Cough up

Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon’s thoroughly scurrilous Brighton column

Local government minister Mike Gooley today unveiled controversial proposals to charge vagrants at least ten per cent of Council Tax, to come into effect from April 2014.

Defending his proposal, Mr. Gooley stated: “We’ve already brought in measures to ensure that the very lowest paid in our society make a fair (i.e. unfair) contribution towards the cost of local services, but in my opinion this did not go far enough.

“It is our policy as a government to make living in a home pay. At present there is absolutely no incentive for those on the streets to move into a home. This proposal will make make them think twice.

“For too long the homeless have been dependant on handouts from members of the public. Now, feeling the squeeze after many years of charitable giving, the public are demanding something back.

“Vagrants who pay Council Tax will feel a greater sense of self-worth, and will be incentivised to beg harder. Ultimately they will become responsible citizens who will make their own way in the world, like my colleagues in the cabinet who inherited millions from their parents.”

Junior shadow Jennie James responded to this proposal saying: “This is just another half-baked policy. How on earth do they mean to implement this? The whole notion is unworkable. When we get into power we’ll do it properly.”

Following last Thursday’s proposal to charge the poor to vote, this measure suggests that welfare reform continues to be the government’s top priority.

Edward De Bonehead’s Lateral Thinking Puzzles

NO. 2 – THE TWO SCOTSMEN
Two Scotsmen meet on a mountain precipice. Immediately each strips naked and, producing a pistol, shoots the other dead. After their bodies have fallen to the rocks below there are still
two Scotsmen on the precipice. How can this be so?

SOLUTION TO LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE:
The chef is a haemophiliac, and “Sir Simon Nicholson”, “Lady Amelia Danvers” and “the Honourable Richard Bottoms” are his three dogs.
Answer next week.

An occasional series in which we struggle to remember the simple terms that have been abandoned in favour of overblown, crass, neologisms.

WHAT WE SAY NOW:

“Normal”
Another adjective pressed into service as a noun by our cousins across the pond, with their talk of ‘the new normal’. Its plainer predecessor was retired for no fathomable reason beyond the misplaced fear of sounding like the headline to an article on George Wendt’s weight loss.

WHAT WE USED TO SAY: “Norm”