Wyrd Sisters is the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett’s take on The Scottish Play. The nefarious but inept Duke and his nefarious, clear-headed Duchess have murdered the king of Lancre, and have begun a campaign of rumours against the only people who may be able to stop them: Lancre’s three Witches. For a while, the rumours against the witches work. One peasant says:
‘All this burning and taxing and now this. I blame you witches. It’s got to stop. I know my rights.’
‘What rights are they?’ said Granny.
‘Dunnage, cowhage-in-ordinary, badinage, leftovers, scrommidge, clary and spunt,’ said the peasant promptly. ‘And acornage, every other year, and the right to keep two-thirds of a goat on the common. Until he set fire to it. It was a bloody good goat, too.’
Funny ha ha.
Until this recent writeup from the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce):
“Last Friday morning an angry woman from Hartlepool rang the BBC; ‘we voted out but I’ve turned up at my hospital and there’s no sign of any extra money’.”
That “last Friday” was June 24th. The DAY AFTER the referendum.
The United Kingdom has had public education since 1902. There are no ‘uneducated peasants’ anymore. What’s happened??
On 5 July 2016, teachers in the United Kingdom had a one-day strike to protest the underfunding of the school system.
Well.