The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Monday, November 30, 2015

Corruption is What Other Countries Do

The empty suit at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has accepted a complete and absolute non-bribe from a Saudi sheikh, in the form of a watch worth £1950. Given their expected degree of charm and charisma, ministers are permitted to accept complete and absolute non-bribes to the value of up to £140, but are generally expected to supplement their meagre salaries and ludicrous expense accounts by the sale of public assets in return for post-parliamentary directorships. A lesser empty suit might have accepted the sheikh's gift because it did not wish to offend the Saudi ruling class, who are doing such a sterling job spreading democracy with British weapons and whose pious decapitations are so very different from those of Islamic State; but the empty suit at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns is cut from subtler cloth. It was able to accept the sheikh's gift for the very simple reason that the empty suit was a completely different empty suit at the time.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Still A Bit Foreign

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased twice in the last three years. Somehow or other, the destruction has continued in spite of the government's deregulation measures and removal of red tape by President Dilma Rousseff, who apparently wishes to emulate our own Head Boy in leading her country's greenest government ever. The Brazilian environment minister showed her lack of Britishness by admitting the increase rather than claiming that it was all part of her long-term clean energy plan; hence, it remains unclear whether the Brazilian economy is yet sufficiently advanced to incorporate such monuments to sustainability as shale-fracking and Chinese uranium.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Bullies Beaten

Some obliging friends of Goldman Sachs have been persuaded to drop one of their harsher measures against a certain sort of wealth creator. In an unprecedented fit of concern over the tax affairs of the wealthy, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs wrote a letter to a tax-dodger asking him to promise not to do it again. The pledge would have had no legal status, and was merely intended to make tax-dodgers "think again" - much as the welfare cap is intended to make scroungers think again, except that an implied slur upon the tax-dodger's honour is substituted for the far less stressful threat of starvation and homelessness. Nevertheless, HMRC has now been persuaded that this particular method was far too rigorous and inhumane to be applied to the delicate sensibilities of wealth creators; so it appears that our cherished and civilised values are just about safe for now.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Taking Legitimate and Lawful Aim

The brilliance of the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith is, as we know, exceeded only by his compassion; which doubtless explains why a high court judge has ruled against him for kicking unpaid carers. The brilliant Duncan Smith has applied a cap on the social security payments people can receive, on the pretext of sending a message to shirkers and scroungers that they ought to try a bit harder for that next zero-hours contract instead of hanging around the food bank all day. Being the brilliant Duncan Smith, he included in the category of work-shy those who spend dozens of hours a week looking after seriously disabled relatives, rather than hiring a private nurse or kicking them out on the street as the brilliant Duncan Smith himself would do. Such useful idiots save the Government about £119,000 million a year, and it was argued that "were carers forced to give up their role, taxpayer-funded services would have to spend huge amounts providing the care instead" - a point that looks increasingly outdated, thanks to the Bullingdon Club's long-term cripple-kicking programme. In response to the ruling, the brilliant Duncan Smith extruded a spokesbeing which proclaimed that the high court agreed with just about everything the Department for Workfare and Privation does; that no carers were affected by the cap except for a few who didn't matter very much; and that the brilliant Duncan Smith is considering his response, the brilliance of which will doubtless, as always, be exceeded only by the compassion.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Tax Bodgers

In another outstanding money-saving manoeuvre, which history may well rank alongside rail privatisation and Universal Credit for sheer Stupid Party brilliance, the Government has managed to save as much as ten million pounds a year by dispensing with car tax discs and all the nasty, nanny-state red tape that they entail. Of course, driving without vehicle excise duty has doubled and then some, and a few thousand non-offenders have had their cars clamped, and efficiency savings may have resulted in a few thousand more inadvertent offences because people haven't received their reminders to renew; but at least the absence of a visual indication means that the plebs in the police are having to work for a living these days. It is also possible that the Government has lost eight times more in revenue than it claims to have saved; but the abolition took place in October 2014, which means, of course, that the consequences are entirely the fault of the previous administration.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Let Sleeping Wogs Lie

Britain is under no obligation to investigate a possible mass murder by its colonial troops because it was all a long time ago, the Supreme Court has ruled. Members of the Scots Guards shot twenty-four unarmed men to death in 1948, during the twelve-year war on terror known in Whitehall as the Malayan Emergency; and, British values being what they are, no government since has bothered with even the token measures to find a scapegoat which would be de rigueur today. An investigation by the Metropolitan Police found evidence which, according to the president of the Supreme Court, "appears to have been compelling and suggests that the killings were unlawful"; that investigation was terminated in 1970, doubtless for the most honourable and democratic of reasons. The Supreme Court has ruled that the duty to investigate dates back only to 1966, when the Euro-wogs introduced another bit of sovereignty-scuppering red tape. Of course it doesn't matter about the Malayans, whose Emergency has vanished, just as effectively as the Kikuyu rebellion in Kenya, from Britain's noble history of stout chaps doing jolly things; but various parties have taken an interest in the case because of the possible consequences for inquiries into Northern Ireland, some of whose inhabitants are very nearly proper white people.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

A Light Fairly Close to the End of the Chunnel

Fury at blaze horror

Eighteen jobs have been saved in a fire at a wog disposal centre in Algeria.

Thanksgiving among the international community is likely to be brief, owing to the apparent lack of photogenic infantine resources among the warmth-related detrimentations.

The blaze arose from a short circuit which triggered the explosion of a heater. Native authorities have declined to comment on the availability of heaters in sub-Saharan Africa while hard-working British families are at risk of fuel poverty.

Algeria has become a favoured destinaton for North African benefit tourists since Libya's failure to take proper advantage of its 2011 liberation by David Cameron and a few of his chums.

A projected wog-bombing in Syria, which may turn out to be almost equally well-planned, is expected to have better results because somebody ought to do something.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Defending Our Values

Well, here's a thing: Britain's chums in Bahrain are torturing people despite Britain being frightfully concerned about it. So concerned is the empty suit at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns that it has refused to meet with opponents of the régime, so as to avoid compromising Britain's efforts to promote democracy. The country of Cressida Dick and Mad Tessie May is throwing money at Bahrain for "security service reform", so Bahrain's security services are, by definition, being reformed. Detainees have complained of "being subjected to electric shocks; suspension in painful positions, including by their wrists; forced standing; extreme cold and sexual abuse"; but such is the closeness of Britain's co-operation with Bahrain that it is not even clear whether MI6 officers were present, as with the CIA, to make sure things didn't get out of hand.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

The Still, Small Voice of CofE plc

Three leading cinema chains are refusing to show a commercial for a Church of England website, JustPray UK, on the catch-all grounds that somebody might take offence. Since the only spoken words in the advert are those of the Lord's Prayer - grovel grovel; gimme gimme; grovel grovel - it is difficult to see what problems a god-botherer of any persuasion might have with it; while to the godless, of course, the entire sacrament and its "Prayer is for everyone" punchline constitute merely one more minute of corporate dross to be sat through before the main two hours of corporate dross. The feature in this case would have been the new Star Wars, "a multi-generational cultural event" according to the Church of England's director of communications, who also seems to think that mouthing words in "pop songs ... daily assemblies and national commemorations" bears some sort of resemblance to a spiritual exercise.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Churchill's Heirs

Ever since the Bullingdons and their Liberal Democrat appeasers went to war on public spending in 2010, the efficiency savings have been coming back to bite people on the behind. Sometimes the savings are in accordance with the prevailing religious doctrine and the victims unimportant, as with the cuts to nursing staff. Sometimes, however, the savings will result in one of those ineffable paradoxes which are so characteristic of the market's mysterious ways, as when refusing to spend money on a thing leads to a lack of that very same thing. Such is the odd situation with Britain's reconnaissance aircraft, which were scrapped in 2010 by the people who are now squealing about the danger to national security posed by left-wing pacifists. Still, the ability to learn from one's mistakes is a mark of true statesmanship, and the repair of this particular error has taken a mere five years and the generous co-operation of the Russian air force. At this rate, it is just about conceivable that in a decade or two Whitehall may begin to suspect that when it comes to buying aircraft carriers it's usually best to take into account your own plans for buying aircraft; and not too many years after mid-century the penny might even drop that nuclear weapons don't make much of a deterrent for suicide bombers.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Not Enough Coppers to Rub Together

Left-wing militant deficit deniers have infiltrated Britain's police forces to such an extent that senior officers are writing scaremongering letters to Mad Tessie May about the possibiities of a terrorist attack. Forty thousand police workers have already been efficiency-saved, but such is the laziness and inertia of the crime-fighting blob that the prospect of further re-organisation is causing panic in the upper ranks. Even the introduction of common-sense measures like the power to snoop on everyone's internet use and the fine for pleading not guilty has not freed the police chiefs from the rigidity of their thinking, which dictates that in order for things to get done, people have to be paid to do them. And we've got Trident and the prospect of more wog-bombing, too. What on earth are they worried about?

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Tessie's Big Clearout

Britain has ordered Nigeria, as a former colony and therefore a significant cultural debtor to British values, to take back an estimated twenty-nine thousand unauthorised wogs who are living in Britain and interfering with Conservative plans to take back the UKIP vote. The minions of Mad Tessie May gave the Nigerian vice-president his instructions last month, after the Home Office signalled its intentions by booting out dozens of Nigerian care workers, since heaven knows there's no shortage of those. Nevertheless, the Nigerian government seems to be dragging its feet, and even seems to think that Mad Tessie May and her minions have the slightest interest in how long each particular unauthorised wog may have spent here. No doubt this lazy, sit-in-the-sun attitude is what has led so many unauthorised wogs to believe they can get away with working and paying taxes in Britain without heeding the examples of Lord Ashcroft and Rupert Murdoch, and making genuine contributions to our way of life.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Securing the Future for Somebody or Other

The Bullingdons' hapless token filly at the Department for Energising Climate Change has a delicate balancing act to perform between energy security, affordability and climate change; and when a token filly learns delicacy from the Bullingdons, of course, she learns it from the best. Under orders from the Chancellor, Amber Rudd has announced that she will protect our energy security by handing it to Gazprom and the Heathen Chinee; that affordability will be assured subject to the requirements of the fracking companies; and that keeping the planet habitable will just have to wait until rich people start getting their feet wet. The Government has no particular problem with phasing out coal-burning power stations, because most Conservatives are still vaguely aware that coal has something to do with miners and Arthur Scargill; but the need to do more with less has naturally led Rudd to abandon such unreliable and non-sustainable energy sources as wind, water and solar, and to concentrate on those that provide a decent post-parliamentary career for ex-ministers whose qualifications consist mainly in being as honest as Nick Clegg and as intelligent as Owen Paterson. Still, credit where it's due: she has found a way to recycle Ed Davey, her department's former Deputy Conservative doormat, by blaming him for the muesli-chugging profligacy of the previous Conservative government.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Cyber Phish

From: greasygids@bullingdons.org.uk
Date: 17 November 2015 15:30 Luncheon Extended Time
To: terrorists@isil.com; terrorists@isis.com
cc: piggypump@bullingdons.org.uk
Subject: gotcha!!!!1!!!

Daer Isil or ISiS Terrorrits

i am George i am hradworking UK Chancerlor of UK Exchequer adn honororory Wogbomber by Appontiment to dave who is Teh New Winsnot CHurchill who defeattd Adolf Hlitler's Russia in WWWII whit teh hlep of a few Americans rah rah i am George Obsborne i Do nottttttake illlllllegal Durgs Durgs Dugs Drugs i dno t take Durgs.

I am Warming youy notto to cyber atttack our graet conununtry wiht yuor fiendish Cyber atttack. we are ale arble barble able to hit back butt but i wlil nott ttel yuo HOW because i amm Sutble that way. We reverse the Rigghht to repspondd to Cybnerattttack in ANY WyaaY wya way taht we chose HA HA HA i am Gorge obs borne i dnont teak durg

drug we knwow all about Infromatopm technonology in brittain we have Iaain Duncansmith and Un1vers@l Cr£d!t on oour side

rah rah

all best to Knig Salmon

goregrobsbsbsborn

Monday, November 16, 2015

Giving Something Back

Every healthcare professional worthy of the name will rejoice that the Twizzler Lansley gravy train shows no sign of jumping the rails. The Twizzler has taken on three more private sector posts, in addition to those he already holds; which just shows the purity of the ministerial work ethic as compared to those five-day-a-week junior doctors. One of Lansley's little jobs will be giving advice on "pharmaceutical supply and pricing issues in Europe" to the cancer profiteers Roche; another of Lansley's little jobs will be giving advice to the chair and executive director of UKActive, an organisation which works with anyone who has a role to play in getting "more people, more active, more often", such as Coca-Cola. It is certainly true that Coca-Cola has about as much genuine interest in public health as Twizzler Lansley. All of Lansley's new employers have very sensibly determined to make the best possible use of the Twizzler's record in government and his personal charm, and have thus forbidden him to lobby on their behalf.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Just What We Need

Public spending, as we know, is a Very Bad Thing, unless it happens to be spent bailing out the private sector; much as living beyond one's means is a Very Bad Thing unless one can scrounge a few million from the widows and orphans. Hence, the capital's latest blanched pachyderm looks all set to be inflicted on river-dwelling proles despite a £30 million hole in the budget. Thanks to the taxpayers' money already thrown at the project, the eventual result will be counted as private land, and will be a surveillance-rich, kite-free zone where gatherings "of any kind", musical instruments and exercises other than jogging will be instantly swooped upon by "visitor hosts", presumably clad in full, democratically-accountable Kevlar. The London Haystack, whose cable-car toy and freeze-and-boil buses have provided such merriment in the past, is in no doubt the private sector will come up with the goods; so that obviously settles that.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Resolution

Alas, the sorrow and the pity,
To see a major Western city
Attacked and terrorised, and gone
Like something from the Lebanon.
Precautions must be reassessed,
The sins of Muslims re-confessed;
We'll have to snoop on even more
Than we have ever snooped before;
Our nuclear submarines must be
All re-engorged and kept at sea,
Deterring any threats that pose -
If only France had some of those!
And naturally, and not least,
We'd better help the Middle East
By bombing peace into this war,
Because it's worked so well before
In pacifying nice young men -
And then it all can start again.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Special Relationship

The empty suit at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has assured the Irish government that new restrictions on foreigners' access to social security will not apply to Irish nationals. Since Ireland used to be part of the British Empire, its natives don't really count as Euro-wogs and therefore allowances can be made, up to and including their designation as honorary nearly-Britons. Besides, once the land has been purified of all the other marauding swarms, our market will require a few navvies to shoulder the burden of blame for stealing jobs and homes from readers of the scumbag press.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

The Unholy Statuette

Make no excuses, for we will not hear:
A dreadul wordsmith, writing prose so queer,
Subordinating clauses till we're vexed
Whose style is suited more to smartphone text;
And influencing, to some small degree,
The weirdnesses of a mere century.
For plain morality and plainer style,
Your Stephen Kings outclunk him by a mile.

Our world of fantasy can ill afford
To have him glower from its high award.
A racist, he wrote nasty things and so
From all our shelves his eidolon must go;
Along with your whole Founding Father crew,
Who - whisper it - possessed a slave or two.

Samuel Grimsnipe

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

When Something or Other Happens and Somebody Ought to Do Something About It

War can be a very nasty thing, especially when the beastly Russians have a veto over whether Britain can wage it, the shadow Minister for Being the Son of Another Minister has argued. In a particularly tactful intervention to commemorate Armistice Day, Hilary Benn expressed his opinion that the refusal or inability of the UN to engage in wog-bombing should not prevent the well-intentioned from learning the lessons of previous conflicts and having a bit of fun on their own initiative. Benn compared the business of not bombing wogs to the business of standing by and allowing domestic violence: "A crime is a crime, and the sovereign state of the kitchen or the bedroom no longer provides any protection against enforcement of the law," he profundified, although he does not seem to have made clear what retribution would be proper for, to take a random example, the spectre of Jack Straw.

It is certainly deplorable that Russia, which attacks other countries in the absence of any direct threat and uses bombs that really hurt, should have a say over the British government's refugee creation programme. While admitting that the UN may have a role to play in allowing British forces to operate under the "peacekeeper" rubric, Benn also praised a French proposal whereby the permanent members of the UN security council would voluntarily abstain from using their veto. Unfortunately, it seems likely that making this work in Britain's interests would require a degree of skill in international diplomacy - a discipline long abandoned by the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns in favour of grovelling to the biggest bully on the block (be that the Americans, the Chinese or the back-bench baboons) and slaughtering large numbers of brown people in the hope of muddling through.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

How Do They Manage It?

Astonishingly enough, despite the Government's efficiency savings (cutting services and sacking people, in Standard English), there are suspicions that Britain's wog disposal system is being slowed down to make the country less welcoming: a method that is also helping to keep the marauding swarms away from our schools and hospitals. The delays in sorting the economic migrants from the terrorists mean that suspects are detained for longer periods: eight months on average; longer if there are complications, as in the forty per cent of cases which Home Office gets wrong. This will surely gladden the hearts of those nice people at Serco and G4S, thereby proving yet again that economic recovery is in the eye of the beholder. There are also rumours that the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration is at loggerheads with the mad old cat lady at the Home Office over who should be paying for the kick-'em-out tribunals; such rumours are clearly nonsense, as both sides in the alleged dispute have refused to say anything, instead pointing at a third party and grunting, "Ask them." Nevertheless, it appears to be a fact that Britain's wog disposal system has somehow managed to become less efficient. What can be the explanation?

Monday, November 09, 2015

A Ruddy Cunning Plan

Further reasons to abandon the Euro-wogs to their primitive foreign ways have emerged in a leaked letter from the token filly at the Department for Fracking to four Cabinet suits. Although the Bullingdon Club have been happily trashing the wind and solar industries, Britain is now likely to miss its EU targets for renewable energy use; which could mean that the Euro-wogs in their insolence will feel entitled to impose yet more fines. The token filly's ideas of a credible plan to deal with this deplorable situation range between paying the Euro-wogs to generate renewable energy while we continue the dash to frack; and capitalising on the goodwill we've built up in Brussels over the past few years and ordering the Euro-wogs to change their targets for our convenience. The Bullingdon Club were not among the suits to whom the token filly circulated her letter, presumably because not even Amber Rudd believes that the Bullingdon Club cares about missing Euro-wog targets, misleading the public or hanging a token filly out to dry.

Sunday, November 08, 2015

A Statesman at the Cenotaph

So let's recall those bodies brave and bold
Whose flesh is gone to glory, it is told,
Because well-bodied gentlemen like me
Ground maggots' meat to keep the country free.
I chuck my wreath of opium, and bow
Before this solemn thingummy, which now
Stands symbol for the lesson of each war:
Never again, until we want some more.

Past battle's sting is soothed by old grey stone
To jolly joystick for the future drone;
So here we are again, not to forget
The coming luncheon, and may Heaven let
These old bones limping by, as is their perk,
Not misconstrue my reverential smirk.

Davey Fitzanthony

Saturday, November 07, 2015

In Like Nigel

The strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange has been having a bit of a blather in Oldham, where a by-election is due early next month. The Caudillo had a bit of a snigger at Corbyn for believing in one world, which according to some exercise books which the Caudillo saw at school means unlimited immigration. This might sound more impressive if there were any Bad Thing in the UKIP vocabulary that didn't mean unlimited immigration. The Caudillo also had a bit of a snigger about Labour's civil war, because nothing is worse in a democratic party than internal debate about that party's aims. Perhaps Corbyn should resolve the matter once and for all by resigning and then reinstating himself, just to clarify things. The Caudillo also had a bit of a snigger about the proles, who tend at all times to vote for party leaders without taking into account the context in which they are voting; by which logic the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange has lost not only Thanet South but every other seat in the Commons except that of his hated rival Douglas Carswell.

Friday, November 06, 2015

Crashing the Money Train

The National Audit Office has once again placed itself under threat of privatisation by concluding that the Government stiffed the taxpayer over the sale of the Eurostar cross-channel train service. In accordance with the Government's long-term economic plan (viz. filch followed by fire-sale), Eurostar was sold off before the election at a loss to the taxpayer of four-fifths of the sum invested. Retaining the national stake would eventually have met the investment costs, but that might have taken ten years and would not have involved forcing the public to pay the private sector's way, in accordance with the commandments of market forces, hard-working families and the sainted Thatcher. The National Audit Office concluded that, although the sale itself was managed effectively, the Government might learn a thing or two by getting independent assessments of national assets before flogging them off, rather than paying consultants with public money and then priming them with other valuations. Fortunately, the Government's immunity to evidence means that ministers believe the National Audit Office has concluded that the whole business went wonderfully, because the process of selling is all that matters.

Thursday, November 05, 2015

Flame Out

Besides being the party of law and order that condones tax-dodging and enforces its will by extra-judicial assassination, the modern Conservative Party is also the party that respects national traditions by destroying them. One would think Bonfire Night - the burning in effigy of a mercenary religious terrorist, with lots of expensive full-colour explosions - might hold a special appeal for today's wog-bombing enthusiasts; but evidently the festival's commercial potential is insufficient to earn it the holiness of Chocolate Egg Week or the Ninety Days of Christmas. Nevertheless, at least one Conservative councillor in Birmingham is squealing because the local authority has failed to keep the event going through privatisation, as befits other British institutions such as libraries, the police and the NHS.

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Look Over There, and Support Your Local Spooks

Despite today being the day for Mad Tessie May to flog her draft über-surveillance bill to Parliament, and despite the concerns voiced by Corbyn about the human rights record of Britain's new terrorist-busting Egyptian chums, Britain's Head Boy has decided to have a squeal about terrorism. By a remarkable coincidence, today is also the day when new information came to light about the recent Russian airliner crash in the Sinai Peninsula, necessitating dynamic passenger rescue measures, a COBRA meeting or so, and a grave pronouncement from the transport secretary that he doesn't categorically know what happened but that now is as good a time to panic as any.

Of course, Britain's Head Boy is not the chap to make cheap political capital out of a disaster, any more than he would try to manufacture a constitutional crisis out of a legitimate parliamentary vote; so presumably the intelligence services have pulled off yet another brilliant informational coup without needing to see the internet records of the entire population. One wonders how they manage it. Anyway, should it turn out that by another remarkable coincidence the British government is giving out correct information on this matter, presumably Britain's Head Boy will be inviting Vladimir Putin to stay the course in Syria, and not to negotiate with the murderers.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Expert Advice

It is of course axiomatic to mainstream, centrist, sensible politics that most people don't know what is good for them. No modern minister would ever listen to teachers on education, medical professionals on health, or lawyers on legal aid, because vested interests, professional myopia and sheer brute blobbery will always cloud their thinking, so that their answers will usually imply that more money ought to be taken from rich tax-dodgers and spent on education, health and justice instead. You might just as well ask the poor for an objective opinion on what will cure their poverty.

Fortunately for our Britishness, a few professions, such as bankers, politicians and the scumbag press, are immune to this pernicious self-interest and can be relied upon to regulate themselves. Another member of this moral élite is the spying trade, which has recently been robustly defended in the press by Lord Carlile. A few malcontents are raising concerns about the snooper's charter; Lord Carlile has never seen a politician do anything against the public's privacy, and does not seem to believe a politician ever will. Lord Carlile knows this because he is co-owner of a private security firm which offers "strategic advice on UK policy and regulation" and likes to buy the cabinet secretary breakfast now and then. As if that were not enough, Lord Carlile's business partner is a former head of MI6; so Lord Carlile's character as an objective and disinterested commentator should be self-evident, even if we did not have Lord Carlile's own word for it as a spook, a politician and a Liberal Democrat.

Monday, November 02, 2015

Enhanced Ticketability

Well, here's a thing: the Conservatives pledged three years ago to make changes to rail season tickets and lower the costs for part-time workers, but nothing much has been done. Since the promise in question had to do with the financial convenience of the non-chauffeured, few will be surprised that it's beginning to smell a bit Cleggy: the rail companies are dragging their feet, and we might be on track for another constitutional crisis if the Department for Transport should presume to interfere in matters of transport. "We are fully committed to improving the ticketing experience so passengers can benefit from smoother and more seamless journeys," bargled a spokesbot; translated from the machine code, this means that ministers have considerately extended the deadline for doing something or other until after 2017, when presumably it will be clearer whether the Great Daveymander has left enough commuters enfranchised to make the improvement of their ticketing experience worth the bother.

Sunday, November 01, 2015

Holy Fire

Doubtless owing to the recent Annunciation of Chilcot, the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair is once more effulging his way through the headlines. Someone has apparently claimed that in March 2003 his reverence ordered a document burned because it suggested that the then-imminent Iraq adventure might be illegal. His reverence has denied the claim, and indeed the offensive document's author, the hapless Peter Goldsmith, was immediately sent back to his desk to think the issue out again and come up with a more appeasing piece of paper. In this case there seems little reason to doubt the Reverend Blair's version of events: by March 2003 the white phosphorous was almost certainly ready for deployment, and these days the pious rarely burn documents when they can burn people instead.