Top conspiracy theorist Bob Dipstick is sensationally claiming that recent health scares, including swine flu and bird flu, and natural disasters such as the flooding in Cumbria, have been faked by the government. Writing in the latest issue of My Conspiracy Monthly, he alleges that the flooding which devastated the coastal town of Cockermouth and surrounding areas was actually caused by a giant halibut. “This monster fish – at least a hundred feet long – created havoc by rising up on its tail and splashing down of off the Cumbrian coast,” he opines. “The resulting tidal wave swept inland, destroying bridges and causing massive flooding! Obviously, the government didn’t want to start a panic, so they fed the media this nonsense about heavy rainfalls caused by climate change – clearly absolute nonsense!” According to Dipstick, the deluging of Cumbria by the halibut was a revenge attack. “A few years ago an eight foot long halibut was caught off of the Scottish coast,” he reveals. “There was much speculation that it was merely an immature juvenile giant halibut, and government scientists warned against consuming it, fearing that its gigantic mother might be lurking in the deeps, plotting revenge on those who had caught her offspring! It’s taken several years, but finally it has happened!” However, it isn’t just giant fish threatening Britain. Dipstick alleges that the authorities are engaged in a massive cover up intended to disguise the fact that Britain’s animal population is in a state of revolt against their human masters. “It started as long ago as 2001, with that so-called foot and mouth disease outbreak which saw troops deployed to the North of England. I ask you, why did it take half the British army to combat a disease which is non-fatal to farm livestock and does not affect human beings?” he demands. “Just why was it necessary to burn thousands of animal carcasses to contain the spread of a disease which can easily be inoculated against, eh? It was all just a cover for a mass insurrection by livestock!” The revolt started as a series of apparently unrelated incidents in Northern England, Dipstick claims. The animals involved frequently exhibited an unnatural degree of intelligence, often seeming to desire to degrade and humiliate their masters rather than kill them. In one incident, two farm workers from Hawkshead were ambushed on a lonely farm track by a group of farm animals, stripped naked and harnessed to a plough. They were then forced to turn the soil of a nearby field by hauling the plough across it (in driving rain) for over seven hours. A few weeks later, Windemere farmer Jake Grincombe found himself bundled into a barn as he arrived back at his farm after a hard day toiling in the fields, and severely buggered by a gang of sheep, before being shared completely hairless by his woolly assailants.

At first incidents such as these were not taken seriously by the authorities. However, they soon escalated into a full scale insurrection across the whole of Cumbria – and beyond. “At first the government thought the crisis could be contained by the civil authorities in Cumbria”, Dipstick asserts. “But it soon came apparent that the local police couldn’t cope, even after arresting the suspected ring-leaders – two cockerels and a bull mastiff from Penrith – and detaining them at Carlisle police station”. The police station was soon besieged by hordes of farm animals – gangs of poultry and cattle roamed the streets terrorising citizens. “The situation was clearly getting out of hand”, comments the conspiracy theorist. “Moreover, despite restricting the movements of farm animals, they found that the revolt was rapidly spreading to the rest of the country. Consequently, the government felt that they had no choice but to call in the military.” Nevertheless, resistance was far stiffer than expected. In one incident an attempt to encircle a herd of militant cattle in Somerset was foiled when advancing infantry found themselves being shelled by a band of mercenary chickens employed by local pigs. An armoured column had to be dispatched to relieve the ground troops and thereby avert a major military disaster. In order to prevent another such incident, the RAF was authorised to carpet bomb large areas of countryside with napalm – the supposed blazing pyres of animal corpses simply being a cover for these tactics. Whilst the 2001 animal uprising was eventually quelled, there are fears that there could be further outbreaks. Bob Dipstick suspects that the recent furore over swine fever could be another ploy to cover up new animal insurgency. “This time it looks to be worldwide, with the United Nations co-ordinating the lies about swine flu,” he opines. “It was the same a few years ago when birds started attacking people – they came up with so-called ‘avian flu’, but that never materialised, did it? No, once the revolt was secretly brought under control, the ‘pandemic’ vanished from the news!”

However, the question of just what triggered the original uprising remains. Dipstick believes that it is no coincidence that Cumbria has been the epicentre of the attacks so far. “The Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant is sited smack bang in the middle of Cumbria,” he notes. “Everyone knows that radiation causes bizarre mutations, such as giant fish and super-intelligent animals.” However, others are sceptical as to this explanation, pointing out that animal revolts date back much further than the supposed foot and mouth outbreak. “Let’s not forget the so-called ‘Cod Wars’ of the 1970s,” points out animal rights activist Terry Cobblers, referring to the period of hostilities in the North Sea, when the Royal Navy had to be deployed to protect British fishermen from militant cod – several warships were severely damaged after being rammed by the revolting fish. “Those fish hadn’t been irradiated – their sole motivation was economic. It all kicked off when North Sea cod decided that they were being sold too cheaply by UK fishmongers and refused to be caught by British trawlers.” Military incompetence eventually led to Britain losing the Cod War, when the Captain of HMS Irrelevant panicked under attack and dropped depth charges, killing a large number of non-combatant haddock. Under UN pressure Britain was forced to withdraw and accept the fishes’ terms, thereby leading to a rise in fish prices which subsequently fuelled the rampant inflation of the late 1970s. Whatever the cause of the revolt, many zoologists believe that the authorities’ reaction was misguided and disproportionate. “They should have tried to communicate and reason with these creatures, which displayed obvious intelligence”, says one. “Just because animals achieve abnormal size or intelligence, it does not mean that they will become aggressive. I blame King Kong for this misconception, it was highly inaccurate. Gorillas are passive creatures, Kong would probably have spent most of his time on the Empire State Building masturbating or picking his arse – people would have been more at risk from being drowned in his jism as he tossed off than from being eaten by him”. However, Tory MP Harry Johnson believes that the government’s reaction was too little, too late. He maintains that giant mutated animals pose a very real threat: “Let us not forget that airship travel was abandoned in the 1930s as a result of the number of dirigibles being destroyed by the giant Gorillas which infested New York’s skyscrapers during that period!”.