Too Clean for Comfort

Even the most virtuous actions cannot always be carried out to absolute perfection, and it seems that the slaughter of a few tens of thousands of adult and infant Hamas operatives has been accompanied by some unfortunate collateral cleansing. Despite attempts by Hamas to confuse the issue with assertions that three hostages were killed last year in an airstrike by the Righteous State, the IDF has admitted to a high probability that three hostages were killed last year "by a by-product" of an airstrike by the Righteous State. Fortunately for the reputation of the IDF, a Hamas brigade chief was present to serve as a human shield against any suggestion of gratuitous violence.

Stone Fishy

High-school pupils in southern Los Angeles have been privileged to undergo one of God's favourite tests of faith, with the discovery of marine fossil sites underneath their campus. As is well known, the fount of all truth planted the fossil record during that busy week in 4004BCE, in order to sort the believing sheep from the sceptical goats. The implausible sizes and shapes which characterise many of these mythical beasts were doubtless intended as a clue, so that in His infinite mercy and compassion He wouldn't have to consign quite so many souls to damnation. The cache beneath San Pedro high school, for example, includes a species of shark that could grow to nearly seventy feet long, and a sabre-toothed salmon. Among other things, this implies that southern Los Angeles was once deep under the ocean, and that therefore America itself is a changeable and contingent phenomenon. A likely story.

O Canada, We Shiver On Guard For Thee

A bracing breeze of Britishness is blowing through our north-western colonies, where the Canadian army has issued new sleeping bags to its troops without troubling to check how they work. Since Canada is traditionally assumed to be at least partly Arctic in location, soldiers have traditionally been equipped with gear suitable for Arctic conditions. Last year, after the usual "rigorous competitive process," the army spent thirty-five million dollars on sleeping bags whose camouflage is so effective that they blend in seamlessly with the environment, and therefore keep the troops warm provided the weather is warm too.

For Whom the Bells Toll

Notre Dame cathedral is nearing complete restoration, more than half a decade after God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, saw fit to burn much of it down. President Macron had wanted the work finished in time for the Paris Games, when the bells might have provided a suitable distraction from his botched electoral gamble; as it turns out, the opening ceremony will not even take place in time to celebrate his appointment of a right-wing prime minister to protect the Fifth Republic from its own left-wing voters. Any plans for pandering to the forthcoming Le Pen administration by stringing up a Gypsy or two are presumably still at an early stage.

Not Our Sort of People

Soldiers in Sudan's latest civil war are committing the indiscretion of posting video celebrations of torture and ethnic cleansing, thereby appropriating for themselves what the civilised world today considers a privilege exclusive to the IDF. Precedents include atrocities carried out and filmed in Bosnia and Syria by some enemies of civilised values; since the crimes in Sudan are being committed by Africans, there is already speculation that the footage may be used in war crimes trials even though no major US interests are at stake. Such images sometimes circulate among a small coterie, but can also be shared widely so as to send a propaganda message; as distinct from mainstream infotainment footage of NATO peacekeeping activities against the enemies of civilised values and their human shields, which is displayed purely for reasons of journalistic impartiality.

Easily Confused

In a development which may have far-reaching consequences for the sacred rights of capital over common assets, a high court judge has ruled that commonly used disyllables in the English language are not the exclusive property of specific commercial entities. EasyGroup, which runs EasyJet, EasyBus, EasyHotel, EasyLitigation and so forth, sued the charity shopping website Easyfundraising, its founder and its investors, on grounds of trademark violation. EasyGroup claimed that their brand could be conflated in the consumer consciousness with that of Easyfundraising and their reputation sullied by association. The judge took eighty-one pages to point out, presumably in words of as few syllables as possible, that Easyfundraising's poor reputation existed largely if not entirely in the allegations of EasyLitigation, some of whose own fellow EasyGroupies had themselves advertised on the website. Whether EasyLitigation now intend going after Linda Ronstadt, Guns N' Roses or the estates of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda remains as yet difficult to discern.

Unity, Work, Patriotism

Outside the more literal-minded reaches of the Stupid Party's less intellectual wing, it is debatable what anyone really expected of the Rwanda transportation scheme. Initially dreamed up to bait the weedy liberals and give the sensible moderates something to triangulate about, the idea was eventually co-opted to take the place of Brexit in the patriotic consciousness: a scheme whose full-throated adoption could serve to prevent the defection of useful racists to the Farage Falange, while the fact that it could never work as advertised would provide an eternal magnet for righteous indignation against the enemies of the people. Since nobody cared how or whether all the rah-and-blah would actually be implemented as a policy, the previous administration's willingness to listen to Rwandans on the matter seems eminently explicable. In determining whether Rwanda was a safe country, the Ministry for Wog Disposal relied mainly on officials of the Rwandan government, thereby ensuring a positive attitude; and when Rwandans outside the government were interviewed, officials sat in to prevent any misunderstandings. Obviously, this sort of game-playing was a far more effective provocation than the tediously routine recourse of delegating a British Home Secretary to lie and bluster; so it would be unfair in the extreme to imagine that the previous administration relied on the Rwandan government purely because corruption, authoritarianism and poverty made them feel at home.

They Made Us What We Are

Appropriately enough given the family background of the sainted Thatcher, the vast majority of revenue lost to tax evasion is pocketed by small tradesbeings who exploit the perennial happy relationship between the Government and the Babbage calculatifying engines. As might be expected, this particular dodge was facilitated by a law passed early in the first Bullingdon Club administration, whereby the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat accomplices enabled companies to process payments without declaring them, go bust without settling their debts, and then re-brand without hindrance to start all over again. The Conservatives had better things to do than pester entrepreneurs with the pluck and gumption to arrange their own tax cuts; but Team Starmer has proclaimed itself disposed to crack down on the practice as soon as the Chancellor has some leg-room to spare from kicking the pensioners.

Britishness Diluted

Like many an infantile disorder, the virus of patriotism appears to be adapting to a new generation by taking on new shapes. Britons are now less likely to take pride in the nation's history, in which they did not participate; and more likely to take pride in the nation's cultural and sporting heritage, in which for the most part they also did not participate. It's rather like the Catholicism of crusaders and inquisitors being replaced by the Anglicanism of hypocrites and social workers: the symptoms may be less inconvenient, but the disease remains the same. If one insists upon viewing a geopolitical abstraction as a personality, a less charitable commentator than your correspondent might be tempted to consider the former slaver who takes pride in sponsoring a library; or the doddering ex-rapist whose present impotence has driven him to boast of more refined pursuits.

House of Murdoch

Since you can never be too rich or too rich, the current most favoured scion of Britain's Supreme Leader is diversifying into the housing shortage. It is hoped that proceeds from the take-over of the UK's leading property website will be sufficient to subsidise that significant portion of the nation's scumbag press which the Supreme Leader has accrued beneath his cleansing and enlightening influence. The injection of Murdoch family values will no doubt do much to repair the reputation of estate agents, whose trade is traditionally considered nearly as honourable as those of other Murdoch properties in politics and journalism.

Another Holy Mystery

It is well known that God likes to punish people through their children; but even when He rewards them via the same channel, gratitude is not always fortcoming. The secular arm in Australia has just adjourned its trial of some pious folk over the death of an eight-year-old girl whom the All-Merciful saw fit to afflict with diabetes and a parental dupe. On the instructions of his brethren in Christ, her father withdrew her insulin, causing her to be transported to Heaven after a period of no doubt cleansing physical chastisement; he proclaimed in his closing statement that he believed her "only sleeping," although his lachrymose demeanour at the time might cause the uncharitable to question his faith. Indeed, when it comes to this ultimate matter the sect as a whole appears disturbingly lacking in joyful acquiescence to the divine Will. Their defence is based on the Saviour's assertion that the dead can rise again; from which it follows that charges of murder or manslaughter are meaningless; nevertheless, they also claim religious persecution without apparently rejoicing or being exceeding glad, as the Saviour also enjoined. It is quite the little paradox.

The Way It Has to Be

Rather than take proper precautions to shield the tree of knowledge, let alone raise humanity to His own estate, the Almighty famously chose to create Hell, thereby instituting the infallible moral principle that punishment is better than prevention. Doubtless in the same holy spirit, the Christian state of Georgia has decided to treat a fourteen-year-old as an adult in aid of legal retribition for Murca's latest school shooting. Whatever else the Christian state of Georgia may hope to achieve by this, it is certainly an effective means of conveying the infallible moral principle that the slaughter of unarmed civilians is what makes a boy into a man.

Business as Usual

In the towering spirit of British justice, a public inquiry has taken seven years to discover that landlords, corporate profiteers and laissez-brûler governments all did their bit towards causing the seventy-two avoidable deaths in the Grenfell disaster. Dear me, who would have thought it? Fortunately, a certain stability was apparent in the predictability of the responses. The corporate spokesbeings responded with blanket denials and blame-shifting. The CEO of Team Starmer responded with a pledge to deprive the relevant corporations of Government contracts; it remains to be seen how much or how little difference this will make once they start trading under different names. The Metropolitan Police responded that further patience will be required, since a further year or two will be necessary to go through the report and ensure that legal culpability for the deaths is sufficiently attenuated to make prosecutions appropriately impracticable.

Payback Without the Pain

Fraud in the British payments industry has been sharply on the rise for some years, and a few months ago the regulator issued the standard British boast of world-beating combat, with banks being obliged to reimburse victims up to £415,000. There followed the standard squeals of outrage from the sector whose right to have all its errors paid for by someone else has hitherto gone entirely unquestioned by anyone whose moderation could be considered remotely sensible; and the unauthorised consumer protection now appears likely to undergo the standard British solution of being scaled back by the cost of a few weeks' executive luncheons. Doubtless the fraud levels will take care of themselves, especially as market standards are enhanced by the sudden presence of so many erstwhile Conservative parliamentary expenses claimants.

God's Own Crooks

What degree of incompetence is necessary to allow a rifleman within a frew hundred feet of a US presidential candidate, and then allow that rifleman to kill one person, wound two more, and come within an earlobe's breadth of bullet-creasing the world's most powerful head-tribble? No less a theologian than the very same head-tribble's dangling orange squeaker has preached that such epoch-making ineptitude can be nothing other than divine; and in a rare convergence between expert opinion and the democratic will "a lot of people" have backed him up, as well as his own animal-killing offspring. The hypothesis of a bungling or malignant Deity has of course been advanced more than once before now; but the Trumpster's implied endorsement is certainly an unexpected blessing.

Militant Book-keeping

Although Team Starmer has made abundantly clear that the only problem with private profiteering in the public sector is that there isn't quite enough of it yet, dissent is already brewing over, of all things, keeping track of the money thrown at the private sector on behalf of the grateful taxpayer. The Blair administration's PFI boondoggle was intended for no other purpose than to funnel public cash into private coffers, yet at least one back-bencher seems to believe that some sort of accounting, if not actual accountability, ought to be in place. She does not go quite so far as to blaspheme the national religion by suggesting that cuts should be made to private profits rather than public services, so a suspension for antisemitism appears as yet unlikely.