Coping With Austerity

Great show yesterday kid. A great show which ticked all the right boxes, touched all the bases and tickled the fancy of the great unwashed man who sits, legs akimbo on the abandoned mattress on the Ballymena round-a-bout.
Tommy my cat, with a look of austerity on his thin,sensitive, feline face, wiped his brow and said,
"I have emptied all the oil out of the oil tank and used the tank to make 750 gallons of home made gruel. That should be enough to see you and me through the next four years of poverty and penuary."
"Have you piped the gruel into the house?" I asked.
"Yes!" replied Tommy. "When you turn on the cold tap you get gruel and when you turn on the hot tap you get cold water."
"Well done good and faithful feline," I said. "Now go round the house and blast all the light bulbs with this double-barrelled shotgun. It will greatly cut down on the money we send to NIE."
"I hate loathe and despise NIE!" screamed Tommy. "They add 5% VAT to the bill. Why should I send my hard earned money to the Vatican?"
"Shut up Tommy!" I yelled. "It's money well spent. If there was no Pope, who would we kick on the 12th of July?"
"The Reverend Willie McCrea," suggested Tommy.
I grabbed a Zulu spear and chased him round and round the garden like a teddy bear.
"Ah, it's BBC education correspondent little Maggie Taggart," I said.
"Is it true Maggie, that our school children are-grand?"
"Far from it," said Maggie. "They can't spell, do sums or speak English like what it should be spoken. Our young girls are aspiring Millies and our young boys can't even pull their trousers up over their underpants."
"By the beard of Socrates," I yelled, "something must be done! Someone should get on the blower to Jamie Oliver or Doctor Poo, Gillian McKeith."
"Worry not," said little Maggie. "Paul Gascoigne has promised to come over here and teach the kids English if he gets community service."
"Crisis averted!" I cried. "Saved by the Bell's whiskey. By the time Gaza is finished,the children will be talking English like what it has never been talked before."
Maggie and I linked arms and sang,
"The fog on the Tyne is mine, all mine.
The fog on the Tyne is mine."
I gave Maggie an A plus. She gave me a riser and we parted on the best of terms.
Suddenly, to my surprise and horror,little Maggie fell into an open manhole.
I ran frantically towards it yelling
"MAGGIE! MAGGIE! MAGGIE! OUT! OUT! OUT!"