The News In Shorts

How the news would look if everyone stopped waffling and told the truth.

Thursday 24 September 2015

Dementia Epidemic Threatens World Economy.

The epidemic of dementia amongst leading businessmen has now spread to the German car industry it has been reported today. Seven years after a similar outbreak in the financial sector was discovered and a mere two years after the shock outbreak in the Murdoch media empire, the plague that has already turned many of the world's politicians into zombies now seems to be completely out of control. We asked a leading health expert for his analysis; "A 30 second memory has plagued politicians since time immemorial," he told our reporter, "but the spread of this debilitating condition to the business world is now threatening the whole of industry. The number of chief executives who have absolutely no idea what anyone else in their company is doing is very worrying. Many seem to have no idea what their job actually is, have absolutely no idea what they were doing as recently as yesterday and can barely recognise people they work with every day. We now suspect that the agent of infection must be dirty money which politicians and captains of industry compulsively stuff into their offshore bank accounts without washing their hands properly. This latest outbreak at Volkswagen is particularly worrying since the Germans are usually very fastidious about washing their hands after doing something particularly underhand. The extent of the damage to executive brains can be judged by Martin Winterkorn's reaction to the latest scandal affecting Volkswagen; "I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part." Essentially he admits that he has been doing something wrong but insists that he remains completely unaware of it. This is striking similar to Rebekah Brooks' condition which prevented her from knowing what her staff were doing and to that suffered by Iain Duncan Smith who remains blissfully unaware of the distress that taking all means of support from the sick, disabled and unemployed causes. Perhaps a more striking case is that of Sepp Blatter whose almost total amnesia is truly terrifying. I must emphasise, however, that it is probably misleading to label all these instances as dementia - "wilful amnesia with malice aforethought" is perhaps a better description though the much simpler term "corruption" is probably more accurate."

Monday 21 September 2015

Now Dave Knows How Labour Leaders Feel.

With Lord Ashcroft's accusations spread all over the tabloids David Cameron has today learned what it feels like to be a leader of the Labour party. Such musings as to why Jeremy Corbyn didn't sing "God save the Queen" and, perhaps with more relevancy, Ed Miliband's tussle with a bacon sandwich have suddenly become small beer compared with David Cameron putting his naughty bits into the mouth of a dead pig. Now "Call me Dave" is about to find out why truth is such a precious commodity when no one cares if something is true or not. The false accusations in the right wing press that Jeremy Corbyn described the death of Bin Laden as a "tragedy" were a deliberate slur calculated to damage his reputation. Now, with Lord Ashcroft's tales of Cameron at University, the boot is very firmly on the other foot. The story about the dead pig is so memorable and so funny that it really doesn't matter whether its true or not - the damage has been done and will probably never be undone. The Tories love to deal in lies, half-truths and scurrilous accusations. Now we can all sit back and enjoy watching them deal with this one already dubbed "Piggate". But the whole episode tells us something much more important than the truth or otherwise about Cameron's behaviour at University because it allows us a glimpse into the mind of a Tory like Lord Ashcroft. Annoyed that his bankrolling of the Tory party didn't lead to an undeserved job strutting about making himself look important, Ashcroft has turned on his erstwhile friend with appalling nastiness. Cameron shouldn't be surprised nor even disappointed since this is what Toryism is all about - spite, nastiness and stabbing others in the back. Cameron should instead take comfort in the fact that Ashcroft is merely acting in character and is simply doing what any Tory would do when his or her ambition and selfishness are thwarted. Nasty is the name of the game in Tory politics and Dave is now reaping his just reward for being so nasty to everyone else. In the immortal words of that great philosopher of Western culture, Bart Simpson, "Eat my shorts."

David Cameron's Naughty Bits.

Lord Ashcroft, understandably miffed because he didn't get a nice lucrative sinecure after bailing out the Tory party, has turned on David Cameron with a vengeance. He has decided to tell the rest of us all about Dave's high jinks when he was a student. Much of this must, of course, be regarded as sheer spite. I mean, what student hasn't put his naughty bits into the mouth of a dead pig for God's sake? Certainly such behaviour is par for the course amongst the Bullingdon set where study, as the Tory cabinet's grip on their various jobs demonstrates, came a distant second to behaving like a complete twat. Dave's experience as a student has served him well now he's Prime Minister. How else could a Tory toff gain the disdain necessary to lord it over the rest of us peasants and the grit necessary to be such a total swine? Did putting his naughty bits into the mouth of a dead pig give Dave a sexually transmitted disease the symptoms of which include becoming a swine? Is this how all Tories become swine? Is that how Lord Ashcroft become a swine and a Tory? It would explain a great deal about the party in general and its members in particular. The question is can Dave survive this onslaught on his character? The answer, if the Tory party has anything to do with it, is a resounding "yes" since it has little interest in character and regards swinish behaviour as the main, if not the only, qualification for the job of Tory Prime Minister. But what about the rest of us? Is having a Prime Minister with a penchant for Necrobeastiality good for the country? Will other world leaders snigger behind his back? Are any animals, living or dead, safe in his presence? I'll never be able to enjoy a bacon sandwich in the same way again.

Saturday 12 September 2015

It's Jeremy Corbyn Wot Won It!

Jeremy Corbyn has won the election for leader of the Labour by a landslide - beating off the opposition with a massive 59.5% majority in the first ballot. This has hardly come as a great surprise since his victory has been predicted in the press for weeks. So, what does the Corbyn victory mean? David Cameron has no doubts - sternly warning us all that if he becomes Prime Minister then we will all disappear down an economic black hole. This is strange coming from a man that has smugly trebled the national debt over the last five years and complacently watched as Iain Duncan Smith has persecuted the unemployed, the old, the sick and the infirm. Having witnessed the banks laying waste to the world economy he has happily rewarded them for their efforts. Having seen for himself the disastrous results of an economy based on pure greed and stupidity, he has patiently put it back together again. Knowing who was to blame he has deliberately sought out scapegoats to divert attention away from the real perpetrators, punishing the innocent in order to reward the guilty. Any thing else, he has told us, is "socialism" - a sinister conspiracy to destroy ordinary working people by paying them a living wage, providing a decent safety net for the unlucky, giving them a good education and re-establishing services that are fit for purpose rather than to provide an easy living for the already rich. For the rest of us believing in Jeremy Corbyn will be an act of faith since any facts about his policies will be deliberately distorted by a media whose bias is a national scandal. Get ready for stories in the press that Jeremy Corbyn is in fact an ungodly alien communist bent on world domination instead of the decent man he really is. There will rumours (unsubstantiated of course) that he has millions in off shore bank accounts, that he fiddles his expenses so cunningly that the evidence for it cannot be found (which just goes to show how cunning he is) and that he wants to sell our Monarchy to the Americans (not a bad idea if selling off public assets to private enterprise is so good for us all). The question is can he win a general election? The answer to that is a resounding "yes" though that will ultimately depend on whether we are a decent country or just a disorganised rabble addicted to selfishness and greed as the Tories would have us believe. The question is not if Corbyn is good enough to elect but if we are good enough to do so.

Thursday 3 September 2015

The Refugee Crisis

I have grandchildren about the age of this little Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Turkey and this photograph is truly shocking. Despite this I'm going to say some things that many people will be uncomfortable with. There is a great deal of breast-beating going on across Europe and especially here in Britain. It's all the fault of the US and Britain because we intervened in Iraq. It's all the fault of the US and Britain because we didn't intervene in Libya and Syria. Whatever the truth or otherwise of this the refugees desperately trying to cross the Mediterranean are not running away from the West but to the West. They are running away from fellow Muslims, Asad, ISIS, the Taliban and all the other barbarians that infest their countries. Having run away from these monsters, they are being exploited by other fellow Muslims and then left to die mid-ocean in leaky boats. ISIS, Asad, the Taliban and others in the Middle East are delighted that this crisis is putting pressure on Europe and are well satisfied that it is threatening European unity, undermining our democracies and putting strains on US-European relations. We might have many allies in the Middle East but the truth is that we have few friends. Their is little breast-beating in Saudi-Arabia, Kuwait, or The Yemen, they are taking few if any refugees or offering much support and few of the refugees are heading that way in any case. Our problem is that if we open the door to these refugees there are millions who may well soon follow them and force the door open wide. Our choice is an unenviable one. We can either accept that we no longer have any control over our borders and stand by helplessly as we are flooded with refugees with all that means for our infrastructures, political stability and social cohesion. Or, we can intervene in the Middle East to put a stop to this with all that means in terms of death, destruction and huge expense. Our enemies in The Middle East have struck at our greatest strengths - our compassion, our sense of fair play, our democratic principles - and turned them into our greatest weaknesses. Decision time is now here - you pay your money and take your choice.