Invisible Friends and Fiends

The Redistributionist Faction's Annual Unfortunates' Outing And Picnic is now over, and your Cat is eagerly awaiting the Liberationist and Tree events. What's for lunch?

One clear message that sounded loud and clear from the Redistributionist jamboree was the New Discovery that Edweird the Milliner - the Principal Fruitcake of the aforesaid faction - has hidden influences who inform his daily decisions. In his twelve-hour oration to the enraptured assembly of acolytes, dust-mites, stalactites and stalagmites, he referred to a blessed encounter with a friendly character answering to the name of Gariff. It would seem that Gariff has been having a hard time of things lately, and Eddy Boy has promised to muster the considerable forces at his disposal to make his life better - under the precondition that he votes for the Redistributionists at the next Great Count. Which is nice. Sadly though, not one Redistributionist actually knows who this Gariff is, since no one has ever claimed to have seen him. Your Cat loves mysteries!

I decided to do some research of my own, and during the course of my enquiries I discovered that Eddy Boy has been chewing a particularly potent species of mushroom: his own exclusive stock. This solves the mystery and explains why Eddy's marathon oration omitted the small matter of the Great Northumbrian Deficit (which was left as a parting gift by his own faction when they presided over the Kingdom of Northumbria's decline under the wise and sane counsel of the jovial and monocular Guffmund the Brown). And since the Dear Leader hasn't mentioned the Deficit, it follows that his henchmen and adoring sycophants and elephants haven't mentioned it either: it's a persona non grata. It simply doesn't enter the Great Conversation because it doesn't figure in the Great Narrative. In short, it simply doesn't exist.

Edweird the Milliner has a great future eluding him. Prepare for government, cupcakes. And don't forget the mushrooms...

Fascinating Rhythm

Following the shocking abdication of the Caledonian Queen Angus McTrout, your Cat has been interested to a subatomic degree by astounding new developments in the politics of the lovely Kingdom of Northumbria. 

Since it was recently decided by the Caledonian public that the fantasy of self-determination and separation from Northumbria proposed by the retired monarch was a prospect dogged by potential disaster, distress, deprivation, depravity, desolation and biscuit, Dagwald Caedmeron - the Principal Demagogue of the Tree Faction and Archdeacon of the Tree/Liberationist Alliance administration - has promised to grant the Picts and Scots a greater degree of freedom. This will enable them to mind their own affairs in the wild, wet and wintry wastelands of the North. Inevitably, this involves the principle that Northumbrians should henceforth solely have their own representatives in the Witangemot, taking decisions which affect Northumbria - and that existing Caledonian politicos representing their own kinsmen should be banished to their own homeland, where they can inflict their peculiar band of misery upon their own compatriots.

This is a matter upon which the Tree Faction is roundly agreed - and this augurs no great sacrifice for them, since none of their number would ever dare to be found in any constituency north of the River Tweed. However, the Redistributionists - whose inviolable Creed includes the holy dogma of Equality and Fairness for all those who are deluded enough to agree with them - stand to lose the prospect of future electoral success in the next Northumbrian Great Count: not an insignificant number of the mushroom-chewers represent Caledonian parishes. Understandably their Princess, Edweird the Milliner, is deeply unhappy about this prospect, since it obliges him and his motley cabal of acolytes to resort to violent armed struggle in order to gain power and win the hearts and minds of their detractors. 

Once again, it's that time in the cycle of the year where the various factions of the Realm converge on a hapless location so that they can indulge themselves in an annual orgy of rhetoric, rat's whiskers and rhubarb in their respective Annual Unfortunates' Outings and Picnics. Much mead, ale and finest Frankish wine are consumed - along, of course, with industrial quantities of magic mushrooms - an ingredient essential for the business of such political posturing. The Redistributionists have already started theirs, and the smell of beansprouts, boiled cabbage and dog breath - along with the sound of bongoes - already saturates the air around them to a radius of about fifteen thousand miles. Edweird the Spheres - the mendacious and fantasy-fuelled Treasurer of the Shadow - has outlined his fifteen thousand-year-plan for the economy of the Kingdom. More ingenious ways and means have been devised under the influence of the sacred fungus in order to further impoverish and punish the working Northumbrian and to reward the industriously idle.

Like the fine ales, meads and wines, the fantasies continue to flow in measures which are inversely proportional to your Cat's fast waning fascination…

Getting Unknotted

For some considerable time now the soothsayers have been in an exalted state of excitement concerning the imminent Wee Votie north of the Northumbrian border, which will determine whether or not the Caledonians will run themselves as an independent kingdom, thus disconnecting the close ties which hitherto have bound the kingdoms together.

There have been debates between politicos of rival factions; the chief protagonist on the side of independent-minded Picts has been their spiritual leader, the well-fed and immensely self-satisfied Angus McTrout. With a smugness trespassing the borders of severely delusional self-confidence, the Wee Chiefie has capably dismissed the contrary arguments with a majestic sweep of his overloaded and quasi-poetic rhetoric. Invoking the memories of a past which - if truth be told - never had the misfortune to happen, he appealed to a Golden Age of Caledonian supremacy, poets, kings, glorious battles, Pyrrhic victories, free oats, uisge beatha gently trickling in torrents through the burns and braes of the Sacred Land, along with other word-paintings of similar nonsense. Your Cat should point out that such tales owe more to the vast consumption of magic mushrooms, washed down by the aforesaid distillation.

The primary rivals and defenders of the existing arrangement in these debates have been Caledonian Redistributionists; Tree politicos have been notably absent, since on that side of the border their popularity  is matched only with that of a free range dog's colonic droppings on a butcher's bench. Since the Trees therefore have no reason to to engage in debate with the rebellious Picts, the Redistributionists have been obliged to take up the mantle; should the Wee Votie decide that Caledonia is an independent political entity, they stand to lose not an insignificant number of politicos from the Northumbrian Witangemot. The result of this would be utter tragedy, since it would thus guarantee that a Redistributionist majority will never happen in the future. Try - if you can - to imagine this Cat's heartfelt tears.

One sticking point in the debates - which, like a dialogue of the deaf - has involved irritable exchanges of attitude rather than arguments, has been the issue of the proposed new Independent Caledonia's currency. Since the separation would involve the severing of the purse strings from the Northumbrian exchequer, cold logic would decree that the Picts and Scots would have to establish their own currency - thus following through their independent zeal to its ultimate conclusion. This is evidently too much like hard work for the Wee Chiefie, who in his customarily complacent manner has instead that they will retain the Holy Groat, since they will continue to need supplies of the filthy Northumbrian lucre to maintain their existing dependence on magic mushrooms. And Caledonian currency would be worthless in the Northumbrian realm...