Reading standards in Britain are so poor that English Heritage is rewriting its guides so that 10-year olds can understand them. This follows criticism that the guides are far too sophisticated and alienate adult visitors from more deprived backgrounds.

A spokesman gave an example of the kind of changes that would occur to its standard guide. The following text:

"The Duke of York was victorious at the First Battle of Saint Albans on 22 May 1455 at which Somerset was killed, but he was soon forced to back down and come to terms with the King."

Would be replaced by the new text as follows:

"The Grand old Duke of York he had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again."

The spokesman then went on, "We really feel that this might encourage those from lower socio-economic groups to benefit more from England's Heritage. In addition to this plan we are also considering knocking down some of England's more uninviting and inaccessible buildings and rebuilding them with lego to make them more appealing. We think that this could attract people in droves."

A member of one of the lower socio-economic groups who was asked to comment replied, "Why would I want to go an' see an English 'eritage whatever that is anyway? The kids and the missus are quite 'appy with Alton Towers, thank you very much."

The government has signalled that it intends to appoint a new 'Olympic Legover Tsar' to get more people to participate in 'horizontal exercise' and in order to 'whip up private sector interest'. The Olympic minister, Tessa Jowell (no friend of Silvio Berlusconi) is increasingly worried that its image as the government that got a million people 'up for it' by 2012 is being tarnished by repeated criticism of its strategy. It hopes to find a former 'Olympic athlete' or a 'high profile figure' who has experience of running a 'sporting body'.

The government was stung into action by the criticism of Liberal Democrat Olympic spokesman, Tom Brake, who said, "The government has bitten off more than it can chew." The CCPR chair, Brigid Simmonds then added, "The Olympics will have a long sunrise and a very short sunset. We don't want to wake up the 'morning after' only to realise that it all went not with a 'bang' but a whimper."

A spokeman for Ms. Jowell (who is definitely no friend of Silvio Berlusconi) said, "Initially we were thinking of appointing a 'Legged-Over Tsar' because we were worried that the taxpayer might feel legged-over by a government that had expanded the cost of the Olympics from its initial £2 billion to £9 billion over night. We knew we had some explaining to do for the fact that we had forgotten to add VAT... as you do... whoops!"

"But in the end the government decided that it wanted to portray a 'positive' image, one thing at least that New Labour can do really well! We thought that we would appoint this 'Legover Tsar' who will get people horny about 2012. And accordingly we have invited Signor Berlusconi to take up the post - assuming that he might just have some free time in the future."

(The owners of this blog would like to point out that there is not and has never been any acquaintanceship between 'Mrs. Mills' and Mr Berlusconi.)