Golden Shred

The current financial crisis - skilfully manipulated into existence across the entire Holy Roman Empire (which is neither holy, Roman nor an empire) - has been rumbling on for ages. This isn't at all surprising, since the local Witangemots - paragons of virtue that they are - are making an industry of cutting back on their public expenditure - much to the glee of Beeby See, Guardy-Ann and the other soothsayers and prognosticators of doom and nonsense. Naturally, the magic mushroom-led Redistributionist administrations are making sure that they cut the supply of groats to those areas which have the greatest impact on the lives of ordinary Northumbrians - and do the most damage. By doing this, they ensure that the national Witangemot - led by Caedmeron - the Supreme Allied Commander-In-Chief and Chief Cock and Bluebottlewasher of the Tree/Liberationist Alliance factions - will get all the opprobrium and hatred from the unreflective and bovine herds of electors. And then - at the next Big Count - a Redistributionist government. Pass the mushrooms, Edweird. I need to go somewhere for a while...

One of the reasons for the (engineered) financial collapse that gave rise to our current woes was the crazy profligacy of the Moneylenders, who partook of the sacred fungi too enthusiastically and frequently, and consequently lent groats to stoats, goats, as well as members of the human race who had no means of paying back the generous sums advanced to them. Eventually, this occasioned a run on the moneylending institutions, and the Witangemot of the day - led by the psychopathic, dribbling Guthmund the Brown - stepped in and pledged kazillions of groats to the moneylenders (at the expense of the public purse, of course) to rescue the poor benighted moneylenders from the consequences of their infantile foolishness. Heaving an audible sigh of relief, the moneylenders congratulated each other for their successful performance and promptly awarded themselves vast golden sums of cash for their slavering imbecility and incompetence.

One of the previous leaders of the Moneylenders was a man called Thread. I'm not permitted to give his real name, as this gentleman - as rich as Croesus as a result of his (not insignificant) contribution to the nation's present bankruptcy - has appealed to the Highest Moot of the Kingdom and asked that he should no longer be described as a moneylender. This means that anyone calling Thread a 'Moneylender' will be slapped into prison and have to take his or her place with drunks, murderers, people who pull the wings off butterflies and elderly ladies who allow their dogs to park brown colorectal statements on the pavements of the realm. Disgrace indeed.

So from now on I'm going to refer to this gentleman as Thread the Needle. One small prick can burst a bubble...