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Zoos unveil World Cup-predicting animals

ZOOKEEPERS have revealed the 412 animals who will successfully predict the results of this year’s World Cup.

The animals hope to follow in the footsteps of 2010’s Paul the Octopus in a competition pundits predict will be far more intense and interesting than the actual games.

Wayne Hayes of London Zoo said: “Brett the zebra, with the uncanny ability to see the future granted to all African equids, has this World Cup locked up.

“All other animals can frankly piss off.”

But Mary Fisher of Edinburgh Zoo retorted: “Zebras know f**k all about football otherwise they wouldn’t wear Newcastle strips.

“You want astounding predictions from an in-vogue mammal, check out the prescient picks from Mairead the capybara, who’s got a 3-2 victory for France in extra time. Sponsored by Bet365.”

A spokesman for Berlin Zoological Garden said: “Mairead couldn’t even guess the winner of the Scottish Premier League out of Celtic or Celtic.

“She should stick to being disquietingly oversized vermin and leave the punditry to Gottlieb the giant anaconda, who tells us who the winner is by eating rats painted with national flags.”

Other prophetic animals include Barry the box jellyfish, Elmer the spot-breasted ibis, Chiyo the Thompson’s gazelle and Stephen the slime-mould from Braintree Spore Park.

Paul the Octopus, after successfully picking Spain as the winners in 2010, enjoyed sudden fame and embarked on a world tour before dying in the arms of a Las Vegas stripper.

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How to put a nice positive spin on race riots, by Britain's press

CARS and homes were set ablaze by riots in Belfast last night. But for reasons some newspapers broadly approve of, which is why they get this spin: 

It was definitely an asylum seeker this time

While describing the terrible riots, underline that on this occasion the attacker wasn’t inconveniently born here or from a racial group you’d unwittingly failed to previously demonise, but an actual asylum seeker and what’s more, one who’d exploited a loophole. Leave these facts next to pictures of burning homes, casually.

The migrants’ homes that were attacked were taxpayer-funded

Obviously nobody wants masked men with weapons going door-to-door to find anyone with the wrong skin colour. But it is worth mentioning, just by the by, that some of those innocents threatened with death are living in properties where the council pays their rent. Or not. In case that changes your views on death threats at all.

Refer non-judgementally to ‘fury’

Funny thing, ‘fury’, isn’t it? Because when it’s felt by the wrong people, for example in riots that are about a police shooting, then it’s unjustifiable and should be punished with punitive sentencing to set an example. But in these particular riots, in response to a horrific attempted murder, ‘fury’ is understandable, or even appropriate. We should not condemn.

Quote your preferred sources

All the politicians will be quoted, even the Northern Irish ones most decent Britons have rightly never heard of. Most of them will be against the violence. But if you can find a brave few unafraid of standing out of the crowd? Perhaps Rupert Lowe, or Robert Jenrick, or even Kemi Badenoch? Shame Tommy Robinson’s in Russia.

Have a sudden shift of attitude toward Northern Irish men in balaclavas

For years they’ve been the enemy, terrorists, friends of Jeremy Corbyn, unjustifiably taking our poor soldiers to court for Bloody Sunday and the like. But today, those figures are not to be so easily dismissed as thugs, for do they not speak for whole communities in setting fire to cars and doing wheelies down streets? Beneath their masks, are they not white?

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