Let's Hope They're Grateful

Hibernian natives and dogs,
Return to your kennels and bogs;
Our England can do
Just fine without you
And all of those vile Euro-wogs!

And yet in this case we must pay
Due tribute, and let a few stay;
Our Britishness pure
Must always ensure
That every good wog has his day!

We hope this new privilege triggers
Compassion for Home Office figures:
Now everything's fine,
We'll just draw a line
And hoover up votes from the niggers!

Windy Rushbum

Bad Theology

Text for today: Luke 19 xxxvi-xlviii

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, His disciples loudly advertise His claim to kingship. When the Pharisees ask Him to quiet them, Jesus replies that if the disciples were silenced the stones would cry out instead. Nearing the city, He prophesies that Jerusalem will be surrounded and destroyed by its enemies who, acting presumably as agents of the divine wrath, will not leave one stone on another because the city failed to recognise the time of its visitation. On entering Jerusalem, Jesus attacks those who buy and sell in the temple precincts, but is nevertheless allowed to preach every day in the temple, where the people are eager to hear Him.

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the climax of His career as a prophet, predictably shows the Saviour at his most hypocrticial, cocksure and cruel. His boast that the stones would recognise Him with hosannas if the disciples were silenced is quickly followed by His prediction that not a stone will be left standing in Jerusalem because of its failure to accord Him a similar reception. It is noteworthy that, having entered the city, Jesus is permitted to preach in the temple even after His outburst of fundamentalist rage against the money-changers, and that the people of Jerusalem are in fact very attentive to His preaching. As the Son of God, Jesus must of course have been aware, even as He called down destruction on the city and its children for their failure to listen to Him, that they would, in fact, listen to Him.

Similarly, He must have been perfectly well aware that His noisy triumphal entry, His disciples' proclamation of His claim to kingship and His driving-out of the money-changers would make the Jewish authorities nervous, because any possibility of unrest might provoke reprisals from the Romans. His infinite goodness and mercy were insufficient to take these facts into account: Jerusalem and its children will be destroyed because, with all the power that was granted Him, all the allowances that were made for Him and all the chances that were given Him, Jesus did not see fit to ensure that the city knew the time of its visitation.

Would You Describe Yourself as One of Us?

As part of its drive towards a more open and diverse society, which has hitherto encompassed such triumphs of tolerance as the Prevent programme, the Windrush persecutions and the Go Home vans, Her Majesty's Government is now concerned to ensure that companies are employing the right sort of people. To this noble end, the civil service will next year be asking its staff whether they have scrounger blood. Four-fifths of the questionnaire will then be recommended to other employers, and the information will be purely anonymous and will not be used for purging anyone, much as destroying the Windrush generation's documents did not affect their immigration status. Use of the questionnaire will for the moment be voluntary, which should certainly help to enhance diversity among those companies which don't particularly care about it.

Our War is With the Kremlin, Not the Kleptarch

Despite Britain's long and glorious record of putting the Russian Bear in its place - did not our pubescent Minister for Wog-Bombing recently squeak at it to go away and shut up? - the inevitable Euro-wog with a funny name seems to think he has grounds for complaint. A certain José Grinda, who has made his name grinding down the kind of obliging citizens who pay for London's roomiest skyscrapers, claims that Britain's co-operation in fighting organised crime is "less than negative." This of course is entirely consistent with the demonstrated extent of the Recrudescent Imperium's interest in fighting poverty, corruption, climate change and racism; and the fact that some co-operation is to be had in pursuing drug traffickers demonstrates, at least, that Her Majesty's Government has not yet met its Dunkirk in the war on pain-killing. It would hardly be reasonable to expect the Recrudescent Imperium to co-operate in the harassment of those who share so many of our values with regard to income, infrastructure and occasional torture.

Waste Effort

Although the Recrudescent Imperium has long since given up any pretence of interest in keeping the economy sustainable, being far more interested in such vital theological conundrums as how to retain all the privileges of EU membership while obeying none of the rules, it seems that a few muesli-munching hippy types are still worried about the green crap. A report by Green Alliance suggests that Britain should do more to recycle its own plastic waste, as opposed to the present policy of sending it abroad and letting the wogs make what use of it they can. Having been compiled at the behest of a few communistic regulation-fetishists from the more disreputable depths of the business community, the report recommends that companies be compelled to include recycled content in all plastic products and packaging, and even that taxpayers' money be used to stabilise the reprocessing market, rather than for ensuring healthy growth in the salaries of the deserving. Fortunately for the renewability of the nation's greatness, instead of a Secretary of State for the Environment Britain has the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, who has his own future to think of and who certainly isn't the man to intervene in an unfolding global catastrophe unless there is something in it for him.

Yes I Am Indeed Human Why Do You Query

On the eve of the Grenfell Tower disaster's first anniversary, a time when a less gauche breed of Christian might consider hiding away for a bit and repenting in sackcloth and, more pertinently, ashes, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has been pontificating on social media. As leader of a government whose sense of duty towards its citizens is obsessively proportional to their wealth, influence and racism, Tumbledown Tessie was predictably clueless about why officialdom had taken so long to respond. Partly, no doubt, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was to blame; it is certainly remarkable that so crass, cavalier and wealthy a council could ever have been allowed into the Conservative Party, and doubtless the good folk at Central Office are even now working flat-out to ensure that blame for the oversight falls justly on London's firefighters.

Although the council was slow and insensitive in its response, such was not the case with the dead-eyed warden herself, who turned up only two days after the fire to have her picture taken. She now regrets the delay, which left something to be desired as a public-relations gesture and may, perish the thought, have given some people the idea that she didn't care. Of course this was never the case. From the start of her ministry until now, if there has been one question, one danger, one ever-present menace about which the dead-eyed warden has always cared deeply, that would be the question of angry poor people; particularly if they happen to be Muslim or Coloured and thereby look a bit migranty, but still have yet to be deported.

Mature Judgement, Enlightened Conscience

O rah for those brave and courageous
And free-thinking Members so bold,
Who honourably, for their wages,
Rebelled, and did what they were told.

O rah for the flunkey resigning
Because of the ethical strain,
Who stands forth and, after some whining,
Resolves, at the last, to abstain.

O rah for the malcontent rabble
Who mutter and murmur and plot,
Then after a bit of a gabble
Decide, when it matters, to not.

O rah for the moderate faction
With so many sane things to say,
Who then take the sensible action
Of trusting in Mad Tessie May.

O rah for the brave Tory rebels,
Those swashbuckling not-young non-Turks!
Those cunningly horse-trading devils:
All patriots loyal: true Burkes.

Hansard

Subtle Distinctions

Surprising as it may seem to anyone who recalls the lock-'em-up-and-kick-'em-out rah-rah which characterised her Blairite heyday, there are one or two cockroaches so potentially utilisable that even Yvette Cooper doesn't think they should be deported quite yet. The new Minister for Wog Control proclaimed a temporary amnesty last month, while the mild embarrassment occasioned by the Windrush persecutions was still warming the cockles of his self-interest. Now that other headlines have come to prominence, the true difference between the May-Rudd hostile environment and the May-Javid compliant environment is emerging in all its sub-microscopic glory: in summary, the opportunistic racist at the Ministry for Wog Control is still kicking people out at the behest of the ideological racist in Downing Street, even when such people's economic credentials are sufficient to satisfy a focus-group racist like Yvette Cooper.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 21 xxxiii-xli

Questioned by the Jewish elders about His authority to teach, Jesus relates a parable about a landowner who builds a vineyard and lets it to tenants, and then departs for a distant country. When the landowner sends his servants to collect the profits, the tenants beat and kill them. The landowner then sends his son, whom the tenants murder in hope of inheriting the vineyard. Jesus asks the Jewish elders what the landowner will do with the tenants, and the elders respond that he will destroy them and let out the vineyard to tenants who will pay what they owe.

The parable is highly precise in its allegory; being directed against Jesus' most treasured enemies, it was no doubt long and meticulous in the planning. The vineyard represents God's covenant with the Jews, with all its advantages to the chosen people; the landowner is God, the servants are the prophets whom the Jews have ignored or persecuted, and the son is Jesus. The profits from the vineyard represent the worship and obedience which the Jews owe to God, the tenants represent the enemies of Jesus, and the worthier tenants anticipated at the end are the adherents of His new blood-cult. The landowner's departure to a far country indicates the detachment of God from His creation and His consistent refusal to take responsibility for His servants, even when they are dutifully carrying out dangerous errands at His command.

When sending his son to remonstrate with the tenants, the landowner remarks that the tenants will surely respect him. Given the parable's exactitude in all other regards, this most peculiar statement can hardly be ignored. If God, like the landowner, has sent His Son in the genuine expectation that the Jewish leaders will heed His message rather than killing Him, then self-evidently God has made a mistake. If God genuinely did not know in advance that the Jewish leaders would reject and kill His Son, then the divine plan of crucifixion, resurrection and redemption was no more than a gamble, in which for all He cared the chief priests and Pharisees might have triumphed as easily as the true faith.

This of course is inadmissible. Assuming that the landowner represents the omniscient God, he must obviously have been aware of his tenants' character before he let them the vineyard; and he must also have foreseen what the tenants would do with his servants and his son. Nevertheless, the landowner retreats to a far country, leaves his precious vineyard entirely in the tenants' unworthy hands, and knowingly dispatches servants and son to their inexorable fate.

Why, then, does the landowner assert that the tenants will surely respect his son? As an allegory of God, the landowner must be aware, even as he makes the assertion, that the son will in fact be killed. Hence we must assume that the landowner's remark is a lie, intended perhaps to deceive the son and induce him to walk willingly into the trap. The landowner's omission of any mention of the resurrection can doubtless be put down to God's famously robust sense of humour.

Muted Bell

Britain's leading liberal newspaper has refused to publish a cartoon by Britain's leading political cartoonist, on the grounds that it contains antisemitic tropes. The cartoon depicts the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK having a cosy chat with her counterpart from the Righteous State, in front of a fire on which Razan al-Najjar, the Palestinian medic who fanatically threw herself in front of an Israeli sniper's bullet just to make the Jews look bad, is seen burning. Cremations and fires are antisemitic, you see; as is blood when the Righteous State is depicted as shedding it, and weaponry when the Righteous State is depicted as using it. Even the implication of censorship is no doubt morally dubious, given the parallels to Nazi book-burning which are likely to be drawn by the malevolent and simple-minded. Britain's leading liberal newspaper is clearly to be commended for its policy of fair and balanced caution, and it is certainly to be hoped that the forces of antisemitism do not poke their noses in and engineer a Streisand effect.