LONDON, UK — The United Kingdom has announced that it plans to change its long-held and ancient practice of drawing and quartering homeless people. Instead by 2025, the UK has vowed to only cut homeless people in half.
This detracts from the ancient English practice of drawing and quartering. Amnesty International has long-condemned the British practice of hanging, drawing, and quartering socially undesirable individuals.
“Back in the 1910s, we got rid of the hanging and drawing. With the first war on, it was really too expensive. You need a hangman, four horses, and four men to drive the horses. Really, it’s jolly good fun, but the labor costs alone have become cost prohibitive.”
“We found that the remaining custom–just cutting homeless people into several bits–was excessively cruel,” announced a representative of Her Majesty’s government. “Further, at least four cuts is still a bit excessive and the clean-up costs have only increased. Why both with all that when one good stroke can do the trick?”
“From now on–,” he snapped his fingers, “It’s once right down the middle.”
Pundits subsequently debated whether the stroke meant vertically or horizontally, as a horizontal technique would likely fit the current government’s austerity measures whereas a vertical cut would be a whole lot of bother.
When asked whether that is really what was meant by the campaign, the government’s representative scoffed that, “Well, we bloody well invented the language, didn’t we?”