Keeping Them In Their Place

Britain's Head Boy has pulled off another diplomatic coup. A week after meeting the Iranian president, ostensibly in the hope of gaining Iran's co-operation if not its friendship, Daveybloke has had a bit of a posture in front of the UN general assembly. Since he was in front of a different audience and selling a slightly different product, he felt no particular need to be polite to the Iranians, who probably don't have television or the internet anyway. Daveybloke burbled that Tehran was "part of the problem" in the Great Game, due perhaps to its recent interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc., and proclaimed that if Iran behaved itself and helped the Crusaders in their legitimate business, it might earn itself a pat on the head. Apart from Iran's support for terrorist organisations, Daveybloke also criticised its lack of any equivalent for Trident and its treatment of its people, of whom evidently not enough are sufficiently poor. The speech has embarrassed the president whose co-operation Daveybloke was supposedly seeking, and has boosted the more conservative factions in the Iranian government, who for some reason or other are "deeply sceptical of British politics".

Not Terribly Bright

Solar energy could become a major source of electricity within a few decades, despite the efforts of the greenest government ever, according to a foreigner with a funny name. The executive director of the International Energy Agency claimed that the cost of solar energy systems has decreased markedly in the past few years; it is as yet unclear whether the greenest government ever will be making a formal complaint over this deliberate and malicious attempt to undermine the market effectiveness of nuclear, shale-fracking and poisoning the Niger delta. Still, the executive director of the International Energy Agency did give the greenest government ever its due with her observation that the solar energy market would most likely be led by the Heathen Chinee, followed by the United States, Africa, India, the Middle East and just about everywhere but Britain.

Weapon-Selling Wog-Bombers For Pluralistic Inclusiveness

Britain's Head Boy has been having a bit of a burble about his comprehensive strategy for democratising the Middle East through wog-bombing. Apparently it would be awfully jolly for the success of the said strategy if the wog-bombing could be extended to Syria. One cannot bomb wogs effectively if the wogs keep on running away and turning themselves into illegal immigrants; self-evidently, one must simply keep dropping things on places until the nonsense stops. The ultimate outcome, as so many times before, will be "an Iraq that has a democratic, inclusive government for everyone", possibly modelled on Daveybloke's own democratic, inclusive government which earned such an impressive mandate in 2010 and has done so much for our own social cohesion ever since; "and, in time, Syria needs exactly the same thing." However, that time is not now and it's all Labour's fault.

Once More

Once more unto the great jihad!
Let us make good, and kill the bad.
Our peril's great, our choices short:
We must bomb wogs, or else do nought.

Our aims are clear, our purpose pure;
The situation's not obscure,
Because the facts upon the ground
Are those we made last time around.

By clash of arms, in battle famed,
The honour of our tribe's proclaimed;
And we shall have a quiet laugh
In six weeks, at the Cenotaph.

Bucky Banger

Home Rule

Not content with having vanquished Michael Gove, the mad old cat lady at the Home Office has chosen the day of the latest debate on wog-bombing to issue a new pronunciamento on the Passport Office. The proclamation intimates that things have not been going terribly well at the agency, where the coalition imposed one of its trademark non-top-down, non-chaotic reorganisations last year, and where passport consumers have been plagued with delays ever since. Part of the pretext for the reorganisation was national security, so naturally the Passport Office relaxed its security checks in order to speed things up. At this point it became apparent even to Daveybloke's mad old cat lady that all was not entirely tickety-boo, and she has now decided to rule the agency by decree until it can be sold off to a private company the next time the Chancellor needs help with his sums or, as with the probation service, just for the pure giddy hell of it. Then as now, Daveybloke's mad old cat lady will doubtless hope to bask in the reflected collateral damage.

Let Us Therefore Brace Ourselves to our Duty

Translated from the Journalese by Philip Challinor and a traitor

RAF Tornado jets are expected to recommence wog-bombing in Iraq within hours of a vote by the expenses-claiming community to permit Britain's Head Boy a bit of party conference rah-rah.

The Ministry for War and the Colonies is planning for an operation that will last until at least the next general election as part of a US-led coalition that includes the French, the liberal press and some Decent Fundamentalists from Osama bin Laden country.

A ministerial spokesbeing cautioned that there would not be a massive set of explosions similar to those that marked the telegenic 2003 crusade, when the night sky was lit up with burning Iraqis.

“It will not be shock and awe,” the spokesbeing said. “This will be a much more fluid operation, involving surgical strikes and minimal civilian casualties, which has never been thought of before because of the mess made by the last Labour administration.”

Jets, special forces and other exciting toys have been deployed to the region, primarily to help identify targets. So far, not many targets have been identified.

The shortage of targets is compounded by the results of the previous major wog-bombing in Iraq, when the War Against Terror relieved the troubled nation of its ministry buildings and television stations.

Some RAF targets will be predetermined but others will be chosen on an ad hoc, opportunistic basis when something moves or looks at the pilot in a funny way.

The US and its clients are depending on the Iraqi army, the Kurds and some Decent Syrians to defeat the enemy on the ground. The Iraqi army was trained by the US, much like the Army of South Vietnam, the contras, al-Qaida etc.

To Portray is to Participate

"Censors tend to do what psychotics do. They confuse reality with illusion."
David Cronenberg

An exhibition at the Barbican, depicting slavery as a degrading, humiliating and racist institution, has been cancelled because campaigners objected to the degrading, humiliating and racially charged nature of its images. The exhibition consists of a dozen tableaux depicting "settings drawn from real life" in the good old days when everyone knew their place, or at least could be duly informed of it (perhaps via castration) without provoking a lot of liberal fuss. A former equalities and human rights commissioner said that "having people objectified in this humiliating way was always going to cause a fierce reaction"; a statement whose categorical wrongness the exhibition was designed to show. As so often with the morally righteous, a disturbing depiction is as culpable as a hateful act. Certainly, thanks to some loud voices on one side and some weak knees on the other, the depiction is easier to prevent.

At Last, A Possible Solution

Britain's Head Boy has hopes of livening up next week's rah-rah in Birmingham with a bit of wog-bombing, which always does so much to keep the peace in the Conservative Party. Daveybloke has taken the precaution of buttering up the Milibeing, and Labour's business spokesbeing has expressed cautious enthusiasm. Labour's spokesbeing for international development, Jim Murphy, blathered happily about America's attempts "to stop the humanitarian slaughter" and proclaimed, in case anyone doubted it, that "The Labour party is not opposed to trying to save people’s lives", especially when there are so many exciting toys with which to make the attempt.

If all this were not enough to settle the ethical case for yet more death by democratisation, Jack Straw has also conferred his approval. "Last year’s debate was about strikes against the Assad regime," said the Reverend Blair's minister for humanitarian slaughter. "This year’s debate is a very different one - it is about strikes against the enemies of the Assad regime." This reorientation of the moral compass is necessary because the Middle East, despite all our efforts, remains a remarkably changeable place.

The Assassination of Lord Bell

Lord Bell always enjoyed his nights at the club. The Dover sole was passable, the claret was excellent, and the trough for each course was customarily lined with copies of the Guardian: from the Monday edition for the hors d'oeuvres, right through to the Saturday blockbuster for dessert.

On this occasion, however, Lord Bell's jowls had barely scraped the bottom of the fifth course when, out of the corner of one eye, he caught the printed words "The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher".

Lord Bell's indignation would later have to be scraped off two walls, three waiters and part of the ceiling. As it turned out, the story was a fiction, and made up as well; which only served to worsen the sordid, murderous evil of the deed. In Lord Bell's code of ethics, the only things that should be made up were facts.

He called for his phone. He had done a good bit of business on it this very day, arranging teaching contracts for his old client Harris: "Girls' schools, old boy. Just so you can feel your way around before getting properly back into things. Mostly Muslim girls; they're used to it from an early age, I'm told, so they won't complain so much." But Harris wasn't quite the man for this sort of job.

The phone arrived, in its own small gold-plated trough lined with archive pages from the News of the World. Blinking back a tear for the forces of Press freedom, Lord Bell seized the phone and dialled his clients at Cuadrilla. "Some ghastly woman called Mantelpiece has written a screed about Lady Thatcher. I want her fracked thoroughly."
"Is there oil in her?"
"How the bloody hell should I know?" The jowls of Lord Bell quivered like maniacal sea-cucumbers as the righteous wrath came foaming up his oesophagus.
"Well, we can't very well frack a mantelpiece unless there's something in it for us, can we? Market forces, Timbo. Probably doesn't even live in the north of England, does she?"

Lord Bell, who didn't seriously believe that anyone lived in the north of England, broke off the call and vowed on the sacred Name of the Iron Lady never to take another commission from Cuadrilla, except at the right price.

He thought of phoning some old chums of his late client General Pinochet. They owed him a favour and might have thrown in a few pliers-and-blowtorch flourishes for sentiment's sake; but they were a doddery lot by now and might not have the balls for it. There was Tony, of course; but he was busy crusading in the Middle East.

The Middle East! Inspiration struck Lord Bell like a blow to three of his more sensitive chins. He phoned that nice Mrs Assad, who had been so grateful to Lord Bell for saving her reputation and who, above and beyond the agreed remuneration, had sent him a crate of nerve gas for his own personal use. She was only too happy to give Lord Bell the number of some obliging young men with very strict morals and lots of special expertise.

"We will smite her ruthlessly," said one of the obliging young men when Lord Bell explained the dereliction, taking care to use terms the chap would understand, and to omit any complicated references to modern fiction, the Guardian or Lady Thatcher. He phoned some chums in Riyadh and told them to give the obliging young men anything they might need in the way of fire-power, then he put the phone away and bellowed for the liqueur and after-dinner mint trough.

Two months later the explosion struck London. It broke windows in Scotland and France, causing extensive aftershocks of stereophonic sniggers; and it caused Lord Bell, who was larynx-deep in the foie gras bucket at the time, to inhale rather sharply. His choking was a lot easier than his indignation to clean up after; and when they finally hosed him down they found his face patriotically mottled in red, white and blue. The lining at the bottom of the bucket was the latest issue of the Guardian; it contained a short item about Hilary Mantel's lecture tour in Canada, which had begun with great success the previous day.

Although certain characters in this work are acknowledged to be real people, the story itself is a made-up work of fiction whose composition was motivated largely by malice.

Sharing the Burden

Mere scientists have published a report stating that countries which do most to cause climate change should also contribute the most towards mitigating it. The calculations are based on a "fair system of shared responsibility", which is accepted at the United Nations and hence largely irrelevant, except when being sniggered over by the greenest government ever. Under such a system, most poor countries would be net receivers and the newly-forged United Kingdom would need to start cutting its emissions and might even have to forego the dream of growing bananas in Cornwall. Obviously, this is far too high a price to pay for the convenience of a few foreigners, some of whom actually have the gall to produce goods instead of running tax havens like civilised people.

Waking Westminster

From: coord@electmiliballs.com
Date: Fri 19 Sep 2014 8:00pm Europe/London
To: labuk@colleaguesnotcomrades.com
Subject: Caledonistan referendum bumsqueak

Dear Colleagues

The referendum has been a wake-up call because of the extent to which voters have unexpectedly become involved in politics. The foundational appetite of the electorate was for change. The overwhelming emotion is one of politician-oriented negativity and situational rejectionism due in part to perceived excessive homogenisation paradigms. The Caledonistan separatists succeeded in part due to voter communicativity exchanges at basement level which we have commenced forthwith. This will be ongoing subject to human resource feasibility factors. Movement Not Machine must be our slogan and our infotain-distributivity must be set to Plebbo Max. We won because only 45% of the country wanted to leave when it saw all the talent we had. We must balance changing the electorate with reassurance to business. We must embrace the harmonisation of diversification to synthesise a new and beautiful orchestrational solution. We must offer faster, safer and better change without compromising the stability provided by the free market. Consideration of contemporaneous psephological phenomena indicates minor positive potential for ostensible human beings utilising demotic idioms.

Onward to thirty per cent,

Douglas Alexander MP

The content of this electronic statesmanship eructation is copyright © LabourUK plc and possesses full legal immunity from prosecution under fair trade legislation or clean air laws. Observing spooks must refrain from any action over race-baiting, poor-bashing, workplace bullying, crimes against peace and selected sexual offences, on pain of pension loss and, for senior personnel, forfeit of seat in the House of Lords. Please refrain from printing unless absolutely necessary for the short-term convenience of your office.

Safer in Chains

Fury at Salmond horror

Markets were calm amid an epic of underwear-changing at Westminster as the proud English nation of Scotland voted to stay in the United Kingdom.

Rebel leader Alex Salmond conceded defeat, but it is understood that he has not as yet come crawling to London confessing himself a traitor and begging for the highest possible penalty. This continued recalcitrance can only damage his case in a free, unbiased and responsible media.

Britain's Head Boy has more or less promised to do what he can to consider delivering on the "vows" which were drawn up on the back of an envelope two weeks ago.

If any meaningful reforms have been allowed to creep into the package, the Government will most likely rely on the Lords and the UKIP fringe of the Conservative Party to vote them down.

Britain's Head Boy promised a "chaotic, top-down programme of revolutionary rah-rah", which will commence as soon as the present arrangement has given his party the overall majority to which it considers itself entitled by the grace of Murdoch, Thatcher and God.

A healthy and vigorous debate has already started, at almost all levels of the top of the Westminster hierarchy, about what specific power-grabs, gerrymanders and boondoggles can be perpetrated under the rubric of constitutional reform.

The Labour leader, Ed Milibeing, is thought to prefer a slightly different system of British Neoliberal Party hegemony to the Conservatives, while Nick Clegg's Deputy Conservatives agree with both, with which they disagree.

British Hugs for British Mugs

Among the many unfortunate consequences of a Scottish No vote may be the temporary re-emergence of the most abject presence in British politics prior to 2010-vintage Nick Clegg. Stirred from his post-defeat sulk by the squeals of desperation from Downing Street, Gordon Brown has been re-inflating his megalomania by drafting a new British constitution. He has drawn up a rather high-flying pie which entrenches this, codifies that, and transcends the fundamental dichotomies of the other; and we are left with a profound and vivid insight into the fantasy world of a betrayed and rejected Reverend Tony acolyte, and not much else. Both Britain's Head Boy and his little orange fag have "embraced" Brown's blather, much as Daveybloke once embraced a husky in the name of Owen Paterson and Frackers United; which should give some indication of how enduring and effective Brown's resurrection is likely to be.

Resurrecting the Union

One of Vladimir Putin's more prominent flankers has been touring a factory, and has received a Sukhoi Su-35 as a souvenir. Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church have been cuddling up to one another, apparently because they both agree that the former Soviet republics have no business going away and having Orthodox Churches of their own. "Russia is not only a country," sermonised Patriarch Kirill; "it is a whole civilisation, it is a thousand-year story, a cultural melting-pot, of enormous power." Evidently Patriarch Kirill is dangerously close to delusions of Britishness.

But What About the Husky Hug?

Well, here's a thing: certain uncharitable and backsliding persons have criticised the greenest government ever for failing to take effective action in ten different areas of environment policy. Because of the respect accorded to the relevant ministers' ability to process information, the Environmental Audit Committee has adopted a traffic-light colour coding, with green for satisfactory progress, amber for standing still and red for going backwards. Surprisingly enough, out of the ten ratings the greenest government ever received only seven amber and only three red; more surprisingly still, one of the latter was for flood prevention, even after Britain's Head Boy toddled up and down Surrey babbling that money was no object. Attempting to dredge virtue from necessity, a spokesbeing blathered that the coalition had spent more on floods than the previous administration, without troubling to state how many workers the previous administration sacked from the Environment Agency, or how many climate change deniers it appointed to head the Department of the Environment in order that money might not be an object.

God Preserve Our Sovereign Spooks

Those glorious bastions of British democracy, GCHQ and police spies, could soon be severely hampered in their work thanks to interference by the Euro-wogs. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has gone to Strasbourg, which is what Brussels calls itself when adjudicating on legal matters, in order to try and overturn the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was passed during the Reverend Blair's first legislative orgasm in 2000. The act allows government-appointed snoopers to identify journalists' sources by sneaking a look at their phone records. Naturally, those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear; but it is thought that some banana-straightening bureaucrat among the Euro-wogs, probably working in cahoots with the Ayatollah Leveson, may have slipped some sort of meddlesome technicality into European law.

That Child-Shaped Hole in the Universe

Assuming we are to have a national health service, which is to say assuming the taxpayer is to bestow medical aid upon the financially negligible, there must obviously be limits as to what treatments can be obtained. Alcoholism, as we know because the tabloid moralists have told us, is a lifestyle choice; as are obesity, transsexualism and such wages of idleness as depression, malnutrition and rickets. There has been, at various times, some controversy over whether these complaints and their consequences are worthy of treatment on the NHS. In the case of breeders, of course, there is no such argument. The production of yet more worker-consumers is always and forever an inherently meritorious enterprise; because if there's one thing the Anthropogene Extinction Event can do with, it's more human beings.

Why Not Spend it on Us?

Britain's scumbag press is set for an indignation meltdown as out-of-touch MPs voted through a Deputy Conservative bill to throw a whopping £11,000 million at foreigners every year. The bill commits the Government to spending a massive seven-tenths of one per cent of Britain's national income on poor people, even though Britain's economy is in dire shape thanks to thirteen years of Labour waste, even though Britain's economy is all that is keeping Scotland viable. The bill was opposed only by seven big-hearted Real Conservatives, and is likely to be denounced by UKIP, the Daily Mail, and anyone else who can calculate the value of £11,000 million in tax cuts, executive bonuses, privatisation payouts, military hardware, water cannon and riot gear.

Blathering for Britain

It isn't all about the fiend Salmond, you know. The Caudillo of the Farage Falange, who never saw a bandwagon he wouldn't try to steer, has leapt aboard the Scottish independence debate with his usual hob-nailed, gibbering charm. In defence of traditional British values, such as the political neutrality of the monarch, the Caudillo recommended that the monarch should abolish her political neutrality and tell the uppity Scots where not to get off. Still, the Caudillo did not neglect to push his Falange's favourite button, namely "but what about me?" The sudden and doubtless temporary enthusiasm of the British Neoliberal Party's two and a bit main branches for Devo Something-or-other has fired the Caudillo's ever-glowing indignation, and it appears that the Farage Falange will now be campaigning for a federal England in addition to a politically committed monarch. The Caudillo also wished "to make an argument that nobody else has made in this campaign, that this referendum is not about independence." As so often with the Caudillo's pronunciamenti, the reason why nobody else has made the argument will be apparent to almost everybody outside the country's various institutions for the mentally incapacitated, such as the Farage Falange.

Too Comfortable to Go On Living

The Government's ombudsman for human warehousing and profitable probation has described a sixty-four per cent rise in prison suicides as "troubling". Levels of mental illness are increasing; prison staff are consistently failing to identify those at risk, and monitoring and review systems are presumably more conducive to punishment with a free-market face than to anything so liberal-lefty as prevention and cure. The relevant minister, Chris Graybeing, has said that he takes the issue seriously, after his usual Zen fashion: "We saw a rise in numbers earlier in the year; we saw a fall in numbers across the summer," he intoned. "We may see a rise or a fall in the future." This is certainly helpful. Still, Graybeing undoubtedly takes the matter seriously, doubtless because he believes that the unauthorised self-destruct of a penitential unit shows an unacceptable level of unearned privilege.

That Which is Altogether Just Shalt Thou Follow

The Righteous State's chief military prosecutor has decided to investigate a handful of isolated incidents which occurred during its recent rampage in Gaza. Apparently there have been hints in certain quarters that not all the violence was the fault of Palestinians; and the Righteous State does not wish to co-operate with a UNHCR investigation which will involve personnel from the United Nations, perpetrator of Security Council Resolution 242 and other anti-semitic tracts. It is to be hoped and expected that the disinterested probity of the Righteous State's chief military prosecutor will rival, if not surpass, the self-probings of our own Metropolitain Firearms and Headbangers' Club; but civilian judges are standing by, in the interests of yet further righteousness, just in case anything inconvenient needs to be overturned.

Gumption, Pluck and Phlegm

Great Britain began in sixteen-oh-three
With a learnéd and shrewd sort of king,
Who had the good sense not to play it too free
With his God-in-the-monarchy thing.

Great Britain went on through years and decades
Of greatness and Britishness, too;
By conquest and massacre, rapine and raids,
And all that is jolly and true.

Great Britain has long since passed its high noon,
And may shortly wind down to a stop
With a technocrat geek, a mendacious poltroon,
And an ignorant, panicking fop.

Caminicker Bandycleg

In Touch

I am in receipt of a flyer, apparently authored by George Osborne under the pseudonym of Mike Freer, Member of the Expenses-Claiming Community for Finchley and Golders Green. As one might expect, the Chancellor's achievements have been limited only by the amount of self-congratulation which can be fitted onto a mere sheet of A4 paper.

The budget deficit, for one, is "down by a third since the election." Presumably this is the same deficit which the Chancellor promised to eliminate entirely within a single parliament; which presumably means that, on his own terms, he has failed.

Oh well, never mind. "Growth forecasts have been revised upwards ... and Britain is set to grow faster than the USA, France or Germany", thanks to the Bullingdon Bubble in the housing market. Given the Chancellor's performance in other areas, it would have been considerate of him to let us know how soon after May 2015 the bubble is scheduled to burst.

"People who have worked hard and saved all their lives will no longer be forced to take out an annuity", while those who work hard but don't make enough to save will keep working hard until they drop, or else be driven to despair by Iain Duncan Smith's idleness police. That's only fair, after all.

But that's not all! "There was good news for the many people that contacted me regarding beer duty. Another penny off the pint! Cheers!" And let's not have any more back-talk about the Tories patronising the proles!

There is good news for motorists (I don't drive, unlike many members and supporters of the greenest government ever), good news for airline passengers (ditto), and help with energy bills that may save families £1.25 a month which they can put by for the next time the energy cartel decides its executives could do with something extra to keep their own families off the streets.

There is also a rather bizarre little squib about a "new ultra-secure £1 coin", which will be the most resilient ever and will have twelve sides. Obviously this is frightfully jolly.

Mike Freer does display a bit of concern about the rumours of a Labour and/or Deputy Conservative mansion tax, which would be "simply unfair, as many people in Finchley and Golders Green would have to leave their homes as a result" - real people, mind you, not the scroungers and shirkers affected by the Spare Bedroom Subsidy Withdrawal.

Since 2010, Finchley and Golders Green has acquired a food bank; but Mike Freer's pride in that particular Conservative achievement evidently goes without saying.

How Could They Refuse?

Calamity! Tragedy! Farce!
However did this come to pass?
Although I do try,
I cannot deny
I feel a chill wind up my arse!

The fiend Salmond's vile agitation
Means Scotland's forgotten its station!
There is one course only:
I'll emulate Tony
And hold a nice Big Conversation!

It's looking distinctively tickly;
My dewlaps are sagging quite sickly.
Let's draw up a plan!
Go, Nicky my man,
And pass me an envelope, quickly!

Albion Britpish

Why She Did It

Wendy Davis came to wide public notice in June last year, when she talked out a bill which would have placed severe restrictions on abortion rights. Now, as Democratic candidate for governor of the Christian state of Texas, she has provided some explanation for this aberrant behaviour, revealing that she herself took advantage of the state's liberal laws on baby-killing on two occasions. One of the pregnancies was ectopic, which means that God has somehow managed to allow the precious cargo to metastasise outside the womb, presumably so that He can claim the innocent's soul all the sooner, and possibly the mother's as well. The other foetus had been divinely gifted with a brain defect that would have made the child blind, deaf and in a permanently vegetative state, which would hardly make for a viable worker-consumer anywhere, except possibly the House of Lords. At the time of her first abortion, Davis had not yet entered politics and was already a mother of two, though it is unclear how far this will redeem her in the eyes of those Texans whose invisible friend has such famously strong views on the matter.

Britain Stands Alone

As one does when the home front is looking a little creaky, Britain's Head Boy has been having a bit of a posture on the international stage. Daveybloke is very annoyed that certain countries are not living up to their obligations in the fight against Islamic terrorism. Daveybloke believes that Islamic terrorism is a serious matter, quite unlike public health, climate change or anything else he may have fibbed about. Daveybloke believes that Islamic terrorism is a jolly nasty business, and he might even consider it the new Hitler had he not already awarded those laurels to Vladimir Putin. Daveybloke also believes that certain foreign states are paying ransoms to terrorist kidnappers in order to get their citizens back. Of course, Daveybloke has never really believed in governments spending money to help mere aid workers who should be busy knitting; but money paid to terrorists "goes into arms, it goes into weapons, it goes into terror plots, it goes into more kidnaps," all of which Daveybloke believes could so easily be averted with a bit of wog-bombing and a friendlier weapons market for the more congenial Arab dictatorships.

Keeping Things Civilised

In the time-honoured fashion of law enforcement around the world, the Christian state of Oklahoma has investigated its bungled execution of Clayon Lockett in April, and has concluded that, although lessons must be learned, nobody was to blame. The main problem seems to have been with a sheet which was requested by the prison warden in order to protect Lockett's modesty while he was being killed, and to safeguard those observing the death against the sight of anything so distressing as a set of genitalia. The sheet hindered the execution squad from realising that the wheels of justice had ground to a halt, and Lockett eventually died of a heart attack more than a hundred minutes after the auto da fé began. Having made its investigation, the Christian state of Oklahoma recommends, in order to keep things constitutional, that only about an hour should elapse before the department of corrections calls the prison governor to "potentially request" that the correction be consummated on another occasion.

Brute Courage

When home-bred proles kill foreign proles,
Some ribbons brighten up the holes,
And whip and bridle play their parts
In steering forth their fighting hearts;
So, horsey, why not make of you
A medalled beast of burden, too?

Hardy Waugh-Hoare

Toxic Waste

A container of radioactive material has fallen off the back of a lorry in Kazakhstan. Exposure to the material in question can result in various unpleasant symptoms including severe burns and death. Locals have been warned not to open the container if they find it; and the present whereabouts of Tony Blair, dispenser of moral advice to the President of Kazakhstan, are doubtless being urgently investigated.

Not Quite So Ill-Judged as to Imperil Western Civilisation

A suit full of stale air has resorted to strong language in criticising the Righteous State's latest appropriation of Lebensraum. Almost a thousand acres of land have been taken over as a "display of Zionism", defined by the Righteous State's economics minister as continued collective punishment for the kidnap and murder of three students who have already been rather extensively avenged in Gaza. The suit full of stale air, which serves Britain's Head Boy in lieu of a foreign secretary, said that the theft was "particularly ill-judged". Regrettably, the suit remained rather taciturn about what specific sanctions and penalties will be imposed in order to improve the Righteous State's judgement as far as the standards required from such unauthorised displayers of Zionism as Vladimir Putin.