It is rumoured that the HSE are to ban black lead pencils ae there might be lead in them.

A secret report of a Brussels committee on the proposed common Euro language has been leaked causing extreme annoyance. Leaking information to the public is, of course, considerably more serious than the wholesale looting of the Commissions finances by their officials.

It was not previously known that there was a committee to decide on an official Euro Language – but there is, and chaired by an obscure German.

The three options considered were English, French and German.

French was rejected, as it is a dying language, which left English and German.

As English is effectively the world language agreement has been reluctantly reached that it will also become the new Euro language - to be known as EuroSpek.

However Tony Blair and his europhile advisers have conceded that there is room for some minor improvements in the spelling. To this end a five year plan has been drawn up to introduce these improvements in very small increments; to allow people to get used to the change without them realising what is happening.

In the first year “s” will replace the soft “c”. The hard “c” will then be dropped in favour of  “k”. This should klear up any konfusion, and keyboards kan have one letter fewer. Sertainly this will make the multitude of sivil servants ekstatik.

In the sekond year it will be klaimed that there is growing publik enthusiasm for Eurospek. The troublesome “ph” can be replaced by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20% shorter - thus saving millions of Euros in typists time.

In the third year, due to overwhelming publik demand and akseptanse of the new spelling, we kan expekt to reach the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible. The removal of double letters will aid more akurate speling. Also al wil agre that the horrible mes of the silent “e” kan be resolved simply by deleting it and any redundant “a” kan be removed or replased with ‘u’. By the fourth yer , peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” and ‘sy’ with “z” zen zer  “w” kan be replased wiz “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be droped from vords kontaining “ou” and similar changes, vud of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. The “t” has alvaz ben a problem to pronunz und zat kan be solved by using “d”.

Afder zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riden sdyl. Zer vil be no mor drubls or difikuldis, und evrivun vil find id ezi du undersdand eash ozer beder.