Gummed Up and Watered Down

Once more the moisture provision profiteering watchdog has deployed the gentlest gingival pressure and a dignified dry-humping of well-trousered corporate leg to steer a miscreant onto the path of righteousness. The latest penitent is South West Water, which has generously condescended to do its job in lieu of paying a fine for breaking the law. After two years of investigation, the regulator found that the company had not installed the proper equipment to prevent illegal sewage discharges, had not properly dealt with the sewage under its care, and had not adequately monitored its treatment works; but since the investigation was at the taxpeyer's expense there seems no good reason to burden real people with excessive financial obligations that might interfere with the next round of boardroom pay rises. Clean water ideologues are complaining as usual, apparently influenced by the antisemitic and dinosaurid dogma that corporate crime should be punishable; nevertheless, the Home Office has not so far announced plans to proscribe them as terrorists.

Loyal Toast

British nationalists in Northern Ireland have drawn criticism for adding effigies of refugees to a bonfire. The pyro-patriotic display, which seems in little danger of being considered a hate crime by the state to which the artists pledge their loyalty, will be part of the annual commemoration of a military victory by a rather tolerant seventeenth-century European immigrant. Even the Demagogic Unionist Party, which was tolerant enough to enter an informal coalition with Theresa May, has condemned the display on the grounds that bonfires should be "positive cultural celebrations" about the smiting of the Papist scum.

On a Departed Polecat

The heatwaves this year have been driving me mad,
The barometer's due for another foul hike,
And I'm still throwing off that infection I had;
But the day Tebbit died on cannot be all bad.

While current disasters continue to spike,
With few compensations to help one feel glad,
The day has an aspect it's hard to dislike
When Tebbit has finally got on his bike.

Samuel Grimsnipe

Fired

Russia's transport minister has been sacked and apparently shot himself, although the order in which these events occurred remains as yet unclear. If he was dismissed after committing suicide, it would be a tribute either to Russia's quasi-British efficiency levels or to Tsar Vladimir's talent for rubbing it in. The sacking may have been connected with disruption to the air transport network resulting from an exchange of drone strikes with Ukraine at the weekend; while the suicide may have been connected with Russia's lack of a proper disposal system for non-viable political careers, such as the House of Lords.

Temporary Exile

A felonious immigrant who voted for the Trumpster and his head-tribble so that they could deport more felonious immigrants is crying betrayal because the forces of the Trumpster and his head-tribble are deporting a felonious immigrant. The voter in question spent a quarter of a century working and paying tax in Los Angeles, lacking legal residency status but accruing substantially fewer criminal charges than many on Team Trumpster. With characteristic treachery, the Biden administration gave her a work permit last year, whereupon she voted for the Trumpster and, in accordance with the art of the deal, was detained by government agents when she went for an interview about obtaining a green card. She is now being held pending deportation to Canada where, once the planned North American Anschluss is complete, her US citizenship will presumably be assured in any case.

And Soft Refreshing Rain

A downpouring of the divine mercy upon a Christian indoctrination camp in Texas has led to questions about the wisdom of the Trumpster administration's recent entrustification of weather warnings to Providence rather than science. Nevertheless, it appears the Christian state of Texas has been steadfast in its faith: despite having prayed for a different outcome, one adult relative of a nine-year-old victim proclaimed himself thankful that she was killed with her friends while having the time of her life; and although the disaster area is known as Flash Flood Alley because the soil is so thin, the chief elected official stated that the county doesn't do warning systems. The Trumpster has not so far claimed credit for all lives spared, but the administration is "working with" state and local officials, so presumably it won't be long. In the meantime, prayers from the White House are ongoing; apparently not even the White House is claiming any longer that thoughts might be involved.

Avignon in the Himalayas

Tibetan Buddhism may soon enter the amusing theological territory mapped out in Christendom during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when a disagreement emerged over whether God was a Roman or a Frenchman and two or occasionally three different men simultaneously claimed to be pope. A similar situation of mutual quietism may arise with the forthcoming fifteenth Dalai Lama, as the incumbent's paperwork regarding his reincarnation seems to be commanding scant respect among the Heathen Chinee. The blasphemers even have a separate selection ritual, involving a ludicrous superstition whereby lots are drawn from a golden urn in Beijing before the Party gives approval to the latest embodhiment. The Christian kingdom of the Trumpster and his head-tribble has responded with threats of sanctions against any Heathen Chinee who compound their country's sin of overthrowing a feudal theocracy by interfering with the due and holy process of metempsychosis. Nevertheless, the fourteenth Dalai Lama has specified that his successor may be an adult and will be a native of a free country: both conditions which may hinder the Trumpster's candidacy despite his famously robe-hued complexion.

Buccaneering Buoyancy

Plucky little P&O Ferries entrepreneur Peter Hebblethwaite, who summarily sacked hundreds of workers from the master race and replaced them with cheap foreigns, received a pay rise of at least fifty-five per cent that same year despite his obvious contempt for the little people. Hebblethwaite informed a parliamentary huff-and-puff that he accepted the bonus after due reflection despite having committed the Truss-and-Trumpster error of doing the quiet part out loud and despite having suffered a similar dearth of adverse personal consequences. He also, despite being asked whether he was robbing his staff blind, bragged that some of his workers were so sustainable as to be paid less than the legal minimum wage: a claim which the company had denied. At present P&O's accounts are coming in nine months late, after a major accountancy firm resigned the job of auditing them despite the self-evident probity on show.

Larva Labour's Lost

Even in the realm of the Trumpster and his tribe, it seems that parasitic flesh-eating maggots are not universally welcome. A government scheme is afoot to flood the dating market of the New World screw-worm fly with artificially sterilised males: a family planning initiative which might profitably be applied to the Trump and Musk breeds if some means could be found of extending their sterility from the intellectual to the reproductive. The romantic method of pest control is more effective and less pollutive than using chemical insecticides, and is therefore being tolerated by the US government only because it helps the planet-eating parasite that is the beef industry.

Outside the Bounds of Humanity

Contrary to all recent precedent and the interests of the Righteous State, a judge has ruled that it is unlawful and unconstitutional for police to arrest, detain, handcuff, photograph, fingerprint, DNA-sample and threaten a person with strip-search even when that person is accused of antisemitism. Nottingham police arrested and processed a not altogether uncoloured protester five years ago on suspicion of racially or religiously aggravated offence against public order, and a judge has imposed punitive damages even though the arrest was made on the basis of a single denunciation and on no other evidence. Nottingham police have indicated their intention to appeal the verdict, presumably on the grounds that the protester in question has placed themselves outside the epoch-defining he/she lavatorial dichotomy and is also not a fascist, and is therefore beyond the protection of the law.