Let Us Reason Together

In the wake of the Gard case, an official spokesbeing for the Creator of mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome has been quick to demonstrate the moral courage and intellectual heft of the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury took the painful affair as an opportunity to wag his finger at those nasty materialistic rationalists who think that our actions might be best determined by reason and evidence rather than by hormones and priests. It is perhaps unfair to chide a man for defending irrationalism when unreason is his daily bread; but the Archbishop of Canterbury's thought for the day seems to fall a little short in terms of justifying the ways of God to man. For example, if we admit the irrational but Gospel truth that a sparrow cannot fall to earth without the knowledge of the Archbishop's invisible employer, how rational are we permitted to be in our conclusions as to the ultimate responsibility for dead babies and the suffering that results? Should those who suffer not be rebuked for failing to rejoice in the will of their Father? He is, after all, rather well known for making lofty moral points by killing children, whether His own or those of others. If the Gard calvary has such an improving place in the divine plan, then the Archbishop's place is to defend and praise the death of Charlie Gard; if not, then the Archbishop's invisible employer is not the almighty Creator of mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, but a feeble and useless fraud whose mercy towards His children cannot even stretch to keeping a few proteins in order. Or am I being too reasonable?

Simple Solutions

Mere economists have attempted to undermine the clarity and simplicity of British independence from the Euro-wogs by implying that taking back control of our borders will somehow mean doing lots of things for ourselves which we haven't had to worry about for a while. Although Her Majesty's Government has made its wishes perfectly clear (viz. all the benefits of EU membership with none of the obligations, as per usual), there still seems to be some doubt among the unpatriotic and backsliding as to whether such an arrangement will be practicable. Such boorish nit-picking was given appropriately short shrift by the Conservative MP for Dover and Deal, who is urging the Treasury to recognise that borders have nothing at all to do with immigration or security or even with the movement of solids: "with digital borders, customs clearance can be managed incredibly quickly. In Singapore, clearance takes less than a minute." A new IT system for revenue and customs was naturally agreed before the referendum, and is naturally designed to deal only with the meagre capacity left us by the interfering Euro-wogs. Smooth and rapid transition between systems is, of course, characteristic of Her Majesty's Government, particularly with regard to the use of electronically automated difference engines.

Some Recyclable Corner of a Foreign Field

Dignitaries both British and lesser, as well as a few necessary indignitaries like Theresa May, are set to commemorate the Britishness of the 320,000 more or less significant casualties at the Third Battle of Ypres. A monumental triumph of military Britishness, the British advance commenced with a British artillery bombardment which reduced the local drainage systems to a gloriously unregulated British standard of hygiene and produced a vast landscape of British humour in which thousands simply drowned and in which, perhaps most shockingly of all, even the horses were not spared. Naturally, since the operation was a British one, these practicalities had not been anticipated, let alone planned for; but five miles of territory were gained and the British (for those who came in late) eventually won the war, so it all turned out fine in the end. In a superb access of British good taste, the Royal British Legion has had some of the battlefield mud turned into commemorative pins for the guests to wear at the rah-rah, while they listen to extracts from soldiers' diaries and other works of popular entertainment. It is unclear whether any of the mud so used was analysed for human remains, in order that the relative Britishness of the pins could be taken into account when assessing their future market value.

Purely Moral

Genetic researchers have uncovered further evidence that the Canaanite genocide, as ordered by Jehovah and gleefully reported in the Old Testament, may be one of the purely moral, as opposed to historical, portions of the Bible. The archaeological record seems to indicate that the Hebrew colonisation was a slower and stealthier affair than the glorious struggle for Lebensraum depicted in the annals of the Saviour's ancestors and emulated with pious relish by so many of His loving followers. Even the gospel of Matthew implies the presence of holocaust survivors, as Jesus is depicted refusing help to an anxious mother and calling her a dog; the Saviour's vaunted mercy makes an appearance only after the woman has the presence of mind to grease its passage with flattery. The Canaanites were noted explorers and traders, with somewhat wider horizons than the fanatical bumpkins with whom the Old Testament myths presumably originated; they are even credited with inventing the first alphabet, which was no doubt something else the minions of Jehovah held against them.

Wogs Out, Facts Later

In keeping with the lunge-first-look-later policy which now serves as the Whitehall standard, the Clegg-pledging race-baiter at the Home Office has decided to launch an investigation into the effects which the swarming Euro-wog hordes have on the economy. Since the race-baiting Clegg-pledger herself roused the rabble at a recent Conservative bark-and-blather with a pledge to name and shame companies who keep too many cockroaches on the payroll, it is perhaps unsurprising that the question hadn't previously occurred to her: what, after all, are mere facts compared with the necessity for appeasing the strutting cadres of the Farage Falange? The report is expected to be completed about seven months before the country falls into the low-tax, low-wage, cheese-exporting, chlorine-chickened paradise that awaits us at the foot of the Brexit cliff; which leaves nineteen more months of hostile environment before there is any danger of mere facts showing that the ravening swarms weren't really so bad after all.

A Certain Whiff of Gove

Well, here's a thing: despite the announcement of a rah-rah new policy to start cleaning up Britain's air in as little as a quarter of a century from now, the jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove has no real intention of improving on the prole-gassing régime of his sometime chum, the erstwhile London Haystack. Blathered about with much fanfare and more or less uncritically puffed in the headlines of Britain's leading liberal newspaper, the pledge to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 turned out to be just another bit of noise in the classroom to distract from the fact that, despite having been twice dragged through the courts over the country's illegal pollution levels, the Government's silly little boys still cannot be bothered to do their homework. The jabbering homunculus has decreed that any clean-air measures coming into force before 2040 will be the sole responsibility of local authorities, with no national policy and no guidance from Westminster except, presumably, when ministers' wholly legitimate outside interests appear in peril of falling into unprofitability. If Britain is looking for a jabbering homunculus to take over the Department of the Environment purely in order to be fobbed off with responsibility for the environment, it's clear that Michael Gove is a jabbering homunculus bred from the womb of an altogether more putrid mare.

Lukewarm Orange

Some intimate spiritual associates of the Cuppy-Duppy Congregation, or at least of its ten most expensive little choirbeings, have invoked a crusade against the initials RIP. The acronym for rest in peace or requiescat in pace ("may s/he rest in peace") has managed the difficult feat of exciting the ire of the Orange Order, which has instructed true believers to the effect that use of the term is un-Biblical and un-Protestant. Since a dead person is either damned forever or else at bliss in the bosom of Ian Paisley, it stands to reason that any prayer for the peace of such a person is at best a sign of spiritual confusion, and at worst a direct contradiction of the ineffable wishes of Christianity's favourite celestial torturer.

Nevertheless, in its zeal to extirpate this despicable orthographic heresy, the Orange Order displays a disturbing tepidity. No doubt much spiritual laxness has resulted from decades of proximity to the forces of worldly Papist moderation. There does not, for example, appear to be any prohibition against the decidedly un-Protestant phrase Give us this day our daily bread, which appears in the whiny catalogue of fawning and begging once recommended by a friend of the first Pope. Unless the Protestant reformation has been irredeemably tainted by Roman decadence, it surely remains an article of faith that one's daily bread should be earned, whether by the sweat of one's brow or by the casting of one's votes. Certainly it must be blasphemous to imply that the sky-daddy of Martin Luther and Arlene Foster might wish to reconsider His mysterious distribution of sustenance to those He considers deserving.

Blob Weather

You can, of course, prove anything with mathematics; and given the combination of mere experts and electronic difference engines you might even show one or two things which the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove would prefer to edit out. The Met Office has indulged itself in precisely such mischief, generating a forecast of such dreary pessimism that it might one day come to rival the Stalinist cultural sabotage whereby the whinges and whines of Wilfred Owen gained a better reputation than the healthy rah-rah of Rupert Brooke. Despite recent floods in the south-east during 2013-14, and among less significant voters during 2015-16, the Met Office forecast predicts a greater risk of further floods in the future thanks to, of all things, climate change. Since the jabbering homunculus has consistently voted against measures to mitigate the effects of climate change, the only possible explanation is that the Met Office is engaging in fashionably nihilistic left-wing distortionism; and it can only be a matter of time before the universal panacea of privatisation is applied to rectify the bias.

Oh, the Inclusivity

As we all know, because Tin-Pot Tessie and her minions have told us so often, Her Majesty's Government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone except the undeserving. Being in some need of votes, and recognising that there may be a few transgender people who are not poor, idle, Muslim, foreign-born, Marxist or citizens of nowhere, the Government has extruded the Minister for Education, Equalities and Whatever to burble Cameronian nothings about consulting on the possibility of making it less difficult for people to change their sex. The Minister also announced a reduction in the period of chastity which is required of gay men before their filthy, sin-tainted blood becomes acceptable for donation and potential transfusion into normal hard-working families. It is to be hoped that such liberalising and enlightened measures will be received with the gratitude and humility which they indubitably warrant.

Doing Our Part

Britain's buccaneering achievements in public health continue to inspire great things from those sharers of our values in the head-chopping House of Saud. The ongoing rampage in Yemen, in which British arms dealers are characteristically punching above our weight on the international stage, has resulted in a record-breaking boom in the cholera industry. Since the war has rolled back the state, efficientised water supplies and trimmed the flab from local healthcare providers, Britain's good old Victorian chum has thrust itself to the forefront with a vigour unequalled even by the 2011 flux-fest in Haiti. About half the cases and a quarter of permanent cessations of employability are under the age of fifteen; which, if present trends continue, will make for an optimistic outlook in terms of reducing future threats to British jobs.

Crowded Out

Some thrusting managerial types at NHS England, who evidently share the Conservative Party's belief that healthcare should be for the financially deserving, have announced that they no longer intend issuing prescriptions for drugs which are available over the counter. Those who require such drugs will have to pay for them or else go without, thus providing yet another incentive for cancer patients on low incomes to take up their beds and work. Naturally, Britain's leading liberal newspaper has buried the story at the end of a piece about the withdrawal of homeopathic remedies from the NHS budget, which is expected to save a massive hundred thousand a year, or about one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of a white male at the BBC. Britain's leading liberal newspaper does not find it worthy of mention that the snake-oil subsidy is slightly less than the twenty-five million a year which the Health Service spends on hospital chaplains; nor does it quote any thoughts on how matters might be improved should the money now sprayed away on fertility treatments be spent on helping people who are, perish the thought, physically or mentally unwell.

Work is the Best Way Out of Public-Sector Poverty

Improvements in the job market are helping to ensure that the more deserving members of Britain's white, pink and puce working class have no immediate need to visit a food bank, except perhaps for sniggering purposes. Fifty-two former ministers have found gainful employment outside Parliament: an increase of almost sixty per cent on last year. It was, of course, obvious from the first that the late Head Boy viewed the highest public office in the land as little more than a networking opportunity; but other beneficiaries of our Mother of Democracies' intensely relaxed régime include the ludicrous Francis Maude, who has somehow found nine employers willing to take the risk that he will use their premises to store dangerous substances in jerry-cans; and Ed Davey, the former Deputy Conservative flunkey at the Department of Fracking and Fossil Fuels. In addition to eight other commissions, Davey has set up an "independent consultancy, which specialises in energy and climate change", though whether for or against would be difficult to tell from his record in office. Last and most self-lubricating is the Osbornomic miracle-worker himself, who has toddled into assorted sinecures and the editorship of the London Evening Fuck Theresa May; the last without deigning to consult the advisory committee on business appointments: a watchdog which guards against such derelictions by whimpering in its sleep and rubbing its gums together with almost incalculable ferocity.

We Will Defend Our Island

Despite the notorious Dubs amendment, which obliged Her Majesty's Government to strain Britain's already bulging seams by taking in swarms of junior cockroaches, the Ministry for Wog Disposal has been doing a sterling job of keeping our island safe. As long as the parliamentary wing of the Farage Falange still clings to office, sixty million buccaneering Britons will never fall victim to the dozens of child refugees waiting to swamp them. The Government initially set the limit at 350, but increased it to 480 on the grounds that the Chancellor isn't the only minister who can't count. Fortunately for the safety of our mighty yet fragile Britishness, such figures are irrelevant: the Ministry for Wog Disposal has managed to get through seven months of the present year without letting in a single child, and the relevant minister will spend some of the parliamentary recess celebrating with a little trip (purely in the public interest, of course) to Greece and Italy. Only two hundred places out of the promised pittance have been filled; but besides not endangering the British Empire or the best interests of the Cuppy-Duppy administration, "the transfers must take place in line with the national laws," in the words of the Minister for Locking 'em Up and Kicking 'em Out. Whether the minister was referring to the vicious, anti-buccaneering, Euro-wog laws of Greece and Italy, for which Her Majesty's Government has hitherto shown scant enthusiasm; or to the firm but fair laws of the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, which are explicitly designed to create a hostile environment, remains as yet unclear. No doubt the minister is well aware of the advantage of promising to take child refugees: namely that if you delay long enough the child refugees eventually turn into adult deportables, often in the space of only a few years; while refugees who are already adults can hang around for decades.

Helvetica Sans

In some of the milder samples of cinematic rah-rah about the Anglo-American defeat of the Nazi menace, a number of reluctant yet plucky little fighters end up in Switzerland; and now we can see why. Although the Swiss Confederation notoriously failed to assist Winston Churchill and his American chums in winning either World War, there is much about the country that must appeal to the patriotic citizen of Most Definitely Somewhere. Switzerland has never been a member of the European Union, which very nearly redeems its ghastly neutrality in the two official wars against the Hun; and as far as the mainstream of British opinion is concerned no country can be all bad which is full of bankers and Nazi gold. As if these advantages were not enough, the Swiss citizenship test has revealed itself as a thing of beauty to rival the hypothetical mutant offspring of Tin-Pot Tessie and the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange. The system still lags behind the British one in that naturalisation is apparently open to some marital partners regardless of income; but the fiscal deficiency is more than redeemed by objections on grounds ranging from hate crimes against cow-bells to the wearing of jogging pants without due care and attention, and being too wilfully Turkish to understand the wonders of Hornussen, Schwingen or municipal recycling systems even after a quarter-century lifetime's residence.

Between the Dead

Just for a moment, let's forget the zombies. The late George A Romero did some great things with the disciples of Anubis in two major box-office hits, an under-rated third instalment and a twenty-first-century triptych; but he also made one or two films that fall outside the walking-dead subgenre. Most of these are worth rather more than footnote status, and at least one is a masterpiece.

The masterpiece, Martin (1976), was almost certainly the first I knew of him. I saw it semi-accidentally on late-night television; I had probably heard vaguely of Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead by that time, and perhaps even seen The Crazies; but my mid-to-late teens were a pre-auteurist phase and I had no idea of the director's significance. While by no means abandoning the black comedy, social satire and genre critique of the Living Dead films, Martin attains a higher and more painful mode of horror thanks to bleak visuals, a sophisticated script and a mesmerising performance from its star, John Amplas.

Knight Riders (1981), which Romero managed to make thanks to the financial success of its immediate predecessor, Dawn of the Dead, concerns a troupe of stunt motorcycle riders trying to survive as an Arthurian tribe independent of commercial demands and middle-class values. A rivalry develops between the idealistic King Billy (Ed Harris) and the more worldly Morgan (played by Tom Savini, Romero's spurt-and-splatter effects specialist, and the director of the excellent 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake); there are obvious parallels with Romero's own need to balance his artistic agenda with commercial requirements, and the film as a whole is an appealing mix of road movie, counterculture drama and existential rumination. Like Peckinpah's Junior Bonner ("I made a film where nobody got shot, and nobody wanted to see it"), Knight Riders bled to death at the box office and Romero's next project was the resolutely commercial Stephen King comic-book portmanteau Creepshow.

Monkey Shines (1988) is slightly compromised by the producers' insistence on a hopeful epilogue, but is for the most part an effective and original experiment with the theme of the beast from within. A beta-male scientist defies his overbearing superior by carrying out an unauthorised experiment involving a quadriplegic friend and a cerebrally-enhanced spider monkey. The monkey is intended as a friend and helper, but her psychological symbiosis with the crippled young man means that she soon starts giving more help than is strictly compatible with the welfare of others. Epilogue aside, the resolution is one of Romero's most ironically ferocious, as the hero demonstrates that evolutionary ascent isn't necessarily an uplifting process.

Between the entertaining but relatively conventional Stephen King adaptation The Dark Half (1993) and the inception of the second Living Dead series, Romero's career went into suspended animation: he was able to make only Bruiser (2000), a minor work about an upsilon-male office worker who puts on a blank white mask which sharply enhances his assertiveness skills. Five years later, the Living Dead brought Romero's career back on track; but while the quality and impact of the zombie films are Romero's most obvious legacy, it would be a pity to miss the eccentric individuals that lurk among his career's shambling hordes.

Serious Business

Democracy as we know it in our Mother of Parliaments is, of course, in its infancy among the proportionally-represented Euro-wogs; which may help explain why some people still have not grasped the true significance of Britain's decision to cut the Continent adrift. Her Majesty's Government does not care about tariffs, treaties or the border between the Six Colonies and the Irish Free State; Her Majesty's Government cares about immigration and sovereignty. While mere facts appear to indicate that immigration helps the economy to grow, and while the self-pitying squeal that was the Article 50 notification explicitly recognised that British sovereignty was a non-issue, Her Majesty's Government cares about immigration and sovereignty because these are what the British people care about; or at least that vital, entrepreneurial, wogs-out and rah-rah section of the British people whose opinion is all that matters to the sensible folk. Hence the more or less complete lack of interest or attention which Her Majesty's Government has devoted to the EU negotiations: the doings of a bunch of foreigners in faraway lands are simply not relevant to the serious, adult business of keeping the Farage Falange's migrant-bashers, refugee-drowners and hijab-grabbers in continued coalition with the Cuppy-Duppies.

A Positive Case for Brexit

Since forty-eight per cent of the population consists entirely of traitors, saboteurs, citizens of nowhere and wogs, it's hardly surprising that the blithering prima donna David Davis has been equipped with a rah-rah security briefcase. Digital devices can be protected from snoopers by putting them in the fridge, but members of the modern Conservative Party tend to have limited acquaintance with fridges, which are more the natural province of the little woman or other servants. Shielded briefcases and silent watches, by contrast, are accessories that the most puce-complexioned boy-jobber can sport in good conscience. It is certainly reassuring to see that the blithering prima donna has retained his dislike of snooping in at least some circumstances, as negotiations might well collapse should Her Majesty's Government's next capitulation be prematurely revealed to the back-bench baboons.

Like a Timid, Blushing Tomato, I Humbly Solicit Your Views

The jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove has proclaimed a period in "listening mode" before its expected default to bluster, blather and name-calling. As a self-styled "shy green", its self-effacing instincts have led it to vote against whatever green measures the parliamentary wing of UKIP happens to dislike (viz. all of them) and to denounce green regulations from the EU. Our escape from such absurd diktat will, if the jabbering homunculus is to be believed, lead us into a new and wondrous era of environmental friendliness that will make the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands the dread and envy of lesser breeds. With Tin-Pot Tessie's Great Enabling Act already under hostile scrutiny, no doubt the jabbering homunculus is prepared to consider any revisions within reason. Any suggestions that don't imply interference with the legitimate entrepreneurial interests of head-chopping Saudi fossil fuel merchants and water-poisoning frackers will almost certainly not result in the jabbering homunculus dismissing the proponent as a blob. As shy greenery goes, even vegetable matter such as the blithering Owen Paterson or the gormless Andrea Leadsom could hardly say fairer than that.

Up Yours, Gustavus Adolphus Hitlerus

Some people simply cannot understand plain English. Despite everything Her Majesty's Government has done to clarify its position, there are even now some Euro-wogs who have failed to understand the perils they are courting by not giving Britain everything it wants. The Imperial Haystack has pronounced upon the subject of paying our dues: "go whistle" as he phrased it with the usual restaurant-smashing diplomacy. The blithering prima donna David Davis has preened and postured with his customary hippopotamoid grace, and various other flubs and flunkeys have proclaimed their explicit desire to retain all the benefits of EU membership without any of the obligations. Could anything be clearer? Yet still the Euro-wogs continue to balk at such childishly obvious matters as the distinction between an expat and a migrant. Since expats are entrepreneurial individuals with hard-working families, and migrants are swarming hordes with illegal broods, the whole business could have been settled long before now, if only the Euro-wogs were not so fiendishly obsessed with dishing out Nazi-style punishments. On the day after the anniversary of Britain's famous victory in the Battle of Prokhorovka, do none of them remember who won the war?

Tough on the Non-Profitable Causes of Terrorism

Encouraging indications have emerged to the effect that extremist groups in Britain are not being funded by Iran, Russia, North Korea, Bashar al-Assad or Brussels. Had any of those less-than-British powers come under the smallest hint of suspicion, the race-baiting Clegg-pledger at the Home Office would have fallen over her tax avoidance to name and shame them, thereby handing to the Imperial Haystack and any Blairites it could summon to the flag their cue to start thumping the tub for a restorative bit of wog-bombing. Instead, the Clegg-pledging race-baiter has published a one-page summary of a long-delayed report which was originally commissioned by the late Head Boy during the Conservative administration of 2010-15, in return for the support of his little orange chums over wog-bombing Syria. The martyred St Timothy of Westmoreland has been huffing and puffing at the immorality of it all, presumably because the Deputy Conservatives appear to have negotiated that bargain almost as shrewdly as the stitch-up on parliamentary reform.

Despite the race-baiting Clegg-pledger's famous enthusiasm for naming names and shaming traitors, her summary treats with remarkable tact those enemies of Britain who throw money at the killers of innocent civilians; although it must in fairness be remembered that terrorists have killed rather fewer Britons this year than those champions of civilised values who were in charge of Grenfell Tower. Given the sudden attack of discretion on the part of a government not generally noted for its dignified aversion to foaming and squealing, we may assume that the threadbare "national security" fig-leaf is once again providing a token cover for the sins of Her Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic extremists, the head-chopping House of Saud; as well as for any emotionally vulnerable rotten apples among the security services who may inadvertently have married into terrorist organisations.

You Can't Expect a Boy to be Vicious Till He's Been to a Good School

Fury at migrant horror

Britain's tabloids are imminently expected to erupt with demands that the aristocracy loudly and unanimously condemn the posting of malicious and threatening comments on social media.

The free and cantankerous press will be responding to the judgement against the serially insolvent Rhodri Colwyn Philipps, fourth Viscount St Davids, who offered a bounty on Facebook for running over an immigrant.

Gina Miller, who is an immigrant, plotted with enemies of the people to force Parliament to exercise its sovereignty on the issue of Brexit, despite the obvious fact that all talk of parliamentary sovereignty during the referendum campaign was purely and simply a transparent rubric for racial paranoia and wog-bashing.

The viscount, who shares his aristocratic sense of humour with Britain's piccaninny-kicking Foreign Secretary, described the immigrant Miller as a "boat jumper" and suggested that she and other immigrants should be sent "back to their stinking jungles".

In further tribute to his intellectual prowess, the viscount defended himself in court. It is not at present known whether he was entitled to legal aid.

According to the moral code of the British press, minorities are generally held collectively responsible for objectionable behaviour by individual members, although the viscount's offence will be somewhat mitigated by not having been fictitious.

Something Nasty in the Woodpile

Alas! could a gaffe be much b****r,
Or any more likely to tr****r
Among PC groaners
And Marxist Remoaners
All species of un-British sn****r?

Our Party must take back control
For glory of white working prole:
We've no racist bents,
It's just common sense:
Our glorious, thousand-year role!

No manger is long without dog,
Each Bullingdon boy has his hog,
Our ninnies are picked,
The saboteurs licked,
Yet - there in the woodpile - a wog!

Morris Johnson

Simples

Quite aside from the sophisticated pleasures of wog-bashing, gay-baiting and Churchill-porn, one major factor in the appeal of the modern Conservative Party is its liking for simple solutions to complicated questions. An international crisis means you bomb wogs; an economic crisis means you sack people; a social crisis means you start a moral panic followed by a witch-hunt: it's just common sense. In the event of an ecological crisis, of course, where sandbags are not required you kill things: a solution in which the Conservative Party has frequently found a certain rah-rah whether there is a crisis or not. In the case of bovine tuberculosis, the ongoing badger cull has proved so effective that the Government refuses to release any figures; hence mere experts and other trouble-makers are making noises about local ecologies becoming unbalanced. It seems that stoats, weasels and foxes may be moving in and causing unforeseen consequences, despite the Government's apparently not having bothered to foresee any consequences on the grounds that it would mean throwing money at mere experts who might then disagree with the Government. Since the Department of the Environment is now headed by the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, we may no doubt look forward to such innovative, radical yet common-sense solutions as fox-hunts utilising Serco detainees in place of hounds; compulsory mustelid quotas for primary-school children; and fire-proofing tower-blocks by packing them in weasel meat.

Falling Out

In yet another blatant attempt to victimise their betters, the United Nations' hundred and twenty-two least significant nations have voted to ban not only the development, manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons, but even the threat of use and the stationing of independent deterrents in vassal states. Those powers now in breach of current disarmament treaties did not deign to take part in the talks, the USA and its poodle staying away because the threat from North Korea's deterrent demonstrates yet again that nuclear weapons are far too dangerous to get rid of. Despite its recently-acquired enthusiasm for tearing up old agreements and begging door to door for new ones, Her Majesty's Government would prefer to stick with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has worked so well in the cases of North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan and Israel. Nevertheless, the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands was unable to punch sufficiently above its weight to persuade many others of its case, even with the advantage of the current Foreign Secretary's good name and sober statesmanship. Since genocide rah rah was one of the Conservatives' few coherent manifesto commitments, Her Majesty's Government will be particularly aggrieved at this latest uppity display by the lesser breeds within the law.

La Salvada

There are few more edifying combinations than the benignant political hegemony of the United States and the sublime spiritual beauty of the Roman Catholic church, as witness the case of a high-school student whom the Salvadoran secular arm has just sentenced to thirty years in prison. Having been repeatedly raped by a gang member, the strumpet delivered a stillborn foetus into a lavatory last year; the judge, a virtuous woman, accepted the charge of murder on the grounds that the fallen creature did not seek antenatal care, although it proved impossible to ascertain whether the foetus died before or immediately after birth. By way of compensation, post-natal care was administered while the vessel of impurity was handcuffed to a hospital bed. In the best witch-hunting tradition, the judge also suggested that the murderess could not have acted alone, so the girl's mother may now also be a candidate for the attentions of any concerned citizens wishing to offer spiritual advice.

Radiating Sovereignty

Yet another cabal of interfering foreigners is nagging Her Majesty's Government to abide by, of all things, the letter of an international convention. In its zeal to take back control of our energy supplies by outsourcing them to the French state, the Government decided to take a Bethmann-Hollweg attitude towards a scrap of paper called the Aarhus convention, and has now been censured for having failed to consult the German public over the blanched radioactive pachyderm at Hinkley Point C. Already this week the pachyderm been criticised by the National Audit Office and had its price tag upgraded to Democratic Unionist proportions; so a spokesbeing from the Ministry for Backhanders, Profiteering and Mates' Rates greeted the Aarhus committee's scolding with an expectable shrug of complacency. Her Majesty's Government is confident that the blanched radioactive pachyderm will have "no significant adverse effect on the environment of any other country;" although given the present liberal attitude towards environment-related demises among the natives, it remains as yet unclear how many foreign taxpayer megadeaths Her Majesty's Government would consider significant, let alone adverse.

In My Name Shall They Dispense Antipsychotic Medications

From the time of Paul the Apostle until now, the greatest sin a Christian can commit has always been the imitation of Christ. For two millennia the churches, when not fully occupied with exterminating one another, have striven to cleanse the faithful of such unseemly inclinations as vagrancy, Jewishness and letting the dead bury the dead; to say nothing of forgiving each non-priestly sinner seventy times seven times. Now a Christian think-tank is worried that certain congregations may share the Saviour's enthusiasm for casting out demons, among whose infernal legions are some whose objective reality is apparently open to doubt. The think-tank's report expresses concern about "over-spiritualising" - a tendency to believe in spiritual causes even when the local priest can recommend a good psychiatrist, and to place absolute faith in God and the Saviour even when respectable Anglicans might find it embarrassing. Fortunately, the Church of England has issued guidelines recommending particular caution, especially when ministering to someone who is distressed or disturbed enough to believe in Jesus.

She Still Can't Half Pick 'Em

Electoral disaster, public contempt and the sound of sharpening daggers from behind have done little to diminish Tin-Pot Tessie's talent in choosing her subordinates. Authoritarian rulers often prefer to surround themselves with people less competent and charismatic than they are; which is quite a problem for the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK, who has neither the efficiency of Stalin nor the emotional intelligence of Hitler. Fortunately, in the Parliamentary Conservative Party she has at her disposal a gallery of grotesques such as a sane society would confine to children's entertainment or to very private zoos; and her latest appointment for Team Yah-Boo Johnny Euro-Wog need have no fear of being eclipsed even by pantaloon-popping clowns like the joke Foreign Secretary or the ex-Minister for Werritty. Steve Baker has been caught on video farting out a rah-rah for a right-wing hot-air society; it was a few years ago, but rather less far in the past than Corbyn's talks with Sinn Féin. Baker babbles that the euro-wogs have "succeeded in raising economic nationalism to a continental scale", blathers about devolving power "to the lowest possible level" and burbles that the EU is an obstacle to "free trade and peace among all the nations of Europe as well as the world", and must be wholly torn down and wiped off the map and so forth. His qualifications for negotiating with grown-ups apparently consist in Tin-Pot Tessie's hope that he may have matured a bit during the intervening period, rather like the blithering prima donna David Davis putting away childish things and deciding that a database state is just the thing after all.

Freedom of the Seas

Since concern for the state of the environment is a matter for experts and other undesirables, the jabbering homunculus that is Michael Gove has concerned itself with more important matters: notably the need for the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands to accept its manifest destiny of ruling the waves and protecting British fish from incursions by vulgar cod-Vikings. Having abolished the Good Friday Agreement with a wave of the magic bigot bush, Her Majesty's Government has evidently found it a simple and invigorating exercise to tear up the London convention on fisheries. Like so many of the inconveniences imposed by the EU on the oppressed mainland, the convention was signed before Britain entered the Common Market; but it takes more than mere facts to keep the former Minister for Educational Rah-Rah from hoisting the White Ensign to his limp little mizzen. Naturally, the three Royal Navy vessels charged with protecting the fisheries were ordered to do more with less under the coalition, so there has been no dedicated guard for the past four years. It remains as yet unclear whether any foreign efforts at buccaneering entrepreneurship are meant to be deterred by the presence of a submarine deterrent whose nuclear missiles may or may not fly where they are aimed; or merely by the risk of incurring that jabbering displeasure which was once the dread and envy of Britain's uppity teachers.

A Tough, Resilient Operator

Now that the Tin-Pot Tessie régime is on life support, courtesy of some rather expensive snake-oil extracted from the magic bigot bush, her faithful friends and allies are naturally jostling to position themselves in due accordance with their own long-deserved advantage. Hence, in the great Conservative tradition of courageous cripple-kicking, the blathering prima donna David Davis has pluckily permitted a chum to put the boot in on his behalf. It appears that Davis has been consistently hamstrung in his efforts to bring the Euro-wogs to their senses, thanks in no small part to the dead-eyed warden's unconstructive attitude towards the European Court of Justice. Tin-Pot Tessie's gurning hatred of the ECJ was evident to most observers throughout her six-year incumbency at the Home Office; but evidently the blathering prima donna had better things to do than keep track of his own party's governmental doings, let alone oppose them. This same toughness and resilience is doubtless what enables the blathering prima donna to distinguish between the undemocratic, morally objectionable national ID card and database scheme over which he once held a vanity by-election, and the thoroughly democratic, morally unimpeachable wogs-only ID card and database scheme which his government now plans to introduce.

Hot Off the Agenda

Mere experts are again seeking to muddy the pristine waters of market forces and profitable frackability by blaming climate change for the recent heatwave and the disastrous fires that resulted. Utilising nothing more substantial than the once fashionable but now hopelessly passé and un-British expedients of "evidence" and "scientific method", an international coalition of citizens of nowhere calculated that climate change was most likely to blame. Forest fires killed sixty-four people in Portugal, where period of official mourning was declared; such emotional measures stand in marked contrast to the buccaneering sang-froid here on the mainland, where Kensington and Chelsea council have kept calm and carried on charging rent to at least one victim of the Grenfell Tower mishap. In a similar spirit, Britain's leading liberal newspaper and its social inferiors in the free and cantankerous press have decreed that the effects of climate change remain unworthy of the front pages; at best, they are classified as Environment stories, on a par with such categories as Sport, Entertainment, Dating and World News. No doubt this sense of priority explains why the jabbering journalistic homunculus now playing at being the Environment Secretary had nothing at all to say.