As the Tree/Liberationist Alliance Witangemot administration approaches its 9th month, the antipathy and resentment from the Redistributionists smoulders away. Not content to have taken 13 years of power to bring the Kingdom of Northumbria to colossal debt and the brink of bankruptcy, they continue to snipe and growl at any measures taken by the Alliance to address the economic problems they created. Each day brings yet another litany of public spending cuts, gleefully announced by Beeby See and the other soothsayers, who report it with the faux gravitas of a child snitching on a companion to the school headmaster.
The most recent furore has been about the reduction of services to the libraries. Since the Alliance is on a campaign to reduce public expenditure in a bid to reduce the gargantuan mountain of debt (kindly bequeathed by the Reds), it was deemed necessary by the central Witangemot to reduce the amount of money apportioned to local authorities. Consequently, various public sector jobs have been axed, and as I've already stated before, a multitude of diversity co-ordinators, pigeon psychologists, cat license administrators, fish quota accountants and environmental health enforcement officers have been released from the burdens of toil and wages. Furthermore, services like libraries have been obliged to continue with reduced numbers of librarians and archivists – and they've been forced to reduce their opening times. One of the soothsayers reported that a renowned novelist referred to the impact of expenditure cuts on libraries as tantamount to child-abuse. Most of the children brats I see don't haunt libraries in the first place – unless they're abnormally intelligent or geekish. To be seen entering such a place would reduce their status in the eyes of their contemporaries; to die in a shop window would be a more desirable alternative. They contribute to their own development by hanging around street corners, drinking mead, chewing magic mushrooms and behaving with the dignity and decorum of a herd of half-starved pigs when the swill arrives. I would love to introduce them to my mate Leo.
Absurdities like this are never far away from the public arena; Edweird the Milliner and Caedmeron recently had a lively exchange of views in the Witangemot over the strategy to reduce the Northumbrian debt. Weirdy postulated the all-familiar fantasy idea that the Alliance should have encouraged business in order to improve the economy – rather than reducing services to enable the debt to be paid off. Caedmeron countered that by asserting that you can't encourage business when the moneylenders aren't making loans – and anyway, you can't spend what you haven't got to get you out of the debt you're already in as a result of spending what you never had in the first place. (You didn't get that, did you?) Needless to say, the two leaders started to brawl. Edweird came off worse – he had two black eyes to add to the ones he already possessed.
It's amazing what theatrical stunts these clowns will pull to maintain their elaborate illusion. It's great entertainment – and it suitably occupies me until the next Ð Factor. I can't wait for Erik the Pickle to appear on 'Strictly Come Morris Dancing'…
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