“Bike gang culture has marred what has been an otherwise splendid Tour de France,” were the damning words from cycling legend and five times Tour winner Eddy Merckx this morning. After years of battling to keep it under control, the Tour’s organisers conceded that in 2010 the urban gangs of cycling’s underbelly have finally pedaled their way to infamy.

This year, the Tour’s audiences have witnessed incidents of headbutting, riders sabotaging each others chains, and the occasional throwing of petty insults regarding the size of rider’s hats. And in doing so, the cyclists responsible have succeeded in dragging the good name of the sport into disrepute.

Long gone are the days when competing riders would share water with one another and even offer a struggling rival the rest bite of a lift on their handlebars during tough mountain stages. “It’s an absolutely, ‘ow you say, travesty. This sort of behaviour may well be perfectly acceptable on a bicycle polo court in East London, but there is certainly no place for it in the world’s toughest bicycle race,” commented Tour Technical Director Jean-Francois Pescheux.

Many riders have expressed their displeasure at the Tour’s swift decent into an arena for underhand practices. A mild-mannered Lance Armstrong, most likely bitter at his own poor showing in this year’s Tour commented: “cycling is a non-violent sport pursued by gentlemen born with the extraordinary gift of house-sized calves. While we may well consider drug doping, blood transfusions and sniffing vitamins between stages part of the culture of the sport, I could never condone the current violent behaviour that seems to be associated with the wearing of tiny hats with ridiculously small peaks.”

It is suggested that a number of riders on the pro circuit lead double lives and ride for fixie gangs when not competing on the world stage. And it is in such gangs that they learn their trade. Fixie gangs are notorious for terrorising locals with needlessly-hipster track stands at traffic lights, circling in the same spot, braking gratuitously, offending onlookers with their child-sized hats and for causing general offence to pedestrians by advocating the use of girly bags – otherwise known as musettes – to transport their belongings.

Upon closer inspection, the plot thickens ever further: Fixerati, the unofficial governing body of fixie gang community, is thought to have members competing in this year’s Tour. Gang members are thought to be competing as ghost riders, pretending to take headwinds for their team leaders while in truth they are doing their best act nonchalant in their quest to attack their opponents by whatever means possible.

The Government is considering implementing a winter break for exhausted English employees after poor performances at work this summer we’re blamed on the strain of completely reasonable continuous employment during January.

The schedule of the Christmas period, when workers are expected to perform for up to four days a week while carrying heavy hangovers from Christmas work parties, is said to be the cause of extreme fatigue to the population going into the vital summer months when international competition is often at its toughest.

This year English workers, despite performing at an adequate level during the early part of June, were solidly beaten by a productivity margin of 4 to 1 by German workers who displayed a vitality missing from much of the English’s performance.

“What we’ve seen this summer is the direct result of a lack of a winter break for UK employees. They have a rest period in Germany and you can see how well they have been performing as a result of this seasonal breather,” explained employment psychologist Dr. Arnold Ringer, “Their youthful flair in the economic markets is in stark contrast to the English’s laboured underperformance in recent weeks, and that is primarily down to the German willingness to allow the population to lay down and eat nothing but sausages for two weeks every winter.”

Dismal performances on the world economic stage has led to an outcry from workers who suggest that over the normally exciting summer period they were stretched to the very limit of their bodys’ capabilities and felt as though they were carrying over a collective ankle injury from sometime in March.

Mike Summers, an employee at a graphic design company explained, “I love my job. It’s what I’ve always dreamt of doing and I’m good at it. Every day I come into work I’m proud to wear the security tag on my chest which represents my company. In fact you could call me something of a corporate patriot.” Mr. Summers continued: “However, when I have to work a completely normal and expected loose schedule, which often involves simply messing around with Adobe Illustrator for three hours a day, I start to feel the fatal build up of catharsis.”

Another worker, James McCload, who spends much of his day photographing naked women, elaborated: “All I’m asking for is a completely unwarranted holiday from a job that most people would kill for. Come summer, I’m going to be worn out by the rigours of having to work during the winter months when all I should be doing is sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, i love my country and love to work well for the expecting population, but if you expect me to match other performers on the international stage, without my head going bright red and looking like it’s going to explode, then you’re deluded. Quite simply, I want two weeks off.”

The Workers Union, which have been championing the proposal, explained in a statement, “England workers have experiencing the same summer droop for 44 years. If we don’t start handing the already coddled workers of this country time off during the winter, then expect us to end up like France, where during the summer they tend to get into arguments with co-workers, start firing each other, go on strike, and almost immediately drop off the world stage.”

You can stop worrying, the world’s oil supply isn’t going to run out in the next twenty minutes. Today, oil behemoth BP announced that its attmept to stem the crude flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico using a giant vuvuzela as a rudimentary plugging device, has proven to be successful.

“We’re putting all our oil-covered unhatched seagull eggs into one basket on this one. The vuvuzela really is our final hope,” commented BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward. “We were completely out of ideas before I caught the last few minutes of the World Cup semi-final between Uruguay and the Netherlands and had this epiphany.”

According to reports, BP had orginally planned to use Sarah Palin as a makeshift plug, until the proposal was voted down at a board meeting in June.

BP’s nightmare began when the oil well connecting to the Macondo rig exploded and capitulated in a ball of flames into the sea on April 30. The leak has since been gushing millions of gallons of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico on a daily basis.

Industry experts are forecasting that BP will have the giant vuvuzela, complete with a massive image of US soccer star Landon Donovan depicted upon it, in place and blocking the leak completely by mid-August. When questioned on why the operation has been turned into a marketing exercise for the USA’s ninth favourite sport, an extremely self-aware government official commented that, “We’re attempting to turn an environmental disaster into a feat of human achievement. Plus everyone loves Landon, he’s a symbol of our nations fighting spirit, blind manifest-destinied arrogance, and competitive outperformance.”

For all those in the offshore oil & gas industry, the US government, and for people with hearts that weep a tear every time they see children from Louisiana covered in oil on the 10 o’ clock news, the giant vuvuzela will certainly be welcomed.

However, like all things good, there are side-effects. The main concern of the residents of the Gulf of Mexico – which consists mostly of fish, bigger fish and some teenage sailor well out of his depth trying to circumnavigate the globe – is that they will hear a constant, loud droning noise, much attune to the background sound of the killer bees on most Wu-Tang Klan albums. Upon testing the giant vuvuzela, in the Nevada desert last week, the drone could be heard from up to 40 miles away and was met with hoards of unsuspecting Nevada residents spraying themselves head to toe in insect repellent before battening down the hatches on their homes.

The vuvuzela, which made a name for itself at this summer’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa, has been put to use in all manner of functions – not just to block up an oil well twenty thousand leagues under the sea. Indeed, among other things, the much written about instrument noise toy has been put to good use by US college students as a rather vogue form of a bong, by Lance Armstrong and the entirety of the Radio Shack cycling team to perform blood transfusions during this year’s Tour de France, and as a horn to guide beagles on illegal fox hunts in the heart of the home counties in southern England.

Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne has been named the UK’s ambassador to the UN, after driving all the way from Newcastle to ask for the job.

Gascoigne, known to millions as ‘Gazza’, turned up at UN headquarters in New York on Friday night claiming to be a friend of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Just let us talk ta him, and he’ll switch off the uranium centrifuges, I guarantee,” he told police manning the building entrance.

Though Gascoigne was prevented from passing through the security cordon, his efforts were praised by prime minister David Cameron, who immediately named him ambassador. The former midfielder, who played for Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio and Glasgow Rangers, will also represent the UK on matters of war and peace at the UN Security Council.

“Gazza clearly has the necessary attributes to negotiate on the world stage,” said Cameron. “He is fully equipped with tact, diplomacy, a dressing gown, some chicken, a can of lager and a fishing rod – all the things necessary to hold our global counterparts back from the precipice, or as circumstances might require, from blowing their heads off with a shotgun.”

Gascoigne also claimed that he would be uniquely placed to persuade alleged war criminals, such as former Serbian general Ratko Mladic, to hand themselves in and face justice. “I knew Ratty when he were a bouncer and I played against Dinamo Zagreb. He were sound as a bell.

“Obviously he’s killed a couple of thousand people, which isn’t nice, but he must’ve been on some’t and now it’s worn off. We’d just go fishin’ and I’d be like, ‘Why aye, Ratty man, it’s Gazza. Look, yous might get a 12-year stretch for genocide but yous’ll be out in six.’”

Gascoigne comes to the role with an impressive list of global political contacts, and claims to have been “phone buddies” with the late Pope John Paul II.

He also has vast experience of involvement in sectarian conflicts, generally caused by his own actions. In 1998, he was forced to mediate between Protestants and Catholics at a Rangers v Celtic match, after he stoked tensions by impersonating Orange Order marchers during a goal celebration.

The dispute was resolved after Gascoigne drank 12 cans of Tennent’s lager and sang ‘Fog on the Tyne’ repeatedly until both sets of fans went home.

A man in Northern Cumbria has reportedly defied a recently imposed hose pipe ban and proceeded to freely water his flower bed while apparently wearing a, “horrifying and unrepentant look of ambivalence.”

John Harrows was said by neighbours to have been liberally hydrating his plants in broad daylight on Wednesday afternoon, despite receiving a letter from United Utilities asking him to politely refrain from using a hose pipe due to “lower than usual reservoir levels.”

A neighbour who asked not to be named elaborated on the scene; “John just sort of walked out of his house with a blank stare on his face, casually picked up his hose and began watering his garden in the most outlandish manner. It was like an anarchic, suburban waterfall.”

Another passer-by who was witness to the act told us, “It is an absolutely grotesque infringement of loose-guidelines with almost no real enforcement. The man ought to have his door knocked on by someone in a suit from a company, and be forcefully handed a pamphlet on water conservation. He could at the very least have waited till the middle of the night like considerate rule breakers”

United Utilities, the water company that imposed the hose pipe ban, is now said to be drafting a second letter to Mr. Harrows that will re-iterate their wish for him not to use his hose and instead try alternate methods such as simply letting his garden turn to dust like the rest of Britain.

“Mr. Harrows must understand that a hose pipe often uses as much water as a family of four who bathe together on Tuesday evenings,” said United Utilities spokesman James Coldhan, “If he continues his reckless actions we will be forced to write another strongly worded letter recommending he grow more cacti.”

The recent drought in North West Britain is said to be the worst for over 15 years and has caused chaos for local gardening enthusiasts.

Margaret Thornton, who tends a small plot at a nearby community garden explained, “It’s like the tomato apocalypse. The dry fires of hell’s fury have descended upon my courgettes and I imagine that will only see 70%  of the plants come to fruition this year. I fully intend to call someone at a local radio station and say completely non-slanderous, but vaguely judgemental things about the children of people who work at Met Office who are almost certainly to blame.”

Churches across England enjoyed record attendances this morning ahead of today’s Englands game against Germany in the World Cup. Football fans gathered in their thousands at their local parish churches to pray, to an authority higher than FIFA, that England’s perennial underachievers beat those German non-believers in the Free State stadium in South Africa. “We’ve had a better turnout today than at Christmas Mass and Palm Sunday put together. God bless the World Cup,” commented Rev. Thomas Pickering of Godalming parish church, in Surrey.

Despite the odd Hillsborough-esque crowd surges outside some churches, most dioceses had anticipated the upswing in attendance following the announcement of the fixture and had made the necessary arrangements accordingly. “We screwed down the pews, so nobody could pick them up and throw them around, and we got in a few more boxes of cheap red wine for the blessing too,” commented Rev. Roland Stevens of Braiseworth parish church in Suffolk. “To lift people’s spirits, we even stuck renditions of ‘Land of hope and glory’, and ‘There were ten German bombers in the air’ onto the hymn sheet for this week’s service,” added Rev. Stevens with a cheerful smile.

It seems that the fixture may have even inspired a whole new generation of christian hoards. One first time church go-er told Cultsha before a service at St Pancras parish church in North London: “When I’m done with this God nonsense, I’m gonna swing via Morrisons and pick me up a 24 pack of Carling, a white, plastic picnic table and a cheap hoover. Then before the game starts I’m gonna whack the vaccuum into turbo mode to replicate the sound of the vuvuzelas, and start smashing the new garden furniture over my chidren.’

While the link in England between football and religion has always been tenuous at best, in many Latin countries this is not the case. While England’s footballers see China Whites as their church and pray not to the almighty, but upon young girls, footballers from the Latin world are often deeply religious figures and are eternally thankful for the gift God has given them. ”The only time religion and football crossed paths in the English game it ended in disaster, with former England manager Glenn Hoddle telling disabilists that they ‘had it coming’ for being Arsenal supporters in a past life,” commented Harry Redknapp.

It’s official, the good times are over: Britain’s 13-year-long loan of a VHS copy of Titanic from a movie rental store in Twickenham has cost the country dear. In his Emergency Budget speech today, Chancellor George Osborne was left red-faced after opening the Budget briefcase to find only a £60bn bill from the bailiffs inside. Mr. Osborne informed the Commons that a copy of Kate Winslet’s seminal work, which was rented by the Labour government back in 1997 on an overnight-return policy, has left the country’s finances in tatters.

As a result of the UK government’s blatant disregard of Star Video’s strict returns policy, the bailiffs have been called in to collect the unpaid fine. Along with the contents of the Chancellor Budget briefcase, which Mr. Osborne claims included some small change and some back-of-a-fag-packet plans for the economy, a number of senior ministers have also seen their personal effects commandeered by the debt collectors. Such items include Prime Minister David Cameron’s bicycle, Major of London Boris Johnson’s secret-formula hair spray and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s smile. All of the aforementioned items are expected to be returned to their owners upon full payment of the £60 billion deficit.

Mr. Osborne claims to have been in knowledge of the video club debt since the coalition took power at the start of May, but hadn’t expected it to have been quite so crippling. “The interest they’re charging on this rental is ridiculous. Nobody even watches VHS anymore anyway. This is ridiculous,” he commented.

Removing himself and his party from any blame for the brutal fiscal austerity us Britons are set to endure for the next half century, Mr. Osborne was quick to remind the Commons who was responsible. “The free-spending Labour government thought it was above late-fees.”

Mr. Osborne added, “Gordon knew about it all along. In fact, I have it on good faith that Gordon watched the film until the tape wore out while he was in office at Number 10.”

When questioned over his alleged role in the video rental, Mr. Brown, the former Prime Minister, didn’t hesitate to pass the buck to one-time friend Tony Blair. “The video tape’s not even mine. Tony must have forged my signature on the membership form when he signed up. Bastard.”

Offering us all a monetary comfort blanket of sorts, Mr. Osborne reminded the country that, “being European, we can always rely on our continental compatriots to make us feel better about ourselves via their own shortcomings.”

Indeed, Star Video has caught out a string of national governments this year who have violated the ‘clear for all to see on the case’ returns code. The Irish government is reported to have a copy of ‘The Commitments’ outstanding, while Spain is known to have forgotten to return its copy of a Penelope Cruz box set, and Italy is still showing a nightly-viewing of ‘Gladiator’ in the main square in Milan using their rented copy of the 2000 hit movie. Worst off, however, is Greece, who has come forward and admitted to having lost its copy of ‘Spartacus’ altogether. As the film is no longer sold on VHS, the Mediterranean nation’s repayment for the lost video is therefore expected to be ongoing until the video club decides otherwise.

England supporters have voiced their discontent with the national football team this weekend by announcing that they know stuff about things, and would like to share this subjective knowledge with you through the medium of shouting.

After the dire performance against Algeria on Friday, England fans, convinced of their individually superior footballing knowledge, have taken to voicing their opinions about Fabio Capello’s tactical ineptitude to anyone with ears.

Using loud voices and patio furniture related violence as the means for communicating their message, supporters have spent the weekend expressing their befuddlement at Capello’s continued use of a 4-4-2 system that “seems to have been developed simply to confuse the English players.”

Fan, and self-pronounced expert Ian Matthews explained, “The standard 4-4-2 system is outdated and perplexing for the players who are used following only the most basic instructions of ‘run’ and ‘kick ball with foot.’ Capello’s complex instructions involving overlapping wingbacks, roving playmakers and holding midfielders are simply way over the players’ heads. They can barely fathom why they are being managed by a man wearing glasses.”

Matthew’s assertions are backed by recent reports that suggest Aaron Lennon has been seen in games sporting a drawing on his arm showing a very small stick man and a long arrow pointing down the right side of a pitch. It is claimed that he had Jermaine Defoe design the makeshift tatoo because he is terrified of forgetting where he plays.

Throughout the weekend, messages on internet forums have denounced Capello’s handling of the team with members of the public detailing how friends of friends who are “close to the team,” have told them that the players were on the verge of striking because David James refuses to let anyone else play on the Playstation.

Many supporters who travelled to South Africa have complained that the players do not respect their commitment as fans and that the expensive trip has been wasted on an England team who don’t care about wearing the shirt.

Will Townsend, a journalist who has followed the England camp since the beginning of the tournament gave a rational assessment of the situation; “Having travelled out to South Africa, completely of their own choosing based on nothing but a vaguely optimistic qualifying campaign, you can understand how the fans might be incredibly angry at themselves for wasting the trip. It’s only reasonable at this point that we allow them to get two thousand quids worth of hyperbolic ranting off their chest and possibly provide them with a square where they can throw white plastic chairs at each other.”

The English public has revealed this week that it is fairly sure the England Manager, Fabio Capello, knows nothing about football.

The nation explained it has decided, on the back of England completely unacceptable draw against the USA, that the Italian’s exemplary management record is some kind of irrelevant fiction and that Capello clearly cannot speak English.

England supporter and banger of drums, Mike ‘Indigenous’ Smith explained; “The draw against the USA is probably down to the fact that he’s Italian, talks about lasagne all day and can’t be understood when he tries to convince the players to not be terrible at football.”

Daily Mail reporter Dan Matthews elaborated on the change in the nation’s attitude; “the English public are a reasonable bunch, but if you can’t smash twelve goals past every other team, while playing attractive football and definitely leaving Heskey on the bench, there are going to be questions asked of your coaching style.”

Despite Capello’s management history in which he has won the domestic league title with every club he has coached, as well as the Champions League with AC Milan, the English public is now convinced that his decisions will be to blame for England’s eventual downfall rather than an obvious lack of English players able to control, pass and shoot a football.

The backlash against the Italian gathered steam as the English were held to a draw by a resilient American team leaving them having to gain points off Algeria and Slovakia to qualify for the next round. The slow start has led to chorus of dissent from English fans who are now convinced that Capello is “no better than a foreign Steve McClaren, Graham Taylor crossbreed.”

One fan told Cultsha, “If we don’t put at least eight past Algeria, keep a clean sheet, and simultaneously qualify for the knockout stage on only four points then his decision to bring Ledley King will be completely unjustified.”

The press have begun making suggestions for Capello’s replacement on the back of their pessimistic prediction of a round-of-16 exit. Several newspapers have pointed to Sam Allardyce as a possible replacement. Journalist Pete Townsend explained, “This continental, pass-the-ball-to-feet nonsense has gone on for long enough. What we need is to get back to hoofing the ball up the field, waiting till our fans set the stadium on fire and losing by abandonment. That way we retain our honour and have the chance to see some Germans get their heads kicked in”

With the world shaking its head in disapproval at the Israeli intervention of Gaza-bound aid ships, Israel has attempted to appease relations with Palestine by opening a high-end gentlemen’s club in the heart of Gaza City. Israel’s President, Benjamin Netanyahu, commented that he hoped the unveiling of the Gaza Strip Club would be a diplomatic success, as it would offer the 1.5 million residents of Gaza an escape from their ‘rather pathetic and meaningless lives’.

Following the attacks on the aid flotilla at the end of May, Israel has been met with widespread finger-wagging from such quarters at the UN, the EU, and Turkey – who appears quick to forget its own submissive treatment of its Kurdish population. However, the land that flows with milk and honey is hoping that by opening the region’s first strip joint, it will provide itself with some much-needed leverage to commandeer a few more ships laden with food, wheelchairs and completely non-essential school supplies. “Seriously, what’s more humanitarian than providing a high-grade strip joint?” commented the club’s manager. “It’ll be a classy place. They’ll be no ‘happy endings’ in this part of the Middle East; that’s for sure,” he continued, before pausing, in recognition of how apt his words really were.

Indeed, the club’s manager may well be right, as the initial reaction to the Gaza Strip Club among Gaza residents appears to bode well for future relations between the two bitter rivals. “It’s brilliant, after a long day fighting for your civil liberties, you can come in here grab a cool beer and ogle like a sex-pest pervert over another man’s daughter” commented one of the club’s first punters. “Only problem is, they’re gonna start getting jealous over in the West Bank when they hear about this. While we’re looking at all this fine, young Lebanese titty, all they’ve to look at is a wall.”

However, not all of Gaza’s ailing residents are satisfied with neighbouring Israel’s token humanitarian gesture. “It’s just a weapon of mass distraction to divert our attention from the real issue at hand,” commented one gun-totting member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).”It’s ridiculous, there has been a massacre of innocent peoples in international waters and all the media does is focus its reporting on the opening of the region’s first strip club,” he added.