I am writing to complain about the joke on page 41 of The Bumper Book Of Children’s Jokes. The joke reads “Why are bakers stupid? Because they sell what they knead.” As a baker of some 31 years’ standing I am sure I need (not knead!) not remind you that kneading is a process involved in breadmaking entirely unrelated to needing. It is quite wrong to suggest that bakers are stupid.

However, please do not think we bakers do not have a sense of humour! Might I suggest that a better joke for your next edition might be “Why are bakers pragmatic and sensible? Because they sell what they knead to sell.”

Yours faithfully,

Caroline Jones

Association of Bakers

Microsoft running ’secret database program’ on millions of computers

There were fresh fears raised this week about online safety and privacy, as it emerged that software giant Microsoft had secretly installed a database program on millions of computers across the world, many in homes and businesses. The mysterious program, known only as ‘Access.exe’ is installed when the user first uses Microsoft Office, and hides among the regular components of Office. Although the program only came to light recently, it is thought that it may have been present on even early versions.

The program was found when Sarah Armstrong, a teacher in London, asked a friend for help with Excel and was shown the extra software hiding in the start menu. Immediately, she called other friends, who confirmed that they had ‘the Access program’ installed. Fearing the worst, she contacted Microsoft technical support and demanded to know why the program had been secretly installed on her computer. According to Armstrong, the support representative candidly told her ‘That’s our database program.’ Armstrong then asked ‘could you use Access to store people’s personal details and track their behaviour?’ and the representative said ‘yes’.

The Daily Express described the revelation as ‘just more evidence of what life is really like in Database Britain’. Microsoft has insisted that the public should not worry about Access, and that the program exists to help users control their own data, however when Armstrong contacted Microsoft demanding to see the information Access databases had about her, she was told that this was ‘impossible’.

EXCLUSIVE: Harriet Harman’s Court of Public Opinion

Speaking on the Andrew Marr show on BBC1, Harriet Harman told viewers that Sir Fred Goodwin’s £650k pension “might be enforceable in a court of law this contract but it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion and that’s where the Government steps in”. This comment confused many viewers, and so her office has since issued a further statement to clarify and expand on what was meant by this remark:

“In government, we try to legislate in advance wherever possible. We try to anticipate events and make laws to protect people from crime and keep people happy and healthy. But there are things it is impossible to anticipate, and the strict application of the law can result in regrettable or unpopular actions being taken. In those cases, the new Court of Public Opinion will correct the oversight.

“In this case, clearly the law has failed to anticipate the interactions between the financial bailout and contract law, and the first act of the Court of Public Opinion will be to remedy this by stripping him of his legal right to payment for services rendered. Future plans for the new Court include expulsion of Gary Glitter from the UK, in spite of his legal right as a citizen to live here, and the torture and/or execution of the social workers involved in the Baby P case (however indirectly). Right now on the government’s e-petitions site there are dozens of petitions demanding that important football matches be shown on free-to-view TV channels, so naturally that is something we will be looking into at some point.

“The new Court will allow the government to suspend inconvenient laws, such as the Human Rights Act, in certain cases when there is public support or a loud backlash from tabloid newspapers or religious groups. This will help make society fairer, except for that part of the population that the people have decided no longer deserve the protection of the law.

“In order to differentiate clearly between the new Court and the existing Courts of Law, the Court of Public Opinion will not hear cases in a conventional courthouse, but will instead hear them in a specially commissioned television show, including a jury of public phone-voters. These will of course be strictly controlled to ensure that any member of the public who pays the £1.50 call costs will have their vote counted.

“It is hoped that we will have the system up and running by 9PM next Saturday when the first hearing, The People Versus Fred Goodwin, starts on BBC2. If the Court proves a success, we hope to move it to BBC1 within the year.”

The human rights group Liberty has expressed outrage at the plans. Harman’s office has responded by inviting them to appear on episode five of the show, entitled The People Versus Meddling Hippies. Liberty initially declined the invitation, but the government insisted it was really more of a summons.

Sweatshop worker biopic ‘Slumdog Milliner’ fails to wow Oscar panel.

God, Women Eh, Study Finds

A four year study into behavioural gender phenotypes at Sheffield University concluded this week that men are genetically incapable of living either with, or without, women. The discovery follows a long investigation, led by recently divorced behavioural athropologist Dr Clive Allen. Allen claims the controversial research ‘clearly demonstrates’ that all women are ‘irrational and vaccuous windbags, incapable of reason and who delight in shopping for things they will never wear using their husband’s money’, and vindicate his positions on everything he and his ex-wife ever disagreed about.

As part of the work, the researchers split 1004 male volunteers into a ‘test’ group, who were instructed to, and a ‘control’ group, who were asked to refrain from. After following both groups for six months, no significant difference was seen between the groups, and the scientists concluded that men are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Another experiment published in the same work involved a survey of 2503 men. Each was asked about the time his partner took to get ready for a night out, and how she looked when this was complete. Attractiveness was found not to correlate with time taken to get ready, but it was found that the time was significantly longer when the party was with the man’s friends who he hadn’t seen in ages.

Out of 503 women tested, it was found that 498 had the physical strength and manual dexterity required to successfully lower a toilet seat, and the paper concluded that ‘more research is needed’ to determine what they’re all whining about the whole time.

Critics have accused Allen of mysogyny. Allen says that his data show that his attitude towards women is, in fact, based on solid scientific evidence, and that those who disagree are deluding themselves.

BBC Exec says Top Gear is ‘just a vehicle for Jeremy Clarkson’

Clarkson told reporters ‘if Top Gear was a vehicle, it would be a tank!’ however fellow presenter James May said ‘of course it’s a vehicle — and it’s not going anywhere’.

Church of England to offer Sharia-Compliant Christianity

Online Privacy Campaigner Disappointed Google Street View Stops Two Streets From Her House

Google unveiled the first Street View images of the UK, covering central London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh yesterday, and like many people, Clare Hunter immediately loaded Google Maps to look for her own house. Hunter, who has long been one of Google’s fiercest critics over user privacy issues, said she was ‘mildly disappointed’ that the coverage area stops two streets from her house.

‘It’s frustrating,’ she told reporters. ‘America has had this for ages, and we’ve patiently waited, and now when it arrives I’m just outside the zone. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so close!’ Hunter admits that if you load a nearby street and look through a gap between two houses, Google has caught a picture of what she is ‘pretty sure’ is her washing line. ‘In some ways, I wish I’d had some washing out that day, so I’d know for sure. Although that would raise serious questions about the ethics of putting people’s dirty laundry on the internet.’ After a moment’s thought, she corrected this to ‘wet laundry’.

Other members of her campaign group whose houses do lie within the Street View coverage area have contacted Google to complain, but they were surprised that Hunter did not sympathise with them. ‘Whenever we’ve had privacy concerns in the past, Clare’s been very helpful and supportive, but when I visited her yesterday and showed her the photos Google had taken of my house — and in one case my cat! — she just said “oh, sure, rub my face in it, why don’t you?” and closed the browser window.’

Hunter has plans to harness the democratising power of the internet for an online campaign to have Street View extended, which will launch as soon as she finishes filling in her Facebook account.

• Government Agrees Rescue Package For Snowmen (original submission)

Now the others. Tip of the hat to anhodika for inspiring the first one and to Smudge for the headline on the second one. (Community site, see?)

Straw refuses to publish details of amendments to Freedom of Information Act

Following backlash against the scrapped publication of Parliamentary minutes from the run-up to the Iraq war, Jack Straw has announced that there will be a series of reforms to the current Freedom of Information Act. He promised reporters that the new Act would be more efficient and less easily circumvented, but he refused to divulge how this would be achieved or exactly what the proposals were.

Speaking on BBC Radio 7, he said that the new rules would stop politicians ‘publishing embarassing information in obscure places where it would be unlikely to be widely seen, such as Hansard or this show’. When asked where the information would instead be published, Straw looked puzzled, and after a pause said that the new proposals favoured openness but that the specifics of the proposals were not intended for public dissemination.

Straw went on to explain that while it is important that the public has a right to access information about government, that must be balanced with other concerns, such as security. ‘Of the nation?’ prompted the presenter, to which Straw replied, ‘well yes, obviously, but also of my job.’ When pressed for more information, he explained that ‘if the public know how to get information, then so do al-Qaeda, and that could pose serious threats.’ Instead, the government is set to bring in a replacement Act, whereby the public has a right to access large amounts of government information, including Parliamentary minutes and MPs’ expenses, but will not be told how to do so. He promised, however, that details of the process would be made freely available to anyone who asked to see them, as long as they submit their request in a correctly formatted letter to the new Information Commissioner’s office, whose address was also available on properly presented request.

The new Act is expected to come into force at the start of April, however Straw promised that information important to the public, such as war minutes and MPs’ expenses, would be covered by the new rules immediately ‘to aid transparency in government’.

Book readers ‘must destroy own memory after last page’ – Authors Guild

The Authors Guild have announced that they are to take legal action against Mike Bradshaw, a 23 year old chemistry student at Durham University. The Guild alleges that Bradshaw ‘described the plot’ of Stephen King’s ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ to Patricia Hunter, another local student, at a party at a friend’s flat two weeks ago.

‘I don’t know what the problem is,’ Bradshaw told reporters. ‘I wasn’t even talking about the book – we were discussing films and I said I liked The Shawshank Redemption. Patricia asked what it was about and I told her. I don’t know how they ever expect to sell old books and films if people aren’t allowed to reccomend them to each other.’ Roy Blount Junior, president of the Guild, have said that their members do not have a problem with reccomendations per se, but have stressed the difference between simply stating that you enjoyed a book and explaining what the book is about. The latter, they claim, is infringment.

Blount went on to clarify that in any case the court case was not strictly about Bradshaw’s recounting of the plot, but in fact was about the ‘illegal copy’ of the book that Bradshaw had stored in his memory. ‘Memorizing passages, phrases or plot details from a book is creating a copy which is not allowed by copyright law,’ Blount explained. ‘The author receives no remuneration for this copy and we cannot be sure that the holder of this copy is not creating derivative works in their imagination, for example, placing our members’ characters into situations the authors never intended, or even allowing characters from different authors’ works to meet. In any other medium, this would be unacceptable. Why should the mind be any different?’

Meanwhile, communications company T-Mobile are planning a case against Miss Hunter, claiming that their own copyright was infringed when she gave Bradshaw an unauthorised copy of her mobile phone number.

Obama ’still getting all Bush’s mail’

Official documents released today have shed light on how smoothly the transition form Bush to Obama administration has gone. The reports reveal that an early attempt by Republicans to claim ownership of the White House under common law on the grounds that Bush had lived there uncontested for eight years has been rejected because actually many people complained about it almost constantly. A smaller complaint from Bush himself was noted but not acted upon: apparently Bush was upset as he was ‘just getting the hang of this President thing’.

Obama has had fewer complaints, the main one being that he is still receiving all Bush’s old mail. The report mentions at least one copy of ‘Guns And Ammo’ magazine and several personal letters. There is even some mail arriving from previous White House resident Hillary Clinton, although some of this has arrived from companies that did not exist eight years ago, suggesting she may have sent out over-optimistic ‘change of address’ cards during the primaries.

The report goes on to mention official statistics from Canadian immigration authorities, who have noticed a marked decrease in unauthorised border crossings since November, except across the Western border where Canada meets Alaska, where crossings have slightly increased.

Most worryingly for American citizens is the revelation that the second Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads ‘a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed’ may have to be repealed. The report claims that eight years is ‘plenty of time’ for a citizen malitia to rise up and defend the nation’s freedoms from attack from a corrupt government, and that if the people didn’t want to accept the responsibilities that come with gun ownership then they couldn’t expect to retain the right to it either.

First day’s play abandoned as players realise cricket is actually pretty dull.

All photos in January’s FHM look like airbrush artist’s ex-girlfriend

Colin Jones was one of many men who, after buying the latest FHM as normal this January, was surprised to find that all the models looked almost identical. Some of them were taller or slimmer, or black, but all of them had the same smile, the same blue eyes, and the same high but elegant cheekbones. FHM have received forty complaints about the incident, although it seems that the vast majority of readers did not notice, since the photo alterations only affected the models’ faces.

Jones, however, was one of very few men who recognised the repeated face. It was his neighbour, receptionist Miranda Lee. He took the magazine round to show her the strange phenomenon, expecting her to be puzzled, but instead she simply said ‘that b*****d!’ and stormed off. Lee drove immediately to her ex-boyfriend Craig Turner’s flat. Turner has worked for FHM touching up photos for six years, and had been unceremoniously dumped by Lee following a disastrous Christmas. When Lee arrived, she found Turner, who still harbours a strong desire to mend the relationship, had six copies of the latest FHM and several large printouts of the model photos.

FHM have apologised to their readers and promised to make ‘less-significantly altered’ photos available to readers on their website. Turner has since told reporters ‘the guys at the magazine were actually very understanding. They said they weren’t going to fire me for it but that I should be more controlled in future. Apparently, almost all of the complaints were about the Rachel Stevens shoot — if I’d left that one set alone, probably nobody would ever have known. The worst part of it is that I’m never going to get Miranda back now. She thinks I’m a creep and she’s getting loads of attention from men. They don’t even know why they fancy her.’

Tabloid Editors Apologise to Jade Goody

At a press conference today, representatives of Britain’s tabloid press have apologised for their treatment of Big Brother contestant Jade Goody over the last few years.

The editor of the News of the World read aloud a statement in which he expressed ‘deep regret that [they] painted her as a stupid, vacuous bimbo’. He went on to say that ’since the details of her disease were released, [they] have come to realise that she is, in fact, a brave young woman struggling against difficult circumstances’.

The group have pledged to support her in the future, and have given her a regular column in the Express, which will be released unedited ‘in case her erratic spelling and unconventional use of facts are important in the way she expresses herself’.

Controversial bishop promises to deny smaller atrocity

The ultra-conservative Catholic bishop Richard Williamson, whose excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI earlier this year, has broken his silence and released a statement in which he promisese that he will accept the historical truth of the holocaust and instead deny a series of smaller atrocities against the Jewish people.

Williamson had been under fire for his claims that ‘there were no gas chambers’ and only 300,000 Jews were killed in concentration camps. The true figure is nearer to six million. He now says that he will accept there were gas chambers, and from now on will instead deny that episode of South Park where Cartman makes Kyle watch The Passion Of The Christ.

A full list of Williamson’s new beliefs about the oppression of Jews, which were agreed upon after long consultation between Jewish spokespeople and Williamson’s assistants, has been posted on the Vatican website, and includes a claim that Fourth Council of the Lateran did not force Jews to wear the Judenhut, and a denial of the full horror of Zoe Wanamaker’s role in My Family. A denial of the phone calls made to Andrew Sachs’ voicemail was ruled out at an early stage of discussion due to their sensitive nature, but Williamson will be allowed to exaggerate the success of Clement Freud on Just A Minute.

When asked by a reporter whether he considered it dishonest to change his historical beliefs for political reasons rather than as a result of new evidence, Williamson replied ‘no, I’m a Catholic’.

Jaguar hit by wildcat strike. More soon.

1,500 attend first convention of casual Doctor Who fans

Over 1,500 casual Doctor Who fans gathered in London last night for TARDIS, the new convention specifically aimed at the idle viewers who enjoy it when it’s on but certainly wouldn’t stay home to see it. Most of the attendees lived locally. According to the convention’s Facebook page, entitled ‘who want’s [sic] to meet up re. dr.?’, casual fans from further afield were put off by the amount of effort involved in a trip to London.

Many guests came dressed as their favourite Doctor, usually David Tennant, who was generally referred to as ‘The Second Doctor’. Sarah White, a housewife from Hackney, said the event had been fun. ‘I dressed up as Rose Taylor,’ she said, ‘although I dress like this most of the time anyway. I always watch Doctor Who, because my children love it, and I guess it’s pretty good sometimes, so it was nice to be able to come here and discuss other things with like-minded people. I had a lovely chat about local restaurants with a man dressed as a Cyberman, although to be honest I couldn’t really hear him over the crumpling tin-foil.’

To open the event there was going to be a montage of clips from the first series since the re-launch, played to the extended theme song on a large screen in the conference hall, but this was cancelled after many guests said that they might want to watch that series some day and didn’t want to know what happens.

The pinnacle of the convention was a guest appearance by new Doctor Matt Smith, who will take over from David Tennant next year, and Doctor Who writer Steven Moffatt. Unfortunately, none of the guests recognised either, except for one who had seen Moffatt on a Coupling DVD extra.

OK! Magazine reject new slogan ‘Where Celebrities Go To Die’.

Base rate of interest ‘just made up number’.

As part of a wider plan to inspire confidence in banking by a policy of absolute honesty, the Bank of England was forced to admit this week that the so-called base rate of interest is in fact ‘just a made up number.’ Following the slashing of the rate due to the current economic downturn, many high-street bank executives realised that they didn’t actually have to pay any attention and kept their rates exactly as they were. A manager at Lloyds TSB told reporters, ‘why should we do what they say? It’s just a number they put out every so often. We don’t adjust our rates based on what Natwest do, or the current terror threat level, or any of the other meaningless numbers people release these days.’

Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, said that the base rate was ‘at best, a way of keeping score.’ According to King, the rate is lowered when things look bad ‘to try to make people feel like we [the Bank of England] are doing something,’ and raised again when things are more stable ‘partly so that people feel that everything is normal, but mostly so we have somewhere to lower it again next time everything goes pear-shaped.’

Economists have reacted angrily to the news, saying that in fact the Bank of England is central to the national financial infrastructure, and any change in their rates has a wide-reaching impact. They say there are ’sound economic and financial reasons’ why banks should pay close attention to the rate and adjust their policies accordingly, however King, speaking on a panel of high-level banking officials, dismissed this argument as ‘just what we tell you.’

Other ‘honest banking’ proposals include the scrapping of ‘introductory’ high rates for savers, renaming many common bank charges to ‘greed tariffs’, and the ending of the requirement that bank employees smile.

Christian Scientists Split God

A group of Christian research scientists in Massachusetts announced this week that they had managed for the first time to split God, also known as the Higgs particle although mostly to annoy physicists, into his component parts. God is believed to have existed in the conditions immediately prior to the Big Bang.

They made the discovery using a machine called the Holy Smoke Chamber. A fragment of the True Cross was accelerated to 40% the speed of light and collided with a King James Bible. The 25m wide device is cooled by a constant stream of holy water. A team of 5 priests work round the clock blessing the inbound pipelines. Researchers were able to detect two of God’s components in the debris from the explosion.

According to Christian scientific theory, God is composed of three smaller particles called father, son and holy spirit. The trace from the Holy Smoke Chamber clearly shows a trail for the son particle, which curves gracefully through the chamber for five nanoseconds before ascending into heaven, more-or-less in line with the theory. The father particle’s trace, however, did not agree with calculated predictions. The researchers have admitted that the way the father particle moves is ‘mysterious’, but are confident an explanation will be found. The holy spirit particle was not observed. The Christian scientists believe that this particle passed clean through the chamber like a ghost.

Most Christian scientists agree that the father and son particles could tell us a lot about the universe if we can unlock their secrets. The experiments have been criticised by others, however, who claim that earlier work by Revelation et al suggests that recreating the son particle on earth could trigger a process known as ‘armageddon’, which potentially could wipe out life on Earth.

DCSF delight as exam results show which pupils are stupid

Schools minister Ed Balls has expressed his delight at a ‘mixed bag’ of exam results, which he says ‘accurately show which pupils are clever and which are a bit stupid.’ When the results were announced, Gordon Brown described them as ‘disappointing,’ saying that ‘we had hoped more students might achieve the top grades,’ but Balls now claims that the purpose of exams is to gauge the different ability of students in various subjects and that a good distribution of grades, including fails, is needed to accomplish this.

‘This is absolute nonsense,’ said Beverley Hughes in an interview earlier today. ‘The purpose of testing students is to demonstrate how wildly successful our education reforms have been. We had been looking forward to another year of record-breaking exam results, and the exciting possibility of introducing a new top-grade to cope with the number of pupils achieving A* at GCSE, but now the system has been hijacked by teachers who just want to know how their students are doing.’ Insiders say the planned introduction of the new grade, tentatively named ‘AA1*+’ was intended to be a much-publicised event designed to underline the runaway success of both students and the Labour Party. The introduction has been put on hold pending an improvement in exam grades.

Employers have praised the latest results, saying that their similarity to the previous years’ results will make it easier to compare job applicants who sat them in different years, as well as clearly showing which pupils are habitual underachievers and should not be considered for important jobs. It is even thought that preventing stupid people from entering highly paid and responsible jobs could help the economy in the long term, and employers have been looking for a system of doing just that for many years, but Children’s minister Delyth Morgan has said that national exam results should not be used in this way. ‘This isn’t what they were designed to do. They are purely a tool for demonstrating the achievements of our department and the government in general.’ Some employers have gone so far as to suggest that some government ministers have a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo in which unqualified and incompetent people can remain in well paid, high-power jobs simply by engineering a series of spuriously inflated exam results. Ed Balls has strenuously denied these rumours, citing a government spreadsheet which would ‘authoritatively debunk these rumours’ had he not left the CD on a bus.

Analogue Switchoff: Your Questions Answered

Will I need to get a new TV?

No. In most cases you will need to purchase a digital receiver box to plug into your existing set. This will enable you to receive digital broadcasts after analogue is turned off. Most analogue TV will be switched off by 2011, but your area may differ.

Will I need to get a new radio?

Eventually. Analogue radio is being continued longer than analogue TV. No date has yet been set for this but sometime around 2015 seems likely. When this happens you will need to purchase a ‘DAB’ Digital Radio.

Will I need to get a new clock?

Yes. When analogue time is turned off in 2020, old-style analogue clocks will stop working. You will need to upgrade to a digital clock to enable you to continue telling the time. You will probably already own a digital clock as it will be built into your digital radio.

What other analogue products will need replacing?

If for some reason you still own a video cassette recorder, you will need to replace it with a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) player. You will also be unable to play vinyl records and audio cassettes and will need to replace these with digital media such as MP3s or CDs.

Is there anything else I should know?

In 2025, analogue description will be turned off. Among other changes, you will no longer be able to describe the height of a person by gesturing and saying ‘about this high’. You will need to give a figure. You may continue give this figure in feet and inches as long as you also provide a metric estimate. For reference, six feet is approximately 1.5m, and two inches is roughly 0.05m.

Atheist Buses to be followed by Agnostic Trams, Troubled Billboards

Following the success of the so-called “Atheist Bus” campaign, other irreligious groups have launched similar efforts. The atheist message being plastered across buses throughout Britain reads “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Next week sees the launch of the “Agnostic Tram”, which bears the message “I don’t know if there’s a god – I’m just a tram.” The group behind the “Troubled Billboard” has not yet managed to agree on a wording, but the current favoured text is “There must be more to life than just this, but there’s so much bad stuff in the world… oh, why is it so complicated? I just try to be nice, what else can you do?”. The organisers had hoped to get a bus advert too, but it rapidly became apparent that there simply wouldn’t be enough space.

Commuters in Huddersfield have recently started seeing adverts in train stations which say “We don’t know if we actually believe in God, but we are spiritual”. In one case, this advert is running right next to one that reads “I don’t know whether or not there’s a God, but there definitely aren’t any Thetans.” Nobody yet knows who paid for the double-page advert in Monday’s Telegraph which simply stated “oh, God, I’m so depressed.”

Surprisingly, a recent MORI poll asking which religious beliefs were most common found that most Britons agreed with the statement “I don’t care enough either way that I feel I have to paint it on a bus”.

Civilian deaths in Gaza. More soon.

UN Troops Help Woman With Own Personal Battle Against Cancer

Long-term cancer patient Amanda Myers, 42, was surprised earlier this month when fifty UN troops arrived in her hospital ward to help with what had previously been her own personal battle against cancer. Also surprised were the soldiers, who had previously been deployed keeping the peace in the Middle East. ‘They didn’t seem to know why they were there,’ said Myers. ‘They’ve been very helpful, though. Supportive and always happy to pop to the shops when I need something.’

President of the UN Security Council Jean-Maurice Ripart told the press that after accusations that the UN did nothing about the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein, the UN was keen to regain popularity by fighting something that everyone would support. What happened next is unclear, but it is known that the council discussed removing a rogue head of state, but had difficulty coming up with anybody suitably unpopular. After a number of names were dismissed as either only ambiguously dangerous or too obscure, the British delegate suggested cancer, having forgotten that English humour is not always understood by other nations.

A representative of the hospital where Myers is being treated said ’strictly, we’re not supposed to allow visitors to stay in the ward 24/7, but when I explained this to the sergeant, he said “I don’t think so, Sir” and didn’t move. In the end we just let them stay. They haven’t caused any problems, apart from the two trasnsplant patients killed last week by friendly fire.’

So far, the UN say, the tumour in Myers’ lung has ’stubbornly refused to negotiate’, but they remain confident of victory.

Terrorist changes mind after seeing atheist bus advert

Police were called to a bus in London yesterday after a man was seen emptying an unidentified liquid onto the floor of the vehicle. Witnesses say he then dropped the bag and ran out of the bus laughing. Police analysis confirmed that the liquid was an explosive mixture of flour and peroxide which the would-be terrorist had apparently chosen not to detonate.

‘I spotted him as soon as he got on the bus,’ one witness said. ‘He looked troubled and was carrying a large bag. He seemed to get more and more agitated until he ripped open his bag, jumped out of his seat, and got off as quickly as he could at the next set of traffic lights.’

Following a brief investigation, police believe the man was an Islamic fundamentalist, most likely working alone, who was plotting to blow up the bus in protest at supposedly immoral western culture, but when getting onto the bus had read the advert on the side which says ‘there’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

The man has not yet been identified, but someone matching his description was seen that evening, sitting in the corner of a strip club with a bottle of tequila and a copy of ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’.

Bush refuses to let Obama move into Blair House early

“I know the feeling” – Gordon Brown

Crop circle found that says ‘there probably is’.

OfCom say Prince Harry video ‘outside remit’

Despite receiving hundreds of complaints, OfCom have refused to rule on the alleged racial slur in a video made by Prince Harry three years ago and released recently by the News of the World, claiming that home videos are not subject to their guidelines.

One complaint, leaked to newspapers, reads ‘I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the despicable language used by “Prince” Harry in the recent programme “That Video He Made”. Although I myself am not in Harry’s squad and did not see the events in question, I found the seven seconds of out-of-context commentary which I read about in a reputable newspaper [sic] three years later deeply offensive, and I would like to know what measures will be put in place to prevent it happening again.’ OfCom described the letter as ‘typical’.

Prince Harry, who made the offending remark, has already issued a statement saying that the term was used ‘without malice’ and ‘as a nickname’. However, in an interview with BBC News the soldier’s uncle, who wasn’t there, has never met Harry, and knows only what his nephew chooses to tell him about their relationship, claims otherwise.

The Daily Express has already announced that it intends to escalate the incident to the level of Scandal, and claims to have found a series of similar incidents involving racist remarks or actions by other members of the royal family. A spokesperson for the palace told reporters that he thought it ‘highly unlikely’ that the newspaper had unearthed such events, describing the royals as ‘highly reputable members of the international community’ who ‘would not engage in racism or stereotyping.’

Scientists admit Hadron Collider created Financial Black Hole

New compression algorithm discards information listeners are too uncouth to appreciate

Apple have launched a new compression algorithm developed to further extend the capacity of their iPod music players. The format, called XF2, works by discarding any information that the listener won’t appreciate anyway. For example, the best selling XF2 file at the moment is Alexandra Burke’s cover of Hallelujah, which when compressed contains no Biblical imagery or dark undertones at all.

Audiophiles have been outraged by the announcement and are boycotting the new technology, however the general public have warmed to it immensely. One user told reporters “it’s great; I’ve managed to get the entire back catalogue of Girls Aloud, Hearsay and Britney Spears onto my iPod, and there’s still loads of space left.” A spokesperson for Apple commented on this review saying “what’s really good is that in this case the algorithm produces lossless compression, because there was never really anything to that music to begin with. This allows the system to shrink the songs greatly without losing anything. Many so-called ‘boy band’ songs can actually be reconstituted entirely just from the titles.”

Some users have got more out of it than others. Michael Simon, a builder from Oldham, has found that most songs are very small files that download very fast, but Jason Cockburn, a writer from London, says that the music he downloads seems hardly to have compressed at all, with the exception of Don McClean’s American Pie. “That’s probably because it’s a stupid nonsense song anyway,” he said.

Apple have admitted the new system does still have some bugs: currently the algorithm crashes when trying to compress Bohemian Rhapsody.

The name ‘XF2′ does not stand for anything. In production the project had a much longer, cleverer name which was a reference to Dante, but that name has not been announced because the press release was XF2 encoded and it was felt that journalists wouldn’t get it.

Atheist bus on collision course with Church

Could Apple Juice Be Cure For Hiccups?

According to Professor David Cook of Durham University, the answer may be ‘yes’. The discovery was made yesterday, when Cook had hiccups and noticed they were gone later that afternoon. In an exclusive interview secured by chance in a bar, he said “I don’t know what did it. Possibly they just went away on their own. I know I’d had a glass of apple juice. I suppose that might have helped.”

This ground-breaking clinical research offers hope to millions of sufferers worldwide, and nutritionist Patrick Holford has already launched his own range of apple-juice based pills which you should buy. In a press-release, he said that healthy adults should probably drink fifteen glasses of apple juice every two hours or, failing that, take just one of his ‘Cidex’ brand apple-juice supplements.

Holford explains that the active ingredient in apples is the cell wall, which is much thicker than the membrane in human cells and therefore stronger. This means that the cells can be used to strengthen aspects of the human body such as the immune system, allowing patients to naturally fight off viruses such as the hiccups.

Sufferers of the hiccups are already demanding access to this new cure on the NHS, but NICE have remained adamant, saying that the treatment is unproven and therefore not cost effective. Newly founded support group JUICE has described this as ‘blatant bias and discrimination’ against sufferers of ‘a serious disease which is often under-reported’. They say that experimental treatments such as this should be made available automatically.

If you would like more information on where to get this amazing new medicine, contact Cidex Ltd. immediately, on 0845 123 4789.

• Large Hadron Collider “may destroy universe”, say stupid people (original submission)
• Department for Children, Schools and Families to ‘give up on schools’ (original submission)
• Labour to use ‘guest leaders’ (original submission)
• Halloween update; local youths ‘less frightening than usual’ (original submission)
• Book of phone numbers ‘left on doorstep’ (original submission)

(I do like my headlines-with-quotes-in.)

Next, some of the ones they didn’t. I’ll put most of them after the fold, since there are a lot of them. Also, some might be offensive if you’re easily offended. First, though, my favourite, from early to mid October:

Gordon Brown has new kitchen sink installed under anti-terrorism laws

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has had his kitchen refitted under laws brought in in the wake of the September 11th and July 7th terrorist attacks.

The refit was proposed in August, as part of a larger reorganisation of Number 10. Brown’s wife Sarah raised objections to the plans at an early stage, saying that the new system would make cooking difficult and that she didn’t like the colour. It seemed that the deadlock was unresolvable until September 17th, when the Prime Minister realised he could use existing anti-terror laws to push the installation through without first gaining his wife’s approval.

Critics have claimed that this is “a clear abuse” of the power handed to the PM’s office by these new rules. One backbench MP said that while he understood the need to have special new measures to deal with the new kind of threat faced today, the government had taken advantage of the fear to pass laws granting themselves more power than they had ever been elected to. Other recent applications of the anti-terror laws include freezing the assets of Iceland UK, resolving the double-booking of a conference room in Parliament, and the emergency resolution on Tuesday which mandated it was James’ turn to do the washing up.

Brown has insisted that neither he nor the government has abused the trust placed in them by Parliament, saying that there are “other kinds of terrorism” besides violent attacks on civilians, and that these might be said to include refusal to wash dishes or bad taste in kitchen units.

The House of Lords is expected to overturn the decision, but James Brown has said that as he’s already done the washing up, it’s too late to reverse the damage and a system must be put in place to prevent these situations from arising in the first place.

Morrisons to launch own-brand Marks and Spencer

Supermarket chain Morrisons has announced plans to launch an ‘own-brand’ version of rival Marks and Spencer’s shops. The new stores, called ‘Morris And Sons’, will build on Morrisons’ existing corporate identity, the large green ‘M’, via the addition of an ampersand and an ‘S’. They aim to capture some of Marks and Spencer’s richer market by offering similarly high-class products at slightly lower prices. The new shops are expected to be opened right next to existing Marks and Spencer stores, and look similar enough that customers may enter the wrong one by mistake if they are not paying close attention. The chairman of Morrisons said, ‘this is my M&S.’

While the move has been praised by the Monopolies Commission, who have long felt that Marks and Spencer currently have an unfair dominance for the market of Marks and Spencer products, critics have complained that the culture of supermarket own-brand imitations has gone too far this time. One lawyer has even condemned the move as ‘blatant passing off’, but representatives of Marks and Spencer maintain that their customers are not about to desert the brand for a competitor. Officials have warned that if own-brand Marks and Spencers become commonplace then the term ‘M&S’ could become generic, like Xerox, Hoover or Sellotape, and simply be a word that any company could use to describe produce which is not as posh as it thinks it is. Marks and Spencer are reportedly working on an advert for this eventuality which begins ‘this is not just M&S chicken…’

Some people have expressed fears that if the plans are allowed to go ahead then high streets may consist of nothing other than Tesco versions of popular chains as early as 2015. Experts insist that there is no evidence that this will happen, pointing to America as an example, where a chain of ‘Frankie & Johnnie McDonald’s Steakhouse’ restaurants has been operating for years without incident.

‘Shit’ to be upgraded to Class B swear-word.

After massive public outrage at increasing use of the word ’shit’, often by children as young as eight, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is set to announce plans to upgrade it to a class B swear-word. In her speech, Smith is expected to criticise the current cursing classifications as “archaic”, citing such oddities as thumb biting, seen in Shakespeare but rare in modern Britain and still considered a class C curse in the eyes of the law, and the fact that ‘punani’ is still not listed on the legislation.

There are also plans to crack down on rogue cursers who supplant their swear-words by ‘cutting’ them using harmless letters (producing variants like the increasingly popular ‘feck’), or more dangerous punctuation marks or characters from Wingdings or Zapf Dingbats.

There is growing concern among parents that ’shit’, while not particularly offensive in its own right, may lead on to the use of “harder” curses such as ‘fuck’ or the middle finger. Some are afriad that their children may experiment with dangerous cocktails of powerful swear-words such as ’sheep-shagging motherfucking cunt’. However, others have argued that making ’shit’ less acceptable will do nothing but increase its strength. “The whole appeal of swearing is that it’s a taboo,” said one representative. “If you try to regulate it, that will only encourage people. Surely we all remember what happened whet the government tried to classify ‘knob’ as a class C swear-word. Use sky-rocketed and we lost a generation of stand-up comedians. Since it was declassified and isn’t considered offensive any more, nobody bothers to say it much.” This point is addressed in the text of the Home Secretary’s statement, citing the drop in use of the word ‘nigger’ as a success story for the legislation.

Civil rights campaigners have also slammed the plans, claiming that the right to free speech means that citizens can use any words they like and in any order, provided that it is not libellous or fraudulent.

Parliament has not yet unveiled plans to close the loophole which allows elaborate innuendo, but a certain member is expected to push through such a crackdown in the near future.

(alternate, more offensive headline: ‘Cunt’ to be upgraded to ‘B-Word’.)

Britain to Jacqui Smith: “We were being sarcastic” (probably makes no sense now)

London to host 2012 Olympics in Second Life

The chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee Sebastian Coe, has announced that the stadium where most events will take place is being built inside the Second Life computer game world. The game world has previously hosted conferences and meetings and some real-world companies have offices there. However, this is the first time a major public sporting event has been held entirely within a virtual universe. The virtual stadium will be able to seat 80,000 spectator ‘avatars’, and of course those without Second Life characters will be able to watch on TV. Second Life was chosen over the game world of World of Warcraft to prevent athletes from using performance-enhancing potions such as Swiftness.

London Mayor Boris Johnson hailed the plans as innovative, and said they show that Britain and London are leading the world in embracing the future and online culture, but fellow Conservative Ann Widdecombe said in her Daily Express column that it was a stunt, “a shameless failure to live up to Britain’s promise when we bid for the games, and to just fob the IOC and the world off with something cheaper instead”. Her party leader David Cameron dismissed this opinion, however. Speaking on Webcameron, he said that the modern Conservative Party was excited by the new possibilities made open by the technology, and said that his Second Life avatar, Secameron, had already reserved a seat. Johnson made the speech from a podium outside his Second Life HQ. His avatar is a tall, confident man in a business suit, with neat, black hair in a left parting and a large and conspicuous pair of blue horns which he hasn’t worked out how to delete.

Many athletes have objected to the plans, saying that their years of training will be useless in Second Life, but Coe said in an interview that the Internet was the future, and that that might mean traditional skills become obsolete. Johnson answered the criticism less deftly, saying “well, maybe you should have learned to do something more useful than throwing a heavy frisbee a long way”. His office later clarified the remark in a press release, but former discus champion Carl Myerscough whose avatar attended the event later said “I would have pelted him with eggs if I knew what button did that”.

McCain and Palin to host Countdown

John McCain and Sarah Palin, the failed Republican contendors for the White House, have been signed to present the next series of Countdown, say sources close to the programme. “After Des O’Connor and Carol Vorderman quit the show, we’d been hunting for a new pair to replace them. We needed an older man and a woman about Carol’s age who our viewers would find attractive but not intimidatingly so. And they should know each other and have some chemistry. After months of auditions, we turned on the TV and were shocked to see the perfect pair running for election.”

McCain released a statement confirming the leak, saying “When I first got the offer, I thought it was for MSNBC’s Countdown, currently hosted by Keith Olbermann. It seemed like a good opportunity to tone down the network’s rampant liberal bias. Then they flew me to a state called ‘Yorkshire’ for the audition and I realised my mistake.”

Reporters were also shown a copy of the tape from the audition. McCain is said to have not really grasped what the show was about or who it was aimed at, and viewers responded well to that, because it represented strong continuity. Palin performed well in the letters game, and better than expected in the numbers. In the first round she failed to make the target of 270, but by the end of the show she had found her form. Faced with a 75, a 10, a 4, two 7s and a 1, and a target of 689, she drew a complex-looking diagram on the board made up mostly of numbers, arrows, and arithmetical operator symbols, and explained, “Well, it’s like my momma always said, when you have the sevens, and a four, and you see what you do with them and you multiply… you multiply the numbers, and you pray, and all of them just really come together beautifully so that when you get down to it it’s really a matter of whether you want to make 689 or not.” Then she cocked her head to one side and squinted at the audience to see whether they had understood. 80% of the audience found this ‘not at all different’ to Carol’s performance.

Producers had hoped to test McCain’s ability to handle a Crucial Countdown Conundrum, but one contestant had ammassed a large lead in the early stages of the contest and there was never really any chance that it would go down to the wire.

Vatican City on international watch list

A spokesperson for the Foreign Office was forced to admit last night that the Vatican City had for some time been the subject of international security amid rising fears of religiously-motivated terrorism.

‘We have a number of criteria for these decisions,’ he said, ‘and the Vatican City meets many of them. It is a real cause for concern.’ He went on to point out that only people who subscribe to the national religion – Catholicism – are allowed to work in the Vatican City. Homosexuals are not permitted to work there either. ‘This is not what we can reasonably call a free or democratic nation. It has no education or healthcare infrastructure, and has some very strange laws about celibacy.’

There are also fears that the state may be a harbour for fascism: the Vatican was declared an independent nation in 1929 by the Lateran treaty, signed into law by Benito Mussolini, and recently appointed a former member of the Hitler Youth its leader in a secret vote between only a small number of men. The Vatican has never participated in any kind of international dialogue, and sources say that any official negotiation between it and the United States may be unconstitutional. Sympathisers with the Vatican are barred by law from becoming UK royalty.

It was also confirmed that the country has thousands of cells of ‘devoted followers’ scattered around the world, including in the United Kingdom, however reporters were assured that neither the UK or the US is planning an invasion.

More worryingly, there are reports that Tony Blair has recently been associated with the ‘rogue state’.

Woolworths now worth less than wool.

Man who cut off own hand to free himself ‘would have been okay anyway’

Following a car accident on a country lane, keen mountainclimber Liam Richards and nephew John, 19, became trapped in their vehicle on Tuesday. With no signal on his mobile phone and unable to escape the vehicle, Richards eventually resorted to using his penknife to amputate has own left hand, which was pinned between two crushed panels. ‘I’d seen people on TV who’d done it, and I thought, “I could do that.”‘ He then ran to the nearest telephone box to raise the alarm. According to Dave Moore, the first paramedic who attended the scene, ‘Mr Richards was incredibly brave. I don’t know how many other people could have done what he did,’ but added ‘of course, a local woman had seen the accident and alerted us already, so he would have been fine anyway. Still though, wow.’

‘I saw his car swerve off the road and hit the tree from my kitchen. Straight away I dialled 999 and told them to come right away,’ said local Margaret Houseman. ‘I tried to get his attention, but then I saw him cutting off his arm and I had to sit down for a bit. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know any first aid anyway.’ Paramedics say that Mr Richards’ hand was not badly damaged, but due to the way he had severed it, it would not be possible to reattach it.

Also in the car was John Richards, who was instantly killed upon impact. Peers at his school have described him as ‘annoying’, and ‘not one of the more popular boys’. His teachers said that he ‘rarely paid attention’ and ‘consistently underachieved’. The car had been travelling from a nearby town after a shopping trip, an activity the family say the pair ‘did not particularly enjoy’. Richards said they hadn’t bought anything special that day, ‘just some clothes and stuff.’

Asked about the need for such trees to be removed from the sides of rural roads to prevent such events in the future, John’s mother, Sylvia, issued a statement saying ‘you can’t save everybody all of the time. Obviously we’re all shocked by John’s tragic death, but overprotecting everyone will not help in the long run.’

The car was a 1996 Nissan Micra, which Richards described as ‘basically okay’ and ‘easily replaceable’.

Wikipedia user sets new world record time

Wikipedia user “90.196.252.184″ is celebrating today after breaking the men’s world record for updating Wikipedia after a major world event.

The Wikipedia page “100 metres” was updated to reflect Usain Bolt’s historic race only 9.69 seconds after the race ended. The previous record was set earlier in the year on July 7th when user CoolKid1993 updated the encyclopaedia to reflect Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the Democratic nomination race only 9.74 seconds after her sentence ended.

90.196.252.184 has so far been unavailable for comment, but a statement issued on his User:Talk page simply curses himself for failing to log-on to the website and claim the record under his preferred name.

The record has been ratified by Wikipedia’s controllers, however an appeal has been launched by user 218.186.13.2, who claims that 90.196.252.184’s time should be disregarded because he misspelt “Beijing” in the record table halfway down the article. CoolKid1993 has refused to endorse or oppose the appeal, standing by his initial statement that he always knew the record would be broken and is excited at the talent coming up through the Wikipedia registration page.

Nobody has yet bothered to set a women’s record.

Gordon Brown spending all day replying to e-petitions

Over the last year, in an attempt to connect with younger voters, the Prime Minister’s office has set up a comprehensive interactive website, as well a Twitter feed and pages on Facebook and Flickr. A source inside 10 Downing Street has told reporters that Gordon Brown now spends ‘most of his time’ tending to these services and profiles.

“It took a while for him to get to grips with all the services, but once he did it was impossible to get him off them. We had hoped that other staff would keep them up to date, but Gordon insisted on doing it himself. Now he spends most afternoons responding to e-petitions.”

The Government has not officially responded to this, although the Downing Street Twitter profile did post an update to explain that the Prime Minister felt it was important to connect with the population as directly as possible. Some, however, have expressed concern that it may be his way of hiding from reality. “Brown has 72 friends on the Downing Street Facebook page, which is far more than he has in Parliament. That said, many of them are clearly gimmick accounts. We know for a fact that he’s never actually met anyone called Jesus H Christ.” Brown’s Facebook page lists him as “in a special relationship”.

There have also been accusations that the new digital services are a waste of money. The amount of updates on the sites in total is thought to be a major drain on government time, especially since most of the Twitter updates are 135-140 characters long, suggesting that Brown spends several minutes crafting each one.

According to a note posted on the Downing Street Blog, the blame for this situation rests firmly with the media, whose incessant nagging two years ago forced all politicians to purchase iPods to fill with music which was more popular than them.

US National Debt mysteriously ‘rolls round’ to zero

At 2:41 yesterday afternoon, panic gripped the White House as the National Debt reached nine trillion, nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars for the first time in the nation’s history. Officials immediately set about drawing up a raft of proposals to fix the problem, including tax increases, spending cuts and the invasion of Switzerland, but at 3:07 a junior staffer working in Times Square phoned and pointed out that actually the national debt stood at only a few hundred dollars, one of the lowest on Earth.

At first President Bush did not believe the news, and immediately flew out to New York to check the clock for himself. Some aides attempted to explain that the debt could be more accurately checked within the White House, but Bush insisted that he liked to get his information the same way the American People get theirs. One staff member is reported to have insisted that there will be plenty of time for that in February, but the President’s resolve was characteristically strong. At a press conference, he told reporters that this new era of prosperity spelled an end to the fears of foreclosure faced by millions of Americans and that his vision and the $700bn financial bailout should be credited with the reversal in the nation’s economic situation.

One journalist at the press conference asked if it was possible that the debt had “run out of digits and rolled round to zero”, to which the President responded that complex issues like the economy never have just one cause. “The design of the clock may have been a factor,” he conceded, “but it was [his] decisions and leadership that pushed it over the edge.”

Bush has promised a wave of tax cuts and spending increases in order to make sure that Americans see the benefits of the new solvency in the budget, however President-Elect Barack Obama has announced that he intends to reverse these, claiming that the reduction in debt is somehow “an illusion”. Early polling figures suggest that Obama’s popularity dropped seven points following the announcement.

Outbreak ‘could have been prevented’ by rubber tongue cleaners

The World Health Organisation has said that the cause of the recent outbreak which killed nearly a million people in the poorest parts of Africa was a tongue-borne virus which could have been prevented had these people had access to basic vital medical supplies such as toothbrushes with little rubberised tongue-cleaners on the back.

‘People don’t realise how vital these tongue-cleaners are,’ said the spokesperson. ‘They think they’re just a gimmick cooked up to sell more toothbrushes after people got wise to the whole “flexible neck” fad. But the truth is that a dirty tongue can be disastrous for your health. Remember that everything you eat goes over your tongue. In many ways, it’s simply a miracle that mankind survived this long without this technology.’

He went on to explain that he considered it ‘imperative’ to make tongue-cleaning brushes available to everyone, and has joined forces with the WWF to make this technology available to the animal kingdom. ‘Most animals have some form of tongue and yet only mankind have developed a pimpled rubber pad to clean it with. It is surely our sacred duty to provide this to our brethren in other species, before they are decimated by germs that live on the tongue and inside the cheeks, and those hard-to-reach places around the gumline.’

Fox News: Obama to end ‘pork barrel’ citing rules of Halal.

Trading halted as wasp enters London Stock Exchange

The credit crunch looks set to worsen today as news emerges that trading has been suspended on the floor of the Stock Exchange due to a wasp which has been loose above the exchange floor for the last four hours.

It is thought that the insect got into the building on the coat of a licensed broker, but authorities have yet to name a suspect. Trading had been in full force until shortly after lunchtime, at which point investor Brian Jameson “thought he heard something”. At first he suspected some kind of electrical fault, but ruled that out when he noticed the sound was moving.

When traders started to realise that there was a wasp in the room, they started to head for the exits, wary of being stung on the trading floor. This has lead to a situation known in financial circles as “a bee market”.

Some companies are, however, benefiting from the incident: those who trade on the Internet are reporting ’significantly’ less competition, and there are reports of a single investor still on the floor, who appears to be doing quite well for himself. So far, the wasp has stayed away from him, although nobody can guarantee how long his luck might hold. This has lead to speculation by some analysts that the wasp may have been introduced deliberately in order to reduce his competition.

Authorities now say that the wasp is buzzing about behind one of the large screens in place to show current stock prices, and is impossible to access. “It would be easy if we unplugged the screen,” they admitted, “but it’s been there ages and we’re not sure where all the wires go any more. Anyway, that one guy is still using it.” At present, there is no way to know how long the danger may last, or how much it could affect the value of British companies.

“At Least We’re Not Falling Into The Sea”, says North (also probably no longer makes sense)

Doctor, Liverpool fail to regenerate

Common maths errors “should be accepted”

According to an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement by Ken Smith, Professor of Criminology at Bucks New University, university lecturers should stop correcting the most common mathematical errors in students’ work and simply accept them as “variant” answers.

“Why shouldn’t 57 be a prime number?” he asks. “It looks like one, and a lot of my students think that it is. Surely that gives it as good a claim to be prime as any other number?”

Other proposals to “simplify” mathematics in his article include making 0÷0 equal to one, truncating π to four decimal places — 3.1415 — since that’s all anyone can remember, accepting “proof by example” as mathematically valid, and allowing students to “cancel the d” in calculus questions.

“I’ve seen mathematics teachers repeatedly correcting the same error in the same student’s work, and yet the problem would be solved if they simply accepted the 10 commonest errors as correct.

“Mathematics teachers are just too uptight about the subject to allow any change. Would it hurt them so much if 0.9 recurring was strictly less than one? That would seem pretty sensible to me.”

Scientists calculate formula for the perfect number of days’ detention

Scientists at the University of Westminster have calculated a scientific theory to work out how many days the government should detain a terror suspect without trial. According to Dr. Brown, the formula is D=T×(21/7)×1W, where D = number of days detention, W = number of days in a week and T = number of towers destroyed, and 21/7 is the date of the most recent attack on London.

The academics and mathematicians behind the study, commissioned by the Labour Party, say that the formula will be of use to anyone planning to detain criminals beyond the period normally allowed by law.

The scientists have stressed that the formula is only valid in Britain. Dr Blair was quick to point out that their research found that “in America, for example, imprisonment, or even torture, without trial should continue indefinitely”.

Human rights campaigners have welcomed the findings. A spokesperson for Liberty said “oh, well, if it’s maths then I guess it must be okay”.

42 Days: What do YOU think?

The 42-day detention without charge of terror suspects is a controversial measure, and it is hard to find anyone in government or the media whose opinion is not guided by an obvious vested interest. Therefore, in line with standard media practice, we have found two ordinary members of the public on opposite sides of the debate and given them both a chance to have their say here:

Mohammed Imami

I was arrested in Euston Station three months ago. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was released without charge after 26 days, but my employers had already replaced me. My marriage had been strained to breaking point and I hadn’t been able to pay my bills. My life has been a total nightmare ever since. I cannot see any justification for the new measures.

Moyra Haynes

Well, as a woman who was raped by a man released without charge from police custody 39 days earlier, I have to say I’m in favour of the measures. I only wish we’d had them sooner. It turned out that my attacker hadn’t actually committed the crime he’d been arrested for, but that’s the power of these new measures — they still would have protected me.

Official Chinese Olympic report mentions only events China won

Following the discovery that the fireworks seen around the world at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics were computer generated, and the replacement of a singer Yang Peiyi with a more photogenic mime, details have begun to emerge of other alterations the Chinese have made to the Olympic Games’ image.

The official website so far makes no mention of the swimming events in which Chinese athletes managed only bronze and silver medals, and bloggers in Beijing are reporting that they can’t find the stadium anywhere in the city, leading to speculation that a more attractive city, possibly in Korea, has been used as a stand-in.

One intrepid Olympic correspondent has noted that only one of the Chinese synchronised diving team is ever available for interviews, and that his dressing room contains a fifteen metre high mirror.

Judge decides Mosely basement romp “not wrong”

Josef Fritzl seeking to hire same lawyer.

Inflatable church blows away, converts four (This was the week that two unrelated inflatables were in the news. I just related them.)

An inflatable church designed for Italian beachgoers became detached from its moorings last week and blew into a town centre. Three men and a woman having lunch in a local cafe at the time were struck by the blow-up house of God and were instantly converted to Roman Catholicism.

One of the victims said, “I was having a coffee outside, when suddenly I felt something large and rubbery brush past the back of my head. I was filled with this amazing feeling of love, and I suddenly felt that somehow everything was going to be alright.”

Not all of the group were happy about the conversion, however. One was previously a non-practicing Christian, and did not notice her conversion for two days, when she saw the Pope on television and couldn’t shake the feeling that his word was infallible. Theologians diagnosed her with Catholicism the following day. Since then she has read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in its entirety twice, but failed to beat her condition. “It’s been dreadful,” said another. “I was quite happy as an agnostic, but since becoming a Catholic I’ve been racked with guilt and had difficulty reconciling much of my knowledge with my new faith.”

Also struck by the floating house of worship was Abu Mohammed Ahmed, then a devout Muslim. He is considering suing the operators of the inflatable church, claiming that since his conversion he has been shunned by his family for apostasy and finds it difficult fitting in to his new church. He has, however, found that he quite likes pork, previously forbidden to him since pigs are considered unclean in Islam.

Tesco Store Sign Changes Again

A drive by the Plain English Campaign (PEC) to change signs in Tesco stores has caused mass confusion. The offending signs originally read “10 items or less”, but the PEC complained that “less” should only be used to modify mass nouns. Their proposed alternative, “10 items or fewer”, was deemed ‘too stilted’ by the store’s managers and “no more than 10 items” sounded ‘too negative’. A new sign was eventually unveiled that read “up to 10 items”, but this soon came under fire from the public, who no longer knew if they were allowed exactly ten items.

Tesco rejected a proposal from the UK Mathematics Trust to solve this problem using signs that read “n items, where 0 < n < 10″, when a focus group admitted it had them entirely stumped. The phrasing “10 items or not as many items as that” was rejected also, as was “No more items than you have fingers” as it was feared that the latter might offend the disabled, and nobody was sure if thumbs counted anyway.

In an interview with the BBC, a spokesperson for the Plain English Campaign was asked if it was true that there had actually been less than 5 complaints about the original signs. “I’m sorry,” was the response, “but I don’t know what you mean,” and he kept up this ridiculous charade until the interviewer gave an audible sigh and asked if fewer than 5 people had complained. The spokesperson then admitted that actually nobody at all had complained.

The signs currently read “zero, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 items”, and so far nobody has complained except for the man who makes the signs and two shoppers in Cambridge who were offended by the use of the so-called ‘Oxford comma’. Tesco management have admitted they neither know nor care what that means.

It is thought that all of this has cost Tesco just fewer than £2 million.

Donations made via third parties are illegal unless the person behind the donation is also declared or there is a “reasonable excuse”.

…it also explained this email I received in March but had always assumed was a scam:

DEAR BELOVED URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL

I am DAVID ABRAHAMS, an impotant businessman here in LAGOS, NIGERIA and I have sum of $600,00 USD  (SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLAR) which I want to donate to THE LABOUR PARTY. I would like a trust worthy partner to act as a donor. The money will be transfered into your account and then into THE LABOUR PARTY. The fund will be split as follows: 15% for your expenses, 10% for contingency/emergency and 75% for THE LABOUR PARTY.

Yours in Christ,

David Abrahams

LAGOS NIGERIA

No, really. I wouldn’t lie to you.

Also I read that Santa has lost the disks on which he stored the lists of 25 million naughty and nice children. So, er, let’s hope that doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

“Atheists?” said the demon, “there certainly aren’t any atheists in Hell.”
“But,” he started, starting to question his beliefs now, on his first day in Hell, when one might reasonably argue it was a tad on the late side, “all they had to do was believe! How hard is that?”
The demon made a noise somewhere between “oh?” and “hmm,” in the patient manner of one who’d been going over this for centuries and didn’t imagine having to stop soon. “But they didn’t believe in Hell either. It would seem a bit harsh to expect them to follow rules set out by someone they thought was fiction, with a punishment they thought didn’t exist.”
“So what you’re saying is,” he said, watching with trepidation as the demon selected a pointy looking object from a leather roll-up pack and held it over the flames, “that all we had to do to get carte blanche to sin as much as we pleased was to stop believing?”
“That’s right,” the demon said, as it walked behind the lost soul and plunged the instrument into his back (not that he really had such a bodypart any more, of course). “But you’re in luck. God’s laid down a special rule, just for you. To test your little wager. You can go to heaven, if you want to.”
“How?” Pascal shouted, above the pain. Right then and there there was nothing he wouldn’t do to escape the pain.
“Simple,” the demon replied, moving the instrument savagely, “just believe I don’t exist.”
And for a thousand years he tried.
After that he rather gave up. By that stage his tortured soul didn’t seem worth saving anyway.

President Bush hit back against critics of his economic policies in a press conference last night. He claimed that he had made good progress towards his goal of “a higher-resolution dollar”. Under previous administrations, he said, rounding errors crept into all business done with overseas partners. By reducing the size of the unit of currency, Bush explained, he had enabled it to be far more precise. “Imagine,” he said, “if the dollar was worth so much that you could by five beefburgers for a cent. How would you buy one beefburger? You’d have to buy five and throw four of them away. It’s like that. Now we can buy one beefburger and avoid having to give four of them back to other countries.”

THOUSANDS QUEUE UP IN OWN LIVING ROOMS TO BE FIRST TO RECEIVE LATEST XBOX LIVE ARCADE RELEASE

On Wednesday, gamers got their first look at Alien Hominid on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service, which allows users to download games directly to their Xbox 360 for a small fee. In anticipation of the release, many gamers had queued up beside their Xbox since Monday evening. One such person said “in our house you can never be sure when people will be using the TV. This was really the only way to be certain of getting the game as soon as I could.” He added that he had previously queued up for both the Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii console. “This is better than that,” he said, “because my Mum brings me food here.” Other gamers queued up in this way because they were worried about Microsoft “running out” of stocks of the game.

AMERICAN SOLDIERS ISSUED WITH SPECIAL “HARRYCARD”

The US military has issued all its troops with a credit card-sized photograph of Prince Harry, to make sure he is not harmed in any “friendly fire” incidents. The card carries a photograph of Harry in full battle uniform, which was chosen over a competing photograph of Harry at his passing out ceremony on the grounds that soldiers might be “unlikely to recognise the Prince in uniform based on a ceremonial photograph”. Some British soldiers have commented that it is unfair for Harry to get such special treatment, but most American troops have welcomed the move. One soldier told us, on condition of anonymity, “I think this is a good idea. Normally if we accidentally kill the odd British soldier we’re alright; the army protects us. But if we killed a Prince then the s**t would really hit the fan. We might even get demoted for that.” Producing and distributing the card has cost the US military over $5.4 billion.

Yes, I won.

No, you can’t read it.

But here is an extract anyway. It’s one of my favourite passages that doesn’t involve Nigel and that doesn’t so much as hint at the plot, setting, or genre:

Hannah had been allowed in to see Alex for a while, since the doctors didn’t have any particular reason to be in there. As far as they were concerned, he was the healthiest person they’d seen in years, apart from being in a coma, and he’d only been in a coma for a couple of hours. He could just be a heavy sleeper. She wasn’t really sure what she was supposed to feel. She was relieved that he didn’t seem to be hurt at all, but terrified because he wouldn’t wake up. She couldn’t shake either feeling, despite the fact that until then she’d considered them mutually exclusive. It was like feeling dizzy, or using menthol shampoo in a warm shower. She stayed with him for five minutes before both feelings quietly subsided to boredom. They ebbed away so subtly it wasn’t until she got to ‘more beer for Alex’ that she realised she’d been sat there doing her shopping list while her boyfriend lay there not moving. Then she felt guilty, and angry, and resolved to stop having contradictory emotions about things, a resolution she utterly failed to keep when a doctor came in and told her she had to leave now, making her feel bad about leaving Alex on his own and glad that she didn’t have to stay there feeling conflicting emotions about everything. She could go and feel them in the privacy of her own home.

At half past midnight she decided that if she couldn’t feel an internally consistent gamut of emotions, then she must logically have gone insane. A moment later she decided that that was probably perfectly normal in her situation, and therefore nothing to worry about. Then she realised that that made her both insane and normal simultaneously. That neatly explained the conflicting emotions she’d been feeling all evening, and now that that was cleared up she was finally able to get some sleep.

In the meantime, you may feel free to entertain yourself by installing your delightfully expensive new modem. This is the strange green fish-looking thing with the lights on the front. This must be plugged into your computer’s USB socket, which will provide it with almost enough power to operate, causing it to stop working arbitrarily, and requiring your computer to be rebooted several times a day or, if you are unlucky, resetting your computer almost at random. But don’t worry — until your account is activated all it does is flash lights at you anyway. You must also install the Splitter Boxes wherever you feel they look best.

For more information about why we have made no apparent attempt to activate your account in the weeks since your “Confirmed Activation Date”, please phone our customer care line, on 0845 555-4663 if you are a home customer, or 0845 555-2874 if you are a business customer. Both of these numbers will apparently get through to the same computer controlled response center, which will ask you to press numbers on your phone, and then inform you that your account will be activated on your “Confirmed Activation Date”, now up to four weeks in the past. If this does not give you the information required, please phone again. This time, we reccomend you press different buttons, and if you are lucky you will be allowed to speak to our highly trained staff, who will be more than happy to take your details and put you on hold for forty minutes. If you manage not to hang up after forty minutes of The Four Seasons, then we will transfer you back to our staff, who will inform you that we are very busy and ask you if you would like to be called when we had somebody available to help you. You then have the option of hanging up and not ever getting help, or going back on hold.

Several days later we will randomly activate your account, and send you an email to confirm this. If you want to use the connection on two computers at once, it is easy to find software on the internet which can act as a Proxy server, meaning it will allow other computers to acces the internet via the computer it is running on, often for up to a day before it arbitrarily stops working for no discernable reason. This will not allow you to use MSN Messenger, because it was programmed by the evil Microsoft Corporation.

We hope you enjoy using your new connection, and continue to pay for it.

Over the years, this collection will grow into one of the most expensive collections you have ever known. Also available are fifteen hundred near-identical collections from Time Life.

If you place your order for the Time Life Moron Collection now, you will recieve this worthless CD with three bonus tracks you probably won’t like free. If you buy with your credit card, you will recieve sleeve notes, free! If you order online, then you will recieve the wrong thing entirely — for your convenience, we haven’t got a website!

So act now! Order the Time Life Moron Collection now, for the initial price of only £6.37 plus VAT, plus P&P, plus B&B, plus BNP, plus BSc, and recieve a FREE bonus CD and FREE sleeve notes, by calling 0845 2162162 now! Never mind that you’re watching TV! Never mind that it’s peak time! Do it now!