Whilst praising increased performance levels in the NHS, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt announced, Wednesday, that further improvements were needed in order to reach government targets. Outlining plans for the coming decade, Hewitt revealed that top of the list of performance-related measures is the controversial plan to equip all nursing staff with brooms, implanted anally, which the government believe will help them cut down on service costs throughout the NHS. ‘They’ll be able to sweep up as they go,’ Hewitt explained as she toured the Andrew MacMillane Ward in Romsey General Hospital where the scheme has been trialled.

‘I admit that it took a bit of getting use to,’ said Nurse Wendy Bushbaum as she demonstrated the new implant to watching reporters. ‘It takes me an extra five minutes to get ready in the morning and it’s hard to find underwear, but other than that, it’s been remarkably easy to adapt.’ With a coy grin, Nurse Bushbaum confessed that, ‘if it wasn’t for the extra money they’re giving us, I don’t think I would have gone through with it, but now, I wouldn’t be without my brush. It means that I go home to a clean house because I’ve already cleaned up any mess I made.’

In an interview with The Times, Charles Clarke has launched a scathing attack on David Cameron, claiming that the new leader of the Tories knows ‘nothing about nothing’. In turn, Mr. Cameron has accused Mr. Clarke of knowing ‘even less about nothing than nothing’.

Pete Townshend has warned iPod users that the continual use of earphones might eventually ruin their hearing. ‘I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf,’ he said on his website. Asked if he regretted playing his music so loud, Townshend confirmed that ‘yes it is a bit cold for this time of year.’ The Who’s management has moved to deny rumours that the band plans to regroup later in the year but tour under the name The What.

With the terrible news that Togo, the missing Jackass penguin, has been found in the alley behind a London casino, drunk on cheap gin and claiming to have lost the Isle of Wight zookeeper’s retirement fund on the tables, the government has been forced to again defend its plans for super casinos. Mr. Ron Clegg of ‘Gamblers Anonymous’ regretted the government’s continued intention to go ahead with the scheme, saying that ‘they just aren’t heeding our warnings, which is why we’re giving odds of 10 to 1 that they’re making a big mistake’. (more…)

David Cameron has called on the Tories to modernise and to take Ghandi as their model and help revitalise the Conservative Party. Speaking from his seat beneath a fake banyan tree on on Cromwell Green, Cameron had barely arranged his now characteristic white loincloth before British troops moved in and broke up his meeting of the shadow cabinet.

Meanwhile in his New Year message to his party, Charles Kennedy had pledged to use the example set by Martin Luther King and planned a million man march on London next Sunday. This has been cancelled, since it has been pointed out that the million members of the Liberal Democrats only exist in Mr. Kennedy’s mind and, besides, the rest would be too busy watching Hugh Fearnley–Whittingstall’s new series on Channel 4.

Criticism of the New Year honours list continues after it was announced that Alan Titchmarsh is to be made a Dame. ‘One think’s it a ruddy farce,’ said an experienced commentator on constitutional affairs. ‘I really don’t know what to say, but Philip has told me that he won’t be there in protest.’

One of the most significant events of the last week has passed by with remarkably little comment. In one of the most important policy decisions of the Blair years, the government has awarded a CBE to Jonathan Ive, the man behind Apple’s iconic iPod and iMac.

‘The popularity of the iPod convinced us that it was time to rebrand our thinking about the Middle East,’ explained Sir Wilfred Sands, design consultant to the Foreign Office’s stationary department. From now on, iRaq and iRan will be rebranded throughout all offical government documents, maps, charts, and visas. ‘We feel it makes them seem much more comfortable,’ Sands went on to argue, whilst polishing the new transparent plastic plate they hope to erect outside the iRanian embassy. ‘You know, this is the sort of thing that makes you think: hey, this is the sort of nation you don’t mind taking to the negotiating table.’

Despite this news, rumours that the next version of the Apple Mac is to be powered by plutonium have so far proved groundless, though this has not prevented Intel from announcing that it refuses to rule out all options in the future.

In a shock move, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott outlawed the possession of snow citing it as ‘the single most terrible blot on the countryside’. Said Prescott, whose remit within government is the planning of Britain’s housing, ’snow has been routinely obscuring the effects of government policy for these last few years. We’ve worked tirelessly to cover up as much of that horrible grass stuff with nice clean concrete and we don’t want snow coming along and hiding all our hard work.’