Oh, the Inclusivity

As we all know, because Tin-Pot Tessie and her minions have told us so often, Her Majesty's Government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone except the undeserving. Being in some need of votes, and recognising that there may be a few transgender people who are not poor, idle, Muslim, foreign-born, Marxist or citizens of nowhere, the Government has extruded the Minister for Education, Equalities and Whatever to burble Cameronian nothings about consulting on the possibility of making it less difficult for people to change their sex. The Minister also announced a reduction in the period of chastity which is required of gay men before their filthy, sin-tainted blood becomes acceptable for donation and potential transfusion into normal hard-working families. It is to be hoped that such liberalising and enlightened measures will be received with the gratitude and humility which they indubitably warrant.

Doing Our Part

Britain's buccaneering achievements in public health continue to inspire great things from those sharers of our values in the head-chopping House of Saud. The ongoing rampage in Yemen, in which British arms dealers are characteristically punching above our weight on the international stage, has resulted in a record-breaking boom in the cholera industry. Since the war has rolled back the state, efficientised water supplies and trimmed the flab from local healthcare providers, Britain's good old Victorian chum has thrust itself to the forefront with a vigour unequalled even by the 2011 flux-fest in Haiti. About half the cases and a quarter of permanent cessations of employability are under the age of fifteen; which, if present trends continue, will make for an optimistic outlook in terms of reducing future threats to British jobs.

Crowded Out

Some thrusting managerial types at NHS England, who evidently share the Conservative Party's belief that healthcare should be for the financially deserving, have announced that they no longer intend issuing prescriptions for drugs which are available over the counter. Those who require such drugs will have to pay for them or else go without, thus providing yet another incentive for cancer patients on low incomes to take up their beds and work. Naturally, Britain's leading liberal newspaper has buried the story at the end of a piece about the withdrawal of homeopathic remedies from the NHS budget, which is expected to save a massive hundred thousand a year, or about one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of a white male at the BBC. Britain's leading liberal newspaper does not find it worthy of mention that the snake-oil subsidy is slightly less than the twenty-five million a year which the Health Service spends on hospital chaplains; nor does it quote any thoughts on how matters might be improved should the money now sprayed away on fertility treatments be spent on helping people who are, perish the thought, physically or mentally unwell.

Work is the Best Way Out of Public-Sector Poverty

Improvements in the job market are helping to ensure that the more deserving members of Britain's white, pink and puce working class have no immediate need to visit a food bank, except perhaps for sniggering purposes. Fifty-two former ministers have found gainful employment outside Parliament: an increase of almost sixty per cent on last year. It was, of course, obvious from the first that the late Head Boy viewed the highest public office in the land as little more than a networking opportunity; but other beneficiaries of our Mother of Democracies' intensely relaxed régime include the ludicrous Francis Maude, who has somehow found nine employers willing to take the risk that he will use their premises to store dangerous substances in jerry-cans; and Ed Davey, the former Deputy Conservative flunkey at the Department of Fracking and Fossil Fuels. In addition to eight other commissions, Davey has set up an "independent consultancy, which specialises in energy and climate change", though whether for or against would be difficult to tell from his record in office. Last and most self-lubricating is the Osbornomic miracle-worker himself, who has toddled into assorted sinecures and the editorship of the London Evening Fuck Theresa May; the last without deigning to consult the advisory committee on business appointments: a watchdog which guards against such derelictions by whimpering in its sleep and rubbing its gums together with almost incalculable ferocity.

We Will Defend Our Island

Despite the notorious Dubs amendment, which obliged Her Majesty's Government to strain Britain's already bulging seams by taking in swarms of junior cockroaches, the Ministry for Wog Disposal has been doing a sterling job of keeping our island safe. As long as the parliamentary wing of the Farage Falange still clings to office, sixty million buccaneering Britons will never fall victim to the dozens of child refugees waiting to swamp them. The Government initially set the limit at 350, but increased it to 480 on the grounds that the Chancellor isn't the only minister who can't count. Fortunately for the safety of our mighty yet fragile Britishness, such figures are irrelevant: the Ministry for Wog Disposal has managed to get through seven months of the present year without letting in a single child, and the relevant minister will spend some of the parliamentary recess celebrating with a little trip (purely in the public interest, of course) to Greece and Italy. Only two hundred places out of the promised pittance have been filled; but besides not endangering the British Empire or the best interests of the Cuppy-Duppy administration, "the transfers must take place in line with the national laws," in the words of the Minister for Locking 'em Up and Kicking 'em Out. Whether the minister was referring to the vicious, anti-buccaneering, Euro-wog laws of Greece and Italy, for which Her Majesty's Government has hitherto shown scant enthusiasm; or to the firm but fair laws of the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, which are explicitly designed to create a hostile environment, remains as yet unclear. No doubt the minister is well aware of the advantage of promising to take child refugees: namely that if you delay long enough the child refugees eventually turn into adult deportables, often in the space of only a few years; while refugees who are already adults can hang around for decades.

Helvetica Sans

In some of the milder samples of cinematic rah-rah about the Anglo-American defeat of the Nazi menace, a number of reluctant yet plucky little fighters end up in Switzerland; and now we can see why. Although the Swiss Confederation notoriously failed to assist Winston Churchill and his American chums in winning either World War, there is much about the country that must appeal to the patriotic citizen of Most Definitely Somewhere. Switzerland has never been a member of the European Union, which very nearly redeems its ghastly neutrality in the two official wars against the Hun; and as far as the mainstream of British opinion is concerned no country can be all bad which is full of bankers and Nazi gold. As if these advantages were not enough, the Swiss citizenship test has revealed itself as a thing of beauty to rival the hypothetical mutant offspring of Tin-Pot Tessie and the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange. The system still lags behind the British one in that naturalisation is apparently open to some marital partners regardless of income; but the fiscal deficiency is more than redeemed by objections on grounds ranging from hate crimes against cow-bells to the wearing of jogging pants without due care and attention, and being too wilfully Turkish to understand the wonders of Hornussen, Schwingen or municipal recycling systems even after a quarter-century lifetime's residence.

Between the Dead

Just for a moment, let's forget the zombies. The late George A Romero did some great things with the disciples of Anubis in two major box-office hits, an under-rated third instalment and a twenty-first-century triptych; but he also made one or two films that fall outside the walking-dead subgenre. Most of these are worth rather more than footnote status, and at least one is a masterpiece.

The masterpiece, Martin (1976), was almost certainly the first I knew of him. I saw it semi-accidentally on late-night television; I had probably heard vaguely of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead by that time, and perhaps even seen The Crazies; but my mid-to-late teens were a pre-auteurist phase and I had no idea of the director's significance. While by no means abandoning the black comedy, social satire and genre critique of the Living Dead films, Martin attains a higher and more painful mode of horror thanks to bleak visuals, a sophisticated script and a mesmerising performance from its star, John Amplas.

Knight Riders (1981), which Romero managed to make thanks to the financial success of its immediate predecessor, Dawn of the Dead, concerns a troupe of stunt motorcycle riders trying to survive as an Arthurian tribe independent of commercial demands and middle-class values. A rivalry develops between the idealistic King Billy (Ed Harris) and the more worldly Morgan (played by Tom Savini, Romero's spurt-and-splatter effects specialist, and the director of the excellent 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake); there are obvious parallels with Romero's own need to balance his artistic agenda with commercial requirements, and the film as a whole is an appealing mix of road movie, counterculture drama and existential rumination. Like Peckinpah's Junior Bonner ("I made a film where nobody got shot, and nobody wanted to see it"), Knight Riders bled to death at the box office and Romero's next project was the resolutely commercial Stephen King comic-book portmanteau Creepshow.

Monkey Shines (1988) is slightly compromised by the producers' insistence on a hopeful epilogue, but is for the most part an effective and original experiment with the theme of the beast from within. A beta-male scientist defies his overbearing superior by carrying out an unauthorised experiment involving a quadriplegic friend and a cerebrally-enhanced spider monkey. The monkey is intended as a friend and helper, but her psychological symbiosis with the crippled young man means that she soon starts giving more help than is strictly compatible with the welfare of others. Epilogue aside, the resolution is one of Romero's most ironically ferocious, as the hero demonstrates that evolutionary ascent isn't necessarily an uplifting process.

Between the entertaining but relatively conventional Stephen King adaptation The Dark Half (1993) and the inception of the second Living Dead series, Romero's career went into suspended animation: he was able to make only Bruiser (2000), a minor work about an upsilon-male office worker who puts on a blank white mask which sharply enhances his assertiveness skills. Five years later, the Living Dead brought Romero's career back on track; but while the quality and impact of the zombie films are Romero's most obvious legacy, it would be a pity to miss the eccentric individuals that lurk among his career's shambling hordes.

Serious Business

Democracy as we know it in our Mother of Parliaments is, of course, in its infancy among the proportionally-represented Euro-wogs; which may help explain why some people still have not grasped the true significance of Britain's decision to cut the Continent adrift. Her Majesty's Government does not care about tariffs, treaties or the border between the Six Colonies and the Irish Free State; Her Majesty's Government cares about immigration and sovereignty. While mere facts appear to indicate that immigration helps the economy to grow, and while the self-pitying squeal that was the Article 50 notification explicitly recognised that British sovereignty was a non-issue, Her Majesty's Government cares about immigration and sovereignty because these are what the British people care about; or at least that vital, entrepreneurial, wogs-out and rah-rah section of the British people whose opinion is all that matters to the sensible folk. Hence the more or less complete lack of interest or attention which Her Majesty's Government has devoted to the EU negotiations: the doings of a bunch of foreigners in faraway lands are simply not relevant to the serious, adult business of keeping the Farage Falange's migrant-bashers, refugee-drowners and hijab-grabbers in continued coalition with the Cuppy-Duppies.

A Positive Case for Brexit

Since forty-eight per cent of the population consists entirely of traitors, saboteurs, citizens of nowhere and wogs, it's hardly surprising that the blithering prima donna David Davis has been equipped with a rah-rah security briefcase. Digital devices can be protected from snoopers by putting them in the fridge, but members of the modern Conservative Party tend to have limited acquaintance with fridges, which are more the natural province of the little woman or other servants. Shielded briefcases and silent watches, by contrast, are accessories that the most puce-complexioned boy-jobber can sport in good conscience. It is certainly reassuring to see that the blithering prima donna has retained his dislike of snooping in at least some circumstances, as negotiations might well collapse should Her Majesty's Government's next capitulation be prematurely revealed to the back-bench baboons.

Like a Timid, Blushing Tomato, I Humbly Solicit Your Views

The jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove has proclaimed a period in "listening mode" before its expected default to bluster, blather and name-calling. As a self-styled "shy green", its self-effacing instincts have led it to vote against whatever green measures the parliamentary wing of UKIP happens to dislike (viz. all of them) and to denounce green regulations from the EU. Our escape from such absurd diktat will, if the jabbering homunculus is to be believed, lead us into a new and wondrous era of environmental friendliness that will make the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands the dread and envy of lesser breeds. With Tin-Pot Tessie's Great Enabling Act already under hostile scrutiny, no doubt the jabbering homunculus is prepared to consider any revisions within reason. Any suggestions that don't imply interference with the legitimate entrepreneurial interests of head-chopping Saudi fossil fuel merchants and water-poisoning frackers will almost certainly not result in the jabbering homunculus dismissing the proponent as a blob. As shy greenery goes, even vegetable matter such as the blithering Owen Paterson or the gormless Andrea Leadsom could hardly say fairer than that.