January: Cheshire East announces that it is to use AI to replace its missing senior staff. Spokesperson Sarah Connor told the “Chronicle”: “It’s really hard recruiting staff and we were starting to worry – then we thought of AI leaders. After an extensive procurement exercise we selected Cyberdyne Systems, whose Skynet system has a proven track record. It has already said it can terminate our debt over three years. What can go wrong? Must dash, but I’ll be back.”
February: Sandbach Town Council agrees to have a day of peace, when nobody falls out, slags each other off on Facebook or leaks anything to the Press. In a leaked memo the “Chronicle” can reveal that councillors have agreed that they could manage one day, in any month with an X in its name, so long as they could throw the work experience student in the skip afterwards.
March: It is revealed that Elon Musk has bought Jodrell Bank in a bid to discover the outer limits of his ego. The US cost-cutter, who has reduced the US federal government to three men called Lars and a beagle called Dave, says he needed to prove to Executive Life President Donald Trump that he had the larger ego. In an interview with the “Chronicle”, he said his satellites had been unable to discover his ego’s outer limits and a more powerful tool than even himself was needed. Powering up, he told us: “iiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIII need to find this out to solve the argument with Donald. He says that now he’s abolished all future elections and renamed the country the USD (United States of Donald) he’s got the biggest ego, but I disagree. That’s all I have to say, powering down nooooowwwww.”
April: Local members of Reform welcomed the £100 million donated to party by Elon Musk. “It’s marvellous,” said a spokesman. “We can continue our fight to speak out for normal, hardworking people in their fight against the super-wealthy global elite, unlike the Tories, who are in the pockets of the rich. Our leader, Nigel Farage, has also struggled to get any media attention or a high profile and this will help him get some welcome publicity.” The spokesman added that the money would be spent in the warmer summer months, as Mr Musk’s money was less effective in the cold.
May: Mark Zuckerberg is revealed to have bought all the warehousing in Alsager to store his own ego. A spokesman for the social media site said: “Hi hun! Mark was scrolling on Facebook when, in between an out-of-focus Ring video about an Evri driver falling over a bin and some overt racism, he saw that Elon Musk was buying Jodrell Bank and decided he had to do something even bigger. We searched for ‘largest empty warehousing facility in the world’ and were surprised to come up with Alsager, only just down the road from Elon’s ego. Mark is trying to be more normal now he’s buffed up and got a new haircut and all, and wanted to somewhere to hide his surplus ego. Where better than somewhere he can keep an eye on Elon?”
June: Cheshire East’s Skynet said it would re-introduce charges for littering and had hired Alex Murphy as a patrol officer. Spokesperson Sarah Connor told the “Chronicle” “I’ve been told to say that we’ve heard good things about Alex and his firm Robocop. He can be tough but we can expect incidents of littering – and indeed heads – to fall.”
July: After losing millions on HS2, abolished on a whim by Rishi Sunak when he had to come up north and felt a little queasy, Cheshire East defends its decision to spend £2 million promoting the arrival of the Yellow Brick Road. Spokesperson T Inman said: “We watched a documentary that said somewhere over the rainbow where bluebirds fly the Government was planning a new road and we thought we’d get in with a bid for Cheshire East before anyone else. It’s money well spent, and the road is guaranteed to bring prosperity and wealth to Cheshire. This is a day of independence for all the Munchkins, I mean Cheshire residents, and their descendants.”
August: After Alsager tip turns away people who arrived with rubbish despite it being empty, just because they had not booked, GB News moves its studios there. A special correspondent told the “Chronicle”: “We have lots of people spouting rubbish and nobody watches us, so we thought a deserted recycling centre was an ideal and cheaper base.” Programmes on the station will include Jacob Rees Mogg with “Old Plate of the Nation”, Nigel Farage’s “Garage (clearout)”, Lee Anderson’s “Real Mould” and “The Neal old Olive oil show”.
September: It emerges that MI5 is hiding state secrets on the Cheshire East planning portal. An anonymous spokesperson we met on a park bench slid a message to the “Chronicle” that said: “We looked at hiding them under glaciers, but they were moving faster than the Cheshire East planning process. We send them in as documents attached to planning applications. It’ll be years before anyone sees them again, and nobody will ever find them on the website even when they go live because the links are always wrong.”
October: God reports the “Chronicle” to Ipso after regular correspondent Christian Heralds tells Him that He had lost the true meaning of the Bible and would burn in hell unless He repented. God told us: “I wrote the bloody thing and now they’re claiming I don’t understand it. It’s a breach of the Ipso code for being inaccurate, misleading or distorted. If only that idiot Moses hadn’t tripped over his sandal laces coming off the mountain, we’d not be in this mess. Eleven to 20 of My commandments were about tolerance and diversity and the silly bugger fell over and smashed the tablet. I’ll see thee in court.”
November: Staffordshire Moorlands District Council apologises once again for failing to make it into this column. A spokesperson said: “We’re sorry, we just can’t do it. We did think of doing something a bit crap just to get in, but then we watched Cheshire East change its very good user-friendly planning portal – which to be frank was much better than ours – into something that was really annoying, didn’t work and couldn’t upload anything, and realised we were just amateurs when it came to incompetence. We’ll just have to stick to being a professional, well-run council, and apologise if that’s just not very funny.”
December: Cheshire East’s Skynet proved to be as good an idea as parking fees, the Lyme Green recycling centre and air quality data monitors, after it destroys the entire region and much of the North West. “We’ve had worse days,” said former leader Sam Corcoran, speaking to us from Hack Green bunker. “All that fuss over the cycle path on Middlewich Road was proper stressful. At least nobody can complain, as they’re too busy cowering in the smoking rubble of their homes, drinking rainwater and hiding from their smart fridges.”
