THE government is lining up a multi-billion pound bail-out for Jaguar so it can keep making absurdly expensive cars that do 12 yards to the gallon.
Business secretary Peter Mandelson said it was vital Britain retained the skills and technology to produce pointless vehicles that cost more than the average salary to insure.
The Indian-owned company makes the pathetic Jaguar range of luxury cars, as well as the ludicrous Range Rover Sport, favoured by drug barons, footballers and the women that feed off them.
But Mr Mandelson stressed the government could not simply write a blank cheque for businesses that did not employ large numbers of Labour voters in key marginal seats.
He said: "There is also a huge chain of companies that rely on Jaguar's success. When one of these cars is actually sold, it then has to repaired at least six times a year. And of course you do have to replace all the bits that keep falling off.
"And then there's the billions that will be spent on road repairs, flood defences and treating the millions of British children who will develop chronic asthma thanks to the gigantic amounts of filth spewed out per kilometre by the Range Rover's magnificent V8."
He added: "Experts say the cars of the future will be bigger, uglier, thirstier and more expensive than anything you can possibly imagine. It is therefore right that we keep paying the working class people of Halewood and Solihull to churn out these things even if we end up throwing them into the sea."
Meanwhile the Indian government said last night that it was unable to bail out the car company because it had just spent its last £10 billion on another mission to the moon.
