Small Mercy

In a week when the conviction of Cardinal George Pell shows the cassock-lifting school rather letting the side down, the Vatican's compassionate heart will no doubt be gladdened by the good news from the Pope's own country, where the authorities' eagerness to appease the coathanger industry has forced an eleven-year-old girl to give birth by Caesarian section. The resulting little miracle is unlikely to survive, the Creator in His infinite wisdom and mercy having somehow omitted to make proper arrangements for such a circumstance when designing the daughters of Eve; which has spawned a new rallying cry of "Save both lives" from those pious souls who believe that medical science should try to accomplish what God would not. On the bright side, the girl's rapist does not appear to have been a member of the priestly hierarchy, and his indiscretion was by definition heterosexual; which means that the Church in this instance has been spared the spiritual burden of blaming it all on the gays.

Killer Instincts

Robust British humour has broken out with a vengeance in the Wirral, where a shooting range is deriving a bit of harmless amusement from a teenage victim of terrorist grooming. Shamima Begum was fifteen when Islamic State recruited her, which is very nearly old enough to be a child soldier in the best army in the world. Ultimate Airsoft, which must be the best-named training centre for plucky little Brits outside the fanatically fissiparous Conservative and Unionist Party, has been using pictures of Begum as targets, apparently because of her lack of empathy. In the same light-hearted spirit, the site also uses images of Margaret Thatcher, who married for religious reasons (profit, not Prophet), spent some years at war with enemies within, and spawned two offspring, the stupider of which became involved in a bungled African coup d'état. Since two of Begum's three children have been tactful enough to die before causing too much damage, it would of course be offensive and unjust to draw any comparisons, especially as the Home Secretary is apparently still undecided on the question of revoking Thatcher's citizenship.

They Hate Our Justice

Some greasy foreigners at the International Court of Justice have placed themselves on the wrong side of history, natural justice and the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands with a ruling on the decolonisation of the Chagos Islands. The UK confiscated the territory from Mauritius when that country gained independence fifty years ago, and presented it as a special-relationship gift to the United States; the islands were inhabited at the time, but only by persons of no moral significance. The excess natives were transferred to Mauritius and the Seychelles, although by some oversight many of them ended up in Britain, where doubtless they have been subjected to the usual migrants' welcome ever since. All in all, the matter would seem to have been settled to the satisfaction of everyone who mattered; but the UN general assembly last year took advantage of Britain's renewed ability to punch above its weight on the international stage, and asked the ICJ to interfere. Fortunately, like all legal rulings pertaining to the derelictions of Her Majesty's Government, the court's opinion is non-binding.

Through Our Most Grievous Virtue

Christian humility is always a wondrous thing to behold. While the Synod of the Anglican Church has tried to take its mind off sex by voting on whether the Saviour's orders to sacrifice one's property to the less fortunate are correct or not, the Vatican too has been morally resurging after its accustomed fashion. The Pope has rounded off a four-day summit on the sexual abuse of children by noting that everybody else does it too, and claiming that it reminds him of human sacrifice, as practised by such evil pagans as Jephthah the Gileadite. His Holiness was gracious enough to grant that child abuse happens within the Church as well, but the cloak of humility slipped a bit when he proclaimed that any scandal thereof derived purely from incompatibility with the Church's "moral authority and ethical credibility." There may be a beam in the Vatican's eye, but evidently the only reason anyone need worry about it is that the Vatican's eyes are better than everyone else's.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Enamel xxviii-xxxix

It was certainly not at this time that the Father of Teeth entered prison, although the police of several counties had requested his assistance in connection with certain painful indentations in the buttocks of various local luminaries. While wandering the corridors and engaging in repartee, the Father of Teeth encountered a Reformer who was lecturing the prisoners on the choices which had brought them to their present unpleasant station in life.

"There are events," the Reformer proclaimed, "and we respond to those events. We cannot choose the events that affect us, but we can choose how we let them affect us."
"A most flattering philosophy," said the Father of Teeth, "if a little neglectful of that quirk of cerebral electro-chemistry which brought you to your present exalted state of moral hygiene."
"The freedom of the human will," said the Reformer, "is limited but absolute in moral matters, and your biochemical aspersions are neither provable nor constructive."
"I never said they were," replied the Father of Teeth. "I said merely that you flatter yourself by attaching any more moral significance to your business as a Reformer than you attach to your business as a pink-skinned bipedal endomorph with hereditary flat feet and a predilection for preaching - a predilection which, if I am not mistaken, you inherited from your great-great-great grandmother, who herself spent some little time in prison. Her husband had her put away for standing on street corners and proclaiming that women should speak in chuch and be permitted to own real estate."
"I know nothing of that," said the Reformer; "I made my own choice of career because I was sickened at the endless cycle of crime and punishment."
"Your career, then, is a physiological event," said the Father of Teeth. "The nobility of your nausea surely does you credit; but you will at least admit that other inhabitants of this prison may have been sickened by different things, such as the inequitable distribution of wealth or the continuing existence of an uncongenial spouse."
"Tastes may differ," said the Reformer stiffly, "but one can always choose one's reaction."
"Bravo," said the Father of Teeth; "of course, for the sake of motivating and thereby redeeming these several hundred listening unfortunates, you can name the last three occasions on which, given motive, method and opportunity, you have yourself avoided becoming a felon by means of will alone?"
"That isn't the point," said the Reformer; "and anyway, if I can't help doing what I'm doing, why are you standing there arguing with me?"
"Because I can't help it," said the Father of Teeth; whereupon the Reformer leapt upon him with a shriek and tried to gouge out his tongue from the rear. The Father of Teeth was rescued, with some small but necessary violence, by half a dozen burly prison warders, who had heard the Reformer preach on any number of occasions and couldn't help disliking his continual implications that they were stuck in this lousy job by choice.

A Second Johnson

Since British political discourse is notoriously short of facile parallels to the Second World War, let us consider the career of Joachim von Ribbentrop. A sycophantic snob whom the Führer hailed as a second Bismarck over the diplomatic manoeuvrings of the Third Reich's early days, Ribbentrop was sidelined after the outbreak of war and rapidly became a figure of fun. When the Leader's only interest in foreigners is as enemies or slaves, the post of Foreign Minister ceases to be a great office of state and becomes merely redundant; hence, of course, the presence of the lightweight's lightweight's lightweight, Jeremy C Hunt, as Secretary of State for the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office by appointment to Rupert Murdoch and Her Madge the Queen Gawblesser. With the ghastly Euro-wogs basking in the brilliance of Tumbledown Tessie's personal diplomacy, the Commonwealth merely a set of places for the Home Office to dump deportees, and the Rest of the World a playground which the former Minister for Werritty will soon set to rights, poor little Jerry hasn't much to do except what comes naturally, namely being silly. As a Murdoch minion of some years' standing, it is natural enough that little Jerry should be in the business of re-writing history; and as a member of the NATO-or-nobody Conservative Party it is only reasonable that he should see no distinction between a non-aligned state and a Soviet vassal; but even poor little Jerry should have realised by now that one does not rise in the Conservative Party by insulting countries the gammon has never heard of.

History Bites

Appreciation of the symbolic power of statues is clearly not limited to those fetish-worshipping primitives who would have us all bowing down before the graven images of Cecil Rhodes, Bomber Harris and Winston Churchill. Fifteen years ago an activist group removed the left hand of a slave on an Ostend statue of plucky little Belgium's genocidal King Leopold II, in reference to the great man's firm but fair ways with unruly Congolese. Detectives strained their little grey cells to no avail, but the statue revisionists offered to return the hand if the Belgian state and royal family would apologise for the crimes of their predecessors. A UN working group has now concluded that plucky little Belgium remains institutionally racist and that an apology is owed, a conclusion which the Belgian prime minister apparently finds "very strange;" and an apparent representative of the statue's editors has appeared to the culture minister in Ghent, repeating the group's offer with the added condition that the last remains of Patrice Lumumba be returned to his relatives. The Belgian government formally apologised in 2002 for its sponsorship of Lumumba's murder, but it seems that officials at the Palais de Justice in Brussels are themselves fetishistic enough to have kept some of their victim's teeth at hand, just in case.

They Still Don't Know Their Place

Yet further indications have emerged that the British Empire's only serious dereliction from the humanitarian point of view lay in listening to the trendy lefties, capitulating to the terrorists and failing to outstay its welcome by another few decades. In a typical display of ingratitude for Albion's civilising influence, the Jamaican high commissioner has been conspiring with recent deportees to make the Ministry for Wog Control appear callous and inefficient. The commissioner even made an unscrupulous attempt to muscle in on the Conservative Party's family-values monopoly, by claiming to be concerned about the separation of parents from young children; and his example is clearly instrumental in spreading the deadly cancer of native uppityness. Recent deportees, whom the Minister for Self-Promotional Posturing described as rapists and murderers because half of them had served sentences for drug offences, have complained of being punished twice for the same crime, even though the deportations are clearly not related to their statutory criminal records but only to their melanin-related offences against the morals of Her Majesty's Government.

We're Listening

While traditional police states are known for never making mistakes, the developing technological surveillance state may yet take a fuzzier approach. Policing in comparatively free societies relies a good deal on non-culpable individuals committing mistakes anyone could have made; as when accidental fatal shootings are followed by innocent yet systematic defamation of the victims, or when undercover officers wake up one morning and find they have been careless enough to fall into bed with a political protester. Not yet aspiring to the rough-and-tumble glamour of the Metropolitan Police, Google has so far confined itself to putting hidden microphones into home security systems. The company did not trouble to mention them in the specifications; their presence was revealed only with the announcement of an upgrade involving voice activation. Naturally, the microphones are switched off by default; but it can only be a matter of time and customer service before the converse arrangement becomes standard, and the episode will doubtless be seen in the appropriate quarters as an encouraging demonstration of the potential for future progress in policing by mistake.

Infernal Affairs

It seems that the Deity has a staff shortage on His hands, as many who would otherwise flock to the priesthood are choosing to marry rather than to burn with spiritual ardour. For its own part the management is opposed to any relaxation of the celibacy vow, regarding it as a "gift to the church" in return for the privilege of membership: what might be called a sacrificial cock. Unfortunately, even the rods of present staff are not always comfortably deployed; although the Vatican's compassionate heart is doubtless greatly gladdened at the number of priests who, while guilty of rape, sexual abuse and breaking the vow of celibacy, nevertheless retain sufficient strength of spirit to avoid the greater sin of contraception. It is unknown how many fathers have gone forth and multiplied, although one support group for those born the wrong side of the cassock has some fifty thousand users; and as far back as 2017 the Vatican drafted guidelines whose fundamental principle is, as one would expect, the "protection of the child" and certainly not the protection of the Church. Indeed, so selfless is the Church where its own remaining reputation is concerned that the guidelines cannot be made public, in case an unprotected child should suffer.

The Cogs Grind Slow and Squeakily

Never let it be said that the Stupid Party is not a broad church: it has room even for David Gauke who, after an entire career spent in an organisation famous for its endless, foam-flecked howling in favour of more and harsher sentences for everyone except tax dodgers, mass murderers and the better class of sex offender, has suddenly noticed that more prison does not necessarily mean less crime. Specifically, the ineffectiveness of short custodial sentences has obtruded itself upon the Gauke consciousness; presumably because, in a system where teachers and landlords are used as border police, it will soon be found cheaper and easier to place offenders under house arrest and order their families to supervise them, on pain of becoming part of the homelessness boom. Still, even a tentatively and no doubt opportunistically non-custodial Conservative is a rare enough breed, and the Minister for Profitable Incarceration is to be congratulated on his timely intuition. It is certainly Britain's misfortune not to have benefited from government by David Gauke's party during the past eight years, rather than by whoever starved the courts of funds, kicked legal aid to pieces, vandalised the probation service and believed that the best way to rehabilitate offenders was to let the brilliant Chris Graybeing deprive them of books.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Bicuspid lxiv-lxxvii

But when asked for a parable, the Father of Teeth said: "Did I ever tell you how I once slew a dragon? It was a most voracious and destructive creature, eating virgins by the score and hoarding enough treasure to ensure that the various banking firms with which it did business were too big to fail. Many brave warriors went up against it, but spears and arrows could not penetrate its scaly hide, and the one knight who thought to bring a howitzer was defeated when the dragon breathed fire which set off the ammunition prematurely and blew him to smithereens. I myself succeeded in slaying the dragon only by clinging to its ghastly neck, from which the loose skin dangled in wattles as loose and flabby as the reasoning of priests, and chewing off its scales one by one. The dragon was in flight at the time, and the masticated scales fell down through the atmosphere, shrieking like bombs, and wherever one of them landed a new dragon was born. I understand the banks are still arguing over how to the estate might most profitably be distributed among so many immature and inarticulate heirs. Whoever has teeth to chew, let them chew it over."

But those who had asked for the parable were discontented, and muttered among themselves that the Father of Teeth had failed to explain how he gained access to the dragon's ghastly neck, or who had commissioned him to slay the dreadful creature in the first place, or where the dragon could have been flying on business so urgent that it had failed to notice the scrawny old man digging his vicious gums into its hide. There were even a few who whispered that the Father of Teeth might have been less than scrupulously literal in relating his adventure; but these were hastily trampled flat by the multitude and their pulped remains stamped into the earth where, as a warning to the sceptical, the clay continues red to this day.

"Fools!" the Father of Teeth upbraided the survivors. "You are like readers who ignore the words and see only the spaces between. Your unrelenting attention to what is not in the story distracts you from what is there. The chosen few, however, will observe that one must beware of parables, for each one may spawn further and yet further parables of a far less interpretable nature."

Lordly Legalisms

Although the resident psychic at Britain's leading liberal newspaper has proclaimed peace in Yemen as Jeremy C Hunt's single most important priority after wrecking Britain's economy, it seems that certain unconstructive elements in the House of Donors remain unconvinced as to the Government's good intentions. The Lords committee on international relations has concluded that Britain is breaking the law by licensing arms sales to the head-chopping House of Saud, despite all British-sold weapons being clearly marked to the effect that they are not to be used in defiance of British values and despite assurances from the Saudis themselves, who really ought to know, that the weapons are being utilised in the finest and most honourable tradition of British peacekeeping. Once the little matters of Brexit and wog-bombing by Islamic fundamentalist proxy have been settled to the satisfaction of Jeremy C Hunt, no doubt Her Majesty's Government will learn all the usual lessons and draw the usual conclusions about the inefficiency and lack of democratic accountability in the House of Donors, and about the necessity for immediate and radical reform via further inundations of appropriately experienced and qualified sycophants.

Responsible Adults Speak Out

The dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK has responded to some uppity behaviour in the juvenile wing with her usual acuity, extruding a spokesbeing to condemn the shelf-stackers of tomorrow for their unconstructive attitude. Everybody wants young people to be engaged so we can build a brighter future for all who have the appropriate financial and racial qualifications, but the engagement must be constructive and not interfere with management decisions. "It is important to emphasise that disruption increases teachers’ workloads and wastes lesson time that teachers have carefully prepared for," clunked the spokesbeing, whose party colleagues believe that educational policy is best entrusted to the likes of Toby Young. The Minister for Fracking and Fuel Poverty took a more conciliatory line, but still wagged the finger because the probable end of civilisation is no excuse for leaving homework undone. In the meantime, if young people are worried about the climate there is always the jabbering homunculus and sometime Bible signatory Michael Gove to get behind.

Practically an Immigrant

As a nominally Christian bedlam with a famously pious warder, it is only natural that the United Kingdom should have no particular interest in the reclamation of sinners. Accordingly, the expressed wish of Shamina Begum, who left the country as a schoolgirl four years ago to join the Fighting Sons of Blair in Syria, has been greeted by the security minister with finger-wagging sanctimony. "Actions have consequences," sermonised Ben Wallace, a colleague of Graybeing the Unsacked, Rudd the Rapidly Returned and Fox the Defence Ministry Werritty-warmer. Doubtless with an equally straight face, Wallace demonstrated the expectable level of compassionate insight into the mind of a groomed fifteen-year-old: "People know what they're getting into;" and then had a bit of a blather about investigations, interviews and prosecutions, probably because the Government has just passed a new anti-terrorist law and is simply itching to take it out for a trial run. For her own part, Begum is in the last stage of her third pregnancy, having lost two other children to disease and starvation, and seems to believe that Britain might have some sort of interest in ensuring that the child, though presumably a citizen of nowhere, is not made to pay for the mother's derelictions. Evidently there has been some small communications breakdown in the Middle Eastern terrorist community when it comes to Britain's recent achievements in detention, deportation and child poverty.

Uncivilised Tribes

British values are once again under attack from the unregenerate racists of the Stalinist left, who are seeking to undermine the reputation of both Army and Empire. To the apparent surprise of some, it has emerged that African troops in the Second World War received lower pay than the forces of civilisation, and were sometimes even subjected to corporal punishment, which was illegal at the time except between consenting Sandhursters. Naturally, the forces of political correctness are demanding apologies, acknowledgements and even financial compensation from the Government. This is certainly not the kind of thing that could have occurred during those sensible days when the non-extremists were in charge, and fighting tooth and nail to keep Asian veterans out of the country in case their arrival should spur the more patriotic elements of the great British public to do something immoderate at the ballot-box.

Aux Armes, Citoyens de Nulle Part

One of the most fiendish of the beastly Euro-wogs has issued a comprehensive insult to Enlightenment values by implying that leading figures of the French Revolution are comparable to the sniggering twerps of Brexit. The idea that Alexander Boris de Pfuffup Johnson has anything in common with Georges Jacques Danton may be the saving of the French government should it come to the attention of the yellow-bellied besiegers. On the other hand, there may be something to recommend the comparison between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Maximilien Robespierre: although the latter opposed slavery while the former is presumably in favour, Robespierre did manage to botch his own suicide like a plucky runner-up on the Upper-Class Twit of the Year Show. That said, comparing the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove to Jacques Pierre Brissot may be the greatest outrage of all. Much to his discredit, Brissot founded an abolitionist group called the Society of the Friends of the Blacks; while Gove remains a member in good standing of the Windrush-deporting administration which would be unlikely to take on such a title without some risk of terminological inexactitude. In all three cases, of course, the comparison founders on the total lack of evidence for any of the French revolutionaries becoming more intelligent after their heads were cut off.

Me at Poetry24:
Historical Controls

A Mysterious Setback

In yet another example of that maddeningly enigmatic process whereby services somehow become less efficient the more they are kicked to bits, hospital admissions for problems relating to addiction are increasing despite the Government's efficiency savings on alcohol and drug treatment and despite the Elysian vistas opened up by the hostile environment, Universal Credit and Brexit. As happy chance will have it, the burden of responsibility for drug and alcohol services, and especially for their failures and inadequacies, belongs to local authorities; so Westminster merely extruded a spokesbeing which had a bit of a burble about all children deserving a safe and happy place to call home. The spokesbeing omitted mention of such undeserving exceptions as the offspring of scroungers and shirkers and children with one or more queue-jumping Euro-wog parents; but the free and cantankerous media took their usual civilised attitude, and no discernible moral panic has thus far materialised.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Incisors xxi-xli

On his way there, the Father of Teeth dropped in upon a life emporium where a child's sickness was being compassionately prolonged. So loud and persistent were the patient's screams that she was confined to a box in order to spare her family distress; and so effective was the insulation that very little distress was visible on the family's faces. Indeed, the face of the child's younger brother was home to a positive smirk.

"Life is precious, is it not," said the Father of Teeth to the father of the child; "you spent all of three minutes engendering that one, and the salary of several years bringing it to its present state. It would certainly be a shame to waste the investment." But the father of the child said nothing, and stared at the Father of Teeth as though the latter had said something tactless.

"Life is precious, is it not," said the Father of Teeth to the mother of the child; "you put up with the attentions of that boor for a full three minutes, and then spent forty weeks of increasing discomfort and inconvenience before the result could be painfully and effortfully expelled. Then the feeding and the weaning, with no reward on the horizon save the hormonal apocalypse to come; it would certainly be a waste should all turn out in vain." But the mother of the child said nothing, and gazed at the Father of Teeth as though he had been talking nonsense.

"Life is precious, is it not," said the Father of Teeth to the child's elder brother; but the child's elder brother backed away from the grin of dreadful gums, and would not be tickled nor engage in repartee. However, the younger brother nodded enthusiastically, and answered the grin of the Father of Teeth with a gap-toothed grin of his own.

"Life," said the younger brother to the Father of Teeth, pointing gleefully at the quivering box from which an increasing if muffled volume of screams was leaking, "is precious because it bites."

Empire-Style Punishment Beatings

With so much of Britain's free and cantankerous press focused laser-like upon Labour's plans to deport the Jews, it is encouraging to see the former Minister for Werritty receiving a little credit for his own efforts in refuting the Conservative Party's almost entirely understated reputation for racism. In his capacity as Secretary of State for Speculative Trade, the vole-brained ex-Minister for Wog-Bombing has been toddling around the world ordering developing countries to sign up to trade deals with the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. Even leaving aside the intellectual capabilities of the former Minister for Werritty, it is impossible to say what such deals will actually be worth; for the very simple reason that nobody, least of all Her Majesty's even simpler Government, has the slightest idea what future relationship will exist between the Recrudescent Imperium and the beastly Euro-wogs. Accordingly, the former Minister for Werritty has employed the Conservative equivalent of subtle diplomacy and started threatening Global Britain's potential trading partners with punitive tariffs should they continue to be uppity. This will undoubtedly shame into instant silence those pessimists, queue-jumpers and citizens of nowhere who dare to trump up charges of prejudice against the party of Windrush and the Go Home vans: Her Majesty's Government is treating the lesser breeds to exactly the same blind Brexit as it seeks to impose upon the master race.

Honourable Member Ejaculates in Chamber

One of our Mother of Parliaments' more illustrious man-babies has raspberried out another rah-rah for democracy by objecting to an amendment of the law against female genital mutilation. Sir Christopher Chope, whose previous labours on behalf of a beleaguered minority your correspondent has noted elsewhere, was inflated to Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year's Ruritanian costume jewellery jumble sale, and has graciously repaid the favour by helping to sink a bill which, despite having been co-drafted by the ridiculous racist Zac Goldsmith, does not have Government support. As a prominent Europhobe, Sir Christopher naturally claims that the only one being victimised in all this is Sir Christopher Robert Chope OBE MP, and that his little pranks are motivated purely by patriotic concern over the parliamentary procedure of passing legislation without debate at second reading. Doubtless this explains why Sir Christopher raised no objections to a couple of bills proposed by his equally appealing chum, the osteocephalous filiblusterer Peter Bone.

Uncle Tom Javid Whups Himself Some Bad Guys

Among the many jolly things about British justice is the fact that nobody can be punished more than once for the same offence, unless of course they happen to be a wog. Thus the compliant Sajid Javid's moral reformation of the Ministry for Windrush continues apace with the deporting of twenty-nine people who had committed crimes and served their sentences. Two days ago Javid informed the House of Expenses Claimants that all the deportees had been convicted of serious crimes such as rape, murder, firearms offences and drug trafficking; yesterday the Ministry was forced to issue a clarification which, after the usual fashion of such things, clarified that Javid had said the thing that is not. The Ministry for Windrush had a bit of a whine about those who abuse its famous hospitality, and a bit of a squeal about the prison sentences: "the total combined sentence of their crimes is over 150 years' imprisonment," which, averaged out over twenty-nine people, makes a little over five years each. Presumably the one single conviction for murder drew a substantially longer sentence than the rest, which would lower their average still further and imply that most of the other offences were in fact comparatively minor, if not quite so minor as that of inadvertently misleading Parliament again.

Shaken Resolve

It has long been an axiom of our present religious orthodoxy that shale fracking is more efficient than solar, and indeed more efficient than almost any other energy source aside from moribund half-complete foreign-owned nuclear power stations. With fracking there may be a few minor earth tremors, an occasional cracked water pipe and, for the luckiest customers, a bracing flow of methane through the fatbergs; but production of solar energy is fatally reliant on the very source of global warming itself, and there are rumours in a few dank corners of the Conservative Party that the sun has been so disobliging as to stop being in orbit around the earth. Hence, for the past decade or so the Government has been cutting subsidies for solar while throwing money at the shale frackers, who have come through splendidly with the convenient discovery of absolutely squillions of cubic feet of gas. As usual, the only thing that stands between Britain and its rightful place on the fart-lit uplands is the beastly barrier of regulation, which permits only the very smallest of tremors for fear that the plebs will stampede. Two fracking firms have joined their voices in a squeal of indignation at not being allowed to cause greater damage, on the grounds that the limits under which they originally agreed to work have now become unworkable, at least if the boardrooms are to be kept acceptably joyous; while the Minister for Dim Bulbs apparently occupies both sides of the argument depending on who she happens to be talking to at the time. In the meantime, Great Britain continues to be an island surrounded by waves, lashed by winds and with every prospect of occasional exposure to sunlight; what can be the solution?

Caring Capital

Is there no end to the importunities of think-tanks? Barely a day after Her Majesty's Government made the extent of its concern for the provinces car-crashingly clear by driving Nissan out of Sunderland along with a few expendable livelihoods, the Centre for London has suggested a campaign to show the carping yokels that we are all One Nation rah rah. The report suggests that regional civil servants should engage in mind-broadening job-swaps with actual government officials, and that London's national museums should send out their exhibits to whatever regional institutions may have survived the past decade's cultural slaughter. Since our approaching independence from Brussels is likely to impoverish the regions even further, thereby tempting the more energetic natives to vandalism and possible grand larceny, such ideas seem at best premature. In any case, patting the provincials on the head may prove less than effective at a time when most of London itself has followed the reality-based community into the ranks of traitordom against the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

Norse of Another Colour

Thanks to the Norwegian minister for higher education, who has advised students not to cloud the sunlit intellectual uplands of Brexitannia with their queue-jumping, fee-paying presence, Her Majesty's Government now faces something of a dilemma. On the one hand, it is unclear whether the Norwegian minister for education is motivated by ingratitude for Winston Churchill's personal deliverance of her country from the Nazi yoke, or merely from a residual Viking malice against such defiant paragons of fighting Britishness as Ethelred the Unready. On the other hand, although Her Majesty's Government has been trying for some time to cleanse the nation's universities of filthy foreign students, it is also surprisingly unclear whether Scandinavians count as wogs.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Pulp clix-clxxi

About this time the Father of Teeth came upon a dog which appeared to be chasing its tail around a puddle of black grease. Drawing closer, he discovered that the dog had opened a hole in its side and was greedily swallowing its own intestines, which made their way down its throat and into the dripping cavity to be devoured anew. Because the dog lacked table manners and did not chew before swallowing, the damage each time was negligible, and in any case there was plenty more to go round.

Grinning with all his gums, the Father of Teeth approached the feasting animal, which broke off its meal to give forth a pain-yellowed glare and a jealous growl. "Quite right," said the Father of Teeth; "the means of production and the rate of consumption are balanced almost perfectly, and in so delicately harmonised an ecology the smallest interference could lead to disaster."

Giving the dog a respectful berth, he proceeded into the town, where he was rapturously welcomed by the populace. The mayor invited him to dinner, and the Father of Teeth accepted a bowl of macerated ungulate for politeness' sake.

Over cigars, which according to the mayor were hand-rolled by the cutest children in the country, the Father of Teeth mentioned the dog and asked how long it had been so exquisitely well-adjusted. The mayor assured him solemnly that it had never been otherwise and would never change. "Its motion is perpetual," he said, "a fact which, it is true, contradicts the Seventeenth Law of Entropic Escapement, but one can hardly shut one's eyes to the evidence when the smell of blood and bowel is wafting beneath one's lids." Eminent professors, he continued, were regularly dispatched from court to study the canine miracle and attempt the application of its principles to higher forms of servant.

"Quite right," said the Father of Teeth. "A chambermaid who can chew on her own intestines would represent a considerable saving in fodder, and unlike the dog she would be able to clean up after herself."
The mayor's yellow eyes became misty with scientific zeal. "I knew you would understand," he said.
"And naturally," continued the Father of Teeth, "you would be first to open yourself to scrutiny, and offer up your offal to confound the Seventeenth Law of Entropic Escapement and all its oppressive works, as befits a servant of monarch, nation and people."
The mist in the mayor's eye abruptly cleared. "And whom do you serve?" he asked, grasping the long-pronged storping-fork with perhaps a slightly whiter knuckle than would occur in the ideal host.
"Why, just like everyone else," said the Father of Teeth, "I serve whichever of my appetites appears most deserving at the time in the eyes of my appetite for deserving causes."
"Then," said the mayor, "may I take it that you have no plans to disembowel me?"
"No plans at all," said the Father of Teeth, and left him to his fate among the laws of Entropic Escapement. Passing out of town amid the rapturous farewells of the populace, the Father of Teeth felt a twinge in his lower intestine, which he ascribed to imperfect maceration of the ungulate, and cursed the mayor's cooks for their negligence.

Partners in Liberty

British values are set for another healthy boost in the Middle East, as the armed forces engage in some fun and games alongside the head-chopping House of Saud. Like Her Majesty's Government, the head-chopping House of Saud has been subjected to various nit-picking criticisms by meddling foreigners who fail to take account of high aspirations and noble rhodomontade, in favour of an unhealthily obsessive focus on the self-inflicted cash-flow inconveniences of wogs and shirkers, or on rare and isolated incidences of journalistic strangulation. Accordingly, in the interests of fighting extremism Her Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic extremists will be holding a five-day round of water sports next week alongside the Royal Navy, followed by a further exercise between March and April which will involve whatever army units can be spared from protecting Britain's democracy in the event of an overly joyous freedomisation from the Euro-wog yoke. Extremists from Strasbourg to Brussels will certainly be quaking in their jackboots.

Dastardly Dago Deceit Disgrace

Is there no diplomacy in Brussels? Despite the weakness of their negotiating position, the farcical disarray of their politics and the fact that they just keep on losing wars, the malignant cabal of Nazi-style queue-jumpers has been guilty of tactless language over Gibraltar. A footnote in a document dealing with the minor matter of British citizens' freedom of movement describes the British overseas territory as a "colony of the British crown", despite the fact that it only became a crown colony in 1830. Admittedly this is the year in which the modern Conservative Party has much of its spiritual home; but Gibraltar's status has been re-booted twice in British law since the Golden Age of Thatcher, and Her Majesty's Government is, as usual, squealing and foaming with righteous indignation at the Euro-wogs' refusal to keep up with the mainland. After all, how can they ever give Winston Churchill his due as winner of the Second World War and liberator of Spain from Franco's fascism if they can't even remember who won the War of the Spanish Succession?