George Osborne has unveiled a raft of new measures designed to help companies destroy things and make people’s lives a misery in his 2014 budget speech.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was “absolutely vital” that businesses were given all the assistance they needed to ruin, ravage, dismantle, dismember, axe, annihilate, extinguish, exterminate, trash, torpedo, smash, spoil, wreck and lay waste to whatever part of Britain they could lay their grubby hands on.

Vladimir Putin has agreed to cancel a Winter Olympic event and move it to Canada after pressure from gay activists.

The Russian prime minister said he was happy to transfer the men’s figure skating event to Vancouver for the 2014 Games, but vowed that all other “legitimate” sports would take place in Sochi in February as originally planned.

This is an urgent weather warning. Polar bears have migrated south to the Isle of Arran in Scotland and, as I write, they are eating the residents of Brodick.

No other media outlets know about this catastrophe yet because there has been an island-wide power cut. But I promise you, it’s happening, and the bears are hungry.

Alien invaders looking to colonise Earth have said they are still hopeful a vast reserve of petroleum oil hydrocarbons would be found beneath the Arctic seabed.

When does an empire cease to be an empire? When member countries gain independence, or when their populations are no longer exploited?

According to the former definition, the British Empire concluded within a few years of the Second World War. And yet, the exploitation has continued.

The battleground for the future of humanity has been clearly marked.

On one side are the masses, a vast majority of the population of the globe, armed with nothing but their own passion, energy, heart and intelligence.

The world’s top oil firms have united to condemn Colonel Gaddafi’s ‘appalling’ record on human rights in Libya.

The Oil Firms Against Libya (OFAL) collective said today that dropping bombs on innocent civilians in the desert nation was about ending their suffering, and ending their suffering only.