News in Brief by Stephen Cook

The Daily Scare

by Stephen Cook

Today’s News in Brief British Government Declares New Public Holiday

such as tanks, land mines and exploding vests will grind to a halt.

Following England’s failure to assert global dominance and thrash everybody at that most important of all human endeavours, football, the government has announced the introduction of a new public holiday in July.

Western nations may be forced to resort to make-work industries turning out frivolous products such as shoes and spoons for people who don’t really deserve them in order to keep billions of people in work. The news is dire for the US subsidiary, Great Britain, also. Leaders of our beloved Constitutional Democracy fear that deliveries of munitions and high explosives to the Middle East and the Third World will grind to a halt and that the Banking Sector will be hit hard by a lack of people borrowing money to rebuild cities democratically demolished by said high explosives.

It will be called the National Day of Public Whingeing and everybody will be required by law to sit around in armchairs or pubs (or both) and explain how they would have done a much better job of management than the manager and controlled the midfield a lot better than Steven Gerard. This is to be a British holiday, however, as the Scots, Welsh and Irish will be encouraged to join in.

The largest domestic employer in the US also announced it may have to lay off millions of workers. The Homeland Security conglomerate, which employs 149 million otherwise unemployable people in 246 intelligence agencies (the so-called “3 letter” agencies such as the CIA, FBI, NSA, KGB, PPS, OTT, QED, AAA, LBJ and RSS) may have to lay off most of its work-force. This in turn will produce a downward pressure on wages in other sectors such as private detectives, private security firms, bounty hunters, whistleblowers and memoirwriters.

****** Global Shortage Threatens the Economy The government was left reeling with shock today, its plans for economic recovery in tatters, with the discovery of a global shortage of ruthless dictators. The ruthless dictator scarcity looks set to hit the economy of the United States the hardest, as it relies on a regular supply of demented megalomaniacs to keep the wheels of industry turning.

A memorandum leaked in Washington suggests that the US, right out of ideas, is looking to other, as yet untried avenues to make up for the threat of a catastrophic outbreak of not invading anybody.

US secretary for Peace-loving Invasions, Joe Stalin (92) explained to an ashen-faced press gathering this morning: “As you well know, the only workable basis ever found, after endless minutes of research, for economic vitality in an open democracy is war and preparedness for war. For that resource we rely on a good portion of the planet being managed by sociopathic loonies of our choosing.”

With the discovery by the Hubble telescope of life on the fourth planet orbiting the nearby star Proxima Centauri, the world’s first interstellar ship, the Armageddon, is hurriedly being kitted out and a forty-thousand- man crew trained for the nine hundred year voyage to “establish peaceful relations with our interstellar neighbours.”

The US feels particularly hurt and let down by Iran’s refusal to bow to international pressure and build nuclear weapons or even pretend that it is. With it, it is said, goes the West’s hope of a swift end to the crisis.

Its cargo of torpedoes, space-to-ground strategic missiles (the so-called “smug” bomb) and highorbit bombers are said to be “just a precaution” in case the inhabitants of the new planet take exception to the good will mission walking off with their natural resources.

Without the help and reliable ill will of such economic partners, major domestic industries that produce commodities vital for the maintenance of a civilised standard of living,

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News in Brief by Stephen Cook

Government to Borrow Money to Get Out of Debt The government today announced that it is “completely stumped” and unable to explain how the nation ended up with twice as much debt as there is actual money in existence.

“It is something about which everyone in these Septic Isles can feel justly smug.” he said. The revelations were timed to coincidence with the launch of a new initiative for tackling Britain’s mountain of debt. The Treasury has proudly announced revolutionary plans to follow the revolutionary plans of every country in Europe and “borrow lots more money” so as to get the nation out of debt.

A spokescretin, for the Treasury, Mr Sloe Deathby-Tax did however point out that this particular cloud in the overcast heavens does have a silver lining in that Great Britain is in fact doing a lot better than the United States, which has around three times as much debt as money.

News in Brief by Stephen Cook