Spiritual Wealth

Even among the most pious preachers and zealous crusaders, religious tolerance may occasionally have its place; especially where money is involved. Edward Longshanks refrained from deporting England's Jews until he had taken them for every penny, and modern Christendom's distaste for Islamic fundamentalism is noticeably diluted by proximity to the petroleum-powered moderation of the head-chopping House of Saud. In a similar spirit, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi has been waxing multicultural over the return to India of a jewellery collection interred with the Buddha's ashes some two and a half centuries after his death and subsequently dug up and pocketed by an enterprising Raj. "These sacred relics," Modi oozed, "highlight India’s close association with Bhagwan Buddha and his noble teachings," which have been famous over two and a half millennia for their emphasis on bling.

Dammed Official Channels

Bats, newts and poor people are by no means the only subhuman creatures that His Majesty's Government is supremely uninterested in accommodating. A project to re-establish the country's beaver population was grudgingly approved in March, and forty expressions of interest have been lodged since then; of which slightly fewer than one have resulted in the necessary licences being issued. Admittedly, given the demonstrated extent of Team Starmer's interest in cleaning up the nation's waterways, this may be just as well for the beavers; but a certain moderate and sensible calculation may also be involved. Beavers are notoriously ecosystem-friendly and could potentially be seen by the all-important Farage Falange demographic as pandering to quasi-European Net Zero aspirations. Perhaps even worse, the animals are notorious not only for undertaking ambitious infrastructure projects, but also for regularly completing and even maintaining them; which is self-evidently the wrong way for any creature to behave that wishes to prosper in England.

Let's Be Clear About This

Since all three major parties and the Conservatives agree on just about everything except style and tempo, it follows that there is no such thing as a debatable policy. Disagreements can result only from treachery (Brexit), excessive haste (La Truss), or a chronic inability to persuade the ungrateful rabble as to the awesome nobility of one's intentions (Team Starmer's first year in office). In seeking out a worthy candidate to head his new Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the CEO of Team Starmer has naturally favoured a candidate whose commitment to the truth according to Rupert Murdoch is arguably a match for his own. Nevertheless, certain elements are already protesting the appointment; and although they have not yet been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, it seems unlikely that those elements will prove comparable to the average migrant-baiting lynch mob as regards the legitimacy and understandability of their concerns.

Noble Business

However lukewarm and watered-down Team Starmer's tinkerings with workers' rights may be, they are still too strong for the best business sector in the world and its representatives in the unelected upper house of Britain's Mother of Parliaments. Two Conservative peers and their servant, a Liberal Democrat who was baronised at the fag-end of the Conservative-run coalition, have intervened to perpetuate the Osbornomic legacy by protecting zero-hours contracts, preserving the employer's right of unfair dismissal, and preventing trade unions from getting into mischief. One of the Conservatives, an investment banker who served the business-fucking National Johnson as a hired bully and La Truss as a flunkey in the Ministry for Wog Control, proclaimed that only the party of Brexit is listening to the business sector. The other declined to comment, presumably on the Magna Carta grounds that the Barons are not accountable to the little people.

Deus Ex Machina

Christian missionary organisations are setting up solar-powered audio devices in the Amazon to pester the indigenous population with passages from the Bible and pep-talks from American preachers. The devices talk in Portuguese and Spanish, so apparently the missionaries' faith in the wonders of AI translation is less than absolute, at least where indigenous languages are concerned. Still, at least one of the peoples benefiting from this spiritual largesse is renowned for its ability with war clubs; which means the missionaries are making the supreme sacrifice in forsaking any chance at the glory of martyrdom for themselves and giving it all to the robots instead.

Reasonable Force

From a practical eugenic standpoint, it is expectable enough that those who manifest aggressive concern for the purity of the master race should take an equally robust attitude on family values; and so it has proven in the case of those who used the Southport child murders as the pretext for a pogrom against immigrants. Just over forty per cent of those arrested over last summer's spontaneous outbreak of patriotism had previously been reported for offences such as sexual assault, domestic abuse, bodily harm, stalking, breach of restraint and non-molestation orders, and generally not sparing the rod. A spokesbeing at the Ministry for Wog Disposal proclaimed the abuse suffered by women and girls a national emergency, but was oddly reticent about whether the culprits might have been led to such behaviour by legitimate and understandable concerns.

Cornerstones Must Know Their Place

Some people just can't take a hint, and despite several decades' special residence in the lower intestine of the White House and twenty-one months of unequivocal support for the Righteous State's final solution to the Palestinian problem, a foreigner with a funny name still seems to believe that international law applies to the master race as well as to the little people. The UN human rights commissioner has placed himself and his organisation in imminent peril of arrest, detention and a fourteen-year sentence on terrorism charges by stating that the proscription of Palestine Action is, of all things, disproportionate and unnecessary, despite the ongoing democratic crackdown on anyone using or displaying the words Palestine or action in a manner conducive to being arrested. Fortunately, a Team Starmer flunkey was on hand to reinforce that cornerstone of British democracy which is the right to protest as long as the police permit it and the Government doesn't mind; which has indubitably clarified matters no end.

Passing Gas for Fun and Profit

The wonders of private enterprise are on energetic display at British Gas, whose owner has decided to induce an artificial shortage next winter in order to boost its profits. Centrica wants to flog off its stored gas because energy bills are too low for comfort, so that the company has made a mere five hundred million in the first six months of the year. In a spectacular paroxysm of corporate Britishness, Centrica has also demanded a handout from the Government while denouncing a rival company for lack of financial resilience. Those who can't afford to heat their homes when the cold weather returns are presumably expected to warm themselves by glowing with grateful admiration.

We Don't Do Soft Power

After the roaring success of their efforts to continue and intensify the Conservatives' assault on the domestic poor and unwell, the grown-ups of Team Starmer are preparing to give foreign shirkers the same salutary treatment. Fishy Rishi used the pandemic as an excuse to cut the aid budget from a profligate seven-tenths of one per cent of national income to a princely five-tenths of one per cent; the grown-ups of Team Starmer intend cutting it to a prudent three-tenths of one per cent. A government impact assessment, prudently published just before the House of Expenses Claimants toddles off for the summer, indicates that cuts to spending on health and education will tend to have a detrimental effect on health and education; this of course is contrary to household budgeting, the national religion and the common sense of the past four and a half decades, and would therefore most likely be disregarded even if the proceeds from these particular cuts were not to be spent on wog-bombing.

Strength of Feeling

The pain of those unhappy lands
Doth make us wring our sweaty hands;
Our beady little eyes grow damp
To see a concentration camp.

As suffering grows more profound,
We make a disapproving sound;
But even though we do no more,
Our allies go on as before.

Intolerable though it be
To witness such indignity,
Still by some cruel whim of fate
Events remain indelicate.

Samuel Grimsnipe