Historical Currency

Since viewings of the Bayeux Tapestry have to be strictly rationed in order to minimise damage from the light, the Osborne Museum of Britishness has naturally chosen to put on a free show for an apocalyptic preacher and squillionaire Trumpster string-puller. Alongside his support for divine illumination and fluorescent orange tribblemobiles, Peter Thiel is the founder of Palantir, the company charged by His Majesty's Government with the sacred mission of converting the National Health Service into a profit-making data farm. Thiel's access to the tapestry was apparently purchased with no financial contribution to the museum, which throws an intriguing light on Osborne's continuing fiscal competence; and given that Osborne is an acolyte of Margaret Thatcher, whose defining economic policy was the sale of things that didn't belong to her, it is to be hoped that the French security forces are not too distracted by the pleasures of migrant-bashing to keep an eye on things.

A Most Deserving Case

Such is the zeal of the Trumpster's Immigrant Curtailment Enforcementizers that not even curdled child stars of the far right are immune from their purifying attentions. A certain Milo Yiannopoulos, whose Twitter persona was so reasonable that it had to be reinstated by Elon Musk, and who once offered himself as an example of the positive effects upon the personality of teenage sexual abuse, has been removed from the realm of the head-tribble on grounds of having over-stayed his no doubt rapturous welcome. Since Yiannopoulos is a perfervid promoter of migrant-bashing in all its forms, this turn of events has presumably not altogether displeased him; although it is a little surprising that he waited to be denounced by a fellow fascist rather than flinging himself joyously upon the mercy of the squads. Being neither defenceless nor harmless, he was not summarily executed, and has instead been dumped in Britain as one more mark of respect from our greatest ally.

Pecuniam Sequimur

Since the national religion decrees that education is a cost and not an investment, Britain's university industry is naturally looking abroad for funds, and a plan has duly been approved for academics from the University of Exeter to teach mercenary master's degrees in "applied security and strategy" for the Government's favourite Islamic fundamentalist head-choppers. The House of Saud's attitudes towards migrants, wog-bombing and law and order are all comfortingly British, and the assault course blends "academic depth with practical application" which will doubtless come in jolly useful for the accustomed British-standard maintenance of peace abroad and liberty at home. A spokesbeing for the University of Exeter proclaimed that the transaction was assessed "on academic and ethical grounds, through a process separate from budget planning," and that certainly ought to set everyone's mind at rest. Whether it was those same academical ethicals who decided to embrace the infoslop revolution by sacking a hundred and fifty staff from the humanities and social sciences remains as yet unclear.

Tactical Retrenchment

Having defected from Team Starmer on a point of high principle cunningly camouflaged as a maritime rodentine evacuation manoeuvre, the Chancellor seems to be reining himself in a bit. The point of contention was a commitment to spend even more on wog-bombing, since the Ministry in question is one of those rare government departments that become self-evidently more efficient the more taxpayers' money is thrown at them. Doubtless owing to a loftier and more disinterested perspective on what is good for the country, the Chancellor has now decided that mugging other ministries to fund a few more procurement farces may have to wait until next year. Still, however much the Chancellor may disagree with himself, his small change is balanced by some encouraging signs of continuity with the previous incumbent; notably in the unswerving dedication to the Fiscal Rules of the Medes and Persians and the rhetoric equating the running of a national economy to the maintenance of a credit card account. It's to be hoped that this will be sufficient for the time being to dissuade the more gung-ho defenders of the realm from feeling duty-bound to overthrow the Government yet again.

Red Meat

This evil epitome, this beast
And butcher of our Balkan East,
Gave Muslims in a western state
Too Palestinian a fate.

And when to justice he was brought,
His sentence was the righteous sort
That tends more frequently to face
The warlords from a darkie place.

Hugo Slaverer

Premium Remedy

People are very inconsiderately living longer and taking out life insurance policies despite being sold such policies by insurance companies. Inevitably, this spendthrift longevity has exacerbated the risks for insurers as ever more frequent and severe weather events cause ever more customers to submerge, combust, or simply keel over from lack of business acumen. Although this summer's excess deaths have yet to make their impression on the market, there has already been an increase in claims; and continuing governmental dynamism in protecting and preserving the fossil fuel and infoslop industries can only mean the trend will continue. It is fortunate indeed that the eternal one-size-fits-all solution Make the little people pay more continues, even in these unstable times, to retain its accustomed robustitude.

You're On Your Own, Plebs

Given how profitably the country's infrastructure has been degraded over the past few decades, it is natural enough that His Majesty's Government should have no particular interest in repairing it. Also, the spooks have informed Whitehall that they would quite like a war with Russia within the next half-decade or so, and forcing the Ministry for Wog-Bombing to orient its procurement towards national security rather than handouts to the chums might well provoke a military coup d'état. Hence His Majesty's Government is preparing a Protect and Survive régime to ensure that, in the event of foreign attack or climate calamity catching the nation unprepared, the little people will have nobody to blame but themselves. Those who cannot afford their own bunkers will be exhorted to utilise their excess cash and copious free space for the hoarding of vital supplies, thereby freeing His Majesty's Government to concentrate its own resources on bankers, water company shareholders, and others of society's most vulnerable.

Soft Power

O rah! this cannot fail to please!
Our tax money sent overseas
To pay the gendarmes
For bodily harms
Inflicted upon refugees!

O rah! see how bravely we fight
For all that is noble and right:
By funding the Frogs
To beat up the wogs,
And keeping our hands lily-white!

Flob Grungle

Subversive Literature

In a refreshing change from the usual sex and sleaze, one of the Trumpster's legal feuds seems to have taken a bookish turn. While serving as director of the FBI, James Comey had the temerity to investigate the 2016 presidential election for dirty work by the minions of Tsar Vladimir; but although the investigation found that interference did take place, there was no evidence that servants of the Trumpster and his head-tribble had been found competent enough to take part. Since lack of evidence has always been the moral muscle and intellectual ichor of the Trumpster administrations, this conclusion was obviously malicious, vexatious and deeply offensive. The monarch and his mutants are therefore seeking to prosecute Comey for threatening regicide in a social media post and in a published novel, around both of which the royal prosecutors have concocted a conspiracy theory involving coded messages and a picture of some seashells. Rather than pleading that it was all a publicity stunt to increase the sales of his opus in accordance with the American Way, Comey is trying to get the case dismissed; which in itself is surely sufficiently incriminating.

Have They Learned Nothing?

A hundred and two former diplomats from France and Britain have signed a letter to the leaders of both countries urging, if you please, consequences for the Righteous State over the destruction of Gaza and the ongoing colonial assault. If one didn't know better, one would think that no hands had been wrung, no fingers wagged and no verbal reproaches uttered since the whole beastly business began. Clearly the signatories are on dangerous ground: we all know how slippery the slope can be from well-meaning student politics to full-blown antisemitism. It is a perilously short step from advocating consequences for the wrong kind of war criminal to arguing that the entire deplorable history of the Palestinian problem may have started a little earlier than October 2023; and from there a still shorter and more perilous step to proclaiming that the Righteous State should not have exclusive and unlimited rights of exploitation with regard to the memory of the Holocaust.

Informational Havering

Plucky little entrepreneurs have submitted plans for a Europe-beating infoslop emporium which will transform a couple of hundred football pitches' worth of green belt into a planet-cooking paragon of tech-bro sustainability. Although the Vice-Caudillo of the Farage Falange has clarified the movement's heatwave policy by instructing the great British public to get out and relish the burn, the Unterfahnenschwenkenführer of the local cadre was noticeably coy about the prospects for approval. Presumably the strutting Caudillo's non-declarable crypto-bung from the company's owners is still to be properly deposited.

British Fair Play is a Beautiful Thing

Readers of a certain vintage will recall a previous Labour government's increasingly desperate efforts, in the wake of the Iraq crusade, to preserve the shores of Albion from any influx of erstwhile darkie assistants. The current protectors of the realm have enhanced the Britishness yet further by continuing to refuse resettlement to Afghanis who aided the occupying forces, even after the Ministry for Wog-Bombing considerately made thousands of their identities available to the Taliban. Britain may be a nation of animal lovers, but that doesn't mean our charity extends to collaborators who helped us lose a war: they will just have to go back to their compounds and try to do better next time. Perhaps fairest and most beautiful of all is the fact that, should the next Anglo-Afghan war end otherwise than with the forces of liberation scurrying off in defeat, those natives who share in our glory will not require resettlement from the paradise they have helped to create.

Pax Americana

A major joint military exercise in South Korea has been abruptly and unilaterally terminated, apparently because the Trumpster is concerned about Kim Jong-un's itsy-bitsy feelings. Given their shared idea of what constitutes a democratic republic and the likely mutual affinity between their respective head-tribbles, such sympathy is natural enough; nevertheless, certain elements in South Korea have so far retained their alien Oriental notions of diplomatic protocol as to be miffed at the now customary lack of consultation, courtesy or other conventional allied behaviour. It is to be hoped that the present South Korean government's wish to take a more conciliatory approach to the North, alongside the concurrent American need for matériel to put another ally in its place, may enable the Trumpster and his head-tribble to add the Korean War to the umpty-three or oodly-nine conflicts they have already brought to an end.

Money to Burn

The company which provided the major fire hazard for Grenfell Tower spent thirty-two million of its insurance money compensating victims and survivors, and fifty-five million compensating shareholders for the inconvenience. Fortunately, all but one and a half of those millions were covered, so the actual losses to the company amounted to little more than a lunchtime's worth of boardroom bonuses. No criminal charges have yet been brought over the disaster, and given prevailing attitudes to health and safety, corporate regulation, and landlord control, it seems unlikely that anyone of any consequence has very much to worry about. Nevertheless, it is apparently newsworthy that a company which concealed the facts about a dangerous product in order to protect its profits also cared forty per cent more about its shareholders than it did about its victims.

Spend Don't Mend

New perils are about to befall the American Way, in the form of proposed bipartisan legislation that will impiously and blasphemously seek to countermand the eternal law of built-in obsolescence. Corporate citizens are squealing with righteous indignation at the threat that they may be required to provide their product consumption resources with the equipment and knowledge necessary to repair cars, phones or wheelchairs at, if you please, fair and reasonable terms and costs. Quite aside from the intellectual theft and loss of business motivation should people start using things for longer instead of consigning them to landfill, the risk to the environment might be so severe as to make corporate America play concerned about the environment. In such extreme territory, it is terrifying to think where the matter might end. Imagine the consequences if they the people took it into their heads to make a sagging quarter-millennial constitution fit for purpose, rather than accepting its de facto abolition in favour of the currently imminent imperium of the infoslop.

L'art pour l'art

According to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, Samuel Beckett has hitherto been viewed as a "poet of pure pessimism, interested in despair and stasis but unconcerned by real-life politics;" evidently his work for the French resistance against the Nazis and subsequent receipt of the Croix de Guerre are even more forgivable and forgettable than his Hibernian roots and his occasional lapses into literary Gallicism. Beckett's private diaries of a sojourn in Germany between the autumn of 1936 and the spring of 1937 are now about to be published, and it seems they demonstrate a healthy alertness to the patriotic pride and the legitimate and understandable concerns which were then trumpeting forth in the consolidating Nazi state. Given the obvious irrelevance of such matters at a time like this, the planned English-language edition will concentrate less on the politics and history than on the author's literary development, thereby tactfully ignoring Beckett's deplorable lack of interest in the period from September 1939 until June 1941, when all the most important bits of the Second World War actually took place.

Equipped with Marketable Skills

Several people have been wounded at Virginia State University, in a mass shooting apparently involving more than one perpetrator. It seems that nobody has been killed and that none of the injuries are life-threatening; so presumably it's safe to assume that the incident was yet another tribute to the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, rather than yet another ICE cleansing of the melting pot. Patriots will no doubt rejoice that the American higher education curriculum still includes survival skills appropriate to a civil war.

It's All Been a Ghastly Mistake

There can be few unluckier men on Earth than the Netanyahoo. His cleansing of Gaza has brought him the inconvenience of mild rebukes from the western powers; his entrepreneurial acumen has brought charges of corruption from the envious; and judging by his latest performance in a morale-boosting interview for the IDF, he may have missed his true métier altogther. Righteously indignant at the British government's ever more lukewarm condoning of his final solution to the Palestinian problem, Bibi referred to "what is called the Islamic republic of Britain," and when the interviewer searchingly asked whether all of Europe wasn't just as bad, Bibi replied that "someone said the first Islamic republic with nuclear weapons will be the Islamic republic of Britain." He even cited Winston Churchill's son, whose book The Six-Day War offered an account of the Righteous State's plucky self-defence against the Arab Untermenschen. Of course the Netanyahoo is perfectly well aware that Britain is not an Islamic republic; although like everyone else he may have some difficulty with the nuances attending the nominally Christian, nominally monarchical, nominally parliamentarian, nominally democratic oligarchical coprocracy that constitutes the United Kingdom. Still, his bandying of the Churchill name (and his reference to the loutish scion rather than the superhuman sire), alongside his skill with unverified quotes and anonymous sources, surely demonstrates that his proper place all this time has been the free, fearless and cantankerous British press.

Donaldus Vult

Those notorious hotbeds of anti-American subversion, the Navy Times and the Stars and Stripes, are seeking to undermine the Persian Crusade by insinuating that the crew of an American aircraft carrier might have reason to ask what their country can do for them. The whims of the Trumpster and his head-tribble have kept the USS Abraham Lincoln at sea for nine months, during which the crew has had only two days ashore and living conditions aboard the ship have allegedly deteriorated to levels which most patriots would consider worthy only of ethnic and fiscal inferiors. There are even reports of people attempting suicide, which must be particularly galling for a régime so gallantly battling a country that once conscripted suicidal ideation in its own fight against that great American ally, Saddam Hussein. Fortunately, the greased and tattooed Secretary for Holy War has waved away all such concerns as fake news, and the US Navy has proclaimed itself satisfied that the crew has access to all amenities including the religious; which certainly ought to settle the matter for anyone inclined to believe them.

They're Asking For It

An American oil company and its British sidekick have been denied permission to start drilling in the Arctic because more time is needed to assess, of all things, whatever environmental and social impact may result from the likely levels of corporate responsibility. Having previously scolded hard-working prospectors for importing equipment in too buccaneering and entrepreneurial a spirit, the Greenland authorities have now chosen a rather delicate moment during the Persian Crusade to stab them the back. For its own part, the company seems to have been hastily flung together last year by various obligate parasites of the Trumpster and his head-tribble, and to have been christened Greenland Energy in much the same spirit as the Afrika Korps was named after the great American slave market. Whether there are plans to assassinate Greenland's Supreme Leader in hopes of a spontaneous popular revolt against the Danish occupation remains as yet unclear.

Happy Meal

Apparently last month's little business with the leader of the free world and the two toy aeroplanes was even more edifying than previously suspected. Rather than risk being targeted by Iranian assassins and their irrational Islamic grudges, the rabid radioactive head-tribble and its official bright orange transportation module were surreptitiously wheeled onto a third aircraft in a catering vehicle. Dignified comparisons with the late Supreme Leader of the mad mullahs during the opening sneak attack of the Persian Crusade will naturally be drawn by nobody, least of all in the free world; yet still we may hope that some of the old jokes about the quality of airline food might acquire a certain extra zest.

Damp Decisions, Soggy Solutions

His Majesty's Government is shocked, shocked, and shocked again that moisture provision profiteers are using salary hikes as a way around the ban on bonus hikes, despite displaying no particular inclination to clean up their act before doing so. Thames Water has repurposed part of its emergency debt package to pamper a newly recruited fat cat, and the Department for Environmental Faeces and Rubbish Acceptance duly dripped out a spokesbeing to effluviate upon the unacceptability of the trick. Such master-strokes of cunning being self-evidently beyond the capacity of ministers to predict or prevent, His Majesty's Government is yet again resolved to spare no effort in accepting the unacceptable, while awaiting the industry watchdog's opinion on the likely future impact of its trademark hapless whines and mouldering, toothless gums.

In Prudent Mood

Everything has its price, and even a pretext for sacking people in large numbers may occasionally display some small operational disadvantage. According to a major rating agency, the gains made by banks in the rush to infoslop submersion may potentially be undermined by losses from outages, price gouging, and damaged consumer confidence. The agency went so far as to point out the perils of relying too much on a small number of firms, for all the world as if capitalist commerce had some sort of business with rational competition on a level playing field. Fortunately, an infallible safeguard is at hand in the form of substantial investment, which translates into Oldspeak as another bung from the taxpayer when things go wrong.

That's the Boy

It says much for American resourcefulness that the nation has so often managed to harness nominative determinism in the service of administrative efficiency. Connoisseurs still remember the appointment of an official spokesbeing named Larry Speakes in deference to the mental capacities of Ronald Reagan, although the system was not noticeably utilised under the Bush chimpanzee in deference to that worthy's command of the English language. Now that the chief executive is a hollow orange receptacle controlled by the radioactive defecations of a rabid mutant head-tribble, the task of running the country has naturally fallen upon sleazy upstarts and squalling manbabies; hence the perfect choice of one David Brat as ambassador to Australia. Not only is he a fan of Ayn Rand who preached that capitalism and Christianity should drop the pretence of not being shacked up together, but his surname is about as adult and diplomatic as any Trumpsterite could wish; and also, for the Putin conspiracy theorists, happens to be Russian for brother. His first name, meanwhile, is that of a notorious adulterer elevated to his throne by the arbitrary favour of a whimsical super-tyrant, who subsequently caused the realm to be divided and conquered on the king's account. No wonder they took eighteen months to appoint him: so absolute a match between form and function is no simple matter to find.

Traditional Methods

While occasionally upending ancient custom, new technology still has a way of reflecting fundamental human values. Just as the industrial revolution replaced agricultural serfdom with the mechanised variety, so the information revolution has facilitated paranoia, political reaction and proud ignorance; and the Danish government has evidently resolved upon fighting fire with fire. Among other indignities such as having their classroom essay-writing closely monitored, teenage school pupils will be required to sit viva voce examinations for assignments produced at home. As this process will naturally favour glib and fluent speakers, such measures may well usher in yet another glorious phase in the present conquest of the world by demagogues and salesbeings.

Not All Talk is Cheap

When everyone else is either a flunkey or a foe, there is no particular reason for spending good money on diplomacy; and the Trumpster and his head-tribble are following up recent economies at the State Department by closing consulates and macerating missions across five countries and three continents. Their Imperial Majesties' Loyal Opposition duly objected on the grounds that American isolationism may cause the less emotionally stable races to fall prey to the subtle suasions and insidious inveiglings of the Heathen Chinee; but perish the thought that yellow fever should be the only patriotic deterrent. Ever mindful of fundamental republican and democratic values, the critics also carped at the financial savings, which are unlikely to be large enough for translation into appropriate political rewards.

Tincture of Wormwood

An extract

Four on horseback rode along the beach by the light of the burning city. Their galloping hurled splinters of shell and bone, which glittered in small green sparks; the hour was approaching midnight, but the sea glowed as if with sunset. The four rode in single file: the king followed at a respectful distance by the prince, who was followed at a similar distance by the general and the priest yug-Mungor. Behind the priest, dragged by a rope twice the length of the gap between the king and his son, stumbled a bloody-mouthed wretch with the rags of a rich ceremonial cloak wrapped uncertainly around his sagging loins. Every so often yug-Mungor would spur the horse and then rein it in, causing the overfed wretch to scrape along on his belly like a heretic's ragged remains through a pious main street.

Aside from the minor damage from his run along the beach, the only mutilation thus far practised on the prisoner was the removal of his front incisors, upper and lower, by King Choyug's personal barber. Eleven heads, similarly privileged before being sawn from the bodies that had carried them, were mounted on the pikes of eleven common soldiers in the king's guard. The guard had remained at the city gate while the king, the prince, the general and the priest rode out to Wormbone Reef.

When joined to their bodies, the eleven heads had formed the city's chief governing council; the wretch at the end of the rope, as minister for works and heritage, had received royal clemency thanks to his knowledge of the city and its environs. General yug-Smorod had argued that some trouble might be saved by sparing others besides; Prince Chogrob had urged that the entire city be razed, its entire government destroyed and its entire population removed or eliminated, as the king himself had sworn on the day the twelve councillors had first refused his terms.

For his own part, yug-Mungor was inclined to agree with the prince: whatever might occur along the way to its fulfilment, a vow was a vow. Certainly, an unwise promise made in haste might be better broken than kept; but King Choyug's promise, wise or otherwise, had been made in the presence of the true god, whose ways were notoriously whimsical, and whose prophets from earliest times had praised the virtues of unwisdom. Using his quiet authority as royal confessor, yug-Mungor had done all he could to persuade the king that Dantiscor, outpost of heretics and traitors, must be expunged from existence, save only the accepted quota of mutilated survivors who would be spared to wander the world and advertise, by the stumps of their fingers and the gaps in their teeth, the inexorable mercy of the world's creator.

Unfortunately Choyug the Conqueror, having delayed until late middle age before taking up holy war, could never completely rid himself of worldly concerns. As a commander, he had to keep order among his troops; as a politician, he had to avoid battles that only a whimsical god could win; as a monarch, he had to avoid making too many powerful enemies; and as a father he had to leave his heir a more prosperous kingdom than he himself had inherited.

The priest stabbed the horse's sides with his spurs, then reined back so abruptly that the animal's indignation almost jerked him from the saddle. Even the most whimsical gods have their little consistencies, yug-Mungor reminded himself; for example such minor rigidities as the laws of momentum and inertia. Over the sighing of the blood-flamed sea, he thought he could hear the prisoner struggling up and stumbling onward, and coughing white splinters from his chastised mouth.

Only a little further on, the general's horse had come to a sudden stop, and yug-Mungor duly halted before the distance between them could close too far. As the king's confessor in a time of holy war, he was by ancient right entitled to ride at the side of his sovereign, the better to receive the king's confessions and to deliver all necessary admonishments; but yug-Mungor had made it his policy never to insist on worldly rights, and his presence was for the king to demand. He raised himself in the stirrups, trying to see past the general's squat silhouette; then yug-Smorod twisted in the saddle and beckoned him forward.

Bowing his head, the priest approached at a respectful pace and stopped just short of drawing level. Ahead of them the beach curved away behind the pale, crumbling cliffs atop which the city glowed; and it was before this bend that the king and his son had also halted, apparently to stand and stare.

It could only be the Reef, yug-Mungor thought. Held in superstitious awe by the citizens of Dantiscor, and in superstitious dread by the rabble for miles around, Wormbone Reef had remained unseen through generations of taboo. Ordinances ancient as the city itself forbade that the Reef be visible from any window or turret; the city walls overlooking the Reef held no watch-towers, and only the Reef's reputation and the treachery of waves and cliffs protected Dantiscor from naval attack. Indeed, King Choyug's original plans for subduing the city had provided for just such an assault; but the strenuous objections of his commanders, backed by testimony from reliable spies and the well-attested chronicles of a dozen previous failures, had persuaded him that the precedents were not encouraging. Hence the great siege which had cost so much time and inconvenience; which had lost the king his favourite son and many important allies; and which had brought to everyone involved, from the royal commanders to the lowliest camp-followers, an inexhaustible ration of rumour about the powers and perils of the Reef.

For something forbidden to look upon, it was remarkably easy to hear about. Not only the chronicles in the king's library, but the villages in the surrounding country and the travellers passing through, were full to overflowing with rumours and portents. The chronicles preserved several amusing legends with scholarly condescension, while cushioning with condemnatory verbiage their hints of those less harmless. Among the more innocuous, in several versions, was the story that the Reef constituted the remains of a great sea-monster, slain by one of the city's numerous mythical founders, who had forbidden his people any sight of the carcass in case they should ascribe the victory to him rather than to divine providence. Among the more harmful, in splintered hints, was the idea that the Reef constituted a living shell in which the city's future destroyer slept, and from which the light of illicit gazes would one night bring him forth.

In the villages nearest Dantiscor, people said that the Reef was the forefinger of a buried giant, which wagged back and forth over the centuries to scold the world's impious rapidity. In villages further away, people said that the Reef was a living worm, the fount and source of every other worm in the world, and susceptible to persuasion and propitiation through inflicting on its humbler offspring various ritual torments. Among traders travelling the routes between Dantiscor and Garsilor it was known that the Reef was made of sea-foam left behind by the tide, which had accumulated over thousands of years and would continue to accumulate until the sea dissolved it again; among traders travelling the routes between Dantiscor and Pelbon it was known that the Reef was made of fish-bones, fashioned by ancient tribes into a shrine from which their spirits haunted the sea.

All this fable and foolishness, and any number of variants and elaborations, yug-Mungor and the other priests and monks in the king's retinue had transcribed and collated for the royal librarians; and yug-Mungor himself was intermittently at work upon a compendium for the attention of the bishop, with whom rested the ultimate decision as to what was innocent fairy-tale and what was criminal blasphemy. In the process of compilation yug-Mungor had found that not only did the legends differ as to the Reef's nature, composition, origin and purpose; they could not even agree on its appearance. According to some it was shaped like a finger, according to others like a worm; the sea-foam stories said it resembled a dune made of lace, while the fish-bone stories said it looked like a thousand white nets piled together. Now that the king and his son were apparently in sight of the Reef, yug-Mungor trusted the anticlimax was profound.

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Borderline Retarded

It seems the Trumpster and his head-tribble have finally taken the hint as to the unlikelihood of their image being graven into Mount Rushmore during the foreseeable news cycle, and have instead placed their hopes of a rock-ribbed legacy in the ongoing demolition of the White House and the construction of the Great Wetback Wall. In keeping with the values of Trumpsterdom, contractors are soaking up the local water supplies without legal permission and apparently without much idea of what they're doing; although the aridity of the landscape has thus far prevented their achieving the algae-crusted ineptitude of certain greenhorns elsewhere in the realm. Alas, local malcontents have become so un-American in their priorities as to value the region's scant available water more as a relief from drought than as an ingredient in making concrete.

What it Says on the Tin

I yield to nobody in my appreciation of nominative determinism, but even the best things in life can arguably be carried too far; as witness the fact that one of the lesser parliamentary appendages of the Farage Falange has selected a certain Joshua Bonehill-Paine as its local election candidate. A sometime "nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights," the honourable gentleman has now been morally reformed and restored, and runs a satirical online account which has cast a favourable light upon Kemi Badenoch. Self-evidently it would be difficult to get more satirical than that; but the convert's name - his real name, apparently - gives its all in the attempt. His surname's first barrel resounds with the electoral graveyard, while its second evokes both the standard Conservative solution for social ills and the standard somatic response to the party's current campaigning prowess. His middle names, Mark and John, evoke two of the Gospellers, whose factual scrupulosity rivals that of almost any modern politician; his first name is shared with the génocidaire of Canaan, as well as with his illustrious New Testament counterpart who consigned all but His own followers to the eternal fire. Even a portfolio full of "Home Office counter-extremism certificates" seems rather a minor credential compared to a monicker like that.

Will This Land Never Be Clean?

Never content to rest on its lily-white laurels, the Ministry for Wog Control has been busily dispatching letters to citizens of the Strasbrussels threat, informing them that their residency rights are all a ghastly mistake. Hard-working scions of the master race, abetted no doubt by their American infoslop robocolleagues, are apparently sending up to a hundred missives a month, informing the Euro-wog infiltrators that paying tax in the nation of the Farage Falange and its panderers may be too exquisite a privilege for the likes of them. Since the Ministry's conscience is as clear as ever, full disclosure as to the number of looming expulsions has not been forthcoming; but doubtless all is as moderately fair and above board as ome could sensibly expect. Even so, certain subverters of the people's will are carping that this latest purge may violate the withdrawal agreement, which contains a provision that the mainland should not cleanse itself of beastly Euro-wogs except where such measures are, if you please, genuinely proportionate. If genuineness or proportionality had any place in the immigration debate, let alone in its obligate parasite the Brexit debate, somebody would surely have noticed by now.

Swift Justice

Lawyers for the circumvention of law on behalf of the Trumpster and his head-tribble have requested the dismissal of their own case over the alleged vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. The administration had filed charges against a retired Olympic athlete on the grounds that he did wilfully and with malice aforethought place his hand in the water and sabotage the lining, thereby causing algae to bloom and turning the surface from royal blue to Lincoln green. Someone has belatedly discovered that everybody was frightfully busy at the time, booking cage fighters to dignify the White House's Independence Day celebrations, so that the charges were filed in a bit of a rush. It is a tribute to the leadership of the Trumpster and his head-tribble that their administration's customary level-headedness and respect for due process have been reasserted before any missiles were fired.