Catch Them Young

Enlightened Western values are being imposed at an encouraging rate of assertiveness by Britain's favourite Islamic fundamentalists, according to a draft report for the United Nations. Fifty-one per cent of all child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year are thought to have resulted from the moderate peace-keeping activities of the head-chopping House of Saud, whose bombing campaign has been supplemented by a cholera epidemic and by an approach to public health workers which doubtless causes gussets to moisten all along Whitehall. Naturally, given that Middle Eastern children habitually grow up into migratory cockroaches, Her Majesty's Government has provided weapons and training to the Saudis and their fellow pest controllers, while piously admonishing the very fine people on all sides to avoid excessive emulation of recent Anglo-American crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Light Day's Work for the Pall-Bearers

One of the Conservative Party's most prominent enablers has belatedly discovered the disadvantage of flogging off public assets to foreign asset-strippers. Now that he has no little red box to quiet his qualms, the former Minister for Mates' Rates has reverted to delivering oracular warnings about the perils of profiteering, and has even suggested that the Government's privatisation of the green investment bank may be the "final nail in the coffin" of green Conservatism. We eagerly await the elder statesman's profundities on any nails in the coffins of unicorns, the tooth fairy and the United Kingdom's moral pre-eminence in the international community.

Getting Our Hands Dirty

When exercising soft power and exerting moral force to bring about positive change, not even the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands can rest content with merely criticising from the sidelines. That's why the Imperial Haystack's Ministry for Wogs and Piccaninnies has almost nothing to hide about mucking in with international aid money to help fund British values in Egypt, including assertive measures against enemies of the people and citizens of nowhere. The Imperial Haystack and his chums have a nice little nest-egg called the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund: a name in which one can recognise the sublime sense of right-wing humour which led the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith to call his pet thick-tank the Centre for Social Justice. The CSSF comprises £1.1 thousand million in taxpayers' money, but the Imperial Haystack and his chums consider it beneath themselves to give taxpayers, or even their fellow parliamentary expenses claimants, any information as to how it is being spent. Human rights meddlers have requested, of all things, details, and have been brushed off with the standard response that it is not in the public interest for the public to know how its money is being spent; especially now that parliamentary sovereignty and democratic control have been wrested from the beastly Euro-wogs and placed in the stable, secure and unconflicted hands of the Imperial Haystack and his chums.

Whoso Shall Offend One of These Little Ones, Let Him be Absolved and Allowed to Do it Again

Australia at the moment has some serious issues to consider. As if it were not enough that the country's legislature and executive appear to comprise largely of ghastly foreigners, a man with an invisible friend has proclaimed that he would rather go to prison than help protect children from sexual abuse, should such help involve violating the pact of silence between the invisible friend and the abuser. As humble, modest intermediaries between penitents and the Infinite, Roman Catholic priests naturally consider themselves above the law; and if the law should be changed to reflect trendy modernist ideas about preventing rape and other abuses, then the law will be wrong. The sanctity of the confessional matters more than protecting children, let alone mere women; certainly it matters more than helping abusers to stop harming others, unless a few mumbles to the invisible one and a priestly admonition to turn oneself in can be said to constitute an effective rehabilitation programme. If priests would rather go to prison, then we must hope for charity's sake that Australia will give them their wish, and let them take their invisible friend along to protect them at shower-time.

Me at Poetry24:
The Judge to His Mistress

Let's Be Clear About This

There is no room for racism in the party of Winston Churchill, Enoch Powell, Norman Tebbit and Theresa May. There is no room for anti-semitism in the party whose policies are guided by the ravings of the Rothermere Daily Stürmer and the tax-dodging squillionaires who set up the Farage Falange. There is almost certainly no equivalence between those who say one thing and those who say the opposite, unless they both happen to be Boris Johnson. Theresa May thinks it is important - not vital, not morally imperative, and certainly not Anglican - to condemn the views of the far right, except insofar as such views are compatible with racist vans, corporate piracy and child imprisonment. Above all, there is no reason why a fluorescent orange rubber Boris Johnson remake shouldn't meet a relative of Edward VIII and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon if such is the desire of the psychopathic tribble on his head.

Alternative Facts

Even in the United States, cancer sufferers who use fake remedies are more likely to die than those treated with actual medicine, according to research which is merely scientific. A team from Yale University found that almost four-fifths of cancer patients who relied on medical treatment were still alive after five years, compared with just over half of those who relied on placebos and confidence tricks. Nevertheless, "anecdotal evidence from some" - always an infallible source in these enlightened times - proclaims that cancer can be cured by homeopathic remedies. Our own Minister for Healthcare Profitability has himself been known to shill for snake-oil on occasion; although in his case it's unclear whether he is stupid enough to believe it will cure anyone of anything, or whether he is operating on the traditional British socio-economic principle that what doesn't work is often cheaper than what does.

Human Interest

Being wrongly accused of anything can be very upsetting, and being arrested must be yet more so, even if one is quickly exonerated (or, as often happens to terrorist suspects, "released without charge"). Having one's name splashed all over the newspapers, in connection with an ugly assault that could well have been something much worse if not for the exemplary conduct of a London bus driver, must be very upsetting as well. Indeed, by the reckoning of Britain's leading liberal newspaper, if one is an affluent white male banker on the end of such an accusation, the upset may be severe enough to be newsworthy; quite unlike the upsets of lesser breeds, who must be used to this sort of thing by now.

A Touch of Gove

Among the coalition's more brilliant plans for Britain's schools was the idea that teachers who had been sacked or driven out of the profession could be cheaply replaced in no time by ex-military personnel. Piloted by the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove with his usual depth of competence, the scheme was a flop; but connoisseurs of British education will be happily reminded of Gove's glory by the case of seventeen army instructors accused of spicing up their charges' battle training with a bit of playground fun. The accused are thought to have participated in the crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq, which may have resulted in some confusion as to what sort of teaching methods are best suited to the master race. It may also have resulted in a degree of post-traumatic stress which, if the instructors are found guilty, will certainly be helped in a prison system that has also recently benefited from the golden touch of Gove.

Moderate Migrant-Bashers

There are fears among the racist rabble formerly known as the Farage Falange that the next heir to the strutting Caudillo might lead the party into disrepute. Having been led in the past by a lying, thieving racist and by a lying racist, the Falange now has a choice of eleven candidates for the privilege of failing to win seats in Parliament and getting free publicity from the BBC. Participants in the freak-show include a liar named Jane Collins, a twit named Aiden Powlesland and a gay-basher with an equine fixation. In such eminently sane territory, it seems strange to talk of moderates; but apparently the Farage Falange has them, and they are disquieted by the favourite for the Caudillo's throne, one Peter Whittle, whose modest ambitions include remaking the party into a "cultural movement" to cleanse the nation of multiculturalism. But the moderates are even more worried about the candidacy of one Anne Marie Waters, an Islamophobe with chums in the British National Party. In the event of a Waters win, some senior members have threatened to quit the Grand Purple Conflab and, presumably, look for a more profitable home in the party's parliamentary wing as soon as the latter ditches Tumbledown Tessie in favour of someone less liberal.

Political Predators

Grouse, n. A flying creature bred at vast expense on very private land purely for the pleasure of having it shot down. Distinct from the fighter aircraft in that the grouse has greater nutritional value.
The Satanic Supplement

Despite its deplorable tendency towards non-English nationalism and Euro-wog fifth-columnitude, Scotland does occasionally have its uses. During the good old days, under the blessed régime of the sainted Thatcher, the province served as a testing ground for weapons later to be unleashed upon the rest of the country, such as the poll tax; and even now, after decades of one-party rule by the fiendish SNP, it retains an important function as the home of Britain's independent random-directional American nuclear deterrent. Arguably even more vital to the nation is Scotland's status as a playground for the financially virtuous, such as golf-playing orange toddlers under the control of head-dwelling hydrophobic tribbles, and also the more refined and noble breed who find the epitome of civilised pastimes shooting lumps of metal into artificially fattened birds. Naturally, given the uppity political atmosphere provoked by the recent referendum, mere experts are doing what they can to undermine this glorious tradition, by grousing that the management of moors for aristocratic blast-and-blather is endangering golden eagles, hen harriers and other rivals to more enterprising species such as the great Anglo-American dodo and the lesser Ruritanian peacock. Although industry representatives have denied the findings, which would certainly be the end of the matter for the jabbering homunculus that is Westminster's environment secretary, his counterpart in the fiendish SNP has had the temerity to take actual action, and has even threatened to employ more experts and thereby stir up yet more trouble. How such a laughably inefficient government can hope to attain independence from the world-bestriding Protestant Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands must qualify as one of the more occult mysteries of present-day politics.