Signature Concerns

It is by no means usual for the Government of the United Kingdom to object to the nation's history being flogged off, or even destroyed altogether. Still, the present age is full of the unprecedented, and Downing Street has intervened to stop the sale at auction of a visitors' book containing the signatures of world leaders and John Major, which a civil servant apparently found among water-damaged boxes from a Whitehall basement. According to the auctioneer, the civil servant had permission to take the boxes, which were marked for incineration, but nevertheless contacted Downing Street twice offering to return the illustrious autographs. Since the first of these contacts took place during the régime of Tumbledown Tessie and the second during that of the National Johnson, the claim that he received no response appears eminently plausible. However, the present administration clearly felt bound to step in when he proposed to sell his find "due to ill health and the cost of living crisis," rather than for patriotic reasons such as tax breaks or personal donations to the Conservative Party.