A FAIRY STORY CALLED SOCIALISM
By A. Woodcutter

High on a hill, in a faraway place called Matlock, is a palace called the People's Palace, and in this palace lives a very powerful magician. How he comes to be able to live in this palace , is after he performs his first trick. He knocks on the doors of the people and then disappears for four years. Whilst he resides at the palace, he performs many tricks of deception; he can make many things disappear by just lifting a phone; he can make rich and powerful people speechless; he can also use these dark arts on the local press and make them silent.

He can make working farm museums disappear with the stroke of a pen. With the swipe of a JCB bucket he can make wildlife habitats disappear and replace them with a golf course for very rich people who have no time to stop and study wildlife. He can make tractors and agricultural machinery of historical importance disappear but this trick takes longer - how he performs this trick is to leave them exposed to the elements for years and eventually they disappear into the ground in a little pile of rust.

His best trick is yet to come though. He intends to turn a publicly owned country park into a privately owned country club. To perform this deception he needs audience participation. The audience are given a name! they are called councillors and they have to sit round a big table in the People's Palace and when the magician tells them they put a hand in the air and puff, if the deception works, the people's country park becomes a private country club!

But what this wicked magician does not know - there is a good and honest magician who wishes to live in the People's Palace in this faraway place called Matlock. He only wants to do good for the people and he has told me, through his trusted sprite Wando, that he is going to make this wicked magician disappear at the next council elections, and the good people of Derbyshire will live happily ever after.

One more thing that people must know about the very, very bad, but very, very powerful magician; He can even make special, precious things disappear; And there is something very precious - a thing people die for - it's called democracy: by not allowing people's voices to be heard, he works the dirtiest trick of all.