By courtesy of the only readable news, The Daily Mash……

LOCAL authorities across the UK were yesterday stunned to discover that Iceland is nothing more than a volcano surrounded by two million haddock.

As the volcano’s banks refused to pay out, councils said they were convinced Iceland was a small, landlocked country next to Belgium with a long history of expert financial management.

But after 15 minutes on the internet they confirmed it was nothing more than a slab of stinking lava populated by a handful of wilfully eccentric musicians and half a dozen heavily bearded trawler captains.

Julian Cook, director of finance at the Local Government Association, said: “I meant Luxembourg – sh!t!

“I suppose the haddock-shaped piece of lava with every new account was probably a clue.”

Mr Cook is now demanding £1bn of taxpayers’ money in compensation for losing £1bn of taxpayers’ money.

He added: “When the taxpayer is exposed in this way it is only right that central government should step in with its own funds, wherever they come from.”

But the Treasury has so far refused, criticising the councils for investing huge amounts of public money in badly run banks.

And another story……………..

BUILDING a time machine to take us back 18 months would have been cheaper than the multi-billion pound bank bail out, it was claimed last night.
As the government spent £500bn recreating the exact economic conditions of April 2007, Britain’s leading time travel engineer said he could have done it for half that.

Dr Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “You need a Vauxhall Corsa, a small amount of plutonium and something I call the ‘flux capacitor’.

“You simply punch in the date – let’s say, April 15th, 2007 – activate the flux capacitor, and accelerate the Corsa to 88mph.

“At that point a hole opens up in the space-time continuum and in the blink of an eye you’ve got mortgages being handed out like free newspapers and credit cards coming out of your a*se.

“And once you start giving people credit they can’t afford and engineering a global banking collapse, you just jump in the Corsa and start all over again.”

He added: “Of course, in 2007 there was no such thing as plutonium so we’ll have to rig up some kind of giant lightning conductor. It’ll be fine.”

Meanwhile the National Audit Office has also criticised the government’s overspend on recreating April 2007.

A spokesman said: “It would actually have been cheaper to launch an intergalactic space mission to search for the planet Krypton, find Superman, bring him back and get him to fly round and round the Earth until it started rotating the other way, thereby turning back time and opening up the wholesale money markets again.”