Forced Perspective

By comparison with the cleansing of Gaza and Lebanon, and possibly also with the economic achievements of the Persian Crusade, Tsar Vladimir's ongoing war crime in Ukraine remains a model of fair play and humane restraint. Hence few will be surprised that the jury at the sixty-first Venice Biennale has made an exhibition of itself over Russia's participation in the festival. The jury resigned after the European Commission stated its intention to cut off funding and the Italian culture ministry sent in a team of interrogators, because Russia had turned up again after missing the last couple and had been permitted a pavilion, provoking squeals of moral indignation all round. By contrast, the participation of the Righteous State and its arbiter of taste, the Kingdom of the Trumpster, has thus far been greeted with artistic equanimity.

Some Have Crassness Thrust Upon Them

The Farage Falange Gauleiter of Scotland, who is so aspiring a public servant that he took a week's holiday in the middle of an election campaign to sail one of his boats, has been Trumpsterising the little people with information about how wealthy he is. Amid much edifying talk of houses and hobbies, he claimed to have employed a great many people over a forty-year career, during which his annual tax payments have averaged rather less than two-thirds of the cost of his most recently purchased toy mansion. No wonder the Farage Falange Gauleiter of Scotland considers his privacy sacred when it comes to the details of his financial doings. Even so, his half-dozen homes demonstrate clearly and conclusively that there is no particular housing crisis for anyone who matters; so the leader of the SNP criticised the great man's remarks in true moderate and sensible fashion, as potentially not very effective public relations.

Holy Smoke

Serenity in the modern world is notoriously difficult to achieve; which may help to explain the activities of twenty-three allegedly felonious monks now helping Sri Lankan police with their inquiries. Twenty-two of them had been on a plain-clothes holiday in Bangkok, and returned carrying a hundred and ten kilograms of quality cannabis concealed like a higher truth behind the worldly walls of their luggage. The twenty-third supposedly organised the spiritual retreat and had told his brothers that all those packages were a donation. Should they all end up sentenced to a lifetime or more of community service, their orange robes may at least save the Sri Lankan penal system some jumpsuit expenses.

Royal Diplomacy

Never let it be said that His Majesty's Government always defers to the White House. In the wake of the latest tribute to the Second Amendment, Team Starmer has reiterated its confidence in the royal sock-puppet while prudently declining to permit the Trumpster and his head-tribble any chance at a public dressing-down over the mainland's lukewarm support for the Persian Crusade, or even at some genial, statesmanlike banter about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Gentleman, and what he might be up to nowadays. The two monarchs will pose together for the cameras, but no pretence of substantive discussion will be required, and the eminently qualified Yvette Cooper will be present to leap into action as necessary and ensure that nothing of substance is said.

Manifold Difficulties

Shareholders at British Petroleum have voted against restricting their own rights; presumably because capitalist investors tend to have a more rational view of their self-interest than either the great British public or the corporate serfdom in the Kingdom of the Trumpster. The board of directors, led by the AI-bot-named Albert Manifold, has abandoned the greenwashing commitments of the previous administration led by the unimprovably-monickered Bernard Looney; the board therefore wished to avoid any obligation to give an account of its climate-vandalising activities. With minds doubtless concentrated by the share price roller-coaster resulting from the Persian Crusade, investors expressed annoyance at the board's preference for shutting down debate rather than adapting to reality. It certainly is a good thing that the directors of Royal Britannic Albion Holdings plc would never resort to tactics so crude, immoderate and unsensible.

Cruel to be Kind

Some rich idiot has been squashed to death in Gabon after surprising some female elephants with a calf. The mighty hunter was an American millionaire on an antelope-busting trip, and an acquaintance was quoted in the Rothermere Daily Stürmer to the effect that all his kills were registered as "conservation in culling animal numbers." There are more than twenty million American millionaires in the world, any dozen of whom probably do more human and environmental damage than the remaining half-million elephants and hundred and fifty thousand yellow-backed duikers; nevertheless, it remains as yet unclear whether the rich idiot's demise will be registered as conservational culling also. It is to be hoped, at least, that none of the elephants was unduly inconvenienced by the surprise.

Targeted Savings

Those who fear that His Majesty's Government lacks the capacity for joined-up thinking will rejoice at Team Starmer's latest purge of antisemitic tendencies from the hallowed haunts of Whitehall. Before his recent martyrdom on the altar of prime-ministerial self-preservation, the sainted Olly Robbins further discharged his sacred duty of protecting the Government from anything it doesn't want to know about; in this case by shutting down the department at the Ministry for Wogs, Beads and Trinkets which monitors Israeli war crimes. Evidently the ministerial process of deciding that Russia and Iran are worse, and that arms sales to the Righteous State must therefore continue, is now to be fully automated; doubtless to the incalculable benefit of international law, economic growth and Holocaust remembrance.

Straight Talk from the Grown-Ups

Having spent several years pandering relentlessly to the Farage Falange demographic, Team Starmer is naturally wagging its finger at the Farage Falange. Apparently someone has discovered that various cadres among the legions of the forthright have made unsuitably racist remarks, and Team Starmer seems to imagine that this will be some sort of electoral turn-off for the great British public, which has lavished upon the Falange and its strutting Caudillo the sort of favourability levels it once reserved for the equally statesmanlike Boris Johnson. The depth and perspicacity of Team Starmer's political judgement can perhaps best be gauged from the fact that it has chosen this week of all weeks, with its CEO mired in new and entirely gratuitous strata of ordure from the free pass granted Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring, to lecture the Falange on vetting procedures.

Alaska Imperilled Yet Again

Having thus far failed to antagonise enough allies this week, the Kingdom of the Trumpster has begun a squabble with South Korea, whose government is insufficiently antagonistic towards the North and is threatening to treat the demilitarised zone as if it belonged to Korea rather than to the USA. A South Korean minister publicly identified a supposed nuclear site in the People's Republic, which the Americans wanted kept secret despite having spent the last few decades squealing about the existential threat from the North's independent nuclear deterrent. Since a deterrent cannot deter if kept secret, and since the Korean War is still officially going on, presumably the information was classified in order to prevent the North's disincentivising the Trumpster and his head-tribble against pacifying the peninsula with any Israeli-style ceasefires.

Too Brown to be Racist

Heckled over Team Starmer's migrant-bashing and refugee-kicking, the Minister for Wog Disposal very forthrightly and Britishly played the race card, proclaiming with what she presumably imagines to be salt-of-the-earth sweariness that as a brown woman she has every right to malign and deport whomever she dashed well pleases. Although the heckler was himself a member of the swarming hordes, he had internalised white liberal values and was therefore no better than some antisemitic Jew denying the Holocaust under the transparent pretext of criticising the policies of the Righteous State. Patriots with legitimate and understandable concerns will rejoice that the Minister has not only the policies of the Reverend Tommyrot Yaxleyson and the Farage Falange, but their manners as well.

Unacceptable Levels of Violence

Amid the ongoing Israeli rampage in Lebanon, criminal investigations have been launched and severe measures promised in the case of a soldier who was photographed assaulting a Palestinian with a sledgehammer. The attack brought forth squeals of moral indignation from America and Rome, as well as from the government of the Righteous State itself; for the very righteous reason that the Palestinian in question was no mere civilian or refugee, but a Roman Catholic graven image depicting a noted supporter and enabler of United States policy.

The Great American Brain

Even in the United States, not everyone can enjoy the privilege of having thoughts and prayers diarrhoeically defecated into their cranium by a rabid radioactive head-tribble; but the Trumpster's controller and its colleague the Kennedy brainworm have announced that some lucky citizens will soon have the next best thing. The Tangerine Emperor as the new Timothy Leary may seem a bit of a leap; but an executive order has been signed to facilitate access to research and treatment based on psychedelic drugs. Apparently the choices of American voters, to say nothing of American church-goers, indicate that the nation is as yet insufficiently delusional; and as one would expect, the immediate beneficiary of the Trumpster's hallucinatory liberalism is likely to be the Christian state of Texas, whose unfortuante reactions to direct contact with reality have been evident for some little time.

It Could Have Happened to Anybody

As anyone with a nuance of moderation in their sensibility will have realised, there are all sorts of perfectly grown-up reasons why the CEO of Team Starmer might not have been informed that Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring was a security risk. The obvious one is that the great man's appointment as sucker-up in chief to the Trumpster and his head-tribble had been announced before the vetting was complete, and anyone attempting to undermine that decision would have risked losing their job and being denounced as a terrorist, an antisemite and a practitioner of extremist student politics. Another, not unrelated reason is that the Prime Minister at the time, Morgan McSweeney, was a protégé of his lordship and had no doubt personally interred some of the bodies that might just happen to come unburied if the great man did not get his way.

But let us not be uncharitable. Perhaps the simplest and most human reason for the lack of communication is that the civil servants in charge of the vetting would be aware of the CEO of Team Starmer having been more or less connected with the Labour Party between 1997 and 2010; that during that glorious period he presumably read the newspapers now and again; that Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring had been very publicly ejected from two previous roles because he was too crooked for even the Blairites to brazen out; and that the CEO of Team Starmer had gone ahead and announced his ambassadorship anyway. Given such political sure-footedness, it's difficult to see how the results of a mere vetting process could have made much difference in any case.

Phantom Crimes Are Still Crimes

Britain's mother of parliaments has passed a law to end the prosecution of women who terminate their own pregnancies, and also to pardon, if not exonerate, those who have done so in the past. Given that the police are still arresting people under a statute which the High Court has declared unlawful, it remains as yet unclear whether they intend to halt current investigations into abortion cases merely because anyone convicted is likely to be immediately and automatically pardoned. Abortion-related arrests are apparently still being made, though not quite so many as under the law against graphological terrorism; so not many prison cells are likely to be freed up for all those Quaker grandmothers and suchlike enemies of the state.

Blessed are They that Urge

After several days during which she has evidently had more important things to do, the Archbishop of Canterbury has expressed solidarity with the Pope's courageous declaration that God has taken a dislike to war and somebody ought to do something about it. Although the heir of Urban II, Eugenius III, Gregory VIII and Innocent III explicitly limited his concern to the Christian East, his comments have been interpreted as criticism of the Persian Crusade; so perhaps her Grace found it necessary to check with her own Supreme Governor and ensure that her codicil would cast no pall of heresy over his forthcoming state visit to the kingdom of the Trumpster. The Archbishop herself will soon be heading to Rome, in order to join with the Pope in demonstrating unto the Saviour the error of His commandment at Matthew 6 vi, so doubtless matters will become clearer after that.

A Necessary Update

While criticising the Righteous State may be morally equivalent to Holocaust denial, there is clearly room for flexibility when it comes to certain other aspects of the Second World War. Shortly after Mr Churchill and his American chums had saved the world and liberated Auschwitz, the political and military leaders of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire were tried and sentenced on charges including conspiracy to wage wars of aggression. Fortunately for Mr Churchill's Israeli heirs and their own American chums, Britain's present Chancellor has overruled these verdicts, pronouncing military aggression an error rather than a crime. Were it not for the damage to business interests, Team Starmer would no doubt find the Persian Crusade legitimate and understandable; and were it not for the likely loss of networking opportunities should life's little ironies cause another Labour administration to toddle into another unpopular military quagmire, His Majesty's Government would probably consider the whole adventure praiseworthy.

College Politics

Various states of the US are conspiring to overthrow the electoral college, which can cause presidential elections to hinge on a few swing states, and can occasionally put someone in the White House on a minority of the popular vote. This century's beneficiaries from the latter anomaly have been the Trumpster, his head-tribble, and the alcoholically demented chimpanzee who fronted for the late President Cheney. It is to be hoped that the Democratic Party will manage a little better on the issue of electoral reform than did the mainland's Liberal Democrats, who touted proportional representation as their flagship policy for some years and then casually threw it out for the sake of a special relationship with the hard right. In the US as on the mainland, it also remains to be seen whether any amount of proportionality can help much when the only choices on offer are between business as usual and fascism, or between variants of business as usual distinguishable mainly by their corporate branding.

Imitation of Christ

Even Christians, who proudly outsource their personal morality to a megalomaniacal Bronze Age djinn, occasionally draw a line somewhere; and for some of them the Trumpster and his head-tribble crossed that line by exhibiting themselves in the guise of the Saviour. After squeals of righteous indignation from various saintly sorts who have been fine with the administration's miracles from authoritarianism at home to aggression abroad, the blasphemous eidolon has now been removed. In fairness to the Trumpster and his head-tribble, this cancel-culture commotion is merely one more example of Christian ignorance concerning their own imaginary friends. Whatever His inadequacies in the all-important realms of pocket-picking and pussy-grabbing, Jesus threatened torture and genocide for everyone who disagreed with Him, offered purely transactional love and forgiveness, and was probably not fluent in the English language; so the implied comparison is hardly a far-fetched one.

The Law Decrees that You Feel Safer Already

Despite a recent ruling by some enemies of the people in the High Court, the Metropolitan Police and the Minister for Britishness Enforcement continue to cover themselves in glory over Palestine Action. Not content to rest on her lily-white laurels as recipient of the Reverend Tommyrot Yaxleyson Compassionate Award for Wog Disposal, the Minister strives tirelessly to prove herself worthy of the government whose moderate and sensible priorities conferred an ambassadorship on Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring while suspending Diane Abbott for implying that skin colour might sometimes be a factor in racism. Thus patriots will rejoice, if they know what is good for them, that while various facilitators of the Gaza cleansing and fellow-travellers on the Persian Crusade remain at large at the taxpayer's expense, over five hundred more beastly terrorists have been arrested for the heinous crime of writing words.

Diplomatic Language

The glories of the American astronaut programme began with a military officer performing a Cold War stunt in a craft named Friendship 7, and the revived programme's current triumph has continued that happy Orwellian tradition. Pioneers for the militarisation of the moon have been hailed as "ambassadors for humanity," while the Trumpster and his head-tribble have celebrated victory over China by announcing cuts of twenty-three per cent to NASA's overall budget, and double that for its science budget. The same administrator who spouted the guff about ambassadors said everything would be just fine, while the chief of space policy at the Planetary Society protested that the measures are "discordant." Since the measures are absolutely coherent in terms of benefiting private profiteers and removing such time-wasting, un-Christian obstacles as scientific inquiry and the prevention of martyrdom through rapid unscheduled disassembly events, anyone working for an organisation founded by Carl Sagan surely ought to know better.

What Justice Looks Like

After a mere forty-eight years, the Christian state of Texas has condescended to formalise the non-execution of a long-term death row inmate. Being a brain-damaged schizophrenic with mental retardation and the racial handicap, and doubtless with the concomitant degree of wealth that tends to make such people more personally culpable than their betters, the man has had no legal representation in three decades, and has therefore remained in the queue for the ultimate justice despite having been found intellectually ineligible for the privilege relatively soon after his conviction. He is now likely to be re-sentenced to life imprisonment which, given his prospects if put out onto the streets, is probably about as merciful as the Christian state of Texas could be.

Torn Between Two Lovers

Many are the moral dilemmas that arise for those in charge, and a particularly horny one has emerged to toss Team Starmer. A major infoslop merchant has decided not to help His Majesty's Government inflate the AI bubble any further just now, and has halted plans to automate the great British intellect and do for the service economy what the sainted Thatcher did for the miners. Since His Majesty's Government has been approving phantom projects with all the alacrity of the National Johnson handing out contracts to pandemic profiteers, the inevitable squeals about excessive regulation are presumably AI-generated as a matter of corporate routine; but the complaint about high energy prices does have some merit. Thus Team Starmer finds itself caught between the equally exalted and yet conflicting interests of the infoslop merchant and the energy profiteers: a cruel choice for a government so manifestly and sincerely enamoured of both.

Crusade Camp Follower

Having fulminated indignantly over the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism and the recklessness of the mad mullahs in daring to retaliate when under military attack, the CEO of Team Starmer has toddled off to the Middle East in order to wax lyrical upon the virtuous moderation of the head-chopping House of Saud and the civilised restraint of the Netanyahoo's onslaught in Lebanon. He is also expected to thank Britain's plucky little servicepersons for their anticipated contribution towards keeping the Strait of Hormuz only slightly less open than it was before Britain's favourite ally launched the assault that got it so efficiently closed. Given that the Trumpster and his head-tribble regard negotiations as a holding action between military assaults, and that the Righteous State is already implementing its habitual ceasefire policy of not ceasing fire, Britain's petro-chums will obviously be jolly reassured that the CEO of Team Starmer is there to help sort things out.

His Own Man

Those who accuse Team Starmer of parroting the Farage Falange will have egg on the other side of their faces in the wake of the latest peace offering by the Trumpster and his head-tribble. A forthright slab of social-media diplomacy has promised the death of a civilisation unless Iran does as it's told, and the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange was among those who reacted unfavourably. By contrast, the CEO of Team Starmer has not reacted at all, except to continue the mainland's facilitation of wink-wink defensive operations. So now we know: even the CEO of Team Starmer can disagree with the Farage Falange now and then, provided the latter has balked at openly condoning a credible threat of genocide.

Vital Necessities for Hard-Working Families

It has long been evident that Team Starmer is in no particular hurry to re-establish close links with the EU, except in the sacred causes of wog-bombing and refugee-kicking, for fear of alienating the vital Farage Falange demographic. Nevertheless, the moderate grown-upness of the centrist sensibility dictates that Team Starmer shall not utilise our great nation's liberation from the beastly Euro-wogs towards any goal so imprudent as taking back control of trade policy. The administration that condoned the Gaza cleansing and took eighteen months to decide that reducing child poverty might be just about permissible is hardly likely to balk at animal cruelty; so a pledge to ban imports of fur and foie gras has joined the ever-growing heap of manifesto commitments that would constitute too much of a change. Although a majority of Britons would prefer their famously sovereign parliament to stop the import of products involving cruelty to animals, the party of the National Johnson found that idea even less palatable than the thought of kowtowing to the Strasbrussels dictatorship; which clearly settles the question as far as Team Starmer is concerned. Of course, Team Starmer is often accused of being directionless and of ducking important issues; and it is to be hoped that the policy of standing shoulder to shoulder with all working people who consume fur coats and foie gras will expose this liverish canard once and for all.

Open Discussion Within the Borders of Reason

For the truly plucky entrepreneur there is no such word as enough, and certainly receipt of the Tommyrot Yaxleyson Compassionate Award for Wog Disposal has induced no trace of complacency in His Majesty's Government. Hard-working Team Starmer flunkeys are working hard consulting backbenchers for estimates of just how much migrant-bashing would constitute the bare minimum to save their seats. A backbencher of comparatively recent vintage, Angela Rayner doubtless had almost every intention of doing the right honourable thing before being punted from the Cabinet over suspected grift, and has now helped to set the limits of the debate by denouncing the proposed wog-baiting measures as unworthy of the master race. Any lesser figures whose responses go beyond such sensible moderation can presumably look forward to the same tar-and-feather purging as those who demand lower levels of racism than Team Starmer's policy-makers in the Farage Falange.

Void of Victory

What triumph for the race of Man,
With fuel short, in time of war,
To shoot some muscle in a can
Where no tinned meat has gone before.

What new hopes for the species lie
In this high venture, whereby soon
We'll poke the Chinese in the eye
And start to privatise the Moon.

Dianha von Braun

Healing and Dealing

Rumours that the special relationship may be at an end are clearly premature, as His Majesty's Government has happily joined the Trumpster and his head-tribble in yet another assault on Britain's enemies in the public sector. The despised National Health Service, which all three major parties and the Conservatives have been diligently kicking for the past four decades, is likely to pay the price for a drug deal whose terms are so favourable that Team Starmer has kept them secret until the crucifixion and resurrection of the Saviour and the climax of the national chocolate egg crisis were available to provide a distraction. Some of the Trumpster's tariffs on British exports will be skirted, at least until the head-tribble's whims decree otherwise; but the costs are still estimated substantially to exceed any savings for the mainland. Presumably His Majesty's Government intends making up the shortfall with money saved on resident doctors; although it remains as yet unclear how far such savings will run into the necessary thousands of millions. Fortunately, the deal has the approval of drug company bosses and the ministers they pay for, so no doubt all will turn out well where it matters.

Constructive Engagement

Unpatriotic and pessimistic elements are whispering that the British public's idea of what constitutes a legitimate and understandable concern may go a little beyond the migrant hordes massing on our shores and the transsexuals taking over our toilets. A former flunkey to the abject Gordon Brown even implied that many people don't feel their lives are improving despite Team Starmer having spent the last year and a half talking about very little else. Several people and Sir Edward Davey have noted the likely severe consequences of the Persian Crusade for the global economy, and have accused Team Starmer of failing to make due provision.

In fact, the Minister for Lesser Breeds has followed up her government's latest cuts to international aid by suddenly discovering that Africa and Asia might have problems of their own, and has responded by convening a blah-blah to discuss how best to lay the blame on Iran. Much as progressive voters cunningly moved elsewhere after Team Starmer purged them, so the mad mullahs have caused consternation with their unaccountably military retaliation to a military attack. The consensus among the moderate and sensible global community seems to be that somebody ought to do something about it; which will indubitably help matters no end.

Shared Values, Decent Arabs

The United Arab Emirates, whose human rights violations are of the tolerable-to-meritorious variety so often found on the Arabian peninsula, have imprisoned several British citizens and a few dozen nonentities because they supposedly shared images of collateral damage from the Persian Crusade. His Majesty's Government, which locks people up for writing words, is clearly in a position to sympathise, and has discreetly declined to say anything against the arrests or to provide effective help to the nefarious migrants. Since the realm of the Trumpster and his head-tribble is proving such an unreliable partner, Team Starmer is to be congratulated on its promptitude in finding another authoritarian petro-state on which to expend its world-beating powers of sycophancy.