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Satire
Limerick competition
Many thanks for the entrants to our Limerick competition, the submissions came flooding in. Both of them were given careful consideration and the following was selected as the winner: –
there was a young girl from Waikatowhose intelligence reached a low plateauthe economy went flopincomes did dropand she said the poor can eat gateaux
Police revealed that acting upon a tip off they carried out a surveillance operation on a private gathering in Hundred Acre Wood. After a period of observation (including a break for sandwiches and doughnuts) they intervened and served dispersal notices on the attendees.
A police spokesperson said, “We went into the woods today and certainly got a big surprise.” “We encountered an illegal gathering of mammals of the ursine variety not adhering to social distancing regulations and partaking of a picnic type feast. Unsurprisingly, we observed several of the group defecating in the wooded area.”
The police isolated the alleged ringleader of the group. After the dispersal notice was read, he exclaimed that he didn’t understand as he was a bear of little brain and long words bothered him. The Gold commander of the operation then repeated the orders in words of no more than two syllables so that the bears (and most of the assembled officers) could understand.
Among the group detained and questioned (at a distance, both for medical safety and to provide a running start in case the bears turned nasty) were two asylum seekers, one coming from deepest Peru and the other from Southern Asia, where he was a trainer of man-cubs. Others were named as Big Ted and Little Ted, Rupert, Yogi, Cindy and Iorek Byrnison. Further questioning revealed that although they displayed the logo BLM at their picnic, they were a peace-loving group from the Bears Love Manuka honey organisation. Rather than risk the adverse publicity from harassing a peace-loving group the task force decided that it was in the public interest that they withdrew and as a result, they exited stage left, pursued by a bear.
Intelligence Report
At a secret meeting of the combined forces Intelligence Committee, held in the lounge bar of the Rat and Armpit Public House, Westminster, great matters of intelligence were discussed. The attendees were representatives of the 5 eyes plus 1. The plus 1 was introduced as a friend of the UK representative and he was vouched for as being a “good egg” as he had been to Cambridge. Rigorous questioning about cricket followed by a special handshake confirmed that he was legitimate, and he could remain for the meeting.
To confirm their bona fides each attendee was asked to open their briefcases to show good faith and to ensure that no listening devices were contained therein. To the embarrassment of the New Zealand representative his briefcase revealed its contents to be a copy of an old magazine, three cold meat pies and notes of a dinner party conversation hosted by a German diplomat. He apologised and said that it was obvious that he had collected a training aid from Haymarket, and he must have left his case in the office. The American’s contained the usual stuff, radio transmitter, missile fountain pen, poison darts and various devices to encourage truth telling during interrogation.
The Australian’s just contained a list of Australian politicians and pen pictures so that they could keep abreast of who was likely to be the latest Prime Minister during their tour of duty and avoid public embarrassment during meetings. His phone has a special code to alert him to changes of office holders. The Canadian’s was similar to the American’s, but more subdued and carbon neutral.
The British briefcase contained a copy of the Times crossword, Wisden cricket annual and fake tickets to the Royal Enclosure Ascot, Members’ stand at Lords and the Royal box at Wimbledon. The plus one contained a dummy’s guide to Russian, half bottle of Stolichnaya Elit, and a street map of the main cities of the Baltic states.
The main subject of conversation centred on the use of acronyms to describe security agencies and the standardisation of them to avoid confusion in the future.
They agreed that they should try to limit all acronyms to TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) but understood the difficulties that would present for GCHQ. The American said that he thought that they had 16 agencies, but he couldn’t be sure. When asked about National Security Letters (NSLs) he confirmed that he couldn’t confirm if they existed or not.
Canada has its CSIS to cover all appropriate activities, but is sometimes confusingly referred to as SCRS, particularly in Quebec. Australia has the ASIO and New Zealand the NZSIS.
To complete the picture the UK revealed that it has MI5, SIS/MI6, GCHQ, and a host of other organisations such as National Crime Agency, Defence Intelligence and Joint Intelligence but it couldn’t be sure as to exactly how many and who did what. He suggested that he could check with the Chinese for further details.
All agreed that it had been a fruitful meeting and would meet again in a month’s time in the Strangers’ bar, Palace of Westminster.
When asked about minutes, it was agreed that there was no point in taking minutes as they would appear in tomorrow morning’s copy of Izvestia available from the news vendor on Bayswater Road by Kensington Gardens.
