Who are We?

One of the favourite inanities of the Northumbrian politicos - especially Dagwald Caedmeron is the saying 'We are all in this together.' This profound piece of verbal offal is usually quoted when he's about to introduce some new Great Public Expenditure Cut - or to once again raise the prices of gruel, grain and gravy - in the interests of the Kingdom's imaginary creditors, who (in the opinion of this Cat) live with the fairies in the cloudy castles of Redistribution Land in the vacuum of the cranial cavities of Edweird the Milliner and his like-minded acolytes.

There are those in the Northumbrian Realm who unquestioningly accept that they're all in this together with Caddy Boy and his political cronies - even though they themselves didn't have any personal involvement in the psychotically berserk spending sprees on borrowed Holy Groats that the Redistributionists carried out in the name of Fluffy Diversity and Equality. It takes all sorts.

However, there are others who struggle to give this hackneyed mantra any credence - especially when it comes to light that many politicos are doing their utmost to ensure that they themselves don't have to suffer penury, deprivation and rat biscuit, and are busily engaged in feathering their own nests with filthy lucre - gained from the clandestine sale of magic mushrooms, the writing of fictitious autobiographies (ghost-written by unpaid pimpled youths who work for them) and of course, the telling of wondrous tales of imaginary heroism and derring-do to gullible knuckle-draggers on the lecture circuit. So it appears they're not in it with everyone else.

As the days roll by, more hysteria and high drama surfaces as we learn that the Herbalists - those well-heeled disciples of Asclepius - are setting aside the solemn assurances of their Hippocratic Oath to take strike action, since their opulent pensions are being eroded by the Great Public Expenditure Cuts. So sad. Evidently they're not in this together with the 'we' to whom Caddy Boy joyfully alludes.

We also hear that various slebs, singers of a bygone age and half-baked entertainers of a certain political mentality (that reveres the spumescent ravings of Guardy-Ann, Parly Toywasp and the Windy Pedant) have been assiduously avoiding paying their full quota of Northumbrian tax. So that counts them out of the reckoning..

As I nonchalantly wander around my patch - with a mouse dangling casually from the side of my mouth - I wonder who the 'we' actually represents. I suspect it refers to the diminishing number of ordinary Northumbrians who have to pay up. The mouse - I suspect - agrees with me..