A Pox on Your Houses

It was just over a year ago that the first case of 'house pox' was reported. It came to light in Sunderland after Mr Iain Bolan noticed a series of small, regular bulges in the brickwork of his bungalow as he left for work one morning. By the time he returned home, these bulges had broken out into a pattern of swollen red marks.

Neither Iain's doctor nor any of the local building firms could offer any help or explanation and eventually Iain had to contact a fancy house doctor in that there London. The house doctor diagnosed the outbreak as a new and dangerously virulent strain of property pox, told Iain to slather the walls liberally in calamine lotion and charged him three hundred and fifty quid.

Since that time, numerous other cases of house pox have come to light, affecting residential properties, public buildings and businesses. At the time of writing, reports are rapidly approaching epidemic proportions.

Vaccinations for houses are available, but sadly no one has yet developed a syringe sturdy enough to deliver them. For this reason it has been suggested that a cull is the only practical way forward, meaning that properties deemed to be most at risk of infection will be bulldozed, even if they currently display no symptoms of contagion.

This action, the government believes, will prevent further transmission of the disease, but there remains considerable concern that the proposed demolition sites are predominantly in deprived areas of low-cost and social housing.

When this was pointed out to the minister in charge, his reply was "And?"

Potholes

A local council in the south of England has come under fire after failing to fill in a pothole at one of its busiest road junctions. Complaints about the pothole have risen sharply in recent weeks in the wake of numerous reports of damage to vehicles, further erosion of the road surface and the disappearance of a small dog.

Nevertheless, in spite of the outcry, council officials claim that they have been prevented from dealing with the problem because the pothole has been declared a site of special scientific interest.

"We had some chap turn up from the nearby university," said borough surveyor Mr Walter Theodolite. "He brought along all this shiny and expensive-looking equipment, poked around, took some measurements then told us that our pothole was not a pothole at all but a quantum fluctuation in the fabric of space-time and that we weren't to touch it. He also said, cosmically speaking, that patching it with tarmac was very unlikely to provide a permanent solution in any case.

"Well, we thought that was that, but not long after he shuffled off some fellers from the local army base arrived and a major general type, with a seriously intimidating number of medals, tells us that it's not a quantum fluctuation at all but a portal to another dimension - and that we're not to fill it in until they've had chance to come back and drop a couple of mortar bombs down it, just in case.

"So they toddle off and hot on their heels are some hippies from 'Friends of the Radish', or something - nice people, even if one of them seemed to have something nesting in his beard. Now, he pooh-poohed the idea of a quantum fluctuation, and he ridiculed the notion of it being a dimensional portal, but he was deadly earnest about it being a blowhole for Mother Earth and that if we filled it in the planet would suffocate."

And there the matter would appear to stand, much to the dismay of local residents and the embarrassment of local councillor John Bull, member of the 'I'm Not Racist, But' party, who campaigned on the problem of potholes in the last election, desperately alleging that immigrants were using them to enter the country illegally and steal our benefits.

Inventor Cleans Up with New Hoover Car

Budding inventor Jamie Prang hopes to clean up with his latest invention, the 'Hoover' car. The revolutionary new vehicle, which has taken Mr Prang over ten years to perfect, is both environmentally friendly and economical to run - good news for the environment and the motorist's pocket. We asked Mr Prang how he first came up with the idea.

"Erm, well, just one small correction: it's a hover car, not a 'Hoover' car," he told us.

Marvellous! Of course, the idea of a car that can clean up as it goes along is a novel one and it has been warmly welcomed by environmentalists. Does Mr Prang envisage this group as his primary market?

"What? No... Look, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here. It's not a 'Hoover' car. I don't even know what a 'Hoover' car is?"

Excellent! But what of the average motorist? This vehicle represents a significant shift in general attitudes to transport. Does Mr Prang believe that there will be any difficulty in marketing a Hoover car to the man in the street?

"It's a hover car. A HOVER car!"

Wonderful! So, no fear that drivers will be put off by the need to keep changing dust filters or emptying bags every few hundred miles?

"What bags? This has nothing to do with vacuum cleaners. It's a hover car."

Fantastic! So it looks as though there will be a bright future for the Hoover car. Ultimately, of course, the market will decide, but there's certainly a good chance that in five years' time we'll all be driving one. Let's hope so, for Mr Prang's sake at least. It would certainly be most disappointing indeed if this invention was consigned to the dustbin of transport innovations, along with the vet-ski, the hiccup truck and the tripe-cycle.

Car Horns

There is little doubt that one of the greatest achievements in the history of transport is the car horn. Invented in 1883 by Dr Frank Horn, three years before the invention on the motor car, the car horn represents our simplest and most direct form of communication, allowing drivers to sound warnings, vent frustrations and even knock out the odd jaunty tune.

Nevertheless, it has long been recognised that the particular weakness of the car horn is that it is not directional and when used in heavy traffic it's not always clear who the warning is aimed at. Well now Professor Jez Moonbeam, inventor of bioluminescent cheesecake, has come up with the first narrowband car horn. The horn will be available for most vehicle makes early next year, and Moonbeam believes that it will revolutionise our driving experience. He claims that his creation creates a beam of sound that will have a positive impact on noise pollution and reduce confusion to other road users, while still being heard loudly and clearly by the bastard that just cut you up.