No Chance of a Quick Lend-Lease, I Suppose

Some uppity colonials across the Atlantic have clearly forgotten who won the War of 1812, and are openly threatening a blockade of Britain's chlorinated chicken should the Recrudescent Imperium continue to exercise its inalienable right to tear up the Good Friday agreement. A spokesbeing for the Irish rebels has implied that alternatives to the backstop will have to be, of all things, "identified and demonstrated" before the backstop is dumped, and renegade members of Congress have declared their defiance of the Trumpster, his head-tribble and all stout British yeomen who prefer their poultry dunked in a swimming-pool. Meanwhile, it does not appear that the Imperial Haystack's defiance of the Brusso-Strasbourgian axis and its treacherous allies in Dublin has brought much in the way of admiration for British pluck and gumption. It is fortunate that Britain's obligations to other countries are no longer recognised by anyone who matters, otherwise our international reputation might suffer considerably.

Spiritual Cleansing

Remarkable as it may seem to find Christians selling specious miracles, particularly in Africa, something of the sort does appear to have been the business plan of a few entrepreneurial buccaneers at Fort Portal in western Uganda. A Briton and three Ugandans from the Global Healing Christian Mission have been charged with distributing among impoverished villagers a Miracle Mineral Solution which they claimed would cure malaria, cancer and HIV. No doubt they believed that, regardless of mere material chemistry, God would cure the faithful and disown the undeserving; but the Miracle Mineral Solution, when examined by the authorities without the eyes of faith, was found to contain industrial bleach. It is true that industrial bleach, if administered in sufficient quantities, will cure all human ills eventually; though probably not in the fashion which consumers had in mind.

Fresh Field

Never let it be said that the modern Conservative Party carries a grudge, whether against liars, racists, filly-fumblers or just plain thugs. Since Mark Field's mugging of a Greenpeace activist took place under the previous administration, the Government has decided there is no point spaffing time and expertise up the wall deciding on the degree of his innocence. The activist in question has admitted to being armed with peer-reviewed science, which might well have caused serious mental and emotional damage to a roomful of Conservatives. Accordingly, rather than facing acquittal in the court of nods and winks, Field has been relegated to the back benches until the Imperial Haystack has need of a minister with sufficient physical courage to attack a lady in evening dress.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Gingivitis clxxi-clxxix

And that, said the Father of Teeth, is why I transformed myself into a Dimorphodon, which as you probably know was a sort of flying proto-reptile that flourished in the early Jurassic, some little time before I transformed myself into a Baluchitherium. The Dimorphodon is named for the versatility of its teeth, which it possessed in two varieties, unlike the other proto-reptiles which had only monotonous spikes lining their jaws like points on a very dull graph. My existence in that mode, said the Father of Teeth, was exquisitely simple, though not as simple as when I lived as a Dimetrodon. The Dimetrodon also had versatile teeth, but only according to size, which made things much less complicated, even before taking into account the fact that it was a sailor rather than a flyer.

Much later, said the Father of Teeth, I found out that the flying reptiles had transformed themselves into birds, which as you probably know have amalgamated all their teeth into a single implement called a beak or bill; an innovation which regrettably, and for reasons far too complicated to discuss with spiritual amphibians, I cannot pretend to approve.

Helped Out

British values have made themselves felt in Bahrain, whose government receives advice from the UK on matters concerning fair play, law and order, bobbies on the beat and that sort of thing. Three people have received the usual benefits of this civilising influence, despite interference by rapporteurs and other trendy do-gooders with funny foreign names. Convicted in separate cases of terrorism and killing a cleric, the three were allegedly subjected to assertive questioning and prevented from attending their own trial and sentencing: an economically astute and environmentally responsible mode of justice from which Her Majesty's Government will doubtless not be too proud to learn.

From Strength to Strength

Those delightful Serco people are at it again. Having succeeded so brilliantly, thanks to the patronage of New Labour and its fellow Conservatives, in the areas of wog warehousing, child imprisonment and the tracking of non-existent felons, it seems a little unfair that the Home Office's favourite boot-boys should be euphemised in Britain's leading liberal newspaper as a "private housing provider." In Standard English, of course, this means that the company's concern is to deprive people of housing, without troubling itself overmuch with such pettifogging issues as whether the law permits it. In accordance with good business practice, the most vulnerable cockroaches are being ejected first, and it is to be hoped that this barnstorming entrepreneurialism will be duly rewarded with a contract to enforce the vagrancy laws.

Just a Few Foreign Trees

Thanks to the Boris Johnson of the southern hemisphere, the Brazilian Amazon is being cleared at a faster rate than ever previously recorded, and will soon be irreversibly damaged. Mining companies and cattle-ranchers may benefit should the rainforest be transformed into savannah, but the consequences for those indiscreet enough to depend on the global climate for survival could be less fortunate. In a tragic echo of Europe's self-destructive intransigence over British independence, there is even some doubt as to whether the beastly Euro-wogs will allow the Brazilian government to sign up to a trade deal should Brazil refuses to keep to the Paris climate agreement. On a positive note, Britain's leading liberal newspaper regards the story as purely Brazil news, rather than as anything that might justifiably obtrude itself upon the front page.

Losers

While Britain continues to lead from behind in the race to renewability (the latest wheeze is for the taxpayer to help subsidise investors in nonexistent nuclear power plants), matters are going from bad to worse for the chaps who lost the war. In the Recrudescent Imperium last year, renewables accounted for a whopping twenty-nine per cent of electricity consumption, while the enemy remained stuck on a piddling forty per cent; and the figures seem set to become yet more dismal this year. The beastly Huns are even plotting to phase out their own nuclear power plants over the next three years; which will mean, of course, that there are all the more non-existent blanched radioactive pachyderms for the British taxpayer to glow in.

Our Meritocracy

See how our greatest offices are meant
For racists white, posh and incompetent.

True Britons, the exalted to the basest,
Like their posh whites incompetent and racist.

For who can beat, in merit or in might,
Racist incompetents when posh and white?

Now who's in charge? Well, who'd have thought? Oh gosh!
A racist - white, incompetent and posh!

Sir Winston Boris Spencer de Pfeffel Churchill

Chunter Killer

By convenient coincidence, the primary qualification for leadership of the Conservative Party is the same as the primary qualification for Foreign Secretary; namely a voluble predilection for wog-bombing. Thus Jeremy Chunt is now able to combine his primary and secondary political roles by ordering the European Union to fall in line against the mad mullahs and crusade for the Freedom of the Seas. Admittedly the beastly Euro-wogs were not the Recrudescent Imperium's first choice of partner; but Westminster has already requested the Trumpster administration to help re-stage the Battle of the Atlantic in the Strait of Hormuz and, in accordance with the provisions of the Special Relationship, has been brusquely advised to fry its own fish. This led to some unrest among the Conservative Party's subtler diplomatic minds, such as the brilliant Iain Duncan Smith and the purple-faced filly-fumbler Michael Fallon, who both thought it was jolly unfair to exclude our transatlantic overlords from the fun. Chunt hastened to reassure them and, by means of an aside on oil and natural gas, also took care to remind them exactly how many figs the Government gives for the climate emergency.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Pulp lxxxix-cviii

Many centuries earlier, in a somewhat different city, the Father of Teeth set up his stall with a great pulley to one side which was visible from one end of the market-place to the other. All the apothecaries came to stare at it, and some of them scattered powders made of rats' dung and the toenails of the deservedly disembowelled, in order that their own stalls might be purified of the sight.

One day there came to the Father of Teeth a known eccentric who was planning a long trip to escape the malice of his neighbours.

"What harm have they done you?" asked the Father of Teeth, throwing a new rope over the pulley and testing it for strength.
"They say I have a demon," said his grey-bearded customer; "a voice that speaks only to me, and induces me to do strange things, against all that is acceptable to the true gods of the city. They say I have made burnt offerings to this demon, thereby insuring that the smoke of the fires and the pleasant smell of burning flesh is denied the true gods, to whom they rightfully belong."
"And are these accusations true?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"Sort of," said the blasphemer. "But now I am afflicted with a raging toothache, and Yah Wah - my demon, I think that's his name - although he has made a number of other promises concerning real estate and the breeding of heirs, can't do a thing about it."
"Open wide," said the Father of Teeth; and attaching one end of the rope to the rotten tooth by means of a cunning device constructed from the mandibles of a giant and highly persistent species of centipede, threw his weight and some incantations upon the other end. The patient was lifted several inches off the ground, and joined the pulley in a melodic chorus of squeaks. The tooth, however, persisted in its attachment, doubtless owing to some hidebound refusal to recognise that life is change, or simply because it had nowhere else to go. Many strenuous and noisy jerks of the rope were necessary before the stubborn molar could be persuaded to part company with the unfortunate blasphemer's gums, whereupon the said blasphemer was deposited in an undignified heap beneath the pulley while the erstwhile instrument of his agony dangled small, brown and bloody above his head.

"There is no doubt a lesson, as well as a fang, to be drawn here," began the Father of Teeth; but the blasphemer had already uncrumpled himself and handed over no more than the necessary silver before hastening out of the market-place. Owing no doubt to his new and unaccustomed state of oral comfort, his thanks were indistinct.

A little later, the Father of Teeth heard that the blasphemer had finally emigrated, so he ground the detached molar to a sandy-looking powder which he sold in small sachets to the priests of the city's true gods as an aid to their potency, taking care to caution them against the risks of an overdose.

Cunning Stunts

Despite the departure of the pubescent Gavin Williamson, it seems the Ministry for Wog-Bombing is still being run on the principle of hurried fumbling. While detaining an Iranian tanker as part of Global Britain's buccaneering policy of oozing itself into the Trumpster's pocket, the Government apparently neglected to ensure that Britannia ruled enough waves in the Strait of Hormuz to stop the Iranians retaliating. Of course, there is every possibility that the Recrudescent Imperium is very independently and entrepreneurially being used by the Trumpster's head-tribble's best buddy, John Bolton, to escalate tensions in the region and bring about the long-hoped-for Armageddon with the Shah-busters; but since the Iranians are both foreign and Muslim, it is also conceivable that the Conservatives simply didn't think it would occur to the mad mullahs to try anything so human as a tit-for-tat. In any event although the Battle of the Atlantic is perhaps insufficiently rah-rah for present purposes, the first patriotic squeals of "Remember the Lusitania!" can hardly be far away.

Those Best Qualified

Against all common sense and natural reason, and on the basis of little more than evidence, mere experts have alleged that corporations which profit from selling unhealthy food may not be entirely reliable when requested, however politely, to make food healthier. In 2011, at the delirious beginnings of the Osbornomic miracle, the Bullingdon Club and its little yellow fags decided that the people best qualified to monitor the quality of food and drinks manufacturing were the food and drinks manufacturers themselves. Andrew Lansley, the Minister for Marketable Healthcare whose charity towards the prole-fatteners extended to the belief that they should have a say in running the NHS, freed the industry from the suffocating red tape imposed by the Food Standards Agency, and the coalition asked their corporate chums nicely to reduce, at their own convenience and in their own time, the plebs' intake of salt. As a result, the coalition may be able to chalk up to its enviable record nearly ten thousand extra cases of heart disease and stroke and a possible fifteen hundred cases of stomach cancer. But of course that is only the opinion of a few researchers from Imperial College London; the Bullingdon Club and its little yellow fags would undoubtedly disagree and they, of course, are the ones who really ought to know.

I Am the Very Model of a Very Moral Minister

One of Tumbledown Tessie's various ex-ministers for Brexit has apparently decided that the old bandwagons are best. In case of confusion, it should perhaps be made clear that the blithering prima donna David Davis was not the Brexit minister who resigned in a huff over an agreement he had ostensibly negotiated himself; that was Dominic Raab. The blithering prima donna David Davis is also not the Brexit minister whose name nobody can remember; that is Stephen Barclay. The blithering prima donna David Davis was the Brexit minister who let himself be photographed at the negotiating table without any papers in front of him, since the word of Tin-Pot Tessie was the only one that mattered.

Anyway, long before he was elevated to the role of making Britain safe for kippers, the blithering prima donna David Davis resigned from the Bullingdon Club's shadow cabinet and held a vanity by-election, ostensibly because he was concerned about civil liberties. His sincerity in that quixotic crusade may perhaps be gauged by his participation in the poor-bashing, race-baiting, Windrush-deporting, Trump-licking, Saudi-smooching administration of Tin-Pot Tessie and her brothers in Christ of the Democratic Unionist Party. Now, with grandstands in short supply once more, the blithering prima donna David Davis has again discovered that civil liberties are a thing, and specifically that torture is nearly as bad when the Conservatives refuse to do much about it as it was when New Labour actively supported it. Doubtless his objections, as before, will retain their robustness until the next ministerial post comes along to soothe them.

With Play This Fair, Who Needs a Scorecard?

Since the compliant Sajid Javid is doubtless busy updating his CV with his multifarious achievements as Tumbledown Tessie's token darkie, the Ministry for Wog Control disgorged the reliably repellent Caroline Nokes to shrug off questions about the Government's practice of rounding up slavery victims and throwing them in the clink. As usual, the first fib in the repertoire was that no records were kept, which on the face of it was plausible enough: the Conservative Party does not care about victims of trafficking, and it probably regards modern slavery as something to be encouraged as a sensible and natural evolution of the gig economy. However, it then turned out that in fact records were kept (and cited in Parliament by one Caroline Nokes), whereupon the brilliant Nokes cunningly outflanked her interrogators by denying that the records were accurate. When it was suggested that a central, accurate record might work to the advantage of all concerned, the fragrant Nokes responded that the process, like one or two other matters of Government business, was not as simple as it sounded, especially now that some people have started asking questions later when the Home Office deports first. The former New Labour skinflint Vernon Coaker, who can scarcely have been keeping up with politics these past few years, expressed "genuine shock" that the Government treats victims of trafficking as immigration offenders; to which the fragrant Nokes replied that a modern slave doth not a legal immigrant make, and that, as with one or two other matters of Government business, we must not simply assume that Britain can cope.

Not in My Father's Mansion's Back Yard

Ideally an established church ought to serve the whole nation, but for the protection of God's good name one must strain at the occasional gnat. Accordingly, the Church of England has tolerated gay-baiters, paedophiles and the occasional quasi-Catholic, but draws the line at eastern religions whose teachers speak in parables. A Zen meditation group is vacating the grounds of York Minster, having held meetings there for three years; its presence roused the indignation of at least one member of the general synod, who evidently felt that quiet contemplation "at one of the country’s best-known cathedrals" was lowering the tone for the gift shop. One evangelical group proclaimed that the miscegenation of Buddhism and Christianity was dishonouring Jesus; although some might be tempted to ask how the founder of an apostolic succession based explicitly on ignorance and genocide would have much honour to lose.

As She Preached

Most reverend Donald, you have seen
For certain, on your statesman's trip,
How Britons dote on tangerine
And treasure our relationship.

The values of our precious West,
We both agree, would be a sin
To compromise for those not blessed
With orange, white or gammon skin.

Our great and long-allianced lands
Should act befittingly for champs,
And turn our small and compact hands
To building concentration camps.

And yet, at risk of seeming stern,
I fear that we cannot accept
Your blunt suggestion some return
To those dark places whence they crept.

When British tolerance gets tough,
And troublous wogs are thus addressed,
A statesperson of proper stuff
Will always add "or face arrest."

Mary England

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Dentures xxiii-xlvii

Even the most malevolent and destructive among us deserves a little help now and then, said the Father of Teeth; one cannot in all decency consign a person to eternal torment simply for going astray here and there, and that is why, in spite of all the crimes and horrors he had perpetrated up to that point, I once agreed to serve in the maw of the Almighty in an adhesive capacity. It was purely a matter of goodwill, with no remuneration; not that I would have taken one of his employment contracts in any case.

Anyway, said the Father of Teeth, it was a most unpleasant business. The Almighty's own teeth are long gone for the most part, donated for keystones in churches and gothic arches, or begged for statuary. I shouldn't be surprised if some priest persuaded the barmy old bugger that the best cure for toothache was to have the thing extracted and set up in public with a beatific grin carved onto it. That doesn't help in the least, of course; but you can't fool others properly without fooling yourself first, as the saying goes, and whatever else you may think of the Almighty, you can't deny he does keep packing in the suckers.

And speaking of suckers, said the Father of Teeth, without his dentures that more or less sums him up. His mouth was littered with splinters and stumps, all brown and blunt, with a few black ones that had holes in them which led, for all I know, to Nirvana or Abraham's bosom, or somewhere less restful judging by the reaction whenever you gave one of them a prod.

Of course, said the Father of Teeth, the dentures didn't fit properly. Even with my help they rattled all the time, and they ground against his gums, and sometimes his speech became so garbled that his priests and prophets had to interpret, and we all know what that leads to. There must have been half a dozen schisms and a couple of genocides before things were more or less fixed. Don't ask me why he couldn't get a better fit; maybe the dentists don't like the offers he makes them, or maybe he has too infinitely big a mouth. My personal view, said the Father of Teeth, is that he just enjoys being angry.

Naturally, said the Father of Teeth, I did my humble best. I summoned my most mucilaginous might and I spread myself across those black and brown splinters and I did everything, positively everything I could to hold his damned dentures in place. Great pink and yellow things they were: not only do they not fit very well, they don't even help his appearance much. And people wonder why it's so difficult to see the face of God and live. Worse yet: when those dentures grind together, the noise is atrocious. By comparison with that, even the screaming isn't so bad; most souls, the civilians at least, aren't really able to scream, even when he chews them up; they're too undeveloped, like embryos. Priests, yogis, mystics and authors of popular self-help books are a different matter, and the souls of anchorites and contemplatives can attain quite impressive levels of volume when the juice bursts out of them and the true meaning of salvation starts to dawn. But even that isn't so bad compared with the noise from the dentures themselves, especially when he wasn't chewing anything and just constantly scraped them together. It was like listening to sand being gnawed. I don't know what those dentures were made of; substandard all round if you ask me. Maybe I had it worse because I was spread so thin across his gums, said the Father of Teeth; maybe it was the pressure that got to me.

But the noise was what did it in the end, said the Father of Teeth. I just couldn't stand the noise, so I unstuck myself (a fairly unedifying business) and respectfully took my leave. And did I get one word of thanks? Did I receive so much as a nod, do you suppose?

Go to Bed Early, Wake Up with Joy

Even though he is only the Minister for Privatised Medicine, Matt Hancock occasionally feels the need to make some sort of show at being concerned with public health. Hence, his department is preparing a finger-wag advising the lesser breeds on how much sleep they should be getting. "Failure to sleep between seven and nine hours a night is associated with physical and mental health problems, including an increased risk of obesity, strokes, heart attacks, depression and anxiety," warns a draft, for which ministers' nannies have evidently provided much constructive input. Sleeplessness is not a symptom but a failure, and by reformng their behaviour instead of staying up all night, the plebs can make themselves healthier. It's all so very simples if only they would try; and there is ample reason to anticipate that Matt Hancock will recommend a similar approach to other health issues. Failure to gain a subsistence-level income is associated with physical and mental health problems, so the plebs must purge themselves of idleness, although it remains as yet unclear which jobs Matt Hancock would like us to sleep on. Failure to avoid coughing and sneezing is associated with the common cold, so the plebs must be more mindful of their airways and take care whereof they inhale. Failure to control one's buboes is associated with the Black Death, so the plebs must drain their swellings before toddling off to work in the morning.

Only Human

While the human rights of prisoners and other plebs are viewed by Her Majesty's Government as a ludicrous bureaucratic obstacle to our buccaneering Britishness, the Conservative Party is always happy to confer them on people who deserve the privilege. While claiming expenses as the Bullingdon Club's minister for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers approved a £10,000 apology from the taxpayer for a civil servant who registered offence and distress at having to work in an office prominently decorated with portraits of some palace-dwelling benefits scroungers. A sometime Ulster Unionist now resident in our Mother of Parliament's less elected house has become exercised by the incident, and has urged the Northern Ireland office to restore the portraits. The noble lord contrasted Villiers' urge to please with the delays faced by victims of institutional abuse in Northern Ireland; fortunately for the stability of the realm, the chamber of his dutiful colleagues was nearly empty at the time. The complaining civil servant has been promoted to a senior position at the Parades Commission, which despite the colour-trooping connotations of its name is actually concerned with regulating demonstrations by Orangemen and the like, and ensuring that they don't usurp Downing Street's prerogative in vitiating the Good Friday agreements.

Good Luck

Those materialistic and backsliding persons who decry the Christian faith for its intellectual vacuity and moral sloth may soon receive an object lesson which they will not quickly forget. A Colombian bishop plans to rid his city of violence and drug trafficking, and doubtless of additional inhumanities such as abortion, by the eminently Christ-like expedient of getting into a military helicopter and sprinkling the place with water. It remains as yet uncertain how much strife will be quieted when subject to aerial hydration; fortunately, the water will be special magic water, having been mumbled over by a man in a frock. The seaport of Buenaventura is notorious for its gang violence, and peace-making efforts by the secular arm have apparently met with limited success and very few newspaper headlines for Monsignor Rubén Dario Jaramillo Montoya.

Britain Basks On

Remarkably enough, despite years of dynamic environmental leadership by the intellectual firebucket Owen Paterson, the gormless Andrea Leadsom and the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, the Government has no plans for protecting the more expendable breeds of Briton from the effects of climate change; nor has it shown much interest in trying to mitigate the effects themselves. If one did not know better, one might almost suspect that the Conservative Party didn't care very much. Fortunately, the Committee on Climate Change obviously does know better: it has professed itself "shocked" at the Government's inaction, while most of us who have spent some portion of the last few years on the present planet can hardly aspire any longer even to mild surprise. Slightly shocking in itself, at least for a managerial political culture based almost entirely on rah-rah and media projectiles of the expired feline persuasion, will be the CCC's assertion that setting targets with no intention of enforcing them is not a particularly effective way of getting things done, and that if changes are to be effected upon the reality-based community, actual alterations in policy may occasionally be required.

Improving at Last

Thanks to years of attention from Graybeing, Gove and New Labour's interchangeable thugs, Britain's prisons seem at last to be attaining the all-important aspect of punishment so necessary for the dilution of their notoriously lenient and luxurious laxity. With suicides averaging one every four days, and a twenty-five per cent increase in incidences of self-harm, the entrepreneurial efficiency of the nation's malefactor warehousing sector appears close to rivalling that of the wog control services. Despite this progress towards British fair play, and despite verbal money by the oodle from the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration, the chief inspector of prisons has called the situation a "scandal," for all the world as though he were a UN rapporteur trying to puncture Global Britain's ever-swelling aspirations. It is true that a few unimportant corners may be incurring minor abrasions when it comes to ensuring that released prisoners are subject to proper risk assessments; but the number of such cases barely falls into the thousands, and we all know that Tumbledown Tessie's régime at the Home Office has put the police in tip-top shape.

Crumbs from the Dead Empress' Toothless Maw

Given the purely peripheral relevance of fossil fuels to our repeatedly accomplished mission in the Middle East, it's only natural that the British Petroseum should be coming over all sanctimonious about returning contraband to Kabul. Some ancient terracotta heads, apparently victims of "illegal looting" (sic) and of the Taliban's fetish for decapitation, were discovered at Heathrow and, having spent a mere sixteen years being wrangled over by lawyers, were sent to the BP cultural asset for analysis and conservation. The museum has now condescended to send them back to Afghanistan, in keeping with its new and enlightened approach to the lesser breeds, which has also given rise to the hope that the Benin bronzes might one day be loaned to their rightful owners.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Enamel xcvii-ciii

Nevertheless, the Father of Teeth condescended to be present at the dispensing of the sacred sugar, which occurred with the accompaniment of much piping and choral importuning, at the base of a great flat-topped pyramid like a huge mutant molar. Priests in splendid feathered cloaks handed out the sugar in large brown lumps like crystallised mud, and instructed the children to suck on them slowly as they ascended the sacred staircase towards the top of the pyramid, where the high priest was waiting to present them to the gods. The Father of Teeth stood by and bared his benighted gums, but the children knew only that without their intervention the sun would not rise on the morrow, and they proceeded solemnly up the stairs to where the high priest waited with his fatherly obsidian. "After all," said the Father of Teeth, "what could be more cruel than to let children know that the sun will rise with or without them, and will shine or be extinguished whether they live or die?" And the priests continued to hand out the sacred sugar, and flourish their pretty feathers before the children's eyes.

Liberty Smell

It would no doubt be an exaggeration to say that the Conservatives have transformed the whole country into a rotten borough; but the whiff of long-passed use-by dates is growing undeniably more pungent. British democracy is about to attain yet more fragrant depths of Britishness in the selection by a couple of hundred thousand rich white racists of the country's next glorious leader. As one would expect of a party which exists to reward the deserving, the Conservatives have sent out multiple ballot papers to some members, many of whom may not yet be altogether dead enough to cancel out the error. Fortunately, the extra votes will go mainly to those who joined from multiple addresses and those who have changed their names, thereby favouring the absent-minded and the possibly criminal, as is only proper. Nevertheless, members have been informed that they should only vote once, which will doubtless be just as effective as those moral warnings on the weapons we sell to friendly dictators, to the effect that they should only be used for democratic purposes.

Our Looming Prosperity

Well, here's a thing: the forthcoming independence of the United Kingdom from the slave-shackles of Brusso-Strasbourgian Euro-woggery could mean the end of EU funding for social and infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom. Not only do the Euro-wogs expect us to pay our bills before we leave, but they're also cutting off the money that we'd be better off without; one could almost admire the fiendishness of it. Naturally, Britain's late Head Boy and his chums had no particular plans for such a contingency when they called the referendum; and naturally, since only social and infrastructure projects will be affected, nothing much has been done in the three years since they lost it. With the March deadline missed and the October one hovering on the horizon just beyond the House of Expenses Claimants' paid holidays, a few local authorities are kicking up a bit of a fuss, so the Ministry for Homelessness, Social Cleansing and Centralisation extruded a spokesbeing to dispense a bit of ritual patronisation. The Government registered vague interest in the problem a year ago and said it would talk to some people by the end of 2018, and it still intends talking to some people. What further degree of certainty and consistency could anyone reasonably expect?

More Migrant Numbers Down

Another eighty jobs have been saved in the Mediterranean, despite the inconsiderate efforts of some fishermen who rescued four potential health tourists from their economy-subverting submersible. Despite Libya's democratisation some years ago by Britain's late Head Boy and a few of his chums, people still persist in trying to leave the country, while many others are allowing themselves to be trafficked in spite of the wide range of career opportunities which Western intervention strewn about the area. After all, if battalions of British journalists can make a reasonable living from loudly thanking God and the Special Relationship that Gaddafi is gone, just imagine what might be achieved in that line by an authentic native. Alas, it appears that the entrepreneurial gumption is as lacking as ever.

Not Playing the Game

With its notorious sexism and traditional connection with socially inept males pursuing fictitious if spectacular goals, the gamer trade would seem a ripe environment for the flowering of Conservative Party talent. However, thanks to a fiendish plot by the perfidious French, the famously happy relationship between technology and Her Majesty's Government may be about to enter a phase even more sublime than those which have gone before. The losers of Dunkirk are attempting to take unfair advantage of Britain's forthcoming independence by offering British developers the same perks and conditions as other developers in Europe. In order to take advantage of this Pétain-style punishment beating, the developers will of course need to relocate, and it remains as yet unclear how many will choose to traitorise themselves rather than using their manly talents to harvest data on potential deportees or calculate the next decade's Marmite sales to Japan.

Ode to Joy

or, The Robbers

Joyless glistening gods of Gammon,
Squalling brats of Albion,
Now you enter, drunk with Mammon,
Blaring Fascist clarion.
All is foreign, foul and Other!
Turn your backs upon this place:
Nary wog shall be your brother
While your fist can reach his face.

He who, in attempts successive
At a plush Westminster seat,
Made a showing unimpressive,
Seven times was soundly beat -
He perforce with bitter whining
Must now take his joys elsewhere
And must show up, plump and shining,
Where the Gammons pinkly glare.

All should know our island story
Whether Brits or lesser breeds:
Staunchly Royalist and Tory,
Plucky chaps at plucky deeds.
Here with enemies abounding,
Frog and Polack, Wop and Hun,
They, with ignorance astounding,
Still don't seem to know who won.

Gladly, like the vacuum-flight
Of the dead suns in the void,
Sit and spin, and stay annoyed,
Starry dwarfs, so dim and white.

Millions, let us embrace you
In our firm if sweaty grip!
In our wallets we'll encase you
While our rhetoric lets rip.
As our backs tell Brussels-loving
Traitors where they can get off,
Joyfully our fronts are shoving
Snout and trotters in the trough.

with apologies to Friedrich Schiller, Europe etc.

Attack of the Sex Wogs

Official guidelines at the Ministry for Wog Control have been updated in line with Her Majesty's Government's intense moral concern about the scourge of human trafficking. The concern appears largely rooted in the traditional Conservative fear that dark and devious foreign women may be exploiting staunch yet vulnerable British males, draining them of their substance and using it to gain power and prestige among the watermelon smiles of well-hung home-grown piccaninnies. With its usual plucky defiance of mere facts, the ministry has instructed its minions to be wary of Nigerian women claiming to be victims of slavery or trafficking, since those who return from Europe "are often held in high regard because they have improved income prospects." Doubtless the deportation of such designing females is purely the result of British chivalry; among the Conservative Party's upper echelons, it probably counts as kindness to animals. Certainly they deserve a good deal worse for their calculating exploitation of our sterling British spunk.