Magna Carta 1215-2008

The people of Great Britain are today willingly locking themselves up and throwing away the keys as they mark the death of Magna Carta, which passed away this week after being set upon in the Houses of Parliament.

Magna Carta, the eight-hundred-year-old document in which were enshrined some of the fundamental liberties of the people⁽¹⁾, was born in 1215, after the brooding, treacherous and incompetent King John got drunk on power one night and was accosted by a large group of rebellious barons whilst on his way to meddle with the forest law, increase scutage⁽²⁾ and have one of those kebab things the crusaders kept banging on about. It was when the King awoke the following morning in a damp field in Surrey that he discovered that not only had he given birth to one of the earliest examples of constitutional law and sewn the tiny seed from which democracy might one day flower, he had also lost most of his power and inadvertently given Englishmen the right to equality under the law and not to be locked up without trial.

Given the circumstances of its birth, it is unsurprising that Magna Carta proved to be an unloved child. No sooner had it been born than its father attempted to disown it, even getting the Pope to annul large parts of it as "shameful and demeaning" and forced on the King by "violence and fear"⁽³⁾. Yet despite this, Magna Carta refused to go unnoticed. Thanks to its provisions, for the first time a council was set up to represent the people of England (or at least as many of them as happened to be rich and powerful and have a significant body of knights to back them up) rather than merely to serve the King. It was Magna Carta that first granted the right to be tried by one's peers and insisted fines should be proportionate to the offence, as well as decreeing that only competent people should be appointed to ruling posts (a provision which sadly does not extend to the roles of England Football Manager, Heathrow baggage handler or successful candidate on The Apprentice).

As time passed, the popularity of Magna Carta was to grow. By the reign of Elizabeth I it was being hailed as the embodiment of ancient English liberties, by the time of her Stuart successors as an indispensable limitation upon the powers of the Crown and it was under Magna Carta's banner that Parliament was to seize power from Charles I. Indeed, so useful was it in overthrowing the country's leader that, upon becoming that leader himself, Oliver Cromwell immediately started slagging it off to anyone who would listen, memorably describing it as "Magna Farta".

Despite such attacks, Magna Carta fought on, travelling alongside the common law to all parts of the British Empire and influencing the laws of countries from America to Zambia and encouraging our Georgian and Victorian ancestors to proclaim the superiority and nobility of the British system, even as they sold people into slavery, nicked their land and exported assorted criminals to Australia, where their descendants would one day be responsible for giving us Neighbours and Home and Away in return.

Throughout the 20th Century (aside from a brief funny turn in the 1970s when the British Government decided to help the IRA recruitment drive by locking up without trial anyone in Belfast who pronounced "H" as "haitch" on suspicion of being a terrorist) Magna Carta was hailed as a hero. Yet heroes are not always universally popular⁽⁴⁾. By the early Noughties, politicians in such enlightened countries as America, Britain and Zimbabwe found themselves publicly questioning Magna Carta's role. The aged document was said to be looking dowdy and old-fashioned, ill-fitted to a modern world where Presidents and Prime Ministers might need to lock people up in order to defeat terrorism/steal elections and/or look really tough in the pages of the tabloids and the bulletins of Fox News.

In America, Magna Carta found itself hooded, locked up and "questioned" without trial for giving succour to terrorists. In Zimbabwe it was quietly shot for giving succour to people who weren't Robert Mugabe. In the UK it staggered on, forced year by year to turn an ever more scarred cheek as its provisions were slowly whittled away by those whose job it was to defend it.

Just as it was born, so Magna Carta was to die. On 11 June 2008 an incompetent and much-disliked leader was to find himself locked in a room with a group of privileged people of negotiable morality eager to extract any concessions they could. Mere hours later, the body of Magna Carta was found bruised and bleeding its last on the floor of the House of Commons.

Magna Carta will be buried under several promises of knighthoods, the odd multi-million pound bribe, an "Ulster Says No" badge and a populace ever more eager to see their last freedoms destroyed in the name of an unwinnable and illogical "war on terror". It is survived - somewhat surprisingly - by former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

⁽¹⁾ as well as not-so fundamental rights relating to the ability of widows to inherit fiefdoms, the duties of towns to build bridges and the like, and a complete ban on any member of the D'Athée family being made a royal official.
⁽²⁾ a medieval tax, relating either to the right of a knight to buy himself out of feudal service or, possibly, to the use of obscure and long-disused words whilst playing Scrabulous on facebook.
⁽³⁾ By strange coincidence, these are the same reasons given by many people for wanting to expunge all memory of their renditions of "Uptown Girl" at "the karaoke last night".
⁽⁴⁾ As anyone who has ever played a licensed computer game tied-in to the release of the latest superhero blockbuster can affirm.

News c. 100,000 BC - AD 2007

Journalists are today handing in their rumpled Gannex macintoshes, removing the press cards from their battered trilbies and sloping off to the nearest pub for eleven or twelve "quick ones" (plus chasers) in memory of News, which has succumbed to a tidal wave of gossip, sports stories and infotainment after a long illness.

It was way back in about 100,000BC that Ug the Hack became the first person to realise that it might just be a good idea to actually tell his fellow cave dwellers about the stampeding mammoths heading their way, rather than just watching the ensuing carnage. Not only did his decision to beat out his message on the nearest available drum save his fellow Homo sapiens from a fate worse than death, it also resulted in the birth of News ... as well as leading to Ug being sacked by his boss, Ug the Editor, who pointed out that a bunch of cave men and women being trampled to death by mastodons would have made a much better cave-painting for the Paleolithic Gazette.

Undeterred by Ug's fate, foolhardy messengers continued to bring the News to all and sundry. Given that the News for the next several millennia consisted chiefly of stories about drought, pestilence, invading armies, stampeding beasts and crop failure, it is perhaps unsurprising that News was not universally popular and its bearers soon found themselves occupying a position in the people's affections slightly below venereal disease and just to the left of estate agents. Indeed, when Pheidippides dropped dead after running the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce the defeat of the Persians he was regarded by most Greeks as having done the world a favour.

By the 15th Century, after having brought details of everything from the collapse of the Roman Empire, through the disastrous Crusades all the way to the arrival of the Black Death, News was so unpopular that its bearers hardly dared show their faces in public. Indeed, so many messengers were being shot for bringing bad News that by 1402 the Guild of Heralds could only muster three members, all of whom were mad. Just as things looked their darkest for News, however, a new dawn broke with the arrival of Johann Gutenberg and his miraculous printing press. Now it was possible for the News to be cheaply and easily transferred to paper - allowing messengers to deliver it and then run away very quickly before anyone could read it. Soon News was transformed from a pariah into the latest fashion, with everyone eager to grab hold of the latest items hot off the press.

The popularity of News became so great that it soon found itself granted whole newspapers all to itself, filled cover to cover with all the latest information from near and far (or, at least, as far as a carrier pigeon could travel without being shot and converted into carrier pie). By the 18th Century News was being printed out and stuck up on every stationary surface (a phenomenon which would lead to the unfortunate incident in which several acres of freesheets were pasted to the side of George IV one morning after he fell asleep outside the Brighton pavilion) and thousands of people were engaged in its acquisition and distribution.

As mass communication improved, News came to more and more people, and more and more people came to News. By the early twenty-first century, News appeared almost inescapable - available via television, radio, internet and mobile phones, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yet all was not as it seemed. While the outlets for News were ever greater in number, News itself began to seem pale and worn out.

Pundits began to speculate - usually at length, across all 24-hour news channels and on the basis of absolutely no real information - that News was suffering from an eating disorder. Indeed many believed that, overstressed by the need to say something at all times, News had taken to binging on low-quality gossip about troubled minor celebrities, scandals involving overpaid soccer stars and underclothed women and entertainment "stories" merely repeating the exact event witnessed on the previous night's reality TV, plus unfounded scare stories based on inaccurately reported statistics and tendentious, lying and ill-researched rants along the lines of "Christianity banned to appease Muslims", "Measles jabs give kids AIDS" and "Diana assassinated by house prices". The classic five Ws of journalism "Who?", "What?", "Where?", "When?" and "Why?" found themselves transformed into "What?", "When?", "With how many footballers?", "Will you take your kit off for the photo?" and "Which wankers will read this rubbish?" and even genuinely news-based News became a shadow of its former self, with political reporting reduced to tales of tribal infighting and interpersonal conflict rather than policy, science news reduced to a few whizz-bang graphics or John Humphrys harrumphing about how gravity was all different in his day, and arts news reduced to half-hour specials on the premiere of the latest Adam Sandler movie.

As a result of this, it came as a surprise to no-one when News's body was discovered in the early hours of this morning, the cause of death apparently a heart attack induced by the strain of trying to come up with a story involving Amy Winehouse having a drug-fuelled affair with Victoria Beckham and the winner of the X-Factor whilst trying to cover up the death of Madeleine McCann with the aid of "canoe man" John Darwin.

News will be buried at St Trevor's Church of the Big Ben Bongs. The Reverend Fiona Bruce will arch one eyebrow à la Dan Dare before reading an overbrief summary of News's life, shortened in order to fit in the story about the skateboarding duck. The congregation will sing Hymn No 123, Mailman Bring Me No More News.

The Bobby on the Beat 1829 - 2007

Following the news that the Police Federation has passed a vote of no confidence in Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, after her failure to backdate a 2.5% pay award, we at As A Dodo must sadly announce the death of The Bobby on the Beat, who has clipped his last ear, left his last bicycle unlocked outside the local pub whilst nipping in for a natter and a pint of mild and shot his last innocent victim in the face at point-blank range.

The Bobby on the Beat was born in 1829, the son of Sir Robert Peel. So proud was the then Home Secretary of his new offspring that he named it after himself. Sadly for Sir Robert, the name "Junior" did not prove popular with the public, who preferred to refer to the infant constabulary as "Peelers", "Bobbies", "Coppers" or, indeed, "fascist pigs". Given the understandable reluctance of the Victorian public to have a bunch of uniformed men wandering around the country armed to the teeth and frightening the living daylights out of people - especially as members of the army were already doing exactly that job so well - the decision was taken to arm bobbies with nothing more than a truncheon and a clip (the latter being used - if we've done our googling correctly - to attach to youngsters' ears).

Soon the Bobby on the Beat was travelling across the whole country as every borough and parish clamoured to appoint a jovial, overweight copper to prevent the theft of 'kerchiefs by urchins and to serve as the butt of jokes (normally involving the dismantling of his bicycle when he nipped into the local for a natter and a pint of mild). During the rest of the 19th century and the early 20th century the Bobby on the Beat became an integral part of local community life - calling everyone by their name and being called all sorts of, generally uncomplimentary, names by everyone in return.

For decades, the Bobby on the Beat was held up as a paragon of virtue, defender of the innocent and cheap alternative to the speaking clock. PC 49 smiled out from the pages of The Eagle, PC George Dixon patrolled the streets of Dock Green and The Laughing Policeman, fat though he be, was a hero of popular song. Yet all, in truth, was not well. As the 20th Century wore on, the Bobby began to withdraw from his beat, forced to replace his truncheon with a side-handled baton, his trusty whistle with a malfunctioning radio and his humble bicycle with a flashy police car. Driven (usually in that very same police car, at speed, with his siren on and in the direction of dreadful crime and/or his lunch) from the streets that he loved, the Bobby on the Beat had to find new pastimes for himself. Thankfully, his sharp mind and eager attitude had not been dulled by all the pints of mild and slow bicycle journeys he had taken in his youth. So it was that the Bobby on the Beat spent the Sixties and Seventies inventing exciting games to while away his dull days, such as "Chase the Irishman", "Beggar the Pornography Baron (Unless He Agrees To Give You a Cut of His Profits)" and "Snap ... Goes Your Leg, Sonny Jim, Unless You Sign This Confession". Unfortunately, these games did not prove popular with the public, and the Bobby on the Beat found his former popularity waning with everyone save only Dr Who, who continued to use the Bobby's police box as a handy refuge from the Daleks, despite the fact the Bobby himself usually preferred to be down at the station, carefully "examining the evidence" from that hardcore pornography raid.

Despite this - and the ever increasing amounts of paperwork successive governments loaded him down with in order to stop all that game-playing - The Bobby limped (or more accurately, drove) on as best he could, gamely venturing out to fulfil his quota of arrests ... usually by nicking people for driving 2 miles per hour over the speed limit or wearing a hoodie in a built up area.

It was not enough. The Home Secretary's decision to deny the Bobby on the Beat £200 a year extra in his kevlar-lined wallet was to prove a fatal blow. With his dying breath, the Bobby called for her resignation, announced his intention to have a think about reintroducing industrial action and threw himself down the stairs to the cells.

The Bobby on the Beat will be buried at St Jack Warner's Church, 999, Letsby Avenue. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Sir Ian Blair, who will later deny all knowledge of the event. The congregation will fail to turn up at all, having popped down the pub for a bit of a natter and a pint of mild.

The Bobby on the Beat is survived by Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith ... though not necessarily for all that long.

Christmas Dinner 0-2007AD

Harassed home chefs are today knocking back the cooking sherry and donning their paper party hats in memory of Christmas Dinner, which has passed away at the ripe, old age of 2007 after being shocked at the sight of its carbon footprint, recently calculated by bored boffins at the University of Manchester as generating 55,000 tonnes of CO₂ in the UK alone.

Christmas Dinner was born in 0 AD on the outskirts of Bethlehem in what contemporary estate agents described as "charming, open-plan accommodation with traditional straw and mud floor and en-suite camel, sheep and ox facility". Thanks to the unenlightened attitudes of the time the meal was whipped up by a somewhat irritated Virgin Mary - more than a little tired from the experience of parthenogenesis and dealing with the writ slapped on her by Richard Branson over the use of the trademark Virgin - from whatever lay to hand. Thus it was that the first Christmas Dinner had a notable lack of sprouts and bacon-wrapped sausages and instead went rather heavy on the lamb in gold sauce and camel à la frankincense with a glass of mulled myrrh to wash it down, and that it was eaten by a group of half-cut shepherds, kings and itinerant carpenters who had popped down the pub while Mary was slaving over a hot pile of straw. Notwithstanding this (and the subsequent severe bout of food poisoning the meal engendered, leading Melchior for one to spend the next seven days locked in the bathroom of his hotel in Jerusalem), Christmas Dinner became an instant hit, with Christians across the known world soon lining up on December 25 each year to stuff themselves silly, then feel unwell and irritable for the rest of the afternoon.

Over the next two thousand years, Christmas Dinner spread alongside the religion that bore it, travelling far and wide, often - like Christianity itself - on the end of a pointy sword, long lance or mighty cannon. As it travelled so it came to incorporate all sorts of exotic fare. By the time it had reached Britain a typical Christmas Dinner brought together items such as spices from the Orient, dried fruits from the Mediterranean, turkeys from some godawful shed in Norfolk and a vast array of drinks, including champagnes from France, wines from the New World and that horrible green stuff that tastes like Windolene your Aunty Sal gave you from wherever it was she last went on holiday. Yet even as these newcomers were admitted to the feast, still many old traditions lingered on, particularly the one about all the cooking being left to a harassed female member of the family while the blokes slipped off for a drink. New traditions too were added, from the sullen afternoon slump in front of the Bond movie and the ritual ignoring of the Queen's Speech to the late afternoon punch-up over what Bob said about that horrible green stuff that tastes like Windolene Aunty Sal gave you.

Yet all traditions must eventually come to an end and such was the fate of the Christmas Dinner. With the discovery that assembling the nation's yuletide repast pumped out the same CO₂ as a small power station (not to mention the fact that the impact of all those overcooked green veg on a national stomach more used to pizza, chips and burgers had a similar environmental impact) it was plain that Christmas Dinner's time was up. Unwilling to face a slow decline, the Christmas Dinner picked up the hairdryer Mum had been using for the past three hours in a desperate attempt to thaw out the turkey and garrotted itself with the flex whilst attempting to choke itself on the 50p hidden in the Christmas pud just to make absolutely sure.

Christmas Dinner will be buried beneath a vast pile of roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, boiled potatoes, peas, sausages-wrapped-in-bacon, boiled carrots, sprouts, roast parsnips, cranberry sauce, chestnut stuffing, bread sauce, Christmas Pudding, mince pies, brandy butter and brandy sauce. It is survived by turkey sandwiches.

North East England c 7,500 BC - AD 2007

Purveyors of fake tan and mini-skirts, underperforming football clubs and philanthropic property developers desirous of a favourable outcome at the planning committee are today fleeing southward, following the tragic death of the North-East of England, which has slipped into the fog-covered Tyne mere days after giving birth to a spectacular series of cock-ups ranging from the loss of 25 million child benefit recipients' financial data through the spectacular collapse of Northern Rock and all the way up to a series of "unlawful"⁽¹⁾ donations to the Labour Party (not to mention recent performances by Newcastle United FC, Middlesborough FC and Sunderland AFC).

The North East was first discovered by humanity in or around 7,500BC, when wandering tribes - smitten by the region's beauty and frozen in place by its biting weather - decided to settle near the Tyne and Tees. Little is known of what they did over the next few thousand years but when the Romans arrived in the region in about 46AD they described a people covered in strange dyes and little else, travelling round in small warbands ... a tradition still upheld in Newcastle town centre every night around pub kicking out time.

Over the millennium that followed, North East England would be a place of conflict, seeing scores of battles between Roman and Celt, Celt and Pict, Angle and Briton and Viking and Anglo-Saxon. To this day experts continue to question the causes of so many battles, though the heavy betting remains on the bloke in the silly helmet from the stag party knocking over the mead-flavoured Bacardi breezer of "the fit bird with the big jugs" from the hen night who'd been dancing with the squaddie back on leave and everything kicking off from there. Things carried on in much the same way following the arrival of the Normans, with North East England spending the ensuing centuries being fought over by Scots and English rulers, most of these conflicts ending in the ceremonial handing over of Berwick-on-Tweed to the winner.

Despite all this fighting, North East England was also a thriving cultural centre, with a strong monastic tradition. The monks were initially based at Lindisfarne, though they were to flee inland from the island in the late 9th Century due to fear of Viking attack (apparently one of the monks had made the mistake of "looking at Ivar the Boneless's bird"). Over the years North East England gave the world The Lindisfarne Gospels, the poetry of Caedmon, the Venerable Bede's History of the English People and Paul Gascoigne's rendition of Fog on the Tyne.

With the Industrial Revolution, North East England's vast coal resources were to fuel Britain's foundries and help the birth of new technologies (so much so, indeed, that the phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" came to mean much the same as today's "bringing idiots to The Weakest Link"). The North East also gave birth to George Stephenson's legendary Rocket, the early steam locomotive that - at a top speed of 29 miles per hour - could outpace many a modern GNER intercity train.

In the 20th Century the North East, one of the world's greatest centres of industry, became home to a powerful labour movement. As Britain's power began to wane and its industry was ravaged by the Great Depression, hundreds of Geordies set out from Jarrow to walk to London to lobby Parliament ... though when they got there it turned out that Parliament was otherwise engaged and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was "washing his hair".

In the 1960s and 70s the region went from fame to infamy following tales of council corruption and dodgy building deals funded by bungs from architect John Poulson. By the 21st Century, however, as our lawyers have asked us to make clear, the North East of England was, happily, no longer associated with allegations of corruption or improper payments. Instead it was to become irrevocably connected with the cock-up, giving birth to a series of managerial errors that would astonish even The Office's David Brent. Whether it be the kind of management that encourages civil servants to pop discs containing secret data in the post, with the password handily written on the discs themselves, that allows banks such as Northern Rock to rack up debt faster than a failing NHS Trust even in the face of a global credit crunch, or that happily channels political donations through third parties even after the "loans for peerages" scandal - all were to be found in the North East. With the stumblebum nature of the region confirmed by the performances of its leading football teams and its reputation now centred on the inability of Newcastle's inhabitants to understand that freezing weather entails wearing more than a boob tube, the North East of England became too ashamed to hold its face up in public any longer and sloped off into the North Sea after weighting its boots with the last of the region's coal.

The North East of England will be commemorated at St Jimmy Nail's Church of the Crumpled Viz. The congregation will sing Dance Ti Thee Daddy from When the Boat Comes In and the theme from Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? before getting into a punch up after someone accidentally knocks over the communion wine.

⁽¹⁾ "unlawful" is a technical political term - it means exactly the same as "illegal" but somehow sounds better.

Reincarnation, Time Immemorial - AD 2007

As A Dodo can confirm that Reincarnation has died and not passed on to a better place, and most certainly isn't coming back as a worm, a lottery-winner or a cute ginger cat called Mr Fluffykins, following the news that the Dalai Lama has decided to end the 600-year-old Buddhist tradition of selecting his successor by a series of spiritual tests and replaced it with a ballot of monks across the Himalayas and Mongolia.

Reincarnation was first recorded in the Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, around 800 BC and quickly became popular with Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and anyone else keen to escape a life of grinding poverty by dropping dead and returning a few rungs up the social ladder, or eager to see the utter git who kept lording it over them come back as a slug.

Meanwhile, when they were not pitting tortoises against hares in metaphysical races or eyeing up the pool boy, the Ancient Greeks were also busy pondering the subject. Even that great thinker Socrates said he was "confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring from the dead" - a concept much discussed over subsequent millenia and only recently proved with Tony Blair's escape from his scandal-plagued government without a scratch.

Over in the Middle East, Reincarnation was also proving popular with Judaism, with some rabbis giving each soul three chances to make it in the world - a belief the truth of which many believe is evidenced by the careers of Peter Mandelson and Noel Edmonds. With the arrival of David Blaine-wannabe, Jesus of Nazareth, the coming-back-after-your-death-thing really took off. (Although Jesus blew it when, after being taken down from the cross and banged up in a cave for three days, he came back as himself rather than anything more exotic - we have it on good authority, for instance, that Judas wanted to come back as "a bird ... maybe a nightingale ... or even a heron")

Later many Britons (particularly peasants) would dream of a quick release from a hard life and the chance to enter the spiritual lottery that was Reincarnation, though there was very little proof to substantiate the theory other than the occasional pig that bore a passing resemblance to Cardinal Wolsey or a sideboard that, in a certain light, looked just like Anne of Cleves. Indeed, by modern times thousands of people were claiming to have lived previous lives as Joan of Arc or Julius Caesar (but somehow hardly ever as Ned the manure-carrier or Wat the turnip-minder)

Not satisfied with the mere transference of a gone-before soul to a new-found body, Reincarnation did exactly what it said on the tin and reinvented itself. Concepts that were thought to be long-dead, such as putting innocent people in jail and throwing away the key, were resurrected under the new guise of the "war on terror", nations that were thought to have faded from power and influence, such as Russia, began to flex their muscles in London sushi bars and, astonishingly, the British Conservative Party saw itself reincarnated as a group of people who actually could organise a piss-up in a brewery ... though not necessarily a very enjoyable one

The move away from spiritual reinvention to cynical old re-treads left Reincarnation a shadow of its former self, forcing it to admit that it had little hope of coming back as something more profoundly meaningful to the modern mind than belief in the rejuvenating powers of plastic surgery, a big lottery win or a much younger girlfriend. With even the Dalai Lama suggesting that a form of election might be a better way to find a leader than seeing if that kid in the corner liked to play with the old Dalai Lama's walking stick, it was plain that the wheel of life had become wonky and worn bald. Reincarnation gave up the ghost for the last time and headed off to permanent retirement in Nirvana.

Reincarnation will be buried at the Status Quo Church of the Just One More Farewell Tour. It will be cremated and sealed in a lead-lined casket before being encased in cement - just in case it tries to come back as something else.

The People's Data c 3,800BC - 2007AD

Men and women across Britain are today frantically checking their bank statements for fraudulent withdrawals in memory of The People's Data, which has been tragically lost in a sea of Whitehall incompetence, taking with it the bank records of 25 million individuals and the chief of HM Revenue & Customs, Sir Paul Gray.

The People's Data was first collected in ancient Babylonia in around 3,800BC. Every seven or so years the Babylonian rulers took a census, recording the number of people, their stores of butter, honey, milk, wool and vegetables and their livestock, the data not only giving a useful index of Babylon's prosperity and aiding tax collection, but also explaining where all that dung filling the streets had come from.

From the Babylonians onwards, the collection of The People's Data proved a popular pastime for kings, emperors and other rulers, not only keeping them informed of the health of their city states/kingdoms/empires but also providing a useful distraction from their other favourite pursuits such as wars and having sex with close blood relatives. Indeed so popular were censuses that even God himself got in on the act, ordering Moses to take the number of all the men able to bear arms of the tribes of Israel⁽¹⁾ - a process which proved particularly difficult for Moses as God, being omniscient, could always tell when he'd miscounted.

And so The People's Data continued to be gathered up all the way through history, through the time of the Romans and the Domesday Book and on towards the present day. With more and more data being collected, its storage became increasingly problematic. Indeed, by 1890 the data for the US Census had to be recorded on punched cards - the holes recording either the data of each individual or the passage of the buckshot directed at the census taker when he attempted to obtain that data from backwoodsy types with a hatred of big government and a love of the Second Amendment. Many feared that the collection of so much data in such a small place might lead to it falling into the wrong hands, though such fears were allayed first by the many precautions taken by the US government and, secondly, by the fact that any attempt to read it would have required a card-reader the size of a small house.

It was the arrival of computerisation that saw an explosion in The People's Data. Soon governments across the world were trying to record every last bit of The People's Data they could. And no government was more enthusiastic in this regard than that of the UK, which sought to record everything from people's financial details to the weight of their rubbish bins, their DNA fingerprints, inherited diseases, inside leg measurements and (doubtless) their favourite football teams and sexual preferences. Yet all the while they insisted that the ever-swelling People's Data was in safe hands, despite the fact that those hands belonged to the same people who gave us The Millennium Dome, The Northern Rock Crisis and Government Statistics.

Perhaps, then, we should not have been surprised when those safe hands proved to be butter-fingered, allowing the financial records of more than 25 million Britons to slip from their grasp and into the choppy waters of the Customs and Revenue internal mail system. So it was that the Government was forced to declare The People's Data lost, presumed in the hands of internet fraudsters and identity thieves.

The People's Data will be buried in several computers in Russia, where it will rest in peace until such time as things have quietened down a bit and it can be flogged off to the highest bidder. It is survived by The People's NHS Records, The People's CCTV images and The People's ID cards.

⁽¹⁾ Except the Levites^(2)
(2) Who were instead told to go and manufacture denim jeans, or something ... we may have nodded off at that point in our RE lessons.

Child Benefit 1946 - 2007

Child Benefit has been found dead after HM Customs and Revenue lost the personal information of nearly 25 million UK citizens in the post - fatally compromising the integrity of both the government and the Child Benefit system and leading to the impending bankruptcy of the nation's children in a financial disaster even more embarrassing than the Northern Rock cock-up.

Child Benefit was the proud baby boomer offspring of the Family Allowances Act, as Britain struggled to raise itself from the rubble of World War Two, determined that every child in Britain should escape the crushing poverty of pre-war generations (who can forget the financial ruin caused by the collapse of Lord Snooty plc or the day Billy Bunter's tuckshop franchise business was passed into the hands of the receivers?). Now parents could have five shillings a week extra for every child to spend on powdered milk, powdered egg, 10 powdered Capstan Full Strength and a bottle of black market rum (powdered).

But ten years later Britain's children had never had it so good as they wised up to the fiscal opportunities presented by Child Benefit and set about boosting the economy as they invested heavily in The Eagle, Meccano and gobstopper industries.

As the government doled out the pounds, shillings and pence throughout the Sixties every child was able to experience the white heat of technology for themselves as they purchased Lego like there was no tomorrow, all the while listening to the latest The Pink Floyd album on their new stereo record players whilst dropping some of that really good acid they could now easily afford.

By the Seventies, child poverty was definitely a thing of the past only dimly remembered by one's parents, as kids cycled to school on brand new Chopper bikes (flashily buying a new Chopper every day) or bounced to their investors' meetings on Space Hoppers whilst high on speed.

During the Eighties, as pensioners grumbled about their meagre handouts, children across the country managed their portfolios on brick-sized mobile telephones - buying heavily into shoulder-pads and cocaine off their brick-sized mobile telephones - and, in the Nineties, chilled out on some really good E, moved into more ethical investmnents and emerging new dotcom and gaming businesses.

By the noughties, the nation's children were living the high life as The Benefit ensured that the nation's children did not go without the essentials of modern life - text bundles, knives and crack pipes. So when the National Audit Office asked HM Revenue and Customs for the Child Benefit database a junior official at their HQ in Tyne and Wear burnt it onto 2 CDs (filling up the extra space with the new Arctic Monkey's album) and popped it, unrecorded in the post, in a breach of government security guidelines not seen since John Prescott was told where and when Cabinet meetings were taking place.

Chancellor, Alistair Darling, led the frantic search for the disks but when they failed to turn up down the back of the sofa or being used as coasters on the coffee table he called in the Metropolitan Police. Fortunately, further embarrassment was spared as the Armed Response Team hurtling towards Tyne and Wear was recalled at the last moment before they could "stop and search the Brazilian bastard".

But the damage had been done and the security of Child Benefit had been fatally compromised - the system that had promised to care for Britons from the cradle to the grave had dropped the cradle in the grave and Child Benefit was no more.

Child Benefit will be buried in a pauper's grave at the St Charles of Dickens Church of the Means-Test. The service will be conducted by the Reverend Jack Douglas after the Reverend Darling lost his eulogy somewhere between the vicarage and the library, turned up for the funeral on the wrong day at the wrong church and his trousers fell down. The congregation will sing Hymn 312 You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two as the hat is passed around.

Child Benefit is pre-deceased by the nation's confidence in the government and is survived by the laughter of David Cameron, the laughter of Tony Blair and the scheme to introduce Identity Cards - but probably not for very much longer.

Belgium 1830 - 2007

Belgium, the European country which has done so much to enliven so many dinner parties as couples vie to name six interesting things about that sovereign state before the cheese goes off, is believed to have fallen apart after nearly six months without a government.

Formed from the remnants of the Low Countries in 1830 following a, frankly, hard-to-believe Belgian revolution, Belgium quickly found its place in Europe as it inherited none of the flair and flamboyance of its southerly neighbour, France, nor any of the edginess and excitement of its northern neighbour, Holland, instead promoting itself as the national equivalent of a pair of sensible shoes or a wet weekend - or, preferrably, both.

With King Leopold I installed at the head of its constitutional monarchy, the people of Belgium - whether they be Flemish, Walloons or confused travellers who stopped off before reaching Paris or London - settled down in the traditional trades of brewing, chocolate-making or the burgeoning waffle R & D sector based around the capital, Brussels.

Having been invaded by Germany in 1914 (innocently letting the Kaiser's troops across the border to "retrieve a mislaid bratwurst...") Belgium made sure that before the kick-off of the next world war everyone knew it was neutral and "would be taking no part whatsoever in any future conflicts" only to be interrupted by Hitler's troops rolling across the border in order to take the rat-run to France.

Culturally Belgium was best known for the works of surrealist painter Rene Magritte and his most famous painting Ceci N'est Pas Un Waffle. To the surprise of many, several of France's best-loved musicians were in truth Belgian, though, less surprisingly, Django Reinhardt and Jacques Brel preferred to spend most of their life in France.

But without a doubt Belgium was most famous when it was most fictional. Made-up detectives Hercule Poirot, Tintin and... er... Snowy all raised the profile of Belgium abroad and for a brief instant made readers think it was a hotbed of international intrigue when, in reality, it was a country so dull that M. Poirot had to find work in London to escape the tedium of being asked to investigate yet another mysterious case of the disapperaing waffle.

When the Flemish Christian Democrats won last June's general election no one foresaw that they would fail to establish a ruling coalition. Despite the absence of a government in Belgium for nearly six months the country did not descend into anarchy, instead waffle prouduction at EU and NATO waffle mills exceeded projected targets month-on-month and the people of Belgium continued to drink beer, eat chocolates and look down on the unruly Swiss.

With the realisation that the 150-day run without a government was not an attempt to get into the Guinness World Book of Records (as that had been banned in Belgium since 1967 for fear of over-exciting the populous) talks between the 11 political parties became more protracted. But a split began to develop between the Dutch-speaking Flems and the French-speaking Walloons, and a move to end the right of French speakers in Flemish suburbs of bi-lingual Brussels to vote for French candidates proved so boring that the country shrugged its shoulders and returned to its jigsaws of giant waffles as the country split asunder in utter silence.

Belgium will be buried in two separate ceremonies at La Maison du Waffle and at Den Wafflehaus.

Democracy in Pakistan 1947 - 1953 - 1958 - 1971 - 1977 - 1985 - 1988 - 1999 - 2002 - 2007

Democracy in Pakistan has died yet another death following the introduction by squeaky-clean President/General (or General/President depending on which week it is) Musharraf of martial law on the basis that the country was "in the grip of militant violence and an unruly judiciary", which same unruly judiciary just happened to be about to rule on the legality of the good General's October election victory.

Democracy in Pakistan was born in 1947, the fragile child of the British Empire's favourite method of bringing peace and harmony to their former colonies, partition, as the newly-formed states of India and Pakistan happily went their separate ways with barely a care in the world, merrily agreeing that they should share Kashmir ... preferably as a potential nuclear battleground for decades to come.

Following religious riots, martial law was imposed in Pakistan for the first time in 1953 and proved so popular that it was quickly introduced as a major module at law schools across the country. Following a breather of a couple of years while the army recharged its batteries (particularly the ones they liked to attach to opposition politicians' testicles), Democracy in Pakistan was back in the dock again in 1958. By an astonishing coincidence, it was during this time that Pakistan's relations with the West were cemented as it entered into an anti-Soviet pact with those paragons of democracy: Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

In 1977, part-time Terry-Thomas impersonator and full-time General, Muhammad Zia-al-Haq, took up the reins of power in a "bloodless" coup (so-called because Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged rather than shot for the audacious crime of having won a parliamentary election). But when, in 1988, that "magnificent" man in his flying machine tumbled out of the sky in circumstances more mysterious than Glenn Miller's disappearance over the English Channel or the popularity of Big Brother, Zia's dictatorship was over and Pakistan entered a golden 11-year period of civilian rule with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both leading the country twice and both removed from office on charges of corruption.

It was in 1999 that General Pervez Musharraf decided he was the people's champion - whether they wanted him to champion them or not - and stepped forward to take over the country ... completely coincidentally just as President Sharif was about to fire him from his job. For the next eight years his shiny military boots graced the Chief Executive's desk. Fortunately the General was keen to prove his democratic credentials and held an election in 2002. Not only did this election show all the probity of Western elections (provided the Western elections one is talking about happen to be the Presidential ones in Florida in 2000⁽¹⁾), it also served to keep the Pakistani Supreme Court from getting too het up about trivial details like the rule of law and the constitution. With his credentials thus proven to all and sundry, particularly in the White House and Downing Street, General President Capo di Tutti Capi Musharraf was swiftly ushered into the noble company fighting for democracy, alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other such fine nations.

Despite his penchant for riding roughshod over the rule of law (normally in a tank) and extending Mr Sharif's exile, General Musharraf remained eager to prove himself at least on nodding terms with the notions of democratic behaviour, and promised to step down as head of the army on the 15th of November 2005 and hold a general election⁽²⁾ in January 2008. Democrats around the world took comfort in the fact both that the General had apparently shown himself to be on their side, or if not that at least that the fingers normally poised near the nuclear button would be crossed behind the General's back for a few months. Sadly, such comfort was but brief: for on 3 November 2007 the constitution and hundreds of opposition politicians, members of the Supreme Court and anyone who looked at the General "a bit funny" were arrested. Troops took up positions on the streets and television and radio stations were taken off the air including, to the relief of TV lovers, BBC World. So with Imran Khan and his collection of nuclear cricket bats under house arrest, General President Musharraf was safe once more from the condemnation of democratic governments the world over, and the "deep disappointment" of the Bush administration.

Democracy in Pakistan will be buried at the 24/7 Drive-Thru Chapel of Democratic Rest. The service will be conducted by the Right Reverend President General Musharraf and the congregation will sing whatever song he tells them to.

⁽¹⁾ in fact it is widely rumoured that more poor African-Americans got to vote in the Pakistani election than did in Florida.
⁽²⁾ ie an election which would end up electing a general ... called Musharraf.

Bacon c 7,000 BC - AD 2007

Wage-earners are facing the knowledge they will no longer be able to bring home the bacon, following news that humanity's favourite cured pork product has been singled out for condemnation by the World Cancer Research Fund.

Bacon is thought to have been conceived over 9,000 years ago when a Near Eastern pig farmer tucked into a bit of fatty back meat from his newly-domesticated charges and thought, "This is nowhere near unhealthy enough ... what I need to do is add a whole heap of salt to it and then stick it above the fire to absorb as many carcinogens as possible". What happened to that pig farmer after he made his great discovery remains unknown: some say he died of clogged arteries, some say he died of hypertension, while others claim that his foolish decision to slap a piece of his new-created "Bacon" between two slices of well-buttered bread, thus creating the legendary "Bacon Sarnie" led to him being crushed by a mob of weak-willed vegetarians with a sudden uncontrollable yen for meaty not-so-goodness.

Soon most of humanity was happily bunging bits of pork in vast piles of salt and then slipping it into the chimney, little realising that in doing so they were paving the path for their descendants' anxious journeys to the doors of their cardiologists and oncologists (or, in the case of their American descendants, the even more anxious journey to a lawyer to see if there was any way of getting their health insurance to actually pay out for those cardiologists and oncologists). Only the Jews and the Muslims managed to stand firm against Bacon's savoury allure, the latter group doubtless aided in their resolution by the fact that Islam's prohibition on alcohol meant they never had need of a post-hangover fry-up.

It was in the British Isles, however, that Bacon found its greatest success, becoming - alongside ham - the favourite meat of Britons, who loved it so much they even named leading philosophers and painters after it. In the hands of Brits, Bacon found itself happily nestling alongside sausages or beneath eggs, combining crunchily with broad beans, spicing up smoked eel, braising beautifully with cabbage, giving piquancy to bacon and onion pie and giving spice to many a soup.

All the more distressing then that we should now learn that the mere sight of a single salty sliver of this magnificent meat means certain death (the World Cancer Research Funds survey having conclusively proved that eating bacon is completely incompatible with immortality). With the news that, in its hour of need, the leading defender of a rasher of unsmoked best back turned out to be celebrity gnome impersonator and alleged celebrity chef Anthony Worrall Thompson, Bacon was out of the frying pan and into the fires of eternity.

Bacon will be cremated next Tuesday in front of a large congregation armed with bottles of tomato ketchup and slices of bread. The readings will be from Luke 8:26-39, the casting out of the Gadarene Swine, and Dave 8.30-9am, the preparing of the Gadarene Barbeque.

Bacon will be buried alongside processed meat, red meat, salt, energy-dense foods, sugary drinks and having any kind of fun at all. It is survived by the mung bean.

Government Statistics c. Time Immemorial - 2007

Government Statistics have perished with the news that the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, underestimated the number of migrants working in the UK by 700,000, and failed to factor in the 40 odd members of the infamous Windsor family who have been milking the benefits system for decades.

Since the dawn of time governments have struggled to issue a factual reckoning of everything from the annual figures for the wheat harvest, literacy rate or life expectancy while those governments' subjects have struggled to believe that the figures haven't been spun, seasonally adjusted, calculated in base 72 or just downright fiddled.

When the Trojans woke up one morning to find the Achaeans gone, they proudly announced to the surviving citizens that all that was left behind was one horse, before being forced to rapidly revise this figure by Odysseus and his 30 armed companions leaping from the belly of the horse to remonstrate with the official Trojan statistician. The Ancient Britons massively underestimated the number of migrating Romans arriving via the south coast to take up work in the indoor plumbing and underfloor heating sector that so many Ancient Britons considered beneath them. And, similarly when Harold got his court tellers to tot up the numbers of Normans popping over for a weekend break to buy up and restore disused farmhouses and cottages in England, their calculations were so far out of whack that Harold had no choice but to hand over the keys to William the Conqueror.

Throughout history a sceptical public became used to governments announcing a number they'd first thought of, and then adding ten million to that figure. So when Home Secretary Jacqui Smith first stated confidently that the number of migrant workers in the UK was definitely 800,000, it was no surprise that she was later forced to sheepishly admit that the batteries in her abacus weren't fully charged and the real figure was, actually, 1,100,000... before the Office of National Statistics reminded her that the figure was, in fact, 1,500,000. Having displayed all the statistical acumen of the Metropolitan Police counting the number of protestors at a student demo, Ms Smith's series of seven⁽¹⁾ gaffes exposed Government Statistics as a tissue of lies, damned lies and... er... Government Statistics. As a shocked nation - outraged to discover that it had been misled yet again - called for Ms Smith to be replaced as Home Secretary by a Lithuanian accountant, Government Statistics failed to add up for the final time and were no more.

Government Statistics will be buried at the Church of St Johnny of Ball, the service will be conducted by the Reverend Dave "Let's Just Call It A Hundred for Cash" Dodgy and the congregation will sing hymn 432... sorry, hymn 700,432.

Government Statistics are predeceased by the Tooth Fairy's calculations and survived by Let's Just Split The Bill Four Ways.

⁽¹⁾ sorry, nine, sorry, two, sorry ... 278 following seasonal adjustment.

Royal Scandals c. 8000 BC - AD 2007

It is impossible to exaggerate the sadness at the death of Royal Scandals, which have passed away following news that the best our monarchies can manage these days is some relatively uninteresting sex 'n' drugs allegations about "a minor royal" with "a low public profile". They will be fondly remembered for all the good works they did down the years, keeping millions enthralled and entertained and providing much useful work for paparazzi, indifferent journalists willing to swallow their pride and make a living reporting the antics of a bunch of men and women whose generations of inbreeding have left them with the noble chin, intellectual weight and dignified bearing of one of Wimpy's "Benders in a Bun", and dimwitted aristocratic offspring in desperate need of a family to marry into after failing the entrance exams for floristry and kindergarten assistant.

Rather than dwell on their sad and ignominious end - begging for a headline in the Sunday Times after overhyping in the company of members of the press - we at As A Dodo much prefer to remember Royal Scandals as the great things they once were: hanging around with kings and queens, empresses and emperors, pharaohs, shahs, rajas and ranis from the moment monarchy was first thought of, capable of altering the history of nations and the destinies of millions.

Oh what great times Royal Scandals once had - appalling whole nations even as ancient spin doctors tried to cover them up. Who can forget the quick-witted Egyptian priest who informed a shocked nation that the young pharaoh had only been pleasuring himself out of the palace window in order to fertilise the Nile, or the Greek sage who told the Macedonian troops that what they had seen was merely Hephaestion polishing King Alexander's sarissa before the battle?

Despite such attempts at suppression, by the time of the Romans Royal Scandals had assumed their rightful place in society - keeping comics and clowns, playwrights and players, hecklers and historians in business as they chronicled Emperors happy to entertain their people by marrying their sister before breakfast, murdering them by lunchtime and hopping into bed with their horse by tea.

With the rise of monarchies across Europe, Royal Scandals' opportunities multiplied. Strange sexual preferences, killings and overfamiliar meetings between the species were commonplace - it was not long before those in the know were reporting everything from Phillipe I, Duc d'Orléans's habit of wandering the docks in female attire blowing kisses to the sailors, through Pope Alexander VI's first murder (carried out at the age of 12) all the way to Queen Catherine the Great's stable relationship with Bruno the carthorse. Matters such as King Henry VIII of England's serial marriages and lethal divorce settlements were small beer, even though they helped found a new church.

Ah yes, those were the great days! Yet even in decline, Royal Scandals still had the power to shock. Tales of Marie Antoinette's excess helped to feed the flame of revolution, tales of King George III's madness and the dissolute George IV's divorce threatened the monarchy in England. But it was all downhill from here. Where once a true scandal would have required at least a few deaths or a dangerous liaison with a llama, by the 20th century the best that could be offered to shatter the world's peace was Edward VIII's decision to marry an American divorcee.

The decline continued apace as minor Royals across Europe took to sucking toes and slipping off their bikinis to whip up a whiff of naughtiness, while the best their more senior colleagues could manage was Princess Diana's liaisons with a string of well-heeled dimwits and Prince Charles's fondly-expressed desire to grow up one day to be a tampon⁽¹⁾. Even young Prince Harry found his Bad Boy Reputation almost impossible to maintain.

Royal Scandals' final hour came when, following allegations that two men had attempted to blackmail a royal with an envelope of cocaine and a sex video, the whole of the internet was filled with precisely five people trying to find out who the Royal was, while everyone else turned over the pages of their newspapers to read the soccer scores.

Royal Scandals will be buried at St Catherine's Church of the Hole-y Harness. A minor royal will snort several lines from the Bible and the congregation will sing Hymn 365 "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the royals have had them all".

⁽¹⁾ which would, admittedly, be more useful than being Prince Charles.

Analogue Television c. 1936-2007

Analogue Television has begun its long journey to the great decommissioning centre in the sky as Whitehaven in Cumbria became the first town in Britain to switch off its old-fashioned, analogue, cathode-ray "idiot boxes" and replace them with smart, new, digital, widescreen, LCD and plasma idiot boxes instead.

It was was back in the mid-1920s that John Logie Baird⁽¹⁾ pioneered TV in this country, inventing a mechanical means of broadcasting almost-impossible-to-see pictures of a dummy's head (a practice still much in favour with TV stations across the country). Sadly, like so many British inventions, his system - while brilliantly inventive - was utterly useless, meaning that an alternative means of broadcasting had to be invented in America. Thus it wasn't until 1936 that the BBC began broadcasting from Alexandra Palace. Thousands of middle-class⁽²⁾ Londoners were able to dress up in black tie and gather around their mahogany-hewn television sets to watch up to four hours a day of programming devoted to dancing, loveable cockneys and Bruce Forsyth.

Discontinued during the war for fear that the Nazis would discover the secret of light entertainment and develop a terrifying new weapon, the LE-bomb⁽³⁾, normal service was resumed following the death of Hitler⁽⁴⁾.

Although it remained rationed until 1954, millions of Britons saved up their coupons to watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II - beginning the golden age of Analogue Televison. Sofa manufacturers and spam-and-powdered-egg pizza delivery companies rubbed their hands with glee as those millions of Britons sat, night after night, glued to dramas, sitcoms, documentaries and Bruce Forsyth.

Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s Analogue Television had the nation enthralled⁽⁵⁾, but by the noughties it was facing competition from a new rival. Digital Television was young and slim and able to woo the nation with the promise of hundreds of new television channels (admittedly generally showing exactly the same programmes) and the government with the prospect of flogging off the old analogue broadcasting spectrum to the highest bidder. Analogue TV began to look about as fresh and original as Bruce Forsyth and thus a plan was mooted to pull the plugs across the whole country by 2012 - enabling us all to press the red button and select not just the Olympic Mens' 100m Final, but also the race to complete the Olympic Stadium itself and the ceremonial resignation of Lord Coe.

The people of Whitehaven, Cumbria were chosen to pioneer the great switchover (even though many argued for a complete and utter switch off) and so, in the early hours of this morning, the slow euthanasia of Analogue TV began as Analogue BBC2 had a pillow held over its face⁽⁶⁾ and the people of Whitehaven watched the white dot disappear from their screens for the last time.

Analogue Television will be buried at St John Reith of the Spinning Grave's Kirk. The service will be conducted by Justin Lee Collins and Tess Daly and, after a cross-platform, interactive, phone-in competition the congregation will sing Bruce Springsteen's 57 Channels (And Nothin' On) whether that was the true result of the phone-in competition or not.

Analogue BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five are survived by Digital BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4 and Five... and Men & Motors, Nuts TV, The Horror Channel and Bruce Forsyth.

⁽¹⁾ and his assistant Boo Boo.
⁽²⁾ only the middle-classes had space in their homes for the newfangled television sets which were the size of a small room - normally belonging to the servants, who, from then on, had to sleep in the garden but were allowed to watch television through the window, provided they wore black tie.
⁽³⁾ which is why Bruce Forsyth spent 1935 to 1945 under armed guard deep in a Welsh mine.
⁽⁴⁾ which was broadcast live on UKTV History after viewers voted to evict the Fűhrer and Reichschancellor from Der Grosse Bruder Bunker.
⁽⁵⁾ some say hypnotised - especially those in the advertising industry.
⁽⁶⁾ something that anyone who has watched The Egghead Challenge has been dreaming about for some time.

Political Speechwriters ????-2007

The death of Political Speechwriters is today being reported in blogs, in newspapers and on the television - but not in any political speeches - following the barnstorming, "unscripted" performance by Conservative leader David Cameron at the end of his party conference.

There have long been disagreements between the experts over the dating of the birth of the first Political Speechwriter. Some have suggested that speechwriting goes back to the very dawn of humanity itself, with Ug the Chieftain's brilliant "Ug smash!" oration⁽¹⁾ actually being written by Ug the Speechwriter - though the fact that Ug the Speechwriter could not, in fact, write anything at all and usually contented himself with trying to rub two rocks together in a futile attempt to create fire admittedly militates against this theory.

Others claim the Political Speechwriter was born during the Roman Republic, suggesting that Julius Caesar could not have "come, seen and conquered" without considerable help from his favourite Greek slave - though whether this theory refers to Caesar's famous "Veni, vedi, vici" report to the Senate following his battle with Pharnaces at Zela or merely to the Roman leader's activities at a particularly eventful orgy is still disputed.

There have, of course, been suggestions that the first Political Speechwriter was born during the time of the Tudors. Many believe that Queen Elizabeth I's announcement that she had "the body of a weak and feeble woman⁽²⁾; but ... the heart of a king, and of a king of England too" was in truth ghost-written by William Shakespeare ... though given that many believe that Shakespeare himself was ghosted by Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, Edward de Vere and/or Dr Who mean this theory advances debate very little.

What is certainly true is that even by the middle of the 20th century, many politicians still felt it incumbent on them to write their own speeches. Any doubts as to Churchill having dictated his most famous speeches to his secretary were recently allayed by the discovery of the first draft of his first speech to the Commons as Prime Minister, which reads "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and ... oh bloody Hell! I've knocked over the Johnnie Walker".

By the Presidency of John F Kennedy however, the Political Speechwriter had come to the fore. Without the work of his Special Counsel and Adviser, Ted Sorenson, the President would never have asked the Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you ⁽³⁾, ask what you can do for your country⁽⁴⁾" or informed the people of Berlin that he was a doughnut⁽⁵⁾.

Soon Political Speechwriters were informing us that Margaret Thatcher was "not for turning", Ronald Reagan wanted us to "win one for the Gipper" and John Major wanted to "get back to basics" (such as losing elections). At the same time the dangers of not employing a Speechwriter were also being made clear, not least in the notorious speech by former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, which reached its second day before it closed its first sentence⁽⁷⁾. So it was that the Speechwriter came to dominate the political scene. Brilliant words and phrases were focus-grouped and honed before being permitted to issue forth from the lips of great communicators such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Verbs were abandoned, "people's Princesses" were born. All seemed to augur well for the Speechwriters.

And yet, and yet. Some time in the noughties, people across the globe began to tire of the slick and well-honed phrase and began to question the sincerity of those who delivered them. Matters came to a head in Britain in September 2007, when - during his scripted speech to his party conference - Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to have been taken over by dark forces, calling for "British jobs for British workers" and the instant deportiation of "newcomers" who "sell drugs to our children or use guns" ... though, fortunately, he managed to stop himself before mentioning that, "like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'".

Political Speechwriters might perhaps have limped on even after this debacle, had it not been for the arrival of that knight in shining armour, David Cameron, who sought at one stroke to do away with political spin and deception by delivering his speech to the 2007 Conservative Conference unscripted and aided only by a few notes and an arcane process known only as "learning by heart" - a process which enables any politician to bestride the political stage like a colossus, exhibiting unspun sincerity and deep engagement with the issues of concern to the British people even as they dole out the same bland platitudes, feel-good-phrases and dog-whistle buzzwords that they have studiously workshopped with their presentation teams for the past three weeks.

With the country enraptured by Mr Cameron's performance and the new "learning by heart" process becoming all the rage, there was no more room for Political Speechwriters. They passed away, unloved and unmourned, with not even a single memorable phrase to mark their departure.

Political Speechwriters will be buried at the Church of St Soapbox on the Speakers' Corner. The funeral oration will be entirely spontaneous and unrehearsed, which is to say ill-thought-through and rambling and the congregation will sing Hymn 117 A Little Bit of Politics (Music: Andrew Lloyd-Webber; Lyrics: Ben Elton).

Political Speechwriters are survived by a bounce for the Conservatives in the polls and a worried Gordon Brown.

⁽¹⁾ Later shamelessly plagiarised by The Incredible Hulk during a stump speech to a large number of tanks he was, er, smashing.
⁽²⁾ believed to be Mary, Queen of Scots
⁽³⁾ definitely not provide affordable medical care, for one thing.
⁽⁴⁾ if you are poor, this will conventionally involve dying in a foreign country of which you know little.
⁽⁵⁾ Ich bin ein Berliner^(6)
(6) There is, of course, no truth in the myth that the phrase translated in context into "I am a doughnut" but, dammit, it's funny.
⁽⁷⁾ Though cf. John Prescott, for whom Speechwriters did their best best but were sadly thwarted by Mr Prescott's insistence on trying to read out a minimum of three separate lines of his prepared text at the same time.

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation c.33 million BC - AD 2007

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation, which once struck fear into the heart of mammoths, Ug the Hunter and the easily-excited readers of fantasy fiction, has tragically bitten the dust with the discovery by Australian scientists that the mighty feline's Simpsons-like overbite was about as frightening as a "raw prawn's granny" and its powerful jaws "couldn't crush a wet Pom".

The Reputation first reared its ugly head and flashed its supposedly-mighty gnashers 33 million years ago on what was to become the North American continent. It roamed the grasslands and pine forests bragging loudly about its powerful jaws and claiming to make its living by ripping apart bison, deer, elk, mammoths, mastodons and hunter-gatherer orthodontists with its Herculean jaws ... when it actually knocked them over with a paw and slashed their throats with its weedy but mighty sharp canines while they were busy searching through their wallets for the number of a personal injury lawyer.

As the Ice Age encroached upon the North American continent, the tigers' natural prey began to freeze to death faster than British pensioners in January. Soon, only the woolly mammoth survived to shiver, not only from the cold, but in mortal fear of the sabretooth's big-mouthed boasts. But as the mammoth rarely ventured far from its living room, preferring to spend the millennia-long winters knitting itself another warm layer (unfortunately from its own wool) - it too was soon extinct - and the starving sabretooth was reduced to leafing through the brochures for dental remodelling and howling "ice headache!" when it clamped down on a passing glacier.

Yet even with the demise of Smilodon fatalis⁽¹⁾ itself, The Reputation lived on in the imagination of Homo sapiens, who often woke screaming in the middle of the night terrified by images of the great beast snapping at his pillow, only to find that their one-size-fits all supermarket dentures had been knocked off the bedside cabinet by the cat. Thus it was that scientists at McHenry University were moved to end once and for all the Top Trumps debate which had raged back and forth in the Uni bar for decades ("Your sabretooth versus my marsupial lion") - their tests proving that, at about 1,000 Newtons (the force required to crush 1000 Cox's Pippins), the sabretooth tiger's bite was only about a third as powerful as the modern panther and infinitely weaker than an average Osmond's. With the news that its miaow was much worse than its bite The Reputation put its jaws together in a sulky pout and bragged no more.

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation will be buried at the church of the Bleeding Janet Street-Porter. The service will be conducted by the Very Reverend Snagglepuss and there will will be some wailing and much gnashing of oversized teeth.

The Sabretooth Tiger's Fearsome Reputation is survived by the Fearsome Reputation of Bad English Teeth.

⁽¹⁾ literally "Esther Rantzen".

British Party Politics c.1765-2007

It is with deep regret that we at As A Dodo must today report the death of Party Politics in Great Britain, following news that the policies of the major parties have now become so interchangeable - if not indistinguishable - that there seems to be little or no point in trying to tell them apart. Given Party Politics' long and not always ignoble history, the news that political parties have ceased to be a source of ideological belief and Hegelian dialectic and instead become mere vehicles for the election of their leaders to the Premiership will have come as a shock to many (particularly Sir Menzies Campbell) and a source of delight to Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Given the long decline and sad end of Party Politics, few can today picture them as they were in their youth: two boisterous (not to say belligerent) lads, "Whig" and "Tory", both the children of turbulent times, both engaged in endless battles over the royal succession and the power of the monarchy. By all accounts they were bold youths, never happier than knocking back a few swift ones in the pub before a gentle evening of trying to beat seven shades out of each other as they vied for the favour of a various royals, in scenes which (fortunately) would not be seen again until the tragic and disturbing events of "It's A Royal Knockout" in 1987.

As they moved from their teens into their twenties and beyond, however, Party Politics began to settle down. With independence in the offing in the Americas and revolution nascent in France, Whig and Tory had begun to feel that fighting in the streets was best left to others - preferably German mercenaries trying to keep down revolt on the streets of America and effete members of the British Aristocracy going under the dread-inspiring pseudonym of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" brawling with the sans-culottes on the streets of France. Tired of their youthful ways, Party Politics began to grow respectable - debates in the Houses of Parliament began to involve fewer punch-ups, brawls became confined to only the worser class of election hustings and monarchs became too interested in talking to trees to interfere. By the mid 1800s, Tory had begun to let it be known that he'd much rather be known as "Conservative", Whig started referring to himself "Liberal"⁽¹⁾ and both found themselves able to stand at the same bar in the House of Commons without either attempting to physically wound the other.

Over the following decades Conservative and Tory went about the business of Party Politics with a vengeance - arguing over free trade and protectionism, repealing Corn Laws, spinning off and then absorbing an assortment of splinter parties and ensuring that the House of Commons had some of the cheapest bars in all of the UK.

In the early 20th Century, Party Politics were given a further boost by the arrival of Liberal and Conservative's horny-handed and cloth-capped brother, Labour. This feisty new addition to the political scene, complete with his socialist ideology and Methodist convictions had soon injected new life into the old two-party system ... even if much of this new life was added at the expense of Liberal, who found himself swiftly transformed from a significant figure on the political stage to third understudy in the local am dram players.

By the middle of the century, Party Politics had become a gripping clash between the ideologies of Socialism and Conservatism, capable of sweeping up millions as National Health Services were created, industries nationalised, nuclear weapons purchased, wars fought, unions confronted and much more cheap beer served in the many House of Commons bars.

With the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader and the rise of the Labour left wing in the 1970s, Party Politics arrived at its most glorious hour. There was now no issue which was not a point of principal, no argument which was not vital and no drink which was not a necessary stiffener before a debate.

Few knew it at the time but Party Politics' finest hour was also the beginning of Party Politics' decline. After 18 years of Conservative rule, Labour had begun to rue its old ways. Where once "conviction" had been its watch word, now it began to prefer "pragmatism" and "triangulation": free markets, nuclear weapons and low taxes ceased to be a source of division between the parties and instead became sources of agreement. By 1997, the British public knew they could vote for either Labour or Conservative without fear of sweeping change.

So it was that Party Politics drifted first into consensus and then, with Conservative eager to ape Labour's success by shadowing its policies, into confusion. By 2007 the most fiscally conservative party was the old socialist party, the most ecological party was the centre party and the most socially liberal party was the former right wing party. Thus it was that party difference ceased to mean anything beyond the difference between the party leaders and so Party Politics - despite Ming Campbell's literally breathtaking rendition of "Say It Loud, I'm Old and I'm Proud!" at Brighton this week - sleepwalked off a cliff at a seaside political conference.

Party Politics will be buried all at sea at Brighton, Bournemouth and Blackpool over the Party Conference Season. Mourners have been asked to send large donations and a request for a seat in the House of Lords to the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat election funds.

⁽¹⁾ Our American readers are here asked to note that this was in a time when the word "liberal" meant to believe in liberty, rather than being the vilely offensive curse word, indicative of a total lack of moral fibre and a willingness, nay eagerness, to be violently taken from behind by communists, terrorists and other evildoers, that it is today.

Credit c.1000 BC-AD 2007

Credit, the system of getting free stuff on tick and then 'forgetting’ to make the repayments and moving house very quickly, has gone to the great debt collection agency in the sky, following the news that the worldwide Credit Crunch has made life difficult not just for homeowners but also the people who lent them all that money to buy a one-bedroom shoebox in Pinner.

Credit was born in around 1,000BC, when Ancient Babylonians grew tired of exchanging their wives for goats and bulls for asses and instead began exchanging their goods and services for credit receipts drawn up on clay tablets, which were not only easier to stick in the pocket of one's robe but also much less likely than the goats, bulls and asses to leave a nasty mess behind while they were in there.

Thanks to its convenience, Credit soon became a way of life across the globe, with everyone from Roman Emperors to humble Chinese paddy-field workers more than happy to 'buy now, try to avoid the bailiffs later'.

By the eighteenth century 'tallymen'⁽¹⁾ had begun to offer their goods for sale in return for weekly payments. It was not long, however, before Credit began to tire of this itinerant life and decided to go into business in the City, signing on at banking institutions the world over and offering itself out to the highest bidder. By the middle of the twentieth century, Credit was everywhere and consumers were happily signing away the rights to their property, chattels and small children to finance their credit cards, store cards and London Transport Oyster cards.

Yet all was not well. So popular had Credit become that everyone was demanding it ... and so soft-hearted were the institutions for whom Credit worked that they were reluctant to refuse it to anyone at all ... even if they did happen to be a penniless Alabama five-year old with a credit-history that would make Enron blanch and a desperate need for a $2 million mansion and a gold-plated Nintendo Wii. Credit found itself spread thinner and thinner⁽²⁾. As hordes of US homeowners began to default on their loans, Credit began to contemplate its end. Fearful, Credit decided to leave its old friends in the financial institutions behind and go off to lick its wounds at the Bank of England.

Thus it was that when UK building society Northern Rock found itself short of a couple of million shillings to pop in the gas meter, its search for Credit initially proved fruitless. Yet Credit, noble creature that it was, was unwilling to see the tragic little multi-million-pound-organisation- which-had-foolishly-gone-on-bunging-out-mortgages-left-right- and-centre-even-when-every-sane-being-on-the-planet-could-see-a- credit-squeeze-was-coming fail, and so it came down from its lonely Threadneedle Street retreat and offered to lend Northern Rock the money it needed ... after first requiring it to fill in a loan application and have its credit history examined by a surly teenager on the other end of the phone whilst listening to a tinny rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

For all its nobility, the loan was Credit's last mistake: a flood of desperate applications from financially over-stretched borrowers up and down the country caused a run on the Credit markets. And so the Credit Crunch gave way to the Credit Crumble and Credit was no more.

Credit will be buried at St Vorderman's Church of Your Home Could Be At Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Repayments. The undertakers will deliver the casket to the church just as soon as they see the cash… up front… The service will be conducted by Alvin Hall and the congregation will sing Money by Pink Floyd, Money by Berry Gordy (in the style of the Flying Lizards), Money, Money, Money by Abba and Sgt. Northern Rock Isn’t Going To Help Us by XTCCJ.

Credit is survived by Cash On Delivery, Pay As You Go and Crippling Debt.

NB Your mortgage may go up as well as up. Remember your home, bank or building society may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments.

⁽¹⁾ so-called because they kept a record or ‘tally’ of what people had bought on a wooden stick ... which also proved useful in persuading them to pay up every week.
⁽²⁾ not to mention squeezed into a series of financial vehicles of such complexity and opacity that the only people who ever understood them are now either mad, dead or earning a fortune working out the answers to late night TV phone-in quizzes.

British Military Presence in Basra 2003-2007

The British Military Presence in Basra, part of that joint mission with the United States to extract oil from bring peace and democracy to the benighted country of Iraq, has been zipped up in a body bag as troops withdrew relocated to the airport – marking the end of a foreign adventure with all the mishap-free success of M. Hulot's Holiday.

The British Military Presence in Basra was first established in 1917 as our brave Tommies secured the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s interests in neighbouring Persia freed the region from the evil clutches of the Ottoman Empire, and formed the modern state of Iraq from three rival ethnic groups – the Kurds, the Shi’as and the Sunnis – who have, ever since, co-existed peacefully with their new neighbours.

Granting independence to Iraq in 1932 the British retained a military presence in the region because large deposits of oil had been discovered there, re-invading the country in 1941 to stop Germany from stealing the oil and just “minding it for the Iraqis” for a short while as part of the struggle against the evils of Hitler. Despite British heroism in defence of the oil 17 years later an ungrateful Iraqi Army overthrew the Anglophile puppet government monarchy and set about using their new-found freedom and economic independence to terrorise their population all by themselves.

And so, for a while, Britain withdrew altogether from Iraq. In 1991, however, the latest of Baghdad's loyal friends of the West despots, Saddam Hussein, had set his sights on Kuwait’s oil fields and American and British troops again invaded to restore peace and democracy. While the Americans stopped short of Baghdad, our brave boys conquered Basra and soon felt at home there amidst its ancient streets and traditional Officer’s Club and NAAFI (est. 1917). Withdrawing from the city after a regimental sherry and bridge evening got out of hand, British troops were powerless to intervene as the Republican Guard slaughtered Shi’as in their thousands.

Following the discovery of weapons of mass destruction a dodgy thesis written by a Canadian student a fictional link between the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda, the Allies were welcomed back into Iraq as heroic liberators in 2003, as Tony Blair decided to make his mark in history and to be judged by God back Donald Rumsfeld's George W. Bush’s daring plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein and free Iraq’s giant oil reserves.

Although it was our American allies who were to bear the brunt of Iraqi ingratitude for bombing their country back to the Stone Age liberating their oil them from the nightmare of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, even in Basra mutterings of discontent were heard. Soon these mutterings grew into a more audible collective tut and British troops found they were no longer welcome in the city’s clubs and late-night kebab houses, unless accompanied by a large amount of bombing and rifle-fire from local insurgents.

So it was this week that the “pre-planned” decision to withdraw all British troops to the city’s airport was taken amidst much criticism from the Americans whose decision to “surge” more troops into Baghdad earlier in the year had so successfully pushed the insurgents into the rest of the country and enabled the Iraqi government to take a well deserved holiday.

Denying accusations that they were abandoning Basra to the Iraqi Army – an organisation with all the effectiveness of Warmington-on-Sea's Home Guard (but with better weapons) and all the loyalty to its leadership of a member of the Tory party, the Queen’s Own Light Baggage Handlers Brigade and 2 Para Confiscation of Water Bottles and Nail Files Battalion quickly established control of Basra airport and began merrily wishing happy tourists and business travellers “a good one-way flight out of Basra”.

And so it was that with the US accusing the UK of abandoning Basra and the UK accusing the US’s policy in Iraq of being “fatally flawed”, the last post was sounded and the owners of Basra’s clubs and late-night kebab houses breathed a sigh of relief.

The British Military Presence in Basra will be buried very quietly. The service will be conducted by the CEO of British Petroleum. It is not expected that our American allies will attend. It is survived by The British Military Presence in Afghanistan and The British Military Presence in Aldershot – both of which have been causing much hardship and unhappiness to locals since the 19th century.

Divorce c. 3200BC - AD2007

Across Britain married couples are today bowing their heads and quietly hissing at their partners about a thousand different petty faults they have found in each other as they remember Divorce, which has passed away after the revelation by the UK's Office for National Statistics that it has fallen from a great height to a record low.

Though its origins - like the financial records of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills - remain shrouded in mystery, many believe that Divorce was born in Mesopotamia in the 4th Millenium BC. Most historians believe it was the child of an unhappy marriage, though others believe it was actually raised by a lawyer who had just thought of a brand new way of getting people into the courts and their money into his wallet⁽¹⁾.

From the start Divorce proved popular in Mesopotamia. Wherever Shu-Ilishu could be found reeling home late from the temple after a couple too many beers or Inanna could be discovered having secret trysts with Ishbi-Erra behind Ur-Dakuga's back, there would be heard calls for Divorce to come as quickly as possible.

As the years passed, Divorce decided to strike out for pastures new. It was extremely popular in Ancient Athens, where it became the swiftest and easiest answer to matrimonial disputes (which, Ancient Athenians being Ancient Athenians, usually revolved either around fraught arguments over whether Achilles could ever catch up with a tortoise or even fraughter arguments about what exactly Alexander had been caught doing with his pool boy). It was in Rome that Divorce reached its greatest heights, however, partly due to the fact that anyone was allowed to divorce at will but mainly due to the inevitable fallout from all those orgies.

With the spread of Christianity, however, Divorce began to show the first signs of fragility. It was no longer regarded as a sensible and convenient solution to the problem of two people waking up one morning to the realisation that the worst thing in the whole world is to discover that your partner makes an irritating slurping noise while eating his or her larks' tongues, but seen instead as an affront to God's Will⁽²⁾. Despite this, many attempts were made down the years to keep Divorce alive and well. Henry VIII in particular did all in his power to support Divorce, even setting up his own religion to help separate himself from several spouses (in much the same way that L. Ron Hubbard founded his own religion to separate his followers from their money). Thanks to his good work it was not long before Divorce was proving almost as popular as heretic burning and catching syphilis.

Over the following centuries Divorce fell in and out of favour with the waxing and waning of the power of the church. It was in the 20th century however that it was to reach new heights, particularly after 1945. Not least among the causes of this renewed popularity was the number of Tommies who came home to Britain from World War II to discover their wives had drawers full of nylon stockings, handbags full of chewing gum and a wardrobe full of members of the US military called Dwight trying to do up their belt buckles. The stars of stage and screen, ever eager to help a good cause, also rallied to Divorce's side. In this regard particular mention must be made of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Mickey Rooney for their hard work in the area of serial marriages and to George Clooney for making so many women dissatisfied with that slob they've got taking up space on the sofa back home.

Yet despite all this good work - not to mention the pressures of a society in which both partners must work to afford a reasonable standard of living, the strain of child-rearing and the great contribution of mobile phone texting and the internet to the business of having torrid affairs - last week Divorce was revealed to have fallen to a new low.

Divorce will be buried at St Britney's Church of the Repentant Spouse. The reading will be from chapters D, I, V, O, R, C and E of the book of Tammy Wynette, after which the congregation will inform each other that "It's not you, it's me" before throwing the communion wine over each other and storming out of the church.

⁽¹⁾ which, given that the currency at the time came in the form of gold bars, was almost as capacious as that of a modern divorce lawyer.
⁽²⁾ placing it alongside other well-known affronts to God's will such as US election victories by the Democrats, the failure to possess at least two semi-automatic rifles and the teaching of evolution in schools but strangely not in the same category as owning slaves, selling your daughter or stoning adulterers to death.