Non-Proliferation

Squeals of moral indignation from the virtuous side in the clash of civilisations were conspicuous by their absence yesterday, despite the announcement by terrorist-supporting Islamic extremists that they plan to pursue nuclear power. The decision by the head-chopping House of Saud to start uranium extraction was greeted with the same easy-going tolerance as its ongoing rampage in Yemen or its spawning of the 9/11 hijackers. Threats of sanctions, let alone régime change, have as yet failed to ring out from either the World Cop or its sidekicks in the Righteous State of Zion and the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. Nor is there talk of an axis of evil incorporating the head-chopping House of Saud and other nuclear hereditary theocracies such as the United Arab Emirates and the British Conservative Party.

Totalled Policing

Those left-wing malcontents at the Metropolitan Police are trying to bamboozle Her Majesty's eminently bamboozlable Government with worn-out economic arguments long favoured by unpatriotic, pessimistic prosperity-poopers. An endless parade of bores, from the tedious Turkey Twizzler haters at the British Medical Association to those uppity serfs who warned that Grenfell Tower was a fire hazard, have argued that if you keep on cutting something you'll eventually end up with less of it: a principle long outgrown by every pragmatic, non-ideological moderniser within the realm of acceptable democratic discourse from Tumbledown Tessie to the Reverend Rees-Mogg. Yet even with the lessons of history before them, the police and crime commissioners have joined with Zac Goldsmith's favourite terror suspect to claim that budgetary cuts mean fewer officers, and that fewer officers means less policing. It makes for a depressing contrast with those hard-working G4S people, who have never shirked the challenge of being ever less efficient in return for ever larger handouts from the taxpayer. Fortunately for British values, a spokesbeing from the Department of Wogs Out and Prole Control was quick to put the grumblers in their place, proclaiming that Londoners should be jolly grateful because the rest of the country is even worse off than they are.

Female Trouble

However pointlessly harmful a policy may appear, the right-wing rabble can always find a way to hypertrophy the harm and pump up the pointlessness. If unemployment increases, social security must decrease; if Muslim-bashing is the vogue at home, Islamic extremists must be armed abroad; and if a tax is imposed on women's rights, the proceeds from that tax must pay to limit women's rights. Her Majesty's Government, which is nominally run by a coagulation of cold tea and sawdust masquerading as a woman, has imposed VAT on sanitary products, and will be awarding a chunk of the proceeds to a coathanger promotion charity. The strongest indication of its spiritual and intellectual affinity with Her Majesty's Government may be that the charity opposes the kind of sex education which might help to prevent the unwanted pregnancies whose termination the charity also opposes.

Cultural Britishness

In these unstable times, it's refreshing to note that the great British virtues remain undiminished. Our self-complacent insularity, xenophobic boorishness and thick-headed snobbery have been on garish display for some years; so it is pleasant to see that our world-beating powers of hypocrisy are at last gaining their due. At a time when Her Majesty's Government regards economic chaos and fiscal meltdown as a price worth paying for escaping the beastly beaters of Nazi Brussels, and denounces anyone who disagrees as a citizen of nowhere; at a time when Her Majesty's Government refuses to guarantee the rights of EU taxpayers in Britain and is plotting a special database state just for them; at a time when the best of British diplomacy consists in arming Islamic extremists and sucking up to the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble, the Recrudescent Imperium has proclaimed itself ready and fully committed to hosting the European Capital of Culture 2023. Non-European cities have held the title before, but not while their countries' respective governments were denouncing Europe as a threat to their national sovereignty and a drag on their international trade. With Gallic understatement, the European Commission's director for culture and creativity has said that the 2023 event "could be a problem".

Cash Flow

Roll up, poor folk; your tonic take:
Doc Duncan Smith's best oil of snake!
It's wondrous simple, very new,
Solves everything, including you,
And furthermore, while saving cash,
It quiets children, settles hash,
Kills all known germs, and some as yet
Unknown to all but me, I'll bet.

And with a larger dose you'll see
The evidence supporting me!
Just swallow, feel those cramps with cheer
As nasty facts just disappear;
You have my word, it doesn't hurt
As favourable numbers squirt
And flow with nearly painless leak
From out the hole I use to speak.

But what's this? Did no-one write down
My warm statistics, soft and brown?
How dare the facts still fail to show
The virtues of my fragrant flow?
And now what's this? The cheek! The gall!
There's nothing coming out at all!
We've lost the numbers, and - oh hell,
I've lost my orifice as well!

Sir Godley Snatcher, MD (Genuine)

They Hate Our Freedom

Renewed howls about fiscal fascism and anti-entrepreneurial punishment beatings are doubtless already in preparation among the more squealy echelons of Tumbledown Tessie's rabble, as the fiendish Euro-wogs are plotting to investigate, of all things, corporate tax-dodging. During the late Osbornomic miracle, the Bullingdon Club cracked down on this to the extent of permitting multinational corporations to dodge their taxes; and the Liberal Democrats exercised so profound a moderating effect that multinational corporations are still permitted to dodge their taxes. In January, the empty suit which is hanging in until an actual chancellor can be found threatened to turn Britain into a country that permits multinational corporations to dodge their taxes, although the empty suit has since admitted that this, like everything else, is not the Government's plan. Nevertheless, the fiendish Euro-wogs still seem to think there is reason to suspect Britain of permitting multinational corporations to dodge their taxes. It is really most unfair.

Thick Whips and Punishment Beatings

The university is a cruel mistress. First there was the Heaton-Harris Letter, wherein a parliamentary prefect used the Big School notepaper to demand that universities name names regarding who might be questioning the meaning of Brexit (it's Brexit, for those who came in late), thereby causing several academic malcontents to take the Fifth Amendment, and a few more to recommend that he sod off. The Minister for Being Related to the Foreign Secretary has claimed that whole thing was just a badly-expressed bit of research which has been taken out of context, and that invoking the name of Lenin is unjust because Heaton-Harris, like most Conservative ministers, was not interested in dispelling false consciousness; which seems convincing enough.

Not only that, but foreign malcontents and their various fifth columns in the non-Eton community are showing their Nazi-style proclivities by demanding, of all things, clarity as the price of further academic collaboration between Euro-wog universities and the mainland. Although Her Majesty's Government is deservedly famous for its immunity to mere research, there is the student vote to think about, and a rather limited time-scale for ministers to learn their humanising lines about their favourite emojis and funniest trips to the food bank. The university is indeed a cruel mistress; which presumably is why the Conservatives believe that everyone should pay to get in.

Charity Begins at Home

Among the financial benefits of turning the European Union from a market into a competitor will be the freeing-up of repressed squillions which could be used to pay for free trade elsewhere, according to the Minister for Monetising Global Poverty. At present the squillions are diverted to Brusso-Strasbourgian bureau-wogs to be used for "humanitarian" purposes while British tax-dodgers languish in the strangulating coils of Stalinist red tape. Priti Patel intends to reclaim those squillions for genuinely humanitarian use, viz. the British national interest. Presumably this translates into Oldspeak as a few Nissan-style bribes, once the triumph is complete, to reassure whatever investors we may have left; although to be fair, the chances of Britain's becoming an impoverished Third World country within the next few years are looking increasingly good. It remains unclear for the moment whether Patel's rescued squillions will be in addition to the famous £350 million a week which the Imperial Haystack intends reclaiming from the side of a bus.

Smog of Law

Even before Tumbledown Tessie's sudden discovery of the magic money tree, when it's a matter of genuine principle Her Majesty's Government has always managed to find a little something down the sofa. Hence, no doubt, the greenest government ever's expenditure of hundreds of thousands on futile court cases at a time when the Bullingdon Club and its little orange faglings were merrily burning up the hovels and watering down the gruel. Characteristically enough, the substance of the cases in question was whether Her Majesty's Government has a legal right to poison its own proles whatever the law might have to say about it; and characteristically enough, Her Majesty's Government lost, kept on losing, and kept on breaking the law.A spokesbeing for the jabbering homunculus in charge of green crap proclaimed that, actually, the Government has found almost twice the price of Arlene Foster for improving air quality and reducing emissions; it remains as yet unclear whether harmful fuels will be phased out or simply passed on to the nearest convenient Third World thug at a more or less conscionable mark-up.

In Their Place

As is only fit and proper, British expatriates in Spain will not be treated like EU migrants in Britain. Although Spain has committed the diplomatic blunder of having its foreign minister make the announcement rather than the king, the UK will doubtless welcome the news that the non-foreign status of Britons among the Euro-wogs is at last beginning to gain due recognition. It remains as yet unclear whether a quid pro quo will be required, other than preventing the Imperial Haystack sailing into Cádiz to singe Mariano Rajoy's beard. Given that Britain's oldest alliance is with Portugal, and that Her Majesty's Government probably doesn't concern itself overmuch with the difference between various subspecies of dago, the profitable presence of British peace-keepers in strife-torn Catalonia may not be far away.

Deal Delayed by Detail Doldrums

Fury at delay horror

The deadlocked nuts and bolts of the May administration's major foreign-policy own goal have been kicked down the road in a possible U-turn.

With characteristic bulldog bravery, the UK government has refrained from criticising the various snubs and insults the country has received from its much larger and more powerful negotiating partner.

The May administration has accepted without demur the timetable imposed by the other side, while proclaiming that nothing has changed and that only a few minor details remain to be thrashed out, such as when, where and how.

It is thought that there is also a measure of issue-oriented unresolvitude on the question of who can do what to whom with whose what.

There are signs in Britain that the will of the people, which was originally against the arrangement, is shifting against the arrangement. However, both governments agree that the will of the rabid orange head-tribble must take priority.

As a show of obedience, the UK recently went to the lengths of dispatching Liam Fox and a team of non-negotiators to demonstrate understanding of the fact that no trade deal is yet on the table.

Imaginative Solutions

Like much of the present Cabinet, magic money trees are strange and temperamental bits of vegetation. Though millions may be to hand for purchasing votes from creationist queer-bashers, and billions may cheerfully be hurled into the black hole of Brexit, mere promises to the proles are quite another thing. Now that bigger and better disasters have pushed Grenfell Tower from the headlines, Her Majesty's Government evidently feels that it's safe to start rowing back on those rash pledges to try and stop it happening again. Ministers are turning down applications for Government money to install sprinkler systems, although in cases "where works are essential" they are prepared to consider before refusing. In response to an MP's query, the dead-eyed warden waved the matter away, proclaiming that allocating money to health-and-safety fripperies was the business of local authorities, as Westminster has better things to do, and that sprinklers are not the only solution to ensuring safety. If the proles were out at work all day and all night, they wouldn't have to worry a bit.

Slapped Down

Given that one of the main attractions of Brexit for its more schoolboyish acolytes is the chance to bring back the birch, it's unfortunate that the Scottish government has once more fallen behind the mainland by supporting the outlawing of corporal punishment of children. The Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands regards offspring of the non-wealthy as fit mainly for shelf-stacking, call centres or cannon fodder; and a bit of muscular Christianity about the backside also makes a good preparation for the increasingly inevitable time that desperate and disgruntled juvenile resources will spend enjoying the hospitality of those nice G4S people. Present policy permits "reasonable chastisement", except of course between consenting adults who are not prepared to pay.

Buzzed Off

Although it is hardly front-page news, being a purely environmental matter and carried out by mere foreigners to boot, research in Germany indicates a seventy-five per cent decrease in the number of all flying insects over the past quarter of a century. One possible cause of the decline is pesticide use, which may well be one reason why nobody much has bothered about it until now; and of course Her Majesty's Government is unlikely to worry excessively in any case. For one thing, flying insects have never really caught on as the sort of creature that can be hunted with dogs; for another, the problem can always be dealt with by encouraging the ministerial grubs to notch up a few more taxpayer-funded air miles.

Not Quite Such Pure Evil as Some Others We Might Mention

To those who have learned all necessary lessons from the Iraq crusade, the Afghan quagmire, the Libyan débâcle and other humanitarian ventures, the possibility that the Mogadishu truck bombing may have been blowback from an air raid by the forces of righteousness will no doubt come as a considerable surprise. One of the deadliest terrorist incidents for many years, the bombing seems to have resulted from the complex system of clans and alliances which constitutes Somali society's civilisationally-challenged substitute for patriotism and family values. An American operation in August was so carelessly carried out that some civilians were killed, and investigators believe that the bombing was motivated by a desire for revenge, despite the vanishingly rare occurrence of US-inflicted civilian casualties in the mainstream of respectable reportage. Since no Britons were hurt, that mainstream is even now tactfully sparing the attack's eight hundred victims any burden of excess publicity.

The Orange Carpet

Fury at meteorologist party-poopers

Skies all over Britain have been turning the shade of President Trump's head-tribble today in a spontaneous outpouring of affectionate respect for Theresa May's oldest and loudest ally.

In the wake of Liam Fox's triumphant trade mission, in which he managed the spectacular success of landing in America instead of India, patriotic Britons have taken control of the heavens in tribute to the nation's feudal overlord.

The spontaneous demonstrations of respectful affection are thought to be intended as partial compensation for the recent downgrading of the President's scheduled state visit.

What was originally advertised as a full ceremonial reception with optional royal pussy-grab is now more likely to consist of a working afternoon at the trough with whoever happens to be prime minister at the time, or in extremis with Boris Johnson.

However, mere experts have exacerbated the far-left bias of mere facts by attributing the sky's new colour to dust thrown into the atmosphere from recent golf course clearance phenomena in Africa and the Portugal region of Spain.

The president has expressed scepticism on the subject of climate change, in accordance with the minority of scientific opinion which states that large quantities of dust in the air have no effect on the atmosphere but can help to improve the poor by making them work harder for their breath.

The British government has expressed some agreement with the Chinese, but in practice regards climate change on a par with justice or public education, as something to be dealt with by Michael Gove.

Me at Poetry24:
Fox in Stocks

Troll Triage

It appears, surprisingly enough, that the Government is just as committed to fighting online bullying as it is to greening the economy, curbing corporate profiteering, leashing the scumbag press and preserving the National Health Service. Amber Rudd, the very same Minister for Wog Control who pledged to name and shame companies for employing foreign workers, and whose department regularly sends go-home letters to persons suspected of racial impurity, has allocated £200,000 to the national online hate crime hub, which amounts to about three pounds per incident. Naturally, the money will come from existing budgets rather than from the magic money tree that secured the collaboration of those famous non-haters in the Democratic Unionist Party; which naturally means that something else will have to be cut. It remains as yet unclear whether the Ministry for Wog Control will be issuing any guidelines on which incidents of abuse to prioritise; although it is thought that the emotional requirements of rich, middle-aged men in the white-to-purple colour range are generally the most cost-effective.

Normality Not Normanity

On this day in 1066, the United Kingdom of Plucky Little Britain (which, in the absence of proper Americans, was then generally known as England) suffered invasion by European immigrants. Deposing the democratically elected king, Sir Harold Boris de Pfeffel Godwinson, the Franco-Scandinavian horde proceeded to impose a Feudal System upon the indigenous population, which had hitherto lived a life of carefree liberty in hard-working families. The alien swarm wasted no time in taking over what had been the rights and privileges of freedom-loving Englishmen; in a particularly egregious access of insolence, they even took it upon themselves to harry the North like paid-up members of the British Conservative Party. The nation's very language became bizarrely polluted and mutilated into something nearly resembling the tongue Chaucer spoke, and even the Royal Family did not remain immune, as unpronounceable foreign names like William, Henry and Richard Lionheart replaced solid, businesslike Anglo-Saxon ones like Æthelred, Odda and Eadric the Grabber. Without a doubt, the invasion was the most unsatisfactory subheading in our island story since plucky little England rolled back the Romans under the leadership of that great king, Sir Arthur Boris de Pfeffel Pendragon. Nevertheless, it still remains unclear when the Home Office plans to start deporting all non-Anglo-Saxon taxpayers back to where they came from.

Making Do

When pessimists are talking down
The state of things, with grumpy frown,
Then cries the cheerful-minded chap:
We've never yet run out of crap!

Nay-sayers may yet more complain
That quality will fall again;
The answer to this grumpy gripe:
We have a plenitude of tripe!

Though moaners whine there's not enough
Of any good or wholesome stuff,
Even the cynics must admit:
There are no shortages of shit!

Let now continue, till the end,
This hopeful economic trend;
While we all sink, and smiling die
With optimists in good supply.

Titania Britt

Won't the Children Think of Somebody?

While all true Britons will join the blustering blimp at the Ministry for Wog-Bombing in gloating over the demise of the White Widow and the collateral detrimentation of her twelve-year-old child, the other glorious achievements of British arms should not be forgotten. The cholera epidemic in Yemen, despite having been predicted by mere experts, is now the biggest in modern history, thanks in no small part to the British government's happy business relationship with the head-chopping House of Saud. The vandalism of Yemen's public works and health facilities amount to little more than a radical acceleration of Conservative policy at home; while the enthusiastic subjection of an estimated six hundred thousand children to an entirely preventable epidemic must surely constitute an investment in the future of the British national security state that will rival the Reverend Blair's midwifery at the birth of Isis out of al-Qaeda.

Turning Up Trump

A chaotic, anti-democratic administration riven by ludicrous in-fighting and headed by an incoherent migrant-basher has denied a report in the London Evening Osborne that its chums, the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble, will be denied the opportunity of meeting with everyone's favourite superannuated inbred tax-dodger. Given the achievements of Britain's international diplomacy in the past sixteen months, there may be some who find it hard to believe that elbowing her way to the front of the sycophancy queue was once considered Tumbledown Tessie's greatest diplomatic coup. Despite the glory of that victory for British pride and independence, the Trumpster's state visit was controversial from the first; not least because of fears that the Queen might suffer a modicum of embarrassment at having her crotch seized by someone with all her late mother's most sophisticated opinions but very little of her good taste in headgear. British and American officials, doubtless in that order, are insisting nothing has changed; which certainly ought to settle the matter.

Muddy Materialism

Despite the simplifying effects of the Bullingdon bonfire of red tape, it appears that our fast-approaching freedom from the toils of Brusso-Strasbourgian bureaucracy remains, for some, not an altogether glorious prospect. Indeed, the practicalities involved have given a couple of former Home Office flunkeys occasion to blaspheme. Trapped as they are in the merely real, and cut off by their worldly natures from the Empyrean refinement of Brexiteer doctrine, the two ex-specialists in wog control went so far as to suggest, not only that the Home Office would need to recruit extra staff, but that it would need to train them and quite likely pay them as well. Assuming that resident Euro-wogs aren't all simply kicked out on principle, the Government plans to implement a moderately hostile environment for those who may still have failed to take the hint after the next year and a half, involving identity checks and a requirement to apply for a place on a database of settled sub-Britannics. Even in the event of a Great Simplification, such as would occur should plucky little Britain decide to go it alone and battle on without a deal, the two heretics maintained that some sort of border staff would be required, although it should be obvious from the Government's long and happy relationship with information technology that all the confusing bits could quite easily be handled using electronical computators. If only civil servants weren't around to muddy the clear blue waters of faith in the People's Will, we could have been out and free and selling Trident to North Korea by now.

Aping Their Betters

Armchair viceroys throughout the Recrudescent Imperium will no doubt be gratified to observe the latest outbreak of British values in Uganda, where food rations for swarming hordes have been cut by half. Uganda is dealing with approximately a million job-seekers from South Sudan, despite being somewhat less roomy than the United Kingdom which recently balked at taking in a few dozen smallish Syrians. Since Uganda is as yet insufficiently enlightened and democratic to wog-bomb its neighbours into freedom and peace, it looks as though a well-intentioned if inevitably crude imitation of the Osbornomic miracle will have to suffice for now. The beneficiaries have reacted with the usual ingratitude, even though humanitarian donations have occasionally amounted to as much as a third of what is needed. Britain's Minister for Piccaninnies has thus far made no public announcements regarding the investment potential of the local beach-front.

The Holocaust: Dave Muscles In

By way of contrast to the noxious if largely nonexistent anti-semitism running rampant through the Labour Party, the late Head Boy laid plans for a major new Holocaust Experience thingy next to Parliament, just to show how much racism, homophobia and hatred are disapproved of in the party of Churchill, Clause 28 and the Go Home vans. Unfortunately, the Imperial War Museum intends opening its own Holocaust centre less than a mile down the road; but Pigsticker Dave has never been one to let good taste or manners interfere with his little whims, and if the spat between the sites continues to escalate we shall no doubt soon discover that the Liberal Democrats were against it all along. Quite aside from the queasily anticipated quantum of rah-rah, the likely consequences of the Bullingdon Club's remember-who-won centre include the loss of green space, increased pollution and a large and inconvenient level of security; which at least makes the project consistent with the rest of the Bullingdon Club's legacy to the nation.

Freedomising Ballistic Integration

Mere days after the murder of almost sixty people by an affluent white man, some tactless person has leaked an FBI counter-terrorism report warning about the dangers of "black identity extremists" or BIEs. American law enforcement has a long history of aggressive caution in this area, from the zealous pursuit of runaway slaves through the nineteen-sixties' Black Panther safari to the present-day shootings of civilians hopped up on melanin who look wrong at Kevlar-knights and thereby threaten to shatter their fragile yet life-giving armour. Despite the Trumpster's connections to some very fine people, the FBI stated that it "cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights;" and it was no doubt for the circumvention of such legalistic quibbles that the words identity extremist were included in the specification. Besides, the acronym for "uppity nigrah" is already in use.

They Just Don't Think Like Us

Ignorant and backsliding persons with no knowledge or understanding of Libya have been playing politics with the Imperial Haystack's latest bit of robust British humour. The Haystack blathered at the Conservative Party's Manchester club-and-blub that the beach-front at Sirte would be a jolly place to invest once the bodies had been cleared away: a comment so Churchillian in its quintessential Britishness that not even the Libyans are laughing. The Libyan government, which is backed by those other humourless foreigners at the UN, summoned the British ambassador, and the Libyan parliament's foreign affairs committee called for, of all things, an explanation and apology; which shows just how little knowledge or understanding of Libya is common among mere Libyans. For his own part, the Imperial Haystack has undertaken a couple of taxpayer-funded trips to the country this year alone, in order to observe just how rah-rah the results of a good old wog-bombing can be. Since no reasonable analysis could entertain the possibility that the Imperial Haystack was there for anything so tediously mundane as doing his job, the investment potential of Sirte may well be a fact.

Recoil and Boom

Lovers of liberty across the Cordited States are rushing to beat Big Government's latest attempt to restrict and undermine their rights. In the wake of the latest celebration of the Second Amendment, Congress is considering a ban on a rifle modification which enables a semi-automatic weapon to be fired with increased rapidity, at the price of reducing accuracy so far that even the NRA won't allow it on their ranges. When one is innocently enjoying oneself among the crowds at a concert, of course, accuracy tends to be a minor consideration; more importantly, many fans of freedom are afraid that if they don't buy the gadget soon, their purchase opportunification window may be subject to forcible de-widening. Hence, as God's own countrymen join with the free market in the scramble to send a stranger to Jesus, demand is higher than ever before.

Lion's Meat

As we are all aware, the head-chopping House of Saud is guilty of many moral derelictions; not least the recent decision to let women drive cars, which runs the risk of alienating a sizeable portion of the British Conservative Party membership's more traditionalist wing. Nevertheless, the Saudi government is nothing if not strong and stable, and goes about its wog-bombing with becoming enthusiasm, to say nothing of buying its equipment from all the right sorts of people. A draft report by some meddling foreigners at the UN criticises the parties to the war in Yemen for reducing the number of future dangers to British jobs; a similar report last year was toned down at the suggestion of the head-chopping House of Saud, which apparently reminded the then Secretary-General of Riyadh's contribution to the UN budget, and what a shame if something were to happen to it. The new report credits Saudi Arabia and its best-of-British armoury with a bag of six hundred and eighty-three out of a total of thirteen hundred and forty British jobs saved, although in accordance with civilised British values the head-chopping House of Saud has modestly played down the achievement.

If You Can't Privatise, Militarise

As regards the continuation of our economic miracle, the Government's choices are limited now that the serfs have so little left to donate. Since any attempt to rebuild an economy that actually made things would constitute the worst kind of heretical backsliding, the only real option is to toughen up the populace for a bit of law and order after the manner of those nice G4S people, and then perhaps a war or so thrown in when the taxpayers can next afford it. With the Remembrance Day rah-rah rapidly approaching, and in the absence of an education secretary worth the name, it has fallen to the blustering blimp at the Ministry of Wog-Bombing to announce the further militarisation of Britain's hated state schools. The aim is partly to instil such prominent Conservative Party values as "courage, discipline, integrity, loyalty and respect for others," rather than curiosity, open-mindedness, literacy, multilingualism and all that citizen-of-nowhere sissy stuff. A further aim is to enforce social mobility, which seems to be one of those things, like health, housing and education, that Jeremy Corbyn and his Venezuelo-Zimbabwean Trotskyites have been kicking to bits for the past seven years or so. Still, the blustering blimp does have a point: Pinochet, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein were all military men and, before their innate foreignness caused them to overreach, all mobilised themselves so gloriously as to be chums with the sainted Thatcher herself.

Constitutional Caliber

Of all Amendments, it is reckoned
The best and holiest is the Second:
No enemy would dare to sack
Our homesteads, while we're free to pack;
Nor Government, with all its bombs,
Dare to dishonor men or Moms.
No liberty is counted higher
Than semi-automatic fire,
While communistic safety checks
Would be a halter for our necks
And, should their threats be once fulfilled,
Might very well get someone killed.
We're great and first and free and strong...
Near sixty dead? Lord, what went wrong?

Chester Schott XVII

A Holy Mystery

On this Sabbath day, it is pleasant for a devout person such as myself to reflect upon the mysterious ways in which good can come out of evil, and specifically upon the apparent fact that even Jacob Rees-Mogg has a redeeming feature. An Indonesian company in which he invests produces pills for the treatment of stomach ulcers, which also happen to bring about abortions. The law of Indonesia, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, subscribes to the doctrine that God loves a quack with a coathanger, so the pills are widely used by fallen women who might otherwise be forced to endanger themselves. Hence, however indirectly and inadvertently, Rees-Mogg is aiding the good despite willing the evil; although, as befits an agent of Pandaemonium, he resorts to the flimsiest Pharisaical casuistry in denying all responsibility. Even the Church of England has occasionally had the moral fortitude to disinvest from companies it considers unethical; but Jacob Rees-Mogg cannot imagine that his own profits might be anything other than a personal sacrifice by Jacob Rees-Mogg on behalf of his fellow investors.