraged to print as many pictures of the nominee as possible, preferably with headlines such as "STICK YOUR KNIGHTHOOD UP YOUR ARSE, YOU MASSIVE FRAUD".

On the day of unappointment, the nominee should arrive at the palace a good hour beforehand to receive instruction from the footmen such as "you should hide your head in shame, you arsehole" and be dressed in the Sackcloth of Disnoblement. On being called through to the hall, the nominee enters, head bowed as the gathered attendees boo loudly and throw rotten tomatoes.

On arriving at the front, the nominee grovels and begs for Her Majesty to change her mind. She will snap back with "get up, you snivelling wretch" and the nominee will stand before her. A large wet fish (traditionally a pike from the lakes of the Royal Parks of London) is placed on each shoulder and used to slap the nominee firmly on both cheeks. Meanwhile, the Queen's Consort administers the ceremonial wedgie before crouching behind the nominee in order that Her Majesty may push him over. Guests are then permitted to administer a range of blows and kicks for a period of two minutes, ended by a blast on the Royal Flugel Horn.

The ceremony ends with the nominee being debagged and thrown onto the streets, the former knight now arising as plain old Mister. Truly, it is a moving ceremony and one we can expect to see more of now that the forfeiture committee has grown a pair.

5m British homes "at flood risk"

The Public Accounts Committee today released a report criticising the government for a failure to protect up to five million British homes from flooding.

Capital expenditure on flood defences has fallen in real terms over the last two years leaving communities vulnerable and unable to insure their homes.

Government spokesman Sir Gently Fondling said "look, it's clear where the blame for this lies. It's all the fault of the large number of rivers that the previous government allowed into this country in the form of foreign rain. I urge the Prime Minister to legislate against these watery terrorist bastards and ban them from my leafy Surrey constituency".

A parallel report from the Association of British Insurers also called the behaviour of rivers into question. "If you build houses on flood plains, they may well flood. As we're only interested in betting against things that are at best highly unlikely to happen, none of our members will touch these places with a 90-foot pole".

Demonisation over pay will "deter workers" - CBI

Writing in today's Times, CBI president Sir Roger Carr denounced the "demonisation" of public sector pay claiming that it will deter others from accepting jobs that might be open to political interference. "This cannot be in the public interest", he said.

The "vilification", as Carr described it, would lead to people eschewing vital roles in public service and take their services abroad. He went on to say "There are nurses, refuse collectors and teachers who have had politicians capping pay at 1% and ramping up the rhetoric when they have the temerity to complain. Let me tell you; if this continues, these people will be driven out of Britain. There are plenty of other countries, other economies, that will benefit from their dedication and experience".

Stephen Hester is 83. (percent owned by the public)

Thursday 26 January 2012

Cameron: Tobin tax will "cost British jobs"

UK Prime Minister David Cameron used his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos today to argue against a tax on financial transactions - the so-called Tobin Tax or, for particularly stupid British tabloids, a Robin Hood Tax - saying that it is not the responsibility of the EU to do something that potentially would lead to jobs in Britain being lost.

"This is a reckless act that would lead to Brussels making British people out of work", said Cameron, smugly, "when it is clearly the job of the Conservative Party to make that number of people unemployed. British dole queues for British people!".

"Moreover", continued the man voted as most resembling a slab of reconstituted ham, "we must retain the sovereign right to decide who we put out of work and our friends did not vote for us in order that we hit their bottom line. We were voted in with a semi-sort-of-mandate to put teachers, nurses, bin men and police officers out of work, not those who work in the world of high finance that don't actually produce anything, but earn loads by pushing imaginary currency from here to there. Oh dear me no".

David Cameron is still, somehow, the UK Prime Minister.

Monday 16 January 2012

Government confuses 'need' with 'want'

A Downing Street spokesman today confused the word 'need' with the word 'want'. Talking to the BBC the unnamed source said "we have a very, very big welfare bill and we need to bring it down".

This isn't the only example of the coalition getting it's words mixed up. For example, when the Chancellor George Osborne said "We'll get tough on banking regulation", it was a simple case of getting tangled up in language when what was meant was "Once this blows over, we can get back to doing it all again" and Andrew Lansley's pledge of "No top-down reorganisation of the NHS" clearly meant "sell the bugger off". This is not purely a Conservative disease, however, as the Liberal Democrat pledges of "we will scrap tuition fees" and "we will introduce a mansion tax" were merely cases of getting the words 'will' and 'won't' muddled up.

Saturday 14 January 2012

France downgrades S&P rating

France today took the lead in downgrading Standard & Poors' credibility rating to 'junk', a move swiftly followed by a number of other Eurozone countries.

"If anything" said junior French finance minister Jacques Itallin "we've been too lenient on these bastards. We should have done this years ago when they told us that piles of packaged-up sub-prime shit were triple A-OK". Greek spokesman Stelios Lottabusinessloss told us "S&P have lost all faith we ever had in them and helped get us into this mess. From now on, if we want an opinion on anything we'll ask our mate Dodgy Stavros down the taverna on the corner".

An S&P statement defended the company saying "How were we to know that absolute garbage that had been pretty much designed to fail would cause such havoc in the banking industry which forced governments to step in and bail them out? We're as surprised as everyone, mainly because we don't know what we're doing. It's a wonder that anyone ever listened to us, if we're going to be honest about this. Anyway, despite the intrinsic link that we helped create between banking systems and sovereign debt, we're going to try bluffing it out by saying they're separate departments. Yep, that should do it".

The French initiative sent shockwaves through the credit rating industry with Moodys and Fitch both issuing strong statements denying that they'll be next to be downgraded. Industry expert Billy Ocean-Finance told us "it's well known that any two economists will reach wildly different conclusions from the same sets of data, so the other two big agencies will just say something different in order to avoid the same outcome."

Thursday 5 January 2012

Uncontroversial statement causes outrage

A totally inoffensive and non-controversial statement on social networking site Twitter today caused a massive storm in a teacup.

People who were trying to make it look like they were doing the job they were elected to do and not just pissing around on the internet seized on the statement and attempted to score cheap political points by making the non-controversial statement sound as if there was a semblance of controversy attached to it by quoting the statement without a shred of historical context.

This transparent attempt at politicking gained far more ground than it ever should as media outlets with agendas to push more or less cited the 'rivers of blood' speech and invented a history of oppression of the white man to drum up some controversy, the initial statement on Twitter clearly not having any attached to it. The person making the statement had been so harangued that she was forced into an apology, but as it was one of those modern apologies where one apologises for the offence caused, thereby throwing it back on the person one is supposed to be apologising to like it's their fault, it didn't really mean anything anyway and can be ignored.

The teacup was unharmed.

Princess unveils list of charities

The Duchess of Cambridge today unveiled the charities to which republicans will no longer be donating to.

The former Kate Middleton stymied the chances of the Scout Association, Action On Addiction and the National Portrait Gallery's chances of ever raising funds from people who can't quite understand why such an outdated and anachronistic concept such as royalty exists so deep into the 21st century.

The Art Room and East Anglia's Children Hospices are also expected to see donations from rational human beings drop. Leading campaigner against retention of a feudal system, Oz Trailier, said "well if these places are getting money from the royals, then we're kind of already paying for it anyway aren't we, so bugger it". The opposite view came from flag-waving idiot Pat Riotism who said "oh, she looked so lovely at the wedding didn't she? Makes you proud to be British".