Life copies satire

From The Daily Mash, 5 August 2020:

TEACHERS have announced that they would be willing to relocate schools to pubs as a compromise to keep both open.

As scientists warned that curbing coronavirus might mean closing pubs so schools can operate normally, educators have volunteered to teach classes from behind the bar.

I'm sure they did one about 'home working' from the pub, but I can't find it right now. The principle stands however.

From the BBC, 11 October 2020:

Some pub-goers have queried whether "pub desks" offer a safe way of working, but industry leaders argue more coronavirus transmissions take place in educational settings and care homes than in pubs and restaurants.

In this village pub in Kent, a tenner gets you a table by a plug socket, wi-fi, lunch (I went for a halloumi wrap) and unlimited tea and coffee. (Pints, sadly, are not included.)

Cheers!

When life is funnier than satire

From The Daily Mash:

ANYONE who does not live in a detached house will be barred from shopping in Waitrose during the coronavirus crisis.

As the pandemic continues to disrupt shopping, the supermarket has introduced restrictions to ensure only ‘their kind of people’ stockpile its overpriced items.

Not true. My wife had to queue this morning just like everybody else.

From a Waitrose & John Lewis email yesterday:

We’re also suspending services that involve close contact between customers and Partners. This includes our cafes, A Place To Eat and others that require skin contact, such as beauty counter treatments and bra-fitting. Nespresso and Kuoni will be closing their outlets too as a temporary measure.

Truly the end of the world as we know it.

A headline worthy of The Daily Mash

From The Times:

Isis issues coronavirus travel advice: terrorists should avoid Europe

The Isis terrorist group is steering clear of Europe because of the coronavirus. Having previously urged its supporters to attack European cities, the group is now advising members to "stay away from the land of the epidemic" in case they become infected.

The group has issued a new set of "sharia directives" that instruct followers to "cover their mouths when yawning and sneezing" and to wash their hands regularly. Isis militants have plenty of experience in covering their faces, though previously they did so to hide their identities when beheading hostages on camera.

In the latest issue of its al-Naba newsletter, the group refers not to guidance from the World Health Organisation or other medical experts, but to recorded quotes by the Prophet Muhammad.

Highly unusual to see these three sources saying much the same thing on the same day.

From City AM, normally a huge supporter of the rent seekers and the practices referred to in The Guardian article below:

The government is making its case for stepping up the Sino-British relationship by announcing £30bn worth of new trade and investment deals, despite escalating concerns that the UK steel industry is crumbling at the hands of Chinese manufacturers.

The Prime Minister announced the business deals, which the government says will create more than 3,900 jobs across the UK, one day after reports that [British steelmakers are to cut over 5,000 jobs in the face of Chinese steel dumping].

From The Guardian, actually hitting the spot for once:

Osborne is all for renationalisation – so long as the nation isn’t Britain

To secure EDF as a builder, Cameron guaranteed a fixed price for electricity from Hinkley of £92.50 per megawatt hour. That is around double the going rate for electricity on the wholesale markets, a price so high that equity analysts term it “financial insanity”.

Change your supplier as often as you like, you and everyone else in Britain will be paying for that de facto subsidy in your electricity bills for decades to come. Britons will in effect be paying more for their energy so that French households can pay less. Indeed, so generous are the terms of this deal that the government of Austria is currently taking Britain to court on the grounds that it’s handing out state aid to EDF.

Yes, you read that last sentence right: the UK stands accused of dispensing state aid – to another state. How many times have you read about some age-old manufacturer and thousands of jobs going down the swanee, while ministers wrung their hands over European state aid rules? Now we know that such rules can be tested – provided the recipient is headquartered not in Port Talbot, but Paris.

And finally, from The Daily Mash:

As thousands of redundancies in Redcar are followed by hundreds more in Scunthorpe, the business secretary said he wishes there was something he could do.

Sajid Javid continued: “Tragically, the industry has been hit by a perfect storm of being in the provinces, traditionally supporting Labour and not being financial services. Add that to us not wanting to do anything that might offend our new Chinese friends, and there’s absolutely nothing we are prepared to do.

“If only these plants manufactured something useful, like insurance derivatives supported by credit default swaps, then we’d gladly go billions into debt for them. But steel? What’s that even for?”

"High-earning houses ban humans from living in them"

The Daily Mash does Home-Owner-Ism yet again.

"We had hundreds of family meetings..."

From The Daily Mail:

The Kardashian family had hundreds of intense, emotional meetings to deal with Kanye West's decision to transition into a twat, Kim Kardashian has revealed.

The reality star told Monday how she, her sisters and her mother Kris Jenner would open their hearts to each other to process the emotional turmoil prompted by the 37-year-old former rap star's decision to consider himself a twat.

She also admitted that the issues of being married to a twat are 'not something... I can fully understand' - but added that understanding wasn't necessary for her to 'support him 100 per cent'

A portion of the interview, with NBC's Today show, which was released over the weekend had already revealed that the whole Kardashian clan is also in therapy to help them deal with the change.

The Daily Mash does Home-Owner-Ism (again)

From The Daily Mash:

Renter Emma Bradford said: “When owning a house becomes an impossibility*, at first it’s depressing but then your mind turns to things other than mortgages and floor plans.

“It’s like taking a massive dose of some powerful hallucinogen and seeing everything incredibly vividly. You realise universal truths like what materialistic shits your friends have become.”

* The article is based on a recent Halifax report, from City AM:

Overall, the Halifax data suggested that more people may be giving up the idea of owning their own home.

People saving for a deposit has dropped six percentage points to 43 per cent compared with 2013. At the same time, those who are saving expect to have to put in more effort to save than existing homeowners.

Potential first-time buyers are now prepared to save for an average of 5.35 years whereas recent home buyers saved for an average of 3.6 years.

The Daily Mash on Home-Owner-Ism (again)

From The Daily Mash:

LONDON renters are hoping for enough snowfall to fashion their own crude igloo-style dwellings.

31-year-old teacher Emma Bradford said: “I’ve been renting an expensive shithole after being priced out of the property market. Snow is my only chance of owning a home, even if it melts before I get a chance to put any pictures up. This morning I scraped together enough to build the bottom inch of a crude dome structure on the pavement, but then someone destroyed it with a baby buggy.”

However, the current flurry of snow which has fallen on London is already the property of millionaire foreign investors. Russian oligarchs and Asian venture capitalists bought the snow as it was still crystallising from atmospheric moisture.

Their representative, buy-to-let agent Tom Logan, said: “We are excited to unveil Arctic Heights, an exclusive development of 382 contemporary snow dwellings in the middle of East London.

“Our igloos offer boutique, easily commutable eskimo living in Zone 5. Starting at £1k per week, deluxe ‘Snowdude’ models even have a window made from an old car windscreen.”

The snow owners also plan to levy a £5 per day charge on Londoners who are walking on their flakes.

The Daily Mash on Home-Owner-Ism

From The Daily Mash:

LEADING a dull suburban life with a mortgage and two children is now a phenomenal achievement, everyone has agreed.

Modern life has become so challenging that ‘averageness’ is now considered an ambition on a par with becoming an acclaimed novelist, professional sportsperson or successful entrepreneur...

Factory supervisor Roy Hobbs said: “With my small detached house, ‘luxury’ caravan and three ISAs, I’m living the dream, although not a very interesting one.

“My advice is to have the purely coincidental good fortune to buy a house just before a massive property boom that fucks everyone else.”

More Fun To Be Had... (Part 2)

At The Daily Mash.

Life copies satire

From The Daily Mash, 20 March 2012:

TAXPAYERS are to receive a detailed breakdown of how their money was spent that is indvidually tailored to their cretinous world view...

Tax offices across the UK will issue bespoke statements that will fill individuals with both righteous anger and the realisation that they are the cleverest person in the world.

A Treasury spokesman said: “... people will see exactly how much of their money is being spent on ‘wacky-baccy-bongs, general poovery and that lazy Bulgarian scrounger who’s trying to fuck your wife’."

From the BBC, 3 November 2014:

The letters show that 24.5% of government spending goes on welfare payments.

"The chancellor is relying on the fact that many people think spending called welfare all goes to the unemployed," said the TUC's general secretary, Frances O'Grady.

From City AM, 4 November 2014:

Ben Gummer, Conservative MP for Ipswich, says...  Tax Statements will help taxpayers challenge their representatives, and candidates from rival parties, with real figures.

“Why am I spending £3,000 on welfare and only £352 on transport subsidies and infrastructure?” – the answer to which may change a vote, or influence an MP. That is good news for politics, and for voters.
--------------------------------------
A few facts:

1. The statements only refer to income tax and Employee's National Insurance. Seeing as these raise about £210 bn a year and the government spends about £710 billion, the totals are misleading. For an average household, you can probably double their income tax and Ee's NIC to arrive at the total amount of tax they pay/bear.

2. Government spending breaks down approx. as follows:
40% is subsidies to and 'procurement' from nominally private sector businesses,
30% is public sector salaries, and
30% is actual cash pensions and welfare.

3. The money paid to private business is a mix of a) legit and b) pure theft/waste.

a) It would be stupid for the police to manufacture their own cars or for schools to own their own forests and have their own paper mill, for example. The NHS sets a good example by haggling low prices for the medicines it buys (NHS prices are treated as reference prices by many bodies overseas), so that's fine. Conversely, government departments do not haggle for a bulk discount for generic software, not so fine.

b) It also includes straight theft and waste, like subsidies to banks, paying advertising agencies to churn out health propaganda, endless failed government IT projects, Housing Benefit payments to 'private' sector landlords… the list is endless.

4. Out of approx. 6 million public sector workers (the official total excludes things like BBC, universities, many quangoes and agencies, nationalised banks etc), one million work in education and another million in the NHS, hooray for them.

Fewer than a million others also do vital stuff (police, armed forces, prison officers, social workers, immigration control, dustbin men, firemen, a bare minimum in tax and benefits offices etc). Heck knows that the other three million do.

5. Out of the 30% spent on pensions and welfare, two-thirds is state pensions, public sector pensions, other pensioner benefits (Pensions Credit, Council Tax Benefit) and one-third is paid to working age people.

6. Of cash 'welfare' paid to working age people, about half is Child Benefit or Child Tax Credits and half goes to the disabled and unemployed.

So for every £352 spent on 'transport subsidies' (whatever that includes), about £597 goes as cash payments to the unemployed and the disabled (the categories overlap), and the headline figure of £3,000 for 'Welfare' is a complete and utter lie.

Actual 'theft and waste' appears to be about one-third of government spending, let's say half of the 40% paid to 'private sector' businesses and half the 30% paid in public sector salaries. Even if every penny paid to the unemployed and disabled (5% of the total) were also categorised as 'waste', it's still only one-eighth of the total 'waste'.

Mongo World: same old, same old.

From The Daily Mash:

FIFA has promised an investigation into the successful 2026 World Cup bid by the planet Mongo.

Work on the stadia has been plagued with rumours that unions have been suppressed, worker wages withheld and the entire world is enslaved by the threat of an enormous death ray...

And so the article continues in the usual satirical vein, this was the punch line:

Documents also show that several high-ranking FIFA officials bought land in the uninhabitable Dire Marsh region before Mongo was named as host. They have since made massive profits as the lands are drained to make way for infrastructure and by selling its native lizard men as meat.

BBC or Daily Mash?

Ketamine 'exciting' depression therapy

The illegal party drug ketamine is an "exciting" and "dramatic" new treatment for depression, say doctors who have conducted the first trial in the UK.

Some patients who have faced incurable depression for decades have had symptoms disappear within hours of taking low doses of the drug.

The small trial on 28 people, reported in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, shows the benefits can last months.

Experts said the findings opened up a whole new avenue of research…

Click here to find out.

The Daily Mash on top form

From The Daily Mash:

A UK Independence Party councillor has blamed recent storms and floods on the Government's decision to legalise gay marriage.

David Silvester, who defected from the Tories last year in protest at David Cameron's support for same-sex unions, claimed he had warned the Prime Minister that the legislation would result in 'disasters'…

Glorious, go over and read the rest yourself.

Satire copies satire

The Onion, 1 June 2005:

CHICAGO—Located in the Bucktown neighborhood, American Mini-Storage is one of Chicago's best-kept secrets, but don't expect it to stay that way for long. The self-storage facility houses what is arguably the nation's most impressive collection of personal items accumulated during periods of failure.

"There are 250 storage units here, and each one has a different pathetic story to tell," said Carlos Garcia, one of several client-relations managers at American Mini-Storage.

"They run the gamut—from libraries of unread college textbooks to abandoned bolts of canvas to half-restored antique chests of drawers. Each storage locker is like a window into a separate life of disappointment and inadequacy."

The Daily Mash, 1 August 2013:

ALL of Britain’s best stuff is in storage, according to a new survey...

Wayne Hayes said: “My quest to own every issue of Fantastic Four took me 11 years and spanned three continents. I still burn with the intense thrill of holding #52, the last one I needed and the first appearance of the Black Panther. Then I got a girlfriend. The comics went into storage, and my soul went with them.”

... Roy Hobbs, proprietor of BFG Storage in Swindon, said: “I store your hopes. I store your dreams. I take that part of yourself you can’t admit has died and keep it safely locked away so you don’t have to witness its decay. And all for £17.77 a week.”

The Daily Mash on top form

Woman sues Newport Council after slipping in puddle of vomit and missing start of Whitesnake concert in Newport Leisure Centre

Daily Mash on top form

From The Daily Mash:

White air passengers are routinely stopped and searched by customs officials simply to ensure the right racial ‘mix’ of travellers are being approached, a report reveals today.

It found staff searching for illegal goods at Gatwick Airport selected white passengers to balance the numbers against black and other ethnic minorities they suspected to help avoid race discrimination complaints.

Details of the practice are exposed in one of two highly critical reports by Professor Henry Brubaker of the Institute for Studies, who said it was unlawful and must stop.

Tom Logan, shoe salesman, told reporters that after returning from a holiday in Kenya he was held in Arrivals for eight hours, having his bags searched again each time another plane landed.

Daily Mash or Daily Express?

Can you guess without looking?

A SENIOR aide to David Cameron says the Prime Minister has ruled out a referendum on EU membership because Britain delivered a “very clear result” on the issue 36 years ago.

Laurence Mann, Mr Cameron’s political private secretary, said the British people did not want another in or out vote because it would be “artificial and simplistic”. Instead, he said Britons should be grateful for the EU’s “useful work” on global warming and global poverty. Writing on behalf of the PM, he said: “These are compelling arguments why we believe Britain should be an active member.”

Mr Mann, who is part of Mr Cameron’s inner circle, said there were “strong counter arguments” against the vote, adding: “We had a referendum on that issue in 1975, which produced a very clear result. The EU is not a matter of everything or nothing. We have, in the past, done well in ensuring that Britain can participate in the collective good carried out by the EU, such as free markets, while keeping out of things that we believe would be bad for our country.

"We should not lose sight of the EU’s very useful work, such as ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the biggest challenges of the 21st Century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty. These are compelling arguments for why we believe Britain should be an active member. A simplistic in/out referendum, posing an artificial choice that does not do justice to the range of views in the country, would be highly unlikely to settle the question of Britain’s membership of the EU at all.”

Daily Mash nails it

From The Daily Mash:

MEN cannot resist touching themselves while watching Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell's anti-masturbation diatribe, it has emerged. The movement's leading maniac was filmed talking about the evils of self-pleasurement in a 1996 TV interview... Now traditional Americans who work damn hard to keep a roof over their family's heads while disliking homos and science have been compelled to engage in bouts of guilt-heavy onanism while watching the interview on Youtube.

Judge for yourselves. The sultry sideways glance at the John Travolta look-a-like after 1 minute is especially hot:

Life copies art (4)

Daily Mash, 2 September 2008: "Can I have a car as well?" ask first time buyers.

BBC, 25 September 2008: A businessman is throwing in his £150,000 Lamborghini in a bid to help sell his £1m plus home in Essex.

BBC, 30 September 2008: A Leicestershire estate agent offers a free car to get the housing market moving.