Author’s note: The Tories were becoming completely invisible and ineffectual, ground under by the New Labour PR bulldozer and the charisma black hole of Iain Duncan Smith. We were trying to satirise them and this was my first attempt which was roundly rejected by Tom for being “unoriginal and dull”. I rather liked it – especially the Matthew Parris gag. Also note, this was around the time IDS started having voice problems and famously croaked through various speeches – an affliction of other Tory leaders, too.

Bemused Conservative Party officials today confirmed that after several days of becoming increasingly difficult to see by the media, their leader, Iain Duncan Smith, had now completely disappeared.

“He seemed to be getting a bit blurred at first” commented press spokesman Nick Wood “But nobody really took any notice of that as, well, no one really took any notice of him in the first place. Then things started to get really bad when he turned up to a press conference and not only did no one stop talking, which is usual, but no one from the press noticed him at all. When this disembodied voice suddenly started droning on about ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ it gave everyone a nasty turn – especially Max Hastings from the Standard who had drifted off to sleep after a couple of clarets over lunch”.

The visual disappearance of Mr Duncan Smith was then followed by the loss of his voice. “At first we could keep track of him by following his voice around the room and seeing who started dropping off to sleep.” continued Mr Wood “But then his voice just seemed to get thinner, as if he’d been breathing helium, and disappeared in a loud squeak last Thursday just as he was explaining his views on interest rates to a snoring Michael Ancram.”

The sudden invisibility of Mr. Duncan Smith could not have come at a worse time for the party. Mr. Duncan Smith was on the eve of launching his new policy for the Tories: ‘Conservatives – we’re just like the Government – only more so’. “It’s a huge leap forward for Conservative party thinking” he had commented at the time “We have finally given up any pretence of having any ideas of our own and just want to prove to the electorate that we’re desperate to get back in power”. New policies were said to include “We love public services”, “There’s room for queers in the Conservatives” and “Europe? Never heard of it”

Tory party HQ has now embarked on a series of desperate measures to ensure that Mr Duncan Smith will not be missed. A party insider explained, “We got hold of a show-room dummy and put him in one of Iain’s suits. We then trained Anne Widdecombe’s parrot ‘Oswald’ to repeat a few of Tony Blair’s policy statements so he could sit in the dummy and act as the voice. Unfortunately, the press became suspicious as the dummy was a bit too animated and kept asking Matthew Parris to give him a cracker.”

Another plan to get William Hague to stand in for Mr. Duncan Smith was hatched after confused party members saw them sharing the stage at the party conference and assumed that they were seeing double after the Darby and Joan Tea Dance and Pink Gin-a-thon the previous evening. However, Mr Hague showed a worrying tendency to own a personality, which made the difference between the two easy to spot on close examination.

Media representatives were more sanguine however. Lord Wakeham of the Press Complaints Commission, replying to an enquiry from the Brains Trust about the disappearance of Ian Duncan Smith from the media, responded “I’m sorry? Who?”

Author’s note: It’s fair to say that most of the contributors to the Brains Trust were left or centre left, with the exception of me, who was centre right. The Government announced a plan to renationalise Railtrack and it seemed likely that they would then go ahead and renationalise the entire network. This was seen to be very good news by everyone at the Trust (and was very popular in general) – except me. It says something for the magnanimity of Tom, the editor in chief, that he made this the lead article despite not agreeing with it. He just felt it was an original take that ridiculed the current consensus. Surely the very definition of satire.

The Government today announced that it was instituting a plan to return the railways of Britain to ‘the good old days’ by re-nationalising them immediately.

As small children dressed in freshly laundered smocks and sailor suits waved tiny flags whilst being carefully watched over by their nannies, Stephen Byers, the Transport Secretary announced that Railtrack would be re-nationalised and re-launched as ‘that bastion of excellence in railways – British Rail’. Tearful commuters recalled the years of high investment in the rail network by Governments from the 1940’s to the 80’s; the superb punctuality, frequent addition of new stations, friendly staff and high quality catering. Mr Byers continued, “It’s obvious that free markets can’t work in a system like the railways. Capitalists are greedy exploiters whose only interest is profits. Anyone can see that the only way they can make profits is by killing passengers and completely disregarding safety. Just look at the appalling safety record of our airlines.”

Mr Byers went on to announce a string of initiatives to “bring Railtrack back to the level the public deserves”. The nostalgiaticket will be sold for a guinea and include a pint of whelks, a cloth cap and 20 Woodbines. Three travelling classes will be introduced and only steam engines will be used on the rail network. Finally, railway guards will be required to undergo an image-change programme and develop a portly physique, a permanent rosy-cheeked smile and have shiny brass buttons on their neatly pressed uniforms. All minority groups will now not be allowed to have ‘customer facing’ roles unless they can display an amusing caricature of their ethnicity. Mr Byers was particularly keen to see “wobbly headed Indian Porters or Singing Jamaican Guards like you get in the wartime films”

Vernon Hince, acting General Secretary of the RMT union, was overjoyed at the announcement. “This is a great day for labour relations in the UK” he declared “Public services should be owned by the public and run for the benefit of the public. I mean you only have to look at how successful labour relations have been in public sector organisations like the London Underground…er, no I mean the Post Office…well anyway take it from me, it’s much better.” He also went on to demand that there should be “full compensation for shareholders in Railtrack, or, at least the ones in my Union”

Conservative transport spokesman, Eric Pickles, declared that the Government had not gone far enough. Wiping a tear from his eye as he recalled the idyllic strike free days of the 1970’s he explained “The new compassionate Conservatives now have a real empathy with the people. We would put far more money into public services because we believe that’s the most effective way to run an organisation. The only solution is to set about re-nationalising all of the UK’s industry. Under a Conservative Government the public can look forward to a return to the National Coal Board, the Gas Board and British Leyland”

Mr Byers concluded by reiterating the Governments commitment to public services and public funding. “As long as the steady hand of Government is controlling matters the public has nothing to fear – just look at our record in running the Health Service, Millennium Dome and building a National Sports Stadium”

Author’s note: This was another idea from someone else that I ended up writing as a news in brief item. It just goes to show that what seems like a vaguely amusing thought (Bin Laden – he collects full bins – geddit?) will often not scale well.

Victims of unfortunate names have launched a class action lawsuit against the US Government today for “discrimination, incitement to name hatred and generally pissing us off”. Mr. R Slicker, founder member and life president of “My Parents were Idiots” claimed that the victims of unfortunate, ill thought out or downright stupid names should be treated with compassion and dignity but were continually exposed to ridicule and more recently downright hostility. Mr. Slicker pointed to some recent examples: Ms Anne Thracks of Tampa, Florida had been lynched by an angry mob of tabloid journalists and Dr. Rachael Discrimination of Washington DC had been beaten into a coma by “Citizens against Racial War” using their “Give Peace A Chance” banners.

President Bush has appealed for calm and asked US citizens to remain vigilant for “that no good skunk Al Kayeeda, in case he ever shows up here”.

Author’s note: This was a headline created by Meg Sweeny Lawless which for some reason I ended up writing. I was rather pleased with it, but I’ve no idea why it ended up saying Blaa blaa blaa

In a surprise announcement at the Labour Party conference today, David Blunkett used his keynote address to declare that the Government would be using a race of super-intelligent bees as a part of it’s new scheme for criminal detection, asylum-seeker control and care in the community

The bees were originally trained as extras for Michael Caine’s 1970’s shocker “The Killer Bees”. In the movie they had to swarm together and follow actors who generally ran around going “Ooh! Ow! Get off!”. It was noticed that this behaviour mirrored almost exactly that of criminals who were being pursued by policemen. An economic analysis on the costs of using of bees verses those of using policemen determined that the bees cost considerably less and did not take early retirement on medical ground if faced with an inquiry into their behaviour. It also emerged that as a bee immediately died after stinging a suspected criminal it avoided costly public enquiries and meant that the suspect could be charged with murder.

Initial trials with the bees exposed a number of difficulties which have been addressed. The first problem was that the bees were unable to distinguish between criminals and normal members of the public. Metropolitan Police Bee trainer Sergeant Derek Gadd explained: “We’d always assumed that criminals, asylum seekers and loonies, I mean, the mentally disadvantaged would have some sort of distinguishing feature such as smelling funny. However, it appears that a number of these low-lifes had got wise to this and use soap and water like the rest of us decent law-abiding citizens. To combat this, we have discovered that if we coat the miscreants in honey the bees are able to follow the wrongdoer easily. As such, the ‘Welcome to Britain’ induction session for asylum seekers in addition to handing over the ‘Not valid in any major supermarket chain’ vouchers will also include stripping the applicants naked and glazing them with honey.” It is thought that similar techniques will be applied for criminals and the mentally ill. “Normal people having nothing to fear from this minor infringement of personal liberty” announced David Blunkett in his speech “I don’t believe it is humiliating or demeaning. I, for one, spread honey on my toast every morning and I’ve never heard it complain”

The other major problem to be overcome was that using the bees on stealth operations proved very difficult. “You could hear an enormous buzzing when they were still a mile off” admitted Gadd. “We tried posting a trainer with them who said ‘Shh!’ every few seconds but they didn’t take any notice. In the end we have disguised it by making sure any stakeouts using the bees are accompanied by someone using a hover-mower or leaf-blower.

The bees will come into active service in the next few weeks. If the exercise proves a success it is believed that trials using ants to take food parcels to third world countries and geese to carry out high-altitude bombing of rogue states could begin immediately. They are also said to be looking into plagues of frogs and locusts. David Blunkett finished his speech with a warning to all law-breakers: “This will be the sting in the tail for criminals, the bee all and end all blaa blaa blaa”

Author’s note: After 9/11 the internet was flooded with supposed Nostradamus predictions, which outraged people pointed out were false and thus somehow implied that the real predictions were anything other than nonsense. So, this was a bit of fun around that subject which Tom immediately declared far too frivolous and removed all reference to NostrilAnus.

Also note the sidebar comments at the end – these were additional points that occasionally appeared as a list in a box by the original article. It was a device that was rarely used.

It a startling discovery today it has been claimed that medieval philosopher and prophet Nostradamus has not only foreseen most of the events that have occurred in the world, including quite a few that haven’t happened yet but also the fact that his own predictions would be spoofed by internet hoaxers.

A large number of Nostradamus sayings have circulated the internet since the World Trade Center disaster. These sayings which refer to “two brothers of York in battle”, “the mighty crashing of towers into the sea” and, most scarily, “several well prepared Middle Eastern suicide bombers who will crash four planes into targets in the US” were all attributed to Nostradamus.

Many Nostradamus followers took these as final definite proof that the ancient seer was indeed possessed of great foresight and used the Internet to spread his gospel. One site records that “The mighty Nostradamus has once again shown his ability to foretell the future. Every time a great catastrophe happens, we are able to look back and find that Nostradamus had foreseen it and warned us of it, if only we were prepared to see.” Other went so far as to try and predict what events might be about to happen. “Although it is difficult to be precise, I believe that he has predicted that the end of the world will occur in the not too distant future and it seems to involve a lot of cheese” claimed another site.

However, it now appears that the recent sayings were created by Gary Pipe of Brentwood, Essex in an attempt to impress his friends and persuade Tanya Ellis of the same town to sleep with him. Clearly rattled by this revelation, Nostradamus watchers have scoured the texts again and have found several quatrains that they claim predict that someone called Pipe will write a load of spoof predictions. “These demonstrate that Nostradamus was aware that charlatans would try and mislead the true believers” claimed Martin Blackburn of Nostradamus interest group ‘Crystal Gazing Tree Huggers’. “Only those whose eyes have been opened to the deeper meanings of the spiritual world will be open to the message of Nostradamus. To us it is obvious that a quatrain referring to ‘Large blue oxen with pointed teeth that shall swarm from a boiling sea’ is actually warning of some cynical little shit in Essex who will try and make us look like fools.”

However, other modern prophets have been quick to dismiss Nostradamus as a fraud whose reputation has been greatly overstated by the modern world. “Unlike myself he has no relevance to modern living and provides no answers to modern problems.” claimed astrologer Russell Grant, “Just look at my recent counsel to Capricorns – you will discover that forward planning can avoid unforeseen events. You don’t get Nostradamus giving one twelfth of the World’s population useful advice like that.” Los Angeles seer NostrilAnus, who uses olfactory analysis of Hollywood starlet’s bottoms to predict the future, agreed. “He is a charlatan who makes us serious practitioners appear completely ludicrous” he said, placing his nose between Winona Ryder’s buttocks and chanting the lyrics of ‘Knights in White Satin’ to prepare for a reading.

President George Bush, however, is taking no chances and has asked the CIA to study the works of the philosopher and prophet. Apparently, they have already gleaned that Osama Bin Laden may be hiding out in Afghanistan, trouble could be ahead in Gaza and the West Bank, and ‘Goodbye Baby’ is a dead-cert for the 3:30 at Chepstow. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this guy before?” asked the President, “Especially this bit about someone who’s name rhymes with ‘Bore’ winning an election?”

Sidebar – Things Nostradamus has predicted
The end of the world – 15 times so far
The death of Queen Victoria in a bizarre can-opening incident – the truth has long remained hidden
The fall of the Roman Empire – an early prediction when he was starting out
Kevin Keegan’s 80′ perm – Still dismissed as too ludicrous by observers
The second world war – Probably a lucky guess
Nothing in the future – He is only used to point out events that have happened in the past.

Author’s note: The post-9/11 issue was a very tricky one to get right, especially as Tom our rather strict Editor in Chief had chosen that moment to go on holiday, leaving clear instructions to Editor Robert “not to fuck it up”. The lead articles had to be about 9/11 but we still needed others. So where else did we turn, but to Ken Livingstone, source of continued joy for the writers of the Brains Trust

Ken Livingstone announced today that after repeated attempts to get anyone to pay attention to him, he was now launching a Greater London Authority “Day of Inaction”.

Mr Livingstone, speaking at the end of an all day review of the GLA’s successes held in La Gavroche, declared to the assembled throng: “It is clear that the GLA has been an unparalleled success and that we enjoy the full support of all Londoners. However, the Government and its media lackeys have completely ignored us. So, in a last ditch attempt to make the media pay attention, we are launching our Day of Inaction. Throughout the Capital, the GLA executive and all of its officers will do precisely nothing. Let us then see what these running dog of capitalist propaganda will be able to achieve without our guiding hand to oil the wheels of the legislature”

Mr Livingstone, slurring his speech with emotion and tired and exhausted from his stirring rhetoric, had to sit down but continued with his explanation. “The most senior executives will follow a route of inactivity through London’s most important administrative centres – Langan’s Brasserie, The Ivy, La Pont de la Tour and many more. We will stop at each one to declare our manifesto of militant indolence. We have been inspired by the spirit of Jarrow and will be following the example of the hunger marchers – except we will be taking taxis between each location and stopping for light refreshments at each one.”

One of Ken Livingstone’s most trenchant political allies, Helen Mirren, the actress, went on to comment: “I can’t believe the media’s biased coverage of Ken’s achievements. Of course, I’m used to it, as the media have long been against my husband, Taylor Hackford’s, films and have frequently declared them unwatchable crap when everyone in the industry understands that he is the new Francois Truffaut. But Ken is only used to adoring sycophancy from people and is increasingly distressed at the ire hurled at him. His work on transport has been outstanding. I have direct experience of how important public transport is in London. My housekeeper frequently arrives 15 minutes late at my house in the morning because of tube delays. If this continues, I’ll have to let her go which would be devastating for her as she is a Bosnian single Mother and the minimum wage really makes a difference.

Mr Livingstone, who reawoke after brief refreshing nap, finished with a rousing appeal to all Londoners “I rousingly appeal to all Londoners to join myself and the GLA in doing absolutely nothing. After all, we’ve managed to get away with it for over a year.”

Author’s note: it seems hard to believe now, but the Tories were so useless at the time that it was actually quite hard to write satire about them. Anyway, I gave it my best shot and keen observers may note a wry reference to Tony Blair’s humiliation by the good ladies of the Women’s Institute.

Life was all rather steady and certain. And then the next article I wrote was about God declaring his perfection after the 11th September, 2001

In a terse communiqué from Conservative Central HQ today, the High Council of the Presidium of the Conservative Party explained that with immediate effect the running of the Party would be taken over by a committee of unelected members’ representatives. The move was declared as a response to the recent election in which both candidates showed a complete inability to ‘organise a piss-up in brewery’. The junta has immediately interned both Iain Duncan Smith and Ken Clark announcing that both men would be charged with ‘treasonable incompetence in getting themselves elected’

The spokesman for the junta, Generalissmo Miguel Portillo declared that he was fully behind the democratic process and confident in the member’s ability to select an adequate leader, however they had been denied a suitable choice of candidate. “The election of Iain Duncan Smith is clearly against the wishes of the majority of the party, or at least the ones that support me, and it is now time to give them a proper choice” he commented.

A new election will be organised, with independent observers sent from Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party. The ballot papers will allow a choice between ‘his most gracious Highness Michael Portillo’ and ‘Someone else’. Each voter will be required to insert their name and address on the ballot paper and voters not selecting Michael Portillo will be interviewed by a Zimbabwean War Veterans focus group to help explore the voter’s choice.

The junta has immediately declared a state of martial law within the Tory Party. A media curfew has also been imposed whereby any party member mentioning the Euro, Margaret Thatcher or ‘baldy slap-head election losers’ will immediately be interned and put through a re-education programme involving repeated exposure to the speeches of Keith Joseph and a cattle prod.

Tony Blair condemned the coup stating that it undermined the democratic process and took the Conservatives from a squabbling set of bitterly opposed factions into the realms of a one-party party. “Clearly this is a dangerous move that could make the Tories considerably more electable. This can only damage the harmony in which the country currently finds itself and therefore I am immediately declaring the Conservatives illegal and any voters expressing a preference for them will be arrested as dangerous anti-government insurrectionists’.

In response, the Liberal Democrats have renamed themselves the Counter Revolutionary Forces of Socialism and Pot Smoking and reorganised as a people’s militia based at a secret jungle hideout. This is believed to be located somewhere in the tropical rainforests of the Eden Project in their West Country stronghold in Cornwall. Speaking from the hideout, Charles Kennedy, wearing combat trousers and a bandanna stated that the CRFSPS would launch skirmishes against both the Government and Tory Party by deploying members of the Women’s Institute to ‘ask difficult questions’ and training an elite squad of suicide jam makers.

Michael Portillo meanwhile has appealed for calm and promised a peaceful transition to the new regime. “After all” he commented “no one noticed us in the last election so who’s going to pay any attention now?”

Author’s note: Ken Livingstone was a regular source of fun for the Brains Trust. I can’t remember what prombted this News In Brief article, but it is fairly typical of its type

After several legal setbacks in recent weeks, Ken Livingstone has at last triumphed in the High Court by successfully suing himself. His Mayoral Highness, Mr. Livingstone bought the case against himself for ‘failing to do anything at all as Lord Mayor except ponce about with a load of actresses, models and It Girls’ he also asked for his ‘excessive lunchtime spending and profligate use of taxis’ to be taken into consideration. The Court immediately pronounced him guilty of all charges and sentenced him to a three month restraining order from The Ivy, La Gavroche and Langhams Brasserie. A smiling Mr. Livingstone announced that he was happy that at last the British Justice system had recognised his right to ‘sue whoever he damn well pleased’. Commenting on the sentence, he felt that although it was harsh he believed he would be able to overcome the hardship by putting in plans for a delivery service from the proscribed eateries. Mr Livingstone went on to deny that this was all a huge publicity stunt designed to make him look like he had actually achieved something and announced that he had also instituted proceedings against Jeffery Archer for failing to keep a dinner appointment last week.

Author’s note: It seems hard to remember now, but this was a time when the Conservatives looked like they might never win another election and worked very hard to ensure they wouldn’t by choosing a man whose initials sounded like an inflammation of the lower intestine as its leader.

A fun fact: the Editor at the time was Robert Khan, whose job required him to be at the Houses of Parliament a lot. So we both attended the night IDS was elected as leader. We can be seen in the background of a Sky News report pretending to fight. We also had our dinner table hijacked by Andrew Neil, who, it must be said, was very charming and completely unaware that we stiffed him with our bill.

The Conservative Party announced that after an extensive review period on the ethics of stem cell research and genetic manipulation that they were now ramping up for ‘electoral scale’ cloning.

A party spokesman explained that the original plan was conceived when it became obvious during the current leadership debacle that the only two seriously electable contenders – Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clarke – would not be acceptable to the party membership. It was felt that cloning could offer a mechanism for creating the perfect candidate. A process was then put in place to canvas opinion and create the perfect candidate. The result – Mr. Iain Duncan Smith – was a combination of all of the expressed preferences of the poll. The results showed a predilection for Margaret Thatcher’s piercing blue eyes, William Hague’s hairline and the raving right-wing policies of Enoch Powell. It is thought that the production of the clone explains why no-one had heard of Iain Duncan Smith until three weeks ago.

The party spokesman, Mr Iain Duncan Hague, went on to explain “Unfortunately, recent research has indicated that not only haven’t we got a chance of winning the next election but also no one who isn’t a Conservative actually likes Iain Duncan Smith. We therefore decided that the only solution is to start cloning Conservative Party members until we outnumber the electorate.”

The Tories spokesperson on ethics, Mr Enoch Thatcher, went on to explain that the decision had not been taken lightly. “We have carefully considered this delicate and contentious issue. We realise that this is an area that impacts vast areas of moral and ethical debate. But then we looked at how few votes we got last time and decided to say ‘Bugger it’, lets get the production line rolling.”

The party Chairperson, Ms Margaret Powell, denied that this would move the Conservatives away from being an inclusive party supporting a variety of different viewpoints. “We will have as many different viewpoints as we have always had within the Conservatives – ie one, which is to get us back in power where we belong as quickly as possible”

Alarmed supporters of Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clark have immediately set about their own research programmes, however the initial model – a swaggering, cigar smoking transvestite with a penchant for bullfighting – is said to be ‘disappointing’.

After the announcement a media furore immediately erupted with the Daily Mirror predicting a world overrun with “Toryautomotons” and a ‘Planet of the Apes’ style crushing of the human race which would be subjugated my the Evil Tory Overlords. “I bet we’ll even end up with Charlton Heston discovering the Millenium Dome at the end” commented Piers Morgan, the paper’s Editor, from the top of a smoking model of a destroyed London entitled “ToryWorld” which the paper had constructed for a photo shoot. New Scientist, however, believed that the cloning may actually be counter-productive with the clones being imperfect copies of the originals. Leading geneticist Professor Hugo Z Hackenbush mused “On the other hand most hereditary Tories are the result of years of inbreeding anyway, so you probably wouldn’t notice a couple of extra ear-lobes or a major mental disorder”

On being asked for his opinion, The Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, shimmered from on high outside Downing Street in a robe of whitest white and proclaimed, “Verily a plague of Tories shall be cast over the land and Babylon the Mother of all Harlots and Abominations of the Earth who shall be known as ‘Thatcher, Thatcher the Free Milk Snatcher’ shall return and and there shall be wailing and grinding of teeth” On being asked whether the Labour Party would ever resort to cloning Mr. Blair and his entire cabinet adopted the same beatific smile, shook there heads in unison and said simultaneously “No, how could you think such a thing?”

Author’s note: Northern Ireland still managed to occupy a large portion of politicians time, and this was a musing on how specific words become an essential part of the euphemistic lexicon in all conflict resolution. I think that another author, Al Napp, and I had an identical idea and this was a combination of my article and his.

Politicians from all sides of the political debate welcomed the last minute agreement on language use in Northern Ireland today. The agreement, which covers all areas of euphemism, cliché and cant, is a first of it’s kind and is being eagerly studied by other peace-keeping initiatives around the World.

In an historic move, the phrases “Historic Move”, “Extremely Sceptical”, “Significant Step” and “Demand Clarification” are to be put beyond reasonable use. Furthermore, euphemisms such as “Armed Struggle”, “Collateral Damage” and “Freedom Fighters” must immediately be replaced by “Murdering people”, “Murdering innocent people” and “Psychopathic Mass Murderers” respectively.

In a desperate attempt to get both sides actually debating, it is thought that General John de Chastelain, the decommissioning chief, will be issued a cardboard tube and will proceed to “Bop over the head” anyone caught mouthing platitudes and clichés rather than actually discussing the problem.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, said the announcement was “A hugely historic step on the road to ending the armed struggle of the Irish Freedom Fighters. Ow! What the Hell did you do that for?” as General de Chastelain walked away from him brandishing the centre of a roll of ‘Moppets’ kitchen tissue.

As interest in the approach around the world increased, it is believed that General Colin Powell is already working on a similar agreement for use in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Phrases such as “Active self defence” will become “Kill all Palestinians, including children”, “Political activists” will become “Wild-eyed gun wielding Muslim fundamentalists” and “Armed stone throwing insurrectionists” will become “Children lobbing rocks at us, whom we will shoot”.

Within Northern Ireland itself, although the pro-Good Friday agreement parties have all signed up to the treaty, the DUP has immediately rejected it. Ian Paisley is thought to be particularly unhappy with the clauses related to shouting and the decibel levels of delivery. “This is a typical papist trick to try and muffle the honest cries of the mighty numbers of true Unionist yeomen” he bawled from a megaphone outside Stormount to a crowd consisting of his son, daughter and a man who was trying to ask the way to the airport.

Journalists have expressed surprise at another part of the treaty which re-imposes voiceovers on spokespeople for political groups. Previously, the voices of well-known figures such as Gerry Adams could not be used on the British Media and their voices were mimicked by actors. It is now recognised that all politicians spend far too much time talking to the media and this is distracting them from talking to each other. To try and discourage this, all Northern Irish politicians will now be voiced over by well-known cartoon characters: David Trimble will be Mickey Mouse, Martin McGuinness will be Woody Woodpecker and Ian Paisley will be Road Runner and only ever permitted to utter the phrase “Beep-Beep”

Asked for his comments on the agreement, Gerry Adams would only say, “A-tha, a-tha, a-tha, a-tha, a-tha, a-tha, a-tha, a-that’s all folks!”