Rodents take over house
It was today announced that MPs will in October move into their opulent new office block, Portcullis House. This is expected to cause considerably inconvenience to the mice who have made the building their home. Reepicheep, valiant leader of the Mouse Congress has admitted: ‘This verminous invasion could pose some real problems for us’.
The decision by MPs to evict the mice has sent rents plummenting. The fourth floor, due to be reserved for Tory members has been hit particularly badly. A church mouse said, ‘Everyone's hoping to get a hole in a Lib-Dem office. At least they might have some sympathy for us’.
But it seems there will be no mercy for the mice. A nocturnal animal (Michael Howard) commented: ‘The mice must be deported at once. We cannot afford to offer them either food or shelter.’ He reflected that it is indeed fortunate that laws are shortly expected to be changed so that any applications from the mice for political asylum can be rejected without consideration.
Tony Blair is not thought to favour the biological control option. Indeed he is well known for his hatred of cats, having killed and eaten the Downing Street cat, ‘Humphrey’ after its fluff disagreed with his wife. Scientists at Portland Down are busy working on a deadly mouse annihilating GM strain of mixamatosis with which the building will be infected. Earlier plans of an all-out nuclear attack were abandoned on financial grounds.
A retaliatory strike by the mice, codenamed Operation ‘Indigestion’, in which they would secretly eat all remaining copies of the Tory strategy document ‘The Common Sense Revolution’ was called off after a policy change by the Conservative Party meant they would be pulped anyway. Rumours that the mice plan a dirty protest, deliberately targetting their faeces over many miles of the world's most expensive carpet have not yet been denied.
Reepicheep summed up his team's fighting spirit saying: ‘I may be a mouse. But I'm not a rat’.