Environment Secretary Hilary Benn today announced measures aimed at cutting climate change in the virtual world. In a tie up with Microsoft's XBox Live service, gamers moving through levels and purchasing fuel-inefficient vehicles will pay a "showroom charge" through the Live service. Monies raised will go towards development of more climate models in the real world.

The middle classes in Britain were today in turmoil after Chancellor Alistair Darling outlined the measures that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had briefed him to announce. In amongst a raft of measures designed to deflect attention away from the Governments' fiscal performance and on to the US sub-prime problems were plans for a new tax on "gas-guzzling" cars.

 

An extra £950 pounds showroom tax will be levied on larger cars, in a move designed to raise additional tax while ensuring car sales would remain unaffected. Purchasers of £60,000 Range Rovers will find their wallets dented by a massive £26 a month increase once the tax raise is factored across a typical 36 month PCP finance deal. At the time of writing the Mardale Times is unsure of the level of decimation expected to be wreaked at nail bars across the land as yummy mummies desperately try and balance their meagre budgets.