Private Eye

Eco-Gnomics: “Mr Broadbent’s farm is on a remote hill. When it is windy, all you hear is wind. When there is no wind, the turbine he is proposing will not turn. There has been no objection from his nearest neighbours – all hidden away by a road, Mr Broadbent’s farmhouse, the orchard and a very large oak tree. Yet the environmental health officer declined the application because of ‘amenity impact’…”

With M.D. : “Why has ‘new’ Labour chosen not to protect girls from genital warts as well as cervical cancer?”


With Muckspreader: “The real reason we have easily the highest meat inspection costs in Europe is because of the mess Britain made of implementing EU directives, which has already closed down three quarters of our abattoirs. The reason Defra is now so desparate to recover the costs of this madness is the £450m it lost in EU subsidies by failing to administer them properly…”

With Dr B.Ching : “Perhaps someone should tell rail minister Tom Harris how the rail system has recently been consuming four or five times more public funding than British Rail received at the height of the 1980s economic boom, despite the extra revenue from all the eye-watering fare rises since privatisation. Perhaps they should also remind him that Network Rail has a £20bn debt, more than three times its annual revenue, and that his government has decreed that ticket prices must rise steeply so fare revenue in 2014 will be 80 per cent higher than in 2007…”



With Piloti: “The Victorian building was the fourth chapel built on the site since 1785. Clearly it was the last: a nice block of flats will now rise there instead. Meanwhile five people have been arrested on suspicion of arson…”

With Bookworm: “Chasing a quick buck round the Olympic stadium in the smog seems like a good idea to desperate publishers, and in the run-up to the games they have been flooding the market with China-related books in an attempt to cash in. History, fiction and travel books have all been affected, with cover designs sporting endless images of dragons, chopsticks, emperors, great walls and bamboo shoots….”

With Slicker: “Is the Serious Farce Office, like the British government, looking for the exit in Iraq?”