The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Caries lxi-lxxiii

In the beginning there was light, said the Father of Teeth, and by that light God was revealed to Himself. At this revelation God recoiled in horror, for He was in the image of mankind, which meant that He was neither omnipotent, not omniscient, nor wise, nor just, nor loving, nor powerful, but merely a local and temporary fluke of evolution with a talent for tribal hatred. Shrieking with rage, said the Father of Teeth, God closed His eyes, but the light shone through His eyelids; God covered His eyes with His hands, but the light shone through His fingers, and even through the bones and the marrow, so that He saw just as much as ever. So God clawed at His eyes, said the Father of Teeth, with fingernails grown like black scimitars from an eternity of contemplation, and amid much screeching and squelching and snapping He ripped His eyeballs from their sockets and hurled them away from Him. I caught them and ate them, said the Father of Teeth, although He didn't know I was there; and the void was convulsed with His agony, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. You can see, said the Father of Teeth, why the poor old bastard felt the need of some distraction.

It Isn't Heresy When Nice People Do It

Not all Remoaners are citizens of nowhere after all, it appears. The former attorney general Dominic Grieve, who is among the Conservatives' most prominent advocates of the Euro-wog yoke, has lost a vote of confidence held by his local party. With characteristic sublimity, the Conservative association in Beaconsfield favoured the judgement of a pantomime producer and former regional organiser for the Vote Leave fraudsters, who stood on behalf of the Farage Falange two years ago. Despite these glittering democratic credentials, it remains unclear whether Grieve will have to face the sort of Stalinist persecution which has driven the media to such distraction over the Labour Party. The former Imperial Haystack was quick to clarify that Grieve was almost certainly not a traitor, and the sniggering schoolboy in charge of the London Evening Osborne recommended kicking the local party out of the party instead. The Conservative Party is a broad church after all; and besides his stint as attorney general Grieve has also served on the intelligence and security committee, doubtless without taking the slightest note of any closeted skeletons or buried bodies.

Finest Hour

On the day when Britain's efforts to throw off the Euro-wog yoke endure the dubious glory of yet another Dunkirk, it seems appropriate that researchers have confirmed the significant role played by the Official Greatest Ever Number One Greatest Briton Ever, Winston Churchill, in the death by famine of three million Indians. Simulations of weather conditions during six major famines indicate that five coincided with lack of moisture in the soil, brought on primarily by poor rainfall and high temperatures and only coincidentally exacerbated by the British Empire's disinclination to encourage welfare dependency and its dismantling of native arrangements for dealing with such events. By contrast, the 1943 famine took place when rain levels were above average, and may therefore be credited to the entrepreneurial buccaneering of speculators, the thrift of panic hoarders, and the policies of the Churchill cabinet. Warned by mere experts about the prospect of famine, the greatest Briton dismissed such petty materialistic concerns in his usual robust fashion and his government continued to export food from India while the viceroy was asking for a million tons of emergency wheat supplies. Curiously enough, since independence India has largely eliminated deaths by famine: a tragedy for which Churchill's well-fed successors in the modern Conservative Party have done their best to compensate by adjusting the home-grown plebs to coolie status.

Family Values Or Else

One of the country's main problems these days, as we all know, is an ongoing demographic crisis caused by an idle public's disinclination to breed sufficient numbers of new Britons. Andrea Leadsom even hinted once, during her glittering campaign for the top job, that Tumbledown Tessie's lack of reproductive capacity might limit her potential as a saviour of the nation. In this the gormless Leadsom may well have been correct for once: a teenager rebelling against a May upbringing would undoubtedly be strong, stable, responsible, considerate, decent, truthful, thoughtful and tolerant to a degree largely unheard-of outside American family entertainment. Meanwhile, the Government's policy on reproductive shirkers appears uncharacteristically joined-up: the childless are over-represented among LGBT people, carers and the disabled, all favourite targets for Conservative Party kickings and all likely to suffer in their declining years because of their failure to ensure the presence of an heir and a spare the way real people do.

But Are They Worthy of Us?

There are, as we know, infinite and various possibilities for prosperity once Britain finally and forever attains independence from the Euro-wog yoke. Among the softer options is that of inviting ourselves into the European Free-Trade Association and showing Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and mighty Liechtenstein what's what; however, at least two of the potential beneficiaries are already expressing doubts. Iceland's foreign minister is worried about the anomalies that might arise from the Recrudescent Imperium condescending to remain in the Euro-wog customs union; Iceland's prime minister has cast a bit of a damper by insisting on free movement, and the Norwegians too are making discouraging noises. Clearly, while your Nordic may be a higher type of wog than mere Belgians or Boche, the citizens of Scandinavia are not all the sort of Breivik-quoting opponents of cultural Marxism who could easily do business with the Conservative Party. The day may still come when we all pay the price, as did Edmund the Martyr, for the atavistic Viking urge to condone the activities of queue-jumping migrants.

Defending Democracy

How awful! What horrid events!
How lacking in all fiscal sense!
What's Britain become
When any old bum
Can cause an MP such offence?

How dreadful! Such lack of all tact!
All morals and manners, in fact!
Just lying around
On real people's ground,
In spite of the Vagrancy Act!

Inspector! Those creatures need nicking!
Bring truncheons and dogs and get siccing!
Come clear out these rogues!
I'd dirty my brogues
If I had to do my own kicking!

Heidi Crocweep MP

Gove Gets Flapping

Such is the Britishness of Britain's national parks that wildlife is often safer outside them. According to the head of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the meddlesome foreigners at the UN may soon withdraw the parks' protected status: an outcome doubtless dearly wished for by Tumbledown Tessie's joke Secretary of State for the Environment, the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove. As one would expect, Gove's tenure has been largely for the birds, with continuing encouragement for the use of poisonous farming methods whose effects apparently lack the courtesy to stop spreading just because Her Majesty's Government has declared a few places off-limits. The Conservative Party's traditional concern for the countryside has also made itself felt with efficiency savings of one-fifth to the national park authorities' budgets, despite which only a third of parks are now in "good condition" according to the Government's presumably rigorous criteria. However, a grateful and famously sporting nation will be gladdened at the joyous tidings that conditions for grouse shooting remain favourable.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Bicuspid ccxvi-ccxxxix

But the Father of Teeth travelled on, and came to a city where all the inhabitants had skin as white as the best enamel brushed with the best toothpaste for the best part of a hundred years. Their faces were so smooth that the features were completely bland and unreadable, since any expression would simply slide off and fall to the ground. The citizens looked at the Father of Teeth, and then looked away when the Father of Teeth grinned at them, and the Father of Teeth bowed low before each citizen he met. Whenever he did this, the inhabitants of the city would give the Father of Teeth a curt nod, or else flick with their flowing sleeves the various bald patches on his mangy scalp, in order to indicate that he might safely resume his way without giving undue offence.

But every time the Father of Teeth bowed low before a citizen, he secretly collected the expression which slid from that citizen's face. Under ordinary circumstances these expressions would be trodden into the earth and forgotten except by the wide-eyed buried in their graves; but the Father of Teeth had quick hands and copious robes, and the sight of his scalp when he bowed was distracting to a degree. In only a few hours of wandering the streets, the Father of Teeth clandestinely collected some seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection, all of which he filed away with great care in various pouches that were slung about his person in places few would care to search.

Eventually the Father of Teeth was placed under arrest, because the ground beneath the citizens' feet had become strangely lacking in emotional resonance and the grave-diggers were annoyed at its indifference. The Father of Teeth was brought before the Proctor, who demanded, his jowls wobbling with authority, what manner of magical rite the Father of Teeth had been conducting with all his bowing and grinning in front of respectable persons. At this the Father of Teeth flung open all his pouches at once, and seventeen thousand frowns of disapproval, grimaces of disgust, pouts of dislike and moues of moral objection flew out like halitosis and attached themselves, with hideous slapping and sucking noises, to the Proctor's flabby face.

And ever afterwards in that city, the inhabitants went in fear of the Proctor's supreme lack of goodwill, while the ground remained indifferent of expression even as it received them in the grave.

Police Persecute Peaceful Protesters

Brexit protesters are struggling beneath the jackboot of an over-mighty superstate as functionaries in passport-coloured uniforms hand out arbitrary prosecutions. The protesters were demonstrating the likely benefits of full independence from the Euro-wog yoke next week, by blocking major roads, causing delays and bringing traffic to a standstill after the best traditions of Chris Graybeing and Operation Yellowhammer. Motivated no doubt by vengeful malice over Tin-pot Tessie's uncompromising attitude to police budgets when she was thugging for the Bullingdon Club, government enforcers stopped the leaders and booked them under the Nuremberg-style race laws which prohibit driving while gammon. If further proof were needed of their worthiness of the Farage Falange cause, the protesters intended to bring their vision to thirty or forty locations, but appear to have been noticed and martyred while appearing at the first two.

Common Sense Triumphs Again

British family values are once more under attack, and being staunchly defended by the compliant Sajid Javid's reformed, utterly non-racist Ministry for Wog Control. The guardians of the nation have refused a visitor's visa for a Togolese man to be with his British partner while she gave birth to their twins, on the grounds that, being of a different moral complexion to the Conservative Party, he might feel no particular urge to stand by his obligations and leave when the visa expired. The Ministry was also concerned that the relationship, having lasted only four years until now, is insufficiently stable for the welfare of the country, having presumably been formalised only in some barbarous Togolese manner featuring glistening juju-men and fevered bongo drummers. Since her partner cannot be with her, the mother cannot work and has to live on benefits, to the incalculable profit of her children and the British taxpayer. Naturally, when asked to specify the full extent of these profits in Parliament, Javid's ever-obliging henchbeing Caroline Nokes put Parliament firmly in its place; but the citizens of nowhere at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants claim that a minimum of fifteen thousand British children are imbibing the world's best family values in similar fashion.

Silting Up the Sea of Faith

Young-Earthers, Biblical literalists and other intellectual eminences will doubtless be exalted to find another test of faith from their whimsical deity. Thousands of fossilised jellyfish, sponges, worms and other cultural conservatives have been discovered among the lands of the Heathen Chinee, where the divine prankster was fooling around with the mud some little time ago. He then solidified the mud into rock, onto which He then threw a bit of make-up to give an impression of seniority. At least one victim of the evidence delusion has already proclaimed that such fossils "help us to tease apart how complex organs such as brains could be assembled through blind evolutionary processes" rather than through the creative rigours of the divine will to trickery.

Police to Debate with Extremists

With headlines dominated by the approaching Brexit withdrawgasm and the various messes that may come of it, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer has raised the possibility of yet further feasts of reason in the wake of the terrorism at Christchurch. Neil Basu, who has somehow escaped deportation despite his unpatriotic exterior, took it upon himself to criticise the scumbag press for rushing white supremacist manifestos into publication even as they foamed against the failure of social media platforms to censor extremists. The online Rothermere Stürmer was even considerate enough to make the Christchurch killer's magnum opus available for download from its website, presumably because the generators of decades' worth of front-page Muslim-baiting squeals saw nothing particularly harmful in it. Basu emitted some ominous Levesonic noises about the limits of free speech, and even dared invite editors to debate their coverage with "survivors of terrorism and those of us trying to counter it" - a remark which will certainly come back to bludgeon him at some future date when the Press is feeling particularly free, fair and cantankerous.

Certain Concerns Outweigh Mere Survival

In keeping with Global Britain's position of leadership in the battle against unnecessary and avoidable climate change, a local authority has unanimously approved the opening of a new coal mine. Even the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty has expressed his approval, which gives some indication of just how forward-looking and intelligent the whole business is likely to prove. The councillors cannot even plead a natural loosening of bowels at the local elections this May, since none of their seats will be in contention. Labour and the Conservatives were both in favour, so the former Deputy Conservatives naturally went along in their usual mould-breaking fashion, and subsequently the little yellow chair of the development committee was pushed out the door to proclaim that, of course, we would all prefer to live on a habitable planet and not have civilisation collapse quite yet, but local needs must take precedence and we cannot always have what we want and it was not, after all, an easy decision to make. It's all very well for metropolitan élitists to splurge their sympathy on insects and flooded wogs and trouble-making truants, but some of us have responsibilities, actually.

Dies Irae

Day of wrath and day of chaos!
Unexpected Erskine May gloss
Leads to Governmental way-loss!

Nothing short of revolution
When the Speaker's elocution
Buggers Britain's Constitution!

As in Passchendaele's trenches
Terror dawns upon the benches:
Blubbing bullies, squealing wenches!

Porkers on their barrels cheating,
Gammon faces overheating!
Humble pie they'll soon be eating!

Ship of state hath cracked its gunwale;
All who hoped for no-deal fun'll
Take it up the rear-side tunnel!

Tremble, old Westminster city:
All of Eton's wise and witty
Shriek in sorrow and self-pity!

Now we'll never get out early;
Eurocrats all grim and surly
Have us by the short and curly!

Painful scolding, painful schooling!
Termination of all fooling
When the Speaker makes his ruling!

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Gingivitis lxxxiv-xcvii

Fortunately, however, the Father of Teeth saw a great plume of black smoke in the heavens, and by keeping it in sight at all times he managed to escape the perilous realms and find the path again. He repeated the time-honoured warning, "Never leave the path," but the others had long ago succumbed to weevils, lip-gout and the ravages of philosophy, not necessarily in that order. The plume of smoke grew thicker and darker, and its taste filled the crunchy air as the Father of Teeth came upon a great multitude all waiting in line. Men, women and children of all shapes and ages stood in orderly fashion, monitored by armoured guards who were thoroughly beweaponed and impenetrably shielded against any hanky-panky and who did not hesitate to take the most assertive precautions against anyone who stepped out of place.

Since the queue completely blocked the path, the Father of Teeth had little choice but to join it, but after only a few hours one of the guards clumped up to him and demanded to know the nature of his business at the factory. "What factory might that be?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"Why, you rank and vile impostor," said the guard, whose visor was painted with a rose-cheeked smiley-face in fluorescent pink; "what factory, you ask? You dare to plead ignorance while occupying a place in this very line, and without a dollop of make-up to festoon your blatant phiz?"
"Make-up?" asked the Father of Teeth.

For reply the guard grabbed the nearest few people by their scalps and spun them around one by one. Men, women and children alike were hideously plastered with powder and paint, all in the brightest primary shades, although their clothes were as ragged and faded as those of the Father of Teeth himself. "All customers of the factory present themselves thus," said the guard, spinning them back into their accustomed positions; "it is an ancient and much-honoured custom, dating from the old days before the great reforms."
"Indeed," said the Father of Teeth; "and what reforms were those?"
"Truly, your ignorance is most blasphemous," said the guard; "you are fortunate to have encountered me rather than one of my less tolerant colleagues, otherwise you might have had some of the black knocked off those gleaming gums of yours. Know then that in the olden days the factory took in people and rendered them down into usefulness, extracting certain essences to enrich the colour of the granules, in order to make them more appetising. From all I have heard, the process was quite useful and very nearly painless; but certain disruptive and subversive elements objected, saying that people should be destined for better things."
"Such as what, for example?" inquired the Father of Teeth, with genuine interest.
"Freedom and breeding and poetry and such," said the guard; "all the usual. And the people listened to these agitators, and began to disguise themselves with make-up so that the factory would be deceived as to their true colours, and would render them down to be used on a better class of granule. So the management proclaimed that a regular dose of granules was just the thing to keep you fit for the very best sort of granules, and from that day to this the queue has never shortened, the glamorous facial tradition has been maintained, and only the necessary daily minimum of persons have been bludgeoned for offences against the queue. Now, about this make-up of yours."

And opening a small door in his breastplate the guard produced a brush, a bottle and a powder puff, which scattered small clouds of pink dust to flatter the factory's black perfume. But the Father of Teeth had already left the path and, in defiance of the time-honoured warning, vanished once more into the perilous realms.

Walling Up

With its usual sledgehammer tact, the Trumpster administration has chosen the day after the atrocity against Muslims in Christchurch to assert that it will neither tolerate nor facilitate investigation of atrocities against Muslims. Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court are looking into incidents of kidnap and torture in Afghanistan, besides various self-defendings by the Righteous State which only an anti-semite would be boorish enough to detail. The Trumpster administration has responded with a proclamation that anyone suspected of trying to enforce international law will themselves be treated as a Muslim or even a Latin American, and denied permission to enter the realm of the manifestly-destined. The USA has not recognised the ICC by ratifying the Rome Statute, unlike Britain which takes the more nuanced position of acknowledging the existence of international law but ignoring it when it gets in the way.

Not Us

This is not who we are, you know;
The problem's someone else's, so
There is no need, in countries free,
For all of our community
To seek out and denounce the few
Of us values are not true;
And naturally no excuse
For vengeful insult or abuse,
Or that unpatriotic game
Whereby the lesser breeds heap blame
On white Crusader souls, the Press
Or staunch, ancestral Britishness.
A democratic nation learns
From understandable concerns;
No-one denies some go too far,
But that is Them, not who We are.

In Reason's Grasp

In such volatile times as these, the cool and soothing hand of rationality is always to be welcomed; and the present holder of the Conservative Party's collective scrotum has duly renewed its grip. Without prejudice to further bungs from the ever-obliging British taxpayer, the Democratic Unionist Party will be happy to oblige Her Majesty's Government provided the latter can give a clear assurance that it has no intention of honouring any treaty with the Euro-wogs for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Tumbledown Tessie's thingummy in charge of whatever responded with a bit of a burble about how Global Brexitannia would not hesitate to back out of its commitments if motivated by a radical change in circumstances; but a slight damper was cast by an enemy of the people who declared that neither the fall of the USSR, nor the end of the Warsaw Pact, nor the breakup of Czechoslovakia would be of sufficient magnitude. Of course, the chance yet remains that little Gavin Williamson may decide to celebrate our new-found independence with a pre-emptive military intervention in Gibraltar via the soft underbelly of China, Afghanistan and the Urals. That might just do the trick.

Historical Abuses

It has been said that childhood Catholicism works like an inoculation, and the former Imperial Haystack has responded to the Conservative Party's latest bout of foaming and squalling with a careful emulation of one of the Church's more endearing moral characteristics. The former Haystack, whose mop has been cropped to something more like the sparse baby-strands of Winston the wilderness-bestriding wog-bomber, abandoned the faith of his mother in his youth, doubtless much to the chagrin of assorted father-confessors who missed hearing about his virtues. However, the urgent need to remind the Powers of his existence by grabbing a sordid headline has led the late Minister for Wogs Excluding Frogs and Huns to dismiss the process of investigating non-recent cases of child abuse "and all this malarkey" as a waste of money. There is, as we know, more joy in Heaven over a single repentant sinner than over any ninety-nine merely virtuous persons, so the new-found fiscal continence of the former mayor for pollution, garden bridges and water cannon will presumably bring a smile to the Virgin's face. Nevertheless, it remains as yet unclear whether the former Imperial Haystack plans to emulate Churchill by defecting twice, or whether he will rest content as a mirror image of the equally profound and compassionate Tony Blair; most likely the answer hinges on how much more good advice the Deity is prepared to absorb on the business of creating a world where cake can be both had and eaten.

Plodding Parallel

Despite Japan being a faraway foreign country and an Axis Power to boot, and despite the recent glorious victories of the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands over the fiendish job-providers of Sunderland, certain scientific experiments may yet prove relevant to the modern Conservative Party. A woolly yet elephantine prehistoric creature has been brought into close and intimate association with some small squeaking vermin; as a result it appears that some genetic self-repair is possible and even a resurrection may not be entirely out of the question. However, there is still a long way to go, and even if the creature can be brought back to life its natural habitat will be long gone, thanks to a massive intensification of the changes in climate that probably helped to kill it off in the first place. There is some room for doubt whether the cold, empty tundra behind Tumbledown Tessie's flat dead eyes would be wide or spacious enough to accommodate even a single woolly mammoth, particularly one suspected of being made in Japan.

Moderately Sensible

At some point during the good old days of kippers and smog for breakfast, Aneurin Bevan had occasion to celebrate the British organisational genius which, on an island surrounded by fish and practically made of coal, somehow managed to arrange a coal shortage and a fish shortage at the same time. The Tumbledown Tessie administration is clearly blessed with much the same brand of entrepreneurial gumption, having achieved massive levels of homelessness at a time when more homes are standing empty than at any point in the past seven years. Doubtless those shiftless Grenfell Tower people are largely to blame. Meanwhile, having illegally deprived Britons of their homes and citizenship in the name of law and order, the Government continues to prepare its next and greatest demonstration of Britishness, by ejecting itself from the world's biggest free trade area in the name of free trade.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Caries xiii-xxvii

As a digestive organ, said the Father of Teeth, the human mind leaves much to be desired. So great are its limitations, and so small the space of its confinement, that it can process only the most minuscule fraction of its surroundings; and even of that minuscule fraction it can hardly make use because its workings are so inordinately inefficient. Much that is harmful is retained, to block the mind's transmissions and corrode its components with clots of lusts and pollutive obsessions; while much that might be helpful is simply excreted, so that suicide rates among the tedious remain irritatingly low.

Indeed, he continued, such is the digestive inefficiency of the mind that it requires numerous sets of teeth merely to grind down the universe into manageable pabulum. There are eye-teeth to filter out excess light, ear-teeth to distract from any but the crudest noises, nerve-teeth to keep the infinite pains of existence at a purely physical remove. Thanks to these filters, for most of its life the human mind is sheltered from knowledge and prevented from biting off more than it can chew. It is only at the very end, when the teeth become rotten and start to loosen and drop out, that the truth is unavoidably allowed to infiltrate. And then, said the Father of Teeth, when faced at last with the truth in all its darkness and silence and inanity and pain, the mind shrivels, loses its appetite, alternates between constipation and diarrhoea, and finally gives itself up to starvation.

Pious Wind

Controversy has erupted in the Christian state of Alabama, where the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble have descended to comfort some recent beneficiaries of the Lord's mercy. A storm recently carried off twenty-three souls to their reward, so the Trumpster has been signing Bibles at a Baptist church. Despite the precedent set by a British holy man of almost equal depth and perspicacity, the inevitable few malcontents have given voice to the inevitable criticism. Bizarrely enough, the critics have chosen to attack the Trumpster on the basis of his vicious and inhumane border policy, as though callous exclusionism, arbitrary boorishness and racism were somehow alien to the teachings of Jesus. Nevertheless, those who were present at the ceremony erupted into applause, and at least one perceptive witness compared the Trumpster's whimsical nature with that of the Heavenly Father.

Muslims in Civilian Uniform

Given the degree of clear-eyed realism and concern for truth routinely displayed by the present administration, it will come as no surprise that the casualty figures for the crusade against Islamic State are several times less plausible than those of Where Eagles Dare. It will be remembered that the film's representatives of Anglo-American virtue infiltrate Nazi Germany's most formidable stronghold, battle against crack troops armed with submachine guns, engage in fist fights on top of snow-covered cable cars, plunge into a freezing river and finally escape at the cost of a single character's cut finger. The nice people who won the Battle of Britain have achieved something on similar lines in the Middle East, inflicting over four thousand casualties in five years' wog-bombing of densely populated areas, and in the process killing only a single genuine civilian. The moral and pragmatic advantages of such a low figure should be obvious, particularly as our pubescent Minister for Wog-Bombing has only nine more fingers to count on; nevertheless, mere experts have responded with their accustomed and deplorable lack of patriotic pride.

Delicate Judgement

In a diplomatic coup to rival any by the former Imperial Haystack, Tumbledown Tessie's Northern Ireland secretary has managed both to distract our free and fearless Press from the triumphs of Chris Graybeing and to make the heir to the House of Windsor look almost useful. The brilliant Karen Bradley, whose previous achievements include not realising that voters in Northern Ireland tend to divide along sectarian lines rather than the simple wogs-outery so popular in the Kingdom's more civilised components, informed Parliament yesterday that killing Irish people isn't a crime provided it's done by the right people, whereupon she toddled off to the Irish embassy for a St Patrick's Day potato party. Her verdict was all the more adroit for being detonated a week before the Public Prosecution Service decides whether to go through the motions of acquitting the perpetrators of the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings, although Bradley did clarify her remarks to the extent of stating that she did not intend to offend anyone. By contrast, the Prince of Wales, who also attended the embassy bloat-and-burble, sought to avoid offending people by the quaintly unfashionable expedient of not saying anything that might give offence. Strangely enough, it seems to have worked even better than the Bradley method.

A Worker at Both Ends

Since those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear, Her Majesty's Government has reiterated that there will be no independent review or inquiry into the events of 18 June 1984 at Orgreave in South Yorkshire. Ninety-five people were charged with riot after fighting broke out between striking miners and the forces of law and order, but none were ever convicted and several were indiscreet enough to suffer injuries, having doubtless used portions of their anatomy to inflict violence on defenceless truncheons. No less a troublemaker than the bishop of Sheffield has been pushing for a review and has offered to set up an independent panel, but the Home Office's lack of interest remains just as profound under the compliant Sajid Javid as it was under the race-baiting Amber Rudd. A spokesbeing proclaimed that the Government's sudden and selective dislike for ancient history stemmed from its conscientious taking into account of "how the policing landscape has changed since the events three decades ago;" which, translated into Standard English, was presumably intended to remind us how Her Majesty's Government has recently got around to sacking police officers and their backroom staff with the same blithe contempt as was shown to the mining communities thirty-five years ago.

Too Vast a Vision

Among the more insidious perils of talking to foreigners is, of course, the chance of becoming inadvertently tainted with woggery. Such has clearly been the case with a number of diplomats, MEPs and others whose distorted, treacherous minds persist in believing that Britain is insufficiently plucky and buccaneering to toddle in splendid isolation towards its manifest destiny. Indeed, the former ambassador to the Euro-wogs has gone native to such an extent that he has accused Her Majesty's Government of failing to understand some foreigners, for all the world as if the will of the people had anything to do with politically correct multiculturalism. Sir Ivan Rogers, whose citizenship of nowhere that matters is readily apparent from his crypto-Putinite Christian name, goes so far as to suggest that the Euro-wogs may not permit a sufficiently brief extension of the Brexit cliff-edge to allow Her Majesty's Government to bludgeon Parliament into voting for Tumbledown Tessie's deal, and may even compel the British people to vote in yet more European elections, as if the country were under occupation by the Nazis. Like so many who have allowed their Britishness to become wantonly diluted, Sir Ivan sees only through the narrow perspective of pettifogging Euro-wog legalism, and persists in his bizarre, myopic indifference to the boundless upland vistas of Conservative Party internal management issues.

Creaky Joints

Joined-up thinking must be quite a difficult feat in a government with only two genuine policies, viz. Stay in Office and Wogs Out; it must be even more difficult when so many at Cabinet level can barely aspire to joined-up talking. Hence, no doubt, the latest disarray in Britain's decarbonisation policy, which has seen emissions fall over the past three decades thanks to the fortunate coincidence of the need to avoid coal and Her Majesty's Government's fetish for miner-kicking. Emissions have now fallen consistently for six years, but the rate of progress is slowing because almost everything outside the energy sector is either standing still or going backwards. Presumably Her Majesty's Government expects domestic power use to fall, in accordance with market forces, once it becomes unaffordable to a sufficient quantity of proles; but at the moment the biggest single polluter is the transport sector, despite the assiduous ministrations of the brilliant Chris Graybeing. Mere experts claim that further reductions will be more politically difficult because of the complex liaison and co-ordination that will be necessary once Her Majesty's Government completes the initial stages of digito-rectal extraction; nevertheless, with Graybeing's shipless ferrying initiative, motionless motorway innovation and bootless attempts to run everyone off the railways, a characteristically brilliant start has been made.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Canines clxiv-clxxiii

Nevertheless, a woman approached the Father of Teeth and laid before him a child with a swollen abdomen and a powerful set of lungs. "What am I to do with this?" inquired the Father of Teeth during an interval in the yelling.
"Cure it, of course," said the woman. "We can't afford medical fees, and the Creator who made all things has declined to intervene even after repeated petitions."

The Father of Teeth tried laying-on of hands, but when he took his hands away the volume of noise increased appreciably. "Appendicitis," he told the woman.
"That sounds medical," she said. "I told you we can't afford it."
"Oh, very well," said the Father of Teeth, and chewed his way in; whereupon the woman began to scream, although the noise from the child abated considerably. Truly, to all things there is a balance. Soon the Father of Teeth felt a tingle in his premolar gingivitis; and sure enough, within moments the Vermiform Appendix appeared, swollen up and purple like a party balloon.

"What the devil do you think you're doing?" it said.
"You've got to go," answered the Father of Teeth, a little indistinctly.
"Don't talk with your mouth full," said the Vermiform Appendix. "It's bad for the digestion."
"I mean it," said the Father of Teeth; "you're an evolutionary leftover, a dangerous vestige of the good old days when benignant and charitable apes roamed the world without benefit of meat or monosodium glutamate. Everything was fine as long as you just dangled and did nothing, but now you've made yourself a liability."
"On the contrary," said the Vermiform Appendix, "I was placed here by the Creator who made all things, and I act only according to his will. The customer is always right."

The woman was still screaming, despite the Father of Teeth raising his head from the operation and baring all his most reassuring gums at her. "My diagnosis was correct," he said; "now all that is required is a brief negotiation with a primitive physical attribute, and then all will be well, or quieter anyway."
"I protest," protested the Vermiform Appendix. "Having been placed here by the Creator, I am no more primitive than the most refined neural connections in the cerebrum or the latest microplastic mutations in the mitochondrial machinery. I have been in my place just as long as they have been in theirs, and I am here for the same reason all of us are here: because the Creator ordered it so."

By this time the Father of Teeth had finished his sawing and gnawing, and with a hideous twang the Vermiform Appendix was removed from its accustomed place. Compassionately the Father of Teeth pinched it hard at the neck, to keep it from becoming deflated; then he tied a deft knot, which both preserved the venerable dimensions of the Vermiform Appendix and prevented it from talking above a squeak. Hence, with remarkable speed the woman and the Vermiform Appendix became quite friendly together; and it is to be presumed that the child's soul took leave of its corrupt and dismantled flesh and made its way to whatever reward the Creator had ordained, leaving the Father of Teeth to clean up the mess.

Northern Blights

As one would expect from a government which has the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove instead of a Secretary of State for the Environment, Britain's present strategy for weaning its economy away from fossil fuels consists largely of cultivating dependence on a less dependable fossil fuel than the ones we now depend on. Hence the Recrudescent Imperium's northern powerhouse has suffered further embarrassment after the recent earthquakes, as the shale-frackers have been farting methane into the atmosphere. Not even the shale-frackers claim that this is a good idea, although the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove may one day get around to it in the name of protecting Britain's dairy farmers; the usual practice is to burn the gas as it emerges, but on this occasion the gas let everybody down and, like a synaptic spark in a Conservative cranium, simply failed to ignite. Despite claims of environmental virtues to rival those of clean coal and sustainable uranium, data from the American industry shows that shale-fracking is about as clean as any other fossil fuel extraction; but even its origins in the chlorinated nation of Trump and his hydrophobic head-tribble cannot confer upon this information the usual status of Holy Writ, because Her Majesty's Government's belief is that Her Majesty's Government believes that it believes what it believes.

God's Answer to Truancy

As always, it comes as quite a shock to our free and fearless Press when a particular circumstance arises despite the consistent and deliberate erosion of any measures that might prevent it. Conspiracy theorists and other experts are already seeking explanations for a significant global increase in cases of childhood measles, which features several mysterious aspects. Among the worst affected countries are the Philippines, where the government shares values with Liam Fox, and Yemen, where Britain has been helping with some structural reforms. Countries like France and the USA have also experienced a rise in the number of cases, despite the prevalence of informed commentary on the dangers of vaccination and the analytical skills of the public in evaluating the merits of such research. Resolving these paradoxes may take considerable time and effort, although for the brightest and best in Her Majesty's Government there remains the encouraging possibility of linking the disease to children's participation in climate protests.