Government launches NVQ in housebreaking

Feel you're not fitted for a 9 to 5 job? Have a crack habit to support? Or maybe you just want easy money and can't get out of bed before midday? Well the new NVQ in housebreaking could be just the thing for you.

The NVQ Housebreaking Plus course gives training for the work that's actually available, rather than being just a ruse to take you off the unemployment figures, and comes with a government-backed guarantee of success.

No qualifications are needed for entry and there will be no requirement to attend training any more than you want to. The diploma will be awarded automatically at the end of the course and personally presented by a selected High Court Judge released from the asylum especially for the event.

Practical elements such as the correct use of jemmy and lock picks will be interspersed with health and safety issues including such essentials as how to get through a window without being cut by broken glass and the correct way to lift heavy articles without causing back damage. A legal section of the course will cover how to sue the householder if you sustain any injury while on, or attempting to gain admission to the premises, plus how to build a case of self-defence if you are unfortunate enough to kill anyone.

A government spokesman praised this new initiative. "It may look as though we've gone soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime," he said, "but there are benefits all round from this NVQ. The trainees will benefit from being taught to work more safely and efficiently, and we estimate they will be able to enter 34 per cent more houses in a given week and take 76 per cent more property after the course than before it. We've even got Eric Knowles explaining how to tell genuine antiques from fakes so they don't waste their time carting away rubbish."

He continued: "The householder will benefit from getting a more professional job done. There should be less wanton destruction, smearing of faeces on walls and mindless violence, as graduates of our courses will be task-oriented. They will have learnt that for every 10 minutes wasted shitting on furniture or breaking old people's bones, they could have done 0.76 more blaggings. It's only common sense."

Naturally, the forces of law and order support the course and guarantee not to interfere in any housebreaking carried out according to their guidelines.

President Tony "two flats" Blair, speaking from Cloud Cuckoo Land where he is waging the War against Clouds and Cuckoos™, praised the move. "This will send out a message," he read from a script, "telling everybody exactly what kind of society we live in."

Deputy president John Prescott added his support, saying in a sincere voice, "and don't forget every since probation, soft option certainly and so why? This administration will do, and that's not all. I am incredible."