Church Calls for Moratorium on Jaffa Cake

The Vatican has called for a ban on the baking of Jaffa Cakes. Bishop Golosità di Dolci, president of the Pontifical Academy for Afters and Dainties said that the orange-flavoured confectionary is an affront to human dignity.

“The dignity of Man is compromised and offended by the creation of these monstrous treats,” the Bishop said. “Individual foodstuffs have not been respected by bakers, because eggs are beaten and tasty mixtures whisked up in many ways, as in the case of these artificial toppings. But the line between cake and biscuit had always been respected. Now, this barrier too has been broken and the consequences have not been calculated.

“In the name of reason and in the name of justice and proper cooking,” said the 108-year-old cleric, “let us keep these two categories of dessert clearly apart and maintain our respect for their delicious, but separate natures.

“The baker who is only worried about advancing his range of seconds does not take into consideration the anthropological and philosophical factors, like respect for nature and the natural order. There is a thirst for yumminess that must not go unchecked, and a hunger to experiment with scrumptiousness that can upset the moral sense of the one carrying out the baking, if he is not controlled by a sense of balance and human reason.

“Suppose that I am denying myself the pleasures of the cake in Lent and happen to pig out on one of Mr McVitie’s anomalous creations, thinking that it is a biscuit, but then grow uncertain. How shall I know what to confess unto the Lord, or what number of lashes to award myself in penitence?”

Di Dolci went on to decry jellies, “which blur the distinction between food and drink,” and yetis, calling them a “missing link too far.” He also stated that, while the preservation of endangered species was a good thing in principle, he would be happy to “let the mudskipper go. It is neither fish nor flesh, rendering it quite hard to fit into the ad hoc ethical scheme of one small group of Middle Eastern pastoralists 3000 years ago, and therefore utterly wrong.”

Superpeople for Failing States

(Supersize me! Very occasionally a superhead will go ‘bonkers’, swell up badly, and start haemorrhaging positivity all over the town.)

Following the success of superheads at turning around all failing schools in Britain at least once on their main axis, the government is to extend the scheme to failing states.

If all goes well, and leader-writers are okay with it, the plan could see small minorities of “very effective people” incentivised with salaries of up to 12 orders of magnitude above that of their starving compatriots to “just stop them from failing so much.”

“Failure is an awful thing,” International Development Secretary Baroness Dame Cinderella Farden said. “Especially for a state. If we could entice someone articulate, who knows what the initials A.S.P.I.R.E. stand for, to get these wayward nations to dysfunction less, it would look absolutely scrummy on a CV. We might even win an award.”

A superperson must be someone who enjoys setting goals and can talk well about achievement. They will be expected to flood their country with positivity and trigger a literal avalanche of good results. The ideal superperson will also tackle behaviour quickly, “by whatever means necessary.”

“And there’s no need to worry about the long term,” Farden warned prospective saviours. “I can’t remember why not, but, for some reason, that’s just not important. Besides, superpeople can always move on to another homeland to be a bigshot in, if the first one doesn’t work out (or they find that they accidentally commit too many abuses there), thanks to the incentives.”

Looking Funny at Army Men to Become a Crime

The government is to bring in new laws making it a criminal offence to look askance at soldiers and impose stiff penalties on those convicted of distaining bomber pilots with their brows.

The legislation, which is not representative of a ‘Nanny State’, is among 400 new measures in a scheme designed to curb contempt for service personnel. If trials prove successful, say ministers, it could be extended to the Royal Navy by as early as 2015.

The rules cover frowns and all categories of puckered lip and will “apply equally to homeless ex-soldiers,” said Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth, “so just watch out! If you are committing a xenophobic sneer, make sure your mouth isn’t pointed at a gurkha. Naturally it will still be okay to scorn gingers, people who look a bit like they might be on drugs, sexual minorities (except for gays) and the Welsh. Not Black Welsh though, unless they are non-EU residents. If you find yourself becoming very hearty indeed, and absolutely have to disapprove of someone you know nothing about, we guideline you to glare at one of these.”

CCTV Footage So Poor It’s Unwatchable: Police

Up to 80% of CCTV footage seized by police is of such poor quality that it is virtually unwatchable, say detectives.

“Character development is haphazard, dialogue less than sparkling, and the pacing all over the place,” disclosed Detective Inspector Lomax Coriolis to startled fans. “Some footage doesn’t even have a dénoument, let alone a clearly defined six-act story structure.”

“It’s an utter fiasco,” barked Rendor Mandeville, Chief Constable of Berkshire. “Even when vital evidence is captured, officers do not want to sit through it because it’s so derivative. We assumed that more training would fix that,” he added ruefully, “but unfortunately the training was even duller, and officers just did not want to do it.”

Junior policemen described the evidence variously as “boring,” “worth the price of admission alone” and “madder than a hatful of monkeys on acid, on acid. But boring.”

Another small problem, police say, is that the cameras generally don’t work.

“Most cameras are stuffed full of straw and dead leaves, actually,” Coriolis admitted, “as a deterrent. Billions of pounds has been spent on state-of-the-art adaptive optics, solid steel chassis and hay, but at the end of the day, some form of recording device would probably have a bigger impact.”

He also pointed to a catalogue of mistakes with those that do function. In Ipswich, cameras were left unsupervised for four hours and developed a rudimentary form of consciousness. In Carlyle, a pair of cameras were accidentally trained on each other, by novice operators, resulting in the creation and instant destruction of an infinity of ‘mirror worlds’, “as real as our own, only more transient.”

One camera in Penrith was found to have been controlled by a gosling – for ten years. Since its installation, it has detected no crimes. Images consist largely of mother geese, v-shaped things and other goslings.

But Scotland Yard denied that CCTV was failing Britain.

“It can be crucial to some investigations,” the legal quadrangle said, “particularly terror cases, where standards are lower, due to the terror. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. In order to raise conviction rates, I plan to post footage on YouTube, with saucy titles, in the hope that conscientious net-users will spot something to arouse their suspicions.”

Another plan is to post images to websites frequented by footpads and hooligans.

“When criminals see the cinematic atrocities they have committed, they’ll be less cocksure, at least,” Coriolis supposed. “If the out-of-focus sight of the backs of their own heads and necks disappointing audiences doesn’t fill them with shame, then – bless my soul – I don’t know what will.”

Cosmic Background Radiation Insults Allah

Astronomers at Baluchistan National Observatory, searching for evidence of God’s glory, got more than they bargained for today when they discovered an insulting comment about the Deity formed from strands of the microwave background radiation that pervades the universe.

The radiation, which bathes the cosmos, is thought to mark the aftermath of the Big Bang. Mujahideen scientists at the mountaintop hideout cum observatory were initially delighted when the Creator’s moniker hove into view among its wisps and tendrils.

“At first we just thought, behold: the word God written in Arabic again,” said religious astronomer Agar Jelidi. “Of course, we were overjoyed at yet another proof of His greatness. But then someone pointed out that, from a certain angle, if you squint hard enough, it forms part of a libellous sentence.”

“It’s outrageous,” roared fellow stargazer Atif as-Salami. “I have already personally taken out three jihads on Scotland, birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell who first predicted the existence of microwaves in 1864, two jihads against England (where he held the Chair of Natural Philosophy at King’s College London when he made his breakthrough), and one against Baluchistan for being the site of my own contribution to this horrible sacrilege.”

“And I have beheaded a neighbour,” Jelidi said. “When the Crusaders learn of that, they’ll quail.”

“Yes, praise God,” said Atif. “That will unsettle the kaffir imperialists no end, the thought that, for all their guns and tanks, they can’t stop us cutting the throats of our Muslim brothers and sisters from just across the way. It will sap their sense of purpose.”

Major Event Unreported Due to Lateness

It has emerged that the BBC was unable to cover a major event last year after reporters missed their train and couldn’t be there in time for the evening news.

According to crews, the event was one that affects us all and would have been a gargantuan scoop.

“But we simply weren’t there to stand outside the house where it occurred, 10 hours earlier, to speculate about it live,” sobbed chief reporter Penny Merryweather into her large, expensive microphone, “so what could we do?”

The event was an event of great – some say immense – magnitude with national and international reverberations. It is believed to have been “something on the scale of a nuclear war or a cure for Old Age.”

“But without me there to grimace and nod,” said Penny, “it might as well have never happened.”

News staff reject claims that they could have used the reports of amateurs.

“We use some amateur footage, it’s true, but ordinary people can’t do actual news because they don’t have the right mannerisms. They aren’t trained to grimace in the way I can,” Penny cautioned, “and their nods aren’t half as portentous. It would be futile for them to try.”

“What’s more,” said trainee reader Bill Sloop, “eyewitnesses to some events, particularly foreign events, are foreign. As such, we fear that they could bring a different cultural perspective to their comments, including views which some viewers may find unexpected. It’s important not to surprise Britons.”

“There is also the question of balance,” warned news director Vance Handlebank. “Occasionally an ordinary person will have a slightly different take on things. It would be terrible if this got out. And they probably can’t afford the special microphone anyway.”

This isn’t the only event to fall by the news wayside. In March 2008, something of earth-shattering importance is said to have gone on in Woking, but couldn’t be revealed as it wasn’t a scandal or anything involving princes. In April, something on the scale of an end to all suffering or a First Contact with aliens took place in Carmarthen, but couldn’t be aired because local journalists just couldn’t think of an angle.

“Sometimes business leaders give us tips. But on this? Nothing,” the bewildered newshounds said.

And last week, a discovery that changes everything was made in Durham, but there was no way to garble it to suggest that viewers’ lives are at risk from an everyday activity.

It is not known what any of these events is exactly, at least no one at TV Centre knows, and it’s not in the papers, so it seems unlikely, at this stage, that anyone will ever find out.

“Can’t think how they might do,” guffawed editors, “short of actually googling for it! But that’s all pervs and geeks that internet, so you don’t want to do that.”

Royal Scandal

(You heinous chancers.)

Two chancers have been convicted today of attempting to blackmail an unnamed member of the royal family. The chancers threatened to reveal that the royal, who has no name, regularly extorts a portion of every Briton’s livelihood on the pretext that he is distantly related to an 11th century invader.

Speaking in grave tones, Judge Justice Barry Posilippo-Philippus warned the two that they were guilty of a most heinous threat which was “a horrible one to make,” he said, “to any member of the royal family, but especially to a man already suffering the indignity of namelessness. This offence is one of the ugliest and most vicious crimes in the calendar of criminal offences, and one of the dirtiest and hideousest felonies in the almanac of criminal misdeeds. What has the member of the royal family ever done to you chancers, apart from robbing you legally with the help of his power and privilege, thereby corrupting the very idea of justice in this land from the top down, to say nothing of the impact on healthcare? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Unless the anonymous nobleman paid them a fraction of his loot, the chancers hinted by their tones of voices, they would go to the press. Unfortunately for them, it was unwittingly to agents of the nameless grandee’s state that the threat was implied, while those agents entrapped the chancers after first beguiling them.

The royal is understood to have been particularly vulnerable to such a threat, partly because of his guilt, but mainly due to personal insecurities surrounding the fact that, unlike most royals, he isn’t called anything. According to palace sources, the boy was to have received a name in Westminster Cathedral, in the normal way, but a clergyman, drunk on the love of God, got one of the words wrong – so badly wrong, in fact, that the baptism just didn’t take.

“We thought we saw the signs of a name starting to develop around the age of six,” said servants, “but it turned out to be just a pet name that he quickly grew out of. Oh, what a to-do-ment!”

The chancers are currently in Broadbell High Security Prison for the Criminally Untitled, waiting for their luck to change.

Members of the public are advised to direct their prurience at a less well connected target: a foreigner perhaps, or a poorly singer?