Christmas card from your Tory MP?

Hello Friends,
Well, there I was having a productive December morning, house trimmed up.......

......front door adorned (for free, I might add, some unruly shrubbery & secateurs being a true money-saving combo at this time of year!).......

......& feeling pretty full of seasonal goodwill on the whole, when 'plop' onto our doormat landed a large cream House of Commons envelope. Was it a 4th response to my heckling in support of constituents' right to recall errant MPs? It wasn't. It was a Christmas card.......leading me to the 'What to do with the Christmas card from one's Tory MP" dilemma.

As dilemmas go, this one lasted all of 30 seconds. It's a cheery pleasant card, designed by a child at a local primary school (well done, Oliver, aged 11) 

 but I would feel more goodwill if our MP selected one of our local primary schools for his children's education..... or indeed, actually lived in his constituency instead of 100 miles away. The message inside the card wished me a 'Very happy Christmas & New Year', which was nice enough, but put me in mind of the dramatic increase in numbers of homeless people during his party's time in government, as well as all the families who will be eschewing turkey dinners for a food bank parcel this year. I thought about how our MP always votes in line with his party's cruelly divisive policies, regardless of whether they are of benefit to the majority of his constituents, as well as supporting those which are actively destroying our NHS, public libraries, youth services, Surestart as well as many other services I, my family & friends hold dear.

I thus found that I was unable to accept Festive Wishes of Goodwill from our Tory MP, so what to do with the card? We are a household hot on re-using & recycling.

Idea no. 1: Heavy duty litter tray liner. This would have been useful back in the summer, but now we have an outdoor 'come & go as I please' cat, we no longer need to provide a litter tray.

Idea no.2: Cat puke clearer-upper. Not a pleasant job, this, & being something of an emetaphobic, I have resorted to stiff pieces of card with past cats to assist with clearing. Albert Whiskers, however, appears blessed with a cast iron stomach, rendering such an innovation unnecessary.

And then a situation presented itself. For the last few weeks, we have been visited by 2 very large & equally persistent slugs. They seem to be breaking into the house via an air brick, compressing themselves sufficiently to squidge under the cupboards until reaching the apparent Slug Eldorado which is our kitchen floor tiles. They always visit together, late at night, just as we are thinking of going to bed, & have nothing to hand with which to remove them, so.............

Idea no.3: Slug scooper!!!  Just ten minutes later, the device was made........

......and you can see that by separating the card into its two halves, I have been able to create an additional back-up device, which will I am sure be useful as a replacement or indeed a 
re-enforcement should our unfortunate sluggy problem escalate. If you too are a conscientious objector where Tory MP's Christmas cards are concerned, you too could make this handy scooper using only scissors & the vast outlay of 2 staples per device. Just cut the card along the fold. Now fold both edges to the centre. Make a 4 cm cut into both the creases, then bend the resulting strips into the centre. Fold in anything that is sticking out to neaten, & secure with staples. Simple! Slugs, I am waiting for you tonight so as to be able to test run my not-yet-patented device. 

So there you are. Problem solved!
Hope everyone's having a good week. I'm looking forward to icing my Christmas cake, but the the reindeer I was planning to put on top has lost an antler & looks a sorry mess. I can either say I'm going for realism this year & that he's been rutting, or think again!
Cheers all,
C x