Ritual Indignation

Gods are a notoriously whimsical bunch, and there are a few who find it a rather jolly thing to see their acolytes carve up the genitals of young girls. The echoes of their pleasure are detectable in a report by the Local Government Association, which observes that the number of likely victims in England has more than doubled in the last year, thanks mainly to better detection. For our present rulers, of course, female genital mutilation is a handy sort of crime. Despite the best efforts of the free and fearless Press, many Britons are still aware that grooming and paedophilia are not exclusively Muslim pastimes; FGM, however, is a genuine minority pursuit, although undoubtedly the more ecumenically-minded pushers of British values would be happy to take up the hobby if the scars could be arranged into a portrait of Winston Churchill. Accordingly, Her Majesty's Government responded to the report by extruding a spokesbeing to huff and puff about alien belief systems which cannot justify abusing children, whatever the nation's true faith may permit in the way of bombing, starving and poisoning them. The spokesbeing was also helpful enough to recommend that relevant concerns should be reported to social care authorities or to the police, both of which the preachers of our precious Kingdom have providentially cut to bits.