Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

It is indubitably one of the great Paradoxes of national Greatneſs, that the moral and intellectual Diſtinction of the better Claſses are accompanied in the lower by a correſponding Degree of Fooliſhneſs and Depravity. No ſooner hath our noble Prime Miniſter, that erect and engorged Obelſk of ſtone-hard Deciſiveneſs, proclaimed that the Peaſants ſhould conſider it their patriotick Duty to labour and make merrie as of Olde, than thoſe ſame Peaſants haſten to infeſt the Beaches and diſport themſelves in Publick-houſes, as if no further Manifeſtation of the Divine Chaſtiſement were merited by the horrid Burden of their Sins. At the Bloater and Blueſtocking Coffee-houſe yeſter Eve, I was informed by the Vice-Treaſurer of the Loyal League of Facial Defiants, a Mr Blytherynge-Twyt, that the Peſtilence hath reſumed its Devaſtation of severall leſser Countries, including the American Colonies where the Wrath of Heaven waxeth mightily, owing to the Laxneſs of the Overſeers in ſuppreſsing the late Uppityneſs among the Sons of Ham. It all ſimply ſhows once again, as I have written to the Prime Miniſter on ſo many dozens of Occaſions this Week, that what we need is another Warre.

Perilously Enigmatic

Utilising their usual combination of insidious cunning and treacherous subtlety, the Heathen Chinee have inveigled a sinister slant into their response to Global Britain's bluff and forthright security measures. Gloriously and independently, and with hardly any advice at all from the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble, the Recrudescent Imperium has expelled from its new-cleansed shores the treacherous Huawei, and has protested against the insidious introduction into Hong Kong of the kind of colonial security laws which only white governments know how to enforce nicely. The Heathen Chinee have retaliated by threatening not to recognise the not-quite-British passport which the Ministry for Wogs, Beads and Trinkets is offering to those Hong Kong natives who haven't heard of Windrush. The Heathen Chinee ambassador made sinister insinuations about his country's lamentable dearth of recent military conquests and, with cunning so subtle as to verge on dorsal self-perforation, even claimed that his country's re-education programmes for Uighur Muslims were no more harsh than the kind of detention meted out to suspected terrorists under the Prevent programme, or at worst in English boarding schools.

Ritual Abuse

Such is the pervasive insidiousness of Corbynite antisemitism that it can afflict even the chosen citizens of the Righteous State. An Israeli sculptor has portrayed the Netanyahoo tucking into a luxurious parody of the Last Supper, to the horror of a cabinet colleague who fears future depictions including "the gallows and a rope," apparently under the impression that Jesus wasn't crucified and the Muslims have been right all along. The Last Supper was a celebration of the Passover festival, commemorating some summary executions in Egypt which prefigured the glorious Nakba in Canaan: an altogether inappropriate setting for a purely secular war criminal, crook, incompetent and thug. Clearly, showing the Netanyahoo as a rabid authoritarian with a penchant for genocide goes well beyond all civilised bounds of government-approved satire.

Shock and Awe

When it comes to the maniacal motivations of mad mullahs, with their combination of pathological self-righteousness and obsessive tunnel vision, it is only to be expected that they would be comprehensible only to members of that similarly blessed estate known as journalism. This no doubt explains the psychic abilities of the Associated Press as displayed in Britain's leading liberal newspaper, which proclaims that the Iranian government has followed up on its provocative adherence to the nuclear treaty, and its aggressive restraint in response to the drone-strike murder of one of its senior officials, in order to exacerbate tensions with the United States. A perpetual victim of Iranian military might, the USA has now been martyred anew by the spectacle of Revolutionary Guards staging military exercises on a replica aircraft carrier in Iran's own waters. Although the exercise has neither disrupted US naval operations in the area nor interrupted the Homeland's God-given fossil fuel supply, there can be little doubt that harbouring such irresponsible intentions in a year when the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble are trying to steal another election merits the most severe of peacekeeping efforts.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Yeſterday once more unto the Taylors for further Adjuſtments of the Guſset and ſundry ſplit and ſhrunken rearward Panels which tend to a chronick Diſcombobulation of the Gluteus when the Flaps are raiſed and buttoned. Afterwards to the Bloater and Blueſtocking Coffee-houſe, where the Loyal League of Facial Defiants was muſtered to draw up its lateſt Manifeſto againſt the compulſory Wearing of Maſques by Perſons of ſuperior ſocial Poſition. There were ſome dozen Members preſent, which Number was agreed to conſtitute a Quorum, and a generall Accord was ſwiftly achieved upon the Character of the Organiſation, which is pledged to occupy the moderate Centre-ground, and therefore purpoſes rather to guide and adviſe Her Majeſty's Government towards fulfilling its own divinely inſpired Wiſhes, than in any Manner or Faſhion to oppoſe, diverge or exert an altering Influence upon legitimate Policy. I muſt continue to watch and ſtay alert for cyphered Meſsages of ſubversive Subtility.

Meanwhile that moſt ſlender of Striplings, that ſimmeſt of Sylphes, that delicate Gazelle of the Weſtminſter Glades whom we are privileged to call our Leader, hath declared that the Britiſh Race is in peril of becoming unfitted to its rightful Deſtiny becauſe of the ſcandalous and ſtultifying Epidemick of Gluttony among the Poor. Such far-ſighted and compaſsionate Viſion is preciſely what the People need to maintain their Fortitude during the poſt-peſtilential Period. This very Forenoon I have ſent ſeverall Miſsives offering my Services as Stomacher General to my Diſtrict, and expreſsing my fervent Deſire to guard the Publick from its own unquenchable Appetites by renting my own Cellars and Larder to the ſtoring of Treaſury Rations at a moſt conſcionable Rate.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Caries xciv-cxviii

Every so often, temporally speaking, said the Father of Teeth unreliably, the Creator of the universe will try to make an honest whatever of me by forcing me into employment. At one time or another I was janitor on the seventeenth level of unreality, which is the oldest and dustiest and least regarded of His cellars, the one where He puts all the bits and pieces which He called imperiously into being at one time or another but of whose existence He no longer wishes to be reminded. They pray to Him after the usual fashion, offering propitiation and begging to be forgiven, but the dust and the intervening sixteen levels serve to muffle the noise, so He isn't too much inconvenienced. There are several hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-nine boxes down there, said the Father of Teeth, all full to the brim with the failed and freakish, and I'm accountable to the Creator of the universe for all the losses and breakages and for wear and tear and despair, and for every sign of moult and mange on every feather duster. It's no holiday, said the Father of Teeth, especially when a box falls finally silent and has to be cleaned out ready for the next lucky tenants. You'll probably have noticed that the Creator's mind has been failing for a while, arguably since time began or even before, and every so often He will not only forget about one of His creations but will actually lose all ability to remember it again. Possibly some of those who pray do so in the hope that their yells and mumbles will jog His memory and thereby postpone their inevitable annihilation, or at least confine whatever annihilation is coming to their enemies. For those who have never had to scrub one out, said the Father of Teeth, the state of a box after kalpas of occupation by a slowly decaying dimension or crumbling metaphysical firmament can only be imagined. And yes, said the Father of Teeth, I do know the intimate particulars of every sentient creation trapped in every single one of those several hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-nine boxes gathering dust on the seventeenth level of unreality; and no, said the Father of Teeth, I'm not going to tell you if you're one of them. If you don't know by now, temporally speaking, you'll find out soon enough.

Delusional Jackboots

More by a Teutonically rigid adherence to bureaucratic rules than by anything resembling the democratic processes of the Cummings administration, the German government has installed itself as president of the beastly Euro-wogs, and is now taking advantage of that position to launch a Blitzkrieg of Nazi-Soviet punishment beatings. In what is possibly the most egregious betrayal of Churchillian values since the Windrush generation went unsterilised, the Hun has expressed the need for, of all things, "more realism in London." Naturally such ideological inflexibility will provoke much chewing of carpets in the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, whose vaulting global ambitions and patriotic concern for loyal British fish have attained their present glorious tumescence largely through brazen defiance of the merely existent. Severe inconvenience is likely unless the enemy capitulates by October; yet it still remains unclear whether this military fact has penetrated the Pickelhauben in the Brusso-Strasbourgian Politbunker.

Colónic Irritation

After the usual grumbles about censoring history (which grumbles were remarkably muted in the West while Communist effigies were being unpedestalled in the wake of the USSR's collapse) the mayor of Chicago has sanctioned the discreet removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus. A Genoese entrepreneur and pioneer of Republican Party values, Columbus attained his heroic status by discovering the New World a mere handful of centuries after the Norsemen and only a few millennia after sundry proto-Olmecs, proto-Toltecs and other uninteresting creatures. Although Columbus had to fight for his rights at a time when Italian-Americans were still a minority in the Chicago area, the modern-day forces of political correctness are trying to blame him for the genocide of the native societies. This is unjust: those natives not murdered, enslaved or starved were mostly wiped out by European diseases, and Columbus and his colleagues, whose acquaintance with modern medicine was barely superior to that of the present-day United States, presumably ascribed the visitation of the Angel of Smallpox to the natives' heathen religious customs, which among other enormities substituted human sacrifice for witch-burning. The removal of the statue comes as the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble make ready to crack down on public disorder with an election only slightly in the offing; and if there is one lesson from history which America doesn't need to learn, it is the one about undertaking ill-planned projects with corrupt and incompetent administrators during an outbreak of fatal disease.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

That ſubtilleſt of Diplomatiſts, that wilieſt of Negotiators, that ingenious Maſter of Detail and imperturbable Paragon of Tranquillity whom we are privileged to call our Leader, hath taken a Journey to the North in order to quell the Rebelliouſneſs of the traytorous Scotch, whoſe ſeditious Clanſmen threaten our ſacred and unvanquiſhable Union with Ruin and very Deſtruction. So far from falling to their unclad Knees and lowering their Sporrans in meekeſt Gratitude for their Deliverance from the Peſtilence, the thankleſs Calvinites preſume to emit Mutterings of impudent Reſtleſsneſs in their rude and barbarous Dialect, while brazenly failing to expire in numerical Proportion to their Neighbours and Betters in Britiſhneſs. The wretched Province being led by a monſtruous Regiment of Women, hath with an obſtinate Perſiſtence of Perverſeneſs flirted and whored with ſmoothly-ſpoken foreign Perſonages, in ſtark and flagrant Contraſt to the international Celibacy of our virginal Engliſh Miniſters. It is to be hoped, that ſuch uppity Females are not ſo lacking in Senſitivity and ſpiritual Refinement as to be unmoved by the famous Charms of our great Leader, whoſe Skills as a Whore-maſter are much ſpoken of wherever the leſs entertaining Aſpects of his Genius have become dull by conſtant and repeated Acquaintance.

Stout Chaps and Simple Natives

Even as Global Britain regains its world-beating birthright and prepares to teach the Heathen Chinee a thing or two about the proper way to treat Hong Kong, the culture warriors of historical correctness are concocting their Stalinist re-write. A cabal of champagne-swilling academics has written to the Ministry for Wog Control, demanding that the background information doled out to the migrant hordes be censored of its rightful dose of rah-rah. The Ministry's handbook, issued to fake Britons to give them some inkling whereof they aspire so hopelessly, includes a version of British history which has been simplified to prevent any painful moral confusion. Mention of famine in India, concentration camps in Kenya and Agent Orange in Malaya would merely bewilder the primitive wog brain; while any hint that the non-gammon races might have some role in shaping their own lives would constitute a declaration of open season on our entire island story.

Under a Cloud

While emitting the standard blather about tough choices, the Cummings administration's Treasury spad has allocated the usual squillions to major polluters and fossil fuel profiteers while shuffling around some small change for energy efficiency. A pressure group of pessimists sent a letter some weeks ago, pointing out that the plans, if plans is quite the word, are too pitiful to meet even the Government's own self-proclaimed target; but those appointed by destiny to embody and fulfil the will of the people have better things to do than engage with noisy fact-bigots about mere international obligations, and the Government did not deign to respond. Therefore, motivated by über-foreign levels of hatred for the world-beating and by a corresponding and wholly unpatriotic passion for the merely legal, the group is now collaborating with enemies of the people and fraternising with the beastly Euro-wogs and their fiendish reality-based recovery programmes, in order to sabotage Global Britain's victory over the weather.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Having been enforced theſe paſt Months to a ſedentary Life, I found it neceſsary this Fore-noon to apply to my Taylor for further Repairs to my ſecond-beſt Guſset, which ſplit in moſt unſeemly and diſcomfiting Faſhion through the lower Eſcutcheon. The Shoppe was well filled with Cuſtomers taking their final Gaſp of freſh Air before the threatened Impoſition of the Maſque by our deſpotick Government and in deſpite of all ſtrenuous Effort by our noble Prime Miniſter. There was much healthy and democratick Debate as to whether or no the uppity Negroes ſhould be tarred and feathered in addition to the ſtatutory Chaſtiſements, and the Taylor complained of the late Shortage in Cotton, at the very Time when ſo many prominent Gentlemen have ſo far expanded their Subſtance as to require Stripping and Greaſing with beſt Quality Lard before they can get through the Door. It ſeemeth to me none the leſs, that the Wretch in Hopes of further Fees, hath contrived to leave inſufficient Trouſer-ſpace for the proudly uncircumciſed Member of a ſaved Congregation.

Bad Theology

Text for today: Numbers 15 xxxii-xli

During their time in the wilderness, the Israelites discover a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath. Uncertain of the appropriate penalty, they imprison him and then bring him before Moses and Aaron, whereupon God informs Moses that the man should be stoned by the entire congregation. After the man's execution, God tells Moses to order the people to put tassels with blue cords on the corners of their garments, as a reminder to do as God tells them.

Like most tyrants, God cannot tolerate the smallest infraction or show the slightest mercy. Even His chosen people, a gang of itinerant barbarians who thought nothing of stoning adulterers and were later to commit multiple genocide while emitting loud hosannas, are briefly given pause by the triviality of the offence. Once the miscreant has been disposed of, God's response is to impose an elaborate piece of make-work as a mnemonic device against believing their own eyes or obeying their own conscience.

God's proclamation that man was made for the Sabbath and not the Sabbath for man was eventually overruled by His Son, who declared Himself lord of the Sabbath because it annoyed His enemies, and presumably also because God was by that time obsessed with His eventual destruction of the world and therefore less concerned about commemorating His day of rest after its creation. Later, in his letter to the Romans (14 v), St Paul declared the Sabbath a matter of individual conscience, thereby creditably clearing the low but still significant moral bar of being less murderous than God and less egomaniacal than Jesus.

Gone Native

Patriotic Britons and other non-racist commonsensicals will rejoice that the Cummings administration is continuing Tumbledown Tessie's crusade to protect the greatest imperium of entrepreneurial buccaneers ever to waddle the globe against its own children. The Minister for Wogs, Beads and Trinkets had a bit of a burble last autumn about innocent orphans who don't deserve to be treated as though they were Yemeni, and Her Majesty's Government subsequently managed not to hinder the repatriation of three unaccompanied minors from Syria. The Imperial Haystack claimed it as a great success; which along with the Home Secretary's business interests doubtless explains why sixty more minor Britons are still stuck in the war zone. While it is true that the repatriated orphans can always be deported again once they reach the age of majority, the Ministry for Wog Control would betray its entire ethos were it to consider diluting the greatness of our nation by re-importing compromised juvenile resources.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Yeſterday our noble Prime Miniſter's moſt humble and dutiful Chancellor announced the ſtirring News, that with the Peſtilence reduced to the ſame State as all other foreign Enemies we muſt brace ourſelves to the Duty of protecting the Nation's Revenue. A ſupreme Effort of Spending will be required, eſpecially from the Servant-claſses which are wont uſuriouſly to hoard their Aſsets againſt a rainy Day rather than employing them with Chriſtian Faith and Foreſight to make Hay while the Iron is heated and repair the Roof while the Sun ſhineth.

No ſooner was the Proclamation iſsued, than I ſummoned my domeſtick Staff before me to inform them of their patriotick Duties, at which they did no more than mumble and ſhuffle their Feet, as if I had ordered them to ſome outraging unnatural Intemperance. Even thoſe recenty dead of Want, the which I had ordered exhumed and brought forth upon the Chance of the good Tidings reviving them in the Hour of their Country's great Need, appeared to ſlump againſt their Neighbours with a new inſolent Dilatorineſs. No matter how patiently I explained, that they were far more fortunate in their Lot, than thoſe of their Betters whoſe inveſtments may this Yeare, with the Government's Charity, yield no more than the uſual Profits, theſe froward and diſcontented Creatures perſiſted in refuſing to recogniſe their good Fortune. Is there no Depth of Idleneſs nor blacke Abyſm of ſelf-deſtructive Depravity, to which the inferior Claſses will not ſink in the Abſence of the clean white Hand that wieldeth the God-beſtowed Rod of benevolent Chaſtiſement?

Free Trade Or Else

Having at last heroically liberated our great nation from the bureaucratic tentacles of the Nazi-Soviet single market in Europe, Her Majesty's Government is naturally concerned to offer the provinces appropriate protection against any kind of complex and fragmented regulatory environment, such as the one Her Majesty's Government and its chums have spent the last few years bringing about. A single market among the Euro-wogs may be an insult to democracy and an assault on parliamentary sovereignty; but the British single market in Britain, with its Britishness belching Britishly forth in all its resplendent Britishness, is altogether a more British proposition. Accordingly, in what the Imperial Haystack, with his usual plausibility, referred to as "possibly the biggest single act of devolution ... in modern memory", new legislation will ensure that the devolved parliaments don't take the idea of glorious independence to any un-British extremes.

Freedom of the Seas

Now that the Imperial Haystack and its chums have grown bored with boasting about their world-beating pandemic scores, it has become necessary to find new uses for the environment minister. Accordingly, Her Majesty's Government has announced the most comprehensive plan for tackling floods since the glistening pink Head Boy and his little orange fags adopted their policy of allowing large swathes of the country to become flooded more or less regularly. The new strategy graciously concedes the existence of the real world to the extent of allowing for the possibility of fields getting wet; but it does not include any ghastly red tape to prevent building houses on flood plains. This opens up the possibility of housing without the need of catering to the perverse preferences of namby-pamby newt fanciers, which will of course make the said housing all the more affordable for the more expendable class of buyer. While few would dare accuse the Cummings administration of anything so Stalinistically Europhiliac as an actual environmental policy, it does appear that Her Majesty's Government has at least managed a bit of joined-up bungling.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Were it not for the unrivalled Conſtancy of our Prime Miniſter's Character, the implacable Firmneſs and Forwardneſs of his Paunch, the determined Sway of his Dewlaps and the pearleſcent porphyrous Gleam of his induſtrious perſpiring Countenance, I might fear me that this greateſt of Leaders had been ſuborned by ſome beaſtlie foreign Power intent upon ſapping our moral Fibre. For it muſt ſurely be a moſt ill-adviſed Conception, to force upon our free and plucky Nation ſuch a monſtrous Impoſition as the Wearing of Maſques in publick, whether the Breath be ſweet or foul and the Teeth black or white, and even to levy Fines upon thoſe with ſufficient Steadfaſtneſs of Patriotick Principle to defy the Law of England in the Name of perſonal Convenience. At the Bloater and Blueſtocking Coffee-houſe this eve Sir Deſmond Swyne was incandeſcent with righteous Diſcombobulation at this new Aſsault upon the Liberty of his Jowls, and ſeverall brave Gentlemen were moved to ſubſcribe to a freſh conſtituted Bare-faced Defiants Clubbe. I did not join my Self, pleading Lack of ready Means owing to the late Rebelliouſneſs among the Negroes, but noted their Names in caſe it ſhould benefit my continuing Correſpondence offering my Services as a Miniſter in charge of domeſtick Intelligence.

Trade Wind

Patriotic Britons, and anyone else who knows what is good for them, will rejoice that Her Majesty's Government has finally found a worthy use for all that money we will save through making a competitor of the evil Nazi-Soviet Euro-wog bloc. Thanks to our new independence from Brusso-Strasbourgian bureaucracy, the Government will seize the opportunity to impose British bureaucracy instead, besides embodying the People's Will in several scenic lorry parks to contain the cornucopian overflow which will inevitably result when foreign traffic collides with British efficiency. So simplified are the procedures that a two-hundred-page document is required to explain them; and there still remains some doubt over whether the arrangements are too stupid even for the Minister for Marmite to Japan, rather than being just stupid enough. There will also be ten new border and customs sites, or perhaps a dozen depending on whether liberty compels the use of decimal or Imperial measurements.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: Dentures lxvi-lxxiii

It was nowhere near there, however, that the Father of Teeth came upon a great idol of stone, surrounded by the ruins of an ancient city. There were carvings on the shattered walls, of which the more lewd and libertine had been recently improved with paints and sprays; and there was a handy stall where fees could be paid and small chisels rented, should the discerning tourist wish to acquire a sample of the site's archaeological riches.

The idol had clearly been a worthy object of veneration. Thanks to the assertive vastness of its intellect, its eyes bulged forth like a pair of enraged pumpkins; its various fists were clenched in overwhelming compassion, its majestic brow was carven with mystic runic wrinkles, and the opulent protrusion of its lips framed with gracious modesty a divinely omnivorous grin. Between its carven legs dangled a decorous awning, and before the awning stood a brightly coloured stall with a counter, and behind the counter stood a large man in a wide-brimmed hat and an apron with a patriotic flag.

"Get your smiley sustenance right here," bellowed the man as the Father of Teeth gnashed into view; and the Father of Teeth, who rarely disobeyed a direct order except those personally issued by the Creator of the universe, approached with a molar-flashing moue of malign curiosity.
"What's cooking?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"Only the best," said the man, taking up a skillet and prodding at his cooking-fire, which was belching black clouds of sickly-sweet smoke into the idol's face. Fortunately its nostrils were quite rudimentary, or most of them anyway.
"Only the best what?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"Stir-fried sugar cane, of course," said the man, as he took a pair of tongs and withdrew from a frothy cauldron a sizzling bundle of sticks. These he dipped into a vat, where they gained a white coating; and then he held them over a roaring blue flame until the coating gained a pottery polish. The man dropped the sticks onto a paper platter and sprinkled them with clots of coarse powder in red, white and blue. "There you go," he said. "Authentic stir-fried sugar cane, glazed in sugar and hand-frosted with colour-processed millisaccharines, just the way the natives used to bake it."
"Just before they died out?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"They were a depraved and inefficient race," said the man. "Why, before they were conquered they hardly knew about sugar at all, and afterward they became so excessive in farming it that these days it has to be imported." He gestured at the cooking fire. "Can't even get fuel hereabouts, and the codex market's drying up fast."

Reaching to a high shelf he took down a wooden block, from which hung tattered cotton tassels done up in intricate knots. With a flick of the man's meaty finger the block unfolded into a jointed rectangle of brightly decorated panels, at which the man glanced with casual disdain. "Couldn't even do a proper graphic novel," he grunted as he knelt by the fire. Smoke rose again into the idol's face; black tendrils plucked at its mouth, and as the man prodded the codex into the flames the idol's seventh upper left incisor detached itself from its granite gum with a brief grinding crack and fell, with a brittle sugary crunch, upon the cranium of the stir-fry seller. During its descent the tooth tore away the awning and thereby exposed the idol's momentous genitals.

"Madam," said the Father of Teeth, with the utmost courtesy; and before taking his leave he carefully prepared and set forth the mashed mincemeat of the stir-fry seller. In accordance with the sacred recipe set out in the next codex on the shelf, he left the dish unsweetened.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Should any Philoſopher conceive a Wiſh to contemplate the Myſtery of Creation in all its engmatick Splendour, he could ſurely do no better than to obſerve the relentleſs Perverſeneſs of Spirit among the lower Orders. Without the Cares of State upon their Shoulders, and lacking all Senſe of Reſponſibility or Guilt for the oft diſgraceful Conduct of their own mediocre Affairs, the common People are nevertheleſs habituated to the iſsue of continual Groans and Plaints concerning the Lot which the Lord hath given them. Already ſeditious Grumbles are to be heard from thoſe who have ſurvived the Peſtilence ſufficient to return to the Publick-houſes, and are diſcontented becauſe they fear for thoſe humble Livelihoods which, before the Peſtilence began, they conſidered ſo poor and unworthy.

Nay worſe, for a Cabal of Orderlies, Apothecaries, Nurſes and the like, having doubtleſs fallen under the foreign Influence of the rebellious Negroes, Blackamoors and Females among their Number, are diſinclined to content themſelves with the Applauſe of their Betters and are manifeſting great Indignation becauſe they have been requeſted to pay Duty on the Space they occupy in our publick Hoſpitals, in order to relieve the Overcrowding of the Wards. Truly one could not make it up, that in a Metropolis ravaged by the late Peſtilence, ſuch that a Gentleman muſt pay twice the Rate in Silver for ſome Loafers to watch his Carriage without Risk of returning to find his Upholſtery ſlaſhed, his Whore ſuborned and his Wheels ſubſtituted with Piles of Bridge-building Stone, theſe ſo-called Angels of Mercie begrudge Her Majeſty's Government a mere Groat in the Service of Humanity. It is in ſuch Situations that the moſt deciſive and ſtateſmanlike Action is required from thoſe honoured and afflicted with thoſe heavy Reſponſibilities which come of ſuperior Breeding. For a Certainty, when next I ſend my Servants to applaud on my behalf the Dedication and Courage of thoſe who have battled againſt this Peſtilence, I ſhall forbid them ſpecifically to include the Uppity and Ungrateful in the Accolade.

Mysterious Animal Instincts

Despite their manifestly destined inferiority in most regards (the capacity for unskilled labour at no reward being a noted exception), it cannot be denied that the lesser breeds are sometimes rather difficult to understand, even for those most skilled with coloureds. Nevertheless, in a plucky new effort to fathom the motives of Africans, a Lords committee has spent six months discovering that a hostile environment may occasionally cause Africans to withdraw their goodwill. As if this were not perverse enough, the coalition's policy of deporting British citizens to countries where they can be among their own kind has been met with the blackest ingratitude. In their simplicity, however, the African natives have fallen under the insidious influence of the Heathen Chinee, whose own treacherous reaction to the stabilising opiates of British rule is a matter of historical record. What can be the matter with them? Fortunately, Her Majesty's Government's new Ministry for Wogs, Beads and Trinkets is resolved to spare no effort in resolving the conundrum.

Targeted Responsibility

Now that the Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has efficientised its sanctions régime to avoid discrimination against human rights abusers who know their place, Britain's pre-eminent global export after tax-dodgers can at last continue in its wealth-creating buccaneeritude. Having once more seen off the enemies of the people and their contumelious legalisms, Her Majesty's Government is ready to resume sales of weapons to its favourite Islamic fundamentalists despite (or, in Standard English, because of) the continuing profitability of the head-choppers' rampage in Yemen. It would certainly be a poor fulfilment of Britain's export responsibilities if Her Majesty's Government were to take a few rotten apples as representing the entire barrel, as so many incautious persons have already done with such diverse and venerable institutions as Hollywood, the Church of Rome, the Metropolitan Police, the Conservative Party and the slave trade.

He Wasn't Having a Mote Removed

Given that the Dear Leader's trip to the optician's castle at Durham in the middle of the lockdown exposed the Cummings administration as liars and hypocrites, it's only to be expected that the Church of England would have a few moral qualms about those who called out the Cummings administration as liars and hypocrites. Several bishops criticised Cummings and his government on social media, and some of them received death threats in response; though since Cummings is not Jeremy Corbyn any suggestion of responsibility on his part would of course be unacceptably antisemitic. The General Synod is due for an online pearl-clutching session over whether it was appropriate for members of the Church to criticise those who endanger others by declaring themselves exempt from the rules at a time of national emergency; especially at a time when clergy are having to close their cathedrals and are dismayed at not being exempt from the rules at a time of national emergency.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

It is reckoned among our Pedants, that the Quantity of Perſons claimed by the Peſtilence in England may exceed that in any other Realm outſide the American Colonies, though theſe laſt ſhould arguably be omitted from Calculation given their unfair Advantages of Space, Puritaniſm and Smallpox. But if the great Britiſh Nation hath achieved of its own buccaneering Initiative a more thorough Cleanſing of the expendable Claſses than any leſser Breed could accompliſh, then ſurely it is fitting to permit ourſelves a brief Period of Rejoycing. Our noble Prime Miniſter this very day applauded the Attendants at our Aſylums for the Infirm and Bewildered, for having played ſo honourable a Part in relieving the Congeſtion of our Cities and enabling new Heights of Efficiency among the Peaſantry, in victorious Contraſt with the beaſtlie French and other rival Powers. I have it from a moſt reliable Source, that the Piles of bloated Corſes in the Streets of Paris are noted for their Paltrineſs by the great Majority of Witneſses, and that thoſe who have obſerved Conditions in London and the Provinces manifeſt ſuch Aſtoniſhment, that afterward they can ſcarce ſummon the Will to return to their Relatives upon the Britiſh Mainland. Should the Peſtilence leave their Armies more numerous than ours, then ſo much the greater will be our future Glories for being won againſt the Odds.

At the Bloater and Blueſtocking Coffee-houſe there is much Talk of ſetting up a Royall Commiſsion for the Purpoſe of regiſtering formally the Gratitude of the Britiſh People towards Her Majeſty's Government and enſuring that appropriate fiſcal Compenſations are fairly diſtributed among the Heroes, and I have therefore written to Her Majeſty offering my moſt devoted Chairmanſhip for a very negotiable Conſideration, and had copies diſpatched to all her Sons and their Valets, Buttlers, Procurers and the more literate Type of Nannies.

The Colstonoclasm Avenged

Adherents of patriotic relativism - the idea that all the master race's historical figures, with the possible exceptions of Nurse Cavell and Boris Johnson, should be judged by the standards of their times - will rejoice at the initiative of some Fourth of July celebrants in New York who commemorated the re-opening of the mainland's pubs by pulling down a statue of Frederick Douglass. Notoriously disrespectful of the free world's attitude to property rights and human resources management, Douglass not only deprived his legal owners of his labour but compounded this un-Christian subversion by conspiring to help others do the same. In a speech in 1852 he even went so far as to imply that the standards of our own time - siding with the strong against the weak and with the oppressor against the oppressed - might somehow have room for improvement. Certainly, by any profitable reckoning he was a very bad man indeed.

Bad Theology

Text for today: II Samuel 1 i-xvi

As is His occasional habit, God has stood complacently by while the Philistines slaughter an entire army of His chosen, including all the sons of King Saul. The king has fallen on his sword, having been refused the coup de grâce by a servant who fears to lay hands on him. A man comes before David and states that he found Saul still alive and leaning on his spear, and that he killed Saul when the king asked him to end his suffering. David has the man executed.

Had God been interested in ending the king's suffering, He would have done it Himself, and the premature termination of Saul's pain is therefore the act of a blasphemer and usurper. The king's armour bearer, being presumably a Hebrew himself, having witnessed the gory scene on Mount Gilboa evidently takes the hint. Knowing better than to expect mercy, he commits suicide alongside Saul rather than face David's judgement.

Having torn his clothes to demonstrate his grief (and, no doubt incidentally, to absolve himself of complicity in Saul's demise), David asks the man who brought the news where he is from. When the man responds that he is the son of an Amalekite immigrant, David has him killed for showing compassion to the Lord's anointed when the Lord Himself had none. David's combination of xenophobia with murderous fanaticism prefigures the gospel of the Lord's anointed Son, whose biographers proclaimed Him David's spiritual heir.

God Murders While They Smile

When asked how happy they are, people who believe themselves under continual supervision by an omnipotent génocidaire who will inflict hideous punishment for any disobedience respond more or less as one would expect. Like any other slaves when questioned in the presence of their owner, religious fanatics from the USA to the Righteous State describe themselves as "very happy," no matter what the suffering inflicted by their fun-loving gods. Although the results of the research were not uniform, with apparently lower degrees of enthusiasm in half the countries surveyed, the Hasidic leader of a team in Tel Aviv has predictably decreed that "the more religious you are, the more resilience you have," whatever the economic and personal consequences of isolation, overcrowding and arbitrary supernatural restrictions. Once the mainland is properly cloistered from the European evil, no doubt the same will apply to Britain's own national cult of racial purity and Churchill twice on Sundays.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Our noble and virtuous Prime Miniſter, that Cuſtodian of our Britiſhneſs, that Benefactor of the Peaſantry and moſt manlie Specimen of our ſtout Iſland Breed, hath moſt movingly demonſtrated his Commitment to Family Values by allowing his aged Progenitor to go a Jaunt into the Wilds of Bulgaria, where the Seaſon for Sodomite-hunting is not yet cloſed. I hear from moſt reliable Sources, that it is cuſtomary in thoſe Parts to bait the depraved Creatures by attaching a rainbow Banner to the Hindquarters of a young Stallion, the ſolemn Taſk being performed according to Tradition by a ſmooth-buttocked Student for the Prieſthood. A Sodomite in the full Gripe of his unnatural Luſt will purſue ſuch Bait for Days upon Days without Pauſe for Reſt or Nouriſhment, meanwhile filling the Countryſide with the ſhrill horrid Hullaballoo of its mating Call, and the Sport of the Chaſe is reputed to provide as great and gentlemanly Amuſement as our own Courſing of Hares, Strangling of Badgers, Diſmemberment of Foxes, Hanging of Thieves and Sticking of Pigges.

This moſt ſtateſmanlike Demonſtration of filial Piety by our dear Leader hath naturally provoked much vicious hypocritical Diſsent among the mean of Spirit and filthy of Mind, whoſe traitorous Sniping and foreignerlike Scoffs would doubtleſs inflame the entire Populace if not for the moſt foreſighted Meaſure of opening the Publick-houſes upon the morrow. For that doth not exiſt in Heaven and Earth which can obſtruct the inborn Reſpect and Affection, which a true Native of theſe Iſles harbours towards his Betters, while the Rabble is aſsured of its healthy and vigorous Britiſh Rights of Booze, Binge and buccaneering Regurgitation.

There are no further Tidings of any Moment, ſave onlie that the Head of the Civil Service hath deſerted his Poſt in a fit of Pique at being called a ſeditious Rapſcallion and a vile miſpriſing Traytor and Baby-eating Frenchman, all of which Epithets he merited moſt thoroughly.

Clean Rivers or Dry Carpets: Britain Cannot Afford Both

There are many was to help shareholders during an environmental crisis, and the fragrant people at Thames Water have been doing their part by dumping raw sewage into an environmental wetland. The area used to be part of the London Olympic Blanched Pachyderm complex; but after the Games of St Tony and the Blessed Tessa it was developed as an environmental haven for the public. Of course, being both a public and an environmental asset the wetland was as natural a target for Thames Water's private excretions as an uppity Negro for the moral splatter of a twenty-first-century Churchill. This doubtless explains the Environment Agency's blithe proclamation that it's all within the rules; and in similar spirit, the fragrant people at Thames Water released a finger-wagging chastisement of the plebeians' unrealistic expectations. The alternative to dumping untreated sewage in environmental wetlands would be to flood people's homes, and literally no other possibility exists because that is how the system has been designed. That's what freedom of choice is all about.

Send Us Your Dawsons, Your Lindemanns and Lysenki

Although science has a tendency to let the side down by relying on experts and concerning itself with facts, the Cummings administration has apparently decided that a post-independence brain drain might be a less than desirable result even for the Not Awfully Bright Party. There are certain minor issues, such as that little business of setting up our own satellite broadband without troubling over such petty details as whether it will work, which may possibly turn out to require an expert or two if only for blame-sharing purposes. Accordingly, the Cummings administration has founded a new thingy for helping foreign scientists navigate the hostile environment.The ex-Deputy Conservatives have been quick to dismiss the initiative; which seems scientific enough given their enthusiastic connivance in setting up the hostile environment to begin with.