Excursion to Lake Doom cancelled, Lake Monster “disappointed”

The daring attempt by British scientists to bore through nearly two miles of Antarctic ice to lake Ellsworth was called off on Christmas day after it emerged Jenkins had spent all the fuel money on tea. The mission began to unravel last week when the main boiler broke down, leaving the team with nothing to do but play monopoly and wait for British Gas to come out with the part.

With the boiler fixed, the team had aimed to dig down to Lake Ellsworth using giant hot water pistols in the hopes of being the first team to be eaten by a rare Antarctic Lake Monster. Unfortunately, however, the initial bore holes needed to enable the recirculation of the water didn’t join up and after 20 hours of trying to join them, monopoly rage struck late on Christmas eve. It was at this point that the team, in examining their fuel supplies found they did not have enough to continue as Jenkins had used all the fuel money to buy Earl Grey. So in the early hours of Christmas day, the team had to reluctantly call an end to the digging. In a press release, Professor Martin Siegert, Principal Investigator of the Sub-glacial Lake Ellsworth experiment, stated:“Although circumstances have not worked out as we would have wished, I am confident that through the huge efforts of the field team, and our colleagues in the UK, we have done as much as we possibly could have done and I sincerely thank them all [except Jenkins, he’s an idiot]".

The Russians and Americans amongst other teams also have plans for drilling into sub-glacial lakes, so only time will tell if the British dreams of being the first to have a team eaten by Antarctic Lake Monsters has been dashed.

North Korean rocket launch: the elaborate regime of deception

Following an intelligence investigation into the North Korean (NK) satellite launch earlier this month, it has emerged that elaborate deception tactics were used by NK in an attempt to catch the U.S. intelligence system off-guard in the run up to the launch.

The most extravagant of which was a monkey dressed in a $400 custom made sheepskin jacket, found in Toronto’s Ikea car park just a few days before the launch. After attracting much media attention the monkey was quickly scooped up by U.S. analysts amidst fears it was a ‘monkey spy’ who had alighted at the wrong bus stop on route to a nearby U.S. intelligence base.  Officials said: “Despite offering the finest bananas we can source, the monkey just won’t talk; however our satellites have been monitoring monkey training camps in North Korea for some time now and we are confident he is working under cover.”

No one suspects a monkey...

He added: “We first had our suspicions that they [NK] were developing underhand tactics after intercepting an email, which detailed an elderly man called Chang-see Moon, who has been tasked with tracking U.S. satellite orbits from a remote mountain shack for the past five years. He would reportedly sit and stare at the sky with his telescope for days on end, logging each satellite which flew overhead and then report back to the military.”

In a state press release, North Korean officials said that this sophisticated tracking of satellite orbits allowed them to launch their rocket at a precise time with no satellites overhead to avoid prying U.S. eyes. They did, however, deny allegations that they were using monkeys to gather intelligence data, suggesting stripograms are much more efficient at extracting information from ageing defence dinosaurs.

Hey, Paterson, leave that fox alone!

A poll released to coincide with Boxing Day hunting meetings suggests the British public would much rather hunt “Toffs on horses” than cute fluffy foxes, after the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson: a keen horse rider, huntsman and widely accused climate change sceptic, reluctantly agreed to postpone a vote on lifting the ban until he was sure they would win. 

"Please sir, don't send a pack of angry dogs after me"

This comes following the leak of footage appearing to show the development of a smear campaign against the RSPCA’s foxy friends, suggesting ‘rogue foxes’ are getting it too easy now they aren’t having their legs chewed off by pursuing dogs, and are gorging unsuspecting children’s faces off in local parks whilst shouting "Ha Ha! Boom! Boom!"

Campaigners say Paterson’s popularity is now in a state of perpetual decline with people who actually care about the environment, following the string of blunders since his appointment, including brandishing gardening and outdoor presenting legend, Alan Titchmarsh, a “complete muppet” earlier this month after he criticised the government's countryside policies. 

The opinion poll suggested that before the “greenest” blue government could reinstate a shade of red, the government should nominate some ministerial cannon fodder to be chased by hunting dogs in a new reality TV programme, aimed at publicly addressing any issues of cruelty in the hunt.

Merry Christmas!

...from the forest peoples of Middle England.

Slight feeling of disappointment as world fails to end

Thousands of weirdie-beardie types have woken up disappointed this morning after once again the world failed to be destroyed in an ambiguous cataclysm.  Through much squinting and deliberate misinterpreting of the ancient Mayan calendar, they decided that the 183rd apocalypse prediction (from the past 2000 years), would prove lucky and that this time the world really would end...honestly.

Egged on by the media and grinning entrepreneurs they happily handed over all their monies for survival kits, doomsday bunkers (£920 would have let you hide in Stalin’s personal bunker) and one-way (or else rather hypocritical) trips to Bugarach, France in the hopes of being rescued by aliens.  Causing governments the world over to worry that some more of their subjects might commit ritual suicide, a solution our French source suggested was 'a little silly': “If ze world really iz going to end, I’d rather die covered in high-class prostitutes with a nose full of ze Bolivian marching powder,” definitely sounds better than drinking a foul ‘potion’ in a cold damp field whilst wearing organic itchy hemp clothes.

Vegetarian ration packs were going down a treat.

The Chinese government resorted to arresting 500 scaremongers from the ‘Eastern Lightning’ religious group, who were handing out pamphlets foretelling the end of the world and the French government sealed off Pic de Bugarach Mountain to prevent any more hippies getting drunk and falling off the top.

The French Mayor of Bugarach Jean-Pierre has issued a plea to all crazies to stay at home and not descend on his picturesque village saying: “our village will not be able to cope,” possibly due to the lack of local mental health facilities.

Meanwhile, hotels in Yucatan: the heartland of the ancient Mayan empire, are fully booked up into next year, genuine doomsday threat or elaborate long lasting tourism drive? You decide…

December Issue of This Way Up

December issue is available for viewing and download:

 

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-dzZ9A0Wc2rYXB1TTIwNWIxWkU

(Download for best viewing quality)

Merry Christmas Ma’am: Britain reasserts its claim to land it doesn’t own.

Britain today shows it hasn’t lost its colonial heritage by reasserting claims to no man’s land in Antarctica, presenting the Queen with an early Christmas present comprising 169,000 square miles of prime Antarctic real estate, now known as 'Queen Elizabeth Land'.

 

Queen Elizabeth Land (Red) offers spectacular sea views, a few penguins and ample acreage for snowball fights.

The frozen desert, which was previously unnamed, falls within British Antarctic Territory, Argentine Antarctica, Chilean Antarctic Territory or For God’s Sake Leave One Place On Earth Untouched Territory, depending on where you come from.

Despite claimants having a ‘if you recognise my claim I’ll recognise yours’ type agreement, most other countries do not recognise land grabbing in Antarctica and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty prevents the prospecting of oil, gas and minerals other than for scientific research. The treaty preventing unscrupulous activity on Queen Elizabeth Land will come under review in 2048, where changes can be made by unanimous agreement of all parties. 

The Queen is said to be delighted with her acquisition though insisted she did not wish to be mined for oil; however, sources suggest that scientists have an underground global agreement to never find anything useful on the continent in order to prevent incompetent politicians making a mess.

IPCC ‘expert reviewer’ worshipper of ancient sun god

Academic eyebrows were raised yesterday after it became apparent that any old riff raff could get on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 800 strong ‘expert reviewer’ board, which are shown the draft report and asked to comment before general release.

This comes following the unauthorised draft release of the 5^th IPCC global warming report by a rogue reviewer, where it quickly became clear he was not selected on either profession of expertise or reviewing capabilities.  The reason for going rogue quickly became clear on the website where the report was published, where some abysmally cherry picked statements were butchered together to try support unfounded conclusions on the causes of climate change.

The 2012 Wisconsin Cherry Picking Champion said: “This is possibly the worst case of cherry picking I’ve ever seen, half of what he cherry picked doesn’t even support what he’s saying. Who is this guy and what’s his deal with the sun?...amateur.”

The rogue climate change sceptic who clearly didn’t read the report he promised he wouldn’t make public, claimed it highlighted that enhanced solar forcing is a significant factor contributing to current climate change, stating that authors acknowledge “strong evidence for enhanced solar forcing,” when the report in fact points to a minimal influence of solar forcing and an almost certainly that human emissions are the principal cause.

 

Even the summary for policy makers (which hopefully some policy makers will actually read this time around) shows that solar forcing is about 1/24^th of that of human driving agents.

S