Embattled Kelly prepares to walk plank

Education supremo's position 'untenable'

by Janus Motsonius

Embattled education ministrix Ruth Kelly this morning arrived at her desk to be confronted with further angry demands for her resignation following a weekend of shock newpaper revelations that her department had approved the employment of Sven Goran Eriksson — described by one tabloid newspaper as "more dangerous to our children's futures than a staff common room full of kiddy-fiddlers".

Kelly: Plank As one enraged red-top put: "Imagine this: a world where your children and your children's children's lives have been shattered by England's repeated and abject failure to advance further than the World Cup semi finals; a world where a smirking Swede stuffs his face with champagne while negotiating a Ł5m-a-year deal to manage Aston Villa with a comedy Sheik who is in fact a blacked-up printer's apprentice from the News of the World as kiddies the length and breadth of Britain sob quietly into their World Cup 2006 commemorative duvet covers, haunted by another ignominious penalty shoot-out exit at the hands of eleven octogenarian Germans, three of them in wheelchairs."

Kelly's protestations that she did not personally endorse Eriksson as England manager are likely to fall on deaf ears as enraged parents nationwide are dragged before news cameras to vent their spleen that a priapic Scandie takes a 13 per cent cut of all UK football ticket sales while scoring only with bow-legged former weather girls.

As one enraged father-of-two put it to a suitably fired-up Sky News team: "You expect your kids to be able to watch their international team play something at least approaching proper football. My eldest still hasn't recovered from the Brazil fiasco at the last World Cup. He still asks: 'Daddy, why doesn't that nice Mr Blair do something about that horrible man in the glasses who speaks funny? He scares me, daddy.' It fair breaks your heart, it really does."

At FA headquarters, meanwhile, a spokesman endorsed Eriksson's agent's view that what the bespectacled love machine did off the pitch was his own business — including giving forth about England players to ragheads. "What he does off the pitch is his own business," the spokeslackey intoned from a prepared statment. "This is scurrilous entrapment, and any lighthearted remark about Rio Ferdinand being a lazy, lazy bastard was just that — a bit of fun between mates."

Back in Westminster, as Ruth Kelly prepared to clear her desk in anticipation of being held fully responsible for Sven Goran Eriksson, former sports minister Lord Waddle of Motson thundered: "I think her position is untenable, to be honest. She's lost the trust of her Cabinet team."

The Rockall Times attempted to contact Sven Goran Eriksson for comment this morning, but were told by an assistant that he was tied up slipping a length to some blonde bird while rolling on a huge pile of money.

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Embattled Kelly prepares to walk plank

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