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Local Schools Abandon Phonics For Nuspeak

Local primary schools have announced that they will not follow Government plans to use phonics to teach children to read.

A story in the national news today (Saturday) explained how children will be tested on non-words such as ‘zort’ and ‘koob’, to ensure they are not simply memorising words and regurgitating them like some sort of literary sparrow feeding it’s chicks.

St Neots educators were disgusted. “Despite the fact that most of us learned to read using phonics in the eighties and that,” said year 2 Crosshall teacher Andrew Parr, “we’ve decided this is a stupid idea and instead will teach children to speak how people actually do – chavspeak, basically.”

The Citizen attended a cross-school meeting of teachers held at Bushmead last week, where the main debate was around spellings of certain chavvy words. “We’re not sure,” said Priory headteacher Lisa Crawley, “whether it should be ‘blood’ or ‘blud’, for example. Many chavspeak words are essentially formed phonetically but there are, as with traditional English, some anomolies.”

It is proposed that new reading tests will pose youngsters questions and ask them to answer with a word or two, rather than merely spelling a word read out by a teacher. Questions will include “You meet your breds down by the river. There’s three of them and one bird. What is an appropriate greeting?” – the answer to this, of course, is “Safe fam, wha gwarn?”

More traditional educators were horrified. “It’s bad enough they’re all speaking like this,” said English teacher Sue Anders of Longsands, “without us encouraging it. Bunch of little twats.”

The new curriculum begins next week.

Tags: Bushmead, Children, Crosshall, Education, Ernulf, Longsands, Phonics, Priory, Reading, School, St Neots
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A14 Closed

The county’s nightmarish A14 was closed earlier today due to an incident which possibly involved some vehicles, and maybe some livestock.

The accident occurred somewhere between junctions 21 (Brampton Hut) and 29 (Girton Interchange). Traffic came to a standstill on neighbouring roads such as the M11 and A428, and had a knock-on effect in towns including Huntingdon, St Neots and St Ives, as traffic was diverted away from the main route.

It is not yet known if anyone was injured. A police spokesman said the road would be open “later”.

This is a daily A14 update from Cambridge’s Automatic A14 Reporting Mechanism.

Tags: A14, Accident, Huntingdon, incident, St Ives, St Neots, Traffic, Traffic Jam, Travel
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Newsrags Announce New A14 Reporting Mechanism

Local newsrags today announced they were going to stop reporting on crashes on the A14 in favour of a new automated approach.

The road, which is on target to meet it’s quota for closures in 2011, has been closed six times in the last three weeks due to incidents ranging from multiple-car pile-ups to lost chickens.

Cambridge Evening News editor Fred Eclair explained that valuable resources were being wasted updating readers on the latest incidents. “Every time the A14 is shut we write about it,” said Eclair. “This takes someone away from the important business of reporting news that people actually want to hear.

“The only people that care why the A14 is shut are people already on the A14, so it seems rather pointless.”

Eclair described a new system which will automatically publish the same story at a random time every day. It reads as follows:

The county’s nightmarish A14 was closed earlier today due to an incident which possibly involved some vehicles, and maybe some livestock.

The accident occurred somewhere between junctions 21 (Brampton Hut) and 29 (Girton Interchange). Traffic came to a standstill on neighbouring roads such as the M11 and A428, and had a knock-on effect in towns including Huntingdon, St Neots and St Ives, as traffic was diverted away from the main route.

It is not yet known if anyone was injured. A police spokesman said the road would be open “later”.

The story will be syndicated to other local news services.

Readers of the News were variously delighted and appalled. “I want to know exactly what is happening all over the A14 all the time,” said Millie Harston, 82, of Cambridge’s Sherlock Road. “If I don’t know whether it’s a crash or a lorryload of burning pillow ingredients, what the fuck am I going to gossip about?”

St Neots residents were mostly happy about it. “The A14 doesn’t really affect us as much as people in Cambridge like to think,” said local courier Tom Gretna, “and let’s face it, the News doesn’t exactly report on much of interest if you live in St Neots.

“This automatic story will make it easier for me to gloss over all the banal detritus printed in that paper every day.”

Tags: A14, Accident, Cambridge, News, Traffic
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Meet The Team

We thought it was time we revealed a little behind the famous names you see up in that there byline as you get your daily(ish) intake of local news from premier rag the St Neots Citizen.

Editor Tim C

The Citizen Editor lives in Citizen Towers, on the town’s luxurious Westside. Rumoured to be nearly thirty, he has claimed to be 23 for the last few years and is currently also a grotty tax-dodging student.

His hobbies involve upsetting small villages and repeatedly giving up smoking. He drinks approximately a gallon of tea every day.

Features Editor Francisco Sanchez

Francisco joined the team in March 2010, and quickly became one of the highest-contributing reporters whilst not actually writing any features.

Sanchez is a “militant smoker”, often lighting up in bars and restaurants and then running away as quickly as his wrinkled lungs allow, in a never-ending homage to Neg’s Urban Sports from an episode of Balls Of Steel.

He is also a militant car-parker, militant bus-passenger, militant pedestrian and militant toenail-picker.

Eastside Correspondent A.J. Oke

A.J Oke is an Eastsider who actually graduated, from the St Neots Library University with a pass in English and Journalism in 2003.

He is a sociable type who likes to look for a scoop wherever he can find it. A keen follower of all our local celebrities – that’s follower, and definitely not stalker. The restraining order against Mark Faster is purely an administrative error.

His passion is chav spotting, with multiple volumes of St Neotian chavs and a little black book of the easiest Chavettes.

Lifestyle Journalist Thundopolous P. Staker

Thundopolus P. Staker is the founder and editor of the now defunct Oi! magazine.

Known for its razor sharp observations on St Neots chavery, Staker liquidated the infamous journal after embezzling a Rowley Million (£1.53) from its pension fund and faking his own death in a weir related incident at The Rivermill after a lock-in.

Found sleeping in a wheelie bin at the back of the Co-Op, Staker was given a second chance by The Citizen on the promise of having a bath. Staker lists his interests as, The Jeremy Kyle Show, Late Night Roulette and Bid-up TV.

International & Politics Correspondent Don Draper

Draper is a man with too much money and too much time on his hands, who reads every newspaper every day and then promptly forgets it all.

Rumours abound that Don Draper is not in fact his name, but then what’s wrong with changing your name? Don joined the Citizen in February 2011 and is completely self-medicated.

Newsdesk Reporter Adam Douglas

Adam Douglas was once rumoured to be a local politician, and has recently vanished. He said, well, nothing, because he’s vanished.

Astrologer & Gastronomical Advisor Benny T. Bean

Benny T. Bean (of indeterminate age – so far carbon-dating has proved unreliable) began his formal education under the tutelage of Kirklawitz Munkapunk at the University of Firm Nudges, graduating in the summer of ’99 and receiving a doctorate in ‘Being quite good at writing ‘n’ that’.

Spending the next 11 years in an acid-haze (believing himself to be a tramp by the name of Grubby Pete), B.T.B. soon cleaned-up his act after a chance meeting with Francisco Sanchez. Sanchez immediately cognized Pete’s steaming, yellowed genius and sequestered his writing talents for the Citizen. “I’ve never read such an eloquent yet scathing political commentary…” says Sanchez “…nor have I ever spent so long watching a tramp piss in the snow.”

To this day, all Benny T. Bean articles have to be transcribed from his dirty urinations.

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Gypsys Surprised That People Are Surprised At Compo Claim

The travelling community today expressed surprise and amusement that no-one had forseen their massive compensation claim over Channel 4 show “Big Fat Gypsy Weddings”.

The documentary series, which draws millions of viewers and even more Facebook statuses, chronicles the lives of gypsies and travellers and centres around traditional gypsy weddings, whilst attempting to demystify certain elements of their way of life to the wider audience.

But in today’s national newsrags, stars of the show hit out and threatened legal action over the show which has ‘ruined their lives’.

“I don’t know why people are surprised that we’re suing,” said spokesman and Romany gypsy Will Oldland, of Berkshire. “In my opinion we’ve pulled off a really effective scam here, even though obviously we’re not the scamming type!

“Basically, we knew when people found out we were travellers they’d kick off and refuse us work and that sort of thing, so we let it happen and now we’re going to be claiming loss of earnings.”

Despite being famously secretive about money, Oldland said that he estimated lost business for his driveway resurfacing business at around £250,000 a month. “It’s not like I keep books is it,” he said, “who’s going to check?”

We pursued Oldland to explain further, but he just offered to sharpen our knives and then offered us outside. This reporter quickly scarpered.

Tags: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Channel 4, Gypsy, Travellers, TV
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Schools Take Lead From BBC Series

Single St Neots secondary school Longsands, which apparently also controls Ernulf, which is apparently called St Neots Community College, is set to conduct a ground-breaking experiment to separate male and female students.

“It’s been proven that when boys and girls are seperated,” said principal Robert Whatnow, “they learn better and stop fucking about. Some of them might actually get the odd GCSE instead of an ASBO.”

The school claims that it has conducted extensive research into the idea, which will see boys learning at Longsands and girls at the Eynesbury counterpart. However, a teacher who did not wish to be named rubbished that idea. “What actually happened,” he said, “is that someone watched Waterloo Road last week and decided to copy them. Obviously it’s not going to make them learn any better, but it might slow the rate of pregnancy among our year nines, where there is a higher birth rate than India, China or even Cambourne.”

Tags: ASBO, Chavs, Education, Ernulf, Longsands, Schools, St Neots Community College, Teen Mums
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#SHOUTYFRIDAY

Dear sir,

It has come to my attention lately that people on popular social networking sites such as Friendface tend to loudly shout about how it is Friday.

I don’t know why they’re surprised. Friday happens almost every week, usually preceeded by Thursday, which I feel gives ample warning.

However, in order to combat this madness I propose that anyone who likes Friday should tweet with my lovely new hashtag #shoutyfriday. I invented it, maybe, and it’s rather pretty I think you’ll agree.

Let’s spread awareness of Friday by SHOUTING about it as much as possible. Hopefully, together we can combat it.

Twitterer, Parklands.^

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St Neots Plunged Into Dark Age

Controversy swept the town earlier today when the local green movement decided that the world could saved by covering the whole of St Neots with Bacofoil.

“I’ve studied this long and hard and can say without question that the amount of energy I can trap in my Bacofoil energy sump will be more than enough to shut down the power station,” said local inventor Bark Maddingley on a well known interforum.

However other town know-alls were quick to disagree. “I fucking disagree,” said one “just because I can. Anyway if you cover up the town with foil we’ll just turn more lights on negating the energy produced. This green thing is just a load of bollocks.”

In an amazing twist of co-incidence Mr Maddingly was also able to comment on the current interest in the St Neots Chimney. “It’s not chimney, it’s a well. Ground level in St Neots has been eroded 30m by the globally warmed wind and rain over the last 5 months. This is true because I can’t find any pictures of it on the internet. If it’s not there it’s not the truth. It’s not there so it must have been underground. The facts are evident.”

Tags: ATS Chimney, Chimney, Environment, Foil, St Neots
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Scorungers Shit Themselves Over Benefit Changes

Local dole-queue regulars were said to be terrified today whilst awaiting the Government’s announcement on changes to the benefits scheme.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will this morning reveal full details of a shake-up to the dole system aimed at getting long-term unemployed people off benefits and in to work. The new Universal Credit will replace current handouts such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and incapacity benefit, and be a bit harder to come by.

Duncan-Smith said that people going back to work after long periods of relying on taxpayer subsidisation would be mentored and reviewed to ensure they weren’t just turning up for interviews because they had to.

Residually unemployed man Colin McWilson, from St Neots, said he and his friends were worried about the news. “I don’t work cos I don’t think I should, innit,” he explained. “If they change the dole system I might actually have to get a job. That’ll interfere with my daily routine of drinking Stella and sniffing ketamine, and that really isn’t fair.”

High Street wanderer Martin Sumner, 25, hit back saying that he wanted to work, but due to a series of monumental blunders had been unemployed for nearly a year. “If they change all the current benefits into one single one, then every time I lose a job I’ll only need to fill in the one form, instead of seven or eight. What am I going to do to fill my days now, eh?”

Tags: Benefits, Dole, Job Centre, Scroungers, Skivers, Unemployment
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Bit Of Grass Gains Name

A shortcut which runs from Eynesbury Manor to Eaton Socon has been given a name, complete with proper street sign.

The rubbish bit of grass and hardcore-covered pathway, which includes a playground otherwise known as Friday nights’ second-best chav socialisation location, last week sprouted the name Wren Walk.

“I don’t know why they think this countryside-style alleyway needs a name,” said David Redrow, 40, whose house in ridiculously overcrowded Bevington Way overlooks the area. “I realise they’re building another estate – sorry, development – on the other side of this scrubby bit of turf, but are they actually going to build on it? They love to cram houses in these days but that’d really take the piss.”

Eynesbury councillor Paul Marcel explained that it was his impression that all walkways and alleys in the town were due to gain names, even though many of them are just hideaways for teen drinkers and the odd smackhead. This will be especially useful for the network of muddy tracks connecting to the Chav Superhighway.”

Indeed, the pricey bridge connecting Ernulf to Shakespeare Road is coming on a pace. “It still doesn’t have a name,” said councillor Marcel, “but I’m sure we’ll think of something completely inappropriate before it’s finished. The team which is coming up with roadnames for Love’s Farm, which likes to use the word ‘hill’ a lot to describe a minor slope, has been consulted and are working on it.”

Local court-botherer and Citizen reporter Benny T. Bean was delighted. “I’ve been planning to move into a tent for tax purposes,” he explained, “and now I’ll be able to actually have an address, by pitching on Wren Walk. Very excited.”

However, Flawn Way resident Jacob Paris said, “I don’t want to look out my window and see a fucking hippy encampment. It’s bad enough looking over the Chav Superhighway site and seeing the next generation of council-estate nippers being conceived.”

Tags: Chav Superhighway, Cycle bridge, Eastside, Eaton Socon, Ernulf, Eynesbury, Eynesbury MAnor., Footbridge, Park, Pocket Park, St Neots, Wren Walk
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