Loaded and Biased

The fiend Salmond's question in favour of breaking up the United Kingdom has caused a mighty blip in favour of Scotch nationalism and has therefore been universally denounced as loaded and biased. Here an expert provides a word-by-word analysis, showing the fiendish cunning whereby the question has been phrased in order to ensnare the gullible.

Do The very first word of the question implies action, as though breaking up the United Kingdom were something positive, constructive and progressive like Trident or the poll tax.

you Salmond here personalises the issue, addressing his audience as though they were adult human individuals rather than abstract psephological resources to be utilised and expended for the greater glory of British democracy.

agree Agreeability is more agreeable than disagreeability. Had the question asked whether respondents disagreed with something, many would have voted otherwise in order to seem agreeable to anyone who might happen to witness them voting in a secret ballot. The word also implies that there are people to be agreed with, i.e. that Scotch nationalism is a popular political enterprise rather than a perverse minority obsession.

that This bland conjunction exudes neutrality, and may on that account alone be treated with justified suspicion.

Scotland The name of the disputed region, calculated to stir up misguided local sentiment in those lacking sufficient dignity to consider Britishness a point of pride.

should The word implies obligation, and perhaps even moral necessity, neither of which should be invoked in a mature debate unless it concerns social cleansing or meritorious homicide.

be Another small but significant verb, like do, which packs a considerable freight of ontological intensity into a deceptively concentrated monosyllabic lexeme. There is a terrible postmodernist irresponsibility in Salmond's casual yet manipulative use of a word whose full implications have not been properly understood by even the most eminent philosophers.

an The use of the indefinite article implies that Scotland will be able to sustain itself as a unitary state, one and indivisible. Yet negotiations are already afoot to make it part of Norway, and even of Europe.

independent A highly loaded term, offering the implicit claim that Scotland's present circumstances are repressed and downtrodden, and that voting for the snare and illusion "independence" would somehow express a wish for the Good Thing that is independence.

country? Carries the clear implication that if the United Kingdom broke up Scotland would be a real country like England, rather than a pathetic tattered remnant like India or the United States.

Excuse Me, Prime Minister, Your Greenwash is Fading

David Nussbaum, the chief executive of WWF UK, has expressed mild disappointment that the greenest government ever may not be altogether living up to its claims. In 2006, David Nussbaum's charity helped to arrange a photoshoot whereby Daveybloke was driven to the airport, flew to Norway, hugged a husky, flew back to Britain and was driven away from the airport, thereby symbolising the Conservatives' commitment to a low-carbon economy. It is possible that this was the same Daveybloke who repeatedly used his dead child as an alibi for all those promises about helping the vulnerable and protecting the NHS; in any case, Nussbaum displayed approximately the degree of rational scepticism one would expect from a former accountant with a qualification in RE: "The long-term future of the Conservative party David Cameron is trying to lead is the party which continues to embrace people for whom environmental sustainability, care for the natural world, thinking about what we are leaving our future generations, those are deeply held values."

Nussbaum was tactful enough not to mention the Government's recent decision to spend what it has saved by depriving people of legal aid in a fight to cut subsidies for the solar industry. Nevertheless, the Government has made noises about a green investment bank but has ensured it will have no borrowing powers until the next election; the Government has made noises about improving the energy efficiency of homes, but has gone all coy when asked how the improvements will be paid for. It is becoming clear even to Nussbaum that something has unaccountably gone awry. I wonder what it might be?

New Technologies

Russians have resorted to various guerrilla tactics in protesting the corruption and incompetence of their government, including a sixty-five-metre phallus painted on a St Petersburg drawbridge which, when raised, faced FSB headquarters. Police in Siberia are attempting valiantly to deal with an infraction on a smaller scale, consisting of various toy figures brandishing subversive placards. Much mirth was occasioned among the unenlightened public, but officers of the local constabulary subjected the display to a detailed examination and sedulously copied down all the slogans in case one of the toys should make a run for it. "Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events, using toys with placards at mini-protests," complained Andrei Mulintsev, the deputy police chief. New technologies are the bane of many a democracy enforcement official the world over; but Andrei Mulintsev appears rather an extreme case. Our own Metropolitan Headbangers, Firearms and Venus Trap Club is famous for its difficulties in coping with such innovations as digital cameras, mobiles and people with cerebral palsy; but dolls were known in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and people have been making figurines since at least the Neolithic.

Elegy for Chicken Yoghurt

Farewell, Chickyog! O nourishing domain
And poison of our nation's nasty shits,
With all those floating crunchy sweary bits!
I fear we shall not know thy like again.
Perhaps thou hast attained thy worthy goal;
And yet I fear that with thy going hence
The blogomind will grow a bit more dense;
The internet will gain a sorry hole.

Still, better to part well than stay too long.
All yoghurt has, of course, its use-by date;
In Brighton too, oblivion must come.
Although the world continues so far wrong,
Thy lactose may foment a better state:
Thy spirit's giblets yet shall beard the scum.

It's All About Fairness

Government attempts to give the proles a bit of moral backbone have reached such rarefied ethical heights that even some Conservatives are starting to feel queasy. Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who was lord chancellor under the sainted Thatcher and the subsequent interregnum, has registered disquiet at the idea of making people pay for the services of the Child Support Agency. Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition plans to allow the CSA to charge up to twelve per cent of any maintenance collected, and to impose a fine of fifty or a hundred pounds on anyone who has the gall to try using the agency while claiming unemployment benefits. The idea seems to be that there is nothing like a cash-flow crisis to bring a couple together again; and, of course, those who are not legitimate couples are little better than single parents, breeders of riot and work-shyness and militant expectations of free university courses, who should be thankful for any chance at self-improvement.

Ministers may be prepared to lower the charges, which would retain the all-important principle that justice is for those who pay; and they have also tabled an amendment watering down the requirement that applicants demonstrate an attempt to reconcile with their absent ex-partner, perhaps by paying News International for a transcript of their telephone conversations. Nevertheless, Lord Mackay still seems to think there is something wrong with docking the child maintenance of people who can't afford to hire their own bailiffs. He has met with Iain Duncan Smith and has found the reply "hard to make out", though it is as yet unclear whether this is due to the foot in Duncan Smith's mouth or the rectum encasing his head.

Me at Poetry-24
Family Values

Just A Suggestion

In Westminster there is a clock
Embedded in a tower,
Beside a palace where a flock
Of sheep and crooks do cower.
The pile is leaning by degrees
Insidious and small;
Let's lock the doors, and chuck the keys,
And watch the fucker fall.

Gurney Hopflobbage

Structural Adjustments

An Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster applied to his doctor for relief from his lack of well-being. Because the doctor was also a Trainee Accountant and Junior Financial Efficientiser at various hospitals and related outlets, an appointment was granted after less than seven years.

"What seems to be the trouble?" asked the doctor, when the Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster had at last attained admittance to the surgical sanctum.
"The trouble," said the Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster, "is that the country is governed by venal incompetents for whose greed and stupidity I pay the price, along with millions of others."
"Very likely," said the doctor; "but I asked you what the trouble seems to be. Diagnosis and treatment of genuine troubles falls, I fear, some considerable distance outside your income bracket."
"In that case," said the Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster, "the trouble seems to be that I am morally indignant at the recent past, chronically worried about the present and gnawingly apprehensive of the future."
"Neurosis, anxiety, paranoia," diagnosed the physician, handing the Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster a bottle of tablets and a Final Demand. "Take one affiliated pharmaceutical product every four hours and remember that money isn't everything. This service is free at the point of use, so kindly make your payment to the receptionist on your way out."

The Involuntary Participant in an Economic Disaster did as he was told, and had completed almost half the course of tablets when his medical insurance company was bought up by a conglomerate of wealth creators registered in Belize, whereupon he was dismissed from gainful employment in order to improve his productivity and downgraded to Malingerer Second Class.

Such Transparency, You'd Hardly Know it was There

A consultation document has been published, in which the British lobbying industry specifies the maximum level of scrutiny it is prepared to put up with, and trusts Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition to water things down according to taste. Political corruption being one of our few growth industries, the proposals take unerring aim at think-tanks and charities, and also at trade unions, whose patronage of the Labour party was one of our most shameful national secrets until the Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband and his Balls declared yet again for the Conservatives last week. However, in order to spare the blushes of people like the former defence secretary, Adam Werritty, the Government's idea is to create "a register of activity, not a complete regulator for the industry", on the standard assumption that criminal activity is perfectly fine provided only that it isn't all furtive and proletarian. Hence, there will be no statutory code of conduct and no obligation for ministers to declare meetings with chums of theirs who just happen to be lobbyists and with whom they just happened to be discussing the weather or the evils of materialism or something.

Mean Times

Greenwich may lose its status as the world's horological hub thanks to a Conservative back-bencher who has betrayed her party's traditionalist instincts with a proposal to move the country's clocks forward an hour throughout the year. This would place us in the same time zone as the rest of Europe, doubtless to Europe's profound relief at having finally been allowed to catch up with the mainland.

The benefits, according to supporters, would be nearly as numerous as those once claimed for New Labour's ID cards: lower electricity bills, fewer accidents, lower carbon emissions, more sports participation in the evenings by those few who still have the use of a playing field, and up to eighty thousand leisure and tourism jobs in the middle of a global recession when simply everyone is going on their hols. A reduction in seasonal affective disorder would even provide a pretext to slash mental health services yet further, should the Government feel the need of a pretext for doing anything so self-evidently virtuous. The sole unfortunate side effect would be "reduced fear of crime", although it is certainly arguable that Daveybloke and his Cuddly Coalition have done more than enough to ensure that a replacement programme of structurally sustainable fears will be fully installed and functioning by the time any legislation comes to pass.

Fortunately for the soul of the Conservative party, a Rees-Mogg is on hand with the traditional dose of reactionary inanity. The MP for north-east Somerset has proposed an amendment to the bill which would allow the county to set its own time regardless of anything else, thus transporting it back to the early nineteenth century when there was no public transport and everyone knew their place.

Update In accordance with the revered democratic traditions of our Mother of Parliaments, the bill has been talked out by a handful of MPs. Among the bill's opponents, interestingly enough, was Christopher Chope, whose debating skills have been noted by your correspondent before, and who was worried that the proposed changes would play into the hands of the fiendish Alex Salmond. No doubt this is only the first of many instances, between now and the referendum, of principled Government concern over the comfort and welfare of people in Scotland.

Argie Bargy

Fears are being revived that an ugly right-wing government faced with popular unrest and an economy going into a tailspin might find it expedient to start a fight over a few sheep. Daveybloke has been huffing and puffing to the faithful about making sure our defences are in order, and has annoyed the Argentine government with the claim that it is behaving in a manner reminiscent of the empire for which Britain should stop apologising. Meanwhile the Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns, Willem den Haag, has been trying to induce the Brazilians to intervene on Britain's behalf, with indifferent success. Luckily, Brazil is quite close to Belize, from where den Haag's chum Lord Ashcroft gives the Conservative Party its orders; so the trip is unlikely to be entirely wasted. Nevertheless, the Argentine foreign minister has charged Britain with unprovoked deployment of the Duke of Cambridge and with rewriting history. It is as yet unclear whether Daveybloke's new-found dislike of colonialism will extend to ordering the Americans to give the island of Diego Garcia back to its original inhabitants.