Malicious Fate

Stabilisation of the Sahel continues apace, as the interim president of Mali has apparently decided not to be quite so interim as originally supposed. In a move which would doubtless be admired by many Conservatives if they knew Mali existed and if he weren't a wog, Colonel Assimi Goïta has delayed elections and demonstrated a quasi-British independence of international agreements. Most progressively of all, he has expelled the beastly French, whose foreign minister took it upon himself to criticise the Malian leadership as illegitimate and irresponsible. Although the Brusso-Strasbourg dictatorship has been irritated by the presence of Russian "security contractors" (mercenaries, in Standard English), France has intervened to help the government counter an Islamic insurgency in the north. Much as Iran's history begins in 1979 and Iraq's in 1990, it appears that the trouble began in 2012, ironically coinciding with the glorious wog-bombing of Libya and associated stabilising measures during the previous year.

Pack Up Your Troubles

With typical post-imperial ingratitude, the Euro-wog Free State has held a formal commemoration of an unfortunate incident that was nobody's fault and happened a long time ago. One resentful relative was even heard to criticise Her Majesty's Government for protecting plucky little troopers against those same vexatious laws which are even now seeking to smear the most successful Conservative prime minister since Theresa May with an ambush of cake. Mercifully, the National Johnson was somehow restrained from pronouncing upon that echt-Scouser wallowing in victimhood which has characterised the beastly Fenians ever since Cromwell's intervention to spare many of their descendants the rigours of the potato famine.

Nothing to Boast About

Authorities in the north California town of Fort Bragg have been debating a name change. Braxton Bragg was a slave owner and Confederate general, and by all accounts not a very good one: he lost most of his battles and wasted much time and energy squabbling with his subordinates. However, Bragg's contribution to the Union's victory does not appear to be the reason for his municipal immortalisation. He apparently never visited the place that bears his name, which was established as a military post to assist in the chastisement of uppity redskins. A commission discussed changing the town's name and concluded that there was no consensus on which to base an unequivocal answer, which of course is hardly in the great British spirit of rule by a moral minority of specially bred and trained culture warriors. Civilisation and democracy were further compromised by the commission's recommendation that children's schooling should be contaminated with the history and culture of lesser races. Clearly, British values are teetering on the brink.

A Moral Intervention

Like many a god-botherer before and since, Theresa May appears reckless of the dangers involved in trying to remove a cake-crumb from her neighbour's eye while her own face is plastered with egg. Mere weeks after the news broke of illegal partying at Downing Street, Tumbledown Tessie has intervened with a solemn pronouncement upon the subject of equality before the law. The impeccable Britishness of her jeremiad (in the Maidenhead Advertiser, no less) may be gauged from her previous criticism of the National Johnson for compromising the UK's "position of global moral leadership" after its exalted apotheosis in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Windrush. Britain's leading liberal newspaper charitably refers to May as a former prime minister, rather than as the Home Secretary who illegally deported Britons because of the colour of their skin; and also tactfully omits any mention of what penalties were imposed for her criminal conduct in office. Given her record, it seems unlikely that Tumbledown Tessie really found much to disapprove beyond the idea of people enjoying themselves; and her opinion of the witless incompetent who appointed Johnson as Foreign Secretary is presumably being saved for the memoirs.

While God Sat Back and Watched

As though last spring's little mishap were not enough, more failed Canadians may have been discovered in the grounds of another "residential school." Investigators have found evidence of recalcitrant pupils being dumped in rivers and lakes; or else cremated, doubtless with all due ceremony, in the school incinerator. The school, charged with the enlightenment of British Columbia's natives for ninety years, was run on such merciful lines that some pupils attempted suicide, and at least one runaway received divine retribution in the form of death from exposure. It remains as yet unclear what sanctions are to be imposed against Mussolini's favourite mediaeval city-state in the event of further embarrassments being uncovered.

Corpse Factory

In another glorious victory for Poland's echt-Vatican abortion laws, another woman has been allowed to die rather than imperil the holy foetus. When one of her twins died in the womb, doctors at the sardonically-named Blessed Virgin Mary hospital refused to remove the dead flesh, on the grounds that it is better in the eyes of the law to destroy an incubator than to halt a pregnancy. Only when the second foetus had been dead for two days were the medical staff able to overcome their scruples. By the grace of God, the failed incubator paid the ultimate price for her transgression, after several weeks of deteriorating health which, according to her relatives, the servants of the Blessed Virgin insinuated was mad cow disease.

Another Civilising Intervention

Britain's leading liberal newspaper professes itself shocked at the levels of decency, restraint and tolerance with which newly declassified documents characterise a notably successful episode of literary Britishness. In the early sixties, with Western civilisation yet again imperilled by a so-called elected leader, Britain's plucky little intelligence boffins went right to work. With straightforward British honesty, they declared a fatwa against the Indonesian foreign minister and incited pogroms against the ethnic Heathen Chinee. After all, the minister was a leftist and therefore presumably antisemitic. British restraint was much in evidence in a radio script where six kidnapped and murdered military officers blamed their fate on ethnic communism, and British decency found its own accustomed level in the pronouncement that, while in an ideal world all lives may matter, reality tends to slant against those who bring trouble on themselves by defying a global force for good. Eventually the so-called elected leader was removed and a sensible moderate stepped in to avoid chaos, while so efficiently restraining the natural and spontaneous anti-communism of his little brown brothers that the losses may have amounted to little more than half a million expendables. So sensible was his moderation, so tolerant Her Majesty's Government, and so palpable the shock of the contemporary Press, that he remained in power for over three decades.

Tastelessly Bronzed

Rebellious colonists in Puerto Rico, to which the native and now piously genocided Taino gave the less capitalistic name of Boriken, have de-pedestalled a statue of the local conquistador mere hours before a visit by the current monarch of the original colonising power. Felipe VI of Spain is visiting to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the capital's founding; the statue was that of one Juan Ponce de León, whose record as a mass murderer, slaver and thief was such that even a Catholic priest changed his mind about joining in. This aspect of the great man's career the well-mannered press report decorously omits to mention, stating only that Ponce de León eventually became Puerto Rico's first governor. His statue was forged in New York a decade and a half before the colony was seized by the United States, using bronze from captured British cannons; which may possibly explain why no squeals of outrage on behalf of violated history have been forthcoming from the worshippers of such graven images as Colston, Clive and Churchill.

Levellng Up and Down and All Around

Remarkably, considering that the Government's levelling-up agenda is an empty slogan in the charge of a jabbering homunculus, two-thirds of the officials charged with handling the rah-rah are based in the capital. Eighteen months ago the jabbering homunculus in question had a bit of a burble about getting literally closer to the plebs by relocating "government decision-making centres" to different regions of the Conservative Party's United Kingdom; but so far relatively few such palaces of democracy appear to have materlialised. Meanwhile, success has thus far eluded the Government's attempts at expanding the empty slogan to comprise sufficient verbiage for an entire White Paper. The latest excuse is that everyone is waiting for the report on Downing Street's work events which, once duly approved and redacted by Team Johnson, will undoubtedly be the occasion for an improving purge of the civil service, with the more redeemable offenders exiled to a career of getting close to the provincials.

Who Could Possibly Have Foreseen It?

Much to their shock and consternation, certain Conservative seat-warmers in the House of Expenses Claimants have received threats that government investment will be withdrawn from their constituencies unless they vote the right way. Like the gormless Baroness Warsi, who discovered the Conservatives' enthusiastic racism and sexism after mere decades of membership, the Parliamentary Not Particularly Bright Party has taken its time noticing the National Johnson's little character flaws, all of which have been on detectably fragrant display since at least his prole-poisoning stint as mayor of London. Before that, the National Johnson was sacked from the front bench for lying, and afterwards he waggled his prodigious statesmanship as Mad Tessie's Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns; but the seat-warmers in the House of Expenses Claimants either did not notice these peccadilloes, or else joined with our free, fair and cantankerous media in dismissing them with a light laugh until Dominic Cummings graciously gave permission to take them seriously. The chair of the standards committee has said that misconduct in public life is a matter for the police, although it remains as yet unclear whether the National Johnson is quite foreign enough to be shot while attempting to escape.

Decent Muslims Help Thin the Swarming Hordes

British values have received yet further stalwart support from the head-chopping House of Saud and its plucky little allies in the ongoing Yemen rampage; although with typical lack of moral fibre for the culture wars, Britain's leading liberal newspaper omits all mention of British backing for the coalition. A migrant detention centre, doubtless with conditions close to what patriotic Britons would wish for future wog warehousing in Rwanda, has been subjected to democratisation by detonation, with the usual edifying results. If the migrants had stayed at home, of course, the casualties would all have been criminals and the liberators would not have been forced to stain their reputation in this way. In a separate attack, Global Britain's favourite Islamic fundamentalists shut down Yemen's internet: an action which cannot help but appear benign to the red-rimmed pisshole perspective of Whitehall, which is suspicious of all communication not based on nods, winks and commercial family values.

Justifiable Homicide

Doubtless for the same weighty moral reasons that caused Him to prevent His servant, the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak, from acting against endemic child abuse, God sat back on His heavenly throne and treated His dupes to another spectacular display of divine compassion as a couple of dozen people were crushed to death as they attended a mass grovel in Monrovia. Eleven children and a pregnant woman died after the crowd was attacked by street-gang members wielding knives, whose mischief was blithely tolerated by the benign Omniscience. Although the dead have presumably gone to their just reward, the Liberian president declared three days of mourning and recommended that prayer ceremonies be regulated in order to keep more martyrs out of Heaven's clutches. Given the Father's timeless perspective and His demonstrable addiction to collective chastisement, we may take it that the deaths were inflicted in order to punish Liberians in advance for this deplorable lack of faith.

Honourable Traditions, Worthy Successors

In an age when Geoff Hoon and John Major count as elder statesmen, one can hardly expect too much from the title of "Tory grandee," which Britain's free and fearless Press has duly conferred upon the pickled gammon David Davis. Having dutifully defended the National Johnson to his constituents, only to find his famous negotiating skills nearly as effective as when he went up against the Nazi Euro-wogs without a piece of paper, Davis sought to preserve his honour by delegating a spad to hunt up a quote. "In the name of God, go" was first uttered by Oliver Cromwell, who let the Jews back into England after four hundred years, presumably against the advice of the Daily Mail; but Davis and his servant were most likely thinking of Leo Amery, whose thoughts on national self-determination as a facile slogan and the superior advantages of large supra-national blocs would presumably get him precipitately expelled from the modern Conservative Party. However, in May 1940 Amery went some way towards atoning for this treason by using Cromwell's phrase to attack his own prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who resigned within days and was dead of cancer within months. Whatever Amery's ancestral sins as a Hungarian Jew, not even David Davis could deny his dedication to the principles of modern Conservatism in using a national crisis as the excuse to put the boot into a terminal cancer victim.

Union Undermined

Patriotism and heritage are all very well in the right hands, but both can have unfortunate consequences unless properly controlled by the master race. A county council in Wales has defied centuries of tradition by designating St David's Day a bank holiday, to the ineffable ruination of whatever business interests still continue to survive the sunlit uplands of British independence. All sorts of people the English don't care about - social workers, refuse collectors, librarians and cleaners - will receive a paid holiday, although the least admired group of all - teachers - will not, because their conditions are negotiated (imposed, in Oldspeak) from a higher level. Bank holidays are themselves the responsibility of the gormless Sycophant of State for Business, Kwasi Kwarteng, last seen ordering Parliament's independent regulator to step down for being independent. Nevertheless, the leader of the offending council accused Her Majesty's Government of seeing Wales as the Empire's last colony, which is of course far from true. Although the military mugging and ethnic infiltration of Wales by Edward Longshanks was arguably England's first imperial conquest, for administrative purposes Wales has for seven centuries been considered part of England, like the Lake District, with some pleasant holiday scenery and a few pestiferous natives; hence the lack of dragons on the Union Jack. It remains as yet unclear whether the National Johnson intends sending a few stormtroopers to toddle across Offa's Dyke and restore the Queen's peace.

Those Little Details

Given that decades of right-wing rah-rah have procured aircraft carriers with no aircraft and submarines that can just about detect Scotland by touch, it is perhaps not surprising that the Royal Navy is suffering a certain lack of moral fibre in dealing with the migrant apocalypse. As the Minister for Wog Control strives to preserve the master race from being overwhelmed by the swarming armadas, officers have expressed a lack of interest in pushing back to France the fruit of the coalition's and Sir Tony's little adventures in Libya, Syria and Iraq. Much as sensible and moderate Nazis once floated the idea of deporting the Jews to Madagascar, and in the absence of co-operation from Albania, the master race's natural party of government is reportedly considering Ghana or Rwanda as potential dumping grounds, the latter having a glamorous record of co-operation with the ethnic correctness policies of the Righteous State. Being poor and foreign, of course, the refugees will fit right in at either colony; but it remains as yet unclear whether the Ministry for Wog Control will give our jolly Jack and Jill Tars the choice of delivering their deportees to the one that has a coastline.

Rishi Waits it Out

It's fortunate that the Chancellor is too busy having the cutlery polished for his long-awaited stab in the National Johnson's rear; for otherwise certain of the deserving poor might well be under threat of being treated like the idle plebs. Since nothing urgent remains to be done about the environment, fossil fuel companies have paid out hundreds of millions in shareholder dividends over the past decade, and in the last year profits have risen as wholesale costs are absorbed by the ever-obliging British taxpayer. Little Rishi is understood to be thinking about the possibility of potentialising the prospect of considering the idea that somebody ought to do something about it, even though the prospect undoubtedly violates his laissez-faire principles. If the plebs choose to sit shivering in their homes rather than marry some real money, then it is hardly the Government's business to interfere. Nevertheless, other countries have taken measures to relieve the situation, and even a few profiteers are starting to worry about the prospect of customers dying off in quantities large enough to prove inconvenient, especially if gas prices continue rising even after the forthcoming conquest of Russia.

A Bit of a Howler

Plucky little Scandinavians are defying the beastly Brusso-Strasbourg dictatorship in the most British way possible, by slaughtering an endangered species. Across five per cent of Norway, protection of wolves is a priority; therefore the other nineteen-twentieths is to be considered a free-fire zone because wolves prey on game animals. While it is unlikely that Norwegian hunters quite measure up to the blooded and chin-free of merry England, the motivation - killing animals in order to kill animals - is about as British as could be wished. Equally reminiscent of the master race is the concern with the rule of law in its purely technical aspects: extinction is to be avoided therefore anything short of extinction is fine therefore keeping wolf populations on the brink of extinction is as laudable as it is more or less legal. Sweden and Finland are following suit, despite their membership of the ghastly EU, which has undoubtedly crippled their ability to make international trade agreements and thereby increased their dependence on moose meat. Modelling by Finnish scientists indicates that a genetically healthy wolf population would require more than five hundred individuals; Finland has a population of about three hundred, of which twenty are to be culled so as to encourage the evolution of a wolf with sufficient intelligence, cunning and social skills to rival the British establishment.

Another Jury Outage

Although the attorney general made it clear how confused she was over the acquittal of Edward Colston's de-pedestallers, it appears that the necessary lessons have not been learned. Enemies of the people acquitted three Extinction Rebellion activists who disrupted public transport services in London two years ago, despite being old enough for admission to the ranks of gammon. Despite all three being committed Christians, one of them even admitted to concern for the physical conditions of his own family - a taking of thought for the morrows of others which will may well confuse the attorney general even more than usual.

Work's Too Good For Them

One of the less anticipated consequences of British independence from the Euro-wogs has been the reluctance of the master race to step up to the plate and rush into all those jobs the migrants had stolen. Such has been the severity of the labour shortage that Her Majesty's Government resorted to ordering a few beastly foreigners back into the country, and hiring the charmingly-named operators Pro-Force and Concordia to "maintain high standards of immigration control and migrant welfare." In Oldspeak, as might be expected, this means that in many cases accommodation has been provided which is unsafe, uncomfortable, unhygienic and cold, without running water or kitchen, but with a healthy dose of Go Home Van Land hospitality. Even more encouragingly, workers have been denied contracts in their own barbarous languages, thereby incentivising them to learn English and save their employers the effort of shouting. Health and safety equipment has of course been relegated to the bonfire of red tape. So far there has been no repeat of the Morecambe Bay cull of Heathen Chinee, but the Ministry for Wog Control doubtless lives in hope of a fire here and there once the weather warms up, just so the survivors can understand how grateful they ought to be.

They Got the Job Done

An enemy of the people has ruled that the Government broke the law when it used the pandemic as an excuse to hand lucrative contracts to cronies, donors and some chap somebody met at a party. One company was smooched into the taxpayer-fuelled fast lane when its chair informed the Department for Profitable Healthcare that he had recently attended the birthday party of the procurement director's father-in-law. Doubtless at least one of them was under the impression that it was a working lunch. Subsequently, that company and another issued a principled defiance of red tape by supplying masks and gowns which failed to meet NHS standards; so naturally the judgement noted that, given the circumstances, they would have received the contracts anyway had Her Majesty's Government been so indiscreet as to consider them on their merits.

Too Close to Home

Notoriously, Adolf Hitler overcame his Catholic upbringing in favour of persecuting Jews and demanding unquestioning obedience to an arbitrary will. Disinclined as usual to pluck beams from their own eye, the denizens of Mussolini's toy city-state decided that anyone who hated yids, gipsies, gays and commies could be forgiven a mass grave here and there. Nevertheless, the clergy joined Jewish leaders in condemning a recent Rome funeral procession in which the coffin was draped with a Nazi flag, the parish priest distancing himself (and, bizarrely enough, his Saviour) from extreme ideologies favouring torture and genocide for those judged unworthy. A similar incident took place last year, and it remains as yet unclear how far future offenders will be deterred by the Church of Pacelli's moral authority.

Affluence for the Few, Effluents for You

Among the great advantages of Britishness is automatic world-beating status in everything ever; and among the great advantages of beating the world is that one does not have to pay one's troops. Over the course of the pandemic, this fact of life has been borne in upon health and social care workers as never before, with increasingly impossible burdens paid off in applause, rah-rah, and wage increases of the negative persuasion. Now that the hated NHS is practically down for the count and waiting only for the Blairite vultures to take credit for its final dissolution, it looks as if the Environment Agency is next in line for treatment. Staff have been ordered not to bother about the less serious categories of pollution; which means, of course, that a greater number of such incidences will be left in peace to become serious, whereupon they will be tackled with resources which will have become even more inadequate through having to deal with increasingly severe problems in ever growing numbers on a budget shortened by the need to bail out fossil fuel corporations and subsidise frequent fliers. Eventually the National Johnson or his successor will proclaim the Environment Agency unfit for purpose, and will efficientise its administration by handing it to BP or Shell, once the country's rivers have attained an appropriate level of Britishness.

Clean Hands

Although the National Johnson's administration is routinely accused of chaos and disorganisation, the passage of a mere two years has brought encouraging signs of joined-up thinking. The squeals of outrage over the maltreatment of a slave-trader's graven image demonstrate a moderate, sensible and enduring British principle which is also manifested in the Government's choice of NHS suppliers. It will be remembered that the initial policy was to save the economy rather than issuing personal protective equipment to expendables. However, as the pandemic declined to halt in the face of such exemplary Britishness, the Government began ordering equipment. One of its suppliers was a Malaysian company credibly accused of using forced labour, and once the USA and Canada had banned the company's merchandise Her Majesty's Government took the lead in its usual fashion. The official inquiry was so British that within a few weeks the slave-drivers were approved as a supplier of disposable gloves, apparently on the grounds that they were considering appropriate procedures for deciding to take action on measures to speed up the process of putting things in place. Nevertheless, even though the slaves are only migrant swarms, certain enemies of the people still remain dissatisfied.

Upright Citizens

It seems the great British public are not the only ones who have difficulty dealing with the more rambunctious elements of their heritage. Archaeologists in Peru have put up a nine-foot crimson replica of a pre-Columbian fertility symbol, only to suffer an armed assault by the forces of repression. Hooded vandals held the guard at knife-point while they forcibly penetrated the statue and damaged its five-foot endowment. Reportedly, they also discharged their noisy little substitutes into the air as they pulled out. Several people have objected to the idea of children being exposed to rampant masculine sexuality, even though a Roman Catholic education is mandatory in Peruvian state schools; but whether the vandals were acting on their behalf remains as yet unclear.

All Gassed Up

Some are born cosy; some achieve cosiness; others have cosiness thrust upon them. In the case of the great British establishment it's clearly still all three, as witness the appointment to a Centrica directorship of the race-baiting thug Amber Rudd. Her new boss, Chris O'Shea, has been assuring the nation's scumbag press dupes that Centrica's subsidiary, British Gas, will put no pressure on the Government to lower energy prices, unless it can do so by removing protection from the environment. O'Shea did condescend to permit an increase in general taxation, thereby pushing the cost of the climate crisis onto those least likely to be Chris O'Shea. Rudd, who advocated blacklisting companies for employing foreigners and enthusiastically assisted Tumbledown Tessie in implementing the hostile environment, will no doubt fit in well, though it remains as yet unclear how long we will have to wait before British Gas is fully turned over to manufacturing Zyklon-B.

If Slavers Aren't Safe, Who's Next?

When a legal jury reaches a legal verdict with which Her Majesty's Government disagrees, then the law must of necessity be wrong. The acquittal of those who de-pedestalled the statue of a Bristol slave trader has brought forth the predictable squeals of moral outrage from the back-bench baboons, and also from the law-abiding Sebastian Fox. As the minister responsible for running a dual carriageway through Stonehenge, Michael Green is naturally much concerned with people who cause vandalism and destroy the public realm, and the Government is pushing a new law to bring "emotional or wider distress" within the remit of the courts. Evidently there are limits even for the rock-ribbed non-snowflakes with their unbowed knees.

Blast from the Past

There are, of course, all sorts of reasons for objecting to the Reverend Blair's elevation to the Most Servile Confabulation of the Stocking-Top, and of course some sorts of reasons are more legitimate and understandable than others. For many it's a matter of misguided principle, relating to their sensitivities over the Iraq adventure and pathological blindness to the wonders of Sure Start. Others are just doing it to annoy the more moderate and sensible variety of Guardian columnist. Still others have more personal reasons, and one such may be the elder statesman and area of outstanding natural fatuity Butcher Hoon, the stages of whose salubrious career have been noted by your correspondent on several occasions past.

It is not impossible that Hoon's day may have dawned anew, for he is evidently a most foresighted politician. As the Reverend Sir Tony's Secretary for Wog-Bombing, Hoon anticipated present-day Brexiteer statesmanship by proclaiming that, given a few years to think it over, the mothers of dead Iraqi children would probably thank us for their liberation. Demoted to the post of chief whip (School Bully, in modern English), Hoon again headed the downward curve by retiring from politics and setting up a "consultancy" for the profitable use of his ministerial contacts, only to be caught out in a sting operation by the now-to-be-dismantled Channel Four. Now Hoon has reacted to the Reverend Sir Tony's ascent by printing extracts from his memoirs in the Rothermere Daily Stürmer, where he raises the possibility that the Iraq crusade may (gasp!) have been considered illegal. The relevant advice was "not easy to read," perhaps because it included the three-syllable word illegal, and Hoon claims he was ordered to burn it but negotiated the matter down to indefinite detention in a ministerial safe. So profound a matter of principle did it prove, that Hoon remained in his wog-bombing post until unceremoniously given the heave-ho a couple of years later. And yet still nobody has knighted him.

Confirmed Bogus

Decency, compassion and tolerance, to say nothing of efficiency, are still being tempered with a healthy portion of Britishness at the Ministry for Wog Control. Although the Ministry has condescended to confirm more than six thousand people as trafficking victims during the past five years, less than four hundred and fifty of the swarming horde have been granted leave to remain in Britain and steal our valuable fruit-picking and HGV-driver jobs. Just under four thousand seven hundred had their applications rejected, perhaps on the increasingly plausible grounds that the rafts of the transportational entrepreneurs might prove a less hostile environment than plucky little Britain. Naturally, the Ministry for Wog Control does not intend to let the matter rest at this unsatisfactory stage, and is even now pushing legislation which will go further than ever before in depriving modern slavery victims of their rights. A spokesbeing provided the necessary translation from the Oldspeak: "will go further than ever before in putting modern slavery victims’ rights into law."

Another Albion

Although the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha was a dedicated culture warrior and racist whose prisons were anything but soft, he rather blotted his honorary-Britishness copy-book by also being a Stalinist (socialist, in journalese) with nothing to sell. Nevertheless, it appears that a memoir of life under his rule is viewed as something of a provocation by the more patriotically inclined. The autobiography, by a Marxist immigrant of the female tendency at the London School of Economics who has so far managed to evade the moral cleansing of academia, criticises Hoxha's régime but also presumes to criticise, of all things, market forces. It has thus received a bumpy reception from those who haven't read it, and others among the more spiritually British of the author's compatriots.

Rassemblement Franglais

Perfidious and contemptible as they may be, the status of the French as beastly Euro-wogs clearly does not preclude an occasional bracing outbreak of Britishness. Having inherited six months of EU presidency through no particular virtue of its own, the government raised the EU flag before the Arc de Triomphe, which was itself originally raised to celebrate the good old days of occupying Spain, plundering Germany and invading Russia. The EU flag remained in place for two days, during which the national front for Britishness rallied to emit the usual squeals about their national identity being erased. Just like the greatest country in the world (England, for those who came in late), it appears that French national identity is so fragile that it can be erased by waving a piece of cloth in the wrong place. Now that the flag has been removed (in line with the planned schedule, according to the president's office), the more Churchillian elements are already claiming credit, as patriots will, for events beyond their power and outside their control.

Tony, Your Silk Stocking's Hanging Down

Her Madge Gawblesser is to confer upon Britain's most prominent war criminal one of Britain's most ancient and ludicrous honours. The Most Reverend Tony Blair is to be appointed a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, a title invented by the fourteenth-century king Edward III, who would have been proud to acknowledge Tony's bag of Muslims as his own. Like Edward and the National Johnson, Tony is a member of the Church of Rome, and like Johnson's his conversion was most likely motivated by something in his trousers. I refer to his wallet, of course: rumours of hanky-panky with a Murdoch spouse aside, Tony's besetting sin has always been middle-class avarice rather than upper-class lust. The Press Association notes his bestowing of the cognomen "People's Princess" on Diana, and does not neglect to mention his discretion in waiting until after her death to do so. A mere footnote to this glittering achievement is the fact that his reverence "was the UK's leader during Allied military invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan." He just happened to be there at the time, you understand. The Press Association is also tactful enough to note Sir Tony's time as a "Middle East envoy" rather than as a Middle East peace envoy, and to forbear from mentioning his profitable stint providing public-relations advice to the dictatorship of Kazakhstan.