United Against the Common Peril

If there is to be co-operation between the Recrudescent Imperium and its former oppressors in the Brusso-Strasbourgian axis, the basis of such co-operation is likelier than ever to lie in the warm and welcoming regions of cockroach control. As leaders in Führerreich and Ducetalia seek to bring the Continent into step with British values, the EU has approved and strengthened the let-'em-drown policy in the Mediterranean, and decreed that the surviving swarms be delivered to the mercies of the Libyan coastguard. Despite some humanitarian wog-bombing a few years ago by the forces of Anglo-American decency, Libya has somehow got itself embroiled in a civil war, which makes for some small doubt about the coastguards' moral compass and whether they can be relied on to constitute a sufficient deterrent. Fortunately, there is much ambitious talk of building a network of wog warehousing centres to revitalise the North African economy, and perhaps even a few in Europe; although it remains as yet unclear in whose back-yard such camps would be concentrated.

Insider Trading

As befits both the glittering record of those efficient Serco people and the unfailing cack-handedness of Her Majesty's Government, a former lobbyist for the corporate muggers has been appointed to the Ministry for Profitable Punitivity. In the interests of locking up anyone who cannot be thrown out, Her Majesty's Government wants ten thousand new prison places; and, as with every other government project under the present religious orthodoxy, there is no better qualification for managing such things than a career spent channelling public money into private profit. Serco, it will be remembered, is the company which charged the taxpayer several tens of millions for monitoring the activities of dead people; and no doubt the ideal arrangement would be for the taxpayer to reimburse Serco for tracking all malefactors permanently immobilised by the taxpayer-sponsored boot-boys at G4S. The slightest perception of the remotest hint of the smallest possibility of the least chance of even the most insignificant conflict of interest will, of course, be avoided with fanatical scrupulosity.

Affordable Law and Order

Investigation of the Putney Bridge jogger who was caught on video last May pushing a woman in front of a bus has been closed without a prosecution. This must be galling for the police, as common assault in broad daylight before electronic witnesses is precisely the sort of hobby which has caused the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club some small trouble in the past. Although embittered officers and the Corbyno-Stalinist subversives of the Police Federation tried to blame the failure on efficiency savings resulting from the Osbornomic miracle, a spokesbeing for the Met insisted that cuts had not affected the case; the coalition's mass sackings of "unnecessary" support staff, under a Home Secretary whose name and present position are doubtless of minor significance, have been a boon and a blessing all the way. For its own part, surprisingly enough, the Home Office believes that the police have all the resources and funding they need; and, assuming that the Putney Bridge victim is neither foreign nor a scrounger, presumably expects her undying gratitude for saving the culprit's legal aid on her tax bill.

Conscience of Nations

Of all the moral pressures that might cause the Trumpster and his hydrophobic orange head-tribble to think again, there can surely be few more weighted with significance than a sermon by the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair; at least in the estimation of Saint Anthony himself. His reverence apparently hopes to gain still greater moral traction from his association with the Trumpster's son-in-law: an association pursued "mainly over the middle east" where Saint Anthony achieved such spectacular peace-making results both during and after his ministry, but no doubt also pursued because Jared Kushner's father-in-law has the unbeatable ethical advantage of being incredibly rich. His reverence is concerned that global politics may be returning to the dark days of the nineteen-thirties, when governments rode roughshod over international law, started wars on the basis of lies, imprisoned people without trial, practised torture, and used force to suppress peaceful dissent. His reverence, of course, achieved all that and more, shoulder to shoulder with Baby Jesus and the White House chimpanzee; yet still his martyrdom continues.

Adonai Gevalt

Another state-funded faith school has been caught displaying excessive religious tolerance: despite being more than a little Jewish by persuasion, the Yesodey Hatorah senior girls' school appears to have been preparing its merchandise for life in Saudi Arabia rather than in Britain. Abetted by parents whose concerns are no doubt genuine and legitimate, the governors have imposed restrictions on careers advice and on the teaching of sex and relationships, human and animal biology, and global warming; and sad little people on the staff have gone through every book in the library blacking out mentions of bare skin on ankles, wrists and necks. Even helpline numbers have been redacted, in order to protect the young innocents from the blasphemous perils of secular telephony. Thanks partly to a New Labour/Michael Gove policy of employing unqualified teachers, Ofsted inspectors have rated the school as inadequate, prompting the usual screech of indignation from the chair of governors about having to fall in with a secularist agenda while taking money from multicultural taxpayers. In all fairness, the school's tolerant approach to the beliefs of others extends to the most unlikely beneficiaries: a reference to homosexuality was censored from a history textbook to prevent pupils getting the wrong idea about the Nazis.

It's Only Wales, After All

There are, of course, any number of good reasons why Her Majesty's Government would reject plans for a tidal lagoon which could supply power for a hundred and fifty thousand homes. The reason given by the Secretary of State for Profits, viz. a sudden access of Government concern about the next generation's tax and energy bills, need hardly detain us. The fact that the proposed site is in Wales, which most Conservatives probably still think of as that place where they burn down holiday cottages, may not be altogether irrelevant; although when faced with a choice between green crap and sustainable uranium, the present administration has been nothing if not consistent. The project was first proposed in 2011 and backed by the Bullingdon Club, who were probably vaguely aware that Wales is nowhere near the Home Counties; so it is entirely possible that the rejection stems in part from Tumbledown Tessie's wish to impress her political intelligence upon her predecessors. The most likely reason, however, is that the project was strongly backed by an independent report whose conclusions were tainted by the opinion of mere experts. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Profits admitted that he had spent eighteen months leaving no stone unturned in his search for excuses to disregard it.

Bad Theology

Text for today: John 6 xxxv-lxix

Preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus proclaims that only those will be saved who eat His flesh and drink His blood. He also states that no-one can come to Him or be raised to eternal life except by His Father's will.

By preaching the consumption of flesh with blood, Jesus insults His fellow Jews at the very foundation of their beliefs. The privilege of consuming live flesh and drinking blood is reserved for God alone (Genesis 9 iv, Leviticus 17 x-xiv), and any human being who does the same is an outlaw cut off from his people. Thus Jesus exhorts the Jews to throw off the very fundamentals of their identity, while at the same time assuring them that none will be able to do so without the will of the very God who originated their law.

The significance of the flesh is life, and specifically the life of priests: God requires that His priests be offered the first choice of any meat killed, on pain of blood-guilt and ostracism, while the priests are required to feed Him the blood and burn the fat because He enjoys the smell (Leviticus 17 iii-vii). In keeping with the backward spirit of His ministry, Jesus offers His own, presumably raw, flesh as part of a similarly primitive covenant, whereby the sacrificial meat is blasphemously eaten by the faithful as a means of cutting themselves off from sinful worldly society.

The significance of the blood is ransom: God requires the blood of sacrificial animals as a ransom for the human souls which He holds captive. Casting Himself as the sacrificial animal, Jesus asserts that those who drink His blood will be raised to God. Far from being a radical new development in human ethics, this is strictly in accordance with the Saviour's accustomed, rabidly reactionary doctrinal position. Since the practice of human sacrifice had been expunged from Jewish culture some centuries before, as manifested in the famous story of God's little joke with Abraham and the young Isaac, the comparatively civilised listeners in the synagogue are understandably puzzled and revolted.

Family Values Redux

Yet further far-sighted benignity from the morally-reformed Ministry for Wogs and Witch-Hunts was on display when a flunkey had a bit of a blather in the Daily Barclaygraph. Victoria Atkins effectively put the lid on any stray accusations of far-right antisemitism by blithely advocating the Righteous State's policy of collective punishment. A law passed in 2014, when of course no liberal, democratic party was in coalition to prevent it, provides that the families of gang members can be made homeless at the behest of the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club, as long as they happen to live in council houses. Atkins evidently believes that this law has not been sufficiently applied; although strangely enough, as a believer in reprisals against relatives of those who exploit the young, make lives a misery and put fear into people's hearts, Atkins does not seem to have made quite clear what fate should befall the families of parliamentarians who toddle through the lobbies in favour of destabilising the economy, wrecking communities and destroying livelihoods. Still, she was careful to advocate "leniency" (presumably the eviction of mothers and babies only, rather than the whole vicious brood) in cases of cannabis possession, as her husband used to grow the stuff for GW Pharmaceuticals.

Wealth Creators

The increasing importance of India in the world economy was emphasised yesterday when some small but determined entrepreneurs entered a cash machine and gnawed away more than a million rupees. In a blatant metaphor for the global financial system, ordinary mortals were denied use of their money while the strivers performed their accustomed services for hard-working families who played by the rules. Indeed, so heroically was prosperity pursued that one of the venturers appears to have made the ultimate sacrifice, though whether from a burst stomach or a business disagreement remains unclear. Funeral expenses will doubtless be covered by the grateful taxpayer.

High Eels

To anyone who has witnessed the career of George Osborne, the detrimental effects of cocaine are by now familiar enough; but it seems that the problem extends to higher forms of life than the Bullingdon Club. Rivers and water systems including, surprisingly enough, those near the Houses of Parliament, have had their fatbergs and other morally acceptable pollutants spiced with illegal drugs, which are causing all manner of troubles in European eels. The hyperactivity induced by exposure to cocaine causes damage to gills and muscles and burns up the fat necessary for migration and breeding. Fortunately, since drug use is regarded not as a complicated social and public-health problem but simply as a matter of moral fibre, the solution is simple. If the drug-using migrant Euro-eels don't like it here, they can always just swim back home.

Breathing British is a Privilege Not a Right

Well, here's a thing: despite the pellucid clarity of its pronunciamenti and the empyrean cleanliness of its rhetoric, when it comes to improving air quality the Government has been accused of dragging its feet. Four separate Commons committees made a series of joint recommendations in March, and in response the Government proclaimed that we are so far ahead of everyone else that any further action would be unsporting. Although we have the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove rather than anything so passé as an actual Environment Secretary, air pollution in the Recrudescent Imperium continues to cause some forty thousand premature deaths a year; but not generally among the kind of people the Conservative Party cares about. It is true that an interfering foreigner has accused the Government of flouting its duty to protect the health of the country's citizens; however, since Tin-Pot Tessie has withdrawn the privilege of citizenship from all subjects who disagree with her, this is a somewhat smaller problem than it might at first appear.

Identity Politics

Contrary to what you may have heard or wish to believe about the English-speaking peoples, child detention is what America is. Child detention is what Great Britain is, and it's certainly what Australia is. A third of Americans approve of the Trumpster's policy of separating families and keeping the children in cages, and John McCain must have a very rosy view of the institution of slavery if he genuinely believes that breaking up dark-skinned families is "contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded." Worries about lost votes or emotive pictures are beside the point: from single mothers through welfare scroungers to unauthorised wogs, attacking the vulnerable to bamboozle the unthinking is what modern democracy is all about. It is what we do, what we have always done. It is who we are.

Let's Hope They're Grateful

Hibernian natives and dogs,
Return to your kennels and bogs;
Our England can do
Just fine without you
And all of those vile Euro-wogs!

And yet in this case we must pay
Due tribute, and let a few stay;
Our Britishness pure
Must always ensure
That every good wog has his day!

We hope this new privilege triggers
Compassion for Home Office figures:
Now everything's fine,
We'll just draw a line
And hoover up votes from the niggers!

Windy Rushbum

Bad Theology

Text for today: Luke 19 xxxvi-xlviii

As Jesus approaches Jerusalem, His disciples loudly advertise His claim to kingship. When the Pharisees ask Him to quiet them, Jesus replies that if the disciples were silenced the stones would cry out instead. Nearing the city, He prophesies that Jerusalem will be surrounded and destroyed by its enemies who, acting presumably as agents of the divine wrath, will not leave one stone on another because the city failed to recognise the time of its visitation. On entering Jerusalem, Jesus attacks those who buy and sell in the temple precincts, but is nevertheless allowed to preach every day in the temple, where the people are eager to hear Him.

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the climax of His career as a prophet, predictably shows the Saviour at His most hypocritical, cocksure and cruel. His boast that the stones would recognise Him with hosannas if the disciples were silenced is quickly followed by His prediction that not a stone will be left standing in Jerusalem because of its failure to accord Him a similar reception. It is noteworthy that, having entered the city, Jesus is permitted to preach in the temple even after His outburst of fundamentalist rage against the money-changers, and that the people of Jerusalem are in fact very attentive to His preaching. As the Son of God, Jesus must of course have been aware, even as He called down destruction on the city and its children for their failure to listen to Him, that they would, in fact, listen to Him.

Similarly, He must have been perfectly well aware that His noisy triumphal entry, His disciples' proclamation of His claim to kingship and His driving-out of the money-changers would make the Jewish authorities nervous, because any possibility of unrest might provoke reprisals from the Romans. His infinite goodness and mercy were insufficient to take these facts into account: Jerusalem and its children will be destroyed because, with all the power that was granted Him, all the allowances that were made for Him and all the chances that were given Him, Jesus did not see fit to ensure that the city knew the time of its visitation.

Would You Describe Yourself as One of Us?

As part of its drive towards a more open and diverse society, which has hitherto encompassed such triumphs of tolerance as the Prevent programme, the Windrush persecutions and the Go Home vans, Her Majesty's Government is now concerned to ensure that companies are employing the right sort of people. To this noble end, the civil service will next year be asking its staff whether they have scrounger blood. Four-fifths of the questionnaire will then be recommended to other employers, and the information will be purely anonymous and will not be used for purging anyone, much as destroying the Windrush generation's documents did not affect their immigration status. Use of the questionnaire will for the moment be voluntary, which should certainly help to enhance diversity among those companies which don't particularly care about it.

Our War is With the Kremlin, Not the Kleptarch

Despite Britain's long and glorious record of putting the Russian Bear in its place - did not our pubescent Minister for Wog-Bombing recently squeak at it to go away and shut up? - the inevitable Euro-wog with a funny name seems to think he has grounds for complaint. A certain José Grinda, who has made his name grinding down the kind of obliging citizens who pay for London's roomiest skyscrapers, claims that Britain's co-operation in fighting organised crime is "less than negative." This of course is entirely consistent with the demonstrated extent of the Recrudescent Imperium's interest in fighting poverty, corruption, climate change and racism; and the fact that some co-operation is to be had in pursuing drug traffickers demonstrates, at least, that Her Majesty's Government has not yet met its Dunkirk in the war on pain-killing. It would hardly be reasonable to expect the Recrudescent Imperium to co-operate in the harassment of those who share so many of our values with regard to income, infrastructure and occasional torture.

Waste Effort

Although the Recrudescent Imperium has long since given up any pretence of interest in keeping the economy sustainable, being far more interested in such vital theological conundrums as how to retain all the privileges of EU membership while obeying none of the rules, it seems that a few muesli-munching hippy types are still worried about the green crap. A report by Green Alliance suggests that Britain should do more to recycle its own plastic waste, as opposed to the present policy of sending it abroad and letting the wogs make what use of it they can. Having been compiled at the behest of a few communistic regulation-fetishists from the more disreputable depths of the business community, the report recommends that companies be compelled to include recycled content in all plastic products and packaging, and even that taxpayers' money be used to stabilise the reprocessing market, rather than for ensuring healthy growth in the salaries of the deserving. Fortunately for the renewability of the nation's greatness, instead of a Secretary of State for the Environment Britain has the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, who has his own future to think of and who certainly isn't the man to intervene in an unfolding global catastrophe unless there is something in it for him.

Yes I Am Indeed Human Why Do You Query

On the eve of the Grenfell Tower disaster's first anniversary, a time when a less gauche breed of Christian might consider hiding away for a bit and repenting in sackcloth and, more pertinently, ashes, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has been pontificating on social media. As leader of a government whose sense of duty towards its citizens is obsessively proportional to their wealth, influence and racism, Tumbledown Tessie was predictably clueless about why officialdom had taken so long to respond. Partly, no doubt, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea was to blame; it is certainly remarkable that so crass, cavalier and wealthy a council could ever have been allowed into the Conservative Party, and doubtless the good folk at Central Office are even now working flat-out to ensure that blame for the oversight falls justly on London's firefighters.

Although the council was slow and insensitive in its response, such was not the case with the dead-eyed warden herself, who turned up only two days after the fire to have her picture taken. She now regrets the delay, which left something to be desired as a public-relations gesture and may, perish the thought, have given some people the idea that she didn't care. Of course this was never the case. From the start of her ministry until now, if there has been one question, one danger, one ever-present menace about which the dead-eyed warden has always cared deeply, that would be the question of angry poor people; particularly if they happen to be Muslim or Coloured and thereby look a bit migranty, but still have yet to be deported.

Mature Judgement, Enlightened Conscience

O rah for those brave and courageous
And free-thinking Members so bold,
Who honourably, for their wages,
Rebelled, and did what they were told.

O rah for the flunkey resigning
Because of the ethical strain,
Who stands forth and, after some whining,
Resolves, at the last, to abstain.

O rah for the malcontent rabble
Who mutter and murmur and plot,
Then after a bit of a gabble
Decide, when it matters, to not.

O rah for the moderate faction
With so many sane things to say,
Who then take the sensible action
Of trusting in Mad Tessie May.

O rah for the brave Tory rebels,
Those swashbuckling not-young non-Turks!
Those cunningly horse-trading devils:
All patriots loyal: true Burkes.

Hansard

Subtle Distinctions

Surprising as it may seem to anyone who recalls the lock-'em-up-and-kick-'em-out rah-rah which characterised her Blairite heyday, there are one or two cockroaches so potentially utilisable that even Yvette Cooper doesn't think they should be deported quite yet. The new Minister for Wog Control proclaimed a temporary amnesty last month, while the mild embarrassment occasioned by the Windrush persecutions was still warming the cockles of his self-interest. Now that other headlines have come to prominence, the true difference between the May-Rudd hostile environment and the May-Javid compliant environment is emerging in all its sub-microscopic glory: in summary, the opportunistic racist at the Ministry for Wog Control is still kicking people out at the behest of the ideological racist in Downing Street, even when such people's economic credentials are sufficient to satisfy a focus-group racist like Yvette Cooper.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 21 xxxiii-xli

Questioned by the Jewish elders about His authority to teach, Jesus relates a parable about a landowner who builds a vineyard and lets it to tenants, and then departs for a distant country. When the landowner sends his servants to collect the profits, the tenants beat and kill them. The landowner then sends his son, whom the tenants murder in hope of inheriting the vineyard. Jesus asks the Jewish elders what the landowner will do with the tenants, and the elders respond that he will destroy them and let out the vineyard to tenants who will pay what they owe.

The parable is highly precise in its allegory; being directed against Jesus' most treasured enemies, it was no doubt long and meticulous in the planning. The vineyard represents God's covenant with the Jews, with all its advantages to the chosen people; the landowner is God, the servants are the prophets whom the Jews have ignored or persecuted, and the son is Jesus. The profits from the vineyard represent the worship and obedience which the Jews owe to God, the tenants represent the enemies of Jesus, and the worthier tenants anticipated at the end are the adherents of His new blood-cult. The landowner's departure to a far country indicates the detachment of God from His creation and His consistent refusal to take responsibility for His servants, even when they are dutifully carrying out dangerous errands at His command.

When sending his son to remonstrate with the tenants, the landowner remarks that the tenants will surely respect him. Given the parable's exactitude in all other regards, this most peculiar statement can hardly be ignored. If God, like the landowner, has sent His Son in the genuine expectation that the Jewish leaders will heed His message rather than killing Him, then self-evidently God has made a mistake. If God genuinely did not know in advance that the Jewish leaders would reject and kill His Son, then the divine plan of crucifixion, resurrection and redemption was no more than a gamble, in which for all He cared the chief priests and Pharisees might have triumphed as easily as the true faith.

This of course is inadmissible. Assuming that the landowner represents the omniscient God, he must obviously have been aware of his tenants' character before he let them the vineyard; and he must also have foreseen what the tenants would do with his servants and his son. Nevertheless, the landowner retreats to a far country, leaves his precious vineyard entirely in the tenants' unworthy hands, and knowingly dispatches servants and son to their inexorable fate.

Why, then, does the landowner assert that the tenants will surely respect his son? As an allegory of God, the landowner must be aware, even as he makes the assertion, that the son will in fact be killed. Hence we must assume that the landowner's remark is a lie, intended perhaps to deceive the son and induce him to walk willingly into the trap. The landowner's omission of any mention of the resurrection can doubtless be put down to God's famously robust sense of humour.

Muted Bell

Britain's leading liberal newspaper has refused to publish a cartoon by Britain's leading political cartoonist, on the grounds that it contains antisemitic tropes. The cartoon depicts the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK having a cosy chat with her counterpart from the Righteous State, in front of a fire on which Razan al-Najjar, the Palestinian medic who fanatically threw herself in front of an Israeli sniper's bullet just to make the Jews look bad, is seen burning. Cremations and fires are antisemitic, you see; as is blood when the Righteous State is depicted as shedding it, and weaponry when the Righteous State is depicted as using it. Even the implication of censorship is no doubt morally dubious, given the parallels to Nazi book-burning which are likely to be drawn by the malevolent and simple-minded. Britain's leading liberal newspaper is clearly to be commended for its policy of fair and balanced caution, and it is certainly to be hoped that the forces of antisemitism do not poke their noses in and engineer a Streisand effect.

Give the Kids the Pick of Pips

Given the presence of little Gavin at the head of the Ministry for Wog-Bombing, it should come as no surprise that the army has again been caught using the stresses of GCSE results day in an attempt to recruit child soldiers. The army has been posting social media messages suggesting that disappointing grades be seen not as a setback but as an opportunity to improve oneself by riding quad bikes and finding somewhere to belong. Although the campaign is UK-wide, citizens of the northern powerhouse were of particular interest; it remains unclear whether the army would be able to supply enough quad bikes for those in areas where Field Marshal Graybeing has made it all quiet on the transport front. Potential poppy-seeds can apply to join the army at the age of fifteen years and seven months, although there is a cooling-off period for anyone who has the well-known and widespread adolescent talent for cooling off, and there is a six-month period after the first twenty-eight days when they can leave and explore other rich prospects among the food banks.

Pour Encourager

With typical lack of consideration, born no doubt from pathological Gallic envy at the diplomatic skills of Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, the leader of the perfidious French has called upon the leaders of the world's most virtuous economies to stand up to the Trumpster, just at the point when the Recrudescent Imperium is minded to grovel in upright abjection and proudly urinate all over itself before the might of the hydrophobic head-tribble. As a disgraced former minister of Werritty and wog-bombing, the vole-brained Secretary for International Trade is in an excellent position to realise how much less fun a trade war is than a real one; nevertheless, the leader of the perfidious French had the pathological gall to invoke our shared values and common heritage of peace-keeping in the Middle East, which must have brought forth a few sniggers from the Imperial Haystack and every other British patriot who has stormed the D-Day beaches with his mouth. It remains to be seen whether the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble will realise in time where their true interests lie; possibly they may take the hint as the Recrudescent Imperium continues to model itself as a less self-respecting version of the Trumpster's troublesome new chums in North Korea.

Our Better Selves

British values continue to intensify among Her Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic fundamentalists. According to a United Nations special rapporteur on anti-terrorism, the head-chopping House of Saud is using the rubric of national security to suppress dissent and justify torture, for all the world like a mother of democracies. Although women are now allowed to drive, thus entitling members of the head-chopping House of Saud to include the term "Proud social liberal" in their social media straplines, according to the rapporteur there is "no separation of powers in Saudi Arabia, no freedom of expression, no free press, no effective trade unions and no functioning civil society". For its own part, the head-chopping House of Saud claims only that there is no conflict between its own interpretation of sharia law and its own interpretation of international human rights standards; and that freedom of expression is permitted, though doubtless within the pacific and moderate bounds of law, reason and the divine will. Quite apart from the continued glorious wog-bombing in Yemen, things are becoming so enlightened as to seem almost a vision from the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair.

Baring the Important Bits

Political correctitude and femi-McCarthyism have claimed yet another chunk of the ever-decreasing ruggedness that is high culture in the United States. The Miss America pageant is forsaking all concern with mere appearances, as its organisers intend from now on to ensure that contestants are judged purely by the depths of their souls, rather than their appearance in a swimsuit. It remains as yet unclear what awful fathoms of depth are expected in the kind of people who enter the Miss America pageant, let alone by whom and with what equipment the spiritual colonoscopy is to be performed.

Cold-Cocked

Either some self-publishing romance novelists are illiterate to a degree unsuspected even by old romantics such as myself; or else the world, for all its upheavals, has continued stable enough that social media remain an inferior publicity machine to the American courts. The two possibilities are of course not mutually exclusive; in this case, the artist in question had tried to register the word "cocky" as a trademark, and had dispatched several billets-doux enjoining various rivals to unhand the heated hunk of hardened lexicality which was now to be hers alone. Unfortunately, not even the Trumpster's hydrophobic head-tribble has yet got around to granting people exclusive ownership of bits of the English language; and the panting purveyor of pulsing throbs and heaving flushes has had her doggle thoroughly de-booned by an upstanding member of the New York judiciary.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Mark 12 xxvi

Baited by the literate and upper-class Sadducees with paradoxes about the resurrection, Jesus invokes God's words to Moses out of the burning bush, proclaiming Himself the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Isaac, whose name means laughter, was accordingly used by God as a pawn in a bad joke against his father, and was later the butt of another bad joke by his devious wife and thieving younger son. This of course recalls the Saviour's own recommendation that family members should turn against one another, besides prefiguring (no doubt with humorous intent) the murderous, child-abandoning Father whom He reproached at Golgotha.

In the mouth of Jesus, who only a few verses later is seen renouncing His kinship with David, the invocation of the Hebrew patriarchs is remarkably hypocritical. The patriarchs' relationship with God was often healthily disputatious: Abraham argued against the genocide at Sodom (Genesis 18 xx-xxxii), while Jacob repented his swindling of his brother and fought the tyrant physically until he was blessed (Genesis 32 xxiv-xxx). Moses himself, whose laws Jesus famously considered too lax and lenient, interceded for the disobedient Hebrews against their loving Father's threatened holocaust (Exodus 32 x-xiv).

The idea of Jesus attempting to persuade the Father to spare Sodom, or to abstain from raining brimstone on blasphemers, is self-evidently absurd. At every opportunity, the Saviour calls down torment and destruction: not only upon His enemies, but even upon those who lack the opportunity to hear or understand Him. Aside from brief lapses at Gethsemane and Golgotha, Jesus makes no demands on the god of the living. Instead, He urges absolute faith in the face of the most appalling indifference and cruelty, while skimming over God's crimes with all the blithe callousness of that infantile state which He proclaimed as His moral ideal.

Animal Rationis Capax

Gender inequality is unprofitable and hence at least arguably undesirable, according to research commissioned by the World Bank. Women are less likely to be educated, to be employed or to be paid for the work they do; and when they are employed, they are more likely to work fewer hours and for lower pay. The children of young and poorly-educated women are at greater risk of malnourishment, academic underachievement, and even of dying off altogether before they have the opportunity of contributing to the wealth of the World Bank, or any bank at all. This would of course be a deplorable situation if human society were ruled by purely materialistic considerations; fortunately, our most genuine and enduring values are protected by our great moral traditions. Such is the power of their ethical imperative that they have regulated our conduct for thousands of years, not least because anyone going against them could be stoned or burned alive. By comparison, even the moral stature of the World Bank may still have room for improvement.

Sovereign Gold

Now that all minor issues such as the Irish Question have been settled to everyone's satisfaction, the Brexiteers are naturally turning once more to those thornier matters which rank in importance with blue passports and commemorative bongs from Big Ben. A number of the Conservative Party's more illustrious intellects, along with their moral guides in the scumbag press, have ordered a set of special coins from the Treasury, which has now extruded a flunkey to state unequivocally that he can see that there could be an argument. Doubtless because the Treasury has still to decide whether the Royal Mint should be moved to Frankfurt, it remains as yet unclear what design might be used. It is arguable that an armed Irishman in a hangman's hood, or a Kent-long tailback of freight lorries, could risk striking a downbeat note; and since the union of England with its peripherals may not survive the process of Imperial independence, even the image of the Union Jack might prove premature.