You Can't Get the Staff These Days

Zac Goldsmith, the wholly independent, non-Conservative race-baiting ex-Conservative with whom the Conservatives disagree so profoundly that they are not fielding a candidate against him, has been clipped by his own car on the way to a final by-election blather in Richmond Park. It remains as yet unclear whether he was making a bid for the likeable-bumbler image which served the Imperial Haystack so well back when he was serving his country as a game-show host; or whether he has any plans to blame his torn trousers on bus-bombing Scary Muslims. Then again, perhaps he was merely showing his independence of Conservative ideology by employing a non-expert driver because a licensed one would have meant wasting time and money on bureaucratic red tape.

The Party of Working People Who are Properly Thankful for What's Put in Front of Them

Having hurriedly abandoned her more or less sane pledges on corporate governance, presumably in order to make room for her government's ever more loony gyrations over Europe, Mad Tessie has dispatched her Secretary of State for Profiteering and Fat-Cat Strokage to explain how not keeping a promise is, as the Liberal Democrats might say, really much the same as keeping it, actually. Rather than placing employee representatives on corporate boards, the Government now wishes merely to ensure that workers have a voice, without bothering too much over forcing anyone to listen who might have better things to do, and provided that the voice keeps a properly respectful tone and doesn't say anything silly like Please, sir, I want some more. The favoured proposal seems to be for a non-executive director with an explicit obligation to lecture the proles and hold meetings, which is certainly the sort of radical shake-up that will deter future Philip Greens from excessive additions to the yacht collection. The present system, said Mad Tessie's flunkey, "has been a successful system which has had the confidence of business around the world." To the flunkey's credit, the use of the pluperfect at least demonstrates a welcome if subtle acknowledgement of the confidence business around the world now has, and is likely to go on having, thanks to the Government's blundering Brexit and flatulent Foreign Secretary.

Inside Every Starving Syrian A Food-Bank Briton is Struggling to Emerge

Something called Toby has been trying to explain why RAF personnel, whom the Government is more than happy to place in harm's way when a bit of wog-bombing is called for, should not be placed in harm's way for reasons that are purely humanitarian. More than a hundred and twenty MPs have called on the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK to authorise air-drops of food, medicine and British leadership to Aleppo, citing the rather unfortunate examples of the Reverend Blair's crusade for titanium in Sierra Leone and his blithe aggravation of the war in Kosovo. Since the Americans haven't told us to drop food on Aleppo, and since it is unclear how far such air-drops would help NATO progress towards its Holy Grail of war against Russia, the Government is feeling a bit hesitant about it all, and extruded the thing called Toby for no other readily apparent purpose than to say "actually" a good deal. Having worried that sending aircraft to keep Syrians alive might actually compound matters in some way that sending aircraft to kill Syrians actually does not, the thing called Toby warned Russia that using food as a weapon of war, rather than as a means of monetising foreign proles for the benefit of transnational corporations, is actually a war crime. If he has finished quaking in his boots by now, Putin is doubtless considering how the thing called Toby might best be appeased.

Respect Where It's Due

Some little time ago, Britain was ruled by an over-entitled serial word-breaker whose reign ended in disaster for the country and the personal loss of a head which King Charles I should have used a little better. It remains to be seen whether the career of Boris Johnson will be so violently curtailed; but a couple of flunkeys are clearly becoming worried that the Foreign Secretary is being treated more in accordance with his record than with his patronage. Jake Berry is a former PPS to the well-known bully and liar Grant Shapps, and Paul Goodman is a former PPS to the floundering prima donna and David Davis publicist David Davis; so they both should know better than to imagine that the Imperial Haystack is worthy of his office simply because he happens to occupy it. Nevertheless, both have raised objections over fellow Conservatives making bad jokes about the Foreign Secretary just because he happens to be a bad joke himself. Evidently, neither the lessons of history nor recent events in the USA have sufficed to purge the Stupid Party of the idea that high office dignifies the holder, rather than obliging holders to dignify themselves.

Beasts of the Benelux

Not for nothing are they called the Low Countries. A Luxembourg MEP recently tabled a below-the-belt proposal whereby subjects of the Empire could retain their links to the European Union, with all the unpatriotic human rights entailed thereby, and even a substantial risk of becoming immigrants. This idea has now received approval from the leader of the conspiracy to deprive Britain of its club privileges the moment Britain leaves the club, who on top of his other derelictions is a former prime minister of Belgium, location of the dreaded Strasbourg. The proposal may be serious, or it may be a superb piece of Brexiter-trolling by the EU's grown-up community. If the latter, the squeals from the Westminster wendy-house have doubtless warmed their nasty little cardiac cockles.

Responding to the suggestion that British subjects might pay an annual fee to keep their citizenship of Europe, one Andrew Bridgen went right off the deep end: "It’s an attempt to create two classes of UK citizen," other than the eternal and necessary classes of rich and poor, "and to subvert the referendum vote," which was, contrary to common prejudice, entirely concerned with the question of whether we should all march in step with the whims of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Andrew Bridgen. "The truth is that Brussels will try every trick in the book to stop us leaving", even sinking unto the depths of asking us nicely to state our wishes with something vaguely approaching coherence. It is certainly a novelty to see a Conservative MP (who in happier days referred to opponents of Twizzler Lansley's NHS vandalism as Stalinists) opposing the idea that British people should be free to spend their own money as they think fit.

Small Change

The Ministry for G4S and Wog Warehousing has beaten a huffy retreat on plans to quintuple the fines levied on immigrants and asylum seekers for having the temerity to request access to British justice. Like everything else in the hated public sector, the courts are now considered purely a potential source of revenue, and the migrant-milking measures would have raised up to thirty-four million a year, or enough to plug a whopping one-thousand-seven-hundredth of the Brexit black hole. Accordingly, the Ministry is still determined to sneak ahead with its reform (vandalism, in Standard English) of the judicial industry; as a spokesbeing proclaimed, "the cost of our courts and tribunals on the taxpayer is unsustainably high." The relationship of this unsustainability to the Government's own enthusiasm for low wages and smoochy affection for tax-dodgers, and consequent commitment to ever-lower tax receipts, remains as yet tantalisingly unclear.

A Great Time to be British

Some agitators for the sovereignty of Parliament called a demonstration today, some months after winning a referendum ostensibly about the sovereignty of Parliament, because they are aggrieved at the high court for asserting the sovereignty of Parliament. More than fifteen thousand were invited; two thousand said they would turn up; and in keeping with the Leave campaign's enviable record of reliability, a few dozen actually did. The Britishness-signalling of this patriotic elite was rewarded with a blather from the chinless dimness that is Jacob Rees-Mogg, who spoke in tongues ("we have to make sure it is continued until the end and that we leave as soon as soon"), blessed the United Kingdom by putting words in the mouth of the United States (couldn't he find a British quote?) and attributed a misquote from Julius Caesar to something called "the great Boris Johnson." No, I don't know what that is either; but it is presumably a Boris Johnson somewhat other than the Boris Johnson who announces to foreign newspapers what his patroness will not deign to share with the House of Commons. The rabble was also roused by the dentally-oriented race-baiter, David Davies (not to be confused with the floundering prima donna and David Davis publicist, David Davis), and by one of those clapped-out UKIP leadership things of which there seem to be so many these days. Such fun was had by all that another demonstration against the sovereignty of Parliament and in favour of something that is already happening will take place in ten days' time. One can only wonder how long they'll be able to sustain this level of intensity.

Proper Protection

Our masters, so upright, so clean,
Will free us from all that's obscene:
Consensual hurting
And feminine squirting
May be done (for now), but not seen.

Our moral police have the fidgets
Because of below-the-belt widgets;
For many a prole
Might get in a hole
With illicit bundles of digits.

Be careful, for there will be more
Of sexual healing in store:
Let not private doings
Become public viewings,
Or Serco may bang on your door.

Connie Clutchpearl

More Than It Hurts You

Those pesky human-rights shysters have notched up yet another Blitzkrieg against British values. An enemy of the people at the high court has ordered the Ministry for Wog Warehousing to release a number of asylum seekers from detention, in spite of the possible financial repercussions for those charming people at G4S and Serco. While graciously admitting that victims of torture should not be thrown in the clink unless more or less necessary, the minions of the race-baiting Clegg-pledger Amber Rudd have re-defined torture as something that is carried out only by official state agents. It is certainly an encouraging sign if the Government has finally recognised that the likes of MI6, the CIA and our chums in the head-chopping House of Saud are capable of torture; but the Home Office's moral progress must be slightly undercut so long as it simultaneously proclaims that the business of being carved up, beaten and shot is less torturous when inflicted by Nepalese terrorists or the Taliban. This humane distinction is particularly singular when drawn by an administration that includes the Imperial Haystack, who once equated mere verbal criticism of the wastrel class with Nazi persecution of the Jews. Appearing in court for the Ministry, a thing called Rory demonstrated a similarly rational sense of perspective by protesting that any re-think would be "a radical thing to do", and thus quite at odds with the one-nation, small-c conservatism of the policy as it stands.

Treasonous Bagatelles Condoned

My learned friend Mr Justice Stapley, BB, MFM, AP* etc., etc., has tipped my writing a flattering wig or several over the past few years; and he has now reviewed, at most charitable length, a couple of my recent off-blog jeux du foie, the slightly failed sociological study Moron Mine and the citizen of nowhere's non credo, Against Britishness. Besides these minor yet illuminating works of mine, the Judge's own archives are well worth a trawl; anyone who isn't an acerbic orthography Nazi will find finely-argued verdicts to entertain and edify on subjects ranging from music (folk to Krautrock) through Wales (language, culture and woeful politics; see this of recent note) to the preparation of cholesterol bombs and the psychological perils of jigsaw puzzles; and there are photographs, too. The files go back quite a number of years, but have recently been tidied, dusted and docketed; so there is almost certainly a reasonable chance of your emerging more or less alive, should you choose to emerge at all.
____
* Brymbo Baccalaureus, Moderator Fororum Musicorum, Adversarius Populi.

Blood, Toil, Tears and Soames

Vexatious legalisms and politically-correct human rights are set to wobble the jowls of the mentally diaphanous Conservative MP, Nicholas Soames, who is chair of a mercenary contracting firm called Aegis (foreign meaning: shield of Zeus; British meaning: sponsorship). Aegis profited considerably from the late crusade in Iraq by providing armed guards to defend US military bases, the US military at that time being apparently incapable of defending itself except against weapons of mass nonexistence. Some of the company's armed guards had been recruited in Sierra Leone, which was then a recent beneficiary of the Reverend Blair's crusade for titanium; and some of the recruits had been child soldiers during the civil war. Since they were both cheap and experienced, Aegis saw nothing wrong in using them; and naturally Aegis asked no questions about their former lives because there is nothing a mercenary corporation finds more distasteful than penalising people for being forced into an unpleasant job, especially when those people are cheaper than Europeans and thereby impose upon the said companies a sacred duty to recruit them. Nevertheless, two beneficiaries of the Aegis back-to-work scheme are attempting to sue the company for placing them in a traumatic situation and failing to care for their mental health, despite the fact that not providing such care would have been cheaper than providing it and therefore a sacred duty also.

Law and Orders

A former enemy of the people, who revels in the transparently biased and foreign name of Igor Judge, has accused the lord chancellor, Liz Truss, of failing in her legal duties and possibly breaking the law by refusing to defend the independence of the judiciary with appropriate promptitude and rigour. "She is in relative terms a very inexperienced politician with no legal experience," diagnosed the former chief justice tactfully, "who has been silent - and answered to Downing Street when she should have been independent." This being the case, it seems strange that the lord chancellor's learned and experienced colleague, the Minister for G4S and Profitable Incarceration, failed to warn Liz Truss of any possible conflict of interests between defending the judiciary and grovelling to the Rothermere Daily Stürmer, or between defending the judiciary and goose-stepping to the will of Tin-Pot Tessie. The present Minister for G4S and Profitable Incarceration is one Liz Truss, now engaged in refusing to defend the ability of prison officers to do their job.

Affordable Homage

One of the country's most just-about-managing families is to receive a sixty-six per cent increase in its welfare benefits, courtesy of the taxpayer. Buckingham Palace, ostensibly a public building, will remain occupied by an immigrant family while various repairs are carried out; the on-site staff will receive custom-built temporary accommodation, presumably not of the G4S variety, to prevent their livery being sullied by excessive contact with the plebs. It remains as yet unclear why some of Betty Battenberg's private assets, which are thought to be extensive thanks to decades of tax-dodging and are affected only minimally by the bedroom tax, could not have helped with the bill. Doubtless the explanation, as is usual in these matters, relates to the sublime wonders of Britishness and (for this week, anyway) a bit of rah-rah for our boys at the Somme.

Strong Signals, Leading Roles, Blah Fishcakes

Britain has continued its leadership in the battle against climate change by extruding a jumped-up journalist to ratify the pitifully inadequate Paris agreement; Britain's leading role having been preceded in this case by only one hundred and ten non-forefront nations. The Imperial Haystack consistently broke legally binding environmental laws when he was playing at being mayor of London, so it seems unlikely that the voluntary guidelines in the Paris accord will trouble him over-much. Nick Hurd, the Minister for Being the Son of Another Minister, said that he hoped the UK's ratification would send a strong signal, rather than actually leading to anything beyond the Government's planned measures of prole-fracking and blanched radioactive pachyderms.

Sorting Them Out

In a week when another two hundred and fifty British jobs have been gloriously saved in the Mediterranean, it is heartening to witness the Government's continuing sensitivity to the legitimate concerns of the white working class here on the mainland. Minions of the race-baiting Clegg-pledger Amber Rudd have drawn up new restrictions on the species of cockroach that Britain can tolerate, excluding Eritrean, Afghan and Yemeni junior marauders from swarming into the UK. This seems only fair, since British weaponry, with its inherent fair play and decency, is a prominent feature of the wars which the Yemenis and Afghans are fleeing. Robert Goodwill, who basks in the most appropriate ministerial surname after that of the vole-brained Liam Fox, responded to parliamentary criticism with the implication that nobody knows how many more children would be helped and that the Home Office, at least, is not inclined to care. Goodwill also gave the encouraging assurance that, far from being arbitrary, the restrictions are based on countries with a higher success rate in asylum applications; in other words, the Government's criteria for allowing people in are based on the kind of people the Government has been allowing in.

Haystack Hovadina

The Imperial Haystack has been engaging with Britain's partners in Europe after the natural fashion of a statesman of his calibre, by having a bit of a blather in the local Press. Although the British parliament, whose sovereignty he was once so eager to restore, is not allowed a running commentary on the Government's ongoing nervous breakdown, the Haystack informed a Czech newspaper that the UK would probably be leaving the EU customs union, apparently on the grounds that serious harm to the economy can be jolly rah-rah if it keeps the wogs at bay. The Haystack also dismissed the idea that freedom of movement was ever a founding pillar of the EU. In the world of mere facts, the right to freedom of movement was enshrined in the Treaty of Rome (1957); but Britain's leading liberal newspaper has not had the temerity to contradict him.

Expanding Their Skill Set

Given her obsessive concern with wog reduction, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK takes a remarkably lackadaisical attitude towards immigration control. Rather than kicking the border police into shape after inheriting the usual excuse from Labour, Tin-Pot Tessie has favoured the Michael Gove policy of handing matters over to untrained amateurs; and it all seems to be going about as well as one might expect. Private landlords are afraid to rent properties to legitimate wogs in case they turn out to be illegal wogs; in which case the landlord may face fines of up to £3000 and, from next month, a period of rent-free accommodation at one of Bessie Battenberg's hard-drugs-and-no-toothpaste pleasure-houses. Some landlords are even turning away those British citizens who lack a passport to prove their pedigree, even though many of the white working class are undoubtedly putting off obtaining a passport until the Euro-wog maroon is forever expunged from the cover. A whopping thirteen per cent of landlords have found the relevant Home Office advice line helpful, so it seems likely that twelve per cent or more have misunderstood it.

Thanks Be

That paper bauble or that stylish brooch
In taste impeccable, and yet discreet:
Commemorating Army, Air Force, Fleet -
So potent, yet so well beyond reproach;
This yearly pomp, which courteously allows
Economy-sized hearts and minds to dwell
On those we blasted, bombed, bereaved so well
At your behest, and whom you cannot house -

For this we thank your worships, humbly raise
To cold forelocks our patriotic stumps;
And wait for the explosions of your praise
To blow our regiments a few more chumps.
Our sacrifice, thanks be! was not for nought;
Assuredly, it was for this we fought.

Lofty Bloodworth

Straining Truss

In a letter to the highly free and independent Murdoch Times, the lord chancellor, Liz Truss, has defended the freedom of a free, cantankerous, Europhobic, Muslim-baiting, migrant-mugging, NHS-bashing Free Press to call whatever names and to hunt whatever witches it may find, in all good conscience, necessary. The lord chancellor, Liz Truss, has been at pains to correct any misapprehension that part of her function, if function is the word I want, might incorporate some sort of bias in favour of the judiciary against the screechings and foamings of rabid press barons. The lord chancellor, Liz Truss, does not believe that the impartiality of the judiciary is imperilled by headlines calling judges enemies of the people; it is, after all, a matter of entire months since our last political assassination. It remains as yet unclear how far the relaxed attitude of the lord chancellor, Liz Truss, is influenced by her colleague, Liz Truss, a Cabinet minister in the government against whose case the judges in question had ruled.

The Stones Took Wing

O glory be! what privilege to die
For God and monarch, state and politician!
The Cenotaph stood preaching in position,
A righteous missile pointing at the sky.
Through daydreams of red buttons which let fly
Projectiles to exterminate sedition,
Red paper petals fluttered on their mission
To gaud dry plastic pupils of dead eye.

Two minutes' peace! The silence lay so light,
Heroes entrenched were called up from their lairs.
Over the top! and from each corpse's face,
Disgust grinned at the bloody, solemn slight,
And from the graveyards and the city squares,
The stones took wing, and fled that sorry place.

Tommy Rott

Just Doing His Part

Fans of the Health and Social Care Disassembly Act 2012 will be gratified to know that its primary pusher, Twizzler Lansley, seems to be making a decent living in the private healthcare sector. His various works of charity and public service include advising a Swiss drugs company which, by a delightful coincidence, is also a major beneficiary of a fund set up by the Twizzler himself for the purpose of throwing taxpayers' money at cancer profiteers. He has also found time to advise a management consultancy firm "which has healthcare clients" and MAP BioPharma; the latter's corporate mission is to "make BioPharma and MedTech market access simple, enabling companies to take control of their market access strategy and optimise their time and budget, securing timely patient access to the latest healthcare innovations", which is just the kind of Newspeak to moisten the Lansley gusset.

Having kicked the NHS into shape for the Bullingdon Club, and thus proved himself too toxic for the Head Boy to appoint as a placeman anywhere else, the Twizzler was duly kicked upstairs to the House of Donors, where he is now doing his bit for democratic accountability by tabling thirty amendments to the Lobbying (Transparency) Bill. Scrutiny is time-limited, so it seems that the Twizzler is performing much the same service to democracy as a talker-out in the House of Expenses Claimants. As with the NHS, the Twizzler proclaims that his patented mercury and strychnine snake-oil is proffered purely from an altruistic sense of public duty and is intended to save and not to kill; and as with the NHS, no doubt the results will speak for themselves.

Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine

Is this the way the world ends - not yet with a bang, but with a bad tangerine dream surmounted and, for all we can imagine, steered by a hydrophobic mutant tribble? It seems like a good start; and with both the Senate and the House of Representatives now controlled by the Republicans, it would appear that we are to be denied even the minor consolation of a congressional rally to the Clinton vision of business as usual with minor adjustments. Certainly, any American who has the moral turpitude not to be a middle-income white man-child or his grab-pussied helpmeat can look forward to a thoroughly unpleasant time; as can any shirkers and scroungers living in areas with British-standard flood controls, and any breeders who might prefer a habitable planet for the forthcoming fruits of their all-American loins. Nevertheless, as my learned friend the enemy of the people points out, the Trumpster's dismal ascent may not yet be altogether the end of the world. The United States has, after all, endured two long periods within living memory during which the country was effectively without a chief executive: the nineteen-eighties, under the régime of the senile Hollywood C-lister; and the twenty-noughties, under that of the smirking chimpanzee. Much as it pains me to look on the bright side, there are people - not nice, but experienced - who can keep the White House more or less ticking over in such circumstances and who may, in the interests of their own convenience, prevent or dilute the more obviously biocidal initiatives. There are Republicans who, barring a whimsical abrogation of the Constitution, will have to face their constituents in two years' time; which might just possibly be long enough for even the Democrats to think of a better offer than the one just made and rejected. There is even - assuming the Trumpster's professed lack of interest in poking Russia with a sharp stick is genuine - some small possibility that the world may become slightly safer in the short term than it would have been under the First Female.

A Force For Good

Last month Pakistan, which hosts one of the world's largest refugee populations outside Middle England, arrested a woman who has been living there forty years, threw her in jail for two weeks, fined her £850 and told her to go back where she came from; namely Afghanistan, where fighting and general disorder unaccountably continue to occur despite a couple of centuries' worth of British intervention. Unfortunately, the woman is something of a celebrity, having appeared on the front cover of the National Geographic as a child; and the Pakistani government has allowed this to embarrass them into suspending her deportation, rather than simply allowing the Press to defame her as a terrorist or as ugly and badly-dressed, as would undoubtedly happen were the Pakistani sense of patriotism as highly developed as some. The migrant in question has now added to the embarrassment by refusing the condescension and saying she can't wait to leave because, somehow or other, her treatment "was seen as violating the Afghan notion of honour". It appears that Mad Tessie's trade mission to the Raj, where she informed the caretakers of India that they would need to take back more wogs in return for their students having the privilege of paying our universities' fees, has been a moral as much as a diplomatic success.

The Dark Crystal

Jim Henson & Frank Oz 1982

Created by the Muppet godfathers and the English artist Brian Froud, The Dark Crystal was supposedly the first feature film with a cast made up entirely of puppets; though I suspect that a couple of long shots employ meatware body-doubles. The lack of CGI sophistication may put off some modern fantasy fans; as may the dearth of epic pitched battles consisting entirely of frontal assaults, energetic eviscerations and last-minute reinforcements. Nevertheless, despite the genre's moral progress since I first saw The Dark Crystal on its original release, I remain rather fond of this one.

The story is simple and the symbolism obvious: A long time ago the Crystal cracked, resulting in the emergence of two new races: the cruel but clever Skeksis and the benign but unworldly Mystics. The Skeksis are genocidal slave-holders who cheat the ageing process by draining the vital essence of lesser breeds, such as the friendly, potato-faced Podlings; but in spite of their crimes the Skeksis do not kill one another, which places them an ethical cut or two above Homo sapiens ipsedixit. Because of a prophecy which seems to predict the end of their power, the Skeksis have done their best to wipe out the elf-like race of Gelflings; but it turns out that a couple have survived, by whose hands "or else by none" the Crystal must be healed.

As with many fantasy films, the best bits of The Dark Crystal are in the design and the incidental details; although it is not entirely incidental that the Mystics' anatomical arrangements are as enigmatic and impractical as their daily rituals. The Skeksis (with whom we spend much more time, some of it hilarious) are scaly vulture-headed hunchbacks, while their stormtroopers are superbly unpleasant tentacled beetle-tanks with tiny heads that swivel from side to side in endless disapproval. Aughra, a Wise Woman with horns, Billie Whitelaw's voice and an unsettling eye, lives in a brain-shaped observatory where she narrowly avoids being brained by a gorgeous, creaking orrery. The landscape features carnivorous hillocks, and the heroine's cute pet is a demented furball with mad yellow eyes, more teeth than it knows what to do with and a noisy line in emotional blackmail.

Personal highlights include the Skeksis general's lofty acknowledgement of his sycophants' applause during the opening duel; Kira's demonstration of the difference between Gelfling boys and Gelfling girls; just about everything that Aughra says and does; and a riotous Skeksis banquet where the local equivalent of wafer-thin mints are sent scuttling along the table while the diners merrily club them into oblivion. A more serious virtue lies in the ending, which omits the Lord of the Rings-standard meritorious genocide in favour of something a bit more interesting and a good deal more enlightened.

And the Rocks Were Rent

An Italian priest has blamed the recent earthquakes on God; not merely for squatting on His heavenly throne and doing nothing to prevent the hundreds of deaths and thousands of destitutions, but for actively engineering the disasters as a punishment for civil unions between gay people. Italy introduced the relevant legislation only last month, and post hoc ergo propter hoc is about as sophisticated as Christian reasoning has ever been. The Vatican was moved to condemn the priest's views in the strongest terms, stating that the idea of a vengeful God was a "pagan vision" dating from the "pre-Christian era" which was responsible for the production of the vile, un-Biblical, Semitic documents known as the Old Testament. These pagan ravings were, of course, enthusiastically endorsed by the Saviour on numerous occasions; particularly when calling down the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, or worse, on those who would not or could not endorse the Saviour's own eminently sane disquisitions.

The Will of the People

O judgement! O wrath for that day
Which doesn't go Brexiters' way!
The law is an ass!
We can't let it pass!
The Press mob has started to bay!

The judges receive too much pay
And one of the buggers is gay!
The Sun and the Mail
Must gnash, rant and wail
And call for a public affray!

Trussed up with NewsCorp, come what may,
In terror of barf, bite and bray,
It's looking quite messy
For old Tin-pot Tessie,
And Lizzie has nothing to say!

Hardy Barr

Constitutionally Illiterate

Greasy foreign values such as the rule of law and the political independence of the judiciary have come under predictable attack from our free, courageous and cantankerous press. Anti-establishment populists working for such warriors of progress as the Barclay bullies and the very 'umble Murdoch have been squealing from the front pages about the betrayal of Brexit by a bunch of foreigner-pandering metropolitan élitists. The shadow justice secretary has called upon the lord chancellor to defend the judiciary; but it is unlikely that the Government will be in much of a hurry to unfurl any umbrellas against the foaming tide. The lord chancellor happens to be the ridiculous Liz Truss, who has about as much legal knowledge and experience as one would expect. Truss also just happens to be Mad Tessie's very own little justice secretary, and is thus obliged for sundry weighty reasons (viz. her political career and whatever financial kickbacks may come of it) to connive at whatever deranged illegalities the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK may be plotting. One or two mere experts raised concerns about a potential conflict of interests at the time of Truss's appointment, but were promptly howled down as misogynistic reactionaries.

After the judges' subversive decision that the law of the land and the rights of its people are not exclusively Mad Tessie's business to change or bestow, the strutting Caudillo emeritus of the Farage Falange was quick to threaten rivers of blood; fifth-column citizens of nowhere such as the present chair of the Bar Council and a former director of public prosecutions were both quick to slap down the "idea that judges would be better employed kowtowing to the executive" as "shameful heresy from political pygmies". A former attorney general, and even a Liberal Democrat who has no little red box to keep him occupied, have also expressed a certain discomfort at the levels of scumbag press hysteria; fortunately, however, an orificial spokesbeing for Downing Street does not believe the British judiciary is being undermined, and evidently considered any comment on newspaper coverage to be an act of lèse-Rupert.

The Lions' Share

We shall remember those who fought and died
For our security and Britishness
And honour and low taxes, nothing less.
I wear my paper whatsit with due pride
So all will know that I am right on-side
To guard the realm from future nastiness;
Because we would be in a dreadful mess
Should soldiers kill again when someone lied.

A donkey's bray towards the prides he slew;
A charitable crutch for those who tamed
The beastly Hun! Now let our nation see
Your proud concurrence with compassion's view
That all the widows, orphans and the maimed
Should live on charity, and not off me.

Tessie Grubber

Rehabilitating Recidivism

Compassionate Conservatism, as formulated and practised by the late Head Boy, decrees that everyone above a certain income bracket deserves a second chance; and it appears that the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK is prepared to show similar clemency in the case of the environmental criminals who have spent the past few years steadily poisoning the plebs. Pollution levels from nitrogen dioxide have been illegal since 2010, much to the indignation of Tim Farron, whose party during the Conservative administration of the time was evidently out the back mending a puncture on Boris Johnson's bicycle. The Government was defeated in court over the pollution levels eighteen months ago; it promised to mend its ways and has now been hauled back into court and defeated again because it has continued to break the law. In line with the present religious orthodoxy, ministers relied on projections which accentuated the positive and didn't do the country down, while treating with appropriate disdain the nasty, pessimistic, unpatriotic opinions of people who merely knew what they were talking about. Fortunately, as in the cases of Coulson, Hunt, Fox and others of similar fragrancy, the provisions of compassionate Conservatism decree that mistakes are there to be learned from, and even promoted for; especially if they are the tough, ambitious, patriotic sort of mistakes that can lead to fifty thousand excess deaths a year.

Within Measurable Distance of its End

I am sure we all remember the War on Terror, with its concomitant necessity for ridding Iraq of the weapons of mass nonexistence and for removing Saddam Hussein, than whom few things could be worse except, possibly, various things which the forces of Western civilisation actually managed to achieve. Among the more spectacular results of that particular crusade was the emergence of the Fighting Islamic Sons of Tony, from whom Mosul is expected soon to be liberated by "Iraq's most elite counter-terrorism division", as Britain's leading liberal newspaper gung-hoes it. Civilian casualties are expected; not because civilians inevitably get killed in wars, but because the enemy stands accused of using them as human shields, in order to hinder the projectiles of democracy upon their liberating trajectories and possibly mess up the whole business yet again. The assault also has a certain wider significance, in that it will undoubtedly be seen by the forces of Western civilisation as an excuse for more wog-bombing, if it fails; or conversely, if it succeeds, as an excuse for more wog-bombing.