Amphibious Assets

Concerns about the disinclination of water supply companies to look after the water supply will be greatly allayed by those companies' equally insouciant neglect of conditions on land. Since moisture provision profiteers tend to lay rather less emphasis on the provision than on the profiteering, they are naturally also much invested in the English landscape, which they have naturally protected and maintained nearly as well as all those leak-pipes, dumping-rivers and sewage-beaches for which they are justly renowned. Although the state of boardroom salaries doubtless reflects this performance as faithfully as any funhouse mirror, it remains as yet unclear by how many hundred per cent water bills will need to rise in order to maintain acceptable parameters for future deterioration.

Rings of Power

In the unlikely event of His Majesty's Government attempting to limit the sacred self-defence capability of the Netanyahoo, there would be consequences for the Special Relationship with the World Cop by the grace of God. According to the Trumpster's last national security adviser, who doubtless knows a thing or two about crawling through difficult passages in the White House, it's bad enough that no bounty has yet been placed upon the staff of the International Criminal Court; while a ban on arms sales to the Righteous State could cause a serious rift. This of course makes Team Starmer's new understanding with Germany, with its emphasis on espionage and wog-bombing, appear more foresighted than ever; especially given the Trumpster's relaxed attitude to expendable satraps being eaten by the Russian bear or flooded by the Heathen Chinee and their insidious weather balloons. It is arguable that British sycophancy has yielded diminishing returns since the Blessed Tony played poodle to the Bush chimpanzee; and although several dozen British prime ministers were in office during the Trumpster's presidency, it is believed that their access to American sphincterdom was limited to the lower regions of the tangerine dangler, rather than to the hallowed orifice from which the ruling head-tribble defecates its radioactive rhetoric into the Trumpster cranium.

Won't Somebody Think of the Parents?

Enigmatic and alien values have manifested themselves in a ruling by the constitutional court of South Korea, which specifies an obligation to provide legally binding targets for reducing greenhouse emissions. The decision concludes a lawsuit brought four years ago by the kind of young people for whom Team Starmer would probably like to bring back Borstal, who claimed that the government's lack of interest in proper climate action violated the rights of future generations. The court's finding for the plaintiffs, and the possibility that the decision will set a precedent for other Asian countries, demonstrates the distance still separating those countries from that supreme moral maturity which has led Britons who grew up with a functioning national health service, affordable housing and public utilities, and Europe-wide freedom of movement to spend the last four decades voting all such advantages out of their children's reach.

Kept Down

With symbolism subtle enough for any number of Great American Novels, an apparently injured bald eagle rescued at the site of a Civil War battle turned out to have a truly patriotic malady. Discovered on the ground and unable to take off near the battlefield memorial of an early Confederate victory in Missouri, the living symbol of the greatest country in the world was found to be uninjured but too fat to fly, having dined to excess on raccoon in what was presumably an automotive serving. Unfortunately, the local veterinarians' insistence on rehabilitation somewhat compromised the Murcan-ness of the national bird's inability to take wing thanks to its exploitation of the crushed coon.

Liberty Through Incompetence

So parlous is the state of the prison system in England and Wales that the Government has been forced to adopt a policy other than banging everyone up for longer while proclaiming that conditions are still too good for 'em. The customary bank holiday surge has left only enough accommodation for about eighty-two per cent of the current parliamentary Conservative Party, and since Team Starmer is unable to build a new prison by Saturday certain inmates will now be released early. There are also plans for a cut in the proportion of sentences that certain categories of offender must spend in jail; though lest any patriot should fear the approach of anything so un-British as a properly-run probation service or a favouring of rehabilitation over punishment, we are assured that this will be a purely temporary measure.

Drummed Out

Another Caribbean government is set to emulate the black ingratitude of the treasonous Republic of Barbados by removing from its national coat of arms the image of its first European slaver flotilla. The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago has announced that the ships are to be replaced with an image of the culpably non-historic steelpan, which has led to the standard complaints about erasing the national heritage. Considering that the Genoese thug in charge of the ships believed the Caribbean to be part of India, there is a certain irony to the claim that the change could lead to an increase in ignorance. Meanwhile, the government of Spain has yet to announce any intention to swap the House of Aragon's coat of arms on its own flag for an image of that inestimable colonial prize, the syphilis spirochete.

Grown-Up Growth

Just in case we didn't know that the grown-ups are back in charge, Team Starmer's spokesbeing for business has proclaimed that, whatever the Chancellor may have told the little people, economic growth really isn't so frightfully important after all. The Government intends to continue the Conservative policy of pursuing solo trade deals with our close neighbours in Vietnam, Australia and Mexico, which will produce no significant economic growth and will preclude any significant reset of relations with the EU. This will solve all sorts of problems because our recent difficulties in trading with the EU have resulted not from flouncing out of the bloc but from the previous adminstration's adversarial approach. Obviously, non-membership of a club is no barrier to participation as long as you refuse to pay the subscription fee in a properly diplomatic manner. Even more importantly, a valuable atmosphere of stability will doubtless be provided by the uninterrupted continuation of the Conservative policy of appeasing the Farage Falange at all costs.

The Brain-Worm and the Head-Tribble Went Globb'ring Hand in Hand

It's always a pleasure, in these shrilly divided times, to see political disagreements transcended by respect, rapport and intellectual cross-fertilisation; and it is indubitably an encouraging sign that the Trumpster and his head-tribble have condescended to accept the endorsement of Barking Bob Kennedy and his brain-worm. By no means least among the associated delights is the spectacle of several dozen cadres of climate denial queueing to get into an Arizona rah-rah in near-penitential temperatures and dropping over from heat exhaustion. Adding yet further to the gaiety, the Trumpster and his head-tribble are pledged to conscript old conspiracy theories in aid of the new ones by releasing archived information about the assassination of a very ordinary political thug some six decades ago. Sensational revelations are doubtless on the way; notably that the grassy knoll was inhabited by the Warren Commission, the Heathen Chinee, some feminists and several thousand migrants, and that the so-called magic bullet was in fact deflected through the heroic self-sacrifice of a hereditary cerebral nematode.

Unprecedented Impacts

While Team Starmer battles the climate emergency by expanding Britain's airports, the transcendental importance of the tourist industry is apparently not fully appreciated in the colonies. The antipodean winter is proving a bit of a washout this year, and at least one pressure group leader has proclaimed that "we're going to see some negative impacts" far beyond such fripperies as the Caribbean getting blown to bits or Athens burning up. Not only is climate change a cause of migrants, shortages in good quality cooking oil, and other nasty things; it can also inconvenience the patrons of ski resorts and bring about rare instances of Australian understatement.

Bigger Boats Have Realer People

Alackaday, and life's a bitch:
A tycoon's lost at sea,
Although he was so very rich
And not a refugee.

He sank with his expensive toys
In an unscheduled storm,
Despite his work among those boys
Who've helped the globe to warm.

Some fair few more will sink and drown
In smaller boats this summer;
But all too poor, and far too brown,
To grieve Lord Selwyn Gummer.

Samuel Grimsnipe

Fiscal Reform

Since the good people of Clacton have no very pressing problems at the moment, the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange will soon toddle off for a blah-and-bloat on the other side of the Atlantic. Last month the great man attended the national summer belch-in with the Trumpster and his head-tribble; this weekend he will be representing Clacton's interests in Arizona; and in mid-September he will be the biggest noise at a dollars-and-drivel event for some climate deniers in the city of Al Capone. While certain recently sidelined elements from the boardroom of Reform plc have voiced concerns about democratising the cadres, the strutting Caudillo is not the kind of person who lets rich people down. It is to be hoped that his travels will include a healthy degree of contact with the great American milkshake.

Discharge of Duty

Moisture provision profiteers who "recklessly" discharge sewage may soon be rewarded by the Environment Agency with less than top marks. After only a decade or two of crumbling infrastructure, spiralling costs and mass cloacalisation of every waterway in England, there are one or two worries within the EA that certain companies may be treating their high ratings as an excuse for high executive pay, rather than awarding high executive pay with or without excuse as God, the markets and the sainted Thatcher ordained. Under the current rules, companies are judged by the length of their sewer networks, which is almost as helpful as judging politicians by the content of their speeches; and as one would expect from its title, the Enviroment Agency has hitherto taken little or no interest in the environmental impact of sewage dumping, although it does award brownie points for openness.

On Principle

There was once a tradition about those who were neither properly virtuous nor properly vicious, but trimmed to the prevailing wind: it was said that while such people would certainly never get into Heaven, the gates of Hell too would be barred against them, since beside the likes of them even the damned would be proud. It is to be hoped that some such limbo awaits Huw Merriman who, after several years of serving the party that demonised train drivers for taking industrial action, has now condemned all such uncouth language in the strongest terms and expressed support for the current government's settlement. Even the abject Mel Stride, who recently huffed and puffed against populist rabble-rousing after several years of paid humiliation in the service of a government that did practically nothing else, has at least displayed sufficient integrity to hang around and angle for leadership of the rump. For Merriman, who took the rodentine maritime evacuation option at the general election, a Starmerite sinecure presumably awaits.

Economic Health

Mere experts are complaining that the world's response to future pandemics may be compromised by, of all things, a tendency to prioritise corporate welfare over that of the lesser breeds. The growing mpox outbreak in Africa has prompted warnings that the virus could spread to less expendable populations alongside a repeat of the discrepancies in the availability of testing, vaccination and protective equipment that occurred during the Covid pandemic. Apparently some people still consider such discrepancies undesirable despite their being a natural and predictable consequence of global inequity and master-race money-grubbing. Certainly Wideboy Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Profitable Medicine, is unlikely to have much truck with anything that smacks of socialised healthcare; and the USA, home of the model for public health towards which Britain has been working for the past several decades, has responded to the mpox outbreak with the customary paternal handout.

Space Snoopers Britannia Are Go

His Majesty's Ministry for Wog-Bombing has launched its first fully-owned spy satellite, using a launch site borrowed from the US Government and comprising almost nine-tenths of one per cent of the payload on a Cosmic-Manbaby Falcon 9 rocket. Naturally, besides helping to keep the lesser breeds in order the satellite will do all sorts of nice things like monitoring natural disasters and the impact of climate change, the better to aid His Majesty's Government in doing nothing much to stop them. The satellite is named Tyche, after a Greek goddess who, according to Pindar, had the power to bestow victory on lesser athletes; which shows that even now His Majesty's Ministry for Wog-Bombing has not entirely lost its sense of humour.

Why Did No-One Think of This Before?

In working for a ceasefire in Gaza, His Majesty's Government is prepared to deploy all diplomatic means short of economic sanctions, calling ethnic cleansing by its proper name, or doing anything of which the White House might disapprove; and doubtless the Foreign Secretary's rumoured diplomatic mission to the Righteous State will continue to fall short in the accepted manner. As a one-time member of the coalition that devastated Iraq on the pretext of a crime perpetrated mostly by Saudi Arabians, Britain has already wagged the finger at Iran about the perils of retaliation. Now the Foreign Secretary hopes to bring together the "cruel" hostage-takers and the evidently rather less cruel crusaders for Lebensraum in Palestine, apparently by sheer force of personality. That should certainly help matters.

Dose of Salts

Cynics and nay-sayers who sneer that Britain's waterways are full of raw sewage will be sneering on the other side of their faces now that the West Midlands has received a healthy infusion of sodium cyanide. Apparently yet another blessing of unregulated entrepreneurialism, the spill has contaminated some twelve miles of canal, and the famously toothless Government watchdog is working itself up to wrap its gums around some serious corporate ankle. Whether anyone will eventually be found responsible, let alone suffer consequences more severe than the price of a few executive lunches, remains to be seen.

Truss Snaps

If one wishes to hitch a ride on the Musk/Trump bandwagon - if one wishes, so to speak, to catch the Mumps - it is vital to exude the proper vibes. One cannot, for example, respond to a political prank by dismissing its basic assertion with a light laugh and then coolly making a case as to why the assertion isn't true. The only possible dignity in such circumstances is the sort that is outrageously, undeservedly wounded; the only possible response an immediate flounce followed by loud, righteous squeals of denunciation.

Presumably whatever misplaced and malformed gall bladder serves Liz Truss for a brain was operating on the basis of some such calculation when she flounced out of a West-saving book-rah after pranksters lowered a banner bearing the slogan I crashed the economy. Later she took to social media to demand whether people would have sniggered quite so much had the far right carried out a similar stunt; to which the answer is of course No, since the far right (a) would be unlikely to stop at lowering a non-violent banner, and (b) even had they done so, would be unlikely to proclaim anything that was either true or amusing.

On the face of it, the fact that La Truss and her cohorts did indeed crash the economy should matter little in rebutting the assertion, since in these circles truth is hardly an issue. But for a Mumpsterite, particularly a Mumpsterite with British values, self-pity must take precedence even over defensive mendacity; although in proclaiming that the stunt wasn't funny La Truss did manage one quick fib when leaving the stage.

To Exploit Strange New Worlds

Those fine entrepreneurial folk at British Petroleum have made a deal with NASA to pool their experience of working in hostile environments. While it is true that no other planet in the solar system is noticeably pullulating with obliging taxpayers or compliant governments, BP apparently has hopes that its drilling abilities may enable the discovery of extraterrestrial water, which can then be imported to Earth as a profitable substitute for what BP and its fellow entrepreneurs have polluted. The enterprise may also be able to seek out any life that exists beneath the surface of Mars, while laying the foundations, in due course, and with appropriate rewards to the deserving, for unspecified yet indispensable advances in "hydrogen, regenerative fuel cells, high-capacity batteries, solar power systems, small-scale nuclear power systems." As always, BP executives also hope to supplement such greenwashed aspirations with drilling for fossil fuels on Earth, thereby bringing the terrestrial environment conveniently closer to those of Mars and the moon.

Flawed in the Breeding

A pressure group which advocates for the sort of people who like to chase wildlife around the countryside and then watch it get torn to bits by dogs has apparently prepared a legal case for designating such jolly sporting types a protected ethnic minority. The group considers hunting an extension of natural selection, on the grounds that hunters only pick on animals that can't fight back or run too fast; it also claims that hunting is not cruel because its practitioners carry it out in the English spirit of grudging acquiescence, without personal pleasure being involved. It is certainly refreshing to see a British political lobbyist who admits to combining the sportsmanship of an impersonal evolutionary process with the self-pity of an English nationalist; but it remains as yet unclear why these stormtroopers of natural selection should not themselves stand proudly subject to the same benign and vitalising process, rather than squealing for Big Government to protect them.

Southern Fried Felons

Entrepreneurial moral values are turning the climate catastrophe to good American advantage in the Christian state of Texas, where prison inmates are being broiled in their cells because it's cheaper that way. Since killing people who haven't been sentenced to painful demise by experimental drug cocktail is arguably cruel and unusual even in the Christian state of Texas, a lawsuit is now in progress to determine whether the state should be compelled to dilute the all-important punitive aspect by air-conditioning the cells. Meanwhile, some eighty-five thousand prisoners could incur the spiritual benefit of heat-related chastisement this summer, including several who are likely to become quite otherworldly as a result. For its own part, the Texas Department of Cooking for Jesus has blamed summer fatalities on those underlying medical conditions which tend to deprive chronic dehydration and forty-degree heat of their customary invigorating effect.

Little Rats and Big Rats

Those who think they can hide behind keyboards and stir up accepted government policy will need to think again now that people are being imprisoned for advocating violent disorder on social media. While it is perfectly acceptable to conflate and thereby demonise non-whites, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and other objects of legitimate and understandable concern, it remains unacceptable to encourage people to demonstrate such concerns via damage to property and policemen. Patriotic Britons don't need to hide behind keyboards, as witness the frequent appearances of the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange and his business partners on the BBC; the continuing non-appearance of Leveson 2; and the fact that the owners, editors and staff of the Murdoch Sun, the Maily Toryguff and the Rothermere Daily Stürmer and Stürmer on Sunday still seemingly remain at large.

Memorial Diplomacy

Today is the anniversary of the glorious victory at Nagasaki, which followed the glorious victory at Hiroshima because the Truman administration was not minded to accept Japan's surrender until the USA had tried out both its toys. Hostilities closed within a week of the bombing, thereby ending nearly half a century of Japan behaving as if it had the same rights in Asia as a white colonial power, and paving the way for subsequent decades of American benevolence in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia with the redeeming assistance of Japanese war criminals. As befits this noble history, today's annual commemoration at Nagasaki will not be attended by the ambassador from the country that carried out the experiment, or those of several of its client states, because Israel has not been invited. It is feared, no doubt justifiably, that there could be misleading comparisons with the Righteous State's co-non-invitees Russia and Belarus, which have inflicted far fewer casualties and have not attempted to set off a regional conflagration.

Wealth Creators

Among the literally uncountable blessings conferred by Britain's independence from the beastly Euro-wogs is the removal of restrictions imposed upon the bonuses of free bankers on the land. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Strasbrussels junta ruled that short-term profits should not be prioritised over stability, and that bankers should therefore not receive financial incentives that would predispose them to take undue risks. This of course was ideology, and the regulation capping bonuses among the bankers of the master race was removed last year; Team Starmer, as one would expect, has no intention of restoring it. Now Barclays has circulated a memo to staff announcing that the limit will no longer apply, while informing the lower orders that their own incentives will be remaining stable. In the higher realms, by contrast, up to ten times the value of salary will be available to those with a sufficiently exalted level of talent to award it to themselves.

Let's Get Tough Again

Sentences of between twenty months and three years have been imposed upon some of those who recently allowed their legitimate and understandable concerns to get the better of them. One has fourteen previous convictions, including some for violence: a true testament to the effectiveness of the British penal system. All of them, and doubtless more to come, will spend a considerable period of their future in environments where violent disorder is a badge of prestige, to the literally immeasurable benefit of themselves and society at large. Fortunately, they are likely to be warehoused in conditions of sufficient squalor and boredom to ensure that whatever lessons they learn will not bring dishonour upon the cadres of the Conservative Party, the Farage Falange or any other branch of the Patriotic Legion of Sensible Moderation.

Unfit For Human Eyes

As the battle continues over whether compulsory display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms is unconstitutional, the Trumpster-endorsed governor of the Christian state of Louisiana has given his gracious permission for pupils not to look at them (or "to not look at them" in the original Murcan). This may amount to more than a flippant dismissal of heretical parenthood; indeed, since the first four or five commandments explicitly forbid religious freedom, it arguably leaves the governor of the Christian state of Louisiana open to charges of blasphemous liberalism. Meanwhile, the commandment against adultery expressly prohibits Trumpsterite marital practices; the one against bearing false witness blatantly declines to endorse Trumpsterite legal practices; and the one against stealing comes perilously close to anathematising the Art of the Deal. It is tempting to conclude that the governor of the Christian state of Louisiana may in fact be one of those rare followers of the Mosaic law who has not looked away from the maunderings of his nasty little god, and has understood their import only too well.

Not In Our Name

When Britons gather round the flag,
Some migrants from hotels to drag,
Or, citing British values, aim
To whiten streets with cleansing flame,
Yet make a dreadful vulgar fuss -
They absolutely are not us.

Those paunchy thugs, that purple crew
In foreign swastika tattoo;
Those heinous hijackers of hate
That's proper and legitimate;
Those rioters with gammon face
Stand not among our master race.

Verity Glanding

Hostile Environment

Given that crimes against motorways can result in a prison sentence of five years, it will be interesting to see what constitutes the full force of the law for crimes against mosques, migrants and potential pro-Palestinian voters. Whether any meaningful distinction will be drawn between race rioters and climate protesters, let alone between race rioters and Gaza protesters, remains as yet unclear; especially since the entire blame for the current disturbances appears to lie with social media, despite the very best efforts of politicians and journalists over the last decade or three to keep things fair, balanced and rational.

Bodies of Opinion

Mere experts have cautioned that, contrary to British democratic principles as defended by everyone from the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange to the jabbering homunculus Michael Gove, seeing feats of prowess on the telly does not necessarily constitute an appropriate training régime for trying them out in the living room. Have-a-go heroes have suffered bruises, ligament damage and - presumably least dangerously - head injuries in attempting to emulate athletes who have done little more than give their lives to daily training over periods of years, and are therefore arguably little more than mere experts themselves. Team Starmer may be trying, however timorously and deceitfully, to repair relations with Europe, and those who believe they know better than the law what constitutes a murder suspect may be getting a robust response in the only language such people understand; but the nation that voted Brexit and Boris is still alive and well, though in some cases possibly not for very much longer.

Arrayed in Purple and Scarlet

Accusations that the Church of Rome is intolerant of sexual diversity must surely be silenced once and for all by what is euphemistically termed the restoration of a three-hundred-year-old church in north-eastern Spain. The Hermitage of Our Lady of Mirón has been luridly camped up, with beams and pillars painted pink and the cherubim looking like the more inexpensive genre of drag act. Mere experts are up in arms, while a spokesbeing for the diocese managed to employ Old Testament legalism and trendy-vicar permissiveness in a single sentence: "all I can tell you is that the works on the church were carried out with the required permissions and that some people like the end result and some don't." A more cogent and pious defence would surely be that, since the entire cult of the Virgin derives ultimately from the translation of an everyday Hebrew parturition into a gaudy Greek miracle, it is only fitting that the Lady's real estate should be transformed in similarly slatternly fashion.

Whatever Happened to Good Taste in Backstreet Abortions?

Several audience members clutched their pearls and wilted, and the rest were made to suffer the righteous indignation of another, when a stage play whose programme notes warned of blood, sexual content including coercion, and graphic abortion scenes, turned out against all expectation to contain graphic abortion scenes. Apparently the casualties were mostly male, including the shouter from the circle who had not read the programme notes, the theatre's website or the email sent to ticket holders. Since the play is called The Years, it is possible that the snowflakes were expecting an adaptation from Virginia Woolf. In any case, London's Almeida theatre is privileged to have witnessed some of the most perceptive on-site criticism since the screaming and fainting which greeted the revelation that Tod Browning's Freaks had freaks in it.