The Premier League is considering introducing a new system to determine the fourth club to qualify for the next season’s European Champions League.

Smaller clubs hope to fist their way into Europe

Under the current rules the fourth placed club in the league is automatically entered into the final qualifying round where they face a playoff game over two legs. However, a new proposal from Chief Exective Richard Scudamore would see the remaining 17 clubs battle it out for the final European place in a televised ‘Rock, paper, scissors’ tournament.

The move has been enthusiastically supported by all the clubs outside the ‘big four’ of Arsenal, Chelsea, Man United and Liverpool who have dominated the Champions League places in recent years.

“This is bloody marvelous”, said Alfred Dalrymple, Honorary Life Secretary of Hull City. “It’s about time they clubs like us a chance. Clubs that’d never be in Europe in’t million years. But now that they’ve taken away any need to qualify on merit we could find ourselves welcoming European giants like Real Madrid, Inter Milan or FC Rubin Kazan to’t KC Stadium”.

Fulham manager Roy Hodgson told the Irish Sentinel “I’m weally intewested in seeing how the Pwemier League bwing this into being. Obviously it’s twemendously exciting for clubs that have twaditionally stwuggled to get anywhere near fourth place. Personally I think it’s wight thing to do and we’ll be pwacticising our wock, paper, scissors after twaining evewy day”.

Critics of the idea say it will dilute the tournament even further, pointing out that at least the current system at least rewards consistency over the course of a season. “It’s a fuckin’ stupid idea, aye. Ye cannae turn on the bloody group without seeing the 4th best team in Bollockstan playing some shower o’ Romanian gypsies. If that’s their idea of Champions then I despair”, said one Premier League manager who asked not to be named before going after a BBC reporter with a empty bottle of Glenmorangie.

Meanwhile, UEFA have demanded an investigation into player salaries after they spoke out against Ashley Cole. According to their spokesman “Clearly footballers have more money than sense. This man is married to one of the hottest women on the planet yet sends pictures of his cock to dumpy hairdresssers and secretaries who probably have quims like a wizard’s sleeve. Something has to be done”.

Clubs have previously resisted attempts to introduce a salary cap but Cole’s latest indiscretion may just be the wake up call that football needs.

Jesus imparts some wisdom to local residents

Councilors and gardaí in Mayo are calling on people to give up bad driving for Lent. Mayo County Council has said that instead of giving up chocolate, beer or hanging around the swimming pool taking surreptitious camera phone photos of pre-pubescent girls in swimsuits, motorists should stop speeding, tail-gating and using phones while driving.

The gardai in Castlebar have backed the call saying that road-users should use Lent as a starting point to change their behaviour for the better. Sergeant Dick Monogram, from Swinford Garda station said “I don’t know why we haven’t thought of this before, tying in obeying the law with obeying the Lord. People over here are scared *shitless* of Jebus. We’ll save lives while the chocoholics, booze jockeys and filthy pederasts can go about their business as normal”.

It would seem the whole community are getting on board, with many pledging to change their wicked ways in favour of nailing a front row seat in the strip club of heaven.

Local slut Sarah O’Toole expressed huge enthusiasm for the scheme. Aged just 16, she made a solemn promise to the lord almighty to “not get the box sawn off me” by every local lothario who so much as beeps the horn of their Vauxhall Calibra at her. Her 7 children will welcome the news.

However, some Mayo residents are unhappy at the council’s suggestion. Mickey Harte, aged 19 from Ballyhaunis, said the religious aspect had scuppered his plans. “I was planning on spending lent driving recklessly, you know. Doing laps of the town, racing knob-ends in Micras, texting my girlfriend at the same time and smoking joints as I burn the rubber of my 95 Nissan Sylvia. How can I do it now though?

I mean, I’ve seen all the safety films and the ads on the telly when the bloke crashes into a garden and lands on a kid playing football and they didn’t make the first bit of difference. All that buck was worried about was his insurance. I could happily ignore road safety advice all day… but you can’t ignore Lent”.

And it seems other counties are looking at Mayo as a new trail-blazer and copying the appeals. Gardai in Dundalk have appealed to shoppers to give up crossing the border for cheaper groceries and carjacking people with samurai swords. Wicklow County Council has urged people not kill their wives with bricks for the duration of Lent while in Dublin there have been calls for gangsters to stop robbing the country blind and abusing power so badly that it affects every strata of society.

So far there has been no response from Dail Eireann. They are currently on holidays for the vampire new year.

: We asked people around the country to tell us what they’re giving up for Lent…

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After a week-long radio campaign against Head Shops, which saw a legitimate business burned to the ground, RTE insiders have declared the exercise a ‘100% success’ and revealed it to be a test case through which social change can be made.

Joe Duffy reacts to news of Capel Street fire

A source told the Irish Sentinel last night “The Head Shops thing was just the start. There was a meeting of the stations chiefs late last year in which they decided to use their influence as the national broadcaster to shape Irish life on a day to day basis. They felt there was a niche there now that the church’s control has dwindled. And what better way to do it than through the nation’s second most listened to radio show, Liveline?”

Before Joe Duffy’s radio show began its campaign of scaremongering and misinformation Head Shops had been legal in Ireland for years without anybody batting an eyelid, but store owners hadn’t counted on Duffy’s production team shamelessly exploiting the death of one man in 2005 to sway public opinion against them. As more and more people rang into tell Joe how disgusted they were with these shops that none of them ever used and were in total, blissful ignorance of until they heard about them on the radio, the more pressure grew to do ’something’ about them.

Listeners, who both smoke and drink alcohol, lambasted the owners for selling dangerous products which could adversely affect one’s health. Ultimately, it appears that the crusade resulted in the arson attack on the Nirvan head shop on Capel Street, destroying it and several nearby buildings, and resulting in the closure of one of Dublin’s main thoroughfares to traffic.

“We had a fuckin’ party!”, said the RTE insider. “At best we thought there might be a bit of legislation in 18 months or a few people out with placards but getting the whole place burned down was beyond our wildest dreams. It just shows that Liveline is the voice of the people when we tell them what it is they should say. The plans have been ratcheted up now and with our new two week long offensive against foreigners we’re sure Ireland will be a proud, and much less swarthy nation, once again”.

It’s not the first time Liveline has been embroiled in controversy. Transport Minister Martin Cullen and his advisor Monica Leech sued the show over allegations made by a caller and in 2006 there was outrage as a Daily Mail journalist accused gays and lesbians of wanting to adopt children so they could practice legal incest.

: We spoke to the people of Dublin and asked them for their reaction to the Capel Street fire and Liveline’s Head Shop campaign.

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Ruler of the tiny kingdom of Smurf Village, Papa Smurf, has been subjected to racial abuse, both physical and verbal, whilst visitng the Co. Meath town of Athboy.  Smurf, who is 165 years old this March, currently visiting Athboy as part of the Town Twinning Process was said to ‘visibly smurfed’ at his treatment by locals and in particular the lord Mayor of Athboy, Cllr  Fintan Snatch.

"Beardy little wanker" says Mayor of Athboy

Snatch, a former Grand Dragon of the West Leinster chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, was against the Town Twinning from the start. “We’re already Twinned with Monroeville in Alabama, Wheelright in the great state of Kentucky and Drumshambo, why would we want to associate ourselves with this breed of pint-sized shitehawks? I don’t trust them. They’re devious, beady eyed little pricks and what’s the story with the pointy white hats? They look like a bunch of hypothermic field mice…..errr with hats on ”

In a meeting with Mayor Snatch, the Smurf leader was told in no uncertain terms that the people of Athboy had no interest in twinning with the tiny principality and was given 24 hours to leave the country.  ‘I’m quite literally smurfed. He spent the entire meeting smurfing in my face and then had the smurf to call me a “beardy smurf wanker”. What the smurf is his smurfing problem?He said if I didn’t get the smurf out of town immediately he would have the entire population of Smurf Village viciously smurfed in the ass and then smurfed in a watery smurf. I’m getting the smurf out of here. ’

Papa Smurf was accompanied by Foreign Affairs minister, Smurfette, who was also subjected to racial abuse and lewd comments from townsfolk during their 2 day visit to the east midlands.  ‘I was having a BLT in The Fiddle and Firkin  and some puck ugly wankrag who stank of cats piss tried to grab me by the goother. I wasn’t having any of that so I glassed the fucker. Next thing I know I’m surrounded by a group of malodorous mutants decked out like the Clancy brothers shouting all sorts of abuse at me. “Come here to me you till I rape ya” “Show us yer pink bits you little blue scag” “ Get up on that you clowdy looking cunt”. It was pretty horrible. I made my escape by pointing to a picture of the 1996 all Ireland winning team and asking them to find Colm O’Rourke. As they leered in awe at their former heroes I pulled a legger out through the smoking area‘, said the strangely attractive, pint-sized beauty.

The Smurfs quickly scuppered plans to visit  Belfast after reading Ian Paisley’s Wikipedia page and finding that he’s “That fucking Paedopile Gargamel’s”, Godson’

Adele Staunton, media pig

Social media experts up and down the country today rejoiced at the launch of Google’s new social media product ‘Buzz’.

“We’ve had a mare of a Q1 so far” said Adele Staunton of leading Irish digital media agency Vapidit.ie

“Our portfolio of expertise was waning there for a short while. People had begun to unlock the deep, dark mysteries of Twitter and Facebook and we found our 2000 euro per day ‘Social Media Synergy’ workshops were beginning to lack in popularity. We needed some new hype, and thankfully, Google Buzz has come along at just the right time to fill the money shaped hole in our portfolio of bullshit.”

“In the last 24 hours, Vapidit.ie has established itself as Ireland’s leading authority on Google Buzz. How? That’s a deep, dark mystery that I cannot divulge, and you could never hope to understand. All you need to know is that WE are the experts. Only we can help your business leverage it’s  untapped sales potential in the sociosphere.”

So it’s just a simple matter of upscaling your clients’ vertical markets into a socially scalable, cloud-aware hyperniche?

“Pretty much. Our marketplace is mostly advertising agencies who don’t have a clue about the internet but know that they should be ‘involved’ in social media somehow. They saw it on the cover of the Economist, but were too lazy to actually read the article. At the proposal stage, we just throw a couple of buzzwords at them like ‘retweet’, ‘unfollow’ and ‘fan page’… before you know it, marketing managers are crapping  themselves because they’re hearing technical-sounding words they’ve never heard before. They don’t want to seem out of the loop, or that they’re losing their edge.”

“Once you instill that fear, well, the money starts flowing like the fucking Niagra Falls.”

“We’re talking workshops, seminars, conferences, open coffee, closed coffee,  shitbrick Tuesdays… you name it, we’re selling it to them for sizeable chunks of their marketing budget. All we’re really doing though is copying stuff off someone else’s blog and pasting it into Powerpoint, but don’t tell anyone.”

So business is booming then?

“Google Buzz is going to keep us in Grande Lattes and Macbook Airs for at least the next 12 months.”

What then?

“Sure if the hole falls out of it, I can always go back gutting fish part-time in the factory down the docks. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll probably go into SEO.”

Earnest celebrities and well meaning members of the public have today called for new disaster through which they show the world what caring people they are.

At a press conference in Dublin this morning a phalanx of media personalities, actors, musicians and other household names were joined by ordinary people from the street to express their concerns that people no longer have blanket coverage of them being overtly altruistic.

“We feel it’s time nature provided us with another opportunity to show how great we are”, said the lead singer of some band who nobody’s ever really heard of but play quite regularly in Whelan’s and the like. “Only 12 people showed up for our Haiti fundraising gig last night and that can only mean one thing … people are bored of Haiti. I mean, there were only 21 at the one the night before and 25 at the one the night before that”.

Ryan Tubridy larks about in Port au Prince

“It’s true that there’s an air of ‘meh’ about Haiti now”, added Ryan Tubridy whose hilarious Twitter updates from Port au Prince kept a nation entertained for minutes on end. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for something else now. A medium sized tsunami, a volcano, a cyclone … Jakers, I think we’d even take a bog-standard Limnic eruption at this stage”.

And it’s not just celebrities who are urging the elements to do their stuff, it’s every day people and in particular the online community. Their spokesperson, @rainbowguy_8554 said “We want to do our bit too and show our support for the thousands of people who will tragically and painfully die, not forgetting the even greater number of people whose lives will be shattered forever. We’ve got Facebook groups to set up, Twitter avatars to shade in various opacities of a defined colour and blog posts to write so we can compete with one another to see who cares more. Don’t leave us hangin!”

Meanwhile, reports that a 7.9 earthquake had hit Dublin were greatly exaggerated when it turned out to be Senator Eoghan Harris falling over his own ego.

The Fine Gael leader was in pensive mood after today's meeting

Under-pressure Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny today secured the backing of his party after the fall-out from the resignation of high profile TD, George Lee.

Serious questions had been raised about Kenny’s ability to continue as leader but after a meeting at Fine Gael HQ this afternoon senior party members came out in support.

“Enda Kenny is completely adequate to bring this party towards the next election”, said Gay Mitchell, while Michael Ring said “There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that the current leadership of the party is completely passable”. Others described him as ’satisfactory’, ‘quite good indeed when compared with someone else who would be clearly worse at it than him … like a sleeping tramp’ and ‘averagely fair’. It has received a reasonable response from party members, one of whom told the Irish Sentinel “This is requisitely tolerable, which is as much as Fine Gael needs at this moment in time”.

It’s an important victory for Kenny who would have faced a challenge to his leadership from that beardy bloke, the one with the foreign name who’s always on the radio and looks like he was dropped on his head as a kid and Ireland’s only Jew, Alan Shatter.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that last minute attempts to prevent George Lee from leaving the party included the offer of a front bench seat, more input into the party’s economic strategy and even a last ditch promise of Lucinda Creighton or Olwyn Enright as his concubine. Lee, however, was not for turning and is said to be considering an offer from RTE Light Entertainment to front its new Sunday ethical dilemma show, Abortion or Mong.

Some of the leading figures from the online world are arriving in Ireland to take part in the Dublin Web Summit, which gets under way later today.

He moves away from the mic to breathe in

More than 400 people are expected to attend the event at Trinity College this evening. Across Ireland web enthusiasts are frantically freeing up enough space on their iPhones so their voicerecorder app won’t run out of space as they tape the proceedings. While many are looking forward to the speech by the founder of Craiglist, a classifieds website through which one can buy and sell almost everything, including orphans, body parts and sculpted turds, it’s the arrival of some of the web’s most well known characters that is expected to bring 64bit joy to the audience.

“When I first got the call I thought to myself, ‘Ireland? Why would I want go there?’”, said Tron Guy, “but the promise of a slap up meal in the Little Caesar’s of my choice and two nights in the Skylon was too good to pass up”.

“I can’t wait, this is gonna be awesome”, Leeroy Jenkins told the Irish Sentinel. He will appear on stage a few moments before he is scheduled to do so. Practical demonstrations will take place too, with TV star McGyver on hand to show how to get millions of hits from just 2 girls and one cup.

Musical entertainment for the evening will be provided by Numa-Numa Bloke covering Chocolate Rain while a surprise guest appearance from Rick Astley has not been ruled out.

To add some local flavour proceedings there will be a Q&A with drunk guy in a shopping trolley, Twink and Jedward teaming up to do an updated version of Zip up your Mickey, while Imelda from Athlone will demonstrate the manageable size of Apple’s new iPad by inserting one in her gowl whilst having a convict kiss her back better than what her boyfriend does.

However, organisers are said to be ‘disappointed but understanding’ at the cancelling of his appearance by Goatse due to ’severe rectal bleeding’.

There were angry scenes in Dail Eireann this afternoon as the opposition labelled the government ‘a bit shit, really’ in the light of new unemployment statistics.

Aunt Sally was in agreement with Brian Cowen

The latest live register figures show that almost every single person in Ireland is now unemployed but Taoiseach Brian Cowen said the country was being ‘led in the right direction’. To a cacophony of heckling, whistling and some contemplative swearing from Paul Gogarty, Mr Cowen said “You’re looking at it all wrong. Of course if you take the facts in isolation then they look bad. Hundreds of thousands employed. Violent crime increasing dramatically. Houses being reposssessed. Social decline. All of these things look bad but nobody thinks of the positives.

Sure, more people are unemployed but the rate of people becoming unemployed is slowing by up to 0.0003% per month. That’s progress in anyone’s language and let’s not forget that the more people there are unemployed the more jobs there should be for everyone else. And as for crime, there’s a little thing some of us with a bit of vision like to call ‘the future’. How can we dramatically improve crime figures if they don’t get worse first?”

Cowen was backed by Tánaiste Mary Coughlan who said “Oh aye, whatever Brian said is what I think. He’s a wee charmer, isn’t he?”

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore pulled no punches, saying “This government is so clueless you can put that Ray Foley from Today FM in charge and things would improve. Sure, he might be a sub-par, thinks he’s funny but really isn’t, Chris Moyles copycat but I bet he’d get off his zany arse and do something about the crisis this country is facing”.

Having been pummelled by Gilmore, the Taoiseach then faced Enda Kenny, who had the perfect opportunity to deliver the knock out blow but once against spent so long stammering and trying to add a soupçon of cutting humour to his riposte that everyone had gone home by the time he finished.

Things might be bad in the public sector, but spare a thought for the assholes whose job it is to vomit nauseating slogans into your mind – advertisers. Things are so bad that new outdoor ad stealth-megalith, Bravo Advertising, has taken to advertising itself.

Advertising about advertising – normally the preserve of dreadfully sub-standard national broadcaster Newstalk – has taken this turn for the post-modern more out of necessity than any self-referential insight.

Bravo boss-man Meredith Hennessy explains:

“People need something to lift them – what better than upbeat outdoor ads?”

Hennessy went on to outline the rationale behind his ads about his ads.

“It’s meaningless without being clever. Imagine a paper that said it was the last word in print – and you can have that for free!”

But before you could say, ‘run these cunts down with the props from Mad Max 2’, Bravo Advertising were hit with a law suit for their use of the word ‘last’. Today FM lawyers have served notice declaring their ownership of the word ‘last’ in order to top-load their programme names in some sort of empty theme that starts nowhere and makes zero progress.

The real news from Today FM however is that super-bland, if likeable, easy-listening Canuck jock Alison Curtis has been drop-kicked to the milkman shift from her 10-midnight slot. The Today FM Station Director, whose name is coincidentally not an anagram for ‘Denis O’Brien’s cum receptacle’, said:

“I guess she can carry on liking every tune in the world from 5am to 7am.”

Curtis - once unheard of, soon to be unheard

Meanwhile U2 front man Bono has announced plans to masturbate in space. The NASA-funded project aims to ascertain if the raw genetics of self-importance can compete against the classic Newtonian staples of galactic power such as gravity and light.