Tories to abandon “geographical constituencies”

The Conservative government, just possibly with this year’s general election in mind, has announced the end of the “geographical constituencies” that have formed the basis of British elections for the last 350 years.

“There’s really no logic to lumping people together just because they live in the same place,” said the head of the constitutional working group, Mr G Mander. “It makes more sense to look at how people have voted in the past, and group them on that basis.”

Asked how this would work, Mander said that groups of people who vote Tory would be called things like “Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire - just as they are at the moment.

”And of course, there’d be Labour constituencies too. Well, a Labour constituency anyway. We’d call it something like ‘Ghastlyplebshire’, and it would be made up of benefit scroungers… sorry, Labour voters wherever they happen to live.

“And let’s be honest, we Tories wouldn’t have a hope in hell of winning it. No siree. Shame, but we’ll just have to make that sacrifice for the greater good.”

Asked whether this wasn’t just a way to maintain power by putting all the Labour votes in a single constituency, so Labour only ever has one MP, Mander replied “That’s an extremely serious allegation, and deserves to referred to the Electoral Commission. Just give us a couple of weeks to appoint someone we like to run it.”

image from pixabay

Woman suddenly feels irresistible urge to mull

At midnight on December 1st, the true dawn of the Christmas season, Janice Langley, 56, of Nottingham felt an unusual yet familiar urge. That urge was to mull.

She told us that she was in her kitchen, enjoying a hot cocoa with her husband, Ken, before retiring to bed. All of a sudden, the cocoa seemed dull and uninteresting and offensively unfestive. She immediate dashed to her cupboards and rifled through them with such alarming urgency, it caused her startled husband to cry out.

"What's happening, Love, what are you looking for", said a clearly unsettled Ken, "everything's falling on the floor".

He was right, the floor now sported Smores kits, hot chocolate envelopes, 3 mint tea bags and numerous assorted bean cans.

"I MUST MULL, " whispered Janice, "I MUST MULL!"

Finally, she seemed triumphant and emerged from a below surface cupboard with a small bottle of mulling syrup, bought last year but never opened. She unscrewed the bottle top and poured a good glug of the syrup into her Cocoa. She inhaled deeply and drank heartily.

"Yes. YES!" she shouted before pouring some syrup into Ken's glass of bitter, the cats milk and the budgies water dish. Ken had to stop her running outside after she had spied an unmulled bird bath in the garden.

"It was like she was possessed", said a breathless Ken, "every year it happens and every year I forget. I mean we all love Christmas but she mulled the communion wine and the holy water last year on Christmas Day. We've not been asked back to St Cuthbert's since".

image from pixabay

Channel 4 changes slogan to “Yeah, that’ll do”

To mark the 10th anniversary of Gogglebox, the programme which consists entirely of watching people while they watch TV, Channel 4 has announced it’s changing its slogan to “Yeah, that’ll do”.

”Our previous slogan, ‘to create change through entertainment’, seemed appropriate for when we first started, back in the heady days of 1982,” said a spokesman today.

“The first new channel for decades, bringing new voices, fresh perspectives… what an incredible time it was,” he continued. “Or so they tell me - I only started 6 months ago.

”Now, of course, the media landscape has changed beyond all recognition. Viewers have hundreds of channels to choose from, plus streaming services. And yet somehow they’re happy just to watch footage of other people watching telly.

”In the circumstances, any slogan implying effort, ambition or creativity would be ridiculous. So we talked about it for a couple of minutes, came up with ‘Yeah, that’ll do’, then went to lunch.”

When it was pointed out that Channel 4 News is still considered the best nightly news programme, the spokesman replied “Sure, for the moment, but there’s a budget meeting coming up. Don’t be surprised if you tune in one day and find it’s just Krishnan Guru-Murthy telling you what’s trending on TikTok.”

image from pixabay