Tuesday 15 February 2011

AS PROBLEMS MOUNT IS THIS NEW RECRUIT CAMERON'S SECRET WEAPON?

Downing Street has apparently recruited yet another member of staff, but at least this one won’t require massive bonuses and fabulous expenses, as he is a cat, indeed a rat-catching cat.

The new member of Team Cameron was recruited from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home after a rat was twice recently caught on TV cameras running up and down outside the door of number 10, waiting for it to open.

On January 24th, the BBC reported that the government had no plans to bring in a cat. It's a comfort to know that some things never change.

The new recruit is called Larry and first indications show that he won’t require to go to the house of lords when he retires, nor will be he much bothered about a knighthood or a CBE.

He is untried as a ratter but staff at Battersea gave Larry an excellent reference. He had, they said, a "strong predatory drive" and enjoyed playing with toy mice, suggesting that he will be a good rat-catcher. Hmmm. At least the strong predaTORY drive will go down well with his new boss.

He was a stray before being taken to Battersea, so he is a tough wee cookie, having had to live on the streets and fend for himself. Again, in the dog eat dog atmosphere of Downing Street that should prove to be a positive.

In 1997 the ratter, Humphrey, retired shortly after Tony Blair arrived in Downing Street, having decided that he was allergic to Cherie. He was succeeded by Sybil, the pet of Alistair Darling, in 2007, but she returned to Scotland after discovering that dodging Gordon Brown’s flying Nokias was a much more dangerous job than she had signed up for and after blotting her copy book when she tried to catch Thatcher on one of her many visits to advise the prime minister..


Pics: (1) Larry the Cat: David Cameron’s new way of flushing out rats in Downing Stree. He seems very small to deal with the likes of Liam Fox. (2) One of the rats caught on the TV cameras. I suppose there has been in increase in the desirability factor since the last resident left. He probably lived on porridge and skirlie, washed down by water. The pickings will be better under this fellow. (3) Humphrey the Cat who served under John Major (when he developed a taste for peas) and Mrs Thatcher (when single malt was the plat du jour), but who found Cherie a wee bit hard to live with (guacamole and sun dried tomatoes gets tiresome) and indeed had to be sedated to appear in a photograph with her.

28 comments:

  1. Great blog, fell about laughing.

    I do hope Larry tells them that rats are the council's problem...

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  2. I suspect that, as London continues to be infested by an ever increasing rat population, the cat will have his work cut. He should be OK if he concentrates on the rodents, though.

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  3. I wonder if he will take industrial action of Cameron sets him on Ken Clarke, OR?

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  4. How are the government meant to get any work done with a cat constantly stalking them down?

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  5. Wonder what the inevitable U-turn will be on this? But on the whole it has to be lauded as the most (if not only) sensible decision made by the half-wit in Chief: "call me".

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  6. CH, you must tell me how you get a hyperlink in your post!

    I'm sorry folks you will have to cut and paste this as I am far too much of a luddite to give it all the bells and whistles like Cynical:

    http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/3132?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PollingReport+%28UK+Polling+Report%29

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  7. Rejoice at that news??? Or not!!

    (and I don't mean the RAF crashing two helicopters onto the Fortuna Glacier in South Georgia like Mrs Thatcher did!)

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  8. Munguin:
    We already had one u-turn on it. They told the BBC last month that they were not going to have a cat, then they get a cat.

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  9. Interesting news, Munguin. Niko might like to reflect that it's not quite as clear cut as he had imagined.

    I think that Labour's ridiculous rejection of a budget in which they had achieved all that could reasonably be promised, has been seen by Scots as utterly petty and partisan.

    Even Labour has to realise that they’re playing a party political game with OUR LIVES and it's simply not acceptable.

    Their salaries and social position is more important than the Scottish people's lives. Pathetic.

    They continue too to make so much of Lockerbie when every paper that comes out proves what Salmond has said all along. It is disingenuous, to put it mildly, of Labour to continue to play on what are quite simply lies.

    And as for Richard Baker’s half witted assertions that they didn't know what Downing Street or the FCO were thinking: Richard, sod off. We don't zip up the back! If you didn’t know you should have known. But as you lot were micro managed from Downing Street by a Scottish Prime Minister the idea that you were not told exactly what to say, and when to say it on a matter of international importance juggling UK interests of trade with Libya, Libyan revenge and Brown’s ridiculously sycophantic relationship with Obama, is frankly laughable. And you made a fool of yourself!

    If Labour don’t stop treating the Scottish people like fools maybe they will be in for a bit of a surprise.

    I suppose too, that although he was an MP in the English parliament, the Devine Jim's blundering defence... “it was a big boy what told me, but I don't know his name", won't have done Labour any good.

    All of these things are, however, temporary, and as Harold Wilson was wont to say, "a week is a long time in politics". Their effect may be temporary too.

    There is all to play for. But the SNP must get over its achievements and that is going to be difficult given that all the Scottish newspapers and the television station are rampantly pro Labour and anti SNP... and have no qualms about showing it.

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  10. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12467535

    This is an excellent piece.

    The Tory minister comes over relatively well, as does Charles Kennedy... Jim Murphy is as usual totally pathetic. The idea that he could possibly be a Defence Secretary fills me with dread.

    Of course dread is already there with Basil Brush in charge and as for the last moron, Ain't Worth... words fail me.

    It is jaw-dropping that Murphy can talk about a military covenant and the poor treatment of soldiers given Labour's record.

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  11. Munguin + others
    (<)(a)( )(h)(r)(e)(f)(=)(")(Url)(")(>)(Title)(<)(/)(a)(>)
    Remove all brackets carefully and replace url and title to suit.

    feel free

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  12. Edit there should be a space between first 'a' and 'h' you'll have to add it. If you use firefox there might be a 'html add on'.

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  13. Thanks for that Cynical, lets have a go then:

    SNP ahead in the polls

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  14. There have surely been rats at No. 10 almost forever. Larry's services are surely much needed. Nevertheless, I see in the Mail Online that he has attacked an ITV political reporter. A slow day in the rat catching biz I guess.

    The White House has furry rodents from time to time too. But no cat these days as far as I know.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1280156/A-mouse-White-House-Mystery-rodent-disrupts-Obama-press-conference.html

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  15. Hi CH. I clearly need more explicit instructions than Munguin.

    When you say "remove all brackets", are you referring to just the parentheses, or both the parentheses and the "<" and ">" thingys?

    And as for that space between the first "a" and "h", do you mean a REAL blank space, or a space with one of the underline thingys "_" that are used a lot in computer names?

    And as for Firefox maybe requiring a "html" add on. Wouldn't the URL that you insert usually have both a "http://" and a ".html" whether you are using Firefox or not?

    Sorry for the dumb questions, but I'm not really the brightest apple on the tree.

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  16. Danny

    Just remove the () and there should be a real space between the third pair after the first 'a'. replace Url with real http:// then anything you want in the title as that will be shown.

    My ref to Firefox was that they have add ons add ons for danny sorry couldn't resist as it shows title space!

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  17. Maybe Laz, the cat will get hold of wee Maudie and shake him about a bit... then maybe his brain will work a bit better.

    Anyway, with this government don't you think that it would be better if they just did nothing?

    They only make a mess of anything that they do.

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  18. "There's a moose, loose aboot the White Hoose" I have one in the garden that runs up and down in the shade of a high wall, and loads of ivy, scaring the hell out of my female neighbours. I built it a lovely pile of logs and sticks and put straw around under and over it. I just hope the wee man managed to survive that awful winter.

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  19. See that Munguin.... makes me sick. I'm totally baffled by it.

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  20. Poor Dave - his cabinet colleagues asked him to "bring back the cat" and he got the wrong end of the stick, or was it the cane?

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  21. tris grrr! see Munguins link. highlight it (left click hold drag cursor till his has gone blue. rt click on blue and a box opens with options. find 'view selection source' and click. voilla another box appears. this will show the link + ( rel="nofollow") which is irrelevant to you/me so delete. what is left is the code for that link posted. whew!

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  22. Spot on John.... lol

    Been doing time again?

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  23. Oh CH... I'm a total divvy when it comes to things technical. And you've knocked your pan in to try to teach me this... for months now... and I still haven't got it. Sorry!!

    I promise I'll study it, and by the weekend (some weekend) I'll have it.

    ;¬)

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  24. (PS John)..

    I bet the wrong end of the stick put a smile on his face... Eton fags!

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  25. To CH: Thanks for the additional information about inserting hyperlinks. Sorry for the delay responding.

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  26. Did you get it worked out Danny? I just keep a copy of it on my desktop, paste it in and do the substitution.

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