A Sacrifice to Remember

The last Monday in May is Memorial Day, when citizens of the World Cop by the grace of Baby Jesus pay tribute to that portion of the price worth paying which had the privilege to die American. This year the holy festival took place within days of the massacre at Uvalde, and citizens have taken the opportunity to assert, with patriotic alacrity, their sacred rights under the Second Amendment. At least fourteen mass shootings (defined as incidents with four or more successful target utilisations) took place over the weekend, causing at least nine deaths and more than sixty injuries; and when humbler scores are factored in, the triumph of NRA democracy is manifest in a total of five hundred and sixty-eight hits. Although the casualties included numerous potential soldiers and their incubators, America's friend God seems to have weathered the whole affair with His customary equanimity.

Moral Leadership

An anniversary ending in a zero is as good a time as any to encourage virtue in one's inferiors, and Her Madge Gawblesser has taken her accustomed dutiful approach to the opportunification. A jubilee scheme whereby plebs plant trees in Her Madge's name has received sponsorship from several corporate deforesters, and certain unpatriotic voices are already querying whether the likes of McDonald's, Rentokil and Drax are quite so committed to the battle of Britishness against climate change as their public-relations departments like to claim. For her own part, Her Madge has no objection to trees provided they keep in their place: she has planted more than fifteen hundred on other people's land, but prefers to reserve her own property for artificial moors where birds can be fattened to dimensions meet for the marksmanship of the chinless classes and their chums.

By Consent

As with recent attempts to appoint the controversial contrarian and blithering gammoniac Paul Dacre head of the national media regulator, Her Majesty's Government is having some small difficulty with the coronation process for the next leader of the National Crime Agency. Two qualified applicants have been summarily rejected and invited to re-apply, apparently because the National Crime Johnson favours a third candidate who coincidentally happens to favour the National Johnson. One of the rejected applicants is Neil Basu, who is half Bengali and half Welsh; as might be expected of one so genetically susceptible to contamination by critical race theory, Basu is far from congratulating himself on living in a nation innocent of systemic racism, and is even now threatening the Ministry for Wog Control with vexatious demands for explanation. It remains as yet unclear whether he is to receive the inevitable brush-off in London, or back home in Rwanda.

Available Now

The weird review Dead Reckonings has attained its thirty-first issue, which includes a piece by your own correspondent on James Herbert's 1990 novel Creed. Few would call Herbert a great stylist, and many will find his prejudices offensive; but at his best he worked interesting variations on his horror-thriller formula and showed a creditable inclination for experiment. Creed is one of his more intriguing concoctions, featuring a peculiarly obtrusive narrative voice and a prominent pulsation of the humorous vein which also bulges forth in Fluke (1977) and The Magic Cottage (1986), justifiably Herbert's own favourites among his works.

It Doesn't Just Flutter in the Breeze

Your stoical Britannic
May loosen bowels in panic
When decent folk must rush to save themselves:
In plague and isolation,
We've seen phlegmatic Nation
Flush toilet paper clean from all the shelves.

Now patriots are hunting
For flag-emblazoned bunting
To jubilate the Seventieth Year:
They seek red, white and blue stuff,
Absorbent, and not too rough
To utilise when polishing the rear.

Patty Numlump OBE

Please Relax, You Are Perfectly Safe

In light of the Government's plan, if plan is the word I want, to wean the energy industry off dirty foreign fossil fuels and onto sustainable British uranium, it will come as a glowing relief that red tape has been duly slashed after the usual forthright fashion. Safety inspections are carried out less frequently, and security alerts have risen to their highest level since the first Bullingdon Club administration and its little yellow fags had their famous bonfire of the safety measures. The Office for Nuclear Radiation proclaimed that it rejoiced at the increase in reports, which merely reflects an improvement in security consciousness among a previously complacent and lazy workforce; and that "separate regulatory scrutiny, which is not represented in the data" was being carried out, evidently by less boorishly expensive means than paying qualified people to go and have a look.

And Again

The mass murder of nineteen children and two adults by an eighteen-year-old man (sic) in the latest interpretation of the Second Amendment has brought forth the usual emissions of thought and prayer, matched by the usual forthright denunciations of the perpetrator, whose Latino background has presumably helped to eliminate any diagnosis of mental instability in favour of Pure Evil. Paradoxically, the same devout persons who judge so freely and without fear of judgement appear somewhat lacking in faith that their martyred fellow citizens are in Heaven. Even the Pope, whose God raised about as many fingers to prevent the atrocity as He usually does, seems not to have rebuked the bereaved for their inexplicable failure to rejoice. Nevertheless, in a reassuring point of moral consistency for these unstable times, the most intrusive thoughts and the least closeted prayers are emanating from those same appointed voices of God and People who have worked so hard to place unlimited firepower at the disposal of raging teenage hormones.

Imparted Righteousness

Vandals and criminals gathered at a venue in London to plot yet further damage, and suffered some little disturbance before police arrested several of those who tried to stop them. The annual general meeting of Royal Dutch Shell took place at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, in keeping with the Christian conception of divesting from fossil fuels, and was disrupted by climate protesters before shareholders voted to double down on the greenwashing and help the chief executive with his energy bills. While pleading for the constructive sort of engagement that doesn't inconvenience people making an honest profit from the end of civilisation, a Shell spokesbeing agreed that Society really ought to do something about climate change.

Golden Boy

As patriotic plebs pluckily contemplate their ever-inflating food and energy bills, the Royal Mint has done its bit by creating a new way to pay them, in the form of a numismatic rah-rah for the Duke of Cambridge's fortieth birthday. According to the designer, the traditional profile angle has been avoided in order to make him look more dynamic, and according to the director of sycophancy at the Royal Mint the coin pays tribute to his princely grace and his family values. The image shows the great man droopy-eyed and chubby-cheeked, staring up and off like a bored husband at the breakfast table. In addition to the workaday five-pound coin, a limited-edition souvenir set, in gold with 3D laser imaging, will be released for the benefit of those loving subjects who can skip enough meals to afford it.

Yet More Enemies Within

Advisers at the hotbed of ministerial moderation that is the British Home Office have queried the thoroughly traditionalist conclusions of a report into an outdated Government strategy, viz. that the best course of action is to continue and, where possible, compound the said Government's favoured errors. As demonstrated by by one objector's quibble that the recommendations did not "reflect what's going on," the wayward advisers' focus appears irredeemably concentrated upon the merely real and factual. By way of healthy British contrast, the recommendations were extruded by one William Shawcross, a right-wing journalist and Battenberg-licker in good standing, commissioned by the Ministry for Wog Control to endorse its Muslim-baiting strategy as embodied in the New Labour Prevent programme. Although the number of referrals for Islamist extremism has fallen over the past decade and a half, the number for far-right extremism has risen; which, to an administration as moderate and sensible as the National Johnson's, raises the sinister possibility that policies such as breaking international law, criminalising peaceful protest and deporting refugees to Rwanda might one day be viewed as extremist in themselves.

Our Steadfast Upstandingness

Rehearsals for the Ruritanian rah-rah of Her Madge Gawblesser's platinum artificial birthday have been blessed with a degree of Britishness appropriate to the times. People turned up by the absolute dozen to watch Her Madge's toy soldiers embody the nation's dignity by parading in their scarlet togs and silly hats; but when the onlookers rose for the Hymn to Subservience a stand collapsed and five people were injured. It is to be hoped that similar expert timing will be displayed by non-ministerial inanimate objects during our new and happy future of national celebrations undiluted by the petty provisions of Health and Safety.

There's Always Another

Completion of the blanched radioactive pachyderm at Hinkley Point C has not been noticeably hindered by the pandemic, although the relevant corporate benefits claimants have utilised the excuse with characteristic inefficiency. At the moment, the new reactor is scheduled to start operating only a year later than originally planned, at a price only seventy-two per cent more than the original estimate. None of the extra cost will be borne by the British taxpayer, at least until the cowboys start squealing for a handout. This level of quality is of course standard for the nuclear industry, and somewhat above average for a great leap forward announced by the National Johnson; yet the managing director of Hinkley Point C has still felt obliged to invoke the pandemic in mitigation. It seems a rather profligate use of a reasonable pretext, but perhaps the company feared missing its chance. For future delays and overruns it can always fall back on monkey-pox, the war in Ukraine, the decline of the Cornish tin-mining industry, sunspots and so forth.

There Goes the Neighbourhood

Police in North Yorkshire anticipate an outbreak of British decency based on legitimate and understandable concerns, thanks to Home Office plans to start up a wog dump with more than twice the population of the host village. Even the county council, which remains under Conservative control after the recent massacre, passed a motion of no confidence in the Ministry for Wog Control, though apparently less from concern about the party's fun-loving far-right chums than from indignation that local communities weren't offered a referendum on sending the asylum seekers straight home to Africa. Although the swarming hordes will be securely accommodated by those efficient Serco people at a former wog-bombing emporium, the potential threat from clean-limbed cadres of populist patriotism has led the local police to consult with counter-terrorism experts. It will be intriguing to compare the results with those achieved by the Metropolitan Toleration and Exoneration Force, which has historically forbidden its officers getting into bed with fascists in case the latter got up to anything illegal.

Towering Statesmanship

Since the National Johnson told Parliament that the Government would legislate according to the recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry, and the then Minister for Richard Desmond proclaimed that the Government would accept in full all of the report's findings, the fact that the Government neither accepts the findings in full nor intends to legislate accordingly will doubtless leave some people almost as surprised as your correspondent. The report recommends that disabled tenants be issued with personal emergency evacuation plans; but if decades of cripple-kicking have taught the British Neoliberal Party anything, it is that due exposure to the free market can quite easily turn people with disabilities into a self-solving problem. Therefore Her Majesty's Government has decided not to implement the report's recommendation for much the same reasons as flammable cladding was used and safety measures skimped in the first place: because letting renters die is a better risk than allowing landlords to be inconvenienced. Still, in a case like this even the Home Office apparently feels the need to make some sort of show at giving a toss, and ministers have expressed a willingness to share the addresses of disabled residents with fire services. Given the need for customer monitoring and the Government's long and happy relationship with the children of Babbage, this approach might well dovetail conveniently with the final transformation of the NHS into a data farm for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Small Comfort

We're running out of butterflies, we're running out of bees
To feed the flying dinosaurs and pollinate the trees;
We're running out of grasshoppers to hop upon the grass,
And termites, ants and cockroaches and even wasps, alas.
Yet not all of our crawly buzzing chums are disappearing:
From summer clouds shines forth a silver lining for the cheering:
Though extinction looms for others, there are plentiful supplies
Of window-banging bluebottles and whining office flies.

Auntie Molly Gist

Less Than Total Policing

Patriotic gluttons for punishment may find their digestion slightly soured at the declaration by the new chief inspector of constabulary that our boys in blue are not a thought police. Since thought in Her Majesty's Government has evolved from a slightly suspect pastime to an act of cerebrospinal treason, the restriction of policing to the merely physical will certainly save time. Nevertheless, to an uncharitable ear the chief inspector's words might be construed as contradicting the Home Secretary's formal reinstatement of the principle that ethnics can be stopped and searched for making an officer nervous. He even stated outright that there is a clear distinction between what is and is not a crime: a principle which runs blatantly counter to long-established Government practice and sounds dangerously close to the ideological bias of certain lefty lawyers.

A Profiteer is Not Without Honour, But in Her Own Country

So proud is Grantham of its heritage, and so keen to blaze forth its historical significance without fear or favour, that a brazen image depicting one of the town's less appealing offspring has been put up without ceremony, and atop a ten-foot plinth in order to foil any woke decapitations. Baroness Thatcher is shown in Ruritanian national costume (her House of Lords robes, sans handbag), glaring down upon the beneficiaries of her ideology with hands crossed at the crotch like Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower. A ceremonial unveiling was initially planned, at the cost of between three and five nurses' yearly salaries; but such was the local council's faith in the private sector's willingness to cover the expense that the idea was abandoned after a few weeks. Despite all precautions, at least one enterprising citizen managed to hit the old bag with an egg within two hours of her being sneaked into place; and all Britain's enemies within will doubtless wait with due reverence upon the prospect of further indignities.

Landfill's Hope and Glory

Now that Global Britain has freed herself from the Nazi-style punishment beatings of the beastly bureaucrats in Strasbrussels, the master race is at liberty once more to beat the world in order to save it by imparting a new British rigour to the nation's environmental protections. Accordingly, recycling rates at the centre of the world are falling, and the only region of England to have reached, let alone surpassed, the EU target is Wales, where apparently the pandemic was considerate enough not to interfere. Her Majesty's Government has been known to burble sweet nothings about banning single-use plastics and introducing deposit-returns for plastic bottles; but such visionary schemes have been left to litter the wayside while the National Johnson and his chums concentrate on more vital issues, such as using fossil fuels to pack plastic waste off to the Orient and wog waste off to Rwanda. It is Global Britain's good fortune to be led by an Establishment that, thanks to the moral and physical rigours of its education and upbringing, does not scorn to beat the world from behind.

Fast Grey Mare

Despite being unable to do her job three days ago, a benefits claimant with some unfortunate family connections was healthy enough for a flutter at the Races today. Her Madge Gawblesser, a sometime tax-dodger and the mother of at least one suspected sex abuser, was absent from the state opening of Parliament where, in a suitably Ruritanian touch, her duties were carried out by an old man whose job is waiting for her to die and where she herself was substituted by a very expensive hat gaudily inlaid with dubiously-acquired jewellery. Her Madge Gawblesser is of course well within the gammon bracket of the deserving demographic, having celebrated her ninety-sixth birthday only twenty-four hours after family friend Adolf Hitler celebrated his hundred and thirty-third. This may possibly help to explain why patriotic concern about how much Her Madge spends on luxuries and tattoos has thus far been conspicuous by its silence in Britain's free, fair and cantankerous Press.

A Problem For Every Solution

In the wake of the beastly Strasbrussels dictatorship's petty, pedantic intransigence over keeping to the letter of mere international law, it seems Northern Ireland isn't the only British colony to bring trouble to the mainland this month. Doubtless owing to the ideological rigidity of its left-wing extremism, the present government of the United States is having some difficulty coping with all the sane and sensible reasons why the National Johnson's former triumphal treaty is now a disastrous diktat, and how the thingy which was inserted to protect the Good Friday Agreements has placed the Good Friday Agreements in imminent existential peril. If only the White House were still occupied by the National Johnson's bright orange manly-me and his visionary head-tribble, the matter might easily be resolved; but the administration of the Communist usurper Biden has dispatched a concerned delegation, and has hinted that Global Britain's supplies of chlorinated hormonal chicken may be at stake should anything go wrong. The Americans may be all very jolly as partners in a wog-bombing, provided you stand quietly by at the waterboardings and don't toddle under any drones; but their grasp of diplomacy has never been terribly subtle.

Dry Legalities

Tackling the climate emergency is all very well, but certain native passions are inclined to stray beyond the limits of what is moderate and sensible. The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, which Her Majesty's Government's anti-woke Ministry for Wogs, Frogs and Huns presumably still calls the New Hebrides, is conspiring with vexatious international lawyers to attempt, of all things, impactful change, despite the implications for all those nice wealth creators at BP and Shell. Fortunately, in its South Seas impetuosity Vanuatu has chosen to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, which would carry legal weight and moral authority and would therefore be non-binding on anyone who mattered and Global Britain.

Hot Air

While hardly the stuff of front-page headlines for Britain's leading liberal newspaper, the airline industry's twenty years of greenwashing may possibly be a cause of concern for a pessimistic nay-sayer here and there. A report by an optimisically-named climate charity assessed the targets which the industry deigns to set itself under the self-regulatory régime so rigorously imposed by the high and frequent fliers in Her Majesty's Government, and found that the industry had missed, massaged or ignored almost all of them, except for those that are "realistic" by the sensible and moderate definition of making little or no difference to the emergency. Fortunately, a spokesbeing for the Ministry of P&O Ferries was on hand to set the record straight: the report is so wilfully inaccurate as to verge upon the woke, since Her Majesty's Government is keeping significant taxes down by throwing taxpayers' money at technology that doesn't exist. Notably, we are spending a hundred and eighty million "to accelerate sustainable aviation fuel," which demonstrates an intriguing revision of those tedious mechanical rules whereby fuel is a means of accelerating something merely solid and tangible.

Reinventing the Parking Experience

As befits a poster city for Brexit, users and volunteers at a food bank in Sunderland have had a taste of British decency unhampered by petty regulations. The organisation running the food bank hired a private company to prevent unauthorised use of their car park; that company was subsequently taken over by an Australian multinational which did not deign to inform the food bank project of the change and, once they had found out, refused to release them from the contract. The firm, aptly named Smart Parking, began handing out fines to users and volunteers and threatening them with legal action if they didn't pay within a week. Coincidentally, hired boot-boys like Smart Parking customarily derive their income from such fines rather than receiving payments from landlords, since landlords in Britain are famously more deprived than food bank users. Smart Parking condescended to reach a negotiated solution once the Press had been involved; but given the progress of British values over the past few years it seems unlikely that publicity will remain a deterrent for long, especially as Her Majesty's Government has pledged to try and improve matters.

Sensible Repentance Within the Bounds of Moderation

A mere eight centuries after the fact, and less than eight decades after the most infamous outbreak of antisemitism in world history, the Church of England has deigned to apologise for its historic role in perpetuating prejudice against Jews. England was ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1290, when King Edward I expelled them from the country, having first prudently taxed and levied them to ruin because he was saving up for a Muslim-killing trip to Palestine. The nakba was eventually ended by Oliver Cromwell, who was tolerant of most sects other than Catholicism. Sixty-eight years before Edward's decree, under his pious predecessor Henry III, the English church held the Synod of Oxford, which forbade Christians to have social relations with Jews, forced Jews to wear identifying badges, and banned Jews from certain professions; and with characteristic promptitude, the Church of England has now decided that this anticipation of Nuremberg and Martin Luther may have been a bit of an indiscretion. A special service at Oxford is to be attended by a representative from Mussolini's pet city-state, realm of the Venerable Pacelli; as well as by the chief rabbi, who was ill-mannered enough to regret that Christians feel obliged even today to save Jews from the hell-fire which the Saviour repeatedly and explicitly promised to anyone who failed to heed Him.

A Reasoned Petition

Little one, we pray your tears
Are dried by Heaven's grace,
And that to your soul's eye appears
The merciful God's face.

For was it not the will of Heaven
And God's eternal Plan
That you should die 'twixt four and seven
And rot in some trash-can?

Samuel Grimsnipe

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Worshippers at the altar of his reverence Sir Tony of the Garter will be proud to recall the great man's role in wog-bombing Iraq towards the adoption of universal British values. Nearly two decades on, these supreme outgrowths of Western liberalism have put down such sturdy roots that a member of the master race may suffer the death penalty for following in the footsteps of Lord Elgin. A British geologist has been arrested on suspicion of smuggling pottery fragments out of the country; his family have asked Her Majesty's Government to intervene, but at present the Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns has bigger backs to stab. Given the record of the Johnsonian Foreign Office when it comes to helping Britons in the Middle East, perhaps this is for the best. If Iraq has truly adopted Blairite moral standards, a casual confirmation of the unfortunate gentleman's guilt might place him at risk of indefinite detention with torture; and if Iraq has also adopted Blairite standards of hard-headed pragmatism, he might even end up being executed more than once.

Shackled Art

Woke censorship of Britain's historic statuary has reached dangerous new levels with the addition of a beastly thing called context. A Liverpool art gallery has added some wrought-iron workplace clothing to a display of sculpted portraits of a family of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs, created by the city's leading contemporary sculptor on the eminently entrepreneurial presumption that rich is beautiful. Although the family in question was gracious enough to accept substantial compensation when slavery was abolished across nearly the whole Empire, the unmistakable implication is that plucky little Britons not only abolished slavery but profited from it too: a slander nearly as outrageous as the idea that brave little Britons not only win wars but also start them.

That's What Freedom's All About

After an excruciating wait of nearly eight years without a judicial kill, the Christian state of Arizona is getting itself all gussied up for another dose of righteous retribution, this time with the added attraction of Zyklon-B gas. Since pharmaceutical companies persist in their reluctance to peddle drugs for use in lethal injections, the Christian state of Arizona has availed itself of the only working gas chamber in the Union, and has offered a choice of method to the lucky beneficiary. Nevertheless, it seems that some small ethical difficulties remain. Even assuming that the state's dubiously-sourced drugs work as required, a lethal injection would involve a certain unpleasantness, as the condemned has a spinal condition which would cause severe pain when being strapped to the gurney. On the other hand, since the prisoner's late mother was a refugee from Nazi Austria, the use of Eichmann's favourite pesticide would arguably be open to accusations of poor taste.

Swift Justice

Lest anyone should imagine that the breezy Johnsonian attitude to the law is confined to Westminster, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Nottingham has admitted to multiple speeding offences before, during and after her election on a platform of cracking down on speeding offences. Independently of her defence solicitor, Caroline Henry delivered a grovelling mea culpa to the court, announcing with a Johnsonian flourish her sorrow, embarrassment and shame, and presumably expecting the matter to be forgotten there and then. It is essentially the corporate approach: commit the crime, pay the fine, make a few appeasing noises and carry on as before. Doubtless coincidentally, and entirely without reference to her blue Mercedes and silver Lexus with personalised number plate (the personalised number plate is a delightful populist touch), Henry is the wife of Darren Henry, the most assiduous expenses claimant in the House of Commons, who cost the taxpayer almost three hundred thousand pounds last year, thanks to an "exceptionally busy year for correspondence."

Growing a Walnut to Crack a Sledgehammer

Since nobody is going to lift a finger to preserve the Amazon, the Congo Basin or the New Guinea rainforest, the task of saving the world falls to Britain's plucky little gardeners. As with paying for plastic bags and abstaining from red meat one day a week, leaving the lawnmower in the shed for a month will clearly make all the difference while every year or so areas the size of small countries are being reconstituted as savannah. In equally effective spirit, community groups are petitioning our lords and masters to return them the feudal right of growing their own food on unenclosed land. A couple of denizens of the fourteenth-century vegetable patch that is the House of Donors have cheered them on, and they may well gain further support from those well-fed pushers of British gumption who advocate abolishing the planning laws so that the plebs can knock up their own hovels. However, it seems unlikely that Her Majesty's Government, having struggled so long and so pluckily to defend its corporate chums against the BBC and the National Health Service, will abandon its protective instincts when faced with a possible rival to the junk food industry.

Platinum Pabulum

Treacherous Celts are plotting to subvert Her Madge Gawblesser's seven decades of grinning, squeaking and sex-pest production by imposing, of all things, freedom of choice on British schools. The Ministry for Infantine Enlightenment has spent twelve million fruits from another magic money tree on bringing forth a commemorative pamphlet of Ruritanian rah-rah for the tinies, which was to be distributed to every primary education consumer in the nation like an improving dose of hormone-boosted castor oil. Rivetingly enough, the book includes "famous quotes from the Queen" and "facts about the coronation ceremony," not to mention some jolly bits about the near-genocidal assault by one of Her Madge's predecessors which led to the creation of the title Prince of Wales. There is also information about notable kings and queens, presumably including Her Madge's father, grandfather and namesake, besides such exemplars for the sunlit uplands as Richard II (who promised a fair deal to the peasants, then had them slaughtered), George IV (a gluttonous drunk whose only notable talent was for spending money) and Æthelræd the Unready (enough said). In an exceptionally British touch, Nelson Mandela features as a "famous Commonwealth figure" alongside Margaret Thatcher, an assiduous ally of the apartheid régime whose party spent years denouncing Mandela as a terrorist and baying for him to be strung up. Despite all this and more, the rebel governments in those regions of England known as Scotland and Wales will compel schools to opt in before receiving copies. Whether Her Majesty's Government is contemplating a military solution remains as yet unclear.