Lack motivation and love cream cakes? You may not need a New Year’s Resolution after all...

... but you do need a kick up the arse.

Just as D-list Celebrity fitness DVDs begin their annual increase in popularity and glamour magazines fill their pages with dodgy diets, science can always be relied on to throw a cream cake in the works: being overweight may extend your life rather than shorten it.

This comes following the seasonal increase in soon to be ‘forgotten’ New Year’s Resolutions, made by those generally needing a good kick up the backside to instil some motivation. The study suggests fat may act to protect the heart and help you withstand periods of reduced eating resulting from illness.

Dietitian Sarah Shaw said: “After a week of pudding-filled parties, the non-chain smoking skinny folk carry on life as normal; going for their morning runs and eating healthily, whereas most of us lack the motivation to run for anything other than catching a bus or chasing a rogue toddler, hence the communal motivation found in New Year’s Resolutions is often the answer... for a few weeks.”

Bring on the pies...

The first study of its kind not to be funded by a fast food chain goes against all government advice aimed at tackling the obesity epidemic, prevalent under western diets and most common in the US where around 74% of the population are classed as overweight. However, the author stresses the results are not a green light to stuff your face as they only investigated life expectancy, not the likelihood of you contracting diabetes and the array of other fat-induced diseases along the way to your overweight prolonged existence.

Essentially if you’re an overweight, fatty food eating chain smoker, the advice still stands to get in touch with your local funeral directors; however, if you’re just packing a few extra pounds you can forget some of the guilt from the Christmas food binge as it may pay off when old age starts knocking.

Update: Many experts remain unconvinced about the findings - a typical day in the science office really.

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)