The Curmudgeon

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

Friday, June 30, 2017

Fiendish Foreign Plots

Like krieg-blitzing stormtroopers sneaking around the Maginot Line, the fiendish Euro-wogs continue their gratuitous and self-destructive attacks on the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. Rather than muddling through in buccaneering entrepreneurship, the Euro-wogs have the gall to be making plans for all sorts of contingencies, including the rather unlikely one of Britain's newly-sovereign lords and masters having a sudden attack of political maturity. The Empire itself, of course, has managed very well without such disreputable foreign tactics ever since the Bullingdon Club pushed through its exercise in party management without troubling to allow for its going wrong: an approach which has previously entertained the world with such glories of Britishness as the Iraq adventure, Operation Market Garden and the last rah-rah of Captain Scott. As a diplomat from "a country close to the UK" pointed out, the UK's cockroach infestation will most likely be solved when the economy collapses again: since the EU's economic health is now improving, all those nasty plumbers and nurses will either stay in their native lands or migrate to countries where the environment is less hostile than in our free, open, tolerant, Saudi-serving, Trumpster-licking mother of democracies.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

We're Not Sorry, and We Won't Tell You Why

A couple of beastly foreigners continue to persist in their vindictive campaign against the Reverend Blair's chief castrato for the Bush Administration, whom they accuse of knowing about the activities of MI6. With the present joke incumbent at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns such an idea attains rather plausible deniability; but the Reverend Blair's little henchbeing had certain pretensions to seriousness which, however hopelessly out of date in the age of Brexit, have still come back to haunt him. His persecutors are a Libyan dissident and his Moroccan wife who, as part of the war for peace, freedom, democracy and enlightened British values, were abducted and handed over to some rather rough employees of the Reverend Blair's second-best chum Colonel Gaddafi. The plaintiffs have displayed the low, mean cunning characteristic of Britain-hating foreign types: they have said they will settle for £1 in damages and an unreserved apology from the British Government. This is of course out of the question: Her Majesty's Government never apologises about anything until the perpetrators are safely dead and have buildings named after them, while recent progress on Brexit means that the amount of money at stake could vary considerably, depending on whether it were paid at present rates or at sterling's value four years ago, when the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns was refusing to accept that the case should be heard at all. Now that the matter has reached the high court, lawyers for Her Majesty's Government and its obedient henchbeings are demanding that the case be heard in secret. The reasons for this are so innocent and above-board that the Government refuses to say what they are; its pretext being the ongoing legal proceedings whose validity the Government has spent the last four years refusing to recognise.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Britain's Got Bottle

Some people are never satisfied. Even after the proud and noble sight of Tin-Pot Tessie holding hands with the Trumpster; even with the Conservatives' dream of a frackers' free-for-all with no red tape to choke the methane from our water-pipes; even now that the Department of the Environment has been passed from the gormless Andrea Leadsom to the jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove, there are still those who complain that Britain's leadership as regards green crap is in some sort of peril. Thanks to decades of entrepreneurial buccaneering, there is a growing shortage of drinkable water; this has led to an explosion in the market for bottled water, and hence for plastic bottles. Strange as it may seem, not all of these empty, transparent, brittle and environmentally-unfriendly vessels turn into right-wing politicians; the less lucky are disposed of in landfills and the sea, where their components can enter the food chain and contribute to the growing shortage of drinkable water. The Euro-wogs seem to be under the dual misconception (a) that this natural and beautiful process will affect people who matter, rather than the kind of expendables who live in places like Grenfell Tower; and (b) that the problem can be solved by telling corporations what to do. Britain, as always, has a much better idea but won't tell anybody what it is; and even after David Davis' recent victories at the Brexit negotiations, there are still some citizens of nowhere for whom that isn't good enough.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The Will to Win

In these times of turbulence, it is reassuring to see that the Liberal Democrats remain a bedrock of stability in their slavish emulation of the Conservatives. Following the recent martyrdom of St Timothy, all possible contenders for the leadership have bowed out one by one, leaving the former Secretary of State for Mates' Rates in line for an unopposed coronation without any of that destabilising nonsense about liberalism or democracy. After the inexperienced Jo Swinson and the former Deputy Conservative doormat for health, Norman Lamb, the last to go is Ed Davey, the former Deputy Conservative doormat for energy, knighted two years ago for services to the Bullingdon Club. Davey cited his wish to spend more time with his family and see his severely disabled son grow up without suffering too many of the indignities Ed Davey and his party have helped inflict on the severely disabled children of less hard-working families than their own. But who would have thought that the Liberal Democrats, having sold out their principles with all the energy of Philip Green squirming out of a financial obligation, would suddenly come over so unambitious? To watch them politely getting out of each other's way, one would almost think nobody wanted to lead a sweaty little handful of tainted Tory placemen.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Renewable Vote Initiative

In a renewed orgasmification of strength and stability, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has gone away with the fairy-bashers, shaken the magic bigot tree and given the pot of gold for a handful of dust. Since the DUP would never bring down the Government, agreement or no agreement, because by so doing they would bring to power a Sinn Féin sympathiser with the same initials as Jesus Christ, the Conservative and Unionist Party has agreed to pay them several times the cost of Arlene Foster's little indiscretion as a reward. As often happens with the Not Awfully Bright Party's cunning plans, the problems are already beginning to show, with all the other uppity Celts demanding a handout as well; even the Liberal Democrats, who propped up the Conservatives for five years at what must, by comparison, be considered bargain rates, may finally stop hanging around the rose garden. "While our schools are crumbling and our NHS is in crisis, Theresa May chooses to throw cash at ten MPs in a grubby attempt to keep her cabinet squatting in No 10," squealed the recently-martyred Tim Farron, whose party's noble record of voting against cuts to health and education between 2010 and 2015 is doubtless a matter of record somewhere or other. Perhaps some of the money to pay the terrorist-supporting homophobes of the DUP may be found in the profits from arming the terrorist-supporting homophobes of the head-chopping House of Saud; although it remains as yet unclear how long the back-bench baboons will be able to wait before demanding their own hundred million apiece for keeping the dead-eyed warden in office.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Diplomatising Above Our Weight

Britain's glorious allies, the head-chopping House of Saud, have delivered an ultimatum to Qatar, demanding that al-Jazeera be closed and that Qatar sever ties with Iran and with anyone else of whom the head-chopping House of Saud does not happen to approve. Qatar is already subject to a trade and diplomatic blockade by the liberators of Yemen and their allies, and will face unspecified further consequences unless it complies within ten days. The response from Britain's joke Foreign Secretary was surprisingly muted, with no reference to Nazi-style punishment beatings or even to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's notoriously acrimonious correspondence with plucky little Serbia. Instead, the Imperial Haystack eructated the usual blather about the need for all sides to be a bit more measured and realistic, and for somebody or other to do something. It remains as yet unclear what practical measures the Imperial Haystack will be adopting to ensure that Britain's glorious allies in the head-chopping House of Saud consent to be led by his words, rather than by his example.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

A Devilish Bargain

Today is the hundred and seventy-fifth birthday of Ambrose Bierce - soldier, satirist, poet and the world's second greatest lexicographer. Send me your email address (pchallinor at madasafish dot com) for a free PDF of this definitive rip-off. Samples are available here and at various other points on the blog. This Mephistophelian offer expires at midnight. Should you choose to accept it, I won't use your email address for any other purpose, but cannot guarantee the state of your soul.

Friday, June 23, 2017

Insular Concerns

Britain's inexorable progress towards the glories of a recrudescent Empire has been meanly and poltroonishly stalled by the uppity wogs at the United Nations. Despite the subtle statesmanship and famous diplomatic skills of Boris Johnson, the Euro-wogs once more refused to acknowledge their debt of liberation from rule by some friends of the Daily Mail, and the general assembly voted ninety-four to fifteen in favour of going to the international court of justice over the status of the Chagos Islands. The islands were stolen from their inhabitants half a century ago in order to make way for an American military base, later to be gloriously utilised in the CIA's post-9/11 programme of kidnap and torture. The Chagossians have spent the intervening period under the delusion that they have some sort of right to take back control, even though the Other Milibeing, during his small and ugly tenure as Minister for US interests in Britain, declared the territory a marine protection zone so that even if the natives were able to return, they wouldn't be able to eat. Nevertheless, Britain has promised to return the islands to Mauritian sovereignty when they are no longer required for defence purposes; but since defence purposes by definition require everything and everyone, all the time and for all time, a specific date is understandably hard to come by. As rulings by the international court of justice are strictly for lesser breeds, any verdict will be purely advisory; but the British representative at the general assembly took it upon himself to threaten that many nations "could come to regret" the precedent being set. In a departure from the usual protocol on Gibraltar, the Falklands and related matters, nobody from the Conservative Party has yet suggested sending a task force to chastise Mauritius; most likely because very few of the party's back-bench baboons have ever heard of it.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Protecting Proper Families

Another enemy of the people has victimised the hard-working families of Britain's sterling yeomanry by ruling the benefits cap unlawful, at least as applied to single parents with children under the age of two years. Although such morally dubious human resources are not officially required to seek employment, the Department of Workfare and Privation imposed the cap anyway, in what was touted (or envisaged, as the resident psychic at Britain's leading liberal newspaper hath it) as an "incentive" to chivvy the benighted creatures into bettering themselves. A high court judge has proclaimed that the policy causes "real misery to no good purpose," even though two of the four plaintiffs hadn't even been made homeless because of domestic violence. As one would expect from a ministry so famously concerned with saving the taxpayers money, the Department of Workfare and Privation has resolved to spend more taxpayers' money appealing against the judgement.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Game Little Chaps

More than two thousand British jobs have been saved in the Mediterranean so far this year, thanks in large part to the glorious wog-bombing of Libya facilitated by the late Head Boy and his little yellow chums. On World Refugee Day alone, three boats are known to have sunk, scattering to the sea their swarming cargoes of potential parasites on the DWP's charity. From those three boats alone a hundred and twenty-nine jobs were saved; and the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands continues to exert its soft power in the name of British values by training coastguards for the almost equally strong and stable Libyan Government of National Accord. Despite the cool, professional examples set by their liberators and teachers, the Libyan coastguards have been denounced by Human Rights Watch for reckless conduct and for violating international law; evidently their absorption of our buccaneering entrepreneurialism has been a little too thorough for some. The poor brown buggers never quite seem to get it right, do they? If it weren't for all that oil, one might wonder why we bothered.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Cuppy-Duppy Heebie-Jeebies

While the blithering prima donna David Davis was demonstrating to the Euro-wogs precisely who is in charge of the Brexit agenda (the Euro-wogs, for those who came in late), a somewhat more important set of negotiations was taking place on the mainland. The process of uncoupling the British Empire from its biggest market and cleansing the pernicious Brussels odour from forty years' worth of legislation is, of course, a mere bagatelle compared with the need to prop up the dead-eyed warden's zombie government long enough for her to carry the can for the recently-commenced two-year train wreck and allow a fresh mask of near-coherence and partial competence to be plastered on more or less securely once she's been given the boot. Hence the ongoing talks between the Conservative and Unionist Party and its new-found, gay-baiting, terrorist-sympathising, young-earther chums in the Democratic Unionist Party. The uppity colonials have declared themselves unimpressed with the level of focus which the Conservatives have brought to the table: presumably the attention-deficient yak-yak of the Gove-Johnson kindergarten mingled with the slack-jawed droolery of a Leadsom-Hammond coffee morning, or some similarly winning combination. Senior DUP sources are whining about being taken for granted, and complaining about the backbiting baboons on the back benches. It appears, disturbingly enough, that the horse-trading skills of the blithering prima donna David Davis are not only typical among denizens of the Conservative and Unionist Party, but actually superior.

Monday, June 19, 2017

The Lord Giveth

Be careful what you pray for. There can be little doubt, after the Grenfell Tower disaster of public relations, that the vicar's daughter has been petitioning her mean little God for a nice, noisy terrorist attack that would enable her to march into another Cobra meeting and announce the usual prompt and decisive measures to censor the internet, introduce seven-day policing, compel NHS maternity units to detect radical Muslim foetuses via ultrasound, etc., etc. But as Esau, Jephthah and the Crucified One discovered to their cost, God is nothing if not whimsical: the dead-eyed warden got her terrorism, but the victims were attending a mosque and the perpetrator was a pure-bred white Briton who had to be saved from some have-a-go heroes by an imam reminding them that it's Ramadan. Still, there have also been more fortunate results; not least the fact that the tautological tyrant-queen has deigned to elaborate upon the meaning of counter-terrorism (viz. counter-terrorism). Now that Tin-Pot Tessie has clarified that "especially Muslims" means "including Islamophobes," the politically-correct citizens of nowhere will look awfully silly, and there should be few if any problems with such strong and stable measures as taking all British Muslims into the protective custody of those efficient G4S people, or fitting every mosque in the country with CCTV for the viewing of Special Branch, MI5 and the Home Office.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Report from an Inquiry

Prime Minister, you're busy and we'll try to keep this short.
We're sorry you have waited fifteen years for this report.
We hoped to work for longer, as we recognise it's true
These verdicts turn out best when no-one's left alive to sue.
The cladding we found flammable, although we understand
It was the cheaper option, and was only slightly banned;
The fire brigades heroic and blah-blah, and what is more,
Quite likely more efficient than they might have been before.
It's true that certain persons warned the systems didn't suit;
But they were merely experts, and were qualified to boot.
Although with hindsight we might say there's cause for some regret,
The country must draw lines, and carry on and soon forget.
The mopping-up is nearly done, the rich folk on the mend,
The neighbourhood reformed, and all the protests at an end.
Those noisy types who fouled the Royal Borough with their row
Have all been relocated, so the streets are cleaner now.
And, though we lost some lower-class resources to the flame,
This isn't quite the sort of thing where anyone's to blame;
For even if we had some fool to send out and be shot,
The cost of prosecution might deprive him of his yacht.
We recommend that things be learned, as Government prefers;
And trust there'll be less fuss the next time all of this occurs.

The Barwell Commission

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Tough Times at the Trough

One of the least appetising things about the Grenfell Tower tragedy, apart from its distraction of the populace from the Trooping of the Colour, is that certain elements will insist on using it to gain political capital. The residents of Grenfell Tower have had their homes burned, their friends and neighbours killed, their concerns ignored and their safety endangered; their re-housing is in doubt and the Prime Minister has no time for them, and yet Jeremy Corbyn, Sadiq Khan and a few other extremists have had the nerve to go out there and make them angry. The Imperial Haystack and some of its chums in the scumbag press have been caterwauling about the unscrupulous cynicism of it all, as compared with the local council which seems to be rising above the fray by treating the whole affair with Bullingdonian insouciance. Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Expenses-claiming Conservative Party, invigorated by its recent electoral triumph, is morally indignant at the dead-eyed warden's inability to wring sufficient advantage from this near-terroristic unificatory opportunification. "We have a really difficult problem inside the Commons and tough times with this sort of emergency coming up outside," mourned a former minister who apparently declined to be named, perhaps for fear that their noble record of persistent opposition to the bonfire of red tape might count against them. It's a most inconvenient business all round.

Friday, June 16, 2017

And Manly Hearts to Flexibly Pragmatise for Optimal Potentiality

In accordance with the Conservatives' policy of entering the most important and complex set of negotiations since 1945 unburdened by coherent aims, plans or a British government to speak of, the empty suit at the Treasury today said nothing at all, in remarks that were construed by Britain's leading liberal newspaper as signalling the empty suit's desire to leave the EU while remaining in the profitable bits. Although the broad principles of the Conservative position are unchanged, the empty suit said that the UK team would take a pragmatic approach in trying to help the Euro-wogs see where they've been confused all this time. As of yesterday, the blathering prima donna in charge of cutting off the Continent still had not deigned to submit an opening position, which to uncharitable persons of a saboteureal bent might seem like taking pragmatistic flexibilitisation a bit far. Still, with a bit of intellectual heaving the Conservatives might be able to scrawl a bit of rah-rah, wogs-out and I-want-I-want on the back of an envelope by Monday. It remains to be seen whether the Euro-wogs will be sufficiently flexible and pragmatic to reciprocate in kind.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Security Reasons

Though Tin-Pot Tessie's advisers may have changed, the advice clearly has not: at all costs, avoid contact with angry proles. The dead-eyed warden visited the scene of the Grenfell Tower disaster, and had herself photographed in a number of contorted postures ("hand to chin, Prime Minister - that means thoughtful, remember"), surrounded by emergency service crews in order to show, presumably, that the Osbornomic miracle and the London Haystack have left one or two behind. Apparently she even spoke to some of them, probably about further efficiency savings given the high ratio of personnel on the ground relative to the expendability of the combusted resources. She was protected at all times against encountering any of the surviving local fauna; doubtless her handlers had noticed that there were reports of Muslims in the vicinity.

The sordid little stunt was greeted with expectable derision; but since nobody is going to let Tin-Pot Tessie fight another election her sub-Brownian personal appeal hardly matters any more. Now that the Conservatives have unilaterally abrogated the Good Friday agreement, they can cling onto office for at least a few months longer and allow the dead-eyed warden either to improve her own performance or else to sink low enough that Amber Rudd, David Davis or Philip Hammond will start looking like reasonable alternatives. By then the Grenfell Tower residents and their unrefined habits will have been deported from Kensington and subsumed once more into the faceless mass of swarming cockroaches (one of the dead was, in fact, a Syrian refugee). An election in the autumn, when students are changing addresses, could well have a salutary effect on the electorally immature; and until the great day dawns, there is really no reason to risk anyone dangling the dead-eyed warden from a lamp-post unless absolutely necessary.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Political Decency

There is, of course, nothing so distasteful and untimely as attempting to politicise a tragedy. On the very day of the Grenfell Tower disaster, it would be gratuitously offensive to draw attention to Gavin Barwell, the noted self-help author for politicians fighting marginal seats who has now been appointed as the dead-eyed warden's Lord High Everything Else. A housing minister before he lost his marginal seat, Barwell delayed a fire safety review which had already been delayed several years; doubtless his caution was justified given that mere experts seem to have meddled in the review's preparation. Equally premature and boorish would be any mention of the seven years' worth of cuts to fire services by the Bullingdon Club and their little orange enablers, including the now martyred Tim Farron and the London Haystack as was, who today sent his thoughts and prayers to the victims of the fire. Thoughts and prayers are, after all, cheap. It would unquestionably be wrong to scavenge political capital by recalling that legislation forcing landlords to keep their properties fit for human habitation was brought before Parliament not long ago, to be voted down by the party of apolitical capital. Perhaps worst of all, in light of the disappointingly non-terroristic and un-Cobra-worthy nature of the disaster, would be to hint that certain strange, un-British, white-genocidal customs may occasionally save a life. These matters are not appropriate for a day such as today, and it is simply not decent to raise them.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Angst Essen Seele Auf

Despite the Imperial Haystack's frequent and statesmanlike references to the Nazis, and despite several improving British and Commonwealth anniversaries in recent years, it appears that more and more Britons are losing track of who won the war. As a result of the past years' assertion of British values, the number of Britons taking German citizenship has risen more than threefold, and is expected to rise further next year. There being, by definition, no such thing as a British migrant, most of the deserters are expatriates who have somehow failed to appreciate the subtlety of Tin-Pot Tessie's manoeuvres to secure the best deal. They will, of course, be laughing on the other side of their faces when they realise that a swarming horde of Turks is bearing down upon them, exactly as prophesied during the referendum by the strutting then-Caudillo of the Farage Falange. And how they will pine for the green fields and homely castles of Albion, once they realise what language German people talk on the bus!

Monday, June 12, 2017

Planet Murdoch's Little Green Man

When it comes to wishy-washy so-called problems like keeping the planet habitable, the attitude of the Conservative Party is generally plain enough. They may have passed the Clean Air Act as recently as sixty years ago, and I would be the last to deny my own expenses claimant's regular contributions to the recycling industry; but from the London Haystack's intense relaxation over pleb-killing city air, to the Bullingdon Club's kicking of the solar industry, to Tin-Pot Tessie's benign indulgence of the Trumpster, to her abolition of the relevant ministry and her appointment as Environment Secretary of the gormless Andrea Leadsom, the hints have been about as subtle as one of the Rothermere Stürmer's more indignant headlines. Hence it should come as no surprise that, presumably by the will of the deity Rupert Murdoch, the vicar's daughter has recalled to state office the jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove. As a journalist much praised by other journalists for his formidable intellect and irresistible personal charm, Gove's actual qualifications for the post seem to be mainly the possibility that he is a bit less dim than Leadsom; much as his main qualification for the post of Justice Secretary was being possibly a bit less dim than Chris Graybeing. Whatever else he may be, the jabbering homunculus is clearly not the sort of chap for o'erleaping the high bars; which could lead to some forthright exchanges of views when he tries to persuade Britain's farmers that league tables, hard work and Bibles autographed by himself are a jolly sight more rah-rah than whatever silly old subsidies they used to get from their now gloriously deposed overlords in Strasbourg.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

A Royal Pussy

Alas, the greatest diplomatic coup of Tin-Pot Tessie's administration seems to have been postponed. It will be remembered that only a few days after several people turned up for the Trumpster's inauguration, and after the Trumpster himself had completed his discussions with the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange, the dead-eyed warden was eventually allowed into the wendy-house, only to be so overwhelmed by the Presence that she invited the Trumpster for a state visit to Britain. In the ensuing six months, the Trumpster hasn't yet condescended to appoint an ambassador to his greatest little ally in the world, although he has made his appreciation known in any number of unobtrusive ways: in the past couple of weeks alone, for example, he has pulled the USA out of the Paris climate agreement and used the London terror attacks as an excuse to insult the city's Muslim mayor. Now, however, he seems to be losing his enthusiasm; evidently the rabid tribble sitting on his head has been squeaking insidious hints that his popularity is not all that it might be, even in the Recrudescent Global Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. Hence, despite the Conservative and Unionist Party's present enthusiasm for all things orange, the much-pestered benefits claimant Mrs Battenberg may have to wait a while longer before she feels that special little handshake.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

The Unspeakable Pursued by the Unelectable

As one would expect, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has been quick to learn the all-important lesson from Thursday's little mishap: namely that she was right all along. Besides seeking the magic bigot tree across the water, Tin-Pot Tessie proposes decisive action to regulate those extremist, pornographic social media which did so much to subvert the forthright mega-decibel sanity of ordinary newspaper barons. As noted by Mr Justice Stapley, in terms of its rationality, feasibility and general avoidance of pedal auto-fusillade this whole idea is more or less standard quality for the modern Conservative and Unionist Party. It remains to be seen whether the blithering prima donna David Davis, who resigned from the late Head Boy's shadow cabinet and forced a vanity by-election ostensibly over civil liberties, will regard the move as his cue to sharpen a knife for that area of Tessie's rear portions which isn't shielded by the Kick Me sign.

Friday, June 09, 2017

About That Mandate

Well, that was fun, wasn't it? There were a few minor disappointments: the flatulent filibust Philip Davies seemed to be out at one point but wasn't; the Clegg-pledging race-baiter Amber Rudd stayed in, apparently by adopting the EU tactic of ordering recounts until the proper result was reached; the eminently forgettable Tim Farron hung on with his majority reduced to a perfect number; and our own Mike Freer squeaked back in as well. On the other hand, Ben Gummer, the Minister for Being the Son of a Former Minister, had to eat the poisoned hamburger; and Nick Clegg, essentially a dead man walking since Conservative tactical voters graciously kept him at the trough in 2015, was finally consigned to the oblivion he has so diligently earned.

Best of all, Tin-Pot Tessie's contempt for the public has been richly repaid in kind, though not quite richly enough to make her take the hint and clear out. The neoliberal wing of the Labour Party may possibly have grasped that it can sometimes pay to oppose the Conservatives, and occasionally even to outflank them from the left rather than the right; certainly we may hope that the party's rich crop of bland careerists will be re-aligning their self-interest in some interesting new directions.

In the meantime, the dead-eyed warden herself is determined to combine the best of all worlds and build a strong and stable coalition of chaos with the supporters of some Irish terrorists. The Democratic Unionist Party includes uterus-Nazis and climate change deniers; but these will cause no great qualms for the woman who couldn't wait a week before inviting the Trumpster to grab the Queen by the corgis. Like Tin-Pot Tessie, Arlene Foster has experience of paying for a calamitous blunder by simply staying in office and refusing to budge; but the Democratic Unionists are slightly better informed than David Davis about the state of the border with the Irish Republic, and they are a good deal less sanguine than the Conservatives about the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal. Assuming the Government survives at all, it seems a safe bet that austerity is over for at least some of Northern Ireland; everything else, including more than a few bowels, remains in a state of flux.

Thursday, June 08, 2017

Carrying On

Adversity's the social glue
That keeps our British values true;
What else but fear and deprivation
Have kept us going as a nation?
What else but due and dire suspicion
Have gained us our deserved position
Of lordship over Huns and Frogs,
And all those other beastly wogs?
And so, when terrorists attack,
Shall Not-A-Racist-But hold back
From seeking out and hunting down
The veiled, the covered and the brown?

Mobber Jingo

Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Happy Endings

As everyone knows who has kept company with "life-affirming" persons, shared public transport with a child or awaited the profitable departure of a wealthy relative, death is generally underrated. Its virtues are not often discussed even with regard to the demise of others; nevertheless, some brave psychological researchers at the University of North Carolina have proclaimed that one's own death can also be a positive experience. Their conclusion is based on word-counts from a representative sample of humanity, comprising terminally ill bloggers and Texas death row inmates. The writings of these lucky folk were found to be increasingly positive in emotional tone as the end approached, "with an increased focus on meaningful (sic) topics such as family and religion." Since there is self-evidently no such human activity as bravado or false optimism, especially on the internet or on death row in Texas, it appears self-evident that dying can be nice after all; though the question remains how many members of the psychology department at the University of North Carolina would care to volunteer for the privilege.

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

This Chancred Isle

Before Macdonald's, Fox News or Donald Trump, America gave the world syphilis, which is now a bigger hit in England than at any time since 1949. The highest-risk groups are men who have sex with other men, which will add a pleasantly moralistic aspect to this latest triumph of efficiency savings in health and education. There is a certain historical poetry in the mention of 1949, the year after the birth of the NHS, given the approaching demise of that institution thanks to the votes of Brexit-happy baby-boomers seeking immunity from the Strasbourg sickness; and few things could be more appropriate than a resurgence of the pox given Thursday's likely win for the twitching, jabbering, corruption-spewing embodiment of the nation's general paresis.

Monday, June 05, 2017

Standing Together

Britain's tiniest ally in the war against terrorism reacted to the London attacks in his usual statesmanlike fashion, by attacking the mayor of London over something the mayor of London had not said. It is possible that this caused some small annoyance to the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK, especially if she has been hoping to glamour up the last few days of her campaign with the polished wog-bashing wit of Zac Goldsmith. Nevertheless, the dead-eyed warden is standing firm against calls to put off the Trumpster's scheduled state visit, which was extended to him within minutes of Tin-Pot Tessie laboriously hauling his attention away from the polished wog-bashing wit of Nigel Farage. The late Head Boy took more than two years to extend a similar honour to Barack Obama; presumably that was the time required for Tin-Pot Tessie's Home Office to ascertain that Obama, in spite of his regrettable melanin content, was neither a health tourist nor a despoiler for nefarious migratory purposes of decent white working-class women. The Trumpster, by contrast, represents just the sort of entrepreneurial buccaneerage that the Conservative Party admires in other defenders of British values, such as Rupert Murdoch, Rodrigo Duterte and the head-chopping House of Saud.

Sunday, June 04, 2017

Bloody, Difficult and Embarrassing

In a characteristic gesture of respect to the victims of yesterday's terrorist attack, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has suspended election campaigning after the usual fashion, by giving a policy speech. Since there are no plans to restore the cuts she made to the police (she thinks we can best fight terrorism by reducing the police to those 1970s levels which the IRA found so convenient), there will need to be censorship of the internet and increased profits for those efficient people at Serco and G4S. The dead-eyed warden denounced the ideology of Islamist terrorism as a "perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth" which cannot be defeated by wog-bombing alone; but she seems to have been a bit reticent on what is to be gained by selling weapons to the head-chopping House of Saud, which is the biggest, richest and most influential sponsor of that same ideology.

Besides the usual casual insult ("tribute" in Newspeak) to the police and emergency services which her government has been kicking to pieces for the past seven years, the dead-eyed warden clunked into headmistress-at-morning-assembly mode and lectured the public for being too tolerant of the enemy within. From Muslims who show insufficient enthusiasm in spying on their neighbours, to teachers who seem to think the necessity of feeding their charges outweighs that of denouncing them to MI5, everyone needs to be far more robust and engage in some "difficult, and often embarrassing, conversations." It remains to be seen how many such conversations will be sufficiently embarrassing to include the question of who was in government, and who was Home Secretary, while all this ghastly tolerance was going on.

Saturday, June 03, 2017

The Thrifty and the Shifty

Is there no end to the perfidy of mere experts? Some irresponsible and backsliding persons have carried out research into the levels of tax-dodging practised by the richest households, even though we have it on the authority of Boris Johnson that the perils of such households in today's world are equivalent to the perils faced by European Jews during the rise of the original, non-banana-straightening Nazis. The researchers found that the richest households dodge more than ten times as much tax as their persecutors in the wider population; however, their research is flawed by being restricted only to the Scandinavian countries, where the privacy of the wealthy counts for nearly as little as the proles' privacy in the United Kingdom. Any statistics which omit the weapons-grade innocence of British squillionaires' magic money tree must necessarily be a grotesque distortion of the truth; and given such disregard for the facts, one must wonder what atrocities will accompany the next stage of this pogrom. Isolation from the luxury of contact with the lower classes, except perhaps for a servant or two? Forcible bling and compulsory media ownership? Their own private climate? When the politics of envy take hold, nothing is too awful to contemplate.

Friday, June 02, 2017

Special Relationships

As is well known, every President of the United States is constitutionally entitled to the services of a weird little creature who bounces around endorsing the incumbent's every word and proclaiming how generally wonderful everything is and why it's all thanks to the wisdom of the White House. As every American schoolchild learns in first-grade civics, the official title of that useful flunkey is First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But the President has other privileges too; notably that of appointing a vice-president, whose main constitutional function is to protect the President against possible impeachment or assassination by persuading the American people that, no matter how incompetent, crooked or fascistic the incumbent may be, things would be a good deal worse should the deputy be forced to take over.

Being vice-president to the Trumpster, Mike Pence has his work cut out; but the US withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement has enabled him to show his mettle by proclaiming that "for some reason, this issue of climate change has emerged as a paramount issue for the left" - such notorious communists as the German, French and Italian leaders, the chief executive officers of Shell and British Petroleum, and the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson. The Trumpster's aim, if such a term can be applied to the Trumpster's cubicle-spraying approach, appears to be the overruling of those who would invest in renewable energy and the restoration of the US coal industry; Mike Pence duly babbled that the Trump administration has "demonstrated real leadership and real progress" in the battle against non-Fox News facts.

Asked what efforts she had made towards influencing the Trumpster's decision, in her capacity as a major American ally second only to the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK responded that the right Brexit deal was the only answer to everything, and that only by quavering and gurning in our bunkers can we hope to achieve our proper place in the world. The Secretary of State for the Environment is believed to be looking for her wellies.

Thursday, June 01, 2017

Her Very Own

I am in receipt of another leaflet from the local, no-nonsense, straight-talking Conservative candidate, Mike Freer. In part. it rehashes the first instalment, with the same touting of the local, no-nonsense, straight-talking ways of Mike Freer, together with a bit more about the local, no-nonsense, straight-talking ways of Mike Freer. An admittedly interesting additional detail is that Mike Freer sometimes operates out of a mobile home; which is certainly apt enough given the Conservative Party's wholehearted adoption of the trailer-trash mentality embodied in its great ally, the Trumpster.

One major difference is that this offering eschews the local voices of local persons for whom the local Mike Freer has got so many no-nonsense local things done, and in their place includes a national proclamation from the dead-eyed warden herself. Taking out the blather and the bombast and the putting forward of pious aspirations as though they were actual plans, the gist of it seems to be that Jeremy Corbyn isn't worth the risk - this from the woman who appointed Boris Johnson to one of the great offices of state, and who apparently believes that leaving the EU without a deal is a reasonable option. In a charming personal touch, she also refers to her fellow ex-Remainer Mike Freer as "my candidate" - my, how that must have made him glow.

What makes this leaflet truly great, of course, is the way in which it has followed the gradual revelation, over the past few days, that Mike Freer's owner is nearly as brilliant at impersonating a human being as the last gurning authoritarian preacher-spawn to occupy Downing Street, the god-and-everybody-else-forsaken Gordon Brown. Better yet, only yesterday we had the strong and stable spectacle of Tin-Pot Tessie cowering in her bunker while ordering the obnoxious but hapless (and very recently bereaved) Amber Rudd to the front line in her place. The local food bank isn't the only thing about which Mike Freer is too modest: besides and beyond his long-ago laurels for fiscal responsibility, his sense of comic timing is impeccable.