In Baghdad Where the Poodles Yap

As Her Majesty's Government continues to blunder, bungle and generally David Davis its way through Britain's biggest foreign-policy cock-up since Iraq, it's only natural that the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK should have a hankering to tour the site of Britain's biggest foreign-policy cock-up since Suez. Baghdad has been honoured with a visit from the Trumpster's self-appointed doggie, who had herself photographed with the troops and blathered about security, stability and dealing with Daesh because alliteration is just about all she can offer. Strangely enough, there was no talk of the mess Labour made, although Conservative denunciation of the Reverend Tony's crusade in 2003 was quite as enthusiastic as Conservative warnings about his Glorious Successor's fiscal plans in 2008.

Before toddling on to Saudi Arabia, where the urgency of profiting from the Yemen rampage grows greater by the day, the dead-eyed warden had a bit of a blather about the current War on Terror reboot. As might be expected, she sees it largely as an excuse for tracking human resources wherever they go and censoring the internet in the name of British values. Nevertheless, the natural poppy-wearer's urge to blow up real foreigners remains strong, and at least two per cent of the Recrudescent Imperium's economy will remain dedicated to this traditional British pastime. It still remains to be seen how many missiles the Japanese jam market will pay for, let alone whether anyone will be left in the country who can point them in the right direction.

Glories of Empire

According to recent archaeological evidence, a site in eastern Kent may have been the beach-head for an invasion of Britain by highly organised multicultural wogs. At a more recent period of our island story, the same district has been the scene of various little setbacks for the Farage Falange, including some less than happy and glorious episodes for the strutting Caudillo himself. It would of course be invidious to connect such episodes with the military defeat and historical eclipse of some howling blue-painted barbarians by a multi-racial army under an Italian general; not least because pre-Roman Britain was most likely a developed and sophisticated society in its own right, rather than a purple-hued rabble of troglodytes splitting each other's heads with their questionable personal hygiene. It is at least probable that the ancient Britons, unlike the Farage Falange, had advanced sufficiently to understand that successful international trade tends to be a two-way negotiation.

Me at Poetry24:
Jesuit Diplomacy

Jerusalem Sacked

And did those feet, in Ancient Time
Trample the Migrant Worker here?
And did the Harsh-Environed Wog
Make all due Haste to disappear?
And did the gurning Preacher-Spawn
Kick Cripples with her Leopard Spats?
Was Pandaemonium builded here
Among these flaming Blocks of Flats?

Bring me my Tax-free Bankers' Gold,
Bring me Mendacious Tabloid Curse.
Bring me my Gob - No Fib untold!
Bring me my Profit-making Nurse.
No Fight, however Mental, cease,
Nor Pocket rest safe from my Hand
Now we have Pandaemonium
In Britain's blackened white man's Land.

with apologies to William Blake

Trading Troubles

Fenian troublemakers in the Free State have inexplicably joined forces with the ghastly Euro-wogs to delay the negotiations that will determine how far merely European trading interests are to be subordinated to those of the mainland. Apparently the Republic of Ireland believes that, as a member of the European Union, it has some sort of say in what the European Union will do; and this despite the fact that the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands has already solved everything to its own satisfaction and is waiting for the ghastly Euro-wogs to catch up. The former Minister for Werritty has made it entirely clear that Her Majesty's Government does not want a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Free State, while also making it transparently plain that Her Majesty's Government refuses to compromise on demands that will lead to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Free State. In any case, a final answer to the Irish Question will just have to wait until Her Majesty's Government has decided what the final answer is; not least because Her Majesty's Government has already spent a billion or so from the magic money tree in order to buy the votes of a handful of creationist gay-bashers, and if there is one thing Her Majesty's Government cannot abide, it is wasting taxpayers' money.

Dry Response

Pub landlords in Tumbledown Tessie's Maidenhead constituency are threatening to join the ever-expanding ranks of citizens of nowhere and enemies of the people. Over the past seven years the former party of law and order has, with the sometime connivance of its little orange helpers, instituted massive cuts in the police force, on the grounds that the police are part of the hated public sector and their job could be far more profitably done by those efficient people at G4S. Among the unforeseeable consequences of this policy was a lack of police officers, which means that pubs have to wait up to an hour for any response to trouble. Of course it is deeply unfair to blame Tumbledown Tessie for this state of affairs, rather than whichever dithering incompetent was masquerading as Home Secretary during the Bullingdon administration; and in any case the real solution to the problem, as to every other problem, is simply for the proles to work longer hours and restrict their leisure activities to church-going, Briton-breeding and wog-bashing. Unfortunately, the materialistic landlords of Maidenhead are unable to take this enlightened view, and are reportedly considering banning the dead-eyed warden from every watering-hole in the constituency.

We Do Not Negotiate With Health Bosses

Never let it be said that the present administration is a mere continuation of the Bullingdon Club's. Just because both have features in common, notably the formative influence of Rupert Murdoch as embodied in various ministerial pets, that doesn't mean an empty suit cannot still aspire to leave its personal stamp on history. Health policy under the Bullingdons and their little orange helpers was motivated by the sniggering nastiness of playground bullies and the sweaty-palmed haste of greasy little asset-strippers; under the present régime it has taken a soberer turn, and the empty suit at the Treasury has reduced the planned funding for the NHS in England on the highly responsible grounds that the NHS in England had the unpardonable bad manners to ask for it. Since lots of other people were asking for funding besides the NHS, the empty suit had no choice but to become very annoyed with the NHS, and to blame the continuing absence of £350 million a week on those elements of the hated public sector which still seem to think that Her Majesty's Government has some sort of responsibility for the well-being of Her Majesty's subjects. As with our enemies in Europe, the empty suit cannot afford to be seen listening to people who know what they are talking about; let alone giving in to the sort of blackmail which says that you only get what you pay for.

Not Yet Ready for Independence

Well, that will teach them, won't it? Mere days after threatening the Recrudescent Imperium over the trivial issue of a few colonials in Ulster, the Irish government is in trouble over, of all things, a scandal involving the deputy prime minister. In more advanced societies, where deputy prime ministers take hardcore pornography to work on a daily basis and where magic money trees are blithely scrumped in return for the loyalties of scandal-mired queer-bashers, the convulsions in the Free State can only be viewed as Ruritanian comedy. Although the Irish scandal concerns police malpractice, it remains as yet unclear whether our own statesmanlike Foreign Secretary has offered terms on any second-hand water cannon to help clear the matter up.

Presumption of Innocents

Although Her Majesty's Government recognises the contribution made to British society by citizens of the EU, Her Majesty's Government is also committed to kicking out the ghastly wogs as quickly as possible; and further complications arise from Her Majesty's Government's snow-white innocence of expertise in both areas of activity. Something called Brandon, which works for the wog disposal department under the auspices of the race-baiting Clegg-pledger Amber Rudd, is presuming that EU citizens should be allowed to stay; what this means in practice is that the Home Office sends out deportation orders more or less at random and is overruled by an enemy of the people about half the time, with the only loss being taxpayers' money and the only grief being that of people who shouldn't be here in the first place and the citizens of nowhere who love them. Happily, the Brandon-thing and his department are sometimes able to complete the deportation process before any appeal can be heard, which is certainly a tribute to their presumption; and Her Majesty's Government is plotting to efficientise matters yet further by setting up a new database state specifically to keep track of 3.2 million suspected fifth columnists for our enemies in Brussels. On the strength of previous Whitehall adventures in computerland, the fairness and efficacy of this electronic panacea is doubtless being presumed by all the best non-experts.

That's Teaching Them

Given that the modern Conservative vision of Britain is a tax haven populated by serfs, run by Oxbridge graduates and owned by people who can afford to force others to pay for their stupidity, there should be nothing particularly surprising in the Government's continuing crusade to create a hostile environment for clever people. Nevertheless, at least one university vice-chancellor is talking down Britain's education system (the best in the world, for those who came in late) by pointing out the effect of the Government's refusal to guarantee the rights of job-stealing Euro-wogs. Although the blithering prima donna and one-time civil liberties grandstander David Davis has promised the Euro-wogs a database state of their very own, it seems that many university staff may decide to take the hint and make room for the kind of degree-level Britishness that wins wars, incentivises entrepreneurs and enables people like the present Cabinet to play at being ministers of state. If nothing else, at least those beastly foreign students will be kept at bay, along with their dirty foreign fees.

It's Only Public Money

Britain's happy backward slide into a simpler and less expert century is further evidenced by the revelation that almost all the water profiteering companies are prepared to admit using water diviners to locate leaking pipes. A spokesbeing for the regulator has proclaimed that the practice is very much a matter for the conscience of the individual water company; and it is true that, unlike such equally scientific practices as treating epilepsy with an exorcism on the National Health Service, launching nuclear missiles by horoscope or putting Chris Graybeing in charge of a ministry of state, the employment of two sticks and a salary-operated crank is unlikely to do any actual harm. After all, any customers who are bigoted enough to believe that their money might be better spent on methods that have some effect can always exercise their democratic, non-Communistic, non-nationalised right to choose between paying for the companies' hired sorcerers or else abstaining from water.

Update The water companies are now denying the use of witchcraft, although the denials have yet to be tested by any of the traditional methods.

Hands in Pockets

In the trade minister Greg Hands, it is evident that Britain's vole-brained Minister for International Werritty has a worthy underling. A telegram has been released to Greenpeace under Freedom of Information rules, and the Government's innovative dynamism is immediately apparent in the fact that it was released first in its naked, unredacted glory and only shortly afterwards in the public version decently habited in blue pencil and wimpled in whitewash. Normal practice, in the interests of ministerial job security, would be to release them the other way round and thirty years apart; but it is, after all, quite difficult for ministers to get the sack these days. The telegram indicates that Hands lobbied Brazil on behalf of Shell and BP, although naturally the maintenance and strengthening of environmental regulations was absolutely tip-top priority for Her Majesty's Government and its jabbering environmental homunculus. Fortunately for his future directorships in the fossil fuel industry, Hands put the case for clean energy so incompetently that Shell and BP look set to benefit from deep-water drilling licenses and tax relief courtesy of the government of Brazil.

Mutual Assurance

If our dear leader should decide
To do a little genocide
He won't be let, unless it's more
Or less within the nation's law.

For otherwise we shall demur:
"But that would not be legal, sir."
And he will say, "Well what would be?"
And then we'll take a look and see.

We think about this stuff a lot.
In our position, who would not?

Gen. Claiborne T Minuteman (Retd.)

Plastic Dummies All at Sea

Given that a charge on the use of plastic bags has led to a massive reduction in the use of plastic bags, it is natural that the empty suit at the Treasury should be calling for evidence as to whether charges on plastic products might possibly lead to a reduction in the use of plastic products. Even if the call for evidence is not merely a bit of headline-grabbing green crap, the relevant minister is still the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, and much of the evidence will inevitably come from experts and be full of pessimism and non-positivity and general doing down of our fracked and fossilled land. Environmentalists have gone so far as to claim that any resulting action will need to be coordinated, which rather rules it out from the start. The discovery that plastic litter is affecting even deep-sea fish has no doubt helped to concentrate minds among the slimy pond life that is the modern Conservative Party; but the idea that taxes on something other than prole food or female hygiene products could be part of a reasonable solution may need a few more decades to sink in.

Holy Alliances

Doubtless impressed with the moderation of its British-sponsored rampage in Yemen, the head of the Righteous State's military has been making friendly noises at the head-chopping House of Saud. The aim is apparently to start a crusade against Iran, which has invaded so many sovereign countries recently that even the free and cantankerous British press is often hard put to name one. Evidently the recent domestic re-arrangements among the head-chopping House of Saud have done much to help it qualify as a moderate Arab state; which is to say, one which is willing to join with the region's apartheid nuclear power in jihad against the hated Shia. Of course, from the days of P W Botha to the twilight of Priti Patel, the Righteous State's military has long been known for its amicable dealings with moderates.

According to the Flesh

For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Gospel of Thomas

Thanks to those energetic people at the Christian Legal Centre, the latest attempt by the Established Church to gain a toe-hold in the twentieth century looks set to be as reasoned and charitable a process as that little business of accepting gays into the priesthood provided they behaved themselves and didn't get up to anything naughty. The Church has issued guidelines directing its faith-school staff not to bully transgender pupils and proclaiming that children dressing up is not anathema. Predictably, this has caused consternation among the faithful, many of whom apparently believe not only that gender is divinely ordained and therefore irrevocable, but that it is determined at birth, rather than at conception as mere scientists have claimed, or even when differentiation takes place in the foetus, some thirty weeks before the potential convert is ejected from the womb. One such biological revisionist, who presumably believes in spontaneous generation or delivery by stork, is due for a disciplinary hearing on the grounds that he has failed to fall in with what the Christian Legal Centre is pleased to call "the current transgender fad". Like so many of the persecuted and reviled who also happen to have a steady income and a measure of worldly power over the vulnerable, he does not appear to have noticed the guidelines in the Sermon on the Mount about the appropriate circumstances for rejoicing and being exceeding glad.

We Have Taught Them Much

We are all aware, because historians of the calibre of the Imperial Haystack have informed us, that the only tragedy inflicted upon the wogs by the British Empire was that its boot was removed from their necks too soon for their own good. Nevertheless, as those who favour Chinese-style working conditions for the mainland's own proles have observed, many of our rebellious beneficiaries do have remarkably advanced ideas when it comes to red tape, green crap, and health and safety. In Delhi, for example, thanks to a healthy construction industry and an appropriate respect for the rights of motorists, the air quality is such that even the Imperial Haystack's London legacy pales into near-cleanliness. Mere doctors have declared a public health emergency; but India, like the mainland, is governed by right-wing religious lunatics who have had enough of experts. Hence, the efficiency and foresight on display is worthy of the British at their best: having planned to disperse the smog by dropping water from helicopters despite declaring much of the city a no-fly zone, the politicians have now discovered that the helicopters cannot take off anyway because of the smog. It remains as yet unclear whether the Imperial Haystack has offered to sell his little brown brothers any used water-cannon.

More Uppity Colonials

Difficult though it may be to believe, there are places in the world still so primitive that cries of coup and treason can be provoked by tanks in the streets, rather than by the squealing ire of tax-dodgers as happens in more developed societies. In what the Foreign Secretary would doubtless call the country of Africa, some very angry piccaninnies are apparently gearing up to get rid of Robert Mugabe, the Rupert Murdoch of Southern Rhodesia, who now plans to pass on his troubled empire in accordance with family values. Zimbabwe's most powerful general has threatened to step in, and military vehicles are reportedly advancing on the capital, owing in part to the absence of a civilising solution from the Recrudescent Imperium, which would presumably comprise plastering a statue of good old Cecil with a special power-sharing paste made from the ashes of Ian Smith.

Independent Financial Advice

So fair are the forecasts and so profitable the prospects for the newly-liberated Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands that at least one representative of the Farage Falange's parliamentary wing has advised his chums in the financial sector to clear out good and fast. Elderly readers of my own generation will remember John Redwood as the doll-eyed woodentop who extolled the virtues of water privatisation by conjuring up visions of consumer-choice baths with ten or twenty taps, each run by a different company. As the very considerable Secretary of State for the Province of Wales, by appointment to the equally human John Major, Redwood's most famous achievement was failing to learn the national anthem and giving a piscine performance in which his boiled-fish eyeballs were complemented by his goldfish mouth. These days Redwood supplements his expenses claims with a six-figure salary as a "chief global strategist" for the well-padded middlemen at the Charles Stanley Group; and although like most dead-eyed woodentops he regards realistic and optimistic as synonymous for the purpose of tweeting to the proles, it appears that his fiscal self-interest has finally outshouted his political allegiances. Fortunately his political allies are unlikely to notice, as most of them are quite as brilliant as Redwood himself.

The Poppy-Wearers to Their Heroes

We wafted you off with our bellows for blood,
To show off your guts, to be mown into mud;
We certainly respect you.

And now, with your posthumous praises awarded,
Our plastic and paper can well be afforded;
For they will not affect you.

Barker Standfast

Seeds of Triumph

A plastic posy struts the streets,
Saluting each stout chap it meets
With face blood-red and nose blood-black,
Exhorting all to bold attack -
And to recall, yet once again,
The greatness of our living men:
Those suited heirs to glorious dead
Who profited, and died in bed.

New heroes must be called to pop
Their cheery selves over the top:
And so the swollen head explodes
To scatter patriotic loads:
These clouds of opiated spores
Make good, clean fun of all our wars;
And suckers all who take them in
Recall who won, and think who'll win.

Victor Finestock

Hitler Wanted to Unite Nations, Too

Gunboats may be required at New York as a malign cabal of piccaninnies, fuzzy-wuzzies and the perfidious French conspires in a hostile buy-out of Britain's jolly old share in the International Court of Justice. The UK has had a judge on the court since it was set up in 1946; but the present representative is at risk of ejection in a run-off vote with an uppity Indian, and this despite the Imperial Haystack's diplomatic sense of humour and ability to quote Kipling. The incumbent's achievements on behalf of world justice include obeying orders from Lord Goldsmith to deem the Iraq invasion justified, and being fulsomely praised by the Other Milibeing; so the loss would clearly be devastating.

Rude Questions

Given that we are only a few days from the annual ceremony for remembrance of who won the bloody war anyway, it is particularly tactless of the Euro-wog Führer in charge of punishment beatings to start throwing his weight around Tumbledown Tessie's vulnerable Sudetenlands. Nevertheless, Michel Barnier has demanded that the blithering prima donna David Davis and the gibbering former Minister for Werritty come up with, of all things, a plan for the future that involves some sort of concrete idea about what the future ought to look like. One would almost think that visions of a prosperous, independent nation of cake-having cake-eaters amounted to something less than a reasonable basis for negotiation. Even the UK's fair and reasonable offer to treat EU citizens as not quite illegal immigrants, and to create a nice new Home Office database just for them, has been churlishly spurned; and many Euro-wogs appear content to bask in their prosperity under the mistaken impression that they don't have to share it with the mainland. What can be the problem?

As Long As He Needs Us

As with many other conflicts that aren't the war against Communism, no doubt there are decent upstanding folk on all sides in the Syrian civil war. However, the brutal régime of President Assad may have overstepped the mark a bit by maliciously and deliberately signing the Paris climate change agreement and leaving the brutal régime of the Trumpster's head-tribble in splendid isolation. If the Heathen Chinee hoax cannot be held back even by murderous nationalists with dubious connections to Russia, it looks as if America's continuing resistance may depend on its special relationship with the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. It's true that Her Majesty's Government has ratified the Paris agreement, but then Boris is Boris and we have Michael Gove instead of an environment minister. The possibility cannot be discounted that both the jabbering homunculus and the Imperial Haystack believe that after March 2019 the treaty will no longer apply in any case, because we will have stopped being Europeans and become properly British once more.

Just Smogging About

Muesli-guzzling citizens of nowhere are seeking yet again to conspire with enemies of the people and force Her Majesty's Government to act against its most deeply-held religious convictions. Common sense and economic orthodoxy both proclaim that for a government to take an interest in the health of its citizens is sinful and Stalinist and very naughty indeed; and since 2010 the Conservatives and their little yellow enablers have been scrumping from the magic money tree in order to protect themselves from any such outlandish obligation. Last summer the Government was defeated in court for the second time, and pledged to start scribbling on more envelopes in order to haul itself into line with, of all things, EU law. Nevertheless, it appears that British pluck and gumption have once again caused the lion to squeak piteously and lose its false teeth, resulting in a further court case. Presumably the jabbering homunculus now ensconced at the Department of Fracking and Flooding will do what is nowadays required of ministers who break the law, and say how sorry he is that a few tens of thousands of proles each year are choosing to disrespirate themselves by breathing out of context.

When Two or Three are Gathered, Be Sure to Bring Your Gun

The attorney general for the Christian state of Texas has reacted with admirable forthrightness to the worst mass shooting in the state's recent history; which also happens to be the worst massacre at a place of worship in the history of the country. Taking to its logical conclusion the NRA Holy Writ which states that the way to stop people shooting each other is for people to shoot each other more righteously, Ken Paxton (Republican - imagine that) urged all good Christian folks to attend church with concealed weapons, the better to prevent any unnecessary unpleasantness. One or two people have argued that violence and Christianity are incompatible, although it is a little unclear which precedents from the history of Christianity or the history of the United States they are invoking. Meanwhile, the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble have confirmed the religious status of the event by declaring it ex cathedra a mental health issue. It is well known that American mass killers are necessarily psychologically disturbed whenever Islam and melanin are not prominently involved; but only the will of a whimsical God can possibly explain such a regrettable occurrence so soon after the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble removed the Obama administration's safeguards against the sale of guns to the mentally disturbed.

Nobody's Perfect

In the latest accomplishment of Mission Afghanistan, some dozens of civilians have allegedly been maximally detrimented in US airstrike. The Americans apparently targeted three villages with their usual precision, and were much surprised when the villages were found to contain villagers. It has, after all, been a long time since My Lai, and the quality of American airstrikes has deteriorated considerably since the days when the only civilian casualties were human shields or terrorist sympathisers. In those days, the airstrikes were surgical and precision; now the ones that kill civilians are necessarily errant, in contrast with those of the Russians and their Syrian allies, who never make mistakes.

Prince Harry and 9/11: The Iran Connection

Articles in the British media about royals playing soldier were apparently downloaded and studied by Osama bin Laden, quite possibly for nefarious purposes. The British media apparently require the services of the CIA to tell them this. The downloads are the most significant among thousands of documents recovered from the compound where bin Laden died or, in Oldspeak, was extrajudicially assassinated in accordance with Western civilisation's transcendent ideals of law and order.

In other revelations, the Shia fanatics who run Iran are once more accused of co-operating with al-Qaeda, which was hitherto thought to be funded more by the Sunni fanatics who run Saudi Arabia. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran denies the accusations; which of course fools nobody.

More Fishy Business

It takes a certain something to achieve environmental conditions slightly worse than when a climate change denier was minister for the environment; but whatever that something is, the British Conservative Party has it. The quantity of plastic litter on the sea-bed has been in long-term decline since a personality-appropriate peak under the Reverend Blair, and for the past three years it has consistently fallen. Last year, all that came undone, with one and a half times as much litter found as in the previous year. Quite aside from mere environmental concerns, litter in the sea causes damage to fishing equipment and harms the profits of fisheries; so it is just possible that the jabbering homunculus now heading the Department of Environmental Deregulation and Degradation may have to take back control, draw another red line in the sea and permit only our European enemies to fish in Imperial waters.

A Noble Sword to Fall On

Given that previous incumbents have included the fatuous Geoff Hoon and the oafish Adam Werritty, it should be obvious that the role of Defence Secretary has little or nothing to do with actual wog-bombing or squaddie-kicking. Decisions about killing foreigners are taken by the Prime Minister; decisions about cutting off benefits from crippled ex-soldiers are taken by the Treasury and the DWP. The Defence Secretary's essential function is to defend the Government from embarrassing headlines on serious issues by creating ludicrous headlines about trivial issues; and in this regard the poor little spider-keeping squit Gary Whateverson has rather a tough act to follow. Not only could the blustering blimp Michael Fallon be relied on to achieve Daily Express levels of inanity at the drop of a clanger, but with his departure he became the dead cat that threw itself. No doubt he can look forward to a prompt and prosperous political resurrection as Minister for International Trade.

Crusading Journalism

Well, here's a thing: a huge, lynch-mob squeal about Scary Muslims, which was splattered all over both the Murdoch Times and the Rothermere Daily Stürmer this summer, was based on no evidence. The stories concerned the foster placement of an alleged Christian who was an infant physically, rather than just mentally as stipulated by the Saviour. Supposedly this devout personage had been placed in an Islamic foster home where only Arabic was spoken, and where she was distressingly deprived of a crucifix, frightened with burqas and impiously forbidden from eating pork although the Saviour, being Jewish, famously recommended it three times a day with scratchings on the Sabbath. Astoundingly, an investigation by Tower Hamlets local authority has found every one of the allegations to be false, except for that single crime which automatically includes and implies all the rest: namely that an innocent British infant was in the camp of the infidel Untermenschen. How loud the Press apologies will be until next time is not as yet subject to reliable estimate.