The Prime Minister has been forced to deny that Britain is on the verge of returning to the Dark Ages after news has leaked out that Tory MPs are re-fortifying their castles en masse. Most of the castles have not been properly fortified for between three and eight hundred years but for modern fortifications contractors business is booming.
"They tell us that they expect a return to the Dark Ages any day now," one contractor explained on condition of anonymity. "They expect that the massive withdrawal of government services will create a new class of propertyless poor, or 'serfs' as they sometimes call them, and that it will be necessary to keep them at bay with fortifications and heavy weaponry."
The Prime Minister has had to defend his MPs not only against the charge of selfishly fortifying themselves while leaving middle class areas unprotected, but also against the charge that a return to the Dark Ages is in fact the desired outcome of the Tory policies. "There's a lot of nostalgia for Medieval times among the aristocracy and their hangers-on," explained a well-know commentator on stuff. "There is speculation that the government is using the deficit as an excuse to do what the Tories always want to do: cut spending, lower taxes on the rich, increase the gap between rich and poor and reinstate feudalism."
Tory MPs have individually and collectively denied the charges levelled at them. "It's outrageous that people slander us so," spluttered Oswald Inkleby-Speringforth of Borrenshire - who in political life goes by the name of John Timpson - when cornered on his estate. "If I want to have the portals above my gate where the boiling oil used to be poured re-opened that's my business. These accusations get thrown around as though there's something wrong with adding a bit of bullet-proof plating to modernise the battlements. The only nostalgia I have is for when journalists used to show a bit of bloody respect. Now get off my land before I stick your head in my trebuchet."