“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.”

Myfnwy Mwr, 28, complained after the Evil Empire refused to allow her to shop in her crusty nighties even though the company’s own adverts had previously shown actor Martin Clunes doing just that, with no recrimination whatsoever.

Pretending she spoke Welsh for the benefit of the national press, Mwr said, “Mae hyn yn sefyllfa chwerthinllyd”, which roughly translates as “What a fucking joke.” The supermarket giant responded by saying, “Another of our commercials shows someone arriving in a hot-air balloon, but we don’t have balloon parking facilities at our stores. Have some FUCKING PRIDE ya slovenly bitch! Honestly, not getting dressed before leaving the house! In the Victorian era, if you were wandering around in nightwear, you were kindly ‘assisted’ to the local sanitorium, where members of the (fully dressed) public could point and laugh from the lofty heights of the viewing gallery. Good times.”

Realising the uproar this gaffe was likely to cause, the company’s PR department swung into action, and announced trials of balloon-parking at the Barford Road site. “It’ll take up about a hundred car parking spaces to provide for three balloons,” said spokesman Grant Budgen, “but there’s obviously a demand for it, or the Sun wouldn’t have printed it.”

Budgen went on that the corporation was examining other types of parking, including digging canals as far as the cash machines for people who want to use their canoes and narrowboats to go shopping, and landing strips for those with light aircraft. “We can’t afford to be seen to be discriminating against anyone,” he said, “no matter what form of transport they prefer. And we can call it ‘sustainable’ because most of these methods use less petrol than a car, and maybe we’ll give away some green clubcard points.”

Top Gear presenter James May, who recently crashed a caravan tied to an airship into a field in Eltisley, said “This is a great idea. Sometimes I want to go and get a pint of milk, and I wish it took three hours to get there. Now I can use my airship – if I aim for Dover I might just about end up in St Neots.”

Partner Irma Konnman said that his firm had laid on extra staff in the High Street and Market Square last Friday in order to ambulance-chase any victims of falling rigs and masonry. But this was made unlikely by the lacklustre illuminations. “I’m not expecting Blackpool or anything,” said Konnman, “but this is just taking the piss for a town of this size.”

Up until 2006, the Christmas lighting in St Neots had become wonderfully tacky, with “snow-effect” light strips and massive lighting gantries across the road, complete with real miniature trees suspended above the junctions.

But following last year’s fiasco when a lighting rig fell on a pedestrian, the town and district councils have reduced the decorations to tinsel and fairy lights on a few lamp-posts. “We wouldn’t want to get sued,” said spokesman Dean Dexter, “although I suppose then we would have an excuse to increase council tax and therefore provide a better service in our planned non-specific-use centre.”

Undeterred, lawyers are turning their attentions to environmental activists and the weather, in light of the current cold snap. Spokesman for Bedford-based moneyhungrylitigation.com Steve Stevens said, “It’s ridiculous that we are allowing these tree-hugging hippies with dirty long hair to get everyone reducing their carbon bootprint and carbon dioxide emissions. If it stays this cold people will be slipping over on the ice left right and centre – that’s very painful if you slip all three ways at the same time.”

Stevens is hoping to file a class action against “all crusties” and fictional character Mother Nature, to win compensation for anyone slipping on the ice. He encouraged people to run along uneven surfaces in the dark whenever the temperature drops below zero, and of course to call his firm before dialling 999.

When asked how he intended to ensure Mother Nature turned up in court, Stevens replied “I expect we’ll just blame someone vaguely related to the weather, like Michael Fish, or of course CERN – everyone knows they’re bloody sinister.”

“It’s a fuckin disgrace,” said Toseland man James Hague. “These lefty greeny loonies wanna build a load of wind turbines up on that there hill – exactly how is that gonna contribute to global warming?”

A recent survey showed that most residents of the group of small villages between St Neots and Huntingdon were uninformed about global warming, and generally thought warmer weather would be “a good thing”.

Gravely resident Sheila Sarms, 52, told the Citizen “I’ll be doing all I can to get a coal-fired power station built in the area, and perhaps some coal mines to go with it. An extra four degrees on the temperature and a beach in St Ives would be fantastic.”

Huntingdonshire Distric Council and Npower were all unavailable for comment.

Story by DDT