Starmer renews his breakfast priorities

Today at number 10 Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer set out his renewed priorities for breakfast.

Emphasising that he wasn’t going back on earlier statements about what he likes to eat in the morning, merely renewing his priorities with perhaps more emphasis on some aspects than others, Sir Keir said it was time to completely rethink the way we approach breakfast.

He rejected the old paradigm which said that you had to choose between cereal or a cooked breakfast, and what he called the “defeatist thinking” that eggs could be either boiled or scrambled but not both. When it was pointed out that there were no eggs anyway as he’d forgotten buy them, he reminded his wife that this was always an aspiration, not a commitment, and he hadn’t been aware of the disastrous state of his personal finances until opening his wallet at the checkout in Budgens.

He concluded by saying that surely brown toast was really just white toast that had been toasted for too long, at which point he noticed that his wife was no longer there, and neither were the suitcases he’d noticed in the hall on his way down.

Image: Pixabay/pexels

Petition to bring back 'Spangles' passes 2 million signatures

Right-wing media and influencers across the UK are claiming a government petition demanding a General Election equates to a vote of no confidence in the government. However, the petition's impressive number of signees lags behind the current leader, which aims to resurrect Spangles, a favourite sweet of the 1970's.

'Sir Keir Starmer has to accept the will of the people and talk to the King about this at their weekly audience,' said Dan Steely, the petition's creator. 'Hopefully between them, they can persuade Cadbury, or Trebor, or whoever made them to fire up the presses and get Spangles back on British shelves where they belong. If we can do this, then I've got plenty of other ideas for petitions: To bring back the Bar Six, change Snickers back to Marathon, and re-join the European Union. I think the first two have got the best chance of going somewhere.'

In Whitehall, civil servants monitoring the petitions were said to be advising ministers about the best course of action, and which flavour was most likely to appeal to Reform voters. 'We originally thought blackcurrant,' a member of the petitions team told us, 'but then we realised they'd baulk at anything with black in the name. So, we decided on the classic English flavour of pineapple. To be honest though, it wouldn't have mattered which we'd chosen, once we'd put them in Union Flag packaging and called them 'Patriot Sweets' we'd never keep them on the shelves.'

Image: WixAI

Supermarket gets 'down and dirty' to lure in value conscious customers

One of the country’s large supermarket chains is making new efforts to lure in shoppers looking for bargains.

‘We know that life is tough,’ said a spokeman. ‘Our bills are going up all the time and its probably the same for our customers.

‘We are adjusting our retail proposition to reflect how tough things are. Shoppers need bargains.  There’s no loyalty any more.  Cheapest sausage wins.

‘Our re-modelled stores will strongly signal our value-led proposition. The stores will be cold, so wear a thick coat. Or buy one on the way round. The lights will be dim, so you can’t read the small print on your ultra-processed ready meals.  Tinned goods will have foreign labels, which makes them look cheap straight away.  Our fruit and veg will have a homely, no-nonsense, kicked-about-a-bit vibe.

‘As shoppers can’t afford real food, we will have pallets of cheap stuff – strange rubbery sweets, off brand chocolates, Bulgarian lager and unusually flavoured potato-based snack substitutes. We will show that the stuff is cheap by selling it straight from the cardboard boxes. We can’t afford to pay staff to put stuff on shelves any more.

‘We don’t want to embarrass our customers about things they can’t afford, so we will be removing 'aspirational' products. That’s basically anything that Waitrose sells.

‘We are going back to basics - booze, pastry, stodge and fat. We are targeting shoppers with a BMI over 30, or a family BMI over 120.   These people eat more stuff and they buy more stuff, so it makes commercial sense.  Skinny dieters can buy our overpriced slimming meals if they want, but they aren’t a key demographic for us any more.

‘We will also be reducing in store cleaning, to make the shops a bit dirtier, so it looks like we are making savings too.   Puddles of stuff in the aisles will make shopping a bit more of an adventure.  We will also be hiring more unkempt and slightly threatening staff - so customers know we don't waste money on them.  We will be retain the customer support desks, but we won’t be staffing them.

‘Finally, I’d like to talk about pricing.   Some people have suggested that a ‘value’ offer should include lower prices.  Given that the government has massively increased our wage bill and property costs, I must make it clear that the one thing we won't be doing is cutting prices.  We will, in fact, be raising prices, with the aim of fuelling inflation and teaching the government a solid lesson in basic economics.’

image from pixabay