Legitimate Concerns, Understandable Reactions

Protests have erupted in the Righteous State over statements by the colony's police commissioner implying that it is natural to treat Ethiopian Jews as though they were Arabs. Israelis of Ethiopian origin have complained about over-policing and racial profiling, and the commissioner was ready with a rebuttal drawn from the same respected sociological studies that fuel the rhetoric of the Trumpster and the Farage Falange: "In all criminological studies around the world it is proven that immigrants are more involved in crime than others, and this should not surprise us." In a country where immigrants have been engaged in large-scale criminal violence since before 1948, this must certainly be a cause for concern. One activist responded by pointing out the all-important distinction between mere cockroaches and those with a genuine mythological justification: "We are not migrant workers, we are Jews who returned to their country after some 2,500 years in exile." Self-evidently, no true descendant of Joshua's genocidaires deserves anything but respect from the police.

Noblesse Oblige

O rah for the Bullingdon lads,
Their PR and rah-rah and ads!
Six years on the grab,
Now parking their flab
In multiple luxury pads!

O rah for the Bullingdon lads,
Those charming wee chubby-cheeked cads!
Machine-gunning gooks
And cooking the books
From toil of their tax-dodging dads!

O rah for the Bullingdon lads,
Their sweet little foibles and fads!
We humble proles might
Have all our belts tight,
But plenty of cream for the spads!

Gideon Fatwick

Pour Décourager les Autres

Some treacherous foreign swine are plotting to give us back our borders. With the French presidential election approaching, Her Majesty's Government's fellow migrant-bashers across the Channel are taking a rather unsporting attitude to their duty of ensuring that the wogs stop at Calais. At present Britain has an agreement with the ghastly Socialists, allowing passports to be checked in France and thus protecting those efficient people at G4S and Serco from being overwhelmed by too many cockroaches swarming into their concentration camps. Should the serfs of the EU be so indiscreet as to elect a president more in tune with the legitimate concerns of white working burkiniphobes, this agreement may have to be re-negotiated; perhaps through the famous yet discreet diplomatic skills of the ever-subtle Imperial Haystack. As with everything else to do with Britain's new-found independence, doubtless the whole affair will turn out a triumph of fair play and common sense.

Elephantine Interventionism

Well, here's a thing: the Conservative Party appears to have been saying the thing that was not when it pledged to shut down the domestic trade in ivory, which is worsening the risk of extinction for the African elephant. The pledge was first made in 2010, but was quickly forgotten because of the urgent need to fix broken Britain by engineering a three-year economic depression and kicking the NHS to bits; while the Conservatives' little orange enablers were no doubt vociferous in their strong and principled agreement that the African elephant should be granted sufficient liberty to look after its own interests. In 2015 the Bullingdon Club sneered out the pledge again, or perhaps they simply forgot to remove it from the manifesto; this time the excuse for inaction is that "the illegal wildlife trade is a global issue and will only be solved through global co-operation." Rendered into Standard English this means that, as usual, the lesser breeds are to blame and that Britain must necessarily lead from the rear. It is, of course, a great pity that there are no international organisations to facilitate global co-operation on these issues, such as a European trading bloc with powers to make and enforce any laws agreed by its members.

They Hate Our Control

Interfering foreigners have had the nerve to blame British politicians for the spontaneous outbreak of legitimate concern which followed the EU referendum. A UN committee for the elimination of good clean fun has accused our more straight-talking populists of having "created and entrenched prejudices, thereby emboldening individuals to carry out acts of intimidation and hate towards ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities and people who are visibly different". Of course the wogs don't know what they're talking about: Her Majesty's Government has a zero-tolerance approach to hate crime, which is clearly and forthrightly defined as any form of persecution which has not been duly approved by Her Majesty's Government or by the scumbag press, and which the police and the courts have the time, inclination and funds to investigate. No names were mentioned in the UN bureaucrats' anti-Britishness screed, but the strutting Caudillo emeritus of the Farage Falange may well start blathering for a Brunxit if this kind of discrimination continues.

A Most Reliable Indicator

Imbecile calms fury horror

Markets, businesses and embittered Remainers were possessed by beatific calm today after a proclamation by Iain Duncan Smith that Article 50 will be triggered early in 2017.

Triggering Article 50 would give the UK two years to negotiate its exit from the European Union, which has led to jitters among some deluded persons who seem to think that in any such negotiations the EU would be the larger party.

However, for many years one of the most reliable indicators for any given fact of British politics has been an announcement by Duncan Smith to the opposite effect.

Duncan Smith's time as commander-in-chief of the Idleness Police was characterised by repeated announcements of the imminent and efficient delivery of Universal Credit, which is now scheduled to be rolled out at some point between Brexit and the heat-death of the Universe.

Duncan Smith's department also extruded numerous statements about how much freedom the poorer classes were being worked into, while thousands became dependent on food banks and several unemployed expendables committed permanent acts of social self-cleansing.

Apart from his own long-standing contributions to veracity, Duncan Smith's sources for his assertion that Article 50 will be triggered early next year include Boris Johnson, David Davis and Adam Werritty, as well as a fan of the famously demented Psychoactive Substances Act.

Public Indecency

Certain voices in France are beginning to question whether the war against extremism can best be won with bans on beachwear. In the name of secularism, law and order and good manners, women who choose to cover themselves up on French beaches have been stopped and surrounded by armed police, yelled at by mobs with legitimate concerns, and accused of "provocation" by Nicolas de Racaille. Doubtless in the name of liberty, fraternity and equality, the deputy mayor of Nice, a party colleague of the ever-emollient former president, has also threatened legal action against anyone publishing images of municipal police. Nevertheless, as the education minister has pointed out, it remains unclear how far public safety and secular values can be upheld by ordering women to dress in accordance with some arbitrary prohibition, after the fashion of the sky-daddy's more fun-loving friends.

Another Humble Flagstone on the Road to Hell

Two sisters and their brother have been removed from an EasyJet plane and interrogated on the tarmac for an hour by Special Plod, apparently for the heinous crime of looking a bit headscarfy. Some other passengers on the flight decided that one of the sisters had a reference to the phrase Praise be to God on her phone; which, like so much anti-Muslim evidence, would certainly have been damning if it were true. None of the siblings went so far as to incriminate themselves by reading about Syria, although at least two of them have been to Iraq raising funds for victims of the Fighting Sons of Tony. Special Plod asked them about their knowledge of Arabic, a question they cunningly dodged by being natives of London, with Indian ethnicity, and unable to speak any language except English. (Since they looked so foreign-like and exotic, their knowledge of English was tactfully established by Special Plod with the first question barked.) Before being allowed back onto the plane, whose ethnically correct passengers had been treated to a full view of the entire precautionary measure, the siblings were warned that further checks would be carried out and that, if anything turned up, the forces of Britishness would descend upon their heads. Nobody was waiting for them when they returned from their holiday; although, since their father was born in Uganda, there is little guarantee that those efficient G4S people may not decide to pay an early-morning call if the Home Office should suddenly realise that Uganda is no longer part of the British Empire. As for the couple who began the whole salutary business by denouncing them, Essex Plod have satisfied themselves, after doubtless rigorous investigation, that the call was "of good intent".

Laws Are For Little People

Antipreneurial and backsliding persons are again cavilling and complaining about Her Majesty's Government's cosy relationship with its brothers in Britishness, the head-chopping House of Saud. As an enthusiastic backer of the Arms Trade Treaty, which is supposed to protect schools, hospitals and homes from the depredations of unscrupulous warmongers like the beastly Russians or the Heathen Chinee, Her Majesty's Government is quite naturally doing everything it can to assist the head-chopping House of Saud in their continuing rampage in Yemen, where schools, hospitals and homes are being pulverised with rah-rah firepower and token regrets. More people are in need of humanitarian aid in Yemen than anywhere else in the world, yet still the whiny do-gooders persist in talking down this gold-medal British performance.

Bow Down and Be Counted

I am sure we all agree that if there's one thing this country needs more of, it's bright ideas from the likes of Michael Gove and his chums. Policy Exchange, a "centre-right" (right-wing, in Standard English) think-tank founded by Gove and his almost equally sensible chum Nick Boles, has come up with a jolly wheeze for distinguishing between real and fake Britons. David Goodhart, who wrote a book squealing about the beastly migrants and the damage they cause to the social-democratic values which are so precious to the centre-right, has extruded a report squealing that the beastly migrants are using our jewelled isles as "a sort of economic transit camp". The solution, it appears, is to give everyone a number, which would be stored in a central database managed, no doubt, by some efficient, accountable company like those nice people at Serco and G4S. Students and short-term migrant workers "would not have full access to social and political rights, would not have an automatic right to bring in dependents and would leave after a specific period of time", rather than voting in every election, claiming benefits before they're off the boat and staying here forever with all their wives and cats and mothers, as they do at the moment. David Goodhart went to Eton. You can tell, can't you.

Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach

In recent years Ramsey Campbell has continued to turn out fine story collections along with a couple of excellent novellas, The Pretence and The Last Revelation of Gla'aki; but his novels have disappointed. Ghosts Know is competent but unremarkable; while Creatures of the Pool is little more than a rehash of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", disfigured by in-jokes and finally crippled by clever-clever musings on the nature of the Open Text.

Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach is a shorter, more compact book, and constitutes an encouraging return to form. Although Campbell is undoubtedly aware of previous efforts in the subgenre (notably Simon Raven's Doctors Wear Scarlet and the Lewton-Robson film Isle of the Dead) and begins the action of his novel on Lovecraft's birthday, he has refrained from intertextual shenanigans and played to his considerable strengths of evocative prose and carefully chosen detail.

The story concerns a fortnight's holiday in Greece with grandparents, children and grandchildren, and Campbell deftly portrays the characters and the petty awfulness of family dynamics without slipping into soap opera. One overbearing in-law does veer close to caricature, but no more so than many people in real life; and even in his case a few details are sketched in to humanise if not to redeem. The protagonist, Ray Thornton, is the grandfather of the party, and the first chapter combines the mundane nightmare of tourism with the mortal inconveniences of ageing. Even before the supernatural intervenes, a shadow hangs over the holiday, as Ray and his wife have received bad news which they have decided to keep secret from their relatives.

The small island where they sojourn is relatively untouched by tourism; which means that the locals' English can be at least as frustratingly ambiguous as some family members' efforts at translating Greek. As usual, Campbell gets plenty of sinister mileage from innocent child-chatter, conversations at cross purposes and such nuances of local tradition as who might be feeding on what, or vice versa. In fact, despite the hoariness of its subgenre the novel admirably sustains the ambiguity of all its supernatural portents, as becomes apparent with devastating effect during an argument late in the story between the grandparents and their sceptical offspring.

Nor does Campbell stint when it comes to out-and-out scare scenes. A nocturnal visitor steals and partly destroys a clue to the island's mystery, resulting in a chase which Ray finds turned back upon himself. Two gruesome cave explorations, one early in the book and one at the end, as well as a thoroughly creepy look around an ancient monastery, gain immense power from Campbell's depictions of the jumpy and fragmented effects of mobile-phone light and the sinister motions of water. The ending is quiet, but equally powerful after its own fashion: a delicate, poignant merging of hope with horror.

Crumbling Rock

Despite the promised glories of British independence from Europe, it seems that some whiny colonials persist in talking down our wondrous prospects. Gibraltar's chief minister has pointed out that an end to free movement of labour could result in the collapse of the Rock's economy, because of the thousands of Spanish workers who cross the border every day to claim benefits and steal the natives' jobs. The Gibraltarian government has even gone so far as to approach the fiend Sturgeon's one-party state, which also voted strongly to remain a satellite of the Brusso-Strasbourgian junta, in the hope of finding some way of sneaking around the UK's inevitable enrichment. Possibly owing to the length and resilience of the Imperial Haystack's leash, no gunboats have so far been deployed.

Fundraising Without Permission

Some brothers in Britishness of the secretary of state for international trade and former Minister for Werritty at the Department of Wog-Bombing have imprisoned a man for posting on Facebook. It is illegal in the United Arab Emirates for charities to operate while not registered in the country, and the Dubai resident has been indefinitely imprisoned for the heinous crime of raising money for the beneficiaries of the recent Mission Accomplished in Afghanistan. His wife is paying for his food and drinking water, and he is being held at a police station with no segregation from other prisoners and no access to luxuries such as blankets and mattresses, which are routinely bestowed upon offenders in British prisons despite the reforming zeal of Graybeing, Gove and those entrepreneurial people at G4S. A spokesbeing for the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns said that something or other was being done about the situation, even though the victim holds dual citizenship and was an immigrant before he became an expat. Possibly the Imperial Haystack has threatened to build a few more cable-cars unless the matter is expedited.

By Their Fruits

A Christian gay-baiter who preaches that natural disasters are God's punishment for homosexuality has received his reward from the Almighty. A deluge of "near Biblical proportions" has swept away the Louisiana home of Tony Perkins; which home, given that the Biblical flood drowned everything in the world except for a single human family and a boatful of livestock, must have been quite the humble hovel. Besides favouring the world with his meteorological expertise Preacher Perkins, as president of the amusingly-named Family Research Council, has proclaimed that paedophilia is "a homosexual problem" and that homosexuality is a condition similar to drug addiction. Preacher Perkins and his family escaped the flood in a canoe and are now living off "God's provisions": locusts and wild honey à la Ronald Macdonald, one assumes. The condition of Preacher Perkins' closet remains as yet undisclosed.

The Finger of Dictatorship

In a vivid demonstration of why we're better off out, the German vice-chancellor has shown his contempt for universal British values by making an uncivil gesture at some people with legitimate and understandable concerns about immigration. Wearing patriotic face masks quite different to the burqa in both legitimacy and comprehensibility, the men expressed various legitimate and understandable concerns of a national and social nature. The vice-chancellor, who was intolerant enough to break off relations with his father over political differences, refused to debate with the gentlemen unless they showed their faces; which was clearly an intolerable infringement of their religious liberties. On the whole, the incident was a most timely and salutary reminder of the illiberal authoritarianism to which so many Euro-wogs, despite decades of moderating British influence, are even now all too susceptible.

A Well-Oiled Workforce

She gave me the sack, by my soul
(Or else by what fills up the hole)!
A vile thing to do!
That nasty old moo -
How dare she treat me like a prole!

I did all I could, by my vow,
Hard rightward to steer the state's prow;
I hardly deserve
To sit here and serve
My bloody constituents now!

But hold! I'm a Bully, by gosh!
I'm smug and sebaceous and posh!
If life be unfair,
I'll just do a Blair
And waggle my dewlap for dosh!

Gideon Fatwick

Not Just Standing By

Another hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières has been bombed in the Middle East. Fortunately for the moral character of those concerned, the bombing did not take place in Syria, where the west must not stand aside, and was not carried out by the beastly Russians in a renewed effort to subdue our plucky little jihadis. Instead, the bombing and its associated human resource detrimentations had the good fortune to take place in Yemen, where the moderate Muslims of the head-chopping House of Saud are engaged in their own version of democratisation à la Reverend Tony. The fact that the House of Saud is at the head of a coalition (nothing so shabby as Putin's nasty little relationship with Bashar al-Assad), and is also a favoured customer of some plucky little British arms dealers, adds yet further lustre to the peace-enhancing pragmaticism of the enterprise.

If You Can't Save It, Sell It

At last something positive is being done about the state of the Arctic. The difficulties caused by melting ice, habitat loss and likely international squabbles about ownership are all tediously well-known by now; but a holiday company called Crystal Cruises is nevertheless taking a healthy entrepreneurial approach and exploiting the region for the amusement of wealthy idiots. The cruise liner Crystal Serenity will transport a thousand tourists from Alaska to New York via the Northwest Passage, offering a casino, six restaurants and a cinema for when boredom sets in with snowy scenery and guided tours of an exotic ecosystem, or whatever is left of it. For the benefit of any Republicans aboard, the company's website makes clear that the Arctic is not the same as the Mediterranean and is also subtly different from the Caribbean; it is to be hoped that such educative measures will offset the damage done by further human intrusion into the wilderness, at least until Crystal Cruises have accumulated a suitable profit.

Points for Honesty

Further virtues of the Australian refugee storage and disposal system, as lauded by the likes of Michael Gove and the strutting Caudillo emeritus of the Farage Falange, have emerged with the possibility that the company which runs the Nauru wog warehouse may have been a bit G4S in its dealings with its employers. Wilson Security was asked last year for details of all known incidents of sexual assault, child abuse and assaults on minors, but the Nauru files show that the information they gave was slightly parsimonious with the facts. In one typically touching example of corporate concern for employee privacy, Wilson Security knew the name, position and station of a guard who allegedly knocked a five-year-old-girl off her feet, but pleaded ignorance before the senate and the Australian taxpayer. It remains as yet unclear whether Wilson Security has emulated the buccaneering entrepreneurialism of the honest folk at G4S and Serco so far as to balance its modesty over refugees who do exist by claiming payment for those who do not.

The Good is Oft Interréd Under Their Speaking Engagements

In time of war, even when the war is against an abstract noun, there are few actions more dishonourable than removing laurels from someone who deserves them in order to bestow them upon someone who does not. The hydrophobic tribble that perches on the Trumpster's head and feeds him all those fascinating opinions has now led him badly astray in this regard. On Wednesday the Trumpster announced that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were co-founders of Islamic State, and yesterday he reiterated the claim, despite the efforts of a right-wing radio host to help him tone down his remarks. The alien was adamant: "No, I meant that he’s the founder of Isis, I do." The Trumpster's hysterical revisionism has been taken in the appropriate dead-cat spirit, but it does not appear that anyone has yet stood up for the real founders of ISIS and given them the credit they are due. Omitting mention of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is understandable enough, since he was, after all, only a Muslim; but can the contribution of Western civilisation, as incarnated in the George W Bush administration and its poodle, the Reverend Blair, really have been forgotten so soon?

Forgotten Victims

Amid the inevitable political recriminations resulting from the leaking of the Nauru files, the shocking extent of human suffering should not be forgotten. Reports from Australia's offshore wog disposal facility include incidents of sexual assault, self-harm, self-immolation and child abuse, thereby victimising to a cruel and unusual degree the Australian government. The response to the Guardian's report from Australia's minister for keeping 'em out was a litany of compassion in the best James Brokenshire-Mad Tessie vein, condemning the manipulative foreigners whose fanatical urge to steal the jobs of native non-Aboriginals leads them into such undignified behaviour. In any case, the brutalities committed by asylum seekers against well-fed ministers of state are quite futile, since the wog warehouse is maintained at Australia's behest and at the expense of the Australian taxpayer, and is therefore entirely the responsibility of the government of Nauru.

Our Betters

As is well known, the Government is not lacking in compassion when it comes to accepting tax payments from those suffering financial distress. In cases of genuine corporate need, such as Goldman Sachs, the Treasury is only too happy to accept a bit of wining and dining in lieu of tax; and aristocratic families impoverished by death duties are permitted to donate art objects to the state instead. Under this scheme, pioneered by Lloyd George in a proto-Cleggite display of concern for the disadvantaged, the trustees of Castle Howard have donated a full-length portrait of a simpering fop draped in a green velvet curtain, the oversized tassel of which coyly emphasises the golden rod of state concealed in his daringly frilly bloomers. Before a background of classical pillars and arches, the fifth earl of Carlisle, having lost all his proper clothes at the gaming tables, descends some ankle-high stairs, guided by his dog Rover because he isn't looking where he is going. He is languidly attempting to point at something, but is apparently too hung-over to close his fingers properly and is also not looking where he is pointing. The painting will eventually be displayed at the Tate, but for the time being will remain where it is, until the public can be properly prepared for its disturbing insight into the strange habits and stranger wardrobe of the eighteenth-century British aristocracy.

Give Them the Tools and They Will Finish the Job

Our brothers in Britishness at the House of Saud have resumed doing their bit in the war against terrorism, bombing a food factory in Sana'a and terminally affecting at least fourteen employment situations. More than half of the collaterally detrimented are thought to have been women; which, since those who fall to British arms and allies are virtually always terrorists or human shields, no doubt indicates the general fiendishness of the Yemeni enemy. As always, the incident is far less reprehensible than anything the Assad government or its Russian allies may have done in Syria recently; and also far more reprehensible than anything superficially similar which may accidentally have been done by certain highly atypical Americans. From a naïve and un-nuanced viewpoint the dead may in all cases be equally dead; but it is, of course, the thought that counts.

A Rocket for the Head Boy

I am sure we all remember the troubled families initiative, which was launched by the late Head Boy and his little orange enablers after the riots in 2011. The Head Boy was concerned about half a million or so families whose offspring were spending their youth trashing local businesses without following the example of their betters and going on to trash the country. Accordingly, the Government pumped £1.3 billion of taxpayers' money into such worthy and well-defined aims as rocket-boosting the system and underlining the importance of strong parenting; and, as was his wont until the early hours of 24 June 2016, the Head Boy pronounced the whole thing a roaring success, just like austerity, the Big Society, the Health and Social Care Act, the wog-bombing of Libya, etc., etc. Unfortunately, some Whitehall bureaucrats have had the ill grace to take mere facts into account, and have discovered that the success was a little less roaring than the Head Boy had claimed and was, in fact, so discreet as to be virtually undetectable, despite having been hailed by the well-known truth-teller and intellectual firebucket Eric Pickles. Thanks no doubt to slack parenting by over-indulgent tax-dodgers, it appears that standards in Big School are not what they once were.

It Couldn't Happen With Solar

Now worry not, hard-working proles,
While strivers make their friendly holes;
Fear migrant hordes; do not beware
Of little earthquakes here and there;
Fear not that in your English town
The terraced castles might fall down,
Nor that you must await collapse
Whle drinking methane from the taps;
For when we give our chums your land
We'll compensate you, cash in hand.
Nor shall we seek to bribe or please
Mere councils and authorities,
So you yourself have more to put
In all the services we've cut.
Accept our hand-outs and regard,
And let them frack you deep and hard.

Tessie Crackers

Let's Draw a Nice, Blairy Line

British justice has crawled forth again in its glorious impartiality and, as usual, has demonstrated its uncompromising strength and infallible integrity by rolling onto its back and urinating all over itself. The Crown Prosecution Service announced a couple of months ago that it could not see its way to prosecuting anyone over the kidnap of Libyan dissidents by the CIA and MI6 for the purpose of democratic re-education by Gaddafi's goons. Asked by the victims to reconsider, the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that it was right all along, and that the signature of a former head of counter-terrorism on faxes about one of the abductions was purely a matter of private correspondence in which mere points of legalism should not be permitted to interfere. In the course of a four-year investigation resulting in twenty-eight thousand pages of evidence, Scotland Yard also discovered that MI6 had sought authority from ministers; which doubtless has nothing at all to do with the CPS' insouciance in shrugging off the whole distasteful episode.

Pruning Away the Flab

A pledge to eradicate malnutrition by 2030, made by the corporate stooges and boot-filling bandits euphemistically known as world leaders, is proving approximately as effective as can be expected. Rates of malnutrition have increased in thirteen countries, while stunting of emotional, social and cognitive development is expected to contribute to a healthy public perspective on social progress in Malawi and Niger until half-way through the twenty-second century. Complicating the picture is the fact that mere quantities of food are not the only problem; access to clean water and good hygienic practices are also factors, which carries sinister implications for corporate democratisation of water supplies and the targeting of educational resources at the financially deserving. At least we may hope that by 2030 the lesser breeds may have progressed a little further towards the perspective of Food Bank Britain, whereby malnutrition and poor hygiene are seen to be moral failings in the idle and dependent. It works out so much cheaper that way.

Flawed Intelligence

One of these dialogues ends with an intelligent and reasonable response, and the other one does not. See if you can tell which is which.

Dialogue A
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Right, when's she coming back? Two weeks? Call the police and tell them to send a squad to the airport. Well done for saving all our lives."
"Just being vigilant, Captain. Funny how these criminals always seem to make one small but fatal mistake, though."

Dialogue B
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Oh, shut up and get back to work."

In times of terrorist threat and swarming migrancy, the business of keeping calm and carrying on can occasionally be bent into some interesting shapes. A Thomson Airways cabin crew member, under instructions to "be vigilant", noticed a passenger reading a book called Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, which is obviously just the sort of activity any terrorist would use as cover for a lifetime's aspiration to give Palmyra the shock-and-awe treatment. As a result of the crew member's vigilance, the passenger, a British NHS worker in child and adolescent mental health services, ended her honeymoon with a fifteen-minute interrogation from South Yorkshire Plod, who were kind enough to give her a copy of Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act as a souvenir. Thomson Airlines appreciated that in this instance the passenger may have felt herself the beneficiary of an exercise in precautionary overcaution, but gave neither an apology nor any indication as to whether it considers reading a legitimate cause for concern; or, if it does, whether Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act has a place on the airline's Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It also remains unclear whether the passenger is, as the phrase often has it after the blood-spattered terrorist fact, "known to security services". After all, her job includes anti-radicalisation work, which would arguably be an even better veil for her natural Muslim instincts than the act of reading.

Boating the Rock

Some weird little man at Conservative Home has advocated sending the Royal Navy to protect Gibraltar, despite the fact that Gibraltar has shown itself a pessimistic, unpatriotic, bureaucratic and crypto-Nazi little colony by voting to remain in the European Union. The strategist in question, a certain Luke Coffey, is American and thus himself a foreigner of sorts, although this did not prevent his being employed as a special adviser by the vole-brained Liam Fox during his tenure as the Department of Wog-Bombing's Minister for Werritty. As befits one who has rubbed brain-cells with such illustrious company, Coffey apparently believes that waving the national willy at Spain will induce the other Euro-wogs to think twice before allowing any discussion of joint sovereignty over the lump of stone. It remains as yet unclear whether Coffey thinks Mariano Rajoy's beard would be best singed by the Royal Navy's aircraft-free carriers or by those submarines which are so astute that one of them was just about able to detect Scotland by crashing into it.

350 Million Raccoons A Week to Spend on the NHS

Our native racists may be restless, our economy may be traumatised on a scale to dwarf even the Osbornomic miracle, and our Foreign Secretary may be Boris Johnson; but at least we are safe at last from the foreign interference that prevents free-born Britons from importing a red-eared slider or a virile crayfish into the rented castle they call home. Meddling Euro-wogs have just imposed yet more regulations designed to strangle the buccaneering entrepreneurialism of the British ecosystem; but all such invasive bureaucracy will be in vain once we've taken back control of our borders. The Johnsonian eloquence of the North American bullfrog, the Davis-like political enlightenment of the Asian hornet and the Werrittyesque intellectual depth of Persian hogweed will be free to spread unfettered across the nation as soon as the newly-imposed red tape is severed by the Chinese mitten crab that is Article 50.

The International Chinese Communist Conspiracy to Keep Britain's Lights On

Now that EDF, after much moral agony and several resignations, has finally decided to lumber the British taxpayer with Hinkley Point C, Mad Tessie May has got cold feet and has postponed approving the pallid pachyderm until she can assure herself that the reactor rods will conceal no cunning Chinese sabotage devices or their cats. The Heathen Chinee have therefore addressed Her Majesty's Government a stern lecture upon the perils of throwing made-up accusations at potential business partners. "China can wait for a rational British government to make responsible decisions," proclaimed the Xinhua news agency, with more-than-Oriental sarcasm. It appears that the Heathen Chinee have not yet realised the full implications of our cutting loose from the twenty-seven parasitic bureaucracies on the other side of the Channel, and how much larger and stronger we will become as a result.