Bad Etymology

Comment, n. a remark; derived optimistically from Latin com with, and mens mind.

Tongue, n. from Middle English entanglen to embarrass or cause someone difficulty: an instrument of social chastisement, virtuous denunciation, and inadvertent self-exposure.

Communion Waiver

Although the Church of Rome has many uses for young children, some more spiritual than others, the employment of an altar-girl in serving Holy Communion has precipitated a liturgical horror in northern Italy. The parish priest called upon the child, who apparently looked less tainted by original sin than anyone else present, because he found himself without a bishop, priest or deacon handy to assist. Local dupes were aghast at the blasphemous depravity of it, and a Catholic blog whose title translates loosely as Keep Jesus Latin solemnly demanded that the bishop intervene and cleanse the parish of the moral taint resulting from the improper use of a child. The priest, who so far has merely been told not to repeat the offence, complained that it was as if he had killed someone, rather than merely presided over a bit of ritualised cannibalism.

A Pleasant Hour

An extra hour the darkness stays
To shroud this failing nation;
Not all adjustments in our days
Show such consideration.

Instead of turning back the clock
To World War Two or Regent,
A pleasant hour it is to dock
For daylight-time expedient.

Laurel Icklehodge

Cleaning Up the Record

With Fishy Rishi rowing back on the green crap and Team Starmer loyally following in his wake, England can surely do without a lot of experts and other trouble-makers pouring bile on troubled waters. Hence His Majesty's Government has liberated itself from the Nazi-Soviet Strasbrussls diktat requiring that rivers and waterways be surveyed every year, which led to such deplorable consequences in 2020 when the beastly Euro-wog standards demonstrated an inherent bias against doing justice to the cleanliness of British sewage. Our ever-fragrant Government now plans to introduce a more patriotic set of standards which, as befits their innate and inalienable Britishness, haven't been properly thought out yet and are unlikely to be properly thought out before they are implemented. By a fortunate coincidence, the change does mean that no data will be published before the general election to indicate how far the minimalist efforts of Thérèse Coffey and the Department for Effluent Flows and Rancidity Augmentation have improved matters.

Blushers to Spare

As all but the most patriotic Britons are increasingly aware, the process of cutting ourselves off from our single biggest export market has led to a wholly unpredictable decline in exports; while the process of kicking out all the foreigners has brought about a wholly unanticipated decline in the availability of foreign workers. Coincidentally enough, the last few years have seen a reduction on the order of £850 million in the mainland's capacity to help the lesser breeds disguise their blemishes, purify their complexions, and tidy up Nature's little errors. Patriotic Britons will no doubt be shocked and surprised yet again when they discover that the country which elected Boris Johnson, Theresa May and her glistening pink predecessor has less and less to teach the world about beauty.

Moderately Moral

As will be apparent from all the difference it has made, the Archbishop of Canterbury recently spent four days in Jerusalem to show solidarity towards those afflicted with the true and correct variety of the Abrahamic delusion. A statement issued just before he left the UK, in which His Grace tactfully refrained from advising the far-right rulers of the nuclear-armed Christ-killer state to turn the other cheek, has drawn the ire of Palestinian Christians, who observed that the Archbishop ranked the violence of the occupier and the violence of the occupied according to the same hierarchy of heinousness recognised by His Majesty's Government and its big brother in the White House. Atrocities committed against the state of Israel are evil crimes against God and humanity; atrocities committed by the state of Israel are, at worst, a disproportionate response to an existential threat. On his return to the mainland, the Archbishop informed an audience of chums, catamites and corpses that excessive cleansing in Gaza would be a Bad Thing because "the more heavy the casualties, the less chance there is of a renewed peace." When the learned ex-oilman Dr Welby, who read history at Cambridge, thinks peace last broke out in occupied Palestine remains as yet unclear.

Bad Etymology

Propaganda, n. from Latin pro in favour of and paganus heathen: any information which favours the wrong side.

Television, n. from Greek têle at a distance and Middle English visioun a religious hallucination; hence the transmission of delusion.

Hospitality Sector Perks Up

Those forces of British decency which rage against the accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels, or indeed anywhere at all other than prison hulks or Central Africa, will doubtless rejoice that the invasion at least enables a few hard-working families to scrape an honest living. Two private companies have made combined profits of a hundred and thirteen million: one of them, the cleansingly-named Clearsprings Ready Homes, has increased its net profits from twenty-eight million to sixty-two and a half; while the other distinguishes itself from the swarming hordes by making do with office space in Mayfair and providing a Conservative MP with pocket money. Both companies' dividends are courtesy of the ever-accommodating British taxpayer, whose elected representatives awarded Clearsprings a ten-year wog warehousing contract; while the blame for any suspicion of profiteering attaches as naturally as ever to the invaders.

Gove Sorts it Out

Vague threats to implement a manifesto promise to end no-fault evictions have brought squeals of horror from that substantial portion of the Conservative Party which consists of landlords; though naturally every objection was made in a spirit of pure and disinterested altruism. The villainously-monickered Desmond Swayne worried about his ability to kick out antisocial tenants, while the intellectually piscatoid Marcus Fysh predicted the end of the private housing market and an apocalyptic rise in inflation when miffed landlords sold up and moved out. Fortunately, the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove was on hand to reassure: there would have to be changes to the court system in order for the changes to work, and even the likes of Swayne and Fysh are capable of recalling that the court system has already been pre-emptively wrecked. Nevertheless, the more intelligent among those private renters who helped the National Johnson to his landslide may soon be feeling betrayed yet again by the Conservative Party's chronic disinclination to follow its man-of-the-people instincts.

Verbal Values

Even protests which are peaceful and still not illegal can sometimes have unfortunate consequences, and the recent demonstrations against Israel's holy war on the human animals have caused Britain's Minister for Wog Warehousing, the well-known interior designer Robert Jenrick, to start thundering his moral gusset about the perils of intemperate speech. As sensitive to the nuances of language as befits a former servant to a noted publisher of uplifting material, Jenrick has called for those who chant jihad on the streets of London to be dealt with in a manner appropriate to invaders of our shores. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan Police seem to think they have better things to do than arrest and deport people who utter inflammatory words in public.

Class Monitors

Effective government is all about priorities, and with so many schools falling apart it's only natural that His Majesty's Government should be concerned about what teachers, teaching assistants and our few remaining librarians are saying on social media. Even amidst the cornucopia of freedoms which has burst orgasmically forth since Global Britain's liberation from the Strasbrussels yoke, there are still those who expect the state to solve every problem, including those where no more expensive solution is required than yet another healthy helping of plucky positivity. Accordingly, the Ministry for Infantine Discipline and Training has compiled files on those who talk down British schools, or who raise objections to Government policies just because those policies happen not to work. In the interests of conserving funds, the Ministry has also blacklisted mere experts who might say nasty things at conferences, and has indicated its unwillingness to sponsor subversive elements with money that would be more responsibly spent on pre-election pork-barrelling. With excusable indirection, a spokesbeing proclaimed that it is standard practice to carry out due diligence when throwing money at anything that doesn't profit the Prime Minister's wife.

The King's Prayer

We thank Thee, Lord, for making us
Respectful, staunch and virtuous,
Inclined to listen, not to fight,
Except, of course, when we are right.

We thank Thee for those wells profound
Of tolerance we've spread around,
In which we bask entirely free
Of lesser breeds' complacency.

We thank Thy just and awful might
Which keeps our passions so polite,
And helps us on that civil way
Which made us what we are today.

In unity discreet yet stout
Where others are inclined to shout,
We thank Thee, and Thy bounty bless
For this our special Britishness.

Charles Mansion

Bad Etymology

Hypocrite, n. from Greek hupo under and Latin crux cross: a subordinate of Christian symbolism and/or a groveller beneath the flag of Saint George.

Noble, n. an aristocrat; from nobble to gain victory or influence through corruption or intimidation.

No Buffers for British Babies

Even far-right governments believe in peaceful protest as long as it isn't necessarily peaceful and accords with the will of the Führer in the sky; and the Fishy Rishi administration's attitude to demonstrations against women's bodily autonomy constitutes a fine example of such Trumpsterite libertarianism. Although Parliament has agreed that women seeking medical attention should be spared the ministrations of the God-botherers at least unto a distance of a hundred and fifty metres, the Home Secretary has better things to do these days than implement protections that might be tainted with vulgar actuality. A spokesbeing made noises about the unacceptability of harassment and intimidation, but the matter is self-evidently not an urgent one for the Minister for Passionate Britishness. Provided that protesters are not suspected of persecuting fossil fuel profiteers, escaping from a prison hulk or displaying the Palestinian flag, they need fear no curtailment of their crusades.

Politically Homeless

Among the few remaining areas in which Fishy Rishi's floundering administration can convincingly rival Team Starmer is, of course, breach of promise. Having shown how seriously he takes the housing crisis by palming it off on the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, Fishy Rishi has procrastinated unto this eleventh hour over the Conservatives' manifesto commitment to reform the law on private renting. In fairness, the commitment was made by the National Johnson and therefore can hardly be said to have counted even before that statesman's moral repudiation; but the jabbering homunculus and one or two others are populist enough or stupid enough to take it seriously. Meanwhile the Conservative Party's landlord wing is flapping noisily at the prospect of losing its right to arbitrary eviction without appeal; so it remains as yet unclear exactly how far along the Team Starmer route of dilution, emasculation and self-contradiction Fishy Rishi will have the courage to venture.

Joseph R Malarkey

President Biden's re-election campaign team has opened an account on Truth Social, the postmodernistically-monickered platform created in the wake of an outstandingly diarrhoeic defecation by the rabid orange head-tribble into the yawning vacancy that is the Trumpster cranium. Doubtless Biden-Harris 2024 are doing their best to appease Team Starmer after recent allegations by Rashida Tlaib and other Democrats that the Righteous State is not entitled, let alone morally obliged, to commit war crimes. Such inflammatory and divisive language risks condoning antisemitism and thereby alienating a vital US ally in the war against Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Heathen Chinee and the Labour Party membership. In the interests of global stability, it is therefore to be hoped that the Biden campaign's courting of moderate and sensible fascists will bring the desired result; although the confessed motive "mostly because we thought it would be very funny" appears to hint at a discouraging un-Starmerite frivolity.

Gloves Off

Voracious Heathen Chinee crustaceans are depleting the racial purity of Britain's native fauna. The mitten crab, whose Fu Manchu fingernails are insidiously cloaked in a silken covering, has been eating its way through Lincolnshire's salmon, shrimp and trout almost as calamitously as if it were human. Fortunately a hostile environment is being prepared, with specially designed river accommodation and a website where members of the public can exercise their vigilance. Crabs with insufficient cunning to avoid the traps will be frozen and dissected rather than herded and deported, so they can consider themselves to have been jolly leniently dealt with.

Glow of Victory

It is characteristic of great art to reinvent itself for changing times, and restorers' work on John Singer Sargent's Gassed has enabled just such a modernising transmogrification. Commissioned shortly after the First World War for display in a hall of remembrance (which duly took its rightful place in the country fit for heroes to live in by never being built), Sargent's piece was noted for a greenish-yellow sheen which was taken to be an unwontedly realistic atmospheric detail. The restoration has revealed that this aspect was in fact an accidental product of later varnishing, and that Sargent's original work was in keeping both with the interests of his Government employers and with his own characteristic style, provoking criticism from Virginia Woolf and E M Forster and a predictable gush of rah-rah from the Secretary of State for Hot Air, Winston Churchill. Although Gassed depicts blinded soldiers struggling across a battlefield, the colour scheme "glows" with the plucky little vision of a better world, and suggests that although there may be suffering among the expendables, for the Government and its wealthier servants life still goes on.

Bad Etymology

Intervention, n. from Latin inter among and French vent wind: a form of military aggression characterised by gaseous rhetoric.

Religion, n. from Latin reliquiae remains and Greek genḗs tending to produce: a social system invented by the dead for furthering the production of corpses.

Purge Not Splurge

Try as it might to rebuild Labour as the party of working people like that nice Mr Murdoch, Team Starmer has not yet been able to remove all trace of the pernicious trade union influence. Now that the Ten Pledges have narrowed to the Five Missions (doubtless to be further renovated into the Three Vague Possibilities and then, once in office, to the Zero Alternative), certain undesirable elements are beginning to push back against the shadow chancellor's sacred fiscal straitjacket. "If you're serious about rebuilding the NHS, repairing and renewing services," pointed out the general secretary of the TUC, "we're going to have to find the money from somewhere" - a problem that does not grow more tractable as long as Team Starmer sensibly, moderately and non-ideologically refuses either to tax the rich or to contemplate any significant reset of the mainland's relationship with the beastly Euro-wogs. Given that the Dear Leader's idea of rebuilding the NHS is to knock it off its pedestal and into the fires of change, it seems likely that Team Starmer will solve the conundrum by not being serious about repairing and renewing services; though by the usual fortunate financial wizardry sufficient cash is almost certain to be on hand to maintain the nation's commitment to wog-bombing.

To a Bantustan Landlord

If you maintain a slum
For human beast despised,
Should beastly vengeance come
You shouldn't be surprised.

Benjamin Botha

Horror at Night Train Crossing the Border

Is there no end to the malice of the beastly Euro-wogs? Mere days after Fishy Rishi pledged to fight on the beaches, in the fields and in the streets for the rights of the persecuted motorist, a railway service in the tattered Britishnessless remnants of the European Union is being blatantly and shamelessly expanded. Yet worse, the service runs some nine hundred miles between Prague and Brussels, the festering core of the bureaucratic cancer; which can hardly be intended as anything other than a mocking toot-toot at the mainland's inability to complete a railway line connecting civilisation and provinces within a single country and over less than a quarter of the distance. The additional presence of such foreign horrors as attractive timetables and well-balanced arrival and departure times and, if you please, increased comfort, merely serves to add un-British insult to the anti-motoristic injury.

The Sun Will Be Darkened

Some of the more godly states of Murca are to be shrouded in a darkness not merely moral, and not merely once but twice over the next few months. A partial solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Oregon and Texas this weekend, and a total eclipse will appear in thirteen states on 8 April. While scientists occupy themselves with the merely physical and theoretical, humbler natives will undoubtedly be considering what message their God has been cooking up for them since the beginning of time. Indubitably it will involve commandments to make Murca great again, and smash the heathen, and prepare for Judgement, and hate the sin while pestering the sinner. Very likely the "ring of fire" effect resulting from Saturday's eclipse will also incorporate much useful information about the perils of abortion, sexually-transmitted diseases and the indiscreet placing of certain appendages into morally reprehensible orifices. Let's hope nobody misunderstands.

Just So We're Clear

Although it's jolly decent of Hamas to provide a burning Reichstag and light Bibi's little local difficulties into their proper perspective, the assault on the Righteous State is a Bad Thing, because citizens of illegally occupied territories have no right of armed resistance against their occupiers; except where such resistance is a Good Thing because corrupt, authoritarian and law-breaking states have no legitimate security concerns; except for the Righteous State, whose right to military action is as absolute as the right of its staunchest allies to wog-bomb to their hearts' content, migrant-bash to their racial salvation, and invite former Waffen-SS members to speak in their democratic parliaments. However appalled we may be at the barbarism of lesser breeds, let's try not to forget who the good guys are.

Bad Etymology

Deserving, adj. from Latin de- away from and servus a slave; hence a social status which is removed from the servant classes.

Persecute, v.t. from Latin per se of itself, and cutis skin: to find a surface excuse for an inherent urge.

Professorial Pride

His Majesty's Government has proclaimed that the master race will require fossil fuels to generate a quarter of its energy even by 2050, after the climate breakdown has been allowed to proceed more or less unhindered for the intervening twenty-seven years. The Department for Energy and Sham Net Zero (DESNZ), whose business it is to self-fulfil this profitable prophecy for the benefit of the deserving classes, stated that the figure is derived from the findings of the Climate Change Committee, though naturally His Majesty's Government does not deign to show its working just for a bunch of tree-hugging woke boffins. The CCC denies that its figures justify any such conclusion; it is perhaps a measure of the ivory-tower delusions of self-importance afflicting mere experts that they respond with such haughty ingratitude even when real people condescend to name-check them.

Not Who We Are

Ireland's prime minister has bewailed the transformation of the country which gave the world Magna Carta to protect the privileges of some wealthy thugs, and which founded parliamentary democracy in 1265, preceding the tenth-century Icelandic imitation by a healthy margin, for which Simon de Montfort was rewarded at Evesham by having his various bodily appendages voted away. Leo Varadkar is concerned at the master race's disengagement from international affairs in order to visit the wonders of asset-stripping imperialism upon its own population; although given the long and glorious history of English interventionism in Ireland one might have expected them to find its absence something of a relief. Anyway, Fishy Rishi went through the motions in a bilateral meeting with Varadkar, during which they agreed to disagree until Team Starmer becomes available to tweak things a bit. Afterwards Fishy Rishi toddled off to meet the Italian fascist leader Giorgia Meloni, whose historical perspective he doubtless found more congenial.

Suscipiat Dominus Sacrificium

That charming old codger, the Lord of Hosts, has been up to His merciful pranks again. Whether in reaction to the Pope's latest proposal for tolerating the sin of homosexuality, or as a rebuke to the excess of bodily autonomy granted to Mexican women, God allowed a church roof in the north of that country to collapse during mass on Sunday, fatally squashing ten of His dupes and injuring sixty more. Only about a hundred people were in the church at the time; which, even allowing for the Almighty's sportsgodship in suffering little children to constitute thirty per cent of the fatalities, makes for quite a decent bag. In the aftermath, the Mexican Council of Bishops offered a chorus of mumbles; while the diocese gave praise unto the Providence that sent the faithful to their reward, and also to the rescuers who prevented further casualties, naturally in that order.

Boff Bounced

Those old enough to recall the philosemitic ejection of Walter Wolfgang from a New Labour party conference during the wog-bombing pomp of Blairism will rejoice to see the moment repeated as farce in the ejection of one Andrew Boff from the wog-bashing rah-and-blah in Manchester. Boff, who has been a Conservative Party member since his first infancy in the 1970s, took vocal exception to the gay-baiting and trans-bashing with which Fishy Rishi's self-appointed successor was wooing the kind of people whose votes Team Starmer considers clean enough. In short order, Boff was seized by security guards and ejected from the feast of Britishness, while wailing to journalists that his beloved Party had somehow, after all this time, contrived to put itself at risk of giving an impression of intolerance. The equally brilliant Robert Buckland, who served the National Johnson as Minister for Profitable Incarceration before being demoted to the joke position of Cymric Colonial Secretary, said that the boot-boys had been "heavy-handed;" while several expenses claimants, flushed with the courage of anonymity, pronounced the incident "vile." How many of these humane and enlightened persons intend depriving the Party of their services until matters improve remains as yet all too clear.

Cash on Tap

As one would expect given the fines they've had to pay for poisoning the country's rivers, Britain's moisture provision profiteers have suddenly noticed the need for clean water and modern infrastructure, which have been so inexplicably and inexcusably neglected by somebody or other for so long. In order to be able to afford the necessary repairs and refurbishments, the leakers and dumpers plan to recoup their costs by the usual entrepreneurial means: those imprudent enough to rely on household water supplies will be "asked to pay" (charged, in Oldspeak) an extra ninety-six thousand million to make up the investment which the water companies, in their innocence, have been too dashed shareholder-dividendy to bother with so far. The sonorously-monickered regulator, Ofwat, is expected to spend the next few months pondering the permissibility of this bold new initiative.

Bad Etymology

Audience, n. from Latin audiens hearing: those participants in a theatrical or cinematic presentation who are most assertive in making themselves heard, whether via mobile phones, spontaneous interaction, or instant critical commentary.

Yuletide, n. from Anglo-Norman jule the month of July, and Old English tīd season: the Christmas period, which in pre-modern times began slightly less early in the calendar year.