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 parlianentary 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.