Despite popular belief that almost no lights have been put up following a massive balls-up two years ago when a woman was thumped on the head with a falling cross-street display, the council revealed that in fact approximately fifty gantries have been put up over the High Street, but they are not visible to the naked eye.

“It’s the perfect solution,” said council leader Julia Wayward. “We found out about some obscure EU funding for reducing the town’s overall electricity consumption. We based the savings on the festive illuminations from 2001 to 2005, and worked out how much we’re saving now.

“The grant doesn’t apply to towns who merely put up less lights, so we installed a shitload of invisible lights across the High Street, Market Square and New Street, slashing the power bill by 80% year-on-year.”

Local residents were relived that their lights were not the crappest in the county for the third year running, following the 2007 incident. “Well,” commented Penwryn Court resident Jake Cornswalez, “We may not be able to see the lights, but now we know they are there, we can thumb our noses at those superior fuckers in Huntingdon once more.”

A spokesman for the EU said, “Obviously it was difficult to judge just how eco-friendly the invisible lights are, but when the council showed us that they used exactly zero electricity, we were more than happy to pay the full £14m grant.” It is thought that after deductions the council will receive approximately £18.32.

Under directive 09/447/EC, the terms “spitting distance” and “a stone’s throw” could soon be disappearing, particularly from promotional literature.

EU spokesman Johann Rohan said today, “It is clear to me that St Neots is not “a stone’s throw” away from Cambridge. Neither is your own riverside park “spitting distance” from the Market Square.

“This can be very confusing, especially for foreign visitors who already get confused by your insistence on using archaic Imperial measurements for almost everything.”

The directive aims to officially define a stone’s throw as the average distance a stone can be thrown in Brussels with a prevailing north-easterly wind, when the weight of the stone is a known factor. This value is apparntly 26.3 meteres, although how legislators arrived at this figure is really anyone’s guess. A 7,335-word report compiled by oft-quoted Expert Scientists into why spitting distance is defined as “about three feet” is also available.

Rohan added that a number of other expressions were also under review, in particular the threat of knocking someone “into the middle of next week”, which may lead non-native speakers of English to believe that time travel had at last been cracked. Avoiding international confusion in the UK is no new minefield, as the last decade has seen Jif change to Cif and our beloved Opal Fruits to Starburst.

Councillors hit back at the policy. “What a load of old shit,” said Bob Farms, councillor for mystery Hardwick parish. “These are traditional common-use English expressions, and the EU has no right to interfere with our colloquialisms and odd sayings.”

Rohan responded that a “load” of “old” shit was specifically two metric tonnes of faeces which is three weeks and one day old. He added that anyone caught using outdated expressions after 1st December this year would face a fine of up to half a Rowley Million, and this would also apply to people who still call Somerfield “Gateway”.

Council leader Julia Wayward said, “It’s a load of absolute bollocks.” The legislation does not yet specify how many bollocks a load comprises.

Local councils, backed by the Government, have long been fans of half-arsed schemes to reduce the number of cars on the road, such as pinch-point traffic calming, and not providing enough parking on new estates – all while not actually increasing the availability of public transport.

Secretary of State for Transport Lord Adonis issued a statement in Parliament saying, “All towns, cities and villages will have their access from local trunk roads and motorways restricted depending on the number of residents in said area.

“If people cannot get into the town as easily, there will be less cars on our urban roads. Fact.”

Lord Adonis hit back at claims that the strategy was ill-thought-out and would cause more, not less, traffic and congestion on town centre streets on account of everyone trying to leave by one exit, by saying “bollocks”.

St Neots often experiences the loss of one access to its only trunk route, the A1, when Mill Lane bridges flood approximately every seven minutes. While the road is closed, anyone entering the town from the north is forced to use the Crosshall Road junction and travel through the town centre, causing tail-backs up to three miles long through Eaton Socon.

Councillors were behind the plans. “I myself think that this is a stupendous plan, innit,” said self-martyring Lib Dem Terrence Dougall. “Less A1 access means less Huntingdon chav visitors as far as I am concerned, and also if it’s harder to get TO Huntingdon then we will probably get a cinema – I think myself that this stands to reason.”

The understandably pro-car AA said that the scheme was doomed to failure. “I don’t see how you would choose the exit,” said spokesman Eric Geddes. “OK, some towns like Huntingdon can lose a junction – that rubbish little one near Brampton that no-one uses because it causes you to die, for example.

“But most places, St Neots included, need all their exits and maybe more.”

Councillor Steven van der Whitevanman of Eynesbury, said “I know the AA have their reservations, but don’t forget they tried to delete St Neots off the map a few years ago. I hardly think they are a credible source for anything to do with cars at all ever.” Whitevanman, 46, hinted that the council were thinking of going one step further and closing both the Wyboston Lakes and Little Paxton sliproads.

“Anyone travelling from Bedford to Cambridge would have to drive through town, instead of round the bypass,” he said. “Once we pedestrianise the town centre, this will mean the average journey time through the town will be three to four days. This is a boon to local businesses as people will need to stop and eat every 100 yards or nine hours, whichever comes soonest.”

Former council leader Derek Miles said, “Steve is right. Once we have a big queue of traffic, we’ll shut the now-pointless bypass and build a fucking great big cinema on it. Perfect.”

St Neots Twinning Association exists so that local councillors and do-gooders can go on free holidays to France and get in the local rags both here and across the Channel.

But a recent trip to Faches-Thumesnil, which is in fact a suburb of Lille, close to the Belgian border, turned up a surprise for District Councillor Gordon Harp and his colleagues when the French revealed that recycling was “nothing to do with bikes.”

Peter Nerpler, 42, of Chawston Close, who is also a member of the twinning assocation, said, “I’ve always found it a bit odd that Hunts DC’s recycling lorries just tip everything in together. In fact, the blue bins themselves are just normal household waste, minus food.” Having been informed that recycling involves the remanufacturing of old packaging into new, Nerpler decided to investigate last year. “I went to the state-of-the-art recycling facility, somewhere in the Fens, and discovered that recycling actually involved putting all the rubbish in a trailer attached to a pushbike, and riding it around the building twice.

“The rubbish then gets collected to go to landfill.”

However, when the junket visited Faches, they were surprised to discover not a single bike at the local recycling depot. “It appears my first idea of what recycling is was correct,” chuckled Nerpler. “Well I never! I was red in the face I can tell you!”

Huntingdonshire District Council denied the rumours, and issued a statement saying “We’re happy with the way we carry out recycling, and this faggoty French way of doing it is just not on. We also disbelieve claimes that this is how other councils recycle.”

Lille Metropole’s president Martine Le Clerc said, “Ces anglais sont putain de ridicule. Faches-Thumesnil n’est même pas une ville, c’est une sanglante banlieue. Wankers.”

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Story by DDT

This will come as a blow to residents of St Neots, who have recently had to content with other madcap EU rulings on subjects such as the name of the Market Square, and dealt with subsidy confusion over roundabouts.

“How ridiculous,” council spokesman Dean Dexter said today. “The number of people who speak French in St Neots is miniscule, and pretty much the only French visitors we ever get are Faches Thumesnil town council, over on a jolly. I mean, fact-finding trip.”

St Neots’ saving grace is that it is only twinned with one town. Huntingdon will have to translate every road name into not only French, but Italian and Hungarian.

“There’s the matter of how far we go with the translation too,” said Dexter. “Is it just the ‘road’ or ‘street’ bit, or do we have to find out what the name means?” To help in this task the council have ordered a French dictionary from Amazon.co.uk. “Used of course,” said Dexter, “we can’t justify spending £8.99 of taxpayers’ money on a new one.”

The other option is to end twinning association with Faches Thumesnil, but the council are thought to be reluctant to do this as it would end their free holidays, or “fact-finding missions” as they term them. The council were said to be loooking into twinning alternatives in English-speaking countries though – Sydney is currently looking like the favourite.

Dean Dexter, of St Neots Town Council, said “we are currently working with the local government on a solution as St Neots Market Square has been one of the first to be identified as an unequal quadrilateral. From now on we will be referring to it as the Market Rectangle”.

Under the law, St Neots could reclaim its Market Square status if a 6m high retaining wall is built which runs north out of “the shop that was formerly Barneys” to the other side of the market rectangle. This would not only create a square, but an East side and a more desirable West side to the town. An insider from the Town Council, commenting on the wall which would divide Eynesbury and Eaton Socon, said it sounded “desirable”. However one person the St Neots Citizen stopped on the street said “I live in Eaton Ford and work in the Corner House so commuting would be hell”.

It is believed that roads named Square outside of the town centre would be exempt from the ruling, but may have to put quote marks around the road sign to show that it is merely a name, and not an actual square. A ruling on roads named the Crescent which are not crescent-shaped is expected next week.

Story by Bebamag reporter

Fifteen more roundabouts are to be erected on the Great North Road in order to obtain new European funding. Residents were said to be “in shock”.

The dramatic 1.5% increase in gyratory road systems is because of EU finding legislation introduced by Brussells. Conurbations smaller than 100,000 residents are now eligible for the new “Roundabouts and Traffic Circles Grant” whereby extra funding for public services is given.

At present, St Neots has approximately 335 roundabouts, gyratory ststems and other assorted “controlled” junctions. When this figure reaches 350, the new grants will come into effect, and a one-off payment of around £125,000.00 will be made. It is widely expected that this money will help pay for the upkeep of the outdoor pool, slated once again for closure, although the council predicts many residents will “stupidly demand it be used for a cinema”. Should the closure go ahead, then this fund will be used to attract new pubs into the Market Square area.

“We believe the money is welcome, and the £135,000.00 cost of erecting these roundabouts is a small price to pay for a generous EU subsidy,” said local councillor Bob Farms.

However, an angry resident of Eaton Socon had this to say. “Once again, our council are not listening to us! We feel strongly about further roundabouts in this area, and intend to boycott them. From Easter we’ll be driving straight over them without stopping.”

Work on the new roundabouts is expected to last around 12 months. Residents are advised to use “other roads” during this time.

Story by CG.