A Whiff of Chum

The New Year's coming in again:
A festive time, as all can see;
One question, though, torments the brain:
Whatever can that odour be?

It's redolent of flesh and gas:
Corrupt and bloated, foul as well.
A purplish-blue, putrescent mass:
It really is an ugly smell.

The Old Year shambles out in drink,
Twiglets and babble of the pissed -
But what's that nasty, sickly stink?
It's surely not the honours list!

Davey FitzAnthony

Bad News Bear

Further evidence has emerged that Russian wog-bombing is radically different from British and American wog-bombing, in that it tends to kill civilians and children rather than causing collateral damage. The high explosives used by NATO forces, and no doubt by Daveybloke's proxy army of several hundred thousand tame jihadis, are far less impolite. Even when the Americans blow up a hospital the result is at worst a nasty accident, and more often a regrettable if morally awesome penetration of human shields in order that the shrapnel of virtue may assertively access the dark heart of terrorism. But somehow or other, the Russians just don't have the technology.

More Than It Hurts You

So swimmingly is the Osbornomic recovery going, at least in the Cumbrian sense of the adverb, that the march of the makers is expected to continue its glorious retreat. The bottom has fallen out of the fossil fuels market, but the Government is too busy cutting back the green crap to worry about the consequences for North Sea oil. Steel plants are closing because supporting them through hard times would run counter to the prevailing religious orthodoxy. There is no question of a revival in the construction industry until the Government works out how to ensure that house prices can remain sufficiently high to appease the scumbag press. Accordingly, the marching makers are expected to "shrug off this year's recession" or, in Standard English, to deprive thirty thousand people of their livelihood. Britain's leading liberal newspaper considers this a "blow to George Osborne", whose anguish at missing his own targets, breaking his own pledges and denting his shoes on other people's teeth has been palpable for years.

A Rich Repast

Substantial, and a citizen of worth,
Your porphyry of countenance leaves not
A doubt you are; and this plush box you've got!
You will, I'm sure, not mind my lowly berth.
We all are citizens of this black earth,
Some on it and some in it, by their lot:
All flesh joined unto flesh, that jolly rot
Which keeps the tribe in groceries and mirth.

I'm starved for company that's meet to dine;
From now on we'll be close, there is no question
(Permit me, sir, to proffer forth my muzzle) -
Your guts, though much more delicate than mine,
Need fear no pain of gas or indigestion
As I commence, respectfully, to guzzle.

P Upton Richards

Is God a Bullingdon?

A writer for Christian Today has a column in the Independent attempting to dissociate Conservative values from Christian ones, which are held to include compassion for the poor, a welcoming attitude to strangers and peace at any price. The article concentrates on the words of Jesus, which in practice have been assiduously ignored since the days of the Tarsus Inquisitor. They have been ignored for the very good reason that outside the culture of first-century Palestine they appear mostly irrelevant and frequently demented; but an attempt to depict Christianity's various squabbling sects as compassionate, hospitable and peaceful would evidently have been an act of chutzpah too far.

To take the points in order: Jesus was not compassionate towards the poor. He thought poverty a blessed state, and viewed the people afflicted by it as a sort of convenient cess-pit where his followers could dump their evil worldly goods in preparation for the expected arrival of the Yahweh dictatorship. When he saw a poor widow giving away her last coins in the synagogue, Jesus reacted with approval that the poor should make themselves poorer at the behest of the privileged - priests in this case, but the doctrine is quite flexible enough to be modified for the convenience of bankers and other modern paragons. Jesus' final pronouncement on the subject, at the Last Supper, was that the poor would always be wth us and were in any case less important than himself.

Jesus was not nice about foreigners. The parable of the good Samaritan is a calculated insult to Pharisees and Levites, not a paean to the wonders of multiculturalism. It is the equivalent of telling some purple-faced squire in the Farage Falange that his own most cherished values are best embodied in the French. Jesus drew a very clear distinction between the faithful (viz. the minority of Jews who joined his cult) and the heathen, whose alien praying practices were always good for a snigger. When asked for help by a non-Jewish woman, he responded with a bad joke about throwing good food to the dogs, relenting only when she flattered him by implying that when it came to miraculous powers he had plenty and to spare.

Jesus was not a peacemaker; his famous pronouncement in the Beatitudes was pure rhetorical hypocrisy, like the Conservatives claiming to be a workers' party. Off-Mount, Jesus claimed not to bring peace but a sword, and that he had come to set even family members against one another, and on that point I would not venture to gainsay him. Jesus, like his flood-sending Father, did not want peace but obedience. He constantly gloated about the fate of those who would not, or could not, hear his message: a fate which he gladly proclaimed would equal that of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bullingdon Club's continual kicking of likely non-Conservative voters looks rather civilised by comparison.

In short, there seems little for the Saviour to disapprove of in Bullingdon Britain; and of course, in the Regency paradise that is the Conservative Party's spiritual homeland, the Church was even more pampered and petted than it is now. And what is the present deplorable situation in Cumbria, if not the result of taking no thought for the morrow?

Grinding Slow

A mere thirty-odd years after setting up a Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns, the Church of England is starting to make noises about combating institutional racism. Being the strong moral force that it is, the Church reacted to immigrants half a century ago by politely pointing them to churches where they might "feel more comfortable". This has led to healthy growth in Pentecostal congregations, while the Anglicans are suffering an economic decline since Peak Blue-Rinser occurred some decades ago. Less than three per cent of their clergy are from ethnic minorities; which puts them, embarrassingly enough, somewhat behind the Conservative front bench and only slightly ahead of the parliamentary presence of the Farage Falange. Nevertheless, as one vicar pointed out, there are no theological reasons why clergy from minorities should not hold senior positions; it is merely a matter of time until the hierarchy notices that many non-white Britons are neither gay nor female.

We Have Very Nearly Learned the Lessons From the Last Couple of Times This Happened

Despite the Government's efficiency savings to national flood defences, more flood warnings have been issued, although Westminster is unlikely to be submerged. Nevertheless, Britain's Head Boy has done the statesmanlike thing and called another meeting of the COBRA emergency committee, since northern proles being flooded out of their homes yet again does sort of count as the kind of situation which needs to be reviewed and updated. Staff from the Environment Agency are standing by, along with armed forces personnel to stand in for those whom the Government has sacked; and once the waters have receded it is thought that pumps and sandbags, which are cheaper than trees and prettier than wind turbines, may become a permanent adornment to the northern landscape. It is as yet unclear whether the token filly at Environment, who considers the Bullingon Club's subjects among the worst idlers in the world, has permitted her enjoyment of the annual corporate orgasm to be disturbed.

Update Apparently the token filly at Environment chaired the COBRA meeting, and issued a communiqué to the effect that at least a few proles were working appropriate hours to facilitate the war on the effects of the Bullingdon Club's cuts.

Holy Britishness

Britain's Head Boy has delivered his Christmas rah-rah, in which he piously extols the wonders of striking your neighbour's cheek and burbles about the multicultural tolerance of a faith that has conquered, burned and persecuted its way across the world whenever its adherents were not too preoccupied in squabbling among themselves.

Possibly Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the economic Christianity of Maffeo Barberini, who took the papal name Urban VIII and of whom it was said that, like Crown Prince Osborne, he spent three treasuries: his own, his predecessor's and his successor's. In a particularly charming piece of proto-Bullingdon boorishness, Urban plundered bronze from the Roman Pantheon in order to build cannons, leading certain uncharitable persons to compare him unfavourably with the Visigoths: "what the barbarians didn't do, Barberini did."

Then again, perhaps Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the great Christian peace process that was the Fourth Crusade: a military campaign of startling spiritual Britishness that set out to cleanse Jerusalem of unauthorised Muslim migrants and ended up destroying a Christian city in order to appease some bankers.

Or, come to think of it, perhaps Britain's Head Boy was thinking of the essence and kernel of the Christian faith itself, which is that a poor man was made to suffer for the debts of others. Certainly Britain's Head Boy will have been eager to impress upon the great unwashed the value of spiritual things, since those are the only things of value for which his cronies have no use.

Parched, Creeping Dread

Tim Stevens, whose compact and intelligently twisty spy stories are well worth your attention, has posted a very kind review of my book The Wolf That Will Swallow the Sun (PDF ebook version here), which is set during a Fimbulsummer and treats of a strange archaeological find. It seems my personal loathing for hot weather has at last been put to good use, as Lovecraft's allergy to the cold reputedly helped chill the atmosphere of his mountains of madness.

I have read Christopher Priest, but not extensively or very enthusiastically: I found Fugue for a Darkening Island convincing but ugly (if beautifully titled) and A Dream of Wessex unconvincing and ugly, and I'm not familiar with the Dream Archipelago at all. I do like Christopher Nolan's film version of The Prestige, however. I've been to Scarborough, but it was a very long time ago.

Since you didn't ask, several names in the book are derived from Danish words (I thought Old Norse would be taking things a bit far); and my favourite character's appearance and persona are based on the German actress Marianne Sägebrecht, who played the combatants' housekeeper in Danny DeVito's The War of the Roses, and the forensic pathologist Dr Leidzinger in Richard Stanley's Dust Devil.

Men of Goodwill

Britain's Head Boy has been summoned to the servants' entrance of the headmaster's office for a bit of a drinkie-poo and, more importantly, to receive his instructions for the coming year. So proud is Britain's Head Boy to be accorded such an honour that his spokesbeings have refused to say whether he will be attending, which is nearly as discreet as squealing "Look over there!" and pointing at anything but the grubby claw clutching the Daveybloke strings. Doubtless many chuckles will be had over the burial of Leveson, the resurgence of Rebekah and the continuing abjection of the BBC, while Britain's Head Boy makes appropriate obeisance to his Dear Leader's various orifices. It is unknown whether the Head Boy will be broaching any hogsheads for the amusement of the company; but that a plump, pink piggie will be doing a lot of sucking is a reasonably safe assumption.

We All Make Mistakes

Clio is frequently an ironic Muse, and never more so than where the awesome good intentions of governments are concerned. Who can forget the ironies of the Vietnam War, which the United States fought in order to save democracy in South Vietnam, only to bomb and poison the country into ruins? Who has not heaved an ironical sigh, or cracked an ironical smile, at the career of Senator McCarthy, whose notorious inactivity did so much harm to the constitutional freedoms which he cherished? With similar historical insight, a cross-party committee of MPs has concluded that the Government acted too slowly to save the steel industry, despite ministers' expectable über-Thatcherite concern with preserving Britain's manufacturing base and minimising trauma to the working classes.

Trigger Happy

Worried that our policing may be insufficiently total, Britain's Head Boy has ordered a review into whether armed police are sufficiently protected from the perils of acquittal and promotion if they shoot terrorists and "other suspected criminals". Since a suspected criminal is, by definition, legally innocent, and since a number of legal innocents have posthumously turned out to be real innocents (if frequently of the wog variety), Britain's Head Boy has decided to throw the police a few scraps of raw meat to balance out Mad Tessie May's recent chainsaw attacks. At present, officers shooting suspects place themselves at risk of internal inquiries, and sometimes of being asked questions and of being fawned over as stout young chaps doing a marvellous job under difficult circumstances. It does seem frightfully harsh.

Management Escalation

In order to win elections, even moderate right-wing wog-bombers have to make some sort of show at giving a toss about the great unwashed, and Hilary Benn has done his bit by writing to the empty suit at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns about its treatment of the department's cleaners. A complaint about low wages elicited a squealing, self-pitying email from one of those anonymous underlings who always come in so handy when there is blame to be appointed, whining that the Ministry had enough to do without taking responsibility for commoners working at the Ministry, and suggesting that the trouble-makers should be "disciplined where appropriate". Fourteen cleaners were summoned to disciplinary hearings; thanks to media publicity no action was taken at the time, but three were fortuitously made redundant once the fuss died down. Meanwhile the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns proclaimed that disciplinary actions against the help were purely a matter for the contractor firm, as was the minor matter of whether employees should be paid the living wage. It is as yet unclear whether the empty suit will find itself moved by the weight of Hilary Benn's moral authority.

Taking the U Out of Kipper

After all Nigel has done, and all those Parliamentary seats where he's made an almost respectable showing, this is his reward. The strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange has become the new Jeremy Corbyn, as it emerged today that his parliamentary party thinks he should resign, presumably without immediately unresigning himself the way he did last time. The Farage Falange's parliamentary party consists, in its glorious entirety, of the ex-Conservative clown Douglas Carswell, who wants the Falange to become an "optimistic, sunshine, smiley, socially liberal, unapologetically free-market party" much like the one Britain's Head Boy used to burble about before the election of 2010. Undoubtedly this would be some improvement over the rabble of brawling squires, jabbering cretins and whining thugs which constitutes the present image of the Farage Falange and the present reality of the Conservative front bench. Possibly Carswell is also aware of the recent French elections and sees himself as a humanitising liberalator after the fashion of Marine Le Pen, who at least had the sense to blame her own National Front's recent defeat on calumny and defamation rather than postal votes and wogs. It's true that Carswell has ruled himself out of the running as the new Caudillo, but few things are easier to overcome than a politician's modesty.

Kicking the Provincials Into Shape

So proud are the Conservatives of their latest round of council-kicking, library-closing and child-robbing that a minor apparatchik named Greg Clark (a former member of the SDP, by all that's insignificant) has been trundled out to announce it a week before Christmas. Local authorities' funding will be reduced by 6.7% over the next four years, with most of the vandalism and cripple-kicking occurring during the first two; partly no doubt because Greg Clark has a social conscience, but mostly because Crown Prince Osborne will want to distribute a few alms before the next general election. In a triumph of Osbornomic reasoning, Clark babbled that councils' spending power will remain much the same even as it is radically reduced; if any shortfalls should somehow happen to occur, it seems they can always be made up by increasing taxes for people who cannot afford their rent, or by hiking business rates in order to encourage investment. And if anything should go wrong after that, the fault will lie not with the smirking sebacity of the Bullingdon Club, but with those Maoist extremists who attempt to buck the tide of history by repairing potholes in their roads and keeping their Sure Start centres open.

Your Art is History

As we know, the modern world divides quite neatly into what is privately owned, and what can be appropriated, broken up and sold for scrap. The latter honour has been the fate of a number of pieces commissioned, according to the chief executive of Historic England, "against a background of optimism, good intentions, civic values"; which in itself provides a good indication of precisely how expendable such works have become under the blithely boorish régime of the Bullingdon Club. Historic England is launching a campaign to raise awareness of sculptures melted down for scrap and friezes erased by developers; but quite aside from John Bull's famous artistic sensitivity, the national religion is likely to prove a formidable obstacle. Corporate fundamentalism allows no room for such strange socialistic monstrosities as public art; any more than it allows room for public transport, public parks, public libraries or public health.

Ihr Dient

Those unpatriotic and backsliding persons who complained about the Prince of Wales' black spider memoranda will no doubt recognise and repent the error of their ways, now that documents have been released showing that the prince is no mere dilettante. When not attending to the demands of his day job (viz. awaiting the demise of an elderly benefits claimant from a large immigrant family), His Royal Highness apparently spends considerable time and energy doing background research for his melano-arachnoid lobbying. Whitehall considerately abets him in this task by sending him government documents to leaf through and by allowing him to hold personal audiences with ministers. The contents of the documents are, in many cases, too democratic for the plebs to worry about; and the subjects of discussion at the meetings are so innocent that even Mad Tessie May has not attempted to eavesdrop. Indeed, so flawlessly above-board are the entire proceedings that the Government has fought for three years to keep them secret; so our thanks once again to Nick Clegg and the Deputy Conservatives for their commitment to increased transparency. We will certainly know what to say the next time Putin, the Euro-wogs or Johnny Arab need an earful on the requirements of a modern democratic state.

Children of Enterprise

Well, isn't this heart-warming: a couple of fine British specimens have started up some healthy competitiveness over wealth creation. The wealth being augmented is that of Carol Thatcher, who is auctioning off nearly two hundred of her sainted mother's possessions and flogging another couple of hundred online. Items for sale include not only personal bequests to the Thatchlings, but gifts bestowed upon their sainted mother by her many admirers, thugs and sycophants. The enterprising Carol is also selling official and private papers, in a charming echo of that fragrant episode during the Major interregnum when Churchill's grandson was paid twelve and a half million in public money for the archive of the old bag's well-known Second World War incarnation. The whole business has infuriated the more intellectual Thatcher spawn, Sir Mark of Wonga and Equatorial Guinea, because the rest of the family will not automatically benefit from the proceeds. It is as yet unclear how many of them will be visiting food banks as a result; but there can be little doubt that the old bag herself would be proud of the family values and entrepreneurial spirit on display.

Trussing Up the Expendables

After only a week or two of northern prole submergence, and a personal visit to the provinces, Britain's Head Boy's token filly at the Department for Dumping Green Crap has discovered that flood defences might need a bit of a boost here and there. A "partnership group" is to be set up, in which the Clegg-pledging token filly at the Department for Energising Climate Change and a nice chap called Rory will help local residents and community groups to buck up and stop expecting the Government to step in. "After seeing first-hand the impact of the flooding in the north of England it is clear that the growing threat from more extreme weather events means we must reassure ourselves, and those communities at risk, that our defences, our modelling and our future plans are robust," babbled the token filly for dumping green crap, who somehow failed to internalise these rather obvious points after the south of England was flooded in 2013, or after Cumbria was flooded in 2012, or after any number of reports from sources other than Nigel Lawson about the likely effects of climate change. On the progressive side, the remains of the Environment Agency, which the Bullingdons have been happily slicing up between environmental disasters, will be brought in to provide sandbags and lend a sickly green veneer to whatever combination of shale-fracking, profiteering and business as usual is eventually decided upon.

Progress Report

Despite the democratising presence of Britain's Head Boy's seventy thousand tame jihadis, the crusade against Islamic State is somehow progressing too slowly for Britain's Secretary of State for Wog-Bombing. This is partly the fault of our little brown chums in Iraq, who have been efficientised a good deal in the past twelve years but are regrettably no longer ready for action at forty-five minutes' notice. It is also partly the fault of the beastly Russians, who support the wrong side in Syria (viz. Bashar al-Assad, an enemy of Islamic State) and have been making unauthorised incursions into airspace which, if not quite British, is certainly not an immigrant. The Secretary of State for Wog-Bombing did not say whether the beastly Russians have been aided in these derelictions by an enemy within Britain; doubtless the revelations of a fifth column including Corbyn, the Milibeing, the Stop the War Coalition and various junior doctors will be unveiled at some electorally opportune moment. The Secretary of State for Wog-Bombing shrugged off references to "Libya and these other franchises" since Britain's Head Boy, in his well-merited modesty, would rather his own achievements in previous crusades were not shouted about too much.

Keeping Our Country Safe

Even the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair can make an honest mistake, and at first glance the creation of Islamic State through freedomising interventionism in Iraq might seem precisely that. However, this point of view merely shows up the lack of vision which has always afflicted those who criticise his reverence's world-cleansing and Britishness-boosting activities. The creation of Islamic State, as it now turns out, was a price worth paying to give his reverence the experience he needed in order to deal with Colonel Gaddafi and prevent weapons falling into the hands of Islamic State. Gaddafi, it seems, was "someone who a lot of the time they have been so isolated they have not heard sensible arguments and their system does not allow them for people to come to talk to him", and who failed to grasp that Arabs, being a primitive, non-Westminster sort of people, "are not going to tolerate a tiny group of people often unrepresentative of the majority in the country running the country." Certainly the colonel's eye, like that of Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev, contained a mote or two which the Reverend Blair's beaming company seems hardly to have shifted at all. Gaddafi disregarded the Reverend Blair's advice, and we all know what happened to him; the aftermath, according to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, "has been cited by opponents of western intervention as a case study in the dangers of removing strong leaders in the Middle East." It has also been cited by the communistic and backsliding as a case study in the dangers of wog-bombing and resource-grabbing without regard to the local population; but then the same sort of people raised much the same sort of objections to the Iraq adventure, which did after all give the Reverend Blair the experience he needed in his crusade against Islamic State.

Available Now

Suggested by an accidental photograph, my latest is a ghost story featuring a vanished recluse, a curmudgeonly cartoonist, and thirteen mysterious paintings whose back-story is shamelessly lifted from the walls of the Quinta del Sordo; in fact, the book's working title was The Black Panels. The source of the photograph was the wonderful Giovanna, who also provided the superb cover image for Providence Fell.

Shadows With Claws is available now, as paperback and as PDF ebook; and if ordered with due promptitude and alacrity, I believe there is still time for it to serve as a spooky tale for Christmas.

Irritating Crabbs

A committed Christian wog-bomber has provided the traditional festive-season squeal about the evils of secularism, which now apparently include the radicalisation of young Muslims. In a fairly comprehensive catalogue of Christian self-pity, the Welsh secretary proclaimed that, as usual, faith is being pushed to the margins of society; which doubtless explains why two committed Christian wog-bombers like Stephen Crabb and the Bride of Gove have been permanently excluded from the Cabinet, the Conservative Party and the Westminster gravy train in general. Predictably enough, Crabb invoked the non-story of the ban on the Lord's Prayer as a prelude to Star Wars, which is a symptom of little more than the Church of England's powers of self-advertisement in the face of its continuing, and no doubt deeply traumatic, non-disestablishment. Like so many committed Christians, Crabb appears to be unfamiliar not only with the commandment against bearing false witness, but also with the Sermon on the Mount, which includes a rather clear indication of what is required from followers of the radicalised Palestinian when they are faced with ridicule and persecution.

Leading By Example

Fresh from showing off his new wellies to the soggy proles in Cumbria, Britain's Head Boy has toddled off to Paris to lecture the Euro-wogs on the merits of shale-fracking, Chinese uranium and dumping the green crap. Britain's Head Boy has whisked along his Clegg-pledging token filly at the Department for Exacerbating Climate Change, and they have both decided to fly because trains are for vulgar people and any cost to the environment will be offset by the United Nations. A spokesbeing for the token filly's ministry said that ministers used "the most efficient and cost effective modes of transport available", the calculations presumably having been made by George Osborne and checked by the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith.

Hard Work and Family Values

A couple of entrepreneurs have been imprisoned for making economically efficient use of an illegal immigrant. The hard-working family of Emmanuel and Antan Edet incentivised Ofonime Sunday Inuk to work up to seventeen hours a day and conditioned him, according to the judge, "to the extent that he did not ask for what he wanted because he expected his request to be refused". In short, they treated him much as the Government would like to treat the rest of Britain's unpaid carers and other useful idiots, if only they didn't make so much noise. The beneficiary of the vocational training was predictably ungrateful, and complained to a family friend, an MP and the police, and was informed by the latter of the sanctity of British family values. It is as yet unclear how soon the Home Office plans to deport him.

Tough Love

Having discovered last month that the sensibilities of corporate tax dodgers are far too delicate for mere wheedling to have much effect, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is set to impose a rigorous new régime of petting and pandering. Multinational companies will face maximum fines of £22,140 for failing to declare their corporation tax records, and maximum fines of £3000 for filing inaccurate returns. The new rules will apply only to companies with an annual turnover of more than £585 million, which are doubtless the most emotionally vulnerable; and the information will be kept confidential so that nobody's feelings are hurt. It is as yet unclear whether these measures are rigorous enough to suit the likes of Starbucks, Amazon and Vodafone, or whether they would prefer the Goldman Sachs treatment whereby Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs also gives them a little present now and then.

Moral Lepers

Some of the British state's greatest fans have been squealing for the right to be shielded from the consequences of the British state's actions. A rather small gathering of the Protestant Coalition demonstrated outside Belfast city hall, protesting Stormont's decision to flood Northern Ireland (population: 1.85 million) with fifty-one Syrian refugees. The good Christian folk were met by a rather larger demonstration of political heretics and religious renegades, and a civil debate was had under the benevolent auspices of the local riot police. "All you need is one extremist to come - and they said they are coming -and we will be burying our dead," proclaimed one Protestant Coalitioner, who has clearly learned the lessons of history: namely that the cure for the virus of extremism is to live as though in a leper colony.

Good Little Taxpayers Shouldn't Ask Questions

Companies acting as hired thugs for the Home Office deserve all possible protection from public scrutiny in case other companies use the information to compete with them, according to a minion of Mad Tessie May. Some muesli-munching terrorist sympathisers have been asking a lot of impertinent questions about how the Home Office's corporate boot-boys are penalised when things go wrong at wog disposal centres. Naturally, given the profit motive and the expendability of the merchandise, the whole idea that, for example, a detainee self-detrimentation is an instance of things going wrong is really rather quaint; but anyway it transpires that a fine of £10,000 may be levied in particularly blatant cases. It remains unclear how much of the money is extracted from ill-trained, inexperienced and inadequate staff, and how much of it goes in compensation to the victim's relatives. The Home Office is still refusing to release further information on financial penalties in case companies factor them into their bids, thus proving once again that lack of transparency is not an argument against privatising services. The Home Office also maintains that disclosing to the public any information about how public services are run tends to prejudice the legitimate democratic interests, viz. the commercial interests, of the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration, and that such shady practices will therefore never be tolerated among the minions of Mad Tessie May.

The Grown-Ups

Rah rah! We are off to the war!
Already we've managed to score!
We're on the attack,
Just as in Iraq -
Except it's more fun than before!

Great news for the migrancy freeze!
The crisis will now be a breeze!
If they try to sneak through,
A Tornado or two
Can blow away more refugees!

Rah rah and bung-ho and three cheers!
It could last for three or more years!
Campaign 2020
Could benefit plenty,
And move up by several gears!

A strategy? Why be a bore?
We've seventy thousand and more
Tame Muslims to aid
Each wog-bombing raid -
Oh golly, what larks are in store!

Davey Fitzanthony

Revolting Barbarians

Even as our terrorist-terrorising Head Boy and his Blairite Auxiliary Reserve Force prepare to make Syria safe for Britishness, it seems that various enemies within may be plotting to undermine the miracle of unitedness that is the Kingdom of Westminster and the Little People. Ghastly Celts from Northern Ireland, as well as England's colonies on the mainland, could bias the result of the EU referendum even if a majority of real people voted to leave. If the referendum vote among the aliens is significantly different from that among the pure-bred Anglo-Saxons, it might even be used by the fiend Sturgeon as an excuse to hold a referendum. Enthusiasm for the EU is much higher in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland than it is among actual Britons, because devolution means they are no longer run by Whitehall departments and are thus much more susceptible to vicious propaganda from Brussels, Strasbourg and other non-subsidiaries of News Corporation.

Our Boys Could Do It Better

Another Médecins Sans Frontières hospital has been bombed, and apparently rather more unjustifiably than usual, since the weaponry was neither sold by Britain nor deployed by the United States. Indeed, it seems likely that the forces of the evil Bashar al-Assad, backed up by the beastly Russians, were the ones having the fun. Although the motive may have been dishonourable - encouraging terrorists to blow up more airliners for the convenience of the fiend Putin - the method was frankly uncivilised, involving a carefully timed second attack designed to kill off emergency personnel along with the terrorists and expendables. The weapons were barrel-bombs, whose inaccuracy makes their use a de facto war crime, according to some. So inaccurate were the detonations in this case that they killed only seven people; which stands in stark contrast to the thirty-odd bagged two months ago, presumably with pinpoint precision, by the Americans in Kunduz.