Diplomatising Above Our Weight

Britain's glorious allies, the head-chopping House of Saud, have delivered an ultimatum to Qatar, demanding that al-Jazeera be closed and that Qatar sever ties with Iran and with anyone else of whom the head-chopping House of Saud does not happen to approve. Qatar is already subject to a trade and diplomatic blockade by the liberators of Yemen and their allies, and will face unspecified further consequences unless it complies within ten days. The response from Britain's joke Foreign Secretary was surprisingly muted, with no reference to Nazi-style punishment beatings or even to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's notoriously acrimonious correspondence with plucky little Serbia. Instead, the Imperial Haystack eructated the usual blather about the need for all sides to be a bit more measured and realistic, and for somebody or other to do something. It remains as yet unclear what practical measures the Imperial Haystack will be adopting to ensure that Britain's glorious allies in the head-chopping House of Saud consent to be led by his words, rather than by his example.

A Devilish Bargain

Today is the hundred and seventy-fifth birthday of Ambrose Bierce - soldier, satirist, poet and the world's second greatest lexicographer. Send me your email address (pchallinor at madasafish dot com) for a free PDF of this definitive rip-off. Samples are available here and at various other points on the blog. This Mephistophelian offer expires at midnight. Should you choose to accept it, I won't use your email address for any other purpose, but cannot guarantee the state of your soul.

Insular Concerns

Britain's inexorable progress towards the glories of a recrudescent Empire has been meanly and poltroonishly stalled by the uppity wogs at the United Nations. Despite the subtle statesmanship and famous diplomatic skills of Boris Johnson, the Euro-wogs once more refused to acknowledge their debt of liberation from rule by some friends of the Daily Mail, and the general assembly voted ninety-four to fifteen in favour of going to the international court of justice over the status of the Chagos Islands. The islands were stolen from their inhabitants half a century ago in order to make way for an American military base, later to be gloriously utilised in the CIA's post-9/11 programme of kidnap and torture. The Chagossians have spent the intervening period under the delusion that they have some sort of right to take back control, even though the Other Milibeing, during his small and ugly tenure as Minister for US interests in Britain, declared the territory a marine protection zone so that even if the natives were able to return, they wouldn't be able to eat. Nevertheless, Britain has promised to return the islands to Mauritian sovereignty when they are no longer required for defence purposes; but since defence purposes by definition require everything and everyone, all the time and for all time, a specific date is understandably hard to come by. As rulings by the international court of justice are strictly for lesser breeds, any verdict will be purely advisory; but the British representative at the general assembly took it upon himself to threaten that many nations "could come to regret" the precedent being set. In a departure from the usual protocol on Gibraltar, the Falklands and related matters, nobody from the Conservative Party has yet suggested sending a task force to chastise Mauritius; most likely because very few of the party's back-bench baboons have ever heard of it.

Protecting Proper Families

Another enemy of the people has victimised the hard-working families of Britain's sterling yeomanry by ruling the benefits cap unlawful, at least as applied to single parents with children under the age of two years. Although such morally dubious human resources are not officially required to seek employment, the Department of Workfare and Privation imposed the cap anyway, in what was touted (or envisaged, as the resident psychic at Britain's leading liberal newspaper hath it) as an "incentive" to chivvy the benighted creatures into bettering themselves. A high court judge has proclaimed that the policy causes "real misery to no good purpose," even though two of the four plaintiffs hadn't even been made homeless because of domestic violence. As one would expect from a ministry so famously concerned with saving the taxpayers money, the Department of Workfare and Privation has resolved to spend more taxpayers' money appealing against the judgement.

Game Little Chaps

More than two thousand British jobs have been saved in the Mediterranean so far this year, thanks in large part to the glorious wog-bombing of Libya facilitated by the late Head Boy and his little yellow chums. On World Refugee Day alone, three boats are known to have sunk, scattering to the sea their swarming cargoes of potential parasites on the DWP's charity. From those three boats alone a hundred and twenty-nine jobs were saved; and the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands continues to exert its soft power in the name of British values by training coastguards for the almost equally strong and stable Libyan Government of National Accord. Despite the cool, professional examples set by their liberators and teachers, the Libyan coastguards have been denounced by Human Rights Watch for reckless conduct and for violating international law; evidently their absorption of our buccaneering entrepreneurialism has been a little too thorough for some. The poor brown buggers never quite seem to get it right, do they? If it weren't for all that oil, one might wonder why we bothered.

Cuppy-Duppy Heebie-Jeebies

While the blithering prima donna David Davis was demonstrating to the Euro-wogs precisely who is in charge of the Brexit agenda (the Euro-wogs, for those who came in late), a somewhat more important set of negotiations was taking place on the mainland. The process of uncoupling the British Empire from its biggest market and cleansing the pernicious Brussels odour from forty years' worth of legislation is, of course, a mere bagatelle compared with the need to prop up the dead-eyed warden's zombie government long enough for her to carry the can for the recently-commenced two-year train wreck and allow a fresh mask of near-coherence and partial competence to be plastered on more or less securely once she's been given the boot. Hence the ongoing talks between the Conservative and Unionist Party and its new-found, gay-baiting, terrorist-sympathising, young-earther chums in the Democratic Unionist Party. The uppity colonials have declared themselves unimpressed with the level of focus which the Conservatives have brought to the table: presumably the attention-deficient yak-yak of the Gove-Johnson kindergarten mingled with the slack-jawed droolery of a Leadsom-Hammond coffee morning, or some similarly winning combination. Senior DUP sources are whining about being taken for granted, and complaining about the backbiting baboons on the back benches. It appears, disturbingly enough, that the horse-trading skills of the blithering prima donna David Davis are not only typical among denizens of the Conservative and Unionist Party, but actually superior.

The Lord Giveth

Be careful what you pray for. There can be little doubt, after the Grenfell Tower disaster of public relations, that the vicar's daughter has been petitioning her mean little God for a nice, noisy terrorist attack that would enable her to march into another Cobra meeting and announce the usual prompt and decisive measures to censor the internet, introduce seven-day policing, compel NHS maternity units to detect radical Muslim foetuses via ultrasound, etc., etc. But as Esau, Jephthah and the Crucified One discovered to their cost, God is nothing if not whimsical: the dead-eyed warden got her terrorism, but the victims were attending a mosque and the perpetrator was a pure-bred white Briton who had to be saved from some have-a-go heroes by an imam reminding them that it's Ramadan. Still, there have also been more fortunate results; not least the fact that the tautological tyrant-queen has deigned to elaborate upon the meaning of counter-terrorism (viz. counter-terrorism). Now that Tin-Pot Tessie has clarified that "especially Muslims" means "including Islamophobes," the politically-correct citizens of nowhere will look awfully silly, and there should be few if any problems with such strong and stable measures as taking all British Muslims into the protective custody of those efficient G4S people, or fitting every mosque in the country with CCTV for the viewing of Special Branch, MI5 and the Home Office.

Report from an Inquiry

Prime Minister, you're busy and we'll try to keep this short.
We're sorry you have waited fifteen years for this report.
We hoped to work for longer, as we recognise it's true
These verdicts turn out best when no-one's left alive to sue.
The cladding we found flammable, although we understand
It was the cheaper option, and was only slightly banned;
The fire brigades heroic and blah-blah, and what is more,
Quite likely more efficient than they might have been before.
It's true that certain persons warned the systems didn't suit;
But they were merely experts, and were qualified to boot.
Although with hindsight we might say there's cause for some regret,
The country must draw lines, and carry on and soon forget.
The mopping-up is nearly done, the rich folk on the mend,
The neighbourhood reformed, and all the protests at an end.
Those noisy types who fouled the Royal Borough with their row
Have all been relocated, so the streets are cleaner now.
And, though we lost some lower-class resources to the flame,
This isn't quite the sort of thing where anyone's to blame;
For even if we had some fool to send out and be shot,
The cost of prosecution might deprive him of his yacht.
We recommend that things be learned, as Government prefers;
And trust there'll be less fuss the next time all of this occurs.

The Barwell Commission

Tough Times at the Trough

One of the least appetising things about the Grenfell Tower tragedy, apart from its distraction of the populace from the Trooping of the Colour, is that certain elements will insist on using it to gain political capital. The residents of Grenfell Tower have had their homes burned, their friends and neighbours killed, their concerns ignored and their safety endangered; their re-housing is in doubt and the Prime Minister has no time for them, and yet Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan and a few other extremists have had the nerve to go out there and make them angry. The Imperial Haystack and some of its chums in the scumbag press have been caterwauling about the unscrupulous cynicism of it all, as compared with the local council which seems to be rising above the fray by treating the whole affair with Bullingdonian insouciance. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Expenses-claiming Conservative Party, invigorated by its recent electoral triumph, is morally indignant at the dead-eyed warden's inability to wring sufficient advantage from this near-terroristic unificatory opportunification. "We have a really difficult problem inside the Commons and tough times with this sort of emergency coming up outside," mourned a former minister who apparently declined to be named, perhaps for fear that their noble record of persistent opposition to the bonfire of red tape might count against them. It's a most inconvenient business all round.

And Manly Hearts to Flexibly Pragmatise for Optimal Potentiality

In accordance with the Conservatives' policy of entering the most important and complex set of negotiations since 1945 unburdened by coherent aims, plans or a British government to speak of, the empty suit at the Treasury today said nothing at all, in remarks that were construed by Britain's leading liberal newspaper as signalling the empty suit's desire to leave the EU while remaining in the profitable bits. Although the broad principles of the Conservative position are unchanged, the empty suit said that the UK team would take a pragmatic approach in trying to help the Euro-wogs see where they've been confused all this time. As of yesterday, the blathering prima donna in charge of cutting off the Continent still had not deigned to submit an opening position, which to uncharitable persons of a saboteureal bent might seem like taking pragmatistic flexibilitisation a bit far. Still, with a bit of intellectual heaving the Conservatives might be able to scrawl a bit of rah-rah, wogs-out and I-want-I-want on the back of an envelope by Monday. It remains to be seen whether the Euro-wogs will be sufficiently flexible and pragmatic to reciprocate in kind.