Representative Swearing

Mere weeks after voting a new set of snouts into the Westminster trough, the great British public has demonstrated once more its fundamental lack of appreciation for our Mother of Parliaments. Campaigners against Britain's precious hereditary democracy have released a poll showing that a majority would favour Commons expenses claimants swearing allegiance to their constituents - including, presumably, the majority of those constituents who voted against them or did not vote at all. Not only would this imply that MPs represent constituents in Parliament rather than representing parties to consumers; it would very likely impress the feeble-minded as an argument against our Mother of Electoral Systems. Worse yet, it would entrench a something-for-nothing culture in which somewhere between sixty and seventy per cent of the electorate would expect some sort of service from their MP without having done anything to earn it. There would also be untold moral confusion among that élite cadre of MPs who have no connection at all with their electorate but are parachuted into the constituency in the interests of efficientising voter distribution. As long as members swear allegiance to the nation's biggest landowner and wearer of the most expensive hat in the Commonwealth, there remains at least the possibility of some sincerity to the oath.

And Crown Thy Spleen With Tangerine

Although Heaven is explicitly a kingdom and not a republic, Murca's most orange Bible salesman has denied any intention to make his realm more like God's. The Trumpster's declaration to Christians that they wouldn't have to vote any more if they put him and his head-tribble back into office this November was merely an attempt to overcome his audience's otherworldly apathy; and even if Christendom should fail deliver the popular vote, of course there's always the Supreme Court and the Dubya 2000 option to fall back on.

Since one or two people have interpreted his statement as an intention to put an end to voting, the Trumpster was also asked whether he and his head-tribble would have sufficient respect for the Constitution to leave office after a second four-year term; and the nation now has the word of a Trumpster, for whatever that may be worth, that they will do so. After all, they did it last time, eventually. Nor is this restraint merely because the head-tribble can't count beyond two, which is the minimum number required in practising the art of the deal. At the National Rifle Association convention the Trumpster waffled about Franklin Roosevelt, who spend sixteen years in office (1933-1945) despite his indiscretions of fighting wars against fascists and interfering in the free market. Much to the joy of the School-shooters' Civil Liberties Union, the Trumpster seemed to hint that the Twenty-Second Amendment might benefit from the attention of some good guys with guns. Doubtless he merely intended to overcome the NRA's otherworldly apathy as well.

Sporting Spirits

In keeping with the Christian tradition of prizing ignorance and simple-mindedness over knowledge and sophistication, a gaggle of god-botherers has erupted in noisy indignation over a tableau vivant at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. French bishops, who ought to know better and probably do, and American rightists, who never know better when there is squealing to be done, condemned the tableau as a mockery of the True Faith while, as usual, neither rejoicing nor being exceeding glad at another chance to equal the prophets persecuted before them. Participants in the tableau included drag queens, a transgender model and an undraped singer, and the scene was denounced as a blasphemous parody of the Last Supper; while in fact it was based on a painting of a feast of the Greek gods, for all the world as if Olympic values had more to do with clean-limbed physical pagans than with flea-ridden flesh-mortifying Christians. Nevertheless, the organising committee has apologised for the offence caused, and it remains as yet unclear whether anyone has pointed out to the defenders of the Last Supper that little party's indisputable status as a cannibalistic parody of the feast of Passover.

Natural Language

Last year the co-founder of a luxury interior design firm discovered that the Oxford English Dictionary defines nature as opposed to human beings and their creations. This led to the shocking discovery that dictionaries define words as they are generally used, and that general word usage tends towards the loose and changeable; as for instance when a native English speaker demands that human beings "return to [their] place in nature" while also insisting that "humans are part of nature" by definition. There followed a crusade to free people's minds from Cartesian dualism by artificially reviving a dictionary definition considered obsolete since 1873, whereupon "independent research" naturally revealed that the wider definition of nature, as the sum total of the physical world including human beings, was in fact still widely in use. The affair charmingly epitomises the respectable business response to the Anthropocene extinction event - call up a straw man and then drop a white elephant on him - and undeniably has the advantage of not landing anyone in jail or annoying anyone who matters.

Clearly Contains Nuts

A majority ruling by the supreme court in the nominally English-speaking state of Ohio has proclaimed that meat which is marketed as "boneless" should be expected to contain bones. The case arose from a lawsuit by a diner who ordered boneless chicken wings and subsequently underwent an osteo-oesophagal penetrative mishap; and the court has ruled that the word "boneless" in such a context should no more be literally understood than the word "fingers" in chicken fingers, because everyone knows that birds literally have neither fingers nor bones.

Clearly, this ruling has wide-reaching implications, although they may not actually reach, be wide or imply anything. In a culture where conservatives are far-right revolutionaries, Republicans are dictatorial theocrats and Democrats are oligarchical plutocrats, it was obviously high time for linguistic reform in the marketing of literal as well as political fodder. Diners who prefer, or need, food that is gluten-free, sugarless or made without animal products may soon live in interesting times. Whether a majority in the Ohio state supreme court should be literally understood as a majority in the Ohio state supreme court remains as yet to be determined.

Metropolitan Liberality

Yet further moral glory has accrued to the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club, as yet another rotten apple has pleaded guilty to excessive entrepreneurialism in public office. The police constable stole from the wallet of a man who had collapsed and died in the street: an offence mitigated barely, if at all, by the victim's additional possession of a funny foreign name. A custodial sentence is likely, doubtless taking into account the officer's previous good character and the lack of such famous Metropolitan flourishes as rape, assault and culpable homicide. Presumably those patriots who shriek with righteous rage at every early release and at the luxurious régime in Britain's prisons will be watching with vigilance to ensure that the punitive aspect is not neglected.

Shocked and Appalled

Recent earth-shattering events in Clacton, where the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange was elected to the House of Expenses Claimants on only his umpty-whateverth attempt, have been equalled if not surpassed by claims that the very same strutting Caudillo may have said the thing that is not. A former blue-shirt, who was unceremoniously shoved aside to make room for the Caudillo to come belching home, now says that he is owed £8500 in campaign expenses and that the Caudillo himself seems not to take seriously enough the ethical implications of shaking hands with a minion. The rejected swain has also noticed that the Falange contains an aggressive, fascistic element whose presence risks compromising the democratic civility for which Wogs Out plc is universally renowned. It has clearly been a most disillusioning experience; although since the ex-candidate has no background in the media it has penetrated a bit more promptly than British journalism's recognition of the National Johnson's disreputable side after only half a century of clues.

Moral Moderation

Even the saints are not altogether perfect, and according to newly declassified documents the Blessed Tony himself once came dangerously close to antisemitism as currently defined by the Labour Party leadership. In response to a rampage in the West Bank in 2002. the British ambassador proclaimed that a few rotten apples among the forces of the Righteous State were acting more like the beastly Russians than like worthy fellow-crusaders of those soon to civilise Afghanistan and Iraq. Fortunately for the Blessed Tony's heavenly name, these concerns were shared, and thus redeemed from the taint of the Holocaust, by the White House and its resident chimpanzee, who feared that the Israeli campaign would undermine the World Cop's own Arab-killing potential. Further safeguarding the Blessed Tony's moral exaltation is the fact that other newly-released papers show his administration considering the use of a permanent prime ministerial campaign battlebus, thereby demonstrating once more his quasi-divine capacity for prioritising electoral pragmatism. Accordingly, it seems as yet unlikely that the Blessed Tony stands in any great peril of being expelled from the Party.

He Has Sounded Forth the Trumpster That Shall Never Call Retreat

One of the Trumpster's allies has proven himself unworthy of service to the head-tribble by expressing regret over some inflammatory remarks at a Republican rah-and-blah. Addressing the cadres in Middletown, Ohio, where the unpleasant mediocrity that is the Trumpster's deterrent to future assassins attended high school, a state senator proclaimed that "if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved." It remains as yet unclear whether the senator's own education was sufficiently Murcan as to omit the deplorable consequences of the last civil war, notably the triumph of woke attitudes to slavery and the decidedly uncivil labelling of entrepreneurial go-getters as "carpetbaggers;" but he later invoked the recent assassination attempt on the Trumpster as a reason to be mindful. Neither the Trumpster nor his head-tribble is likely to be impressed with such backsliding, especially if it should become necessary to save the country from a Harris presidency by repealing the Thirteenth Amendment.

Worth Every Penny

The squeaking, scrabbling sackful that is the contest for control of the Maily Toryguff has acquired yet another game little rodent. Former chancellor (however briefly) and blithe breacher of ministerial codes Nadhim Zahawi participated in the mass rodentine maritime evacuation exercise that preceded the general election (his seat went to the Liberal Democrats) and has now gone begging-bowl in hand for a few hundred million with which to acquire the squealing far-right rag and its grunting sty-mate the Spectator. Zahawi is chums with the Barclay family, whose prepossessing scions on Sark originally ran the Toryguff into the ground, and was apparently expecting to toddle into the chairmanship of the media group under the auspices of the United Arab Emirates before being stabbed in the back by the Fishy Rishi administration's announcement of laws against UK newspaper assets being owned by foreigners other than Supreme Leader Murdoch. It is certainly to be hoped that Zahawi will be able to carry out his cureent bid without being driven to mortgage his taxpayer-warmed stables.

Big Wind, Small Change

Not content with implying that the Atlantic slave trade was something Britain perpetrated as well as abolished, several Caribbean governments have requested, of all things, help in repairing the hurricane damage which regularly afflicts their countries. Acting on the working-class Christian values which he shares with the Trumpster's running mate, the Foreign Secretary has pledged the cost of a few corporate lunches to tide matters over until the next disaster; but the Caribbean governments have once again failed to respond with appropriate gratitude, and have even numbered Britain among the "major emitters" most responsible for the climate catastrophe. Apparently news has yet to reach the Caribbean concerning Britain's world-beating record in the battle against global heating, which extends to permitting oil companies to sponsor national museums and thereby cleanse themselves of sin.

They Don't Fight Fair

There is wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Righteous State this day, as a drone has struck Tel Aviv and caused one death and at least ten injuries among real people. Although such casualty figures are appreciably below what can be expected from a normal day's peace-keeping in Lebanon, let alone Palestine, the Righteous State's fragile sense of security has been understandably shaken. Launched by the beastly Houthi, who are notorious for opposing the head-chopping House of Saud's rampage in Yemen, and manufactured by the mad mullahs of Iran, who are notorious for just about everything, the drone apparently passed over much of the divinely-granted Zionist real estate entirely unmolested by the Righteous Air Defence. It is possible that the forces of evil have misappropriated the British strategy of clearly labelling weapons TO BE USED FOR LEGAL AND HUMANITARIAN PURPOSES ONLY, thereby cunningly enabling the drone to pass for a virtuous one.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed

We're sorry for this outage
That caused you such delay;
We'll use all proper cloutage
To speed you on your way.

Our corporate survival
Is now the markets' call:
You can't switch to a rival,
Because we ate them all.

We're very deeply sorry
Our product went this way;
But there's no cause for worry,
Since you'll still have to pay.

Cyrus B Crasher

Makes It All Worth While

Having lived an apparently long and unadventurous life in the Jurassic, the largest stegosaur to leave its fossil to the Anthropocene has at last reached the apex of its existence by becoming a commodity. The head of profitable science at Sotheby's proclaimed that the $44.6 million sale to a private buyer underscores the unwavering commitment of salespersons to preserving priceless scientific finds by putting a price on them. The buyer, who apparently intends exploring the possibility of loaning the specimen to an institution, emphasised its contemporary virtues by observing that the animal "was born in America and is going to stay in America" - any nonsense about its having been born in Laurasia instead being contrary to the Bible, democracy and common sense. Though unavailable for comment, the specimen itself is among the most complete ever discovered, and showed evidence of rheumatoid arthritis but no signs of violence and, other than the paperwork at Sotheby's, no evidence of postmortem scavenging.

Weak Case

An official briefing document for the king's speech has been edited to expunge a claim that the Truss mini-budget was somehow disastrous. La Truss was so exercised by this characterisation of her blip at the top that she took time out from courting the Trumpster and his head-tribble to lecture the cabinet secretary on the proprieties. La Truss urged "suitable admonishment" for the forces of woke metropolitan civil service blobness which somehow detected disaster in a fiscal policy which tanked the markets and led to the sacking of the chancellor and the resignation of La Truss herself after seven weeks in office. Apparently the regrettable events which followed the mini-budget were all someone else's fault, and any disaster lay not in the policy itself but merely in the immediate and wholly foreseeable consequences of that policy, and things might have been very different if only things had been different. Naturally, rather than dismissing the complaint with the snigger it deserves, the cabinet secretary boldly caved in. Pledged as Team Starmer may be to eschew the siren song of populist snake-oil while fixing what is under the bonnet of Britain's maxed-out credit card, its commitment to the itsy-bitsy feelings of the far right evidently remains as unerring as ever.

Succession

Among the political messages often to be found in the selection of a presidential running-mate is, of course, "look what will happen if you get rid of me;" and having narrowly escaped assassination the Trumpster and his head-tribble have hastened to lock and load their ultimate deterrent. In turn, JD Vance has hurried to establish his Murcan breadth of knowledge and Trumpsterite diplomatic skills by proclaiming that Labour's election may make the UK "the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon," and Labour's ministers have begged very 'umbly, for the moment, to disagree. It is understandable enough that the JD would fail to register Labour's repeatedly demonstrated contempt for Muslim voters; especially as Republicans' ideas of the British political scene are presumably shaped by cultural commentary from the likes of La Truss and the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange. Even so, the JD's blithe implication that the Murcan-owned and Murcan-controlled nucular weapons in the English state of Scotland constitute some sort of independent deterrent must surely verge on the unpatriotic.

Political Beasts

Encouraging signs of Britishness are apparent in Romania's democracy, where the government has responded to the killing of a common species by a rare one with the issuing of a licence to make the rare species rarer still. Brown bears in Romania have killed and seriously injured nearly three hundred people over the past two decades, and the government has greeted the latest incident with a commemorative silence and a double-sized cull, on the principle that the best democratic answer to any problem is generally to put oneself at the head of the lynch mob. Since not even the legislators believe the cull will prevent future bear attacks, it is clear that the Romanian government has thoroughly assimilated the great British principle that "prevention and intervention" are no substitute for blood sports.

To Clarify

The Deep State
and the enemies of democracy,
working in collaboration with
the Islamo-Communist Washington élite
and with the active collaboration of
the Russo-Iranian sexbot army
through the facilitative machinations of
the Heathen Chinee with their global warming hoax, their hostile weather balloons and the fish-bothering activities of their North Korean allies,
and in malignant conjunction with
the swamp-breeding dark matter of the Democratic Party,

have either
carried out a failed assassination attempt on the Trumpster's controlling head-tribble through a blasphemous and inappropriate use of the Great American Firearm, but failed owing to the inherent inefficiency of all unpatriotic enterprises and the direct intervention of Baby Jesus;
or
been victimised by deeper states, meta-hostile actors, quiet loners etc., who have carried out a fake assassination attempt designed to give the impression that Somebody, also known as They, are desperate to remove the Trumpster and his head-tribble by any means necessary, thereby helping to ensure the re-election of the said head-tribble and its earthly representative;
or
carried out a fake failed assassination attempt intended to give the impression that a failed assassination was intended when in fact a real assassination (which failed) was intended, for obvious reasons;
or
carried out a false flag operation to brand and implicate one or more enemies of the Heathen Chinee, the Russo-Iranian sexbot army, the Democratic Party, North Korea, Satan, medical personnel etc., as a hostile actor, thereby provoking social unrest, replacement of white heterosexual Christians with diverse others, irresponsible conspiracy theories, etc., to the lasting detriment of American greatness.

Obviously, violence has no legitimate place in the politics of a country which was founded on genocide, was built on slavery, is maintained by warfare, and happily tolerates near-weekly shootings as a necessary component of its children's education. Any and all attempts to sow panic and confusion in the wake of these grave events would be inexcusable to an absolute degree, as there are certainly decent people on all sides.

Insidiously Legal

In a fiendish follow-up to their treacherous tricks with aggressive balloons, the Heathen Chinee have deployed four military vessels off the coast of Alaska; which, given the state's close proximity to both Ukraine and plucky little Taiwan, can only be considered a provocation. The fact that all four vessels kept to international waters and "operated within the bounds of international rules and norms" merely serves to show up the subtlety of the perilous menace. More fiendishly still, the incident follows a similar threat last August, in which Chinese and Russian warships manoevred near the Alaskan coast in a highly provocative manner not at all resembling NATO's encirclements and encroachments upon countries with no legitimate security concerns.

Liquidated Assets

One of Britain's more interestingly managed moisture provision companies was fined the value of fifteen or twenty executive bonuses last year, having been ranked seventeenth out of seventeen for customer service and missed so many regulatory targets that even the industry watchdog thought it best to leave off humping the corporate ankle. Despite the management having driven the company so far into debt that the fines won't do much harm, Thames Water has been put into special measures; while all its best intentions have been thwarted by an impressively lengthy list of excuses. Notable among these are cuts to the advertising budget, since everyone knows how much healthier raw sewage is to ingest when it has been properly marketed; and pollution fines, which have caused customer perceptions to deteriorate by calling unwarranted attention to pollution just because it happened to be going on. A woke green agenda was also in there somewhere, leading to the installation of only 204,700 fewer than the 204,700 smart water meters which Thames was meant to install; although in that case the company was magnanimous enough to acknowledge the disappointment caused among those who don't know any better. In keeping with the private sector's habitual efficiency, Thames is now seeking to resolve its debts by increasing its debts, while the regulator has blithely proclaimed that moisture provision users will just have to pay a bit more.

Proportionate Response

Following the killing of three women in an apparent crossbow attack where the suspect is a former soldier, the Home Secretary is pondering a review of the law on crossbows which was launched three years ago, in case it should prove useful in scrounging some law-and-order headlines. Concerns about the accessibility of crossbows to eighteen-year-olds have been exacerbated by the fact that the suspect is eight years older than that; at the same time, he appears epidermally innocent of any sectarian or terroristic motivation, and with regard to the British army, no urgent action is being considered.

Southern Fried Ratepayer

Residents of the Christian state of Texas may wish to emulate the bluebelly General Sheridan and live in Hell instead. They are suffering a forty-degree heat-wave, probably exacerbated by climate change, and have been left without air conditioning because of disruption to the electricity supply caused by an unseasonably strong hurricane whose strength was probably exacerbated by climate change. Fortunately, the state's governor is unlikely to be among the casualties: Greg Abbott does not deny that the climate is changing, but does not share the opinion of godless scientists that human activity is responsible or that somebody ought to do something about it. Accordingly, as befits a Trumpsterite he has toddled off to Asia and left his fellow rugged individualists to fend for themselves.

Fly Bunga Bunga

Milan's main airport seems unlucky in its names. At the moment it's called Malpensa, which suggests evil thoughts or badly-weighed plans; and the far-right cabal currently running Italy have every intention of living down to the label. A scheme is afoot to rename the airport after Silvio Berlusconi, the sometime prime minister who was born and died in Milan and whose unpalatable mix of vapidity, vulgarity, corruption and crimes against hair foreshadowed such political excrescences as the Trumpster and the National Johnson. It's true that the Americans named a major city airport after a priapic political sleaze; but even they only did so after his mediocrity was transcended through assassination. Accordingly, and despite the close association of airports with such Berlusconian values as pollution, noise and needless expense, the idea has provoked considerable protest.

God is Tetchy

Protectors of the Almighty's itsy-bitsy feelings have achieved a victory in Sydney where, in the wake of much pious indignation, a parodied religious painting has been removed from an exhibition, the mayor having balanced freedom of speech with freedom of religion by ordering the abandonment of both. Apparently Christ's words at Matthew 5 xi-xii have been misreported by the Evangelist; and the perpetrator of the painted blasphemy demonstrated a similar penchant for re-writing history when he claimed that violence and intimidation against the impious are "not at all Christian." Assuming that the purpose of a religion consists in what it preaches and practises, two thousand years of crusades, witch-hunts, pogroms, purges and inquisitions provide a rather emphatic indication. Indeed, as at least one eminent theologian has pointed out in all humility, the Saviour Himself spent the greater part of His ministry proclaiming eternal torment for anyone He disliked.

Charitable Moderation

In an admirable access of British decency prompted by only a single spate of complaints, a leading auction house has condescended not to take fees on charity sales, at least for a few months. After a recent auction with "all proceeds in support of Teenage Cancer Trust," it emerged on inquiry that "all proceeds" excluded a premium of at least twenty-eight per cent of the sale price. The auction house now says it has refrained from charging fees on charity sales so far this year, and will continue to do so "in the next few months," after which presumably any fuss will have conveniently died down and teenage cancer victims will have learned to take more responsibility.

New Leader, New Danger

In a country ruled by an authoritarian, intolerant and doctrinaire élite whose foreign policy has contributed significantly to vast economic problems, a disaffected electorate has voted in a candidate for change. While Britain waits to see which, if any, of Team Starmer's words in opposition will be matched by its actions in government, the second round of the Iranian presidential election has brought in an advocate for liberalising the censorship and the hijab law and attempting a more civil relationship with the west. Even without taking into account the conservative and reactionary factions among Iran's ruling establishment, it remains to be seen how the west will greet the threat of reform in one of its most treasured Great Satans.

Taking Out the Trash

Well, that was rather fun, not least thanks to an unexpected live-blog which fell in with the topsy-turviness of the times by starting at the top and ending at the bottom. Lots of deserving people lost their seats, including La Truss, Mark "Racist Van Man" Harper and the furuncular fotherington-tomas of the far right, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Unfortunately my own MP, the ever-abject Mike Freer, joined the maritime rodentine evacuation activities some weeks ago and thus escaped the carnage; the new Labour MP mentioned Islamophobia alongside antisemitism in one of her leaflets, almost as if the two were morally equivalent, so may soon be sitting as an independent if she doesn't watch out.

Independent candidates caused a refreshing amount of trouble: Corbyn won, Wideboy Wes Streeting nearly didn't, and an arbitrarily purged Labour candidate took a healthy chunk of the vote in Chingford; for which Team Starmer will no doubt exact reprisals in due course. Several former ministers, many of them Grant Shapps, were humiliated; as were a couple of Starmerites. Thanks to near-American levels of excusable non-participation, the new administration's majority depends to an unusual extent on marginal seats, which may make for further interesting times when the media honeymoon finishes and the tough decisions start. The strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange and three of his rabble finally managed to spend, sucker and sleaze their way into the House of Expenses Claimants, thereby providing a moderate and sensible parliamentary counterweight to the Greens, whose favourable exposure on national television will presumably remain as extensive as ever.

Finally, of course, congratulations are in order for the Conservative Party, which - despite the voter suppression, despite the gerrymandering, despite the lying and cheating, despite near-total ideological domination of the news media and despite, not least, the quality of its main opponents - still managed to achieve so historic a result.

A Date That Will Live in Infamy

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), which shows the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from the viewpoint of both sides, was almost certainly the first film I saw with subtitles. In fact, the subtitles extend beyond the Japanese dialogue to on-screen captions identifying almost every character who speaks a line, including single-scene appearances like General Tojo and the eccentric Japanese strategist "Gandhi" Kuroshima, who confines himself to his overheated cabin and works wrapped in a blanket. Bizarrely, the captions fail to name the pivotal character of Admiral Nagumo, who commanded the attack fleet and who is presented as a tough, hatchet-faced old sea-dog rather than the bullet-headed and over-cautious figure he actually seems to have been.

Presented by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on two American books and overseen by the efficient Richard Fleischer (the Japanese sequences were directed by Kinji Fukasaku, later of Battle Royale renown), the film is naturally biased towards the USA, with little indication (beyond some squeaking from Tojo about daggers pointed at the nation's heart) of what geopolitical circumstances might have provoked the Japanese gamble. "I give him proposals; he brings me counter-proposals," complains Secretary of State Cordell Hull about Japan's refusal to knuckle under; but the substance of the proposals and counter-proposals is never hinted at. By contrast, a great deal is made of the unintended delay in communication which means that Japan's formal declaration of war arrives only after the attack has taken place: an irregularity which evidently led the United States government to withhold some of its habitual restraint and chivalry when retaliating.

There are occasional amusing touches, such as the flying instructor and her nervous pupil who suddenly find their biplane surrounded by the deadpan gaze of the Imperial Japanese Navy's finest; but for the most part the film is a pedestrian affair until the stirring attack sequence at the end. Why I should be reminded, today of all days, about this long and lumbering effort which distorts and over-simplifies, misses large points while emphasising trivial ones, and climaxes with a big bully suffering a spectacular, if equivocal, defeat at the hands of a smaller bully, I'm sure I cannot possibly imagine.

Still Too Civilian

Significant numbers of Euro-wogs have placed themselves outside the mainstream of sensible moderation by blatantly diverging from the Anglo-American mainland's position on the Ukraine war. Nevertheless, majorities in most countries are in favour of continuing to arm Ukraine, even if nobody seems very sure to what ultimate purpose. Among the Ukrainians themselves, about a third suspect that the USA will go over their government's head and make a deal with the Russians when it suits the White House; and three-quarters of them see membership of the EU as a military necessity, although the extent of their appetite for eventual neoliberal restructuring of the ruins remains as yet unclear. Demonstrating a disturbing lack of British pragmatism, a majority would be willing to cede territory in order to retain sufficient sovereignty to submit to the Strasbrussels yoke. Although most of the lesser breeds are resigned to the current state of the conflict, with their governments throwing money at arms contractors in the name of holding the fiend Putin at bay, there is no support for sending troops. Most sinister of all, victory at all costs and to the last drop of blood that doesn't happen to be a politician's or a profiteer's is apparently not widely considered a viable option.

He Just Slipped Out

Religious lunatics in Linz have decapitated a sculpture of the Virgin giving birth, apparently because it implies that she must have had her legs open at the time. The iconoclast's identity is allegedly being protected by another lunatic who stole some Amazonian statues of pregnant women five years ago and then taped himself throwing them into the Tiber as a moral lesson to the South American pope. Before her unexpected contraction, the Virgin was on display in Austria's largest cathedral and, unlike the blasphemous frog anathematised by the sixteenth Daddy Goodspeak, had the approval of the Church. Nevertheless, a statement supposedly from the headsman proclaims the image an "abominable and blasphemous caricature;" which seems consistent enough. After all, Mary was conceived without sin and impregnated without sex; if the resulting birth took place without the usual messy carnal inconveniences, that would surely be no more than natural.

Mounting Panic

Horses belonging to the best army in the world (the British one, for those who trotted in late) have again bolted in London, this time terrified by public transport rather than by a rubble drop. The animals, whose moral fibre must have been sapped by talking to the ones from last time, threw their riders and galloped around the city while bouncing off occasional bits of traffic. It is certainly encouraging that a military establishment long unable to manage modern vehicles has extended its Britishness to archaic ones. Clearly the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment is doing its part in suppressing the deplorable heresy that military animals should be trained to display equanimity in the face of loud noises or unexpected movements.