Blackpool's Las Vegas Dreams 2006-2007

The people of Blackpool are today jumping up and down on their "Kiss Me Quick" hats and snapping their little sticks of Blackpool rock in two as they remember their dreams of building a new Las Vegas on the shores of the Irish Sea, dreams which were brought to an untimely end on Tuesday with the decision to award the government's new "supercasino" to Manchester.

Blackpool's Las Vegas Dreams were born in May 2006, the offspring of a government desperate to grab itself a nice slice of the gambling profit pie and a council desperate to regenerate a seaside town haunted by an unhjoly mixture of the vomiting remnants of the last few stag and hen parties unable to afford the low-cost airfare to Dublin or Prague and bewildered gangs of nostalgic pensioners wandering the streets in the mistaken belief that the thriving resort of their youth hadn't turned into a place with all the charm of a Glaswegian proctologist.

Soon Blackpool was dreaming of transforming itself into a new Las Vegas - its badly-suited doormen and surly one-armed bandit attendants transformed into uniformed bellhops and unctuous one-armed bandit attendants, its low-grade lapdancing clubs transformed into high-class lapdancing clubs and its "world-famous" Tower, Illuminations and Pleasure Beach transformed into attractions that might stand a chance of being famous outside the North of England let alone around the world. Up and down the sea front, attraction owners fell into reveries as they contemplated the possibility of swapping the daily grind of separating bored teens, problem gamblers and lonely pensioners from their pennies for the pleasant task of separating bored rich people, problem gamblers and lonely pensioners from their life-savings.

Blackpool's Las Vegas Dreams were not to be fulfilled. Their death was announced by The Casino Advisory Panel, who decided on Tuesday to award the rights to build the new supercasino in Manchester rather than the seaside resort, presumably on the basis that the north-west's leading city was the only location with a high enough murder rate to justify Grissom and the gang jetting over from the original Las Vegas to launch yet another extension to the CSI franchise.

Blackpool's Las Vegas Dreams will be buried under the floor of the Tower Ballroom on Friday. They are survived by an ever-declining number of tourists and a massive increase in problem gambling in Manchester.

Rapid Global Warming 1979-2007

The death of Rapid Global Warming was received with scenes of joyous celebration around the world after it was announced that President George W Bush - inspired by the brilliant work of Montgomery T Burns and Professor Ogden Wernstrom - had authorised a crack squad of highly-trained giant mirrors to assassinate it by cutting off its vital supply of light from the sun.

Rapid Global Warming was born in 1979 to a long line of Warmings which have ruled the planet since time immemorial. The youngest Warming quickly set to work in the family business and soon made its parents proud as it increased the rate of land temperature twice as fast as ocean temperatures. Setting a pace faster than any predecessor since that embarrassing incident with the barbie led to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, many critics alleged that it was only able to maintain itself by mainlining fossil fuels in quantities that would make even Keith Richards wobble slightly and go, “Wow!”

Throughout the 80s and 90s, Rapid Global Warming was engaged in a long battle against opponents such as The Greens, riding rough-shod over claims that its fossil fuel intake would lead to the destruction of the planet and breaking into their house at night while they were sleeping, to leave their TV, stereo and PC on standby and leave their fridge door open.

It was in the early twenty-first century that the first blow against Rapid Global Warming was struck, when the US government, realising that invading foreign countries for oil is a lot more trouble than it’s worth, rushed to staunch its haemorrhaging popularity by launching a sneak attack using the most-sophisticated sun-blocking technology since the invention of the knotted handkerchief. Crippled by the most cunning plan in space since the cool-headed and logical thinking which gave birth to President Reagan’s Star Wars laser-missile defence plan, Rapid Global Warming quickly fell into decline. It finally passed away at the weekend at its family home, with all the windows open and the radiators on full blast.

Rapid Global Warming will be cremated on top of a giant oil well at St Bush’s Church of Last-Ditch Idiotic Ideas. It is survived by the US government’s plan to save us all by launching giant mirrors into space to block sunlight from reaching the Earth, and an increased use of fossil fuels and nuclear power to meet the giant surge in demand for electricity as we try to see just where the hell we’re going and what the f**k we’re doing during the long, dark days of the coming Ice Age.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 27 January 2007

• Lord Nolan 1928-2007 - author of the Nolan Report on standards in public life
• E Howard Hunt 1918-2007 - spy novelist and Watergate conspirator
• James Hillier 1915-2007 - co-inventor of the electron miscroscope
• Denny Doherty 1940-2007 - Mamas and Papas singer

The English Counter-Reformation 2006-2007

Political historians have today confirmed the death of the English Counter-Reformation, the attempt by a devout group led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Secretary of State for Communities Ruth Kelly and Prime Minister Tony Blair to overturn more than 300 years of the English state not being told what to do by the Church.

It was in the summer of 2006 that the desperate band, inspired by such martyrs as Sir Thomas "throw another heretic on the barbie" More and Guy "not the political blogger" Fawkes, not to mention the religious teachings of the 43rd President of the United States, the blessed George W of Bush, first hatched an audacious plan to suborn the will of Parliament to anybody who could claim they received direct instructions from (a) a higher being and/or (b) the aforementioned Mr Bush.

It is understood that the group first began meeting in secret in the middle of 2006, when - along with a large number of faith leaders from across the country - they hatched plans to overcome the will of Parliament by forcing the abandonment of the Faith School Quotas scheme. It was the startling success of this project that led the group to plot their most audacious coup yet - blowing up the provisions of the Equality Act 2006 with regard to adoption of children by homosexual couples on the grounds that the idea of placing children in the care of loving couples of the same sex was abhorrent to God, whereas heterosexual couples who occasionally play "hide the sausage" in the wrong bit of the bun are just indulging in a little forgivable experimentation.

In January 2007, as their plan to blow up the Equality Act 2006 neared completion, the plotters were joined by no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury who, despite having argued that it is "imperative to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage" still held it more important to support the view of anybody who espoused a faith, however medieval, than his own moral beliefs. Soon the Archbishop was supporting the rebels' stance in public and in private allowing them a secret meeting place inside his beard.

It was only this week that the Counter-Reformers were apprehended whilst trying to to sneak a number of explosive crucifixes into the cellars of the Houses of Parliament. Though the Archbishop and Cardinal are expected to be allowed to go free as a mark of respect for their offices, Messrs Kelly and Blair will be publicly hanged, drawn and quartered by their party colleagues.

The English Counter Reformation 2006-2007 is survived by the Equality Act 2006 and the tattered remnants of Tony Blair's leadership of the Government.

Branscombe Beach c. 160,000,000BC-2007

Mourners are already gathering to commemorate Devon's Branscombe Beach which died this week after being poisoned by the cargo ship MSC Napoli and trampled to death by freelance “environmentalists” engaged in a desperate last-ditch “rescue mission” (their mission being to rescue as much free stuff as possible before the police realised that taking shipwrecked goods without consent is actually theft).

Branscombe Beach began its very long life during the Jurassic Period over 200 million years ago when a marine incursion flooded Devon, providing it with its first shale beaches, spectacular cliffs, wonderful sea views and the beginnings of a long history of coastal vandalism.

For most of its life, Branscombe Beach contented itself with lying around and staring peacefully out to sea – its seaside idyll shattered only by the occasional passing teenage Ichthyosaur pausing just long enough to leave it’s footprint in some fresh shale for posterity.

It was with the arrival of Man that Branscombe Beach’s life changed forever. Early Neanderthals would gather by the sea in summer to complain that the beach was pebbly and not sandy, scream at their children, and dream of a day when the sea would bear giant cargo coracles that they could lure to the shore and pillage.

Celtic tribes settled near the beach around the start of the last millennium but continuous battles over seaside cream-tea franchises are thought to have taken their toll on the Beach. Its health continued to suffer in its later years as hopes of a quiet retirement were further dashed by an influx of smugglers and professional shipwreckers, lighting fires on the Beach and luring unsuspecting ships (and seamen) to their death in the hope of “salvaging” the latest tricorn hats bound for the Americas, or a BMW coach and four.

The Beach's weakened constitution was dealt a fatal blow last weekend when the MSC Napoli, bound for South Africa, foundered just off the strand, choking the Beach with fuel oil and the personal possessions of a Swedish family – including their prized collection of Abba albums and a cherished Ikea "Billy" bookcase that had been in the family for nearly 15 years.

Branscombe Beach was buried beneath a mountain of twisted freight containers, shattered gear-boxes, nappies and looters who were “just looking after the motorbike until we can return it to its rightful owner”, not to mention a thin veneer of oil, dead marine life and asphyxiated seabirds. The local council has refused permission for a cremation.

The Beach is survived by hundreds of miles of unspoilt Devon coastline – until the next ship disgorges its cargo providing a magnet for thieves from as far away as Middlesborough, desperate to get their hands on an empty barrel or some brine-flavoured cat food.

The Home Office 1782-2007

The death of The Office of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (known to friends and enemies alike simply as The Home Office) following a brutal altercation with a notorious Glaswegian hard man known to gang members as Secretary of State John Reid will be greeted with shock but little horror by all those who had come to know it.

Born in 1782, the child of the Southern Department and Secretary of State Lord Shelburne (who was soon to abandon his progeny for the post of Prime Minister), from its earliest days The Home Office was at the heart of some of the greatest controversies to afflict the nation. Before it had even learned to crawl it was already involved in the most vital affairs of state, including such matters as the direction of Crown grants, appointments and preferments (a role which we are advised certainly was not subsequently assigned to Lord Levy or Ruth Turner).

It was only in its fourth decade, however, that The Home Office was to settle into the job (perhaps one might even say vocation) that it was to cleave to for the next two hundred years, namely the suppression of the people - individually and severally - which it achieved by suspension of habeas corpus, restrictions on the freedom of assembly and granting its support to such brilliant policing actions as the Peterloo Massacre. It was not long after this that, under the direction of Home Secretary Robert Peel, The Home Office first began to dabble in class A legislation.

The hard life which the Home Office was to lead (setting up prison hulks, sending felons to Australia, locking up Chartists and General Strikers and later even the odd Blackshirt), combined with an ever-increasing intake of bills and statutes, began to take a toll. In the mid-1960s, under the influence of Home Secretary Roy "Flowerchild" Jenkins, The Home Office briefly fell out with "the man" and engaged in a series of permissive "happenings", including relaxation of divorce law and abolition of theatre censorship as well as supporting the legalisation of abortions and homosexuality. This "fabulous freak out" turned out to be a brief mid-life crisis before the department of state began the slide into old age.

By the 1980s The Home Office was showing obvious signs of being unable to care for itself. Around the same time it fell under the influence of the first in a sequence of Home Secretaries who were themselves addicted to regular injections of publicity (or "chasing the Murdoch"). Forced to push out more and more laws of lower and lower quality, in recent years The Home Office has shown increasing signs of forgetfulness - often misplacing thousands of prisoners at a time - and paranoia, first insisting on keeping every last citizen under constant CCTV observation, later demanding that each person be required to carry an identity card and be willing to give up their full DNA details to any state employee from a benefits assessor to a lollipop lady. It was in this distracted state that The Home Office first came into contact with John Reid. The tragic result was inevitable.

The Home Office will be buried with little ceremony over the following months, it leaves behind it 24,000 highly dependent civil servants and its two young children, the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love.

But Not Forgotten: Week Ending 20 January 2007

• Robert Anton Wilson 1932-2007 - co-author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy
• Art Buchwald 1925-2007 - American newspaper humourist
• Bo Yibo 1908-2007 - Last of the 'Eight Immortals'
• Barzan Ibrahim Al Tikriti 1951-2007 - half-brother of Saddam Hussein
• Alice Coltrane 1937-2007 - jazz musician and widow of John Coltrane