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.

Marine martyrisée

In the course of a dark day for French democracy, the leader of the Racaille naziesque has incurred a five-year ban on running for public office despite a court of law having determined her to be a crook. Marine Le Pen and a score of her goons were found guilty of embezzling EU funds to aid their own party, causing the mainstream right to huff and puff that the sentence was rather severe for what may merely have been an unfortunate and unintended consequence of schoolgirlish high spirits. Although various far-right régimes responded with expressions of solidarity, the moderate and sensible ones seem to be refraining from comment, at least during the few years until the appeals process is exhausted. From the realm of the Trumpster and his head-tribble has emanated a contemplative silence with brief manbaby squeal, as those yearning to be made great again imagine what might have occurred if felons in the USA were prohibited from using political office for partisan advantage. All in all, the affair serves only to point up the unfussy effectiveness of the British system, wherein Le Pen's derelictions would be considered little more than a breach of good manners, even in the unlikely event of their coming to light less than fifty years after her death as a peer of the realm and a valued consultant to various thriving centres of fiscal creativity.

Affordable Losses

Astoundingly enough, during the last half-decade of Conservative rule the number of prosecutions for enabling tax evasion fell from tiny to minuscule. The tax authorities are reluctant to provide exact figures in case the perpetrators should be identified and treated as criminals rather than wealth creators, which might well cause difficulty in accessing their services even for the people who are paid not to prosecute them. Team Starmer has made some noises about tightening up the régime, which will no doubt fade discreetly away when potential providers of post-government consultancies start squealing. In the meantime, it is all the more fortunate that the youth, pensioner and disabled sectors are sufficiently wealthy to tide the Government over.

Lady Caversham

The House of Donors, Catamites and Sycophants in Britain's mother of parliaments is to be graced with the presence of Amada Spielman, whose management of the school inspections régime contributed to the suicide of at least one head teacher. Readers of a certain vintage may be reminded of Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police officer in charge of another fatal incident involving a victim from another despised subspecies of humanity (viz. dusky working-class immigrants), whose subsequent career was simply one promotion after another. In a post-mortem fuck-you to the teaching profession, the remains of the Conservative Party have nominated Spielman for a peerage, presumably thinking her due some measure of recognition both for her fostering of teacher-killing standards and for her eloquence in conveying exactly how apologetic real people need to be towards little people who don't measure up.

Still One of the Big Boys

As befits a steadfast ally of the United States and a sincere admirer of the Trumpster and his head-tribble, the mainland's Ministry for Wog-Bombing has done its plucky little best to emulate the White House's interesting new security policy, though necessarily utlising a less technologically advanced format. Rather than employing new-fangled electronical methods, the British military has economised its confidentiality via the tried and true tradition of scattering hard copies in the streets; and rather than giving details of current operational planning the papers merely included information on personnel and equipment somewehere in the ever-expendable north of England. Nevertheless, however modest and inexpensive the result, surely even the most exacting head-tribble could hardly begrudge acknowledging the gallantry of the effort.