Still Special

It appears that Team Starmer's wheedling of the White House has brought better results even than the ten per cent tariff. The Trumpster and his head-tribble will be imposing deals in three phases, and they have excluded the mainland from the first phase until standards and taxes are sufficiently lowered from those demanded by the beastly Euro-wogs. A knowledgeable source revealed that, depending on how rapidly and thoroughly Team Starmer can make Brexit work, the UK's elimination from phase one leaves the door open for it to be ranked as either second-rate or third-rate.

Tony Helps Out

Since his place in the footnotes of American history is inextricably bound up with his war crimes in the service of petroleum profiteering, it is natural that the Reverend Blair should feel a certain moral and spiritual kinship with the fossil fuel lobby. In his latest encyclical from the basilica of the Institute of His Very Own Self, the Venerable Sir Anthony of the Garter decrees that any thought of phasing out fossil fuels or limiting their consumption is blasphemy and anathema, and preaches that emissions should instead be limited using technology and constructing lots and lots of blanched radioactive pachyderms. Speaking anonymously to protect their personal safety, at least one Labour expenses claimant has criticised the intervention as unhelpful; but it remains to be revealed whether Team Starmer might venture to voice significant disagreement with anything so closely attuned to the stated position of the extreme right. In any case, his reverence deserves credit for having at last discovered a question to which the answer is neither wog-bombing nor a surveillance state.

Not Quite Twigged

Patriots with a pragmatic disdain for pettifogging bureaucratic distinctions between wood and trees will rejoice at the oaken-headed Britishness of His Majesty's Government's approach to woodland regeneration, which has proceeded in a manner worthy of the famous trading nation that voted to cut loose its own biggest market, as well as of the ruling class that will do anything for public health, public transport and public education except use public money to sustain them. A nominatively determinated environmental foot-soldier has discovered that the Forestry Commission is providing grants almost exclusively for planting new trees, without troubling itself about woodlands which are already mature, more diverse and better adapted to their local conditions. In keeping with Team Starmer's Trumpster-appeasing ethos, doubtless the diversity was the problem; and in keeping with the ethos of Change™ a spokesbeing responded to the possibility that too many trees are being planted with an assurance that the Government is committed to planting more trees.

Who Could Possibly Have Foreseen It?

Ain't it just always the way? You vote in a president with a track record of tanking the economy, persecuting minorities and abusing his authority, who promises four more years of tanking the economy, persecuting minorities and abusing his authority; and then somehow or other he goes and tanks the economy, persecutes minorities and abuses his authority. A hundred days into the head-tribble's second acknowledged term of supreme power, Trumpster fatigue appears to be setting in even among the faithful; which should at least put paid to all those facile comparisons with Hitler or Mussolini, both of whom were sufficiently astute to retain their personal popularity beyond the first three months. No less an authority than Supreme Leader Murdoch's Fox News has found almost sixty per cent of respondents who have taken the hint; which of course means that the Democrats can once more afford to sit back, promise nothing, and wait for the self-destruction around the middle of the third term.

Positive Energy

Though hardly important enough to merit a formal discussion, Britain's energy secretary has managed to scrounge a bit of a chat with an acting assistant something-or-other in the Trumpster administration and has emerged oozing with rah-rah for a Third Way between Team Starmer's managed climatic decline and the head-tribble's full-on ecocide. The head-tribble is enthused about building blanched radioactive pachyderms for private profit, and Team Starmer is more than happy to trumpet those as part of its transatlantic bridge-building. The US also wishes to export more gas, since not even the Trumpster's capacious bagginess can hope to contain the entirety of the head-tribble's planned eructations; and although the acting assistant something-or-other did not bother briefing the Milibeing on this matter, Team Starmer will no doubt be joyously eager to comply. Given the deplorable consequences of our previous reliance on Russian gas, it will certainly be jolly when our energy supplies are no longer subject to the whims of an authoritarian gangster régime with no particular interest in European security.

Cash in What Remains Behind

Even in matters merely cultural, patriotic pride has its uses; but the great British nation has rarely allowed sentiment to cloud its entrepreneurial instincts. National museums are sponsored by fossil fuel profiteers; sites charge fees for allowing the public access to its own heritage; and places of historic interest can be kept open only on condition that there is a financial interest to balance things out. The latest beneficiary of this happy trend is William Wordsworth, whose heirs are passing the begging-bowl around to try and preserve his house and gardens. There is scant prospect of Government help: in the unlikely event that literature meant more to Team Starmer than a convenient source of AI-feed, Wordsworth was at one point a sympathiser with French republicanism and seems to have dedicated much of his Kindle content to nature rather than to economic growth. Even his later acceptance of the Poet Laureate sinecure from a Conservative prime minister who gave his name to the British bobby seems hardly enough atonement for such a liberty.

Relevant Policies for Real Plebs

Now that Sir Edward Davey has rebuilt his party's base by falling into various bodies of water and trumpeting his status as a carer, the former Deputy Conservatives evidently feel emboldened to shake things up a bit in the policy department. Their proposed amendment to a bill now going through Parliament would make it an offence to emit excess gadget noise while on public transport or at stations and bus stops. The party spokesbeing on home affairs trilled that "everyone deserves to feel safe and respected on public transport" except, it goes without saying, for drivers, station staff and anyone inconsiderate enough to live where providing public transport is insufficiently profitable for the right sort of people. She also handily enumerated the legitimate uses of buses and trains, namely commuting towards employment or transporting the wage-serfs of tomorrow towards their compulsory training in economic usefulness. Self-evidently, journeys home or on holiday are the prerogative of hard-working families with the use of cars and helicopters. As one would expect of so moderate and sensible a solution to so significant a national issue, the Conservatives are prepared to give their support provided the statute is "properly enforced," presumably by armed guards with decibel counters and powers to impose discretionary on-the-spot custodial sentences. Whether Team Starmer is prepared to take the matter as seriously as it takes pot-holes, trans-bashing and the need to stamp out anti-entrepreneurial bat colonies remains as yet to be seen.

One People, One Voice, One Zion

The largest organisation representing British Jews has begun an investigation into the thirty-six signatories of an open letter in the Financial Times which voiced some fairly muted criticisms about the current phase of the crusade against the Palestinian Untermenschen. The objections were carefully couched, proclaiming the conduct of the Netanyahoo régime not so much bad in itself as tending to risk a diminution of the moral awe and reverence in which Zionism and the Righteous State are properly held. Yet even this circumspect approach ("might the Revolution perhaps be better served if you received sincere applause from a non-terrified party conference, Comrade Stalin?") was too fanatically deviationist for the Board of Deputies, which issued a statement denouncing the letter and convened its executive committee for a unanimous vote of impeachment, on the technical grounds that the signatories had illegitimately pretended to represent the views of the entire Board. In a move that would do credit to Team Starmer and many another rightist among the nations, the Board's chief executive fulminated in the pages of a newspaper that carrying legitimate debate into the pages of a newspaper is a short-sighted and dangerous precedent, apparently because it tends to imply that a debate is taking place despite the single and settled position of the even more legitimate community as a whole.

Frank Requiem

Francis has gone unto his rest,
His epitaph the age's best:
Although the good he did was slight,
The noises that he made were right.

Rome's ostentation he did shun,
And made his life a modest one;
So self-effacing, it is true,
That only Press and public knew.

He stooped to tolerate the gays
And not to judge their faggot ways,
Provided they aspired to love
The Lord Queer-Basher up above.

When conflict flared in divers lands,
He prayed for peace and wrung his hands;
And yet somehow, when he was done,
The wars would still be going on.

Indulgers of the priestly lust,
He treated as a Christian must:
When sin makes free with holy men,
Forgive and let them try again.

The Pontiff's gone to his reward
While praise resounds with one accord,
Because he knew what things to say
While never getting in the way.

Samuel Grimsnipe

The Rah-Rah and the Ha-Ha

Presumably inspired by this year's convenient coincidence of Easter Sunday with Adolf Hitler's birthday, His Majesty's Government is planning to resurrect the economy using the great man's famously successful method of independent rearmament. In part the decision is pragmatic enough, given the possibility that the Trumpster and his head-tribble may abandon NATO and not beg Britain to join them; and the judicial tribulations of Marine Le Pen have evidently made Team Starmer a bit queasy about relying on the beastly French. As always, and in accordance with the national religion, the main priorities of His Majesty's Government will undoubtedly consist in oozing concern for servicepersons and keeping war safe for our nation's plucky little profiteers. Still, whatever the chances of wog-bombing our way to economic growth, no true patriot will complain at the prospect of more British military efficiency in the tradition of Ajax and Astute; especially if the said patriot should happen to be blessed with a French sense of humour.

Maverick Diplomacy

Diplomacy in Trumpsterland has taken an encouraging turn with an independent initiative by an air passenger in Belize. The negotiator was an illegal migrant attempting to fly himself out of the country, which says much for the virtues of the master race as compared with those obdurate Latino drug orcs plaguing the Tangerine Emperor with demands for due process. Superbly in line with the general spirit of head-tribble foreign policy, the diplomatic incident featured a back-stabbing and terminated in a decisive action by an officer of the law, thereby inducing the US embassy to adopt a conciliatory and co-operative attitude. Doubtless the lessons of this encounter will not be lost upon the Trumpster's other little friends and neighbours.

Profitable Plebs

Salisbury Cathedral, which was the site of multifarious public derelictions even in the good old days, is to make a new bid for the favour of Mammon with a guided tour of the building's graffiti. Poetically described as "whispered messages from the past", the carved scrawls and doodles are naturally unattributable and largely indecipherable, their origins and purposes having been comprehensively drowned out by the trumpeting of the wealthy entombed. In continuing accord with Christian values, the cathedral still finds the humbler folk more praiseworthy when they are dead and monetised rather than animate and troublesome. Visitors are not encouraged to make their own additions to the building's rich and vibrant heritage, as current attitudes have hardened from the easy tolerance of the old heresy-hunters and scold-bridlers: "Marks are often found in very public areas, suggesting they were both accepted and acceptable," by contrast to the present day, in which graffiti are neither accepted nor acceptable and therefore can be found only in private collections.

Food and Whine

Retailers of culinary Britishness have pre-empted a summit next month with a letter reminding the beastly Euro-wogs what they're missing and ordering them to get rid of the red tape that has inexplicably arisen to clog the cogwheels of frictionless trade. Ever since the will of the people freed the UK from the Strasbrussels yoke, successive governments have repeatedly reminded the dictatorship how mean and nasty and spiteful it is to treat Britain as a country outside the EU just because Britain happens to be outside the EU; but alas, such moral and ethical heights remain inaccessible to the degenerate Continental mentality. Fortified with the squeals of a few shopkeepers and with several days of superior prosperity by grace of the Trumpster's tariff treat, not to mention the sheer force of personality that comes from being an acolyte of Managerial Centralism, Team Starmer will doubtless be hoping for a more respectful reception.

Lowe Standard

Having been suspended from a party of bullies and thugs over allegations of thuggishness and bullying, the brilliant Rupert Lowe is now huffing and puffing about a prospective libel case against a party of liars on the grounds that they have said the thing that is not. It is of course entirely plausible that Lowe was deported from the parliamentary cadres of the Farage Falange for the crime of lèse-majesté against the strutting Caudillo, and that any actual bullying he may have done is no more than a happy coincidence; and the plucky little fellow is determined to rescue his reputation from whatever damage it has suffered by no longer being amicably associated with the likes of Lee Anderson and Richard Tice. Despite his little misadventure with the woke net-zero mind virus, Lowe is still enough of a Faragean realist to imagine he has the sort of reputation that a person of honour would consider worth preserving.

Res Publica

Some salutary lessons in the meaning of free speech have been dispensed by taser-wielding enforcers in the Christian state of Georgia, where a Trumpster groupie was holding a rah-rah in a town hall. Although the gathering was in no way political, let alone a protest, the speaker's pre-scripted paean to head-tribble governance was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, who had somehow infiltrated the congregation despite such libertarian measures as demanding that attenders write down their addresses, show their papers at the door, and refrain from speaking to reporters. There were further demonstrations outside by people who felt disinclined to be made quite that great just yet; and the Preacher of the House of Representatives has urged an end to personal appearances at town halls in case of democratic overdose.

Ethically Energised

Rumbles of moral misgiving from energy profiteers may be expected in four-point harmony with squeals of fiscal indignation from hard-working families at the tentative suggestion by the energy regulator that more affluent households might make a larger contribution to maintaining and improving other people's energy supplies. A consultation is afoot to find out whether the energy industry cares where its money comes from and to what extent the rich feel inclined to ease the burden of the poor; although the consultation is still in its early stages and still has plenty of time for metamorphosis into an inquiry as to how far corporations should incentivise the poor to thrift and whether larger bills for people who can afford them really would mean the end of the world and British values and everything else that makes real people's lives worth enriching. Whatever conclusions are eventually reached, Team Starmer will doubtless subject them to appropriate moderation and sensibilitisation towards the vital goal of appeasing the Farage Falange, which is unlikely to tolerate any reduction in British bills from which a single Other might possibly stand to benefit.

Paper Chemtrails

Retailers in the realm of the Trumpster are doing their part for domestic economic toxicity by issuing paper receipts saturated with a poisonous chemical. The stuff is part of a coating on the paper that helps the ink develop, apparently because American ink has trouble developing when applied to an alien substance such as paper; and any purchaser indiscreet enough to hold such a paper in their bare hands for more than ten seconds is at risk of hormone disruption, cognitive damage, cancer and other gifts to the healthcare industry. Doubtless to the head-tribble and its relatives the chemical is no more than a convenient condiment; but lesser consumers are being advised either to brave the risks associated with forgoing the receipt, or else to give retailers their email address and brave whatever hormone disruption and cognitive damage may come with the electronic version.

Fit for Purpose

Ten years on, the Modern Slavery Act is functioning much as one would expect of a landmark touted by Theresa May: namely as a major facilitator of the hostile environment for victims of modern slavery. Under Tumbledown Tessie's pet statute, trafficking victims are choosing not to accept the grudging pittance that British decency affords them for fear that British tolerance will deport them back into their traffickers' clutches. Nor do these qualms derive merely from primitive foreign instincts or a reluctance to accept that some cultures are better than others: between the beginning of 2020 and last autumn, two and a half thousand people were deported to Albania and Vietnam after being designated likely or definite victims of trafficking. Perhaps best of all in view of the current economic realignment, these are the kind of exports on which not even the Trumpster and his head-tribble would consider slapping a tariff.

Epidermal Security

Both the US Department of Hyperactive Spookery and the Texas Department of Proper Skin appear to be circulating pictures of random tattoos as telltale stigmata of Venezuelan tendencies, with the result that Britain's long-hallowed role as sidekick to the World Cop has taken on an inspiring new dimension. A Derbyshire man was surprised to find his personal tattoo conscripted into the war against Latinoid drug orcs, and is now worried that a planned family holiday in Miami might culminate in a side-trip to Guantánamo at the head-tribble's pleasure; although such worries are no doubt unfounded, since in cases such as this the head-tribble is known to favour El Salvador. Meanwhile, it remains as yet unclear whether the Trumpster administration's reading of Leviticus chapter nineteen will prompt similarly zealous interventions against the simultaneous wearing of linens and woollens.

Trouble in Embryo

Readers of a certain vintage may recall that the Reverend Blair once raised the possibility of detecting criminal and terroristic tendencies in the unborn and, if not aborting the culprits (the Reverend Blair is a Papist, though at that time presumably still a covert one), then at least enabling them to start life with an appropriate black mark on their forthcoming biometric ID card. Given the moral supremacy of the Reverend Blair as both electoral trifectista and enthusiastic wog-bomber, Team Starmer has naturally taken up the concept of anticipatory guilt as realised by the Fishy Rishi administration, though under the tactful rubric of sharing data to improve risk assessment as opposed to homicide prediction project. Utilising the skills of its in-house psychic, Britain's leading liberal newspaper has ascertained that the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration hopes to boost public safety, and almost certainly does not consider throwing taxpayers' money at some pet algorithm-spouters to be a moderate and sensible end in itself. Since the project is for research purposes only, the human data will not be anonymised and the Ministry for Profitable Incarceration will almost certainly not be passing on individuals' names and their associated disabilities or mental health conditions to anyone who might care to inspect them in return for some minor and purely coincidental corporate consideration.

United in Principle

Having been rejected by the electorate in favour of more of the same, the Conservatives have now been rebuffed by the Farage Falange after the Dear Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition categorically ruled out almost any deals or pacts that are insufficiently clandestine, back-stairs or opportunistic. The strutting Caudillo draped himself across his high horse in response to the assertion that local councillors of different parties routinely form coalitions when it's "right for people in their local area," or far-right as the case may be. Alas, the Farage Falange has no intention of hobbling its performance by shacking up with a self-made caricature of the Farage Falange, associating itself with a party offering more of the same and thereby compromising the credibility of its own radical offer of more of the same with knobs on.

The Taming of the Tempest

In a rare access of moral fibre, the BBC has restored and returned to public display a sculpture of Ariel and Prospero which was vandalised three years ago. Since Ariel and Prospero are the creations of a notorious Jew-baiter, the return of the piece to Broadcasting House risks provoking the wrath of Team Starmer, the Jewish Chronicle, and all the other bastions of that moderate and sensible philosemitism which unconditionally, unequivocally and fanatically equates the Jewish people with the State of Israel. In this case, the BBC presumably took courage from the soothing fact of the sculpture's creator being a Roman Catholic convert whose sex life was practically piquant enough to qualify him for the priesthood.

Filthy Foreign Freedoms

Is there no limit to the low, bestial cunning of the beastly Strasbrussels Euro-wogs? Some enemies of the people at the European Court of Human Rights have pulled a heinous double-bluff by ruling in favour of parliamentary sovereignty and the Waily Toryguff, and against an unfrocked clothing salesman who was, and no doubt remains, so innocent of the allegations against him that he took out a gagging order to prevent their becoming generally known. One of the more animate occupants of the House of Lords then used parliamentary privilege, as enshrined in a law imposed in 1689 by a king from quite near Strasbrussels, to make the allegations public. Allegedly the great man groped a woman and then paid her off, and also displayed robust British humour in referring to a black employee "throwing spears in the jungle;" and with a circumspection befitting the holder of a knighthood bestowed by the Reverend Blair, the persecuted innocent has denied any racist or sexist behaviour that did not fall strictly within the letter of the law.

Nonentity Seeks Role as Vacuum Salesman

Outer space is difficult to enter, ruinously expensive to live in, fundamentally hostile to human life, and disproportionately populated by the US military; so it should hardly come as a surprise that a Conservative Party has-been is having a bit of a blather about it. The parliamentary expenses claimant for Mid-Norfolk, who served as science minister for a prime minister who was too oafish to know what science was and then for another who was too rich to care, has decided on a rah-rah new role for Britain in the jolly old universe. Since there are a lot of those satellite whatsits up there and nobody sensible is in control of them, the parliamentary expenses claimant for Mid-Norfolk has undergone one of those Damascene reversals of principle that so often occur to people who were once in office and are now out of it, and has become a champion of regulation. As envisaged by the visionary member, Britain's rah-rah new role will be a combination of traffic warden and waste disposal custodian, damping down the buccaneering and making sure all participants in the space race drive on the appropriate side of the road.

The Deal with the Art

Artists are notoriously an unworldly lot; at least where the privilege of patronage has passed from a refined and educated aristocracy to a boorish and sanctimonious mercantile class, and thereby rendered merit essentially irrelevant to success. Even the professional dauber who produced an official portrait of the Trumpster and his head-tribble seems to lack the streak of hard-headed realism necessary to a court hireling in the age of the salesman-emperor. Possibly her British background has left her with an unfortunate susceptibility to American delusions of meritocracy; even so, it is remarkable that any artist in 2019 could enter into a deal with the Trumpster and expect the result to be judged dispassionately, consistently and according to the facts.

Transatlantic Values

No government is perfect, and even an administration fuelled by the cranial defecations of a rabid radioactive head-tribble may occasionally fall into error. So it has proved in the case of a US resident who was deported to El Salvador on grounds that even the Trumpster administration seems to consider erroneous. El Salvador, which has a history of human rights abuses despite its history of US-backed death squads, has been repurposed as a Rwanda for those undesirables whom the Trumpster administration can't deport elsewhere, and the beneficiary in this case is a Salvadorean national; but apparently his arrest was not motivated by any reasonable grounds such as rumoured proximity to drug gangs, or tattoos judged insufficiently Nazi, or all them beaners just looking so darned alike to one another.

By contrast, British decency continues in the tried and traditional manner as the Ministry for Wog Disposal informs an Afghan asylum seeker that she will be safe with the Taliban because of her work helping women through agencies backed by western governments. Clearly she will have built up a good support network, as there are plenty of other people in Afghanistan who are women; and if nice people had anything to fear from the Taliban, why would Britain and her allies have left the Taliban in charge?

Damned Seoul

South Korea's constitutional court has betrayed its American heritage and justified whatever tariffs the Trumpster and his head-tribble may see fit to impose by upholding the impeachment of the country's president. Unlike the Trumpster's Epiphany Putsch, Yoon Suk Yeol's attempt to impose martial law did not result in any deaths or injuries; which implies a fatal streak of un-Americanism that may have contributed to the failure of the enterprise. Instead of doubling down, Yoon's political party offered its apologies to the nation, thereby demonstrating that the Far East still has better manners than either the master race or the beastly French. For his own part, Yoon himself pledged to offer up thoughts and prayers for the republic he tried to undermine, and thus brought to the proceedings a small, redeeming touch of honest American pragmatism.

Treasure in Heaven

As happens surprisingly often, some self-proclaimed followers of Christ seem to have drifted into the habit of taking thought for the morrow. The Church of England, which as one of the country's richest landlords naturally cannot afford to maintain its own buildings, may also be in for some trouble among the labour force that has been failing to fill them up. An action group of vicars appears intent upon a radically non-literal interpretation of the Saviour's commandment to live like birds or lilies, and to wander the world without a spare coat while preaching the gospel and performing conjuring tricks. Certain members go so far as to imply that man does not live by the word of God alone, and even that one should labour and nonetheless ask for some reward other than that of knowing that one does His will. Fortunately, with the Church's usual promptitude where Mammon is involved, the General Synod will be seeking the Deity's advice on the question this summer.

Weak Reed

In keeping with Team Starmer's programme of change, the environment secretary has continued fighting a Conservative legal case against cleaning up a river, and has now lost it. An anglers' association took the Government and the Environment Agency to court after a decade in the usual channels, and thereby induced the Government to produce a plan which may have erred a little too much on the side of administrative practicality by, for example, omitting to inconvenience the local sewage pumpers by compelling them to limit their discharges. A high court enemy of the people found that the Government had shown an unlawful degree of flexibility by not specifying any concrete measures to achieve legally binding targets, and Team Starmer's commitment to Conservative policy has ensured Labour's ownership of the subsequent humiliation in the appeal court.

Surgical Strike

Mere months into their second term of office, the Trumpster and his head-tribble are already scaling down their ambitions and thereby potentially storing up trouble with the Musk manbaby, the gun lobby and others who lust after greatness. In seeking the death penalty for the man charged with assassinating a health insurance company CEO, the Trumpster's attorney general hopes to make America safe again, which doesn't sound much like the old frontier spirit that endorsed the Epiphany Putsch of 2021. Still, there is a bracing sense of realism in the lack of any discussion about a plea of diminished responsibility, indicating that prosecution and defence both concur in the sensible view that you don't have to be insane to want to kill a healthcare profiteer.