News and Facts About the UK You Didn't Know

We start this edition of The UK You Didn't Know with some facts* you did not know about the UK.

Issue 1. The Sodding Weather.

British weather runs the gamut from mildly interesting to interestingly mild, but where does it all come from and why the south west?

These were the pressing questions that were to be answered by a Parliamentary Select Committee formed for the purpose. In their interim report, MPs concluded that most British weather does indeed come from the south west and is carried here by wind from the south west.

MPs immediately saw the importance of wind and proposed a tougher regulatory framework for it. They felt that an over-reliance on weather from the south west was anti-competitive and weather from other suppliers, such as the north east, should be an integral part of the weather in the future.

Members urged year-on-year improvements to the weather to make it more interesting. They applauded the recent introduction of the hurricane to the climate, but felt there was no room for complacency and looked forward to more radical weather in the future. Members voted unanimously for less drizzle, though did recognise it is an integral part of the identity of Manchester.

The Committee then went on a series of fact-finding missions to investigate long periods of unbroken sunshine.

The British have a perennial fascination with the weather.

In part this is because we have enough mildly interesting weather to make “changeable” an acceptable forecast for about 90% of the year, but it’s also because the weather can sustain a conversation cycle for about 45 seconds – just enough time to peer into a stranger’s psyche without involving any over-familiar emotional nonsense.

• A typical exchange first sums up a current weather observation: “It’s nice/awful/a bit wet isn’t it?”

• A short discussion ensues about yesterday’s weather as the participants seek to establish some kind of informal rapport.

• In a crucial turn of the conversation – at a point when verbal gambits like “I tried to kill myself yesterday” or “Do you think my tits are nice?” hover as uneasy possibilities – the British offer “They say it’s going to be warm tomorrow”, and the moment of darkness passes.

Deeply, Partly, Mental News from the Departmental News Team.

Application Form for Mercy

How to apply for tax clemency

The Government’s Indolent Revenue Service has overhauled some of its Self Assessment tax forms in a move to offer a year-on-year improvement on previous improvements that were made to the improved system that was proven to be unproven.

Please see guidance note 118396a, freely available at your local tax office inside a sealed sarcophagus patrolled by agitated poisonous spiders.

The new form appears as follows:

The new forms will only be available if the applicant:

• Is a chinless sex-pest with wandering hands and a heightened sense of personal entitlement.

• Is capable of throttling a pensioner if it was one of the conditions of entry into a tax avoidance scheme.

• Has a history of taxpayer-funded property speculation that has made them into a scrounging tosser of the first order.

If ‘yes’ is the answer to any of these questions then, not only are you free to apply for mercy on the form above, but you are also eligible for membership of The Selfservative Party. The Selfservatives are a like-minded group, a loose coalition, a fragrant collective of silver-tongued, soft-skinned kitty fiddlers.

Applicants are invited to feel the camaraderie of a political party with real convictions (for fraud, gross indecency, perverting the course of justice and false accounting).

More Formication Please: We’re British

We Need to Do This in Order to Freak You Out

The Secretary of State for Social Scrutiny, Sir Edward Bicycle, outlines a new programme of work for the department with more responsibilities, including tax, benefits and counter-insurgency measures.

The Government remains adhered to its policy of muscular modernisation.

That’s why we are introducing our new plans. They form a key part of the Government’s wide- ranging, sweeping reforms, which will overturn and build on the successful wide-ranging and sweeping reforms we introduced last year.

One of the problems with the successful old reforms was that people were uncertain of their position within society. Furthermore, we are faced with the need to reformulate our, and by “our” I mean your, civil liberties in the context of a world where our, and by “our” I mean my, authority is under threat, and where that threat is clearly and without a shadow of doubt, you. We want to change that by screening the population and assigning you, the person, a position in society based on objective rules rather than wishy-washy ideas about aspiration and hope.

This new process includes this form, which you and every other citizen of this nation has been issued.

After you have completed this form there will be further forms and an assessment will be made of how eager your respect of authority is. In particular, you will be asked to choose between an individual with nasal pronunciation that sounds as if it is being squeezed from an earwig or a posh drunk, superficially amusing buffoon whose guilt of heinous crimes is concealed beneath a number of Cotswold stone patio slabs.

People attending from outside the Home Counties will be allowed to complete the next form after inspections for head lice. Applicants using foul language outside the context of a discussion about art will be issued with vouchers for oven chips, and asked to leave.