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New MI6 supremo gets off to flying start

The new head of MI6, John Scarlett, has wasted no time in deploying all the resources at his disposal to counter potential threats to Britain's national security.

With Britain's mission to Iraq successfully completed, and peace returned to that sun-kissed paradise astride the Tigris, the security services have now turned their attention to identifying the next possible target for the ongoing Blair/Bush jihad.

We at The Rockall Times have obtained a copy of Scarlett's new dossier — marked "Most Secret", bound in red ribbon and sealed with wax — and can confirm that the coalition has identified another "clear and present danger" to Tony Blair's absolute rule over the United Kingdom.

Explicit aerial reconnaissance photographs clearly demonstrate the rogue state's shocking capability for mass destruction: a sarin production facility disguised as a golf course; a uranium processing plant masquerading as a recycling centre; and various mobile ICBM launch platforms dressed as municipal meals-on-wheels delivery vans.

Further on-the-ground intelligence — apparently gathered at great personal risk by local CIA operatives — confirms that Conservative-held Basingstoke has the capability to construct and deploy battlefield nuclear weapons "in less than 45 minutes" and intends to use them against neighbouring Israel in the event of yet another Tory general election defeat.

Our MI6 contact refused to comment on the allegations, but material on his laptop which he left in a London winebar after getting drunk at the works' Xmas party states definitively that "we can only conclude that immediate invasion of Basingstoke is the only means to immediately curb the threat to western democracy".

Basingstoke has, however, denied that it possesses any weapons of mass destruction, or that it intends to use them. "We haven't gassed any Kurds for, oh, twenty years," confirmed one Basingstoke South party member in an interview with About Basingstoke, a weekly local interest slot on al-Jazeera Television. "And as for processing nuclear material, well, we've cut the council tax so much that we can't even afford street lighting these days, let alone the means by which to manufacture weapons-grade plutonium."

We asked the Foreign Office to comment on our findings, but a spokesman refused to comment "unless you all sign up for David Blunkett's voluntary ID card scheme and leave your names and addresses and copies of your house keys with reception". We politely declined, but later managed to corner foreign secretary Jack Straw in the street as he took a call from a tearful Ronald Dumsfeld on his mobile.

"I have absolute confidence in MI6's handling of this matter," he told us after assuring Dumsfeld at some length that "It wasn't your fault" and "How were you to know? and "I'm sure the ragheads will accept a full and frank apology and "Don't worry — George will calm down after a couple of days".

Straw continued: "If John Scarlett says that Basingstoke can deploy nuclear weapons in less than an hour, then it must be so. The man has been absolutely rock-solid in the past and I see no reason to start questioning his judgement now."

Next week

Why we fight: Tearful eye-witness accounts of when Conservatives seized power in Basingstoke, proceeded directly to nearest maternity unit and turned off 200 incubator units in vicious cost-cutting rampage.

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