2006/September    FINAL	Every edition of BFN is compiled in accordance with official 10 Downing Street guidelines on accuracy and veracity.

ANNOUNCEMENT We are seeking nominations for the biggest political piss-take of all time. For our part, we can't get past David Steele telling the Liberal conference to go home and prepare for government. All suggestions to the above email address, please.

PHONE NEWS ntl TRIPLES weekend phone rates Telecoms giant ntl is 'improving' its service to customers in October by abolishing its "3-2-1" call plan, which offered cheaper phone calls at weekends and evenings. As a result, evening calls will cost 50% more and the price of a weekend phone call will triple. Worse, the rates for 0845 and 0870 calls are also going up – by a massive 25%. The price rises are thought to have been triggered by the current broadband war, which is slicing into the profits of the major telecoms suppliers.

DEPARTURES Sir Malcolm Arnold One of Britain's most popular composers, if not with the 'arty-farty' set, has died at 84. He began his musical career playing the trumpet with the London Philharmonic and went on to compose 9 symphonies, 7 ballets, 2 operas and 20 concerti in addition to many chamber works and incidental pieces, which included works for Gerard Hoffnung festivals.    He also created music for 132 films ranging from block-busters to documentaries. He won an Oscar for his score for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and an Ivor Novello award for his music for Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958). His film work also included music for 5 St. Trinian's epics.    Although he wrote a lot of happy music, he was beset by depression and bouts of heavy drinking, which ran his career into the buffers some 25 years ago. Under the influence of his carer, Anthony Day, he gave up drinking, resumed composing and achieved again the recognition which his music deserved. Mr. Day also helped him to a command a highly respectable, six-figure annual income.

WAR NEWS Top Secret! Burn before reading! It's official! We're at war with Afghanistan. But don't tell anyone because the government would like it kept secret. Collateral Advantage? Iraq's mini-civil war is doing wonders for American casualty figures. The Iraqi militias are so busy shooting at one another that American battle deaths in Baghdad this year are half of last year's figure, and the troops are spending most of their time picking up bodies after mass murders. The warring factions have admitted that they don't have the resources to fight on two fronts. So it's strictly Shia versus Sunni now as they go for the more important target. Troops home – but not in our lifetime! Iraqis are killing one another off at the rate of a hundred per day, which means that everyone in the country will be dead by the summer of 2472, which is when we will be able to bring our troops home. MoD lies exposed The Ministry of Defence is lying about the numbers of British troops injured in Afghanistan. The figures posted on the MoD website are very much lower than the true casualty rates – for corrupt new labour's usual party political reasons. The scam was exposed when the true casualty rates for the Royal Fusiliers appeared, very briefly, on their section of the MoD website. Who does he think he's kidding? The 16 government intelligence agencies in the USA are agreed that President Bush's decision to invade Iraq increased the threat from Islamic terrorists. Our own present temporary prime minister, who lied to us about Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction ready for use against us in four to five minutes, says he has proof that the American intelligence agencies are wrong. But he won't say what it is on national security grounds.

TRAVEL NEWS Not-so-safe safety equipment Cyclists who wear helmets are more likely to be hit by motorists. Why? Because idiot motorists assume that anyone in a helmet is an experienced bike rider, who doesn't need to be given extra road space. Which is why they drive three inches closer, on average, to helmeted bikistas. Or four inches, in the case of White Van Man.    The best strategy for bikistas who venture onto the roads is to wear a blonde wig, make the driver think you're a woman and gain an extra five and a half inches of road room.    Just a thought, but does Green Dave, the current Tory leader, know this? Or does he have an entourage on the roads to make sure no one gets close enough to turn him into a footnote in Britain's political history? Hot air from Gordon! The tail end of Hurricane Gordon gave surfers in Cornwall a thrill in the third week of the month. The British Surfing Association was able to hold its first ever Big Wave Day at Fistral beach, Newquay, on the 21st. Hurricane Gordon sent hot air from the Mediterranean swirling over much of Britain, producing temperatures in the 80s and hot gales for some, and deluges for an unlucky few. How safe do you feel flying with BA? In February 2005, a British Airways Jumbo jet had an engine fire shortly after take off. Air traffic controllers at L.A. were waiting for it to turn round and land again but to their amazement, the captain shut the engine down and flew on to England. There, he landed at Manchester because he was worried about having enough fuel to get to London. The captain's action saved BA a huge bill for delay compensation. The airline would have had to pay out £100K if the plane had returned to L.A. If you're thinking of subscribing to the European Union's satellite navigation system . . . . . . don't bother. The Galileo system is £270 million over budget and it won't be on-line before 2010 at the very earliest. And probably not even then.

BUSTED MYTHS   1. You can make diamonds out of the cremated remains of a loved one. No, says Dr. Tony Waltham, an engineering geologist. Diamonds are made of carbon and the whole point of cremation is to burn up carbon compounds in the human body, converting them to gaseous carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, both of which go up the chimney. Actually, says the diamond-making industry, cremation isn't totally efficient, there is 2% carbon in the remains and that's what they use to make the diamonds. 2. If the polar ice melts, we'll all drown! No, says Tom Utley of the Daily Mail. Most of the polar ice is floating on the sea and displacing its own weight of liquid water (Archimedes, and all that). So if it melts, the sea level will stay the same.

DOSH NEWS Save for the benefit of others Invest £60,000 in a Scottish Widows Premier Savings Plan and you'll get £59,700 back after 10 years. But the good news is that the Widows will get £12,000 in fees, charges, expenses and commission. Good deal, or what! Legislators on speed? It is somehow fitting that the state of California, home of most of the world's weirdos, should sue the 6 major vehicle builders for causing global warming. Apparently, it's nothing to do with the people who actually drive the vehicles, it's all down to the manufacturers.    California has failed to extort any cash from the energy companies with similar bogus claims, and these class actions always fail on appeal if they don't run into the buffers right away. Curiously, the state legislator is failing to do anything about the governor, sometime film star Arnold Schwarzenberger, who drives a collection of Hummers, each of which has the petrol consumption of 4 average cars.    Afterthought The next logical step is for the people who would like to live in a warmer climate to sue the idiots of California for seeking to meddle with their hopes for a better world. Second Class postage rate doubles in a quarter-century An Xmas stamp bought in 1981 cost 11½p compared to 23p for the stamps which will go on sale on November 7th. Which is not a bad deal, really, when you match it to the way other prices have shot up over the last 25 years. First class post is not quite such a bargain, however. What once cost 14p will set the customer back 32p this Xmas. Out of sight? Never mind! Roger Annies, the postman who was suspended last month after telling his customers how to stop deliveries of Royal Mail junk mail, has been redeployed to Cardiff sorting office. The Royal Mail decided to make sure that he has no further contact with the customers to prevent further loss of income.

WORLD POLITICS What, exactly, is a region? The people making a living out of the European Union would like to abolish countries and have a collection of regions. The Germans, who are next in line for the rotating presidency, have decided to test this concept to destruction by creating arbitrary 'regions' out of coastal areas. Thus the north of Scotland gets lumped in with Scandinavia and Kent becomes part of a region with areas of France.    Some see this as a prelude to redrawing the map of Europe such that it acquires a German Region, which will be suspiciously similar to the Greater German Zone of Influence of about 1943. Which means another change of ownership for the Sudetenland, East Prussia, Danzig, Silesia, Memel and lots of similar territories. And lots more collecting opportunities for philatelists, of course. Hungarian prime minister stricken by honesty attack! Alleged socialist Ferenc Gyurcasany has admitted that he has been lying to his country for the last 4 years, his 'boneheaded' government failed to introduce any real policies, the economy is in a hell of a mess and, by the way, he lied a bit more to win the Hungarian general election in May. And one more thing – he's not going to quit.    Which left the British people muttering, "What's up with that? That's what governments do, isn't it, lie their heads off? Well, it's what ours does." The Hungarian people were so upset by having the truth thrust upon them by a politician that they set fire to the headquarters of the state TV and got into running battles with the local riot police. A period of silence would be appreciated corrupt blair labour has banned known hecklers from this month's party conference in Manchester. The adverse publicity following the assault on octogenarian and recently elected national executive member Walter Wolfgang last year has made the party stooges nervous. Truth Commission? The Statistics Commission would like corrupt blair labour ministers to have nothing more to do with the Home Office's crime figures to restore a little long-overdue honesty and public confidence to a much-abused target of spin. Not 'either/or'. It's 'neither/nor'! The choice for the nation's prime minister: smug bugger, the man who gave us the Millennium Dome and lied his way into President Bush's war with Iraq versus smug mugger, the man who stole your pension, squandered the nation's assets pretended to be financially prudent with his crooked accounts. Some choice! Tanks in Thailand Anyone would think the former Siam has adopted South America as its spiritual mentor. Their response to a corrupt government, and a prime minister who dared to sneak abroad to harangue the United Nations, was tanks on the streets and a shut-down of travel. Luckily for all the people stranded there, the usual tourist hot-spots have remained open and unaffected by the political turmoil. "Dour, dull & deceitful" A brown written constitution for Britain? No bloody thanks! It will be a million pages long, 'ordinary people' will be able to make neither head nor tail of it (by deliberate design), it will mean whatever the lawyers want it to mean, brown will keep tinkering with it for as long as he can and the British people will be no better off. In fact, remembering what g. brown has done with his earlier flagships, such as the absolute shambles surrounding tax credits and attendance allowances, the British people will be a whole lot worse off.

FOODY NEWS A miracle of mussels! The spivs who harvest and sell mussels from the bay of Mont St. Michel, Normandy, are working a miracle. Their annual crop is around 10,000 tons but some 20,000 tons of MSM mussels find their way into Europe's restaurants every year. Needless to say, more or less all of the ones that end up in Britain are fakes. Omega 3 racket exposed A panel of doctors, nutritionists and food scientists has warned that the people who pay fancy prices for foods containing added omega 3 fatty acids are being ripped off. The 'enriched' products contain only insignificant amounts of these fatty acids, which are found in oily fish, and the average consumer would go bankrupt before he/she noticed any health benefits.

LOGO NEWS The new Tory scribble logo . . . ". . . looks like something you would see on the back of a lottery scratch card after people have coined across it." Tim Montgomerie – editor, ConservativeHome.com Recycled politics from Green Dave corrupt blair labour gained power by stealing Tory policies. The current Tory leader, a.k.a. Old Fish Face, hopes to do the same in reverse. He has started off by offering grovelling apologies to the Scots for Margaret Thatcher's poll tax, which was, in fact, of great benefit to old labour scroungers in Scotland. They didn't pay any local taxes, labour councils in Scotland didn't pursue them for what was owing, and everyone else had to pick up the bill. Socialism in action, or what!

CRIME NEWS It was all a waste of time Frustrated motorist Craig Moore demolished a speed camera with thermit in the hope that this dramatic action would save him from a driving ban (see our report last month). Unfortunately, he did in a 'traffic-calming' camera, which was there to intimidate motorists into obeying the speed limit rather than to collect evidence against them. Even so, Mr. Moore collected a gaol sentence of 4 months for doing criminal damage to the tune of £11,000.    The good news, however, is that corrupt blair labour is so embarrassed about overcrowded gaols that his sentence discounts could see him out of gaol almost before he's in. corrupt blair labour's latest law-enforcement idea Bell Police, who will check all bicycles that they encounter for a bell and issue an £80 fine if there isn't one. they will also be able to hand out a penalty ticket if a cyclist fails to ring the bell before crashing into someone on the pavement. Not so harmless fun In the good old days, paint-balling used to be a harmless recreation or a corporate team-building exercise. But now, the police are keeping a close eye on the activity as they suspect that Jihadistas are using it as a means of teaching combat tactics to wannabe terrorists. For your criminal convenience . . . Richard Brunstrom, chief constable of North Wales and a notorious speed-camera junkie, would like a slot machine dispensing syringes to drug-taking junkies to be installed next door to Colwyn Bay cop shop. Common sense failure is contagious A man who lost his eyes in a bombing in Iraq received a 12-week suspended prison sentence for dangerous driving this month. When busted, he was receiving directions from a friend who could see, but who wasn't driving because he had been banned. Omed Aziz had his non-existent driving licence endorse and he was told that he would have to take an extended driving test if he wanted to drive again. Boneheaded, or what! What's up with that? Omar Kayam (no relation) has told the jury at the Old Bailey, during his trial for alleged terrorism offences, that he has talked about blowing up the House of Commons during prime minister's questions. Is this supposed to be some sort of attempt to prove that, in fact, he's a normal, decent British citizen? Because, let's face it – which normal, decent British citizen hasn't wished that someone would blow up our present temporary prime minister and all his lying cronies? [But not many normal, decent British citizens can lay their hands on 650 kg of ammonium nitrate. Ed.] YOUR COMMENTS Blowing up the House of Commons won't do away with enough of the skiving bastards. What you'd need to do is arrange a freebie for MPs and blow that up. D.C. I'm confused. Is this guy Omar in line for some sort of award, or what? M.C. Cops at a standstill As part of its policy of being nice to criminals, the corrupt blair labour stooges at the Home Office have ordered the police not to chase fleeing criminals. Any copper who does so will be sacked for breaking health & safety regulations.  • Two months ago, the Home Office ordered police not to chase motorcycle bandits if the thieves were not wearing helmets. Police racialism exposed The chief constable of the Gloucestershire Constabulary has been obliged to caution himself over his racially biased recruitment policy. He has also been forced to pay damages to a potential recruit who was rejected, quite illegally, because he was neither female nor from an ethnic minority. Further damages claims are expected in the near future.

DEPARTURES Charlie Williams The first black stand-up comedian to achieve national recognition has died at 78. A Yorkshireman first, last and always, Charlie Williams left school to become a wartime coal miner. He played for Doncaster Rovers as a centre-half between 1949 and 1959, then he became a singer and comedian on the Northern working men's club circuit.    His breakthrough came in the early 1970s as a member of the cast of the Granada TV show The Comedians alongside Frank Carson, Bernard Manning and Mike Reid. He was soon starring in his own show, he appeared in Royal Variety Command Performances, and he became the host of ATV's game show The Golden Shot.    After a decade of success, he was consigned to the fringes again until his retirement in 1995. He was awarded an MBE in 1999 for his charity work. DEPARTURES Smug Bugger After being told he's no longer welcome by well over half of his party, the leader of corrupt blair labour is to stand down next year. His plan is to announce his resignation on 2007/05/31 and, after a 2-month coronation for scotch gordon broon (or not!), he will go to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen for his P45.    Smug Bugger is planning a grand farewell tour, which will include freebie holiday trips to his pals abroad and also personal appearances on selected TV shows, e.g. the kiddies' favourite Blue Peter and the god-botherers' flagship Songs of Praise.    If his agent can swing it, he also hopes to appear on Extreme Championship Wrestling, where he will defeat the Big Show for the ECW championship, only to lose the belt a few days later on one of Vince McMahon's other flagship 'sports entertainment' shows. The latest news is that Smug Bugger is definitely going, and it could be anytime between next May and next week. DEPARTURES Raymond Baxter The BBC TV icon, who presented the science & new technology programme Tomorrow's World for a dozen years, has died at 84. A Spitfire pilot during World War Two, he turned to broadcasting when peace broke out and became a pioneer of BBC outside broadcasts in the 1950s and a standard-setter. Mr. Baxter's other notable jobs included covering the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965 and the first flight of Concorde in 1969. Never a retiring sort, he continued working until the day before his final trip to hospital. DEPARTURES Derek 'Blaster' Bates Britain's most famous demolition expert has died at 83. Derek Bates became a bomb disposal expert during World War Two, and made demolition his trade in peacetime. He blew down redundant industrial chimneys, he helped to create the racing circuit at Oulton Park and he is credited with blowing up the underground vaults of a bank without disturbing the customers at ground level.    Out of the same mould which would produce as Fred Dybnah, Derek Bates became well known as an after-dinner speaker, but his career as an entertainer took off with the release of the first of a string of LPs, which featured live recordings of his 'lectures'. When not blowing things up, or recounting his exploits in a jam-packed theatre, 'Blaster' Bates enjoyed shooting, rallying and stunts on his motorbike. He also served as a special constable with the Cheshire Constabulary for 12 years. DEPARTURES Smarties The Swiss food giant Nestlé will kill off production of these chocolate sweets at the former Rowntree factory in York and move all Smarties production to Hamburg next year. This is the latest in a whole string of messings about with familiar products, which has left consumers saddled with rip-off prices and/or an inferior replacements. DEPARTURES Inspector Frost Disillusioned by the Essex Police's clumsy attempt to fit up his nephew for shoplifting, author R.D. Wingfield has announced that his popular character has reached the end of the line. He no longer feels able to write any more pro-police Frost books, and his current opus, A Killing Frost, will be the last.    Comment : "With corrupt blair labour in charge, it's a surprise it has taken so long for him to lose his faith in the police." DEPARTURES Four Shags corrupt blair labour's pantomime horse plans to chuck in the towel when the boss quits. He leaves behind a legacy of mangling the English language; brawling in public and pretending it's a virtue; political dodginess involving taking gifts and favours from wealthy men who stand to make a ton of money out of government decisions; being paid vast amounts of taxpayers' money for doing bugger all; poor judgement; arrogance in office; infidelity and sheer blundering crudity.    He will be missed only by political cartoonists.

RETURNS The Beef in Bovril This beef-stock product has been around since 1870 but it suffered a profound change in 2004. Following the BSE scare and the ban on British beef exports, it was reformulated as a savoury yeast product (which tasted fairly okay). Now that the export ban has been lifted, Bovril is returning to its roots and getting its beef content back again.

HOME NEWS The fix is definitely in! The Anschutz Organization, proprietors of the former Millennium Dome, are recruiting croupiers and other staff for their new casino in Greenwich. Hang on, we hear you say, isn't the bidding process still supposed to be in progress? Well, only on the surface, apparently. The decision has been made backstage and corrupt blair labour is now waiting for a sufficiently big disaster to cover up the announcement. Rogue asteroid wipes out Brussels would be a good one. Learn or go! Oxford & Chester universities are taking out insurance against idle students, who don't go to lectures, fail their exams then try to sue the university on the grounds of sub-standard teaching. New admissions are now required to sign a contract, which requires them to study and attend lectures. And if they don't, they will be expelled. Needless to say, the respective student unions are up in arms against this fascist requirement to do some work occasionally. Smug Mugger less popular than Smug Bugger! YouGov polls have show that our present temporary prime minister's popularity ROSE after the broon back-stairs coup attempt from -34 to -30 while scotch gordon's rating SLUMPED from -20 to -32. What IS IT with all these bloody wall charts? The Grauniad started them and the Daily Mail has jumped on the bandwagon this month. But at least you can avoid the Mail's charts by not buying your paper at W.H. Smiff's. Message to the perpetrators : STOP IT! We don't have enough walls for all these bloody charts. p.s. to the Grauniad about their Planets wall chart :    1. Pluto is still a proper planet, not a dwarf planet, you PC bastards! That vote was anti-democratic.    2. Xena "orbits the sun in an ellipse so has no average distance from the Sun". Bollocks! And they have the nerve to offer further copies of this crap wall chart at 4 quid a time! Things to say to scotch gordon broon "Tell us that one about neo-classical endogenous growth theory. But look like you know what you're talking about this time." Red Ken not value for money London's mayor Ken Livingstone has spent £226,000 of local taxpayers' money on scaring 2,500 pigeons, a.k.a. rats with wings, away from Trafalgar Square and its environs. That works out at £90 per bird. Trafalgar Square's population of on-statue-crappers is still around 1,000.

SPACE NEWS ESA achieves controlled crash on Moon Having reached the end of its life span, the SMART-1 experimental spacecraft completed its mission in the Lake of Excellence with a crash-landing, which telescopes on Earth were able to observe.    Launched in September 2003, SMART-1 was the European Space Agency's first mission to the Moon. The craft was a test-bed for an ion engine fuelled by xenon gas and driven by solar energy.    The low-impulse engine put SMART-1 into lunar orbit in November 2004, using just 60 kg of fuel along the way. In January 2005, it reached the correct orbit for the lunar phase of the mission – extensive photography of the Moon's surface.    The spacecraft's orbit was always destined to decay until it crashed onto the Moon's surface. ESA chose to make the crash happen so that it could be watched from Earth. The agency plans to use data gathered on the debris thrown up by the impact to investigate the composition of the lunar surface in that area. Romiley's astronomers side with PPF Outraged by the decision taken in Prague by just 4% of the International Astronomical Union's members, the Romiley Astronomical Society has thrown in its lot with the Pluto Preservation Front, which refuses to accept Pluto's demotion after it has enjoyed the status of a bona fide planet for 76 years.    The IAU is in trouble for not consulting widely with planetary science specialists, and for coming up with a definition of a planet which is inadequate and 'does not meet fundamental scientific standards'.    Quotes: "Scientists have in the past vested the IAU with authority to name asteroids and other planetary objects. However, the word 'planet' has cultural, historical, and social meaning and as such requires much broader discussion and consensus than those required for the naming of astronomical bodies."    – Dr. Mark Bullock, director of the CSEPR "This matter is about as settled as the Iraq war in 2003."    – University of Colorado researcher Jeffrey Bennett Sense of proportion failure in Greece The chairman of Athens observatory has complained to the IAU about the temporary name 'Xena', which has been given to the Kuiper Belt Object 2003 UB313. A team led by astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology discovered the new planetoid and they gave it the unofficially name Xena in homage to the warrior princess, who is the main character of an American TV fantasy series.    The Greeks insist that all planets in the past have been named after figures from Greek mythology, and they want to preserve that historic tradition. Except, Xena has not yet been declared a planet, and other Kuiper Belt Objects don't follow the tradition. "Sedna" for instance, was named in honour of the Inuit goddess of the ocean and "Quaoar" was named after the creation force of the Tongva tribe of the Los Angeles basin.    So what's wrong with the odd Warrior Princess, you Greeks? The IAU Executive Committee has approved the names Eris for Xena and Dysnomia for its satellite Gabrielle. In Greek legends, Eris (pronounced "ee-ris") is the goddess who started the Trojan War. She had two daughters, the lawless Dysnomia, and Eunomia, who put an end to strife. Shuttle Atlantis launched at last The mission carrying further solar power arrays to the ISS should have been launched on the last Sunday in August, but a lightning strike on the launch tower on the Friday before the launch date, and the arrival off Florida of Hurricane Ernesto, made NASA think again.    The shuttle was moved toward to the protection of the Vehicle Assembly Building but Ernesto proved to be a bit of a wimp and Atlantis's progress was halted and the shuttle was moved back to Pad 39B. The mission had to be launched before the 13th of this month so that it could clear the ISS before the planned arrival of a Russian Soyuz mission in mid-September. The Russians were worried about losing the chance to take a paying space-tourist to the ISS – Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-born, Dallas businesswoman.    September 6th was set as the new launch date. A fuel cell malfunction caused a postponement. Then one of the fuel sensors in the external tank started to act up. But 13 days after the planned launch date, NASA finally got its act together and Atlantis flew again on Saturday, September 9th.    Had the launch window been missed, NASA would have had to postpone the mission until late October. Another 15 missions to the ISS are required before the shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, and every month counts now. Atlantis returned to Earth safely in the dark, landing at Kennedy Space Center at 6:21 a.m. EDT on 2006/09/21 – despite being menaced in orbit by what was probably a plastic garbage bag.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Crooks In Action As a public service, Jenson Farrago is offering access to his collection of bogus lottery, phishing and other email spam. CLICK HERE to find out what miracles they offer.

UNSPORT NEWS Do his job? Forget it! Sven Erikkson, discarded coach to the England football team, has ducked out of an inquest in Berlin on this year's World Cup. Fed up with being called a shit and a useless failure, he is staying at home and counting the £13,000 per day which he's getting from the FA until his contract runs out next summer. "I could murder a hot pie!" "Well, that's a lie!" A passing comment by a politician's wife was repackaged as, "Well, can I get by?" by corrupt blair labour's spin doctors. And when that didn't take, they went into a denial. They tried to crack on that the remark had never been made and they tried to intimidate the reporter who heard it into keeping quiet about it.    But all they succeeded in doing was increasing the certainty that the original report of what was said had been 100% accurate. Which was probably the object of the exercise – drawing attention away from scotch gordon broon's dull rant to his party conference.    And the good thing for the spin doctors is that they know that no matter what lies they spread, they can't be hauled up for bringing politics into disrepute because British politics no longer has any repute after 9 years of corrupt blair labour.

WORLD NEWS Football goes crazy everywhere Footballers have become an endangered species in Iraq. Anyone who is any good is given a simple choice by gun-toting militiamen – play for our team or lose your kneecaps. Iraqi footballers are also ransom targets for any 2-bob terrorist with a gun and a van. As a result, they are either giving up the 'beautiful game' or getting a deal which lets them play in a more civilized country.    French players, on the other hand, feel secure enough to threaten English clubs with a rash of own goals, or fouls serious enough to get themselves sent off, if the club doesn't come up with an agreeable transfer deal. As a result, FIFA is considering a compulsory exchange deal, under which all Iraqi players will come to Europe and the Frogs will be sent to Iraq. Expanded Quotation: "You don't change the world by burning your neighbour's car. No matter how much fun it is!"    – Nicolas Sarkozy, sometime French PM, unconvicted of fraud & current presidential hopeful New health initiative in Zimbabwe The health service in this African country has collapsed so thoroughly under the misrule of that bungling crook President Mugabe that local witchdoctors have been given the power to sign a sick note to give skivers up to a week off work. The religious equivalent of football hooligans? It's always nice to be proved right. Pope Benedict XVI upset Moslems by saying that spreading their faith through violence is something unreasonable. So they promptly went on a worldwide orgy of violence & vandalism, which included fire-bombing and shooting-up Christian churches (but not Catholic ones) and murder, while demanding an apology.    "Islam is a peaceful religion but anyone who disagrees will be killed" – Q.E.D.

	"tony blair should stop playing at prime minister and set a date for his departure. He should be thinking about his legacy," say labour back-benchers.    What bloody legacy? All the lies he's told over the last 9 years? All the public money he's handed to cronies? All the people he's got killed through sucking up to George W. Bush? What??? scotch gordon broon's big grin when he heard that Smug Bugger was to be forced into announcing that he would be standing down sometime in the next year or so. Smugger Mugger scotch gordon denying that he was behind this month's attempted coup against Smug Bugger. "You weren't a dictator. People around you made you look like one." – Abdullah Amiri, the judge at Saddam Hussein's current trial. After the trial is over, Mr. Amiri will be taking up a post in the press office at 10 Downing Street. This has happened sooner than anyone expected. Judge Amiri was sacked for bias a couple of days later. On his first day in charge, the replacement judge chucked the former World's Favourite Despot out of the court room for being cheeky. Although Charles Kennedy was the whisky industry's best customer while the Trivial Democrats were touting him as a prime minister, it's Sir Menzies Campbell's fault that Chucky the Boozer lost his job as the party leader. The Ministry of Defence & NATO's assessment of the strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan before they sent British troops there to be killed. john prescott's Big Idea to issue a grovelling apology for slavery next year. Robin Hood was an 11th Century Welshman, not a 12th Century English Saxon nobleman, who was swindled out of his estate by the church.

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