New CBeebies Show: Meet COP The Talking Shop

The BBC are introducing pre-school children to climate change issues via a new series featuring a talking shop. Meet COP The Talking Shop will air next week and will feature the cute climate aware character COP, who loves to talk about rising temperatures, stormy weather and saving the planet.

Nobody actually buys anything that they’re selling, so they have plenty of time for a natter. There’s also plenty of comedy to keep the toddlers amused including lots of references to wind, and numerous songs for the children to join in with, such as ‘Rain, rain go away!’, ‘Row, row, row your boat gently up the street’, and ‘Oh where, oh where has my polar bear gone?’

A CBeebies producer told us, “Pre-school is an important time to start climate change education, and the first thing they need to learn is how to talk about it, because at the end of the day, and probably the World, that’s all anybody ever does.'

Photo by stockcake: children-watching-television_1309980_340087

Customs seize taramasalata hidden in cocaine

Customs officials have seized a consignment of illegal fishy Greek dip, smuggled into the UK to alleviate a middle-class drought.

Officials searching a yacht off the coast of Sussex today discovered Britain’s biggest haul of fifty kilos of illegal stinky pink goo, cleverly hidden inside innocent packages of high-grade cocaine weighing several tonnes.

Customs Official, Martin Smith, explained: 'We were alerted to the scarcity of the off-white, pongy mush in supermarkets, and that decent families all over the South East entertaining this weekend would be without their essential fish-egg gloop. Middle-class diners will pay a high price for this cod-traband, but not too much, because they’re notoriously tight as cramp.

'We have been relentless in the pursuit of smugglers, and we knew we’d struck gold on boarding when our sniffer dogs began retching and trying to hold their noses.

'This faux roe hitting affluent tree-lined avenues would have been culinary suicide for the supplier and social exclusion for its users, as samples analysed from the haul were found to be nothing more than anchovy purée mixed with Yakult.

'And obviously, we’re concerned about the Class A cocaine. Its ability to preserve fresh food is entirely unproven.'

Image: "Taramasalata" by katsommers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Judges urged to leave out the 'preachy bit'

Mr Justice Bufton-Tufton was about to pass sentence in the case of a particularly heinous murder when he was crestfallen to receive a memo from the Law Society, calling on judges to leave out the 'preachy, self-righteous bit' to save time.

'The Criminal Justice system is hopelessly backed up, and we’re very conscious that justice delayed is justice denied,' ran the memo. 'Obviously we need to give barristers sufficient time to present evidence, cross-examine witnesses and so forth. And the jury must of course be allowed all the time they need to reach a fair verdict.'

The memo concludes that the only area in which they can legitimately look for time savings is the self-indulgent speeches judges make. The new guidelines call for them simply to pass sentence on the defendant 'without getting all Mills and Boon about it.'

'It’s such a pity,” said Bufton-Tufton. 'I’d written an absolute corker for this case. 'You seem a particularly cold-hearted and callous individual… the innocent young life you took… the broken hearts of her loved ones… the hole in their lives that will never be filled…’. Would have had the jury in tears, I guarantee it.

'And now they want me just to say ‘You will go to prison for 15 years.’ I mean, where’s the passion? Where’s the drama? Makes me wonder why I bothered becoming a judge in the first place.

“Thank god I still have my second job writing romantic fiction under the name Evangeline Devereaux… hang on, you’re not going to print that bit, are you?'

Picture credit: Wix AI (Judge in a wig - hilarious)