The new police photo...

Regular readers of the online edition of the Cambridge Used-To-Be-In-The-Evening News were today shocked to discover a new standard police image on a story about something to do with a road.

Traditionally, the website is too lazy to take pictures of anything relating to traffic problems, and just uses a shot of the back of a copper’s hi-vis vest (below).

...and the old one

People logging on this afternoon were confused. “It’s quite like the old one, but a bit different,” said Comberton resident Clare Fading. “Not sure I like it.” Cambridge human Barbie Natalie Trees agreed. “They shouldn’t have changed this image, cos like, now I won’t instantly know what the story is about.”

The publishers of the CUTBITEN said that they were sure readers would soon adapt. “After all,” said one staffer, “we’ve been using an A14 sign that someone knocked up on Paint for the last three years, and no-one’s even noticed.”

Around 72% of the papers’ coverage has been made up of reports of the project for nearly three years, with the remainder covering missing cats and ugly babies.

But this week, contractors BAM! Nuts’n'all handed over the concrete monstrosity, which has overrun by two years. “It’s a happy day,” said a spokesman for Cambridgeshire County Council. “When this project started, the economy was booming and everyone had loads of money. Now, following a global recession which you may not have noticed, we’re all skint, and the completion of White Elephant Avenue is a much-needed ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy outlook.”

Cambridge residents were not so happy. David Morennes, of the city’s Gilbert Road, said “All this means is that St Ives and Huntingdon residents can get into Cambridge a little quicker. Let’s face it, no-one needs that.”

Former News. Crier & Something editor Matt Scottish, who now works somewhere beyond civilisation’s western boundary at the A1, said “There’s a real challenge here for my replacement. They’ll need to dig out some back issues and see what we used to report on before the busway.”

This reporter seems to remember it was mostly cats.

The infamous Leyland Cyprus hedge was planted behind Eynesbury Rovers’ football ground after neighbours complained that the club’s floodlights made it impossible to do anything at all in their houses, acting as a midnight sun.

Resident Jean Tate, 69, said that by 4pm the sun has disappeared, and “all you can see is hedge.”

Mrs Tate continued that “Eynesbury Rovers are doing shit-all to address our concerns. I’m fed up of living in semi-darkness the whole year round. They’d better act soon or I’ll just burn the fuckers down.”

Derek Steels, who has worked at volunteer-run Rovers since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, replied: “We’ve offered to chop a few feet off the top, but we’re not actually going to do it ‘cos we’re skint. Still the neighbours won’t stop complaining.

“Really, you can’t please some people. First it was too bright, because of the lights; now it’s too dark because of the hedges we’ve put up to block out the lights.”

It is thought that the club are looking into buying a large mirror to reflect some extra sunlight into back gardens in the road. “In the meantime,” said Steels, “they’ll just have to spend more time on the other side of the house.”

The Government was last week voting on a referendum to change the system for general elections to AV, where votes for the least-popular candidate are divided up amongst the higher scorers, and repeated until there is a winner.

But council leader Julia Wayward said the council felt this was unfair, and would not be following it for local elections. “No-one is really that bothered about council elections, apart from councillors themselves,” said Wayward, “so we’ll be launching our new vote system immediately.”

The scheme involves recording news coverage in the Hunts Post-it, News & Something, Cambridge Evening News and the Citizen. The winner for each ward will be the one with the most column inches.

Wayward explained, “Anyone not appearing will not gain a place on the council. It’s much fairer this way, as people will already recognise the councillors from reading about their whingeing, moaning and cock-waving in the papers.”

The new system will also cost a lot less, unlike the national AV system which has been estimated at £32RM (Rowley Millions), as there will be no need to actually open any polling stations or distribute voter registration cards.

It is thought that after the next by-elections, St Neots will only have five councillors – Wayward, Paul Marcel, Derek Miles, Steve van der Whitevanman and Terrence Dougall. Cllr Bob Farms, of mystery parish Eynesbury Hardwick, was said to also be considering a return to town. “I’m delighted,” said cllr Marcel. “Now we don’t have to worry about listening to people at all – just carry on filling up the letters pages and posing with chimneys. This’ll be awesome.”

Belland Hill, which gained it’s name sometime in the last couple of weeks, is not named after anything in particular, according to councillors and developers.

However, the name is just one vowel away from a slang term for part of the male anatomy – or rather the end of part of the male anatomy. This has got citizens a bit riled up.

“This is disgraceful,” said Stone Hill resident Mick Trucknell, 42. “It’s bad enough living on roads called Hill when there’s only a 0.5% incline, but making the first part of the name this explicit? They might as well have erected a sign calling it Nobend Close!”

Councillors were, predictably, not forthcoming about the new name. “The thing is,” said former council leader Derek Miles, “it’s usually the councillors who suggest names for the new roads, so one of them is clearly having a giggle. Maybe it’s got something to do with all the cock-waving going on now we’re friends with the Tories?”

Lib Dem town and now District Councillor Steve van der Whitevanman, whose email address is now a record 746 characters long, strongly denied adjusting the final A on the roadsign to an E, despite having smudgy black marker-pen ink all over his hands. “I was, er, drawing a poster, yes that’s it,” said WVM yesterday. “I certainly didn’t change the sign to say Balland or any other connotation…”

In other news, the Citizen has resorted to nob gags, and is very sorry,

Long and complicated second names like Gdnagley and van der Whitevandriver van der Whitevandriverman van der Whitevandriver have lead to a plague of difficult to spell names displayed all over St Neots.

Pre-empting this confusion, local parliamentary candidate Marvin Land had changed his name to “something easy to spell”. His original family name of Rumplestiltskin was seen to be too confusing in an environment where long and difficult to spell names were in vogue.

Land commented, “We were concerned that too many long, hard to spell names might confuse the electorate and lead to election fatigue which would be no good for any of us. So after van der Whitevandriver van der Whitevandriverman van der Whitevandriver declined the offer to shorten his name I felt I had to.”

The plans, however, have lead to confusion amongst road users, residents and ramblers alike. The Town Hall has been “inundated” with calls asking where Marvin Land is and where the borders start and finish. A member of staff who did not wish to be named said, “I have to admit there were a few laughs in the office when pensioners and lorry drivers were calling to say they had entered Marvin Land. Lols.”

Local resident Ethel Farqhuit, 79, said, “We were coming back from Roxton when we saw all these Marvin Land signs, my husband Ron was worried as we didn’t have our passports, we thought we were in Cambridgeshire, no one told us about this new country. We blame the district council”

Local haulier Dave Skandia was also confused. “Nothing showed up on the sat nav, there were no border controls, my mate Bob said it might be a bit like Arnhem Land in Australia but wetter and colder.”

Huntingdon District Council were asked to comment and made the following statement:

“There is no such place as Marvin Land and to our knowledge there has been no declaration of independence locally. We assume he must be a person, even though nobody has ever physically seen him, and people should not be concerned that they may be in a different country.”

Local councillor Steve van der Whitevandriver van der Whitevandriverman van der Whitevandriver, who shortened hsi name to van der Whitevanman, told the Citizen “There’s no such place but wouldn’t it be good if we could declare independence from those tossers at district?”

Local candidate Jonathon Gdangley said he knew Marvin Land and said “he is certainly no country but soon could be if he got any bigger.”

The shock claims come after a sharp increase in the number of felines going missing in recent weeks, particularly from the Eynesbury area. “Well, at first we just thought it was typical Eynesbury chavvery,” said Cats Protection League spokesman Tom Katz. “Then we realised that cats are quite difficult to pinch without specialised equipment, on account of all the claws and fangs and things.”

Residents’ claimes that some sort of cat mafia has been despatching unwelcome interlopers and burying them under local patios was quickly dismissed as a plot too poor for even Brookside to consider repeating.

“Clearly,” said Katz, “the rise in missing moggies is something to do with the local rags. Look at their leading articles is all I’m going to say.”

Indeed, the frequency with which no other news is available – which has led to the Citizen’s own reporters struggling to find anything newsworthy – does appear to have forced the editor of the News, Crier and Something to resort to deperate measures. Editor Matt Scottish mouthed off at our undercover reporter over a pint, “Well all people seem to be interested in these days is town councillors having tit-for-tat scraps, and there’s been none of that recently. How else am I gonna get a paper out weekly? I’m not just gonna make stuff up am I.”

When asked explicitly if the paper had been purloining pussycats for the purposes of column inches, Scottish said “All I’m saying is if you’ve got a cat, you might not wanna live in Eynesbury when our print deadline is approaching…”

A similarly worrying rise in TWOC’d tabbies has been noted on the Oxmoor in Huntingdon. The Hunts Poster refused to comment.