The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Pulp xxxix-lviii

Fortunately, however, the Father of Teeth eluded them by becoming a pixel in the screen of a monitor belonging to a developer working on an exceptionally saccharine video game. For several months the Father of Teeth lurked a few millimetres from the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, turning various pastel shades as required and deploring the developer's lack of artistic ambition.

His position in the screen meant that the Father of Teeth was mainly required to serve as part of the ground, taking on the insipid shades of well-kept lawns and lush forest floors; during indoor scenes he had to acquire the hue of polished floorboards or, very occasionally, the brighter shades of embroidered rugs. It was a discreet and undemanding existence, and almost no attention was paid the Father of Teeth by either his fellow pixels, which were entirely devoid of intelligent conversation, or by the game designer, whose gaze tended to concentrate itself more towards the centre of the screen where the action, such as it was, generally took place.

At last the interested parties who pursued the Father of Teeth broke into the developer's den and fought their way across the vistas of half-eaten takeaways and discarded underwear to demand the surrender of their quarry. Searching zealously for information, they seized the developer and sank their fists into his paunch. Meanwhile the Father of Teeth, though sincerely glad that the tedium had been broken, remained prudently discreet in brightness, contrast and colour tone. Indeed, so modest was the Father of Teeth that the interested parties never even thought of smashing up the developer's monitor along with the developer himself.

When the interested parties lost interest and departed, leaving the developer groaning on the floor amid blood-spattered clothing and cracked equipment, the Father of Teeth depixellated himself and stood forth from the screen. At this the developer was much astounded, and sat up abruptly, clutching a nearly clean takeaway container in which his left upper canine chattered in time with the shaking of his hand, because the interested parties had left it there in case he should require it later on.

"Why didn't you show yourself when they were beating me up?" demanded the developer, as reverence in the face of the miraculous gave way to righteous indignation on behalf of the self, in accordance with the Second Law of Theodynamics.
"It was hardly my place to interfere," replied the Father of Teeth, "and in any case there were four of them. It's considered unwise to manifest when outnumbered; you can curtail your immortality that way, if you're not careful."
"You might have scared them off with those gums of yours," grumbled the developer. "Why don't the likes of you ever concern yourselves with the sufferings of the likes of me?"
The Father of Teeth shook his head sadly. "And you're in the entertainment business," he said.

Little Lectures on Liberalism

Even among the dead ducks, traditional Conservative values are quacking as loudly as ever. Since at least the glory days of the Crimean War, Russophobia has generally outweighed Islamophobia on the dog-whistle scale that passes for the Conservative mind; and the remains of Tumbledown Tessie have shambled to attention for a final diplomatic rictus and rah-rah in keeping with that honourable trend. Having given the journalist-murdering, nation-invading fiend Putin a piece of her mind over the security services' Salisbury fantasy, and promised to continue defending liberal values against citizens of nowhere, enemies of the people and wogs, the rotten remnants went on to deliver yet more advice on moral rearmament to Her Majesty's Government's favourite journalist-murdering, nation-invading fundamentalist head-choppers. On the case of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi crown prince received some friendly advice about open and transparent legal process, such as Her Majesty's Government has been consistently unafraid to pursue in cases from Jean Charles de Menezes to Julian Assange. On the continuing rampage in Yemen, it was agreed that Britain's profitable and character-building contribution to regional stability probably ought to continue, in the continuing hope that the head-chopping House of Saud will be encouraged to improve itself further.

Somebody Must Have Done It

The godly state of Alabama has embarked on a laudable crusade to enhance yet further its already considerable status as a bastion of coathanger Christianity. Last December two women got into an argument outside a shop in Pleasant Grove, the matter being assertively resolved in fine traditional fashion when one of the antagonists shot the other in the stomach. The quasi-involuntary ammunition recipient was five months pregnant at the time and the foetus did not survive, so a manslaughter charge was brought against the woman who fired the gun. However, the grand jury did not indict her, so the state's protectors and servers have brought the same charge against the woman who was shot. She was, after all, present at the scene of the crime, and few other suspects are available, and it appears that the local police lieutenant has one or two mother issues to work through.

Teaching the Juniors to Smoke

Britain's leading role in the fight against climate change continues after the fashion one would expect from a nation which not only has the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove as its environment secretary, but has also appointed a couple of hundred thousand rich white racists to choose Jeremy C Hunt or the Imperial Haystack as its prime minister. UK Export Finance, the government agency responsible for trading beads with the wogs, has been boasting about the "best results for 28 years," apparently because it has cut its support for renewables to approximately one two-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty-seventh of the total spent increasing the likelihood of a catastrophe. A couple of hundred millions' worth of subsidies for oil refineries and exploration in the Middle East and Brazil are, as always, helping to ensure the competitiveness of British industry; although naturally UK Export Finance fully recognises the importance of tackling climate change, to the extent that the aviation and motor industries are not even included in the figures, in case some distortion should inadvertently adulterate the glittering truth about Britain's global leadership.

Beautifully Bound

Appropriately enough in this glorious epoch of patriotic renewal, though with remarkably little rah-rah considering its benevolent impact on the career of the Official Greatest Ever Number One Greatest Briton Ever, the Treaty of Versailles is being displayed for historians at the National Archives. By contrast to the victorious powers at the end of the Napoleonic wars, who did everything they could to reintegrate France into a stable European system, the winners of the War to End War went out of their way to humiliate Germany and pave the way for further conflict. The "post-war peace process" required Germany to accept sole liability for starting the war (the Germans in fact contributed rather less to the outbreak of war than Russia, Serbia and, arguably, Britain), and caused the Allies to break out in an unprecedented rash of respect for the relics of colonised races, provided they hadn't been colonised by Britain, France or the United Latecomers of America. As a monument to the vindictiveness, short-sightedness and stupidity of the British political class, the treaty has had few rivals outside the British Home Office; but on the positive side it is beautifully bound and led directly to the rise of a sort of primitive Teutonic precursor to the Farage Falange, and hence to the blossoming of Winston Churchill's hitherto rather forgettable career: and from there to the modern Conservative Party was, of course, the briefest of goose-steps.

Carbonised Uplands

Our great nation's leadership in the battle against climate change may soon attain new levels of Britishness, as the empty suit at the Treasury administers another kicking to the solar energy industry. The empty suit, which has previously noted that any attempt at serious action to prevent all-out catastrophe would be fiscally unsound, proposes to quadruple VAT on domestic solar battery systems, while blaming the beastly Euro-wogs for not permitting a reduction. The VAT charge for coal will continue at the lower rate, presumably as a Churchillian V-sign to Brussels; and the hike will come into effect on the same day as the House of Expenses Claimants and Holidaymakers debates the meaninglessness of the Government's zero-carbon target.

Qualified Concerns

A judge's order for the termination of a pregnancy against the wishes of the mother and her family has prompted a moral intervention by that paragon among protectors of female rights, the Church of Rome. The pregnant woman has significant learning difficulties and mental health problems; her own mother, who had offered to care for the child, is apparently from Nigeria and "may return to her home country at some point;" which may or may not be a judicial hint that the lady might one day fall victim to the Home Office's zeal for pure British breeding. Meanwhile the Church, which once claimed to regard the will of God as supreme, has undergone a sudden conversion to the cause of human rights. While admitting that not all the facts are known, a bishop wagged his finger about the meaning of "best interests" when a parishioner lacks mental capacity and is subject to the decision of a secular court against the will of the Vatican. In the case of a woman forced to give birth against her will, given his concern for human rights over divine edicts no doubt the same bishop would have raised exactly the same worries. Oddly enough, the bishop also expressed concern about the rights of the uterine growth, which surely has little to fear since the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak abolished Limbo with a wave of his hand a dozen years ago.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Canines ccxliii-cclxiv

In the beginning were the teeth, and the teeth were with God, and the teeth were God, inasmuch as it has pleased the almighty Creator, who could have made things better but chose otherwise, to make suffering the basis and foundation of His world. All sentient creatures, from the humblest to the mightiest, partake of suffering whether they will or no, and thereby comes the first eternal truth, that the Almighty bites. For as long as God was alone He had nothing to bite but Himself, and He gnashed and foamed His way through eternity in exactly the noisy and undignified manner one would expect from the Creator of slug and bedbug, of priest and trilobite, of leprosy and tooth decay. He bit off His fingers, and from their scrabbling and twitching came the universe, every convulsion bringing forth a new spattering of stars. He bit off His feet, which brought Him to immobility amid His own creation; no longer able to walk upon His subjects, He bit out lumps of Himself wherever He could reach, and shrieked for the frenzy of His champings and gulpings to be acclaimed as the music of the spheres. At last He bit off His tongue, and out came blood and water, and the severed part slunk and slithered away, for the word of God had fatigued it. Sheltering like a serpent in a forgotten corner of the universe, the tongue shrivelled and blackened, and lost all sense of taste; and that, said the Father of Teeth unreliably, is more or less how I was born.

After All, He's Just A Man

O rah rah for Bozza! He's silly,
And prone both to shally and shilly,
Yet he can restore
Our greatness of yore
By waving his Bullingdon willy!

He'll bring the right chaps to the fore;
His values are true to the core.
His path has been hilly;
Now see how the frilly
Pink bums of the vanquished are sore!

This shocks us extraordina-rilly,
And turns British backbones all chilly:
Some Communist bore
Called cops to his door
For having a fight with his filly!

Sir William Wynette de Pfeffel Shakespeare

Britain Takes a Stand

Three enemies of the people have ruled that the next prime minister of the United Kingdom broke the law in approving some of the country's arms exports to Her Majesty's Government's favourite fundamentalist head-choppers. Both the Imperial Haystack and Jeremy C Hunt, as well as the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty and others of doubtless equivalent adequacy for public office, signed off the sale of weapons to the House of Saud without troubling to assess the risk to civilians. In its capacity as a global leader for fairness and decency, the UK has responded to the Saudi assault on Yemen by having discreet words in Riyadh, while delicately backing up these hints by licensing almost £5000 million worth of weapons sales. Indeed, so appalled was Her Majesty's Government by the recent murder of a dissenting Saudi Arabian journalist that it applied no sanctions whatever. Since Hunt and Johnson both have better things to do at the moment, the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty was duly dispatched to announce that a similar attitude of entrepreneurial stoicism will, with the aid of the indulgent British taxpayer, be adopted in the present case.

The Forefront is Where You Find It

As befits a country ever more dedicated to becoming smaller, whiter and squeakier, Britain is to close its leading centre for research into mouse genetics. A "strategy board" at the Medical Research Council has recommended the termination of all scientific work at the Mammalian Genetics Unit, naturally without troubling to consult the human resources. In a further access of scientific enthusiasm, the mouse protectors have also recommended withdrawal from an international project researching those murine and human genes whose roles are still obscure. Complaints that British science will suffer and that the country's position at the forefront of genomic medicine are of course beside the point. To the patriotic mind Britain will always be at the forefront, whether its science is based on mouse genomics or, as at present, on mass human sacrifice at the altar of terminal capitalism. In the country's present mood, an international research centre has no more place here than a forensic psychologist at the Salem witch trials.

Gove Gets Busy

Britain is leading the way on microplastics pollution after the fashion one would expect, with at least thirteen rivers thoroughly polluted and one with a higher concentration than the world's largest patch of floating débris. Fortunately, this particular river happens to be the Mersey, which is of concern only to northerners. The nation's excuse for an environment minister has more pressing matters to attend to than reports by mere experts, but his departmental spokesbeing's response bore the characteristic touches of the jabbering homunculus who autographed the Bible and who thinks education should have a bit more rah-rah about who won the war. The standard boast about global leadership and great strides, bags charged and plans announced, was followed by the standard yap about funding "groundbreaking research" by people who can be relied on to come up with cheerier results, and "working wth the water industry," much as past health secretaries have worked with the fast-food industry, to ensure that nothing is done that might inconvenience anyone important.

Those Excitable Colonials

Given that the empty suit at the Treasury has delivered itself of the considered opinion that keeping the planet habitable would be fiscally imprudent for Global Britain, one would have hoped the rest of the world might have followed Her Majesty's Government in its passage to more significant matters; but not a bit of it. Mere experts have discovered that permafrost which has been frozen for millennia is turning out less permanently frosted than previously thought. Fortunately it's happening in Canada rather than in Westminster, so levels of concern within Her Majesty's Government will remain minimal unless the Queen Gawblesser should happen to toddle over there and risk getting her feet wet.

The Next Best Thing

Since God apparently has better things to do these days than impose vocations on would-be eunuchs, the Church of Rome is considering a slight relaxation of Pope Gregory's rule of celibacy among the clergy. Alas, there is no likelihood that priests will be spared the temptation to fondle their flocks by being permitted to run after one another's wives: the possibility that enforced celibacy may have contributed to the Church's various sex scandals is of course entirely unworthy of consideration, and the rule-change is being contemplated not from a wish to do better, but from the urge to do more of the same. Accordingly, the most the Vatican will countenance is allowing a few old married men to toddle up the Amazon in order to help complete, as far as possible, the pious genocide begun some five centuries ago by the forebears of Pope Bergoglio.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Premolars cxxxi-cxlvii

Nine months later, however, the Father of Teeth had infiltrated a paternity ward, where he drifted into the habit of shambling up and down the rows of beds, dispensing useful advice to the swelling expectancies and occasionally fingering the stirrups in a manner which gave rise to much fascination and occasional outbreaks of twitching.

Each day an orderly would tour the ward, pushing before him a gurney with a squeaking wheel; mounted on the gurney was an intravenous feed dangler, and draped over the dangler was a white coat. At the foot of every bed the orderly would pause, stand behind the white coat and tell the inmate of the bed how very well he was doing and why no glucose could be spared just at the moment, while the Father of Teeth stood sniggering a short distance off until the orderly rammed him with an elbow. When the orderly went squeakily on his way, the Father of Teeth would resume shambling up and down, informing the inmates collectively and individually that the whole business was a bad idea and would likely come to nothing in the end. Some of them screeched at him; some of them grinned and clawed for his eyes; most lay back and listened in vacant contentment, complacently fondling their bulges.

Eventually, as usual, war broke out and the hospital was invaded by soldiers in the uniform of the enemy. They raided the medicine cabinets, smashed up the incubators and used the intravenous feed dangler to inflict hideous indignities upon the squeaking orderly; and they carefully recorded on video each one of these deeds of derring-do, and more besides.

"Our children!" shrieked the inmates of the paternity ward.
The Father of Teeth gestured at the soldiers, a couple of whom looked up from their depredations; whereupon the Father of Teeth miraculously transformed the gesture into a salute. "Those were children once," the Father of Teeth said to the inmates of the paternity ward. "There is no shortage, gentlemen; indeed, for some dozens of millennia there has been a positive glut. Your own additions to the flesh-pile, if they survive this unfortunate conflict, will no doubt be driven to relieve the market in their own humble manner."

At this the inmates of the paternity ward grew even more indignant, for none of them wished to see their children in so unprofitable a profession as the infantry, let alone the enemy's infantry. Fortunately, the soldiers were not from the enemy's infantry at all, but from the Ministry of Public Information. They were manufacturing an atrocity video for the motivation of the populace, and they had been ordered to make it convincing. The Father of Teeth sneaked out before the climax: the inmates of the paternity ward had given small thanks for his advice, and he did not suppose they would be much more appreciative if the last words they heard in this life were: "I told you so."

Psychological Penetration

One of Brazil's enemies of the people has ruled that the man who stabbed Jair Bolsonaro during his presidential campaign last year should be hospitalised rather than jailed. The attacker's blade pierced Bolsonaro's speech centres and endangered his life; but the judge has returned a verdict of mental illness, presumably because the motive was something other than the candidate's well-documented status as a gay-baiting ecocidal demagogue. Spontaneous justice was served at the scene by the forces of popular opinion, but the would-be assassin survived the beating and, according to the police, confessed to the assault. In a surprisingly hopeful development, Bolsonaro has announced that he will appeal against the judge's ruling for indefinite hospitalisation on psychiatric grounds. It's refreshing to find such breadth of vision in Bolsonaro; one would hardly expect someone like him to agree that you don't have to be mad to stab a fascist.

Lead of Heaven

Less than a tenth of the money pledged for the repair of Notre Dame has so far been paid; which may well be a blessing in disguise if it delays Emmanuel Macron's plans to reboot the unfortunate pile in fluorescent plastic. Meanwhile the first mass since the inferno is to be held in what remains of the cathedral, presumably in order to thank the Lord for all the fine and upright work He is doing in protecting His servants, some of whose children may now suffer poisoning from the lead in the roof and spire. Part of a cathedral's function is to stand as an allegory of the faith, and there is a certain happy symbolism in constructing its more heavenly components with an element that impairs cognition. A further potent demonstration of faith will be made by the priests at the mass, who will be wearing hard hats in case their Father should decide to rain any further blessings upon them.

Gove Does Not Quite Twig

From the days of the Osbornomic miracle until now, the essential policy of Her Majesty's Government has remained the same: grandiose pledges followed by insouciant inaction and the sort of flexible attitude to hitting its own targets that might characterise World War III if Chris Graybeing's forehead were to depress the red button. Possibly not by coincidence, the jabbering homunculus which is Global Britain's excuse for an environment minister has declared himself averse to targets and deadlines in case they should inconvenience his employer, Rupert Murdoch; which doubtless explains how Her Majesty's Government has managed to miss one of its greener targets by the uncharacteristically moderate factor of seventy-one per cent. Against a target of five thousand hectares of trees to be planted in England over the year to last March, the jabbering homunculus managed a quasi-Osbornomic fourteen hundred and twenty and was crushed by the rebellious Scots. Still, it's only the environment, after all; and the relevant ministry extruded a spokesbeing to burble ambitious nothings because the jabbering homunculus himself has more important matters to worry about.

Fuck Business

Aside from those obliging fillies who are hired to keep the members up at snort-and-snigger gatherings, the Conservative Party does not generally approve of prostitution. Everything else may be for sale, from the prime minister's time to the National Health Service; but prostitution implies the double dangers to civilisation of extramarital sex and working women. Any imputation that government policy might be forcing women onto the game must naturally cause insult as well as injury to the sensitive souls at the Department of Whore Promulgation. Hence a recent memorandum to the work and pensions select committee shrugged off the idea that the Government's filleting of the social security budget was forcing women into sex work, and instead blamed drug addiction, the internet and the European Union, in accordance with traditional Conservative Party wisdom. However, a flunkey has now been dispatched with an apology, so perhaps someone in the Cabinet has been briefed about women, even fallen women, getting the vote some little time ago. Similarly, last month's report by the UN rapporteur, which went so far as to imply that taking resources away from poor people tends to make them poorer, has been faintly praised as "factually correct" by the senior civil servant responsible for depriving children and families. The outraged screeching with which Amber Rudd greeted the report was merely the measured and justified response of a sensitive soul to "the political interpretation of what's happened," namely the ludicrous ideological dogma that Her Majesty's Government might somehow or other be responsible for the consequences of its own policies.

Helpless Before the Might of the Consumer

The natural and innate Britishness of the human species has been gloriously documented in BP's annual global energy report, which notes that people are responding to the effects of climate change by helping to increase the effects of climate change. As the corporation's chief economist profundified, "On hot days people turn to their air conditioning and fans, on cold days they turn to their heaters," which is clearly no-one's choice but their own. Not to be outprofounded, BP's chief executive profundified that the present backwards race to mitigate the climate emergency is "not a race to renewables, but a race to reduce carbon emissions across many fronts." Although the report notes that emissions might just possibly have been higher without the growth of renewables, BP and its fellow non-ideologues are wary of drawing any connections between reducing carbon emissions and energy sources that might reduce carbon emissions. Instead, BP recommends that those concerned about the use of fossil fuel should switch to different fossil fuels until the beastly renewables can be put in their place: a process well advanced in the Recrudescent Imperium, where the extent of the Government's commitment to a sustainable economy has long been apparent in its coddling of shale-frackers and kicking of the solar industry. Meanwhile, BP remains so committed to reducing carbon emissions across many fronts that its minions are mounting a legal attack on Greenpeace protesters occupying an oil rig, while the dynamic wealth creators of the private sector squeal for government subsidies as the price for not bringing down civilisation by mid-century.

Low-Grade Personnel

Outsourced workers at the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns, rather than rejoicing in their economic liberty, have gone on strike over their employer's decision to postpone paying their monthly wages for two weeks. Like many low-paid workers, they seem to have been indiscreet enough to pay rent or mortgages rather than inheriting or owning their homes outright, and some of them even pay their bills in Britain rather than the Bahamas. By contrast, the company that employs them is so fiscally responsible that it was forced to restructure as recently as three months ago; which presumably was what led Her Majesty's Government to renew the company's contract, along with such corporate virtues as a disinclination to recognise trade unions and a non-ideological attitude to the London living wage. The relevant minister, Jeremy C Hunt, proclaimed in March that he would take "full responsibility" for failures to pay support staff on time; but as befits a would-be national figurehead under the leadership of Rupert Murdoch and the Trumpster, he has today outsourced the responsibility for proclaiming that he won't be taking responsibility after all.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Cavities lxxiv-lxxxvii

Quite irrelevantly, however, the Father of Teeth had previously encountered a little middle-aged man with a shiny haircut, a slick handshake and a necktie of oculoclastic panchromaticality. This worthy sat under the hot desert sun, obsessively arranging and rearranging patterns of pale stones while the hair-cream bubbled cheerily on his scalp. The various communities on the edge of the desert held him in superstitious reverence, and habitually left offerings of food and small, fluorescent sex toys in his honour.

The little man leapt to his feet and pumped the gnarled claw of the Father of Teeth with sudorific sincerity. An ellipse of pale stones was laid out around him, with narrow flints at each end and progressively larger and blunter stones around the rim. This, the little man proclaimed, represented the secret of perfect social stability, diagrammatically petrified for anyone to understand, and for everyone, from the most exalted plutocrat to the second-lowest traitor in the land, to appreciate and obey or else.

"See," said the little man, standing at the very centre of the ellipse and pointing at the narrow flints with his longest and most polished sex toy: "the incisors at the front, because they're the sharpest, and then," he pointed at the roughly conical stones which were next in line, "the canines, which are the soldiers and spies who support them, and finally," pointing at the largest and roughest stones, "the molars, which grind away humbly in the background and make the world digestible."

In the black leathery eye-bags of the Father of Teeth was a dangerous overabundance of wrinkles that might have warned a more prudent observer, but the little man continued with heedless enthusiasm:

"... The circular structure of the schematic demonstrates the layout of both upper and lower jaws, to emphasise the structural symmetry of the system. In real life, of course, the personnel would mesh with one another in form and function, but only within their own class: incisors with incisors, premolars with premolars and so forth. It would never do for one of these," he rapped his pointer lightly against one of the stone incisors, and then against one of the stone molars, "to grind against one of these, now would it? Violate a system worked out over millennia by the natural forces of evolutionary dentistry? I should think not, indeed!"

But even as he spoke, the grin of the Father of Teeth led with the molars, while his incisors and canines and premolars bowed their way to the back. As the pale stones rose whistling into the air and streaks of black light seared his necktie, the little man's face took on the nicotine hues of shock.

"You fish," said the Father of Teeth; "you presume to consider the arrangement of your bodily calcium an eternal design for the world, and yet you have never considered that rocks have no roots."

And when the various communities at the edge of the desert ventured out to make their offerings once more, they found no elliptical patterns of pale stones, nobody waiting to accept their tributes; and of the necktie which had been visible for miles they could discern not even a glimmer. There was a small rock-pile or cairn, which some said reminded them of a giant's teeth extracted and heaped up at random, especially as the rocks appeared stained and discoloured as if from persistent chewing on something bad; but they were not the kind of communities to stick their heads in a giant's mouth, as the local idiom had it, and they left the cairn well alone until the wind and the weather wore it away, along with the tributes which they left lying about the district just in case.

Some of Our Best Friends are Asylum Seekers

Mrs Battenberg's big birthday gong give-away is often the occasion for refreshing displays of British bad taste, but rarely more garishly than in this case. Seven Holocaust survivors have been awarded the British Empire Medal for services to Holocaust education and awareness: an award to rank with the Stalin Medal for Ukrainian famine relief or the Pol Pot-Kissinger Compassionate Award for Urban Beautification, and of course a magnificently smug and self-complacent bit of hypocrisy from the nation credited with inventing the modern concentration camp. The British Empire was much admired by Hitler for its forthright ways with the lesser breeds; and there can be few more forthright symbols of the nation's regard for its heritage than the image of the Queen Gawblesser patting refugees on the head, at this carcinogenic fag-end of the obsessively racist May premiership, a scant hundred miles from Calais.

Fathers and Sons

Doubtless in a spirit of paternal kindness, the Church of Rome has offered a family-values correction to the fallible word of Jesus Christ. The line in the Lord's prayer, Lead us not into temptation, is henceforth to be translated Let us not fall into temptation, although in the opinion of at least one Biblical scholar this perverts the plain reading of the Gospel text. Certainly at least one eminent theologian has pointed out the Saviour's frank recognition of God as the ultimate source of evil; nevertheless, the Vatican appears oddly uncomfortable with the idea. The Pope himself stated that "a father doesn’t do that; a father helps you to get up immediately;" which shows that, even for a priest, he has evidently been rather fortunate in his acquaintance with fathers. Of course, the Gospel itself is a Greek translation of a decades-old rumour derived from an untranscripted source in Aramaic, so it could plausibly be argued that some leeway is permissible.

The Invaders

Rah rah for the Normandy beaches
Where Winston's best win was begun!
A history lesson that teaches,
As always, that victory's fun.

Rah rah for a vigorous session
Of helping the Jews and the Frogs,
While giving poor Adolf a lesson
In dealing with uppity wogs!

Rah rah for those Yankees and Tommies
Who died for what's good and what's right,
And boo to those nasty old Commies
Who hardly got into the fight!

Rah rah for high values defended,
Though with the occasional lapse -
As when the Alliance was ended
By nuking surrendering Japs.

Rah rah for the glamorous moping
And scenes of restrained British fuss,
And we statesmen solemnly hoping
The glamour might rub off on us.

Rah rah for those hard British workers
Who killed for our slice of the pie:
At peace while we show we're no shirkers
At helping their grandchildren die.

Quinsey Jingo

Somewhat Deflated

One of the Trumpster's near-handfuls of British supporters has been arrested for perforating a replica of the world's most powerful tangerine-coloured plastic bag of stale air. Naturally, being an upholder of genuine transatlantic values, she stabbed it in the back, and she was subsequently removed from the scene by police officers who were probably relieved to find themselves confronted by an actual sharp object instead of another volley of milkshakes. Although the lady has protested with the wogs-out yellowjackets and other champions of liberty, it remains as yet unclear whether she was among the literal dozens who lined the streets in favour of the Trumpster's previous, non-state visit to the site of the great NHS car-boot sale; or even whether she was one of the comparatively numerous who attended his inauguration. The police initially arrested her for possession of a bladed article; but being a Trumpster supporter and therefore presumably Caucasian, she will not be charged for that offence. At the time of writing, there is no official indication as to whether Theresa May has an alibi.

Worrying

Foreign doom-mongers and namby-pamby nay-sayers are once more marshalling mere facts in their destructive downplaying of Global Britain's leadership in the fight against climate change within the bounds of reasonable possibility and profit for the right sort of people. A report co-authored by a former fossil fuel executive and endorsed by the former chief of the Australian armed forces predicts the end of civilisation by mid-century if governments continue their present course. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen steeply for the seventh consecutive year, and the jabbering homunculus which Her Majesty's Government employs instead of an environment minister has been having a jolly old jowl-wag with the leader of the reality-free world and his hydrophobic head-tribble. Nevertheless, while naturally stopping short of splashing the story across the front page (it is not, after all, a blather by Boris Johnson, let alone a pronunciamento from the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange), the Independent newspaper did concede that the report's conclusions were "worrying".

Another Moral Victory

As Tumbledown Tessie's greatest diplomatic coup (after Brexit) reaches its panting consummation with the state visit of the Trumpster and his newly-shorn hydrophobic head-tribble, it seems apt that one of her greatest moral coups (after Brexit) has sneaked into the Bury Bad News tray. The dead-eyed warden is on record as disliking modern slavery and people-trafficking, whether because Nick Timothy thought the Party membership might have some sort of objection or because she had heard that wogs were involved. With hindsight, the latter reason seems more plausible, if only because the matter eventually landed in the sweaty little paws of the Ministry for Wog Control, which has been treating the victims with all the compassionate efficiency one would expect. In a laudable effort to reward the traffickers' entrepreneurial gumption and will to honorary Britishness, some of the slaves are recycled at the taxpayer's expense and then returned, in slightly improved condition, to the places from which they were rescued; while others are simply pushed out of the detention centre doors, presumably in the hope that they will develop a more can-do attitude towards working their way out of poverty.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Bicuspid xxiv-xxxvii

Nevertheless, just over the horizon from the disaster, the Father of Teeth came upon a peaceful village whose inhabitants welcomed him with charitable benedictions and complacent smiles. Though they asked no questions about the disaster,the very air was fogged with thoughts and prayers, which deadened the distant screams and rendered the roiling plumes of black smoke into a soft and silvery haze.

Since the disaster had left the Father of Teeth somewhat bruised and annoyed, he was taken directly to the church to have his indignation soothed away. A priest descended from the rafters on a rope that creaked only slightly, and assured the Father of Teeth that his lumps and scrapes and scorch-marks would all help to ensure that the divine plan came out nicely in the end.

"Will you not pray with me," said the priest, while the rope swung and squeaked, "and give thanks for your deliverance, and beg the Creator's mercy for those not fortunate enough to have escaped?"
"I would imagine," grumbled the Father of Teeth, "that if supernatural mercy were going to descend, it would have done so before now. If this particular atrocity, with all its chaos and casualties, has been planned from the beginning of time, it seems a little presumptuous to petition for modifications at this late stage."
"The purpose of prayer is not to alter the Almighty's ways," said the priest, swaying serenely from side to side, "but to help us adjust our own attitude and enhance our faith in His ultimate goodness. Each calamity He inflicts is a test of our will to believe in Him; and the misfortunes of others thereby provide an excellent opportunity for us to polish up the gloss on our own souls."

Accordingly, having taken his leave of the village the Father of Teeth produced several sets of automatic heavy-duty dentures and set them to work on the foundations of the church. He calculated that the building would collapse near the Sunday sermon's point of orgasm, and trusted that his soul would shine the brighter for a safely distanced contemplation of the unfortunate event.

Old News

Parts of the proto-Albionic landmass are set to experience the most refreshing coolness of the year so far thanks to the approaching meteor impact. Air quality is expected to become refreshingly carbonated and visiblity in certain areas could attain maximum tactfulness as atmospheric dust shuts out the sunlight for months on end.

"The world is set to enjoy one of the longest winters on record," meteorologist Professaur Emma Smith told The Independadont. "Three-quarters of plant and animal species may like to take precautions and avoid prolonged residence on the surface of the Earth unless absolutely necessary."

Conditions after the meteor impact are expected to remain unstable and hostile to most forms of life for a considerable period, but ministers have warned against fear-mongering.

The Department of the Environment has promised radical measures to deal with the comet impact, such as allowing predators to eat more meat and imposing a special tax for treading on proto-mammals, but ministers are against imposing a timetable because of potential interference with the basking season.

"The world has had major extinction events before and will have major extinction events in the future, and we've always got through them in the end," a government polyp said today.