Since the disappearance of local award winning Cock-Waver extraordinaire Cllr Larry Hackman the town has found itself without a Self-Promotion Champion.

All that changed this week as part-time army chef and bean-counting councillor Harry “R” Rogerson whipped his metaphorical manhood out and gave it a good wave, announcing “THE CINEMA IS A DAMN GOOD IDEA, IT’S NOT MINE, BUT IT MIGHT BE IF IT DOESN’T FAIL. I DON’T KNOW WHY IT’S A GOOD IDEA BUT I KNOW IT’S A GOOD IDEA BECAUSE MARCEL, HACKMAN AND THE OTHERS TOLD ME. THEY ALSO SAID I COULD BE THE SPOKESBLOKE. SEE, I TOLD YOU I WAS WELL IMPORTANT!”

The Citizen asked Cllr Rogerson for his observations on the socio-economic chance for the cinema’s survival based on the local demographic. “YOU FRICKIN’ WHAT?” observed the councillor. “ALL I FUCKIN KNOW IS THAT I CAN GET DOWN THERE WITH THE MISSUS ON SATURDAY NIGHT, HAVE GOOD BEVVY, WATCH A RIGHT GOOD TEAR UP WITH CHUCK NORRIS IN THE PICTURES AND HAVE A RUCK UP THE ROSE AFTER!”

The Citizen is keen to promote the work of good honest cock-wavers like Cllr Rogerson and will be following his exploits closely.

The Roberts Close man, who works as a drug guidance counsellor, had been away on holiday for two months, and missed the completion of both the Chav Superhighway and the guided bus.

“I couldn’t believe it when I got back to St Neots,” said Norway. “I got back on Sunday and needed milk, bread – the usual things that you’ve let go all mouldy in your fridge while you’re away. Little Tesco was really busy so I hopped on my bike and headed for Eynesbury.”

But as Norway approached the River Mill, a casual acquaintance riding the other way asked him if he’d been over the new bridge yet. “I was shocked,” explains Norway. “I never expected the Chav Superhighway to be finished, but it was, and I cycled all the way to the Eastside on it. The tarmac was smooth and the inclines on the bridge slight. It was amazing!”

Flushed with pleasure, Norway completed his shopping and repeated his journey in the opposite direction. “By the time I got home, I needed a sit-down and a cup of tea!”

The following day, Norway travelled by train to Huntingdon for a meeting then caught a bus to Cambridge. “I was annoyed at first because my usual 55 bus had been replaced by a ‘B’. I didn’t think much of it though,” he explains. But as the bus left St Ives, Norway noticed a change in surroundings. “You’d barely believe it: we were actually on the busway!” spluttered Dave. “By the time we got to Cambridge I was hyperventilating. I pretty much messed my pants!”

Doctors at Addenbrookes diagnosed Norway with Unlikely Project Completion Disorder and prescribed a heavy dose of sedatives. They expect him to be able to return to work within months. “I don’t know what I’ll do if they ever upgrade the A14,” he told the Citizen. “I’ll probably have a heart attack, I’d imagine.”

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.”

“This situation is totally unacceptable,” says Warren Pearce, 22, who lives on the Oxmoor Estate’s notorious Kent Road and is the chairman of the local heroin and crack purveyor’s association, Huntingdon Ultra Super Narcs. “Our dealers are all independent businessmen, and are really starting to suffer in the recession. Working people just can’t afford hard drugs any more, and although there are more than ever on the dole, it just doesn’t make up the numbers.

“Just last week, one of the most prolific crack houses in our district, in Sandfields Road, St Neots, was shut down, and all the customers vanished. This put at least four badboy Yardie crack pedlars out of business.”

Seemingly unrelated is the news that Huntingdon is the UK’s most well-read town, in a survey by online book retailer Amazon. But local anthropologists have uncovered the shocking truth – namely that the town’s drug dealers have started pushing reading material instead.

“It’s an interesting find,” commented book shop employee Ras Prince, 40, of Godmanchester. “What’s happening is that the kids these days, people have been filling their heads with all kinds of nonsense about how ‘crack is whack’ and ‘heroin is not your hero’ and all that. So, the suppliers have diversified.”

The method, explains Prince, is the same as pushing Class A’s. “You butter some impressionable teen up with a few really good quality novels and such, and then once they’re hooked you can start emptying their wallets. It’s such a simple transition, I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”

Certainly, this may be the only way to explain why Twilight was so popular. “After all,” says Prince, “here’s a pile of absolute dross which takes vampires from being the stuff of children’s nightmares to sparkly, flaky fairies who are scared of having sex. Only someone with a heavy addiction to the printed word would buy it.”

Unemployed tanning technician takes booking via payphone

Eynesbury residents were shocked and upset in July to find that local brothel ”tanning shop”, Studio One, had closed down.

The studio, on the Eastside’s St Mary’s Street, has been providing sexual services self-tanning services since the 1980s, when local madam small business owner Celine Bouvier discovered a need in the town for ladies of negotiable affection people to look browner.

“I’m so sad to see Studio One close,” said neighbour Pete Doughy, 32. “I mean, I rocked up there at fifteen years old before going on a family holiday to Spain, not wanting to be all pasty on the beach, and imagine my surprise when I was told the tanning beds were all broken but for £40 I could have a much nicer time.”

Abandoning all pretence that the store was not a front for the purchasing of ‘business’, the Citizen tracked down Bouvier to a street corner on Cambridge’s Histon Road. “What did us in,” she explains, “was the amazing number of legitimate beauty salons that have opened in St Neots in the last few years.

“The general process was that someone would come in and ask to use a tanning bed, we would say they were broken, and they would state that they would take their business elsewhere. We would then say something like ‘oh sir, but we are still open for business, and if they didn’t look confused we had a customer.

“Of course, it wasn’t a knocking shop at all. Oh no. We were just referring to spray tans instead.”

Whatever the lies, it looks like the next generation of fourteen-year-olds will have nothing to tease their slightly overweight friend about. “Playground tradition involves posturing that you’ve ‘enjoyed’ at least eight females by year ten,” explains Ernulf St Neots Community College Ernulf principal Dave Lee Traverse, “and when someone fails in this lie you state ‘you wanna get yourself down Studio One mate’. Where are these boys going to go for dangerous liaisons now?”

Suffering more are the former beauty technicians employed at Studio One. “People don’t really like it when you walk up to them on a street corner and offer them a tan,” said Leanne Harvard, 22. “If Studio One remains closed there’s going to be at least three unemployed ‘technicians’ hanging around the Market Square at night, and that just won’t do a great deal for the town’s image, will it?”

Bus company Ragecoach adjusted their legendary Mighty X5 service a fortnight ago after users complained that it stopped too often, especially on the Bedford-bound portion of the route. “It’s a joke really,” commented bus pass holder Lily Van Smith, 64, a couple of months ago. “The bus stops at the Spar shop, a few people get off, then it stops again at the corner of Manor Farm Road, and then a few yards later opposite the garage. These lazy fat bastards really could get off at the first stop and spend two minutes walking down,” she ranted, before alighting at Sandfields Road, a good hundred metres further down the road.

Indeed, the excessive number of bus stops is a legacy of times past. “In the eighties,” explains local historian John Black, “there was only the Oxford to Cambridge or Northampton to Cambridge via Bedford bus, and they had alternate stops. If you wanted to go from Eaton Socon to the train station you had to get one of these long-distance coaches. Back then you could still smoke at the back of the bus and a return to Bedford was only three shillings, AND we used to leave the back door at home unlocked…”

Abandoning that loose end, the Citizen visited the Market Square early this morning to talk to some real-life bus users. Sainsburys employee Sarah Red-Bull, 18, catches the X5 into Cambridge every day for her eleven-hour till tart shift at the city’s St Andrew’s Street branch. “Up until last month,” Red-Bull explains, “I used to catch the bus from outside the George and Dragon. Now I have to walk into town, it’s bloody hell.”

Olly Sandford, who works at nearby Cambridge Arsessment, agreed. “I used to alight on the way back at the Ford garage, which I live opposite. Now I have to get off in the Market Square and walk back. This adds a good five minutes of fresh air to my day which I’m not entirely pleased about.”

Ragecoach customer service director Zoe Page made a statement to the Citizen. “You lot are never fucking happy are you? First you said you needed town buses, so we got you all these incomprehensible sixty-something buses which no bastard ever uses. Then along cam bus passes and the X5 took an hour to get through town and was full of pensioners riding for free, and you said it stopped too often. So we took away some stops. And now you don’t like walking.

“It’s like when you said the buses were old and crap, so we got all these new ones with leather seats and toilets and that, and all you ever do is bitch about the WiFi not working.

“Frankly, if you don’t like it, stop being cheap and get a car, and we’ll take £2.60 off you at the Park & Ride. Can’t escape Ragecoach in Cambridgeshire can you!”

Whatever happens, it’s likely that passenger numbers on the X5 will remain exactly the same. A few really lazy people – or those who genuinely can’t walk that far – will probably start getting the bus into town. If they choose to do so, they’ve got about a million different buses that all follow roughly the same route to choose from; but you can rest assured that commuters won’t be happy either way. “The only way to please some people would be to have the bus stopping every three bus-lengths,” commented Page, “but then they’ll all just whinge about all the riff-raff hanging around in front of their houses waiting for the bus. Which, let’s face it, is always fucking late.”

Virgo (23/08-22/09)

Libra (23/9-23/10)

Librans are all about balance and like a poorly made propeller, if you are imbalanced you will rapidly fall apart. For this reason I would advise you to give-up drugs and alcohol. Thankfully, you can now send all your mind-unbalancing chemicals and plants to the St.Neots Citizen (c/o Benny T. Bean), Citizen Towers, St.Neots, Cambridgeshire as part of the St.Neots Citizen’s Drugs Amnesty.

Scorpio (24/10-21/11)

.ti gnitirw rof ma I naht egnarts erom era uoy neht ,egassem sdrawkcab siht daer ot emit eht nekat evah uoy fI

Sagittarius (22/11-21/12)

Here are some anagrams for you sagittarius:

I is gas, u tart!

Tug a rat Sisi.

I…I gut ass tar!

U – sagi tits, ra!

Tastii sugar.

Capricorn (22/12-19/1)

Aquarius (20/01-19/02)

Lip-up fatty, fatty lip-up fatty, fatty reggae. What more can I say?

Pisces (20/02-20/03)

Pisceians are well known for being generous and charitable, so why not get involved in my fund-raising event ‘Hairless for the Homeless’. All you need to do to get involved is download the ‘sponsor-me pack’ at www.hairlessforthehomeless.com and then find people to sponsor you to shave-off all your body hair in the name of a good cause. You must also keep the hair you remove because it is going to be recycled into clothes and blankets for the homeless community in St.Neots. Then just send it to me along with before and after photos – simple!

‘Hairless for the Homeless’ is part of the St.Neots Citizen’s Pube Amnesty.*

Aries (21/03-19/04)

Plinth.

Taurus (20/04-20/05)

1.21 Gigawatts!!!!!!

Gemini (21/05-20/06)

Geminis are known for their sense of humour, but you have been feeling down recently and not in the mood for joke-telling. This is because Venus (your spirit planet) has been in a state of ‘reversal’ (when it spins in the opposite direction to normal). This will begin to change, however, sometime towards the end of next week when it reverts back to its regular spin-cycle. Until then just keep in-mind this well-known saying:

Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

Just as well really, because it’s not socially acceptable to cry-wank in public. (See also crwnk, Welsh, v., to lubricate one’s self-abuse with salty tears of despair)

Cancer (21/06-22/07)

This is a taster of my latest tune. I’ve invented a new genre of music, which sounds like a flaccid kind of gangsta rap – I call it flip-flop.

Bean Treatz – I’m from the mean streets of St.Neots Town, yeah I got massive feet, but that don’t make me a clown. But I is funny tho, with the honeys yo, I like the nice girls and the dirty hos. I’m a lyricist, a verbal pharmacist, prescribe you word-drugs that make your mind twist. Like elastic, I’m fantastic, but if you push me I’ll go spastic. I get drastic, got bare plastic, loads of cash to splash and a massive dick. It will own you, when I bone you, I will make you cum and then won’t phone you. On the mic I got peng flavours, on the stage some strange behaviours, i like crisps ‘n’ that, but i don’t like cheesy quavers, so all you ravers understand, i is a saviour in your hand, coz i done so much for rap, Dre owes me some favours. I’m bringing hip-hop back, from sticking like a ball-sack, to your inner thigh, when the temp is high and you done too much crack. I got bare rotent green, so much white its obscene and I be bangin’ 7 gram rocks like I was Charlie Sheen.

Leo (23/07-22/08)

Lettuce.

Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce. Lettuce.

Parking on the Market Square has been suspended for the weekend to allow for the time wasting SunFest, also known as the August Festival, Summer Festival or Sort-Of Carnival, to take place.

Residents of the further reaches of the town were enraged. “If I want to go into town I should bloody well be able to,” spluttered Belland Hill man Maurice Lichen, a 32-year-old IT professional who has recently moved to the estate. “I always park in the Market Square as it’s impossible to spend more than an hour in town, and I should be able to do that whenever I bloody well want to.”

Eaton Socon mum of two Lisa Aston, 24, said she had planned to take her three-year-old twins to Costa Coffee, despite the fact they are far too young for caffeine, and was unable to. “I don’t actually drive,” said Aston, unemployed, of Jellicoe Place, “but I was still annoyed that if I could then I wouldn’t be able to park.”

Conveniently forgetting that there are plenty of other car parks and that parking is only suspended for the weekend, councillor Graham Wellington-Boot railed against the organisers. “Businesses in the town are sure to go into liquidation at the rate of one every 33 minutes because of this,” the councillor spat. “Clearly those of us who organised SunFest are to blame.”

Other councillors were so conflicted that they were unable to comment on the issue, but as usual it seems they’re sitting on both sides of the fence simultaneously, and fiercely blaming each other.

It’s thought that approximately seventeen people will attend the free event on the Market Square, fifteen of which will have got lost looking for non-existent toilets.

The Citizen has always aimed to keep locals up to date on the terrible meteorlogical situation over the summer, as when we correctly predicted two years ago that it’d probably rain. “August bank holiday isn’t supposed to be pleasant,” said Michael Shark of the Met Office. “If it was sunny everyone’d be heading for the seaside and complaining that the roads were a nightmare – or worse still, a national embarrassment.”

Indeed, motoring organisations were the only ones predicting the opposite of misery over the last three-day break until Christmas. “Fuel has gone up so much that local garages are just writing ‘joke’ on their polesign where the price used to be,” explained AA spokesman Bill Flatyre, “and with the added bonus of all this rain we expect to see major routes pretty clear this weekend.”

RAC counterpart Andy Cambelt agreed. “If you can afford to head to Lowestoft or something you probably should,” he advised. “There’ll be loads of free parking and once you’ve filled the car up you might have enough cash left for a siggy bag of chips.”

Neotians, however, were nonplussed by this supposed good news. “They really must do something about this,” complained Irene Pavillion, 38, of Longsands Road. “I mean it really is not good enough.” When pressed on who “they” were and how exactly something could be done about the weather, Pavillion muttered something about the council.

Former council leader Julia Wayward was quick to retort. “I’m not a councillor any more, so I can safely tell you to stop being such a whiny bunch of bastards,” she said in a statement this morning. “Obviously it was going to rain – everyone’s already bought disposable barbecues and enough burgers to feed the Libyan rebels for a week. Idiots.”

“This isn’t on,” said councillor Harry “R” Rogerson. “They can take their horses and fuck off!”

Newmarket is part of Suffolk, although around 20% of it’s area is in Glorious Cambridgeshire. The town is the world centre for horseracing, and councillors wishing to push the border east say the extortionate rates of council tax they are planning to charge equines could shore up services and slush funds in the rest of the county.

However, even if Newmarket does join the UK’s most wonderful shire, there is confusion over which district it would belong to. “Geographically,” explained local town-moving expert John Hall of Anglia Ruskin University, “Newmarket should come into South Cambs. However, this district was recently voted one of the top-ten places to live in the UK, and has no towns. Newmarket’s a town so SCDC isn’t interested.”

St Neots residents refused to allow the town to become an outpost of Huntingdonshire, and it is thought that Newmarketeers would be less than pleased to be associated with people-eating Fenland.

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter anyway,” said Hall. “Firstly, it probably won’t happen. And secondly, Neotians need to do their research – Newmarket is half the size of St Neots, as horses don’t, despite rumours, each count as 300 people.”