Newsbiscuit: Best of August 2024

August 2024

The Paris Olympics come to an end. Britain wins 65 medals and comes in third behind the USA and China. More importantly, we are top in Europe, and we get more medals than Australia.

To tarnish Olympic success, the month is marred by summer rioting. This is fuelled by nonsense spread by social media, which is lapped up by the gullible. After warming up (ha!) on winter fuel payments, Keir Starmer continues to play the tough guy. He releases some old lags from prison to make more cells available to lock up the rioters.

UK water companies are fined millions for sewage spills. Again. Does this happen every month? It seems to.

In the entertainment world, police issue an arrest warrant for Katie Price after she fails to attend a bankruptcy hearing. And Harry and Meghan go to Colombia to ‘make the internet safer for children’. And to promote their charity work. And themselves. How could they choose Colombia over the Edinburgh Festival?

In overseas news, Ukraine, Gaza.

In the US, a judge rules that Google have an illegal monopoly over internet searches. Finally, an American news story that isn’t about the US Election.

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

Crime and punishment

‘I'm having that’ says King Charles after huge diamond discovered

CEO of Thames Water explains why it's all your fault

Racist riots just 'Olympic celebrations that got out of hand'

Politics

Tabloids rejoice in finding a person who will properly suffer after losing Winter Fuel Payment

Government to offer pensioners ‘winter pants'

Labour Ministers spend £1bn on High-Vis jackets

Sport and entertainment

Man’s explanation of Olympic cycling event enters third week

Oscars introduce “pointless sequel” category

Threats of Improv only way to get traffic moving during Edinburgh Festival

Other news

Silicon Valley CEOs rejoice at annual data harvest festival

Altar stones were floated to Stonehenge, claims anti-vaxxer

Atheist duped again by religious element of 'Thought for the Day'

Headlines

GCHQ close to decoding rules for cycling Keirin

'I take my job as an MP seriously,' wins joke of the Fringe

Puppeteer offers to explain string theory

Search for 'Google's illegal online monopoly' yields no results

Top uni accepts students with 25m back stroke certificate

Police tasked with arresting Katie Price have no idea what she looks like

Builder who lost his plans of the stairs told to retrace his steps

Israel and Hamas, in a rare show of unity, agree to continue hostilities

Starmer pledges to transform UK steel industry into no-steel industry

No signs of green shoots on Conservative party stump

‘The UK is too dangerous for me and my family’ says Harry as he lands in Colombia

English tourist resort attracts more visitors with rioting mini breaks

Image credit: Wix

New Thames Water mascot leaves a bad smell in the boardroom

News emerged today that beleaguered Thames Water recently briefed a leading ad agency to come up with a customer friendly mascot, in an attempt  to try and win favour with its less-than-happy captive subscriber base. 

But sadly, Tommy The Turd, a cuddly, brown, sausage-shaped character with the catchphrase: "I'd give that ten minutes if I were you," failed to win favour when the agency presented its proposed campaign to bosses.

Company bigwigs were said to be furious with one exec, who asked not to be named, commenting brusquely. 'Look, I know this company is the very embodiment of tin-eared arrogance towards its customers, but even we could never have hoped to get away with such a thing.

'The money we've wasted on this, over five hundred grand by the way, might as well have been flushed round the S-bend. I mean, it could've been divided it up between the board members as a little bit of extra bounce. Tommy The Turd has to be a shittiest idea I have ever seen. I knew we should've just hired that stupid, effing, pink, spotty wanker, Blobby.' 

image from pixabay

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New regulator to monitor performance of regulators

A new government body, provisionally named OfReg, has been created to monitor the performance of regulators. 

'It’s clear that many regulators aren’t doing the job the public has a right to expect of them,' said the Minister for Pointless Bureacracy, Sir Reginald Bufton-Tufton. 'This new body will put a stop to that.

'In line with established best practice in the sector, OfReg will be staffed by people who owe favours to, people we want to shunt out of their existing jobs but can’t fire, and a chap who used to fag for me at Uppingham.'

Asked what he would do if OfReg turns out to be useless too, Sir Reginald said maybe they could set up another regulator to monitor its performance. When it was suggested that the number of regulators was spiralling out of control, he agreed, and said a committee should be set up to look into the problem.

'Or how about this - the water regulator OfWat could monitor the performance of OfReg? They’d have the spare time, since they’re doing sod all about the water companies.'

Picture credit: Wix AI