Gone Native

Prominent right-wingers have denounced EU member states for providing sanctuary to British nationals, especially those who have been rescued from those war zones which are among Britain's precious few remaining growth export industries. The Rothermere Daily Stürmer is all of a tizzy about sickening acts of betrayal, the strutting ex-Caudillo of the Farage Falange has been blathering that Europe is committing suicide, and some prominent cheats in the EU referendum have had a bit of a foam about filthy, despicable snakes, implying that Islamist and British are separate and incompatible categories, presumably in the same way as British and Muslim. The pretext for all this righteous fury is that Salman Abedi, who was British and born in Manchester, was evacuated from Libya by the Royal Navy, shortly after the late Head Boy turned that unfortunate country into a pig's breakfast and then toddled off to better things, much as he was soon to do with the United Kingdom. Three years after his rescue Abedi killed himself and twenty-two other people in the Manchester Arena bombing; and in doing so, of course, he magically transformed himself into an immigrant and a refugee, which was a jolly irresponsible and ungrateful thing to do.

About as Heinous as it Gets

Slavery is a Bad Thing because it costs the state money, according to the persecutors of the Windrush generation. In a sudden access of concern for the rights of British workers doing British jobs, the Home Office has published a report which blazes with righteous indignation about the conditions of people whose exploitation holds no profit for the right sort of people and lacks the entrepreneurial legitimacy of the gig economy. A further review is now proposed, which is expected to lead to further improving rhetoric about Britain's world leadership in the fight against human trafficking, while the remainder of the Government goes happily about its legitimate business of creating a healthy business environment for the traffickers.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 11 xi

Jesus proclaims that no greater human being than John the Baptist has ever been born, but that the person who is least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than John.

There is one who is least in the kingdom of heaven; hence, the kingdom of heaven is a hierarchy and, even under God, its citizens are not equal. This assertion is a corollary of Jesus' declaration that the last shall be first and the first last (Matthew 20 xvi). For all His noted hostility to conventional human affections when they rival the all-important worship of the Father, Jesus had no interest in changing the basic structure of human power relationships. He did not promise to abolish thrones; He promised only that they should be occupied by Himself and His disciples. To the élite He recommended lofty indifference to the suffering of others, while His good news to the poor does not include the abolition of poverty and pain, but merely the assertion that the rich will soon suffer worse in their place.

The idea that the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven is the humblest, as implied at Mark 10 xlii-xlv, need hardly trouble us. As Jesus observes, kings and princes in the ancient world were unashamedly self-aggrandising and boastful, and thus offensive to God who regards all human beings alike as dust and ashes and simply cannot abide arrogance. As the earthly satrap for the greatest tyrant of all, Jesus was merely the pioneer for those many future tyrants who posture as "servants" to the people they command, manipulate and butcher.

When Patriots Hear the Word Culture

Artists of all kinds are notorious for their moral unreliability, and their perverse and horrid vices are now being encouraged by the hotbed of treachery that is the House of Lords. The home affairs sub-committee has called for, of all things, detail and clarity from the Government, and even implies that freedom of movement might be a Good Thing. Of course the report is only discussing culture, which as far as the present administration is concerned begins with Land of Hope and Glory and ends with statues of Bomber Harris; but the idea that "cultural workers" should be allowed to slip into the Recrudescent Imperium and pollute the purity of our morris-dancing with their alien Nazi-style Dubs-steps will of course be anathema to every non-traitor in the land. It hardly seems likely, after all, that the great works of Kipling could have been written if their author had spent all his time messing about in a foreign country.

That Graybeing Touch Again

Well, here's a thing: despite the glittering records of the privatised rail companies, the privatised water companies, the privatised prisons and the part-privatised NHS, it seems that the privatised probation industry has been a bit of a flop. The "ambitious and innovative reform," as the Minister for Profitable Incarceration sniggeringly hath it, was introduced by the brilliant Chris Graybeing, and the very nearly unpredicted débâcle was considerately announced at the end of the Parliamentary session, so as not to upset the plebs who will be picking up the bill. Since the companies' contracts are being prematurely terminated, about £500 million of public money will be shovelled down their maw in order to assuage their emotional trauma. Perhaps most splendidly of all, this amount will include £115 million in penalty charges for failing to meet targets which were once the responsibility of the private companies but are now, by a miracle of transformative efficiency, the responsibility of the taxpayer.

Proposed and Disposed

Poor little Dominic Raab, the Minister in Name Only for Brexit, is having quite a time of it. Appointed to fill the shoes of the blustering prima donna David Davis (shoes which we can only hope the Civil Service has labelled L and R in a nice, clear sans-serif font), he immediately proved himself worthy of his predecessor by failing to have the appropriate paperwork ready for debate in the House of Commons. Then, while he was facing a committee and doing his best to break the English language in new and independent ways, the dead-eyed warden's minions casually informed the Press that the actual work in Raab's department would from now on be handled by the grown-ups in the Cabinet Office. Raab responded by spraying testosterone across the tabloids with a threat to renege on the agreement to pay our dues unless the Euro-wogs started playing fair: a threat which the consigliere of the Brusso-Strasbourgian mafia casually brushed aside today, along with Tumbledown Tessie's fantasy fiction from the recent Chequers bloodbath. Although no piece of paper which results in the loss of Davis and Boris Johnson can really be called hard-won, the Euro-wogs' intransigence must be a bit of a disappointment: who could have imagined that the EU might prefer its customs policy not to be outsourced to a foreign power which regards EU rules as a crypto-Nazi straitjacket? The disappointment must be all the more acute as Her Majesty's Government still has not caught up with the fact that Michel Barnier is the EU negotiator, rather than the twenty-seven heads of state at whom Britain is still, with all the entrepreneurial gumptiom it can summon, barking orders.

Good Old-Fashioned British Fun

For many of its more hard-working ideologues, of course, Brexit is not merely a matter of wog-bashing and tax-dodging. Our approaching independence also has its lighter side, with the resumption of hanging and flogging high on the list of entertainments. Nevertheless, a Conservative colleague of some Jew-baiters and climate cranks in the European Parliament has felt obliged to row back a bit from a seemingly uncompromising call to protect British values and resume some of the traditional pastimes. David Bannerman, who defected to the Farage Falange and then, with Churchill doubtless in mind, defected back to the Conservatives a short but discreet time after they regained office in 2010, equated "extreme EU loyalty" with Islamist terrorism and proclaimed that the fourteenth-century Treason Act needed bringing up to date so that traitors, saboteurs and citizens of nowhere could be dealt with in true British fashion. The last use of the Act was, after all, in 1946, during that brief yet paradisal interlude between Britain's triumph over the forces of foreignness and the horrid letdown that was the founding of the National Health Service.

Bannerman later asserted that he would not wish to curtail debate and that, since our biggest trading partner is now a threat to rival the Great Novichok and the Heathen Chinee, only those who leak confidential documents to the Euro-wogs with anti-British intent should really be executed. Given the trouble everyone has had getting any Government documents at all on the subject of our impending freedom, it would be intriguing to know just how widespread the threat of execution is nowadays among the Farage Falange's servants in Whitehall. Perhaps the blithering prima donna David Davis, with his famously paperless style, was merely trying to protect the nation against its enemies and himself against the patriots.

Let Them Drink Methane

Given that our country consists of various islands, surrounded by sea on all sides (except, at the moment, for the side where it would do the most good); and given that wind and waves are a more or less frequent occurrence on the sea; and given that the sun has been beaming sweatily down on us for the past few weeks like an escaped blob of Boris Johnson's self-esteem - given all these subtle hints as to where we might find new sources of energy, it is only natural that the prevailing religious orthodoxy should decree shale-gas and sustainable uranium as the inescapable way of the future. The Government's choice of today for the annunciation that Cuadrilla can frack the northern proles as much as conscience allows is of course purely fortuitous: it has taken seven years for the Conservatives to lower the relevant standards sufficiently for Cuadrilla to be comfortable in them, and it would be grossly uncharitable to suspect that today's position at the fag-end of the parliamentary session, with no time for questions in the Commons and a convenient plethora of other disasters competing for the media's ever more piscatorial attention span, exerted any influence whatsoever.

Our Civilising Influence

Among the necessary sacrifices involved in working at the highest levels of government is that one is occasionally required to deal with unpleasant régimes, and that in so doing one must occasionally perform certain actions which one may find deeply and inescapably enjoyable. If there is one thing Her Majesty's Government enjoys more than deporting people, it is killing them; mostly in great big batches of exhilarating profitability, but sometimes by sneaky, secretive proxy, at least as long as the Euro-wogs prevent us from stringing up our own malcontents. Having been emphatically if doubtless temporarily stymied in its great work of ethnically cleansing the Windrush generation, the Home Office is now making furtive overtures to the Trumpster's attorney general, to the effect that, while our stance on capital punishment remains more or less against, our stance on capital punishment carried out by the nation's future exclusive source of chlorinated chicken remains more or less whatever. Similarly, Her Majesty's Government has no plans to raise any formal objections to indefinite detention without trial in Guantánamo Bay, although Her Majesty's Government believes Guantánamo Bay should close, presumably on the fair-play grounds that the inmates deserve worse.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Luke 14 vii-xxiv

While dining at the house of a leading Pharisee, Jesus states that during formal occasions one should take the humblest place, on the eminently worldly grounds that it is better to court promotion from a lower position than to risk demotion from a higher. He then relates a parable about a rich man who holds a banquet, but finds that those he has invited are too preoccupied with worldly matters to attend. The rich man eventually orders his servant to compel the destitute to attend instead.

In the kingdom of heaven, modesty is not a virtue but a tactic to achieve greater honour. Jesus advises His listeners to throw parties for the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind, because such people cannot return the favour and therefore God will provide the reward. In other words, one should not show generosity to one's family, one's friends or one's social equals, because such inconsiderate behaviour leaves no room for God to show off His power. According to Jesus, we should humble ourselves in order to be exalted, as befits dedicated sycophants who flatter a whimsical tyrant in the hope of advancement, or at least of avoiding arbitrary punishment.

The parable of the banquet is a cynical joke at the expense of those who imagine that Jesus and His Father will reward them with anything better than slavery and degradation. Not satisfied with inviting those who cannot reward him, the rich man in the parable invites those who cannot even attend: everyone has some reason for staying away. Even when the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind have been asked, there is still so much room to spare that the host orders his slave to force people to come.

Why should a rich man encounter such difficulties in getting people to attend his banquet? As soon as we recognise that the rich man represents the jealous, arbitrary and murderous Father, the answer becomes clear. The guests make their excuses because they know how the banquet will taste: how poisonous to the mind, how disgusting to the senses, how repulsive to the morals it will be. So awful is the menu that even the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind have heard of its reputation and stay away in humiliating numbers. At last, like every tyrant, the spurned host is reduced to ordering people to put up with him.

Astounding Findings Amaze Experts

Experts amazed by astounding findings

Healthcare experts across the country have been astounded by the amazing revelation that spending vast sums on management consultants tends to reduce available resources for healthcare.

In a further astonishing development which instantly reduced gibbering pondlife to Health Ministry spokespersons, it also emerged that forcing health trusts to compete against one another resulted in further expense from duplication of effort.

"These are astounding revelations that have completely astounded us," said healthcare expert Bradley Ichneumon, of the Brown, Cameron and Clegg Serpentine Unguent management consultancy.

"It's going to take a lot of time and a lot of research to appropriately process these resultifications and forward-boot a model for re-dynamicised ongoingness," Dr Ichneumon said. "Mostly, it will take a lot of money."

Junior health minister Pudgey Gambit, who recently failed her 72-hour Wikipedia degree in brain surgery for the third time, said that there was no cause for undue concern as the findings had only occurred in the "real world".

"What is clear in all this is that further efficiency savings will have to be made," she said. "That's what every non-traitor agrees is most important about the NHS, and that's something we will never allow to change."

This Mothering Country

It will no doubt come as a relief to the great British nation that the use of living children, besides dead ones, as police and intelligence assets occurs only when Her Majesty's Government finds it appropriate. Juvenile covert human intelligence sources (children, in Standard English) are being assigned to collect information about gangs and drug dealers, which naturally involves keeping them in the milieu rather than anything so namby-pamby as taking them out; so it is certainly fortunate that this happens only when that repository of cool-headed competence, the British Home Office, considers it a good idea. According to the dead-eyed warden's spokesbeing, utilisation of currently viable juvenile covert intelligence sources is "governed by a very strict legal framework" which the Home Office has naturally been trying to undermine: at the moment agencies can only utilise the juveniles for a month at a time before applying to re-register the asset in question, but Her Majesty's Government is concerned that intelligence target throughput is not being appropriately facilitated, and believes that four months represents a fairer chance for the resources to pay their debt.

Honourable Pairings

By one of those charming little accidents that seem so often to smooth the snouts and slick the trotters at the Parliamentary trough, a Conservative expenses claimant had a lapse of memory in a tight vote, and unintentionally if conveniently breached his agreement with a Deputy Conservative counterpart who was unable to attend the session. The squeals of righteous indignation might sound a little more convincing were it not for the Deputy Conservatives' own relaxed approach, even with regard to the sole party policy which they failed to stay in office long enough to abandon. Opposition to Brexit has now replaced proportional representation and tuition fees as the hill on which the Deputy Conservatives will surrender if thrown a red box in a minor government department; but that didn't stop two former party leaders having better things to do than make life more difficult for Tumbledown Tessie. George Osborne's former Minister for Mates' Rates had an Important Meeting, and the Reverend Tim Farron was delivering a sermon about the challenges of serving his Big Constituent, the great heterosexual sky-daddy, while posturing as a liberal politician. Still, it is reassuring that, despite five years on the receiving end of the Bullingdon Club's sniggering thugliness, the Deputy Conservatives are still capable of registering surprise, and even annoyance, when their fellow austerity fanatics toddle a cleated brogue or two casually over their faces.

A Jolly Good Wheeze

British expendables are being detrimented in record numbers by increasingly severe and increasingly prevalent asthma, and this in the very midst of such brilliant incumbencies as those of Owen Patterson, Andrea Leadsom, Michael Gove and Jeremy C Hunt. Over the past decade, the annual number of deaths from asthma has risen by more than twenty-five per cent, despite the improving effects of all that talk about leading the world, to say nothing of all those efficiency savings at the NHS. Indeed, mere experts are already seeking to pin the blame on a combination of deteriorating public healthcare and Britain's proudly illegal levels of air pollution. Doubtless they hope thereby to resurrect the long-discredited, borderline-antisemitic idea that the Government bears some sort of responsibility for the health of the country's citizens, and that deserving and undeserving alike should be entitled to endless, economically unsustainable non-contributory privileges of respiration.

Plumbing Depths

Only a citizen of nowhere could fail to be moved by the undiluted Britishness of this: the water company which has just ordered a hosepipe ban in the Northern Poorhouse has the second-worst record in the country for leaking pipes; only Thames Water is more abject. United Utilities (a corporatonym on which even the founder of National Consolidated Solutions would be hard-put to improve) loses almost exactly as much water from leakage as it spares for its moisture consumption client base. The company takes the loss just seriously enough to meet the rigorous targets set by the Government, whose fondness for all things infrastructural is such that its own advisers have hinted at toddling towards some sort of leakage reduction thingy by about the middle of the century. Reduction has largely stalled in the past decade, despite the Conservatives being in office for most of the time; and the National Infrastructure Commission has demonstrated a commendable degree of realism by advising the Government to favour the taxpayers rather than the water companies with its constructive criticism, thereby keeping future directorships nice and dry for later.

Gove Talks Turkey

Although the plebs have only one will, which they exercised two years ago and for all eternity, there are certain special people who are allowed to change their minds. Among this élite is apparently the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove who, with the Government floundering and the Imperial Haystack returned to his chickenfeed, has been stroking what passes for his chin in what he presumably intends to pass for a display of intellectual adequacy. Specifically, the jabbering homunculus has been pontificating upon the errors of his wogs-out campaign, which with the benefit of hindsight he would now manage slightly differently; apparently because he believes that the country has become slightly more migrant-friendly and egalitarian as a result. Should the jabbering homunculus have his time over again, there would be slightly less squealing about an invasion from Turkey and perhaps a slight hint that, in the event of our remaining part of the EU, the resulting apocalyptic deluge of Islamic terrorists might number slightly less than seventy-seven million. Perhaps the jabbering homunculus would even prefer some slightly smaller echt-Nazi posters than his allies chose to display, depicting slightly fewer swarthy young males preparing slightly less ghastly fates for virtuous white women and Sarah Vine. It is all frightfully statesmanlike.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 6 i-iv

During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus orders His disciples not to publicise their gifts to the needy, because their Father in Heaven will only reward them if their giving is done in secret and does not attract praise from other people.

Although Jesus advocated healing the sick and casting out devils as a useful means of announcing the coming of His kingdom, He did not consider helping one's fellow human beings a virtuous end in itself. His attitude towards the widow's gift amply demonstrates His satisfaction at the idea that those with very little should to no earthly purpose give away even what they have; and in any case He famously regarded the vast majority of the human race as merely chaff to be burned and forgotten when the Father imposes His régime of religious cleansing.

Human beings are essentially social and conformist: in a society where generosity was genuinely practised and praised, more generosity would probably be forthcoming, to the moral and practical benefit of everyone. However, Jesus had not the slightest interest in bettering conditions on earth, and arguably no real interest in bettering human behaviour. Given that those who are to be saved have been arbitrarily chosen by God, presumably since the beginning of time, there can hardly be much point in wasting time and energy trying to cure the tares of those faults which their Father has seen fit to bestow upon them.

Rather, Jesus required dedication at all costs to Himself and to His Father. Almsgiving in His view was merely a convenient way in which to purify one's life by divesting it of worldly wealth; in other words, giving to the poor was an act to be undertaken for the benefit of one's own soul and not for the good of the recipient. Accordingly, in the interests of focusing His disciples' attention on the things of God and not of humanity, where helping the poor is concerned Jesus forbids the elect to lead by example.

As We Forgive Those That Trespass Against Others

Where survivors of abuse are spiritually unprepared to forgive their abusers, the Christian churches are commendably willing to step in and perform that holy office on their behalf. Catholic policy, before the scandal broke and the Vatican resorted to blaming Judaeo-leftist conspiracies of journalism, was to exact a religious penitence and then shunt the culprit into a new position where he could wrestle temptation anew. The Church of England, as befits its moral position as whining hypocrite to the Vatican's bargain-basement Machiavelli, takes a more nuanced approach, temporarily suspending those responsible for covering up the abuses and later inviting them back to officiate without, apparently a stain on their reputation. Such is the case with Lord Carey of Blathering-in-the-Dotage, who stepped down last year at the "request" of the Archbishop of Canterbury after criticism of his role in covering for a sexually abusive bishop. As with the Vatican's policy, it is possible that, left to itself over the Biblically-prescribed seventy times seven repetitions, this might bring about the most touching and penetrating results.

The Knell

No pleas for the pardon of those who were lost;
No hint of the lessons we learned at their cost;
No scorn for the fools who thought war was ended
While businessmen prudently had it suspended.
Instead let us march! Let us strut and parade
Past compassionate stone, in our hearts' image made:
With all jubilation and thanks let us plod
Our nation's salute to the Englishman, God.

Trenchard Clanger

Not Quite Real People After All

Britain's patriotic rejoicing at the Britishness of the British divers involved in the rescue of the Wild Boars football team will be somewhat diluted by the revelation that the coach and three of the players are authentic citizens of nowhere. They come from an unsettled border region and are not recognised as Thai citizens; the authorities may condescend to exalt their status depending on that of their parents, but many who are eligible for Thai citizenship fail to obtain it thanks to the considerable Britishness of the system. If only Her Majesty's Government had been aware of the situation earlier, the dead-eyed warden's boot-boys would undoubtedly have made short work of the cave; most likely by declaring it a detention centre and the residents not trapped but "being processed". It would have saved everybody so much bother.

It's Potty Time Again

Various uncharitable commentators, including your now duly chastened correspondent, have found it rather easy to mock at the latest flounce from the front bench by David Davis; however, it now appears that the squealing prima donna may have had the makings of that rare thing in the modern Conservative Party: a grievance that is more or less comprehensible to the average graduate from intermediate-level toilet-training and above. Paper, after all, is the one thing that defines the squealing prima donna's tenure as Minister for Britannic Independence, from the famous fictitious impact studies to the committee copy-and-pastes to what was arguably the apex of his career: that iconic portrait of Davis seated behind a paperless desk, facing down an axis of binder-toting Eurocrats with no more than an arf-arf grin. Yet, even with that record of statesmanship behind him, the first time he managed to hand something in before the deadline his nasty old headmistress not only failed to cough up the gold star, but refused even to regurgitate the jewels of his wisdom for the edification of the other infants. Fortunately, several of the noisier ones are indignant at their deprivation and have incontinently begun the usual protests from all the expectable orifices.

Certain Alienable Rights

One of the few aspects of their predecessor's legacy which the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble have not sought to vandalise is, unsurprisingly enough, the continued existence of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Used by Obama's chimpanzee predecessor as a human landfill for selected detritus of the War Agin Turr, the site doubtless holds some sentimental value for Obama's baboon successor as one more place where brown people can be arbitrarily kept from their families. Nevertheless, the forces of liberal snowflakery continue to undermine democracy with appeals to, of all things, laws instead of men: eleven inmates are to be allowed to submit a petition of habeas corpus to the Washington district court. In defence of America's greatness, the petitioners will not be allowed to hear the arguments at their hearing because the prison lacks a room large enough to chain them all up as required by local health and safety regulations.

Fury as Nothing Much Changes

Turmoil at sudden stupidity deficit

Markets were disturbed today as the British government lost first its stupidest minister after Chris Graybeing and then, only a few hours later, its silliest minister after Chris Graybeing.

The departure of blathering prima donna David Davis, a blustering lightweight with the intellectual gravitas of a Sun editorial, resulted in a brief but traumatic upward blip in the Cabinet's collective IQ.

Order was rapidly restored with the appointment of Dominic Raab, a blustering lightweight with the intellectual gravitas of an editorial in The Sun, but the pound lost value as sellers panicked at the thought of a possible decrease in Her Majesty's Government's negative intelligence.

The last time Davis flounced off a front bench, he took precautions against possible backbencher headline levels by following up with a vanity by-election, but it remains as yet unclear whether there are any plans for similar entertainments this time around.

Davis' resignation was followed by that of the joke Foreign Secretary, which caused further turmoil as the negative seriousness of Her Majesty's Government attained the least predictable levels since the appointment of the joke Foreign Secretary.

The vole-brained former Minister for Werritty, who once shared a house with both Davis and the Imperial Haystack and whose appointment was considered almost as prudent and statesmanlike as theirs, is believed to be ready to step into any pair of shoes that will accommodate his head.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Matthew 9 ix-xiii

Jesus recruits a tax collector and dines at his house, where they are joined by other pariahs. The Pharisees ask the disciples why their teacher dines with sinners, and Jesus replies that, just as the sick and not the healthy require a physician, He has come to call sinners and not the righteous.

Although superficially sensible, Jesus' words are at best disingenuous. Since by His reckoning none save God is good (Mark 10 xviii), He cannot have believed that any human being was righteous, and He certainly did not believe it of the Pharisees. Throughout His ministry, Jesus specified belief in Himself as the sole prerequisite for salvation, and He repeatedly proclaimed that all who failed to hear Him would be condemned and damned; therefore, no matter to whom He preached, He would have been addressing sinners.

In any case, Jesus held earthly virtues generally in very low regard: the parable of the prodigal son makes clear that a lifetime of work in God's service counts for little in the kingdom of heaven, particularly when compared with a life of degradation followed by humiliating penitence and submission. His choice of tax collectors and other social outcasts for His ministry was dictated less by medicinal considerations than by psychological ones: people of degraded and humiliated social stature would be more easily led by promises of heavenly reward for themselves and eternal torment for their persecutors.

Rebuked by the Pharisees, Jesus quotes Hosea 6 vi: I desired mercy and not sacrifice. Since Jesus eventually gave Himself up as a blood offering, He cannot have had much objection to sacrifice in principle; nor is the appeal to mercy very convincing from someone whose ministry, from beginning to end, consisted almost entirely of genocidal threats. Indeed, the context of Hosea's words is a series of denunciations and threats against breakers of the covenant: the phrase which Jesus quotes is immediately preceded by the sanguinary boast I have hewn them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgement goes forth as the light. It is is as common for génocidaires and their operatives to proclaim their frustrated desire for peace as it is for them to justify their crimes in terms of sterilisation, amputation and other medical procedures. Clearly, God is no exception.

Must Try Harder

Such is the strength and stability of Her Majesty's Government these days that it cannot co-ordinate with itself, let alone with others, even in the all-important area of precipitating migrant crises. A review of Britain's capacity for wog-bombing was due next week, when our NATO allies expect to be told what's what and to receive their instructions on looking after Britain's interests. Unfortunately, our pubescent Minister for Wog-Bombing has failed to hand in his essay on time, apparently because of a disagreement with his elders over toys and pocket-money. The problem is all the more pressing because the Trumpster's Secretary of State for the Apocalypse is making noises about a special relationship with France instead, despite that country's inexplicable predilection for remaining in the EU. It is not as yet clear precisely how the Farage Falange faction in the War Cabinet views this glorious opportunity for Britain to play the Great Game alone; or whether any Leaver has suggested the obvious financial solution of asking Vladimir Putin for a handout.

Freedom of the Seas

In an encouraging sign of economic stability for these uncertain times, pledges by the Tumbledown Tessie régime - specifically, to revitalise fishing communities and help the humble harbour-plebs do their bit towards making Britain great again - have turned out to be worth just about as much as any other pledges made by the Tumbledown Tessie régime. Despite quantities of rah-rah from the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, all about taking back control of what we already control and at last being able to do what nobody was preventing us from doing, the Government has no plans for any major changes in fishing quotas: large companies will continue to crowd out smaller operators, and no particular interest will be taken in such minor matters as trying to keep the stocks from running out. In the face of such patriotic determination, it is all the more regrettable that mere experts are once more seeking to pollute the clear blue waters of Brexit with the disreputable discharge of factuality.

A Worthier Patron

Now that an England team has won a couple of football matches, the time is self-evidently ripe for yet another round of owlish musing about what constitutes Englishness and whether flying the flag is right-on or far-right or both. Since the said flag was stolen from the Genovese and represents a native of Turkey who is also the patron saint of various lesser breeds, perhaps our newly-independent land, freshly purged of foreigners, might consider flying a new one. The usual expedient of rushing back in time, however, may not be advisable in this case. George's predecessor as England's favourite saint was Edward the Confessor, whose major contribution to the national history was to squabble with the country's most powerful family, thereby precipitating a war over his succession and thence the Norman conquest. Not even our post-1966 World Cup record seems to merit such a patron as that.

Since we must have national patrons from the world of fiction, perhaps I might humbly suggest that we mine our famous literary heritage? There is a thoroughly representative candidate whose two-hundredth birthday, conveniently enough, falls in this very year. He was patched together from diverse human material by a sexually neurotic failed god; he couldn't get a girlfriend, bore a grudge against the world and ended up alone. As to his flag, once we have restored the rights of Genoa we may perhaps reclaim from Hollywood the image of that fine English actor William Henry Pratt, whose performances added to the character those fine English virtues, uncanonically omitted by Mary Shelley, of block-headed lumbering and inarticulate noise.

Fight WInd with Wind

Several of the Recrudescent Imperium's Caribbean jewels were slightly vandalised last year by some uppity foreign weather, so this year the Imperial Haystack has decreed an even stronger response than the one which enabled Hurricanes Irma and Maria to cause damage that is still being cleared up. "One aim is to co-ordinate better with America, Canada, the Netherlands and France, so that each other’s assets are commonly available," the Haystack blustered; it certainly sounds like a jolly good idea, although it remains as yet unclear how far the Recrudescent Imperium's sovereignty will be compromised. Meanwhile, a Royal Navy ship is sitting in the Caribbean loaded with emergency supplies, just in case the Imperial Haystack's diplomacy works out the way it normally does and results in our going it gloriously alone.

We're Not Like Those Vulgar Colonists

Given the dead-eyed warden's righteous tut-tutting over the American policy of separating junior job-stealers from their parents, it should come as no surprise that Her Majesty's Government operates precisely the same policy. A certain James Cleverly did some solemn huffing and puffing last month: "We don't do this in the UK," Cleverly proclaimed. "We have a very family-focused detention régime." Alas, it appears that Cleverly - evidently, like the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty, not the most aptly-surnamed tool in the box - has said the thing that is not. Official numbers are not available, because the two previous incumbents at the Ministry for Wog Control neither knew nor cared, while the present incumbent is a little preoccupied sharpening knives for his boss's back; but in the last six months a charity that offers legal representation to the victims has represented over a hundred and fifty parents who were separated from their children while guests of the British wog warehousing industry. The charity's usual caseload is about a hundred and seventy a year; so, as one would expect in light of Whitehall's famous moral independence from the White House, the family-focused régime may well be expanding.

What's in a Name

A glooming peace the judgement with it brings,
While scholars their confusion do repent,
And all bewail the writing of such things
As Capulet where Montague is meant.
Into the learning of the greatest nation.
Some error must inevitably creep
When that which bears the name of education
Is shovelled in by rote and on the cheap.
Let questions hence be set, from this sad day,
By persons who've perused the poxy play.

Edward de Vere

Bad Theology

Text for today: Mark 7 i-xxiii

The scribes and Pharisees ask Jesus why His disciples eat with unwashed hands, thereby failing to keep the traditions of their elders. Jesus responds by denouncing His questioners as hypocrites because the commandments of Moses call for anyone who insults their father and mother to be executed, and the Pharisees have instituted a milder penalty. Jesus goes on to preach that people are defiled by what comes out of them, and not by what goes in.

According to Jesus, people are defiled by what they do and not by what is done to them; thus, when a child becomes disobedient in response to its parent's abuse, neurotic jealousy and extreme violence, all blame and punishment should fall upon the child. Defilement and moral uncleanliness occur when the child misbehaves, not with the arbitrary punishment which preceded the misbehaviour; and a person's emotions and actions have no connection with exterior circumstances which, according to the Saviour's sublime formulation, can be thrown off as easily as going to the privy. Rather, people's misdeeds result from an interior impurity, for which only they, and not the Creator who made them, are to blame, and for which they are justly chastised.

Called out for permitting His disciples to disobey a law that is sensible and hygienic, Jesus scolds His accusers for failing to obey a law that is authoritarian and murderous. This is entirely consistent with His teaching that otherworldly considerations outweigh all humane concerns; equally, His insistence on the absolute authority of parents over their children is entirely natural and logical given His constant gloating over His Father's approaching punishment of all who fail to obey.