Karadzic trial seen as only first step in ridding world of evil practices

As the trial begins of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the prosecution team is buzzing with the prospect of taking an important step to bringing to justice one of the most high-profile practitioners of alternative medicine.

"With Karadzic we have one of the leading figures in the field of homeopathic so-called medicine. If our prosecution is successful we will be able to drive a stake of fear into the hearts of other alternative quacks the world over," said Professor J. Scott Billingsworth of the Sidcup Centre for the Forceful Advancement of Science.

Karadzic is planning on conducting his own defence in a bid to dilute the charges against him. From killing 1 person in 5 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica he hopes to spread the effect to a less barbarous sounding 1 in 500 of the Bosnian population as a whole. His defence team has, however, privately advised him that attempts to dilute further to a trace value of having ordered the slaughter of only one in three thousand of the Yugoslav population may be too strong to stomach.

"Mr Karadzic has announced that he doesn’t recognise the trial that we are starting," said Professor Billingsworth. "This is typical behaviour for peddlers of homeopathic remedies. They refuse to recognise any impartial trial of their techniques and instead want to stand a make polemic speeches about ethnic purity and water memory. These people must be stopped before they end up telling us that man walked with dinosaurs and that maps are evil."

Mr Karadzic himself is unrepentant and claims that the picture painted by a decade-long media campaign is biased against him and nothing like the man he actually is.

"The charges against me, that I committed crimes against humanity with my book of poetry ‘Under the Left Breast of the Century’ are unfounded," he said at the opening of his new Homeopathic Clinic cum cell at The Hague. "When I realised how many people had lost limbs due to my shelling of Sarajevo I proposed a humanitarian airlift of 20,000 bottles of 10C ‘Bellis perennis’ for them to dab on their stumps and grow new arms and so on. With a dilution of one litre of daisy juice to 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres water this shows exactly how much me and my fellow alternative practitioners care about human suffering."

Weston-super-Mare fire expert misunderstood “end-of-the-pier spectacle”

Holidaymakers in the seaside town of Weston-supe-Mare today awoke to find the cataclysmic results of a misunderstanding during the planning of celebratory events to mark the re-opening of Weston-supe-Mare's world famous Grand Pier.

“I am not taking the fall for this one. It's just a genuine misunderstanding, ” said event pyrotechnics expert Kenneth Billingsworth. “When I was hired they told me they wanted something really special for the end-of-the-pier. Something that would say to everyone that the pier really was finished.”

The historic Grand Pier, today consumed by a raging inferno, was originally constructed in 1904 and had just undergone a multi-million pound refurbishment which the landmark event was planned to celebrate.

“You tell me that wasn't spectacular! Look at the result, everyone knows that pier really is well and truly finished now,” explained Billingsworth.

Kenneth Billingsworth, 58, was only recently hired by North Somerset council in an outreach programme to encourage older members of society with many years of experience to rejoin the workforce, and it is a policy that the local mayor thinks may have to be re-evaluated.

“Given that today was the first day on the job for our new pyrotechnics consultant and that by lunchtime we had lost our most significant tourist attraction” said a spokesman for the mayor's office. “It is fair to say our recruitment programme may need some review, but we will proceed onwards ensuring that there is no discrimination against those who have been unable to work for many years. Kenneth came with huge amounts of experience and a CV of previous fire related work as long as your arm.”

Mr Billingsworth, who previously went by the professional nickname of 'Kindling' due to his role in starting fires, echoed that the first placements by the programme may have some teething troubles.

“The day was great. It's been a few years since I have smelt that intoxicating mix of cold night air and kerosene. The screws kept me well away from that sort of stuff, what with all my previous.” he said from under a blanket as he was bundled into a police van, “I think they might need to re-think the programme though, especially as they have just hired my brother Tony 'The Spanner' for his many years of expertise in door-to-door insurance collection.”

When asked if the worldwide attention and the likelihood of serving a further five years in prison as a result of today's events, had deterred Mr Billingsworth from resuming his career, 'Kindling' was undaunted.

“You'll never stop me!” he shrieked through wire grating as he was driven through a mob of angry ice-cream sellers. “There will always be trouble when there is arson around.”