“Phase one of our local pilot scheme involves providing sufferers with a tiny puppy and no training in how to look after it. Sooner or later the dog will croak it and, with any luck, the owner will come up with such a heart-rending story about how it died that the newspapers will run it. The second phase involves a complete lack of evidence to back the story up, generating more newspaper coverage,” he told The Citizen.

“The net result of such intense therapy is a fucking shed-load of attention!” he added.

The Citizen understands that the scheme will now be rolled out across the county. The Brick Red Animal Sanctuary who will be supplying the furry bundles, have welcomed the news. Spokesperson Gaye Gamling said “What with Christmas coming and all that we’re going to have hundreds of the little shit-machines to give away. This scheme is a real win-win for all concerned… except the dogs that is.”

David Attenborough was unavailable for comment.

While waiting times have fallen dramatically in the last few years, NHS chiefs are said to be concerned that patients – and more importantly, those hanging about in waiting rooms while their more inept friends and family members are treated – still think of a time quoted in hours and minutes as a long wait.

Former maternity spokesman Mike Primark, recently promoted to management and charged with improving patient perception of wait times, agreed to speak exclusively to the Citizen.

“Our waiting times have been steadily coming down for the last ten years, and we’ve also made the waiting rooms much prettier and out Lego in them and stuff to keep people amused,” said Primark, “but people still seem to measure whether the wait was acceptable or not by how many coffees they managed to drink, how many packets of crisps they got through, and how many copies of Chat they thumbed through whilst waiting for their friend or brother or cousin or whoever managed to drop a piano on their toes or whatever.”

The crisps and magazines were easy to remedy. “First, we threw out all those rubbish women’s weeklies you normally see littering the place, and replaced them with much thicker reading material. The Sunday Times is particularly good for sucking people into a coma without them noticing, and then even though they’ve been in A&E for three hours, they’ve only read two sections – about 4% of the paper – so it seems like they’ve been in for about fifteen minutes.”

Primark detailed how they replaced all the vending machine snacks with family-sized bags, so that you’d be full before purchasing that third bag of Starburst.

But the real challenge came from the hot beverages. “We’ve had the same old coffee machines for years,” said Primark, “which dispense a range of teas and coffees which all taste of cardboard, some liquid alleged to be soup, and a nasty sickly brown substance which we refer to as hot chocolate.

“The problem is, people soon notice if they are dispensed more than a 6oz cup, as they need the loo more. The only way to remedy this is to make each drink take longer to drink, by making it hotter, so people have to wait longer for it to cool.”

This is where CERN stepped in, said hapless spokesman Guillaume la Trec, 51. “We used our useless Large Hadron Collider to develop a process for heating water above 100º,” said la Trec, “without it turning into a gas. Basically, there are some very complicated formulas and equations and stuff which I won’t bore you with, but when you mix the water with the ground cardboard used to make all the drinks in these Klix machines, it can hold a temperature of 132.2ºc. This takes about half an hour to cool down to drinking temperature, meaning most ‘service users’ only ave time for one or two coffees, rather than the usual ten.”

“Fucking brilliant,” commented Addenbrookes A&E receptionist, Lottie Marlborough-Light, 22. “Now I won’t have chavvy fourteen-year-old mummies complaining that they’ve been waiting nine cups and three Snickers for their Darren to get his face stitched up. Marvellous.”

The scheme will be trialled at the two hospitals before being rolled out nationwide, if people don’t notice.

In a statement to the Citizen local health authority spokesperson, Kim Stonely-Bolton said “That bloody hospital has been a pain in neck ever since that dick-head built a hotel (treatment centre) and helicopter landing pad (canopy) a few years back. That place is in debt and therefore residents of local towns like St Neots owe, yes owe, the NHS £40million and we want it back! To do this we’ll be franchising out management to the team who can divert as much money into our coffers as possible.”

Local newspaper magnate and champion of the St Neots underclass, Thundoplolus P. Staker commented “they’ll be fucking lucky if they get 40p out of our chavs let alone £40m. I’ll be pushing for heavier drinking, more assaults and drag racing so the A&E gets fully utilised.”

We asked Mr Stonely-Bolton exactly how it would be more cost effective to pay a private team. “That’s easy, they’ll have to employ the useless fat wankers already in post. Then they can come down on the work-shy bastards like a ton of bricks, force them to leave and get a load of Filipinos in on minimum wage. Close a few departments and hey presto, everyone will piss off to Bedford and Cambridge and we can close the place down.”

Aneurin Bevan was available for grave spinning.

Mr Sampson, speaking form his chair just outside cafe Nero, said “I’m fed up with newspapers makin’ out we’re all tiny minded, insular bigots with nothing but time on our hands to moan about speed bumps and crap Christmas lights.” He added, “so I thought I’d use my years of experience in writing letters complaining about stuff that doesn’t really matter to better effect. So I’m sitting here saying that there’s no such thing as small town mentality ‘cos i said so.”

Quick to grab any hare-brained anecdotal theory as a way of saving money the National Health Service (NHS) reportedly slashed funding to local GP’s and Health Trusts dealing with any sign of mental problem claiming Mr Sampson “was right.”

Kim Stonely-Bolton, spokesperson for the local NHS Trust, said, “Of course Mr Sampson is right because the Government told us he is.” He continued “there’s little left to add” and further stated “I have nothing further to state.”

Loads of local councillors were available for comment; we just couldn’t be bothered to print them.