Now Birmingham’s rats come out on strike

Rats in Birmingham have gone on strike in support of striking agency workers called in to clear the garbage left by striking council refuse officers ahead of a new team of agency workers hired to clear the backlog left by the previous teams until they too say enough is enough, everybody out.

'Basically, if there’s a strike by anyone that prolongs the amount of time rubbish is left on the street, then we support it,' said Rodney Rattus, president of the Rats union Norvegicus. 'But this is going too far. Our members don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Not only that, we are concerned at some of the choices the public are making. Our members thrive on "best after" dates, not "best before". We’ve noticed that some people are throwing away food that is in date and is more or less fresh. This won’t do at all.'

Polishing off a cluster of bluebottles on his whiskers with one swift move of his tongue, he added: 'People forget that rats have families too. A growing rat needs at least six Domino’s boxes, with the pizza edges inside, a day. And the average rat can eat three times its own weight in maggots, just for breakfast.'

Meanwhile, Professor Elaine Empathy from Birmingham University’s Department of Anthropomorphology dismissed Rattus’ statement, saying, 'For a start rats can’t talk.' But off-camera, microphones pick her up leaning over a broken bin bag cooing 'What have you got there then my little popsy, who’s a clever little ratty ratty ratty-poos, oh he’s such a handsome fellow, oh yes you are, oh yes you are…'

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Birmingham gets five star review on Tip Advisor

1922 Committee issues form letter for defecting Tory MPs

Dear Honourable Sir Kier, great lord and master,

We the undersigned, who've been sitting on the other side of the House for the past 14 years wearing red trousers and sneering at you, admit that regrettably, at a few points in the past, we may have called you a vile quasi-communist cockroach for serving on the Labour front bench under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

We may also have called you Britain's Little Hitler in chief for advocating lockdowns during the pandemic.

It may also conceivably be possible that we repeatedly yelled across the chamber during PM Questions that you were an unutterably boring piece of dried-up kelp and a great steaming human bollard.

We may also have called your lovable deputy a sullen, sour-faced minx and told Rachel Reeves that she couldn't think her way out of a wet Co-op paper bag.

Since learning the results of the local elections, we have suddenly realised that these statements were entirely misguided and untrue, and that all this time we had been yearning to advance the causes of social democracy and trade unionism.

Therefore, we would like very much to defect to your side of the House, really sharpish, so that we can stand for our seats as Labour candidates in the upcoming general election - thus avoiding becoming political roadkill in a Tory meltdown which we now realise is totally on the cards.

This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that no one, absolutely no one, has responded to our bleating pleas on Linkedin for post-election directorships and such like. People must think we are unemployable, for some reason.

If you let us join you, we promise to think up some really spiteful and vitriolic put-downs to yell at the senior Tories we used to grovel to - Sunak, for instance, or whatever hapless sod succeeds him as leader.

Shameless and rat-like, that's what we are. You could use people like us.

Signed,

150 desperate Tory MPs.