One More Day In Fairyland

Yesterday, Oswine - the Supreme Allied Commander-In-Chief of the King's Purse - made his State Of The Nation speech in the Witangemot, and to a boisterous throng of assorted politicos, Redistributionist drunks, cut-throats and the deluded and criminally insane, he announced that the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria wasn't out of the woods by far. There were going to be more Cuts in Public Expenditure, and the economy of the realm was going to pass through times of Unparalleled Darkness before the golden, welcome light of Solvency and Prosperity would once more blight these blessed shores. He says he's going to borrow more billions of groats to help the Kingdom tread water - or sink gracefully, according to one's perspective. Guffo the Brown - the previous Head Honcho and Rescuer from the Ravages of Solvency - was observed to have smiled, but I later heard that he'd merely passed wind..

Sober stuff indeed - especially since the entire Northumbrian show is in debt to the discordant tune of seventeen thousand gazillions of holy groats, which by my calculation should be cleared - after the interest is paid off, naturally - by the time the entire earth has aged by ten million years, and Caedmeron will be a fossilised set of bones, languishing in a chalk down somewhere. I don't think any of the creditors are likely to be around to receive the finishing payment - unless they're blessed with unnaturally long life expectancy. Good times are just around the corner! Hooray for Ossie!

Undeterred by this apocalyptic gloom, the Great Mass of Disaffected Public Sector salary-drawers are taking to the streets of the towns and the cities, parading their prowess for immaculate Anglo-Saxon spelling and punctuation on roughly-scribbled placards declaiming their detestation of the Tree/Liberationist Administration for proposing to make them work longer and pay extra for their opulent taxpayer-funded pensions. How dare they? Oh, the wickedness of such a thing. I feel sick..

Intoxicated and blinded to the foolishness of their actions (or inactivity) by their unearthly sense of superiority and entitlement to something Far Better than the Great Unworthy Masses whose taxation pays them and enables them to see out their twilight years in the modest villas of Tuscany, they continue to vent their spleens against the machinations of Government. Meanwhile, their mentors - the Trade Guild Barons - urge them on to greater degrees of self-sacrifice while they themselves decide how to spend their generous salaries.

I was chatting with my master Caedmon about this, and he put forward the view that those who take such steps are the product of poor parenting and bad exemplars; he also suggested that if they had an appreciation of Divine Grace, they'd be thankful for every scrap they have, and wouldn't assume that the world owed them everything with cherries on top.

As a kitty, I don't need Divine Grace, since I'm not responsible for the fallen human condition. But I'm certainly thankful for what I have - and for the endless fun and entertainment these clowns give me...