AI writed this headline: The future is now

It has been announced that the Isle of Wight’s best-selling free weekly ‘newspaper’ the Ventnor Harvester (not to be confused with the popular eatery) will be the first newspaper to be totally generated by AI with no human intervention whatsoever.

Proprietor Muppet Murdoch said, ‘We are proud to be world leaders to take news publishing into the sunlit uplands of an exciting tomorrow. Our innovative and exciting AI news-gathering will anonymise from where we plagiarised – oops, I meant creatively and lovingly duplicated – all of our exciting material. Here is an example of an item from this week’s exciting issue:-

‘In an exciting, sensational development today, some political bloke slagged off another political bloke, and accused him of being an anarchist / Reform fascist / Tory scum / Labour scum / Liberal scum / vegetarian / train spotter / Johnny Foreigner. The other political bloke hit back, accusing the first political bloke of being a sheep shagger and or Welsh / priest or bishop / former Post Office Chief Executive / Newsbiscuit contributor. Another political bloke standing outside his party’s stunning / iconic / exciting HQ slammed the first two, insisting that they were totally out of touch with the popular zeitgeist and that only his party could bring the county together and make the Isle of Wight Great Again (stylish baseball caps available in the Harvesters online store.)’

Mr Murdoch continued, ‘I had made the decision to bring the Harvester bang up to date. I found out that our neighbour’s son is doing GCSE Computing. His first project investigating Jaguar Land Rover’s IT systems didn’t go quite according to plan, so he was happy to have a stab at AI. People have been claiming that some rag called Newsbiscuit has been using AI for years – and when you look at the bad grammar, stilted prose and total lack of anything remotely funny this is probably right.’

When asked what the initials AI stood for, Mr Murdoch confidently responded 'Artificial Insemination'.

Image credit: perchance.org

Man who looks older than his age did have tough paper round

A criminal whose unflattering photo appeared on Facebook alongside a news story about his latest drug-dealing offence has confirmed that yes, he did actually have a really tough paper round when he was a teenager.

Michael Doyle, 40 was given a 3 year jail term for supplying class A drugs, according to the local news story, with the general consensus in the Facebook comments being that he should do the time for his crime, but also that he had clearly been prematurely aged by the severity of a casual job he must have had delivering newspapers as a child.

‘Listen, yes, it’s true, I did have a particularly brutal paper round in 1998-1999 in the Squires Gate area of Blackpool when I was about 13 - thanks to all those who have commented and recognised this and who obviously empathise with my plight’.

‘I only delivered papers at the weekend - those broadsheet papers had about 10 different sections. Remember the Culture section in the Sunday Times in the 1990s? It weighed about a kilo on its own. Imagine lugging 20 of those around the Squires Gate area up past the pleasure beach - it was a a bloody backbreaker.’

‘Even just lifting a copy of the News of the World was a feat of strength. Those were the phone tapping and Fake Sheikh days and they took up about 30 pages every Sunday along with the usual mildly xenophobic stories’.

‘I was diagnosed with rheumatism at 30 and have had carpal tunnel problems and posture problems since my 20s. I must look about 65 in that police mug shot where I’m staring vacantly into the distance, as hundreds of people have kindly pointed out. Certainly wouldn’t use that one on my Insta profile. lol’

image from pixabay

Newspaper editors get ready for Donald Trump's pharma tariffs

President Trump says he will announce new tariffs on pharmaceutical goods soon, and will probably describe them as a shot in the arm for US drug companies, or healthy competition, or something.

This advance notice from President Trump gives newspaper editors time to polish up some medical puns for their headlines.

‘Strong medicine’ would be a suitable short, but slightly lazy headline. More sophisticated efforts might include ‘stop taking the tablets’ or ‘fly in the ointment’. More desperate efforts could include ‘anti-buy-otics’, ‘tariffs on depression meds are a real downer’, ‘medicine balls’, ‘now you’ll just have to make do with sex and rock’n’roll’ and ‘now it’s harder to get Viagra’.

You can expect Donald Trump to be referred to as a drug lord or medicine man and his tariffs as ‘a drug on the market’ and/or ‘an ill wind’. Or how about 'Trump calls in sick'. Or 'Trump's prescription'? In comparison, British invalids, and the workshy, will be 'worried sick'.

You can expect plenty of pill references – bitter pill, poison pill, no sugaring the pill, for example. Unhappy pills, perhaps. ‘Trump imposes tariffs on suppositories by the backdoor’ is a possibility. Not really what you’d want to read at breakfast time. But hey! - if it sells newspapers....

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay