Thursday, July 16, 2009

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The inkwells of Rutland

Another visit to Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

Thursday

Rutland’s ink industry has long been the foundation of its prosperity. I am fortunate enough to own several inkwells myself – some supplying blue ink and some black – as well as a plant where the two varieties are mixed to form blue-black ink. In recent weeks, we have been shipping countless barrels of Rutland Extra Black to Westminster and today I discover why.

The Commons publishes its members’ expense returns and they are simply dripping with the stuff. “Redacting” they call it. If I had covered my work with that amount of ink, my schoolmasters would have called it something very different and impressed their opinion upon me in no uncertain manner.

Ink extraction, incidentally, is not without its dangers and we live in fear of one of the men falling in. We keep to hand a supply of industrial strength blotting paper for such emergencies, as that is the only thing that could save him.

Previously on Lord Bonkers' Diary

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