Graphologists left baffled by Brown handwriting

Leading handwriting experts surprised the Daily Mail today by claiming that they are unable to say if a note handwritten by Chancellor Gordon Brown shows whether he is unreliable, evasive or has poor judgment. Mr Brown, pictured putting the final touches to a speech delivered at Mansion House last month, was tonight unavailable for comment.

Brown attacked over increased longevity

Gordon Brown has come under fire for presiding over an unprecedented increase in life expectancy and the row has raised fresh questions about how the Chancellor would run the Government if he becomes Prime Minister. Furious pensioner Harry Gillman slammed Brown over the news. "I'm 65 now. Thanks to that Brown I've got another sixteen years to go. If I had known I would have got myself a private pension," he complained. "My wife is particularly upset because she expected me to be dead by now," he added.

Blow for Brown as focus group rejects new facial expressions

Gordon Brown's attempts to soften his dour image as the Labour leadership contest approaches have run into trouble. A focus group commissioned by the chancellor's camp was shown more than two hundred new facial expressions being considered by his team for the upcoming campaign but rejected all of them. When asked to give the first word or phrase that came to mind to describe the chancellor's efforts, more than half of the group said they were "terrifying". The findings leave Brown's image consultants just a few weeks to come up with a new look before the leadership election expected in May.

Park man slams Brown over Budget

News that duty on beer will rise by 1p a pint from midnight Sunday and cider by 1p a litre has angered Londoner Sol Isaacs. Speaking this afternoon from a bench in Hyde Park, Isaacs said: "I'm appalled at this latest tax rise. My only expenditure is on Special Brew and Woodbines. Once again hikes in excise duty have disproportionately hit me and my friends here and we demand to be told why we are singled out for this unfair treatment!" Mr Isaacs was given vocal support from colleagues on nearby benches: cider drinker Cynthia Dass, 49; whisky fan, Sean Merson, 57; and Chris Troman, 14, who said he was just bunking off school for the day but would drink anything really.

The Whitehall Archipelago

A former member of the nomenklatura emerged blinking yesterday from a gulag where he has languished for the last two years. Comrade Turnbull had been banished to a labour camp known as the "House of Lords," where harsh and brutal metaphors are believed to be used, and where inmates, clad only in ermine, are forced to live on a diet of venison and claret.
"I come to denounce Gordon Ivanovitch," Turnbull said, referring to Comrade Brown, who is expected to become General Secretary of the Party and have rival politburo members shot or poisoned after the forthcoming May Day elections. "He is a ruthless man who thinks nothing of sending millions of innocent memos to the shredder and plunging ice picks into the careers of his colleagues."
Leading candidates for Deputy General Secretary, Piotr Hain, Mikhail Meacher and Harieta Harmanovna are reported to have formed a troika, denounced each other and fled to Mexico.

Miliband: Hundred per cent cut in emissions by 2010

Environment Secretary David Miliband says latest projections suggest that the Labour government will cut emissions entirely by 2010. With the next general election three years away Mr Miliband says that Labour will easily achieve the ambitious target. "Under the leadership of Mr Brown there is no doubt in my mind that we will not be emitting any more damaging policies, Bills or Acts because we'll all be sitting on the opposition benches listening to Mr Cameron drone on." The Tories and Liberal Democrats have welcomed the proposals.

Clarke and Milburn deny menacing Brown

Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn denied, at a press conference on Wednesday, that the launch of their new website calling for a new direction for Labour was motivated by personal animus towards Gordon Brown. Their campaign, called "A world without Brown," is, they said, concerned purely with policy issues. "We need to ensure that the future of the Labour Government is not dependent on Gordon," said Clarke. "If something were to happen to him..."

"Or his lovely wife and children," interrupted Milburn, who appeared suddenly from the shadows at the back of the hall, wreathed in cigarette smoke.

"Yes, we mustn't forget Sarah and the boys," Clarke snarled, his face contorting beneath a snap brim fedora. "And we won't."

Meacher to upload self on to YouTube

Michael Meacher is to boost his faltering campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party by uploading himself on to YouTube. The move is designed to demonstrate that he is in touch with the modern world and that he can appeal to younger voters whilst seeing off sneerers who say that he is a hopeless old self-deluded duffer. Once the upload is complete, Meacher will be accessed only via the popular file sharing site. A spokesman for Meacher said that his remaining useless, empty husk will be donated to medical science, if they want it.

Miliband in Brown "twat" gaffe

David Miliband was today forced into an embarrassing climbdown after describing Gordon Brown as a "twat" on last night's Question Time. The Secretary of State for Environment, an arch-Blairite tipped as a future Labour leader, said: "If Gordon becomes Prime Minister I guarantee that in six months time people will be saying 'Fuck me, even that little prick Tony Blair was better than this dour twat. Why the hell is this tit our prime Minister?' " Asked by David Dimbleby to explain his remarks, he said: "Whoever's in – people always have a whack at you, that's the joy of politics." A spokesman for Miliband said today: "David was pointing out the fickle nature of political life, so piss off."