Britain's Workers Need Witch-Hunts, Not Mere Evidence

A study which found that there is little evidence of British workers being deprived of their jobs by immigrants actually vindicates Conservative claims of the exact opposite and is in any case backward-looking and not really worth much attention. Such is the claim of James Brokenshire, the nasty little replacement for the nasty little Home Office flunkey Mark Harper, who resigned when it was discovered he was unwittingly harbouring an unauthorised wog among his servants. Brokenshire, who facially resembles a younger and even less distinguished version of the race-baiting New Labour cockroach Phil Woolas, looks unlikely to find the dead man's shoes much of a squeeze, intellectually speaking. Much like the badger-busting Owen Paterson fumbling with anthropogenic climate change, where the unanimous opinion of a mere ninety-five per cent of the experts does not constitute a certainty, Brokenshire has ruled that "little evidence in favour" means "cannot be ruled out", and that "cannot be ruled out" constitutes ample grounds for the witch-hunt to continue. Doubtless it was this resounding endorsement of coalition policy in the report which motivated the National Liberal British Workers' Party to delay sneaking it out until today.

Pennies From Heaven

Acolytes of the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair have been giving forth loud hosannas at their master's infinite generosity. Now that the Milibeing has freed Labour plc from its main source of funds, his reverence has decided to step in and perhaps purchase a controlling interest; although it is as yet unconfirmed whether he will spend more in staff and resources than he invested in helping Gordon Brown lose the 2010 election. However that may be, Tony's earthly representatives were keen to assure those of us on the material plane that Tony's ascetic lifestyle remains unblemished: it seems that his reverence's non-spiritual wealth amounts to less than seventy-five million. It was pointed out that his reverence has major financial commitments, which he obviously could not sustain if he were rolling in filthy lucre; and that over the past six years his reverence has contributed ten million to charity, presumably in order to avoid being turfed out onto the street with the bankers, the outsourcing profiteers and all the other victims of excess taxation.

No Disruptive Top-Down Reforms

Another foreigner with a funny name has joined the hue and cry against Britain's deserving poor. Philippe Lamberts, a Euro-wog who conspired in the drafting of legislation to restrict bankers' bonuses, has called for the EU to sue the British government over its connivance in allowing the City to sidestep the rules. The EU restrictions limit bonuses to a mere hundred per cent of salary with or without the shareholders' approval, or twice that if the shareholders agree; so executives are being administered their financial bloat in share awards in order that they may be spared the cuisine of their local food banks. RBS, which is largely owned by the British taxpayer, has paid out more than five hundred million in bonuses; partly because recent losses have been restricted to fourteen times that much, but mostly because the British taxpayer is a mug. Meanwhile, the governor of the Bank of England has written a letter promising a bit more talk; which obviously will improve matters no end.

Antipodean Allegory

An allegory of the British Conservative Party has played itself out at a Queensland lake, where two species of deadly reptile were caught on camera in a vicious death-struggle. One of the combatants was a crocodile: a confirmed Old Tory, legendary for its hypocritical displays of compassion but also known for being intelligent enough to refrain from devouring the birds that clean its teeth. Its opponent was a less than usually vocal representative of the Bullingdon Club. Some canoeists and a woman with a camera were fortunately on hand to embody the bemused public and press as they witnessed the snake embrace and then strangle its thick-skinned but relatively undersized rival. Having devoured the crocodile, the snake partly took on the shape of its prey; but this was certainly a temporary effect, which will dissipate as the legless strangler's natural form asserts itself. The snake is now likely to remain torpid for a while before attempting to swallow anything more; which is, of course, where any resemblance to the Bullingdon Club ends.

Censored With Mother

Penguin Books has ordered the destruction of a parody Ladybird book. Miriam Elia, an artist and comedian, combined collages from old Ladybirds with her own work to produce We Go to the Gallery, in which Mummy introduces Peter and Jane to the formal and philosophical rigours of modern art. Penguin Books has told Elia that the book breaches their copyright and have given her a month to cover her publishing costs, after which all remaining copies will have to be destroyed. Despite our continuing adherence to the capitalist delusion, it is difficult to imagine the mystical glamour which Wagner claimed for the Gesamtkunstwerk ever being accorded to the sorry practical jokes of a Koons or a Hirst; accordingly, this time at least, Penguin's urge to pulp does not appear to have been motivated by a need for religious pandering. We progress, do we not?

Willing Providers

Medical records will not be openly sold for commercial gain until after the 2015 election, unless the Government's intentions are pre-empted through chicanery or incompetence. There is, of course, a wide and convenient range of ministers for chicanery and incompetence; and the one who also happens to be the Minister for Health and News Corporation has given a rock-solid pledge that patient confidentiality will be respected for as long as the Government's chums in the private sector deem it expedient. It is not as yet clear whether Jeremy C Hunt's pledge is rock-solid in the same sense as the one about cutting the deficit and not the NHS; or whether Jeremy C Hunt's pledge is rock-solid in the same sense as all those others from 2010 which were recently consigned to the dark net; or whether Jeremy C Hunt's pledge is rock-solid in the sense that it rests upon some credible guarantee, such as the ritual sacrifice of a spad on the altar of Rupert Murdoch. Doubtless the matter will be cleared up soon enough. In the meantime, we have the assurance of the Minister for Health and News Corporation, and we all know by now what that is worth.

Prioritising Mental Health

A functionary of the National Liberal British Workers' Party has conceded that the Stakhanovite work ethic might be a bit unprofitable to impose in some cases, notably when the beneficiary is unconscious. A woman with bipolar disorder was harassed by the Department of Workfare and Privation until she suffered a breakdown, and while sectioned under the Mental Health Act she had a heart attack which left her in a coma. None of this deterred the DWP's merry men or the iron-hard cadres of Seetec, the private company hired to push sick people into work. They went right on trying to drag out the lady's inner entrepreneur, dispatching a message of hope "that all the activity or training intervention completed so far has not only supported you to achieve your aspirations but has moved you closer to the job market", along with an invitation to have her aspirations supported even more.

The election cycle is approaching the point at which Labour feels it should make some sort of show of caring about the disabled, so the local MP raised the matter in Parliament. Mike Penning, the minister for disabled people (not, you will note, the minister for work and pensions) issued an apology and generously permitted the family to be aggrieved, while controversially claiming that the procedure for forcing sick people to work "clearly has gone wrong" in this doubtless very nearly isolated case. Since Seetec have not admitted to a decline in profits this quarter, it is as yet unclear exactly what the minister believes went wrong.

Deserving Poor

Oh deary! Will folk never stop
Abusing our men at the top?
We gambled and failed,
And so we were bailed:
Why cannot the proles let it drop?

Oh deary! Alas and alack!
Again we are under attack
Because of the onus
To pay a big bonus
And give a few small folk the sack!

Alack and alas! What a shame
That still we must shoulder the blame
From emotional folk
Who can't take a joke,
And don't know the rules of the game!

What a shame! What a bore! What a pity!
We're cursed across country and City,
Although we can pay
Our fat cats today
Because they ate yesterday's kitty!

Buster Grabbe

Our Next Floods Will Glow in the Dark

Britain's Head Boy has had a bit of a burble about climate change, which he once again believes is among the most serious threats to the country and the world. This explains the relatively low priority given to fighting climate change as opposed to fighting wogs and workers' rights, which are among the more serious threats to the Conservative Party and its chums. Flanked by Twizzler Lansley, the embodiment of his equally sincere aversion to chaotic top-down reorganisations of the NHS, Daveybloke burbled about building a new nuclear power station. Owen Paterson has doubtless informed him just how safe and sustainable uranium can be, and most Conservative back-benchers probably think radiation poisoning is something that only happens in Japan.

National Liberal British Workers' Party

After four years of tax cuts, privatisation and food banks, it seems that some uncharitable persons are casting doubt upon the Conservative Party's charitable intentions towards the little chaps. Accordingly, the Bullingdon Club has delegated a couple of working-class role models to re-brand the party for the great unwashed. One of the role models is the post-Thatcher interregnum whose Classless Society rhetoric was an equally effective, if possibly less insincere, precursor to Daveybloke's guff about his Big Society thingy. The other role model is the grinning spiv Michael Green, whose main achievements are shady doings on the internet and insulting representatives of the United Nations. Together, these two champions of the deserving poor will be fronting a campaign in the style of New Labour, whereby long-term economic plans will be set out on pledge cards so that hard-working families can enthuse without pausing too long in the struggle to get on. The pledges, so far, include tax cuts, social security cuts, wog-bashing, reducing the deficit and "delivering the best schools," all of which the Bullingdon Club and Lynton Crosby evidently consider the stuff of prole Utopia. Aside from the fact that the deficit was meant to be gone by now, and the welcome retirement of that flaccid old joke about protecting the NHS, it looks as if rumours of the disappearance of the Conservatives' 2010 manifesto have been slightly exaggerated.