No. 1308: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for an official announcement of an eccen- tric scheme by which the unemployed could be put to work on government money for the benefit of us all or themselves.

D. B. Jenkinson thoughtfully sent me a cutting from a recent Daily Telegraph which proves, though proof is never need- ed, that life can always outzany art: 'Youngsters on the Government's Youth Training Scheme have been made to walk around town with cotton wool in their ears pretending to be deaf, to play with Lego bricks and to shin down steep rock-faces. The exercises also include making them stand on chairs in alphabetical order, play party games and produce lists of local banks and building societies.'

Among the notable schemes you dreamed up I particularly enjoyed Victoria Miers' dreary teabag campaign ('Twice a week these will be collected and taken to recycl- ing centres, where they will be suspended in a restorative solution for 24 hours before being dried, repacked and resold at half price') and Peter P. Fring's mad Job Award System for People Interested in Special Tasks in Outer Space ('Applicants should get on their bikes and arrive at the JASPISTOS centre not later than yesterday, accompanied by the morals and standards of the 19th century'). The winners printed below are awarded £8 apiece.

Several vacancies will shortly exist under the 'Save the Lemmings' Programme of the Sub- Department of Re-Employment. Each successful applicant will be provided with a cabin-cruiser, fully provisioned, and will be expected to carry out a protracted patrol off-shore. Hurtling lemmings should be snatched from imminent death by drowning in the purpose-designed nets — also provided. Applicants should be capable of making simple entries in an appropriate record-hook, as a commission will be payable on a per capita basis in respect of all lemmings netted. This will, of course, be in addition to basic pay and allowances. After netting, lemmings should be humanely dispatched.

(Andrew Hodgson) There are still 8 million vacancies in the Museum of 20th-Century British Endeavour, which occupies 50,000 acres of prime farmland on Exmoor and consists of over 2,000 exhibitions, 18 libraries, 52 restaurants and a Rape Crisis Centre.

Of the exhibitions, the most labour-intensive is 'The Battle of the Somme'. Others include `British Education in the 1960s', in which 200 `students' ransack a Vice-Chancellor's office, and 'Britain in the Recession', in which men and women 'sign on' inside an exact replica of the DHSS building in Harlow New Town.

Those with initials A-G inclusive should collect job application forms from the Post Office today. H-Ps on Monday. Graduates in Political Science are urgently needed for the 'Celebration of Bloomsbury' exhibition which opens on

Tuesday. (Jeremy Bevan)

Three and a quarter million Britons will attempt to crowd into telephone kiosks all over the United Kingdom next year. This is only one of the many hundreds of likely consequences which will flow from the Prime Minister's announcement this afternoon that the Government has decided to 'nationalise' the Guinness Book of Records. 'Every achievement in this Roll of Honour should be held by a Briton,' declared Mrs Thatcher.

In future a condition of drawing benefit will'be a weekly attempt by the claimant on an existing or a new record.

The Prime Minister added that unemployed former shop stewards would be encouraged, on a purely voluntary basis, to attempt the record for lone round-the-world yachting.

(J. H. M. Donald) No traveller of sensibility can have failed to notice the disgraceful condition of many of our public monuments and edifices. These should act as strong tourist attractions but in their current state of being have a contrary effect.

Research has shown that this is caused by three main factors: i) industrial fouling ii) graffiti and intentional defacement iii) pigeon nuisance.

We therefore .innounce a Youth Opportunity Project for the restoration of monuments. Suitable unemployed youngsters will be trained in Heritage Cleansing (with instruction in: Chemistry, Art History, Use of Bucket and Scrubber, Solvent Technology and Bird- Scaring).

Separate squads will collect the pigeon guano, which will be transferred to the Ecological Fuel Research Site at Saddleworth (qv).

(Gerard Benson) From April 1st, Channel Four will be putting out two-minute party political broadcasts on the hour, every hour, in peak viewing time. When the old supply is exhausted new films will be shown. These films are being shot now. There is unlimited work for extras in all parts of the country. Auditions in every Job Centre: Monday 8.00 a.m. Yobbos, pregnant mothers and OAPs. 1930s dress optional. (Labour.) 11.00 a.m. Redundant executives. Please wear city-suits or hunting gear. (Conservative.) 12.00 Noon. All in-betweens or failures in earlier auditions should report to the Alliance auditions.

Payment will be by giro and milk tokens. (Fiona Pitt-Kethley) The Government is to embark on an ambitious programme to revive the native oak and the native pig, so providing new job opportunities for one and a half million school-leavers and giving a welcome shot in the arm to the British truffles industry. Truffles favour soil where young oaks are growing, and at a time of world- wide truffle scarcity the challenge of re- oakification of our druid heritage and of open- air work with tracker-pigs of the requisite sensitivity will be rewarding financially and in terms of health to our youth.

(George Moor)