Government to base its drugs policy on things overheard down the pub

Following the sacking of the government's chief drugs adviser, David Nutt, the Home Secretary Alan Johnson has announced that it will be formulating a new drugs policy based on hearsay, old wives' tales and a story about how some geezer took speed and got turned into a fire extinguisher.

Nutt was forced out of his job on Friday after insisting that facts be used as a guide to reality. "The man was a troublemaker from the start," said Johnson, "On my first day, I asked him to make me a hoverboard and an ice-cream maker in the shape of a lion's head. He said that he didn't do that sort of thing and I told that made him a pretty awful scientist."

Nutt was responsbile for a series of public relations disasters, such as insisting that taking ecstacy was less dangerous than horse riding. Top equestrian Erica Lotterby questioned the findings. "Horse riding is indeed dangerous as is taking ecstacy. However, if you combine the two, they actually cancel each other out. Because if you're on a horse and on ecstacy, you're likely to hold the horse closer to you because it's just so lovely."

Johnson has promised that he will no longer be reliant on the dogma of scientific fact and will be sticking to rehashing sensationalist bunkum from the red tops. "It's important that people don't take drugs," said Johnson, "the untaxed drugs of course. For instance, if you take cocaine, your whole body becomes like a giant whistle. Smoking marajuana makes your spine homesick and every time you take a tab of LSD, part of the Pacific Ocean is executed by lethal injection. Fact."

Cameron to bring back the workhouse

The Conservative party has unveiled its plans to build neo-Dickensian holding spaces for the workshy and the smelly. The new communes will feature up-to-date facilities such as the most modern delousing equipment and brand spanking new recreational spaces where the dregs of society will be able to spend the time in which they are not required to spend 18 hours breaking up rocks banging their heads against a wall. A Conservative spokesperson said, "We see this as a really exciting opportunity for scum."

The Tories plans seem to have caught the mood of the nation. Reg Dwyer, a baker from Luton said, "I personally think it's a good idea. For too long these people who have been left behind by successive governments without the necessary training and education have been given a free ride. You see them loitering in the streets, drinking and smoking and really not contributing to a society that sees them as useless."

The Conservatives have been keen to stress that this new policy does not rule out payments to those unable to work. Benefits will be allocated to anyone who has suffered an injury whilst playing polo, choking on lobster parfait or thrashing their butler. The workhouses will also be rebranded to ensure a positive sheen on the whole backbreaking experience. The properties will not be known as workhouses but as "Scrubbers' Retreats".

Republicans to thwart Obama’s health plans by showing clips of Eastenders

It is the debate that it is dividing America into two separate camps. One side is trying to establish a healthcare system for all whilst the other side see this as the vilest incarnation of socialism since Bill Clinton’s Equal Opportunities for Interns programme of the Nineties. As usual, the issue is being debated on the airwaves and on national television with scaremongering adverts showing the potential dangers of using socialised medicine. One campaign shows Shane McGowan singing and features the tagline ‘Is This What You Want For Your Children?’

However, it is the use of clips of the popular soap opera Eastenders that has stirred up the most debate amongst Americans. Those against Obama’s healthcare plans say that the people featured in the programme are the perfect example of how socialised medicine fails to treat the most hideous of injuries. Chuck Beasley said, “This Ian Beale guy, he’s clearly been in a car accident. The treatment he got means that he can’t talk right and his face is still a complete mess. Then there’s Alfie Moon, that guy must have taken a lot of blows to the head that have gone completely untreated. He looks like a monkey who’s constantly surprised.”

Other notable British have been targeted by the American right to support their cause of the dangers of socialised medicine. Peter Crouch, Chris Moyles and Jeremy Clarkson have all been pinpointed on the assumption that they have had bad experiences with the NHS rather than just being plain ugly. Wesley Pinchmore, a lobbyist for a health insurance firm said, “I mean no disrespect to the Queen but she looks like she’s been throttled by a horse.”

State handouts to deceased slammed: zombies claim discrimination

Bankers across the country were thanking their lucky stars today following a series of embarrassing fiscal revelations at the government’s expense. Not content with buying up toxic debt, it appears that treasury finance chiefs have been making sizeable payments to individuals whose health had “severely waned”. An opposition spokesperson has been quoted as saying that “government policy on job seeker’s allowance and housing benefit was misguided enough, but no rationale whatsoever could be put forward for providing, say, income support to the recently deceased.”

A spokesperson for the dead defended the distributed funds, claiming it was necessary due to the high cost of living faced by the departed. “It’s a nightmare,” said Victor Sparrow through a medium based on the Tottenham Court Road, “people think it’s all ambrosia and clouds but it’s not. You've got to find money for food, transport and heating. I mean, it’s freezing down here in the barren wastelands of eternity. All we are demanding is a bit of money to help cushion ourselves from an unending cycle of torment.”

The government has tried to reclaim some of the money but has run into problems when trying to contact the claimants’ relatives. Cheryl Anderson, a civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions said, “When you phone people up, they just claim that they’ve never heard of their own dad. It’s pretty stupid.”