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Newsbiscuit - Best of October 2024

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October 2024


After all that stuff about a fiscal black hole, and the winter fuel payment thing, there was considerable anxiety about the Budget. Sound familiar? Rachel Reeves delivered her budget on October 30th and whacked businesses with big rises in National Insurance and minimum wage costs. Still, at least she didn’t break any manifesto commitments. Kind of. The Conservatives continued to grind through a leadership election process, hampered by the complete lack of any decent candidates. Just think, back then Robert Jenrick was still considered middle of the road.


In the US, presidential candidate Kamala Harris (remember her?} released her medical records. And Donald Trump continued to not release his.


In entertainment news, Jeremy Clarkson had a cardiac thingy, and had to go to the NHS. Turns out, he does have a heart. Who knew? In sporting news, female pensioners were aghast at Wimbledon’s plans to remove their eye candy, and replace line judges with Hawkeye. No, not the guy from M*A*S*H.


Here is a selection of the top Newsbiscuit stories from October 2024. Click through to read the stories and see the author credits. Scroll down to see some of the month’s best headlines.


UK politics



US and world politics



Jeremy Clarkson



Other news



Headlines - politics


Lettuce makes late bid for Tory leadership

Burning rubbish overtakes politics as dirtiest form of power

After attacking UN, Israel to start stomping on kittens

Gen Z and Gen Alpha reject GenRick

Special episode of Little Britain to feature Badenoch & Jenrick

Starmer: I won't raise taxes for working people... but Rachel will...

'Feels like 14 years already' says Starmer

All of Starmer's decisions so far described as complete no-brainers

Strange drone over the Pentagon revealed to be a broadcast of Keir Starmer’s speech

Tory party lumbered with choice between two Liz-Truss-calibre leadership candidates


...more headlines...


Are you wasting your time online? Take our quiz to find out

Barefoot man finally realises Socktober is not a thing

Charity regrets its slogan 'Let's help bone cancer patients'

Are transparent urns the future? Remains to be seen

Local selling Cuban food, drink and cigars becomes Castro pub

Elderly nuns to star in action movie Old Habits Die Hard

Local dog-sitter flattened hundreds of pups

Man with a chip on his shoulder attacked by seagulls


...and some more...


Woman who wants to have her cake and eat it buys two cakes

Man who ‘always goes the extra mile’ sacked from taxi driver job

Man who fights fire with fire sacked from the Fire Service

Printer admits it hasn’t run out of ink, it’s just taking the p!ss

Where to look to see the comet passing by for the first time in 800,000 years. Up.

London Eye 'on the blink'

Hawk-Eye to replace line judges? You can NOT be serious!!

Man enters 11th hour of 5-minute DIY task


'Arse in a sling' to feature in Corporate edition of St John's Ambulance manual

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Triangular bandages have long been the staple of first aiders trained by St John's Ambulance personnel.  Doughnuts wound out of calico sheets are used to protect items projecting from the body, disappointingly usually depicted as the chest or upper arm, rarely the anus.  A carefully tied sling around the neck tied up with a half hitch and a granny is used to support broken arms and a figure of eight wrapped around the neck, previously used to keep broken clavicles from grinding but more frequently used to intimidate first-time first-aiders in an embarrassing initiation ceremony are the main uses for the versatile fabric sheet.


Management personnel, who are unlikely to want to splint a broken arm, elevate a limb or provide CPR (Company Public Relations, apparently) have requested an abridged version of the manual to include who to shout at in an emergency and how to actually put an arse in a sling.


'It's a complicated manoeuvre,' suggested a senior first-aider today.  'We recommend the management learn the more specialised techniques such as putting a leg in a sling first, then progressing to hand to wallet techniques,' he said.  A senior manager dismissed the suggestion that the technique could prove challenging.  'I've been covering my arse for decades, that's why I'm where I am today.  That and Daddy, of course.' 




Bankrupt Tory Party disbands and Reforms without anyone noticing

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Hard working Conservative MP for Rottenshire and Stour, Fenton Axewound, has redoubled his efforts to not bother hiding it.


Speaking patriotically from a secret tax haven location next to his offshore fund in Dubai, Axewound remarked, 'After 200 years of selflessly extracting everyone else's money and keeping it for ourselves, it turns out that wasn't a sustainable system after all. It's all jolly unfair. No one could've seen it coming. We have staunchly upheld the British value of loyalty. Loyalty to the principle of every rich man for himself, it is what has bound us all together for so long.


'Through no fault of our own, we're now somehow in far more debt than can be swept under the priceless rug at Party HQ. It just doesn't make any sense. Our MPs - good eggs the lot of them - always like to help whenever and wherever they can. They've been helping themselves to Party funds using the same honorable methods they've always applied to helping themselves from the public purse.


'I blame the Party donors. It must be their fault. Those hussies are now flirting with Reform and Labour instead of us. How could they? Our precious nanny state teats have dried up and withered away. That has forced us to shut down the Conservative Party as a legal entity, write off all the debt, and immediately open up a new completely unconnected Conservative Party with all of the same MPs but, crucially, none of the debt. Do you see how very different that is?


'It is criminal. Absolutely criminal that we have been put in this position. But here's the really clever part no one will see coming. At the critical moment, we're all going to loyally jump ship to Reform. Well, the Roubles are sloshing around there now, aren't they? We shall do our duty of each taking as much as we can for ourselves, and then Reform will have to Reform. In the end we'll just rename it the Continuity Conservatives or something, and the voters won't notice. They certainly won't remember.


'Now do excuse me. I appear to have swan stuck in my teeth.'


While failing to herd cats - Tory fat-cat MPs - into loyally jumping ship to Reform at the same time, the Opposition was gifted to the Liberal Democrats.




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