Residents of the self-declared ‘independent state’ of Little Piddle – a tiny village in Buckinghamshire – are calling upon the international community for humanitarian aid, claiming that they can no longer access even the most basic of services from the UK. “It’s like we’re under siege,” Harold Stinkler, chairman of the parish council, told the International Auto Traders Gazette of Wisconsin in a recent interview. “Those bastards in the UK government have cut off all of our services – we can’t even communicate with the rest of the country! We’re having to plead our case via the foreign press! It’s bloody outrageous! We’re British citizens damn it! Even though we’ve declared independence!” The village made its unilateral declaration of independence last month, following a referendum of the hundred and fifty inhabitants organised by the parish council. “There was a clear majority for declaring independence – it was all democratic and perfectly legitimate,” Stinkler explained. “It wasn’t a decision we took lightly, I can tell you. But we’re fed up with higher taxes, higher prices and worst of all, that bloody holding centre for asylum seekers the government is proposing to set up over at the disused RAF base ten miles away. Imagine the effect on our property prices! Let alone the prospect of having bloody foreign rapists being bussed in here on day trips!”

According to the parish councillor, the move was intended only as a protest and wasn’t meant to be taken seriously by the Westminster government. “Look, we just wanted to generate a few headlines, portraying us sympathetically as the victims of this extremist communist government and embarrass Andy Burnham into the bargain,” he claimed. “We didn’t expect them to respond by setting up barricades on the roads in and out of the village, with checkpoints for ‘border control’!” Villagers, however, have found it impossible to leave the village via these checkpoints. “The guards manning them demand to see a passport,” explains the councillor. “But when we present our UK passports, they say that they are invalid, because we are no longer part of the UK!” The council has tried issuing its own passports, but, as the UK government doesn’t recognise Little Piddle or have diplomatic relations with it, the guards refuse to recognise these, either. “It’s no good trying to cut across country, either,” laments Stinkler. “They’ve put barbed wire up all around the boundaries of neighbouring fields – we’re completely trapped!” The village has also found itself cut off from all utilities – without power, gas, broadband or running water. “The utility companies say that they have no contracts with us as they can only serve the UK and that we have to renegotiate new deals with them, at much higher rates! The government also seems to be blocking our mobile signals!”

Perhaps most concerningly, Little Piddle has found itself completely cut off from emergency services. “Last week, Charlie Conklin’s house caught fire – the stupid old git had been smoking in bed again – luckily he got our OK, but when we tried to call the fire brigade, they refused to come out because we were outside of their operational area!” recalls an outraged Stinkler. “As we’d already had the water cut off, we had to form a human chain passing buckets of water from the village pond to the fire! Of course, Charlie’s house was completely destroyed, but at least we stopped the fire from spreading!” The villagers have encountered similar problems with the police, particularly when anti-immigration agitator Timmy ‘Dicko’ Dickens turned up with a mob of his notorious ‘Black Hoodies’ militia/rabble, offering ‘support’ for the newly ‘independent’ village. “This was when we first declared independence from the ‘Immigrantisan’ that the UK has become, before the government cut us off,” says Stinkler. “Anyway, all these horrible beer-swilling working class oiks descended on us, getting drunk, pissing in the duck pond, brawling with locals in the pub – the crime rate went sky high! But would the local police come out to help us? Of course not! They just told us that Little Piddle was now out of jurisdiction!” While ‘Dicko’ and his ‘Black Hoodies’ eventually left after the local pub ran out of booze, Stinkler and his fellow councillors have remained worried about the prospect of lawlessness on the streets of Little Piddle and have set up their own ‘security patrols’,courts and jail (actually a disused cellar under the village hall), even threatening to introduce the death penalty.

Sympathy for the plight of the villagers has been sparing in the rest of the UK, with most polling showing that they are generally considered ‘over privileged middle class bigots’. The government is certainly in no mood to pander to them. “Look, they wanted to be independent, to no longer be part of the UK, observe our laws or pay taxes, so we’ve obliged them,” notes Bill Pottlington, Minister for Villages and Hamlets. “If you don’t pay taxes, you’ve no right to expect services. If you are not part of the UK, you have to negotiate agreements with us for things like trade, freedom of movement and so on. They should have thought of all this before they started trumpeting their ‘independence’ to the press!” Even some of the villagers aren’t enamoured of their home’s ‘independence’. “I voted against it,!” says Raj Patel, a retired GP, who, alarmed by what he was seeing post-’independence’, succeeded in escaping the village, tunnelling out with his wife by cover of darkness. “This whole nonsense was motivated by bigotry – that proposed asylum centre is nowhere near the village, it’s highly unlikely we’d ever have any contact with it or its occupants! Stinkler and his fellow white, middle class, Little Englanders are just worried about their property prices – they made it quite clear that they didn’t like it when I moved in, for sure!” Patel has claimed that the ‘security patrols’ set up by Stinkler and the councillor were always stopping him, his wife and other ‘foreign looking’ villagers, demanding ID and proof of their right to residency in the village, leaving him fearing for his safety.

Other former villagers have been equally disparaging of the ‘independence’ of Little Piddle. “Quite frankly, I find it a bit rich that those buggers are so worried about ‘immigrants’ invading the UK, when they’re all outsiders themselves, with no roots or history in the village,” opines farm worker Peter Frimstone, who was forced to leave the village as he couldn’t afford to rent or buy property there. “My family had lived there for generations, working the land, but then the landlords who owned most of the houses found that they could make a killing by turfing out the locals and selling their properties to wealthy bastards from the city! We locals were all priced out!” Despite the lack of sympathy within the UK, Little Piddle’s situation has generated considerable interest in the US, most specifically amongst the far right. “If we hadn’t been receiving air drops of essentials via drone by our US supporters, we’d have had to capitulate,” says Stinkler. “Luckily, one of my fellow councillors had a Starlink satellite internet set-up, allowing us to communicate with sympathetic foreign media. We’re very much hoping that a Republican Senator in Montana who we’re in contact with can lobby President Trump to make a military intervention!”