- London, UK
The rise of debt-consolidation firms
such as Ocean Finance and Purple Loans is forcing traditional loan
sharks out of business says a new report. 'In the last few years we
have seen an increase in the number of options available to spendthrift
idiots with no self-control.' Harry Carlton of FT YourMoney told a
news conference yesterday 'formerly these idiots would go straight
to the sharks when banks refused them more money on the grounds that
it would only go on lifestyle accessories. Now they have a safety
net and can trade in the otherwise inevitable broken fingers and kidnapped
children for thirty years of further financial penury, augmented by
an initial new Armani suit or long weekend.' Debt-consolidation firms
have proved adept in winning custom from sharks through extensive
TV advertising, effectively focused on the target market of gullible
daytime TV viewers. Retired shark Jimmy 'The Negotiator' Harris told
dialysis it would be difficult for the sharks to fight back, 'A shark
is an independent businessman who uses his local knowledge and network
of contacts to generate business, it's going to be very hard to compete
with TV advertising and no threat of bodily violence. And the knock
on effects on subsidiary industries like protection and crooked accountancy
could see hundreds of dishonest men put out of business.' |
Jakarta, Indonesia
In a cost saving measure hailed by the stockmarket, Manchester United
have announced that dying next season's home strips in the blood of
Indonesian factory workers will save the club over £500,000
in production costs, 'Taking these kind of figures out of the budget
for shirt production should have massive knock on effects on profit
next season,' said football analyst Jake Wackman of Deloitte and Touche,
'United are fortunate that they play in a deep blood red coloured
shirt and are capitalising on that.' Harry Davis, PR boss at United
said that any fans wanting their blood to form part of the dying process
could make the request through the normal blood donation channels
in the UK.
Dudley, UK
Wayne Custis of Penge Road, Dudley has today talked for the first
time of his regrets at having a large holly branch tattooed up his
arm and neck after a lengthy drinking session last November, 'at the
time it seemed like a brilliant idea,' Custis told Wolverhampton's
Express & Star, 'what with it being so close to the season of
goodwill and all, it was partly inspired by George Clooney's tattoo
in From Dusk 'til Dawn, which I'd watched before going down the dole
that afternoon, and partly by the decorations down the Red Lion, but
on reflection, given all the grief I've had like, I wish I'd just
gone for barbed wire or something.'
|
San Jose,
US
The National Association of Pornographic
Websites (NAPW), the most powerful association in the online world
vowed yesterday to plough resource into re-establishing porn as
the dominant search engine result across the web. 'We may have rested
on our laurels given our dominance of meta-tagging in the early
days of the web, but the growth of the web as a resource has set
us back.' NAPW Chief Dick Wellard told the associations annual conference.
Our meta-tagging must begin to reflect what people want from the
web and then distract them. Amongst the keywords a conference workshop
proposed to begin including in sites such as www.wetandwilling.net
and www.rocco.com are popular search terms associated with health
like cancer, arthritis, heart disease and the fifty most common
mis-spellings of dyslexia. The workshop felt it already had it's
bases covered with impotence searches.
London,
England
Dangling precariously above the River Thames David Blaine was unable
to prevent the expiry of his pact with the devil on Thursday night.
The pact, forged in 1999 for the standard levy of the illusionist's
soul conferred both fame and fortune as well as a string of celebrity
friends and supermodel girlfriends on the 26 year old New Yorker
through his chosen medium of magic and illusion. However Satan,
who has recently tightened up several clauses in the soul trade-off
contract ended the period of awe and wonder at midnight on Thursday
and immediately a previously adoring public began to turn against
Blaine. His latest elaborate stunt was rumoured to be a covert method
of prolonging the pact by bridging the period of it's expiry. baline
mistakenly believed that an adoring public would remain in the palm
of his hand if the pact was to expire mid-stunt. Opinion polls suggest
that however that Baline has gone from a popular perception of 'mysterious
and intense' to a derisory 'emaciated human zoo exhibit.'
|
Independent
loan sharks being forced out of business by success of debt-consolidation
firms
