NEW INVERNESS CAMPUS NOW LESS THAN A CENTURY AWAY

“About bloody time”, say commentators

Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Highland Council, Inverness College and UHI Millennium Falcon plus various others including Davy the Ghost and a dolphin from the Moray Firth, today announced the next stage in the long-awaited new university campus for Inverness.

News released today show that planning firms have been approached to draw up plans, and it is now confidently expected that the campus - due to be 150 miles east of Nairn - could be completed as early as the year 2075, around the same time that UHI is finally due to achieve University Title.

The newly-streamlined development agency declared the move the most important moment in the history of the Highlands since the Clearances, and a spokesman for UHI expressed his relief that “the biggest college in UHI will now no longer be a sixties concrete shithole on an industrial estate.  Maybe people will now actually want to come and study with us.”

Meanwhile, Highland Council denied rumours that arguments had already broken out about the use of Gaelic signage on the campus.

 

BYPASS CAUSES RELOCATION OF CITY

Inverness may have to move to make way for distributor completion

Plans produced by the Highland Council this week propose the relocation of the entire town city of Inverness to make way for the final stretch of the much-anticipated southern distributor route.

While those involved have been wrangling, debating and procrastinating about how to finish off the bypass without too much disruption in the bland, faceless, high-income suburbs of the Highland Capital, the council has taken a more dramatic view.

“We all accept that a lot of work needs doing in Inverness,” explained a council spokesman. “The distributor needs finishing, we need at least another ten Tesco supermarkets, the A9 and A96 need dualled, and much of the buildings around Inverness need doing up… or doing down. Surely it would be easier just to relocate the whole city?”

The work, which will take 150 years to complete, will see the completion of the distributor within nobody’s lifetime, and Inverness will be relocated to Fort William.

 

PLANS AFOOT TO CLAMP DOWN ON LITTER

South Kessock to be swept up and removed in black bags

Highland Council has announced plans to clean up the huge amount of litter and rubbish in Inverness, and work will start with South Kessock - all of it.

“It’s outrageous that when tourists visit the Highland Capital, they see South Kessock scattered about the place,” explained a spokesman for the council. “We need to do something about this mess, and the only thing to do is send litter wardens over there to remove it all.”  Plans are now forthcoming to introduce £50 fines to anyone found to be from South Kessock.

Once South Kessock has been removed, Inversnecky understands, yuppie flats, a yacht marina, and something with the word “iconic” will be installed in its place. We hae wur doots, as they say.

A statement from the South Kessock Liberation Front declared that “the ferry” would continue to promote the town city’s most potentially prestigious area with regular festivals devoted to Vauxhall Novas and Buckfast wine.

 

POLISH ECONOMY ON THE UP

Inverness doomed, fear local businesses

Unfilled jobs, uncompleted roadworks, and more empty shop fronts. That’s the warning for the Highland Capital after news of the ever-strengthening Polish economy raised fears that Poles may return in droves.

Home to over three quarters of a million Poles, Inverness has benefited from migrants’ good work ethic and reliable contributions to the alcohol off-sales market.

However, recent months has seen the strengthening of the Polish currency, the złoty, rising wages and increasing job opportunities. This has caused the beginning of an exodus of Poles in the UK which could see a valuable part of Inverness say a big farewell (or “piłki nożnej”) to the town city.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise are concerned of the impact this could have on the city, with nobody doing any work, the housing market collapsing, and shops becoming as deserted as a Zimbabwean bakery.

The recently-streamlined agency has announced a strategy to combat the situation, as a spokesman explained: “Inverness can’t do without the Poles - frankly they’re the only people doing any work and if they go, then we’re up the River Ness without a rubber dinghy. So we will be investing millions of pounds in destabilising the Polish economy, smashing its major industries, and crippling its ability to retain workers. That should keep the Poles in Inverness a bit longer.”

The spokesman could not confirm that a number of its former staff were now heading to Poland in search of a more reliable and stable job market.

 

INVERNESS CHEERS UP!

Change of clocks brings tourists and sunshine to Highland Capital

Life in Inverness has now been officially switched by the Highland Council from “depressing” to “tolerable” thanks to the clocks moving forward.

The spring-time change in the clocks, along with the beginning of the Easter holidays (a fortnight late), heralds the start of the tourist season, the onset of good weather, and an almighty sigh of relief from the manically-depressed and vitamin D-starved citizens of the town city.

“It’s great that Inverness is now officially nice,” declared a spokesman for Inverness and Nurn Chamber of Commerce.  “Winter is always a long, dark, depressing and financially unrewarding season, so our members are delighted that there’s now some tourists in town that we can disappoint with our shambles of a town city centre, substandard kitsch and total absence of customer service.”

Even drivers stuck on Ness Bridge appeared to be tooting with a sense of joy, while 8 out of 10 old men Inversnecky spoke to on Church Street said it was great that having a cigarette outside pubs would now pose less risk of hypothermia.

Now Inverness can look forward optimistically to an influx of annoying American tourists, stoned Findhorn-bound hippies, and wasted Glaswegian music festival-goers.

Inversnecky can’t wait.

 

GOD TO VISIT EDEN COURT

Heavenly Being to use lecture to disprove existence of Dawkins

A major name has been bagged to appear at Eden Court Theatre, the highland’s ugliest building - God himself.

Delivering a lecture to an all-ticket audience this week, God will attempt to argue that the controversial atheist Richard Dawkins does not exist.

“Atheists are just a fiction, made to give some cynics reassurance about how the world came into being,” argued God’s manager. “God will use the lecture to point out that atheism has no foundations and justification. Given that he’s God, after all, how can they be sure he’s a falsity?”

Infinity-old God has a number of supporters and followers in the town city, but one old man on Church Street told us that it was “about bloody time. God’s been absent from too many churches in Inverness, so it’s good he’s finally pitched up to fight his corner.”

 

“NO SURRENDER!” DECLARES PROVOST

Council leads resistance against March of the DUNCEs

In an unparalleled show of efficiency, determination and good government, Highland Council has revealed its strategy for opposing the forthcoming march by the Defenders of Ulster’s Non-Catholic Ethos (DUNCEs) through Inverness.

At a press conference this weekend in the Town House, the Provost and other elected representatives from the Highland Capital outlined a variety of tools to obstruct the marchers, including roadworks, streetscape art, and bizarrely lit-bridges.

“You may criticise the council for all the endless chaos caused by digging up the streets,” admitted a spokesman, “but it has actually been an integral part of our long-term strategy to make it impossible to walk down the streets of Inverness in any normal fashion. If the barriers, diversions, dug-up paving stones and rejigged pedestrian crossings aren’t enough to confuse the DUNCEs, then with any luck they’ll trip up over the three skateboard ramps on Church Street and split their heads open.”

And while environmental experts recently condemned the Ness Bridge lights project as potentially damaging and confusing to salmon in the river, the council has revealed that this was exactly the intention. Thus spake the Provost: “We were delighted to hear that the lights on the Ness Bridge were going to be a problem for the salmon: hopefully they’ll be a similar deterrent to other greasy, small-brained orange creatures from out of town.”

 

DUNCES COME TO TOWN

Permission granted for irrelevant walk in Inverness

Invernessians were up in arms last night at the news that a march through the Highland Capital that has nothing to do with them has been approved for next month.

The march is being organised by the DUNCEs - Defenders of Ulster’s Non-Catholic Ethos - an organisation committed to going for silly walks in places they don’t have any connection with.

A spokesman for the DUNCEs explained their thinking to Inversnecky: “Well, some stuff happened several hundred years ago in another country. We thought it was time to remind Invernessians that it happened, even though they weren’t involved or affected, and even though none of us are from Inverness. And the fact that there’s thousands of Roman Catholic Poles in the town has nothing to do with our decision.”

Several councillors opposed the decision, and have threatened to blockade the march from behind a barricade of sandbags and barbed wire with placards reading “No Surrender”.

 

CITY’S EXISTENCE UNDER THREAT AGAIN

Parliament proposal “the last straw”

Floods, the possible loss of Clachnacuddin FC, the lack of a town city council and the dereliction of a number of Inverness’s finest (and ugliest) buildings have all made this town city a cause for concern down in Inversnecky’s bunker as it is. However, under plans being considered by the Boundary Commission for Scotland, the name “Inverness” could disappear from the Scottish Parliament.

Coming hot on the heels of the declaration by the Lord Lyon that Inverness does not exist, there are now plans to rename two Scottish Parliamentary constituencies: Ross, Skye and Inverness West would become West Highland, and Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber would become East Highland.

The perceived threat to the city’s continuation has even led to the formation of existinverness, a group of concerned local citizens who proclaim themselves the last hope for the town city, and whose motto is “Enough’s enough, right enough.  Right?“.

Gaining access to their HQ - a tent on platform 8 of Inverness railway station - we spoke on condition of anonymity to existinverness (they agreed not to identify us) and heard more about their campaign.

“It seems like those few people in Scotland who actually remember we exist,” said a spokesman while warming his hands on a gas stove, “are committed to our eradication. And it’s time for the people of Inverness to stand up and be counted. Not literally, as that would take a while, but just to say that enough is enough, we exist, and we will not tolerate being told otherwise.”

The spokesman continued: “It’s bad enough that the town city is falling into the hands of anarchists, revolutionaries and the Highland Council planning department, and that even Inversnecky hasn’t been updated for weeks.  But for the Highland Capital to be removed from the political map would be the last straw.”

Highland Council refused to be drawn on the matter, and nobody at their surprise new headquarters in Nairn could be contacted.

 

CONTROVERSY OVER 3 NEW VIRTUES

Authorities reveal: we reckoned “sod it, let’s build a skateboard ramp”

Consternation, controversy and lo, even a curmudgeonly kerfuffle, has spread throughout Inverness like floodwater at high tide at the impending unveiling of the scupltures on Church Street intended to embody the three new virtues of the town city.

Despite the months of consultation, wordsmithery, and imagination (that last bit was hard-going for a few folk), however, the revealed scuplture has ostensibly been replaced with a new town city centre skateboarding ramp.

A spokesman for Old Town Inverness City Centre Green Highland Business Management Improvement District Initiative 2007 Planning Vision Forum Partnership revealed the thinking behind the ramp to Inversnecky.

“After all the effort of identifying the three new virtues, appointing a sculptor, and funding the project, we just decided we couldn’t be arsed. However, equally we didn’t want to waste the opportunity that arises from the annual digging up of Church Street, so we just built a skateboard ramp - a pile of concrete and a few slabs. What could be more simple? And also,” the spokesman continued, “it gives the teenagers of the Highland Capital something to do other than loiter around outside McDonalds.”

However, greater anticipation surrounds the next new streetscape sculpture to hit Inverness, rumoured to be a statue of rally-driver Tich McCooey.

A spokesman for Heilan’ Cooncil denied that the local authority was using the new ramps as the centre of its bid for the 2008 World Skateboarding Championships.