Wicked Tories have stolen the economic growth lever, claim Labour

"We always said the Tories were vile and callous," said the Labour Party's chief economic strategist, "but we never thought they would stoop this low.

"When Rachel Reeves and I were together at the London Playschool of Economics, the classroom assistants would tell us tales of an economic growth lever which stood in the enchanted garden behind Number 11, Downing Street.

"They said that anyone who pulled it during a recession, and tapped their heels together thrice, could start a boom which would make every business in the UK a world-beater, and every citizen as rich a wealthy and contented homeowner.

"Imagine our horror! Once we'd freed the land of 14 years of Tory rule and entered the chancellor's residence, we poked around in the shrubbery but could find no trace of it.

"We can only imagine that the evil Conservatives have squirrelled away the growth lever in their lair in Matthew Parker Street. Even worse, they never pulled the growth lever themselves - undoubtedly because they've always wanted the UK to be poor and bankrupt.

"Rachel told her fellow elves in cabinet that she would be confronting the Tories with their rotten deeds in the Commons. However, Prime Goblin Starmer told her she needed to keep really quiet about magic levers and enchanted gardens in public, for fear it would make Labour look even dafter than it did already."

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MuskBot recalled for system upgrade

TeslaCorps has been forced to recall all MuskBot 3000 models as a major system fault has been discovered.

The MuskBot series were developed to provide backup for The Great Man, but have been operating independently since Mr Musk's over-inflated ego partially ruptured 18 months ago and left him hospitalised across three west-coast states.

"The 'Bot was upgraded in a bit of a rush after the accident, and is a wee bit patchy" admitted a BotSpokesAI, "but we hoped any anomalous behaviour would be written off as uber-rich white guy privilege spouting bollocks on all subjects under the sun. However, it is now clear that the safeguard features are failing to filter the worst excesses of this behaviour"

When pressed as to how swift this upgrade would be, the botspokesAI mused for a moment

"Well, we might be able to lift some of the control routines from the TrumpDroi ... Whoops - I've said too much"

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Labour to massively expand in-patient mental care for its critics

"For far too long," said a Labour party spokes-shrink, wielding a straight jacket in one hand and a sedative in the other, "British society has been starved of places where our most recalcitrant critics can be locked away to get the long-term psychiatric care they deserve.

"Take the City traders who irrationally sold UK government bonds - simply because they were scared of losing a packet on them.

"Well, they're just asking for trouble doing that, aren't they? From now on, we'll be sending Treasury bureaucrats into the dealing rooms to certify all those selling off UK bonds to be paranoid schizophrenics. Then they'll be locked up in the shiny new mental health units we're building until they promise to buy every single bond we issue. 

"And from now on, anyone making cheap gags about Rachel Reeves getting her education at the London Infant School of Economics can expect two years minimum of tender love and care from our specially-trained teams of Nurse Ratchetts, with no chance of parole.

"And that goes for members of the public who've been telling pollsters on the streets they won't vote Labour again.

"We as a government are desperately trying to get the economy growing and to stop making appalling blunders. The last thing we need is people asking out loud why we're so useless.

"You want to have go at us? Just try it, sunshine. See how many people can hear you ranting from inside a padded cell." 

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