Caudillo Cancelled

It's usually sensible to abstain from too much of a good thing, and the organisers of the farmers' protest against the Government's inheritance tax reforms have prudently refused an extra helping of natural fertiliser. Although they did not balk at inviting the likes of Kemi Badenoch, Jeremy Clarkson and Sir Edward Look At Me I'm A Carer Davey to regale the gathering with their farmyard impressions, the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange was weeded out of the dung-pile in case his presence should divert attention from the protestors' point. Having long brayed, bleated and cockadoodled in the interests of the strutting Caudillo, the owner of the commercial concern known as Reform doubtless took the snub with his usual squillionaire-on-the-street fortitude. For its own part, the Falange extruded a flunkey to claim that the organisers of the protest had been bullied by the Conservative Party and to whine that the British electoral system isn't good enough. It is to be hoped that those rural communities to whose present blessings the Falange has contributed so much will revise their gratitude levels accordingly.

Irredeemably Useful

Despite the best efforts of the major churches to protect and indulge the ones who really matter, public understanding of paedophiles has progressed very little over the last few decades, according to the Canadian Mennonite founder of a charity dedicated to social reintegration of convicted child sex offenders. Even in Britain, with its free and fearless media lynch mob and its legislature divided between the hang-and-flog moralists and the corporate empty suits of profitable penitentiarism, it seems there are few signs of a more rehabilitative attitude emerging. From the smallest to the largest, every social group needs its outcasts and scapegoats, who for best results should reflect the less praiseworthy aspects of the collective psyche and thereby deflect the rabble's wrath away from its lords and masters. Followers of a Palestinian magician hunted down witches; the first country in the world to declare itself a people's republic spent a century in paranoid terror of communism; and the first generation in many to leave its children worse off than itself has also found an appropriate pariah.

We Know Our Place

Statesmanship is the art of the possible, and not all the moral compasses and international laws in the world have made it possible for His Majesty's Government to suspend more than a token few of Britain's arms exports to the Righteous State. Legal action on behalf of the Palestinian Untermenschen has revealed the Government's concern lest withdrawal of wog-bombing wherewithal should have a "profound impact on international peace and security" by causing irritation to the World Cop. In the face of such existential risk to all that is true, decent and democratic, the possibility that wog-bombing wherewithal might be used to bomb wogs indiscreetly was deemed a relatively minor consideration, because no sensible and moderate client state of Washington can afford to forget which of its fellow client states is the one nearest the oil.

Rich History

England is justifiably proud of its glorious history, which extends further back than almost anyone else's; certainly further back than those of the upstart Indians or the Heathen Chinee, whose histories had to wait for Robert Clive and the Opium Wars to get properly under way. Fortunately, history is also a commercially viable commodity, as witness the record amount paid at auction for a piece of memorabilia from the Titanic - an episode of maritime Britishness whose progression from world-beating boosterism to costly inconvenience arguably makes it as quintessential as Dunkirk or the Terra Nova fiasco. Items from the Titanic are growing rarer, and thus gaining greater market value, as private collectors buy them up and squirrel them away, thereby fuelling economic growth and protecting England's history from the grubby gaze of museum-goers. According to the auctioneer, this is because private collectors are interested in people, unlike silly old historians who tend to prioritise facts over big-budget soap opera. Obviously, people emerge much less vividly from mere facts than from items which they once owned and handled and which are subsequently owned and hoarded by rich idiots. If you ever get the chance, you should try it for yourself: just fondle a pocket-watch that has been auctioned for a million and a half, and then read any history book you like and see if you can find a person in it. The difference will almost certainly be palpable.

Daylight Raabery

Forty-nine days is a long time in politics, especially when there's money in it. Government ministers who lose their jobs - for any reason whatever and after any length of what is customarily referred to by the Newspeak term service - are entitled to a quarter of their annual salary in compensation. The money is repayable if and only if the crook, liar or incompetent in question receives the superior compensation of another ministry within three weeks. Hence the loutish Dominic Raab, whom La Truss ejected from the Ministry of Profitable Punishment, and who was subsequently restored to the position only to resign after bullying the sort of people who can fight back, has received a severance payment worth about seventy per cent of a nurse's annual starting salary, which he is entitled to keep because in forty-nine days not even La Truss managed to bungle the task of not awarding Dominic Raab another ministry. As the Fishy Rishi administration stumbled towards the coup de disgrâce, Raab joined other brave souls in opting for the rodentine maritime evacuation manoeuvre; his constituents voted in a Deputy Conservative, apparently under the impression that this would lead to change, and Raab himself is now presumably awaiting the call from Team Starmer offering him the Civility Tsardom.

Monolithic Judgement

Criminal charges have been brought in connection with the misuse of a Trumpster-coloured substance at Stonehenge. The stuff was thrown around the site during a Just Stop Oil protest last summer, and it is certainly debatable how kindly the Bible salesman and his head-tribble will take to their complexion being shared with a pagan monument. Although the substance was easily removed, two people have been charged with "destroying or damaging an ancient protected monument and intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance." In keeping with the best traditions of British justice, His Majesty's Government, in the persons of the thuggish Mark Harper and a pseudonym of Michael Green, had plans to bring about one or two slightly less reparable consequences by driving a road tunnel through the site, which the court of appeal happily endorsed some four months before the protest took place.

Shocked and Stunned and Seriously Consternated

Some little time ago, many of the serious Britons who inhabit the serious professions of sensible journalism and moderate politics were seriously surprised when the National Johnson, after a mere half-century career of loutish priapic mendacity, turned out unexpectedly to be a lying sex-crazed lout despite his elevation to the highest and most solemn office in the land that isn't overtly occupied by Supreme Leader Rupert Murdoch. With similar profundity of insight, several serious Murcans are seriously shocked that the Trumpster and his head-tribble have chosen a far-right loudmouth as their attorney general. At least one serious Republican complained that the appointment had failed to do justice to the seriousness of her bingo card, while the serious wog-bomber John Bolton raised the serious possibility that a "person of moral turpitude" might lack the necessary skills to serve under a known liar and convicted felon. Another serious Republican, who took the matter so seriously that they would only comment anonymously, said that they were "stunned and disgusted;" while a serious Democrat noted that the great American voter, having only the Trumpster's entire previous record to go on, didn't necessarily expect this sort of thing when voting him in again. If only, if only there had been some sort of clue.

Bah Reign Humbug

Patriots will rejoice at the persistence of British values in Bahrain, which gained independence half a century ago and yet has somehow managed to hold onto the bedrock decency that goes with a royal family, a no-nonsense attitude to human rights and a willingness to abet the master race's wog-bombing. King Charles has paid tribute to his royal counterpart's pluck and gumption by bestowing upon him the snappy title Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order: an appointment which combines mediaeval grandiosity with imperial pomposity in a fashion wholly befitting the highest-ranking gong in the Windsor firm's gift. News of the honour made headlines in Bahrain, but tidings on the mainland have been inexplicably muted; indeed, the award might never have gained any media attention at all in Britain if not for some malcontents agitating for its immediate removal. Clearly the master race still has much to learn from Bahrain about the suppression of dissent; in exchange for which the rulers of Bahrain might do worse than to emulate the Windsors in their modesty before the Press.

One of Those Paradoxical Little Things

Like many another fortunate lexical item, the preposition despite tends to loosen up a little when translated from English into Modern Standard Journalese. Demotically a rather surly and contradictory sort of word, connoting events that occur in defiance of other events, in the paws of the press despite is transformed into a far more accommodating character. In many Modern Standard Journalese contexts its literal meaning can signify an entirely predictable and widely anticipated result, as when the Righteous State continues its ethnic cleansing despite the pious noises emitted by those selling the Righteous State the wherewithal to do exactly that. Similarly, His Majesty's Government has been granting licenses to care profiteers despite their no-nonsense attitude to workers' rights; the British Home Office has been condoning exploitation and maltreatment of immigrant workers despite being the British Home Office; and Team Starmer has shown no particular concern over the situation despite having been elected on a manifesto of change. Despite their professional fluency as thinkers in Modern Standard Journalese, there are some at Britain's leading liberal newspaper who seem to view this as some sort of failure.

Tough Love

If anything can rival the intellectual dynamism of the Anglican Church, that thing must surely be its moral authority, whose latest manifestation is an outcry over the Archbishop of Canterbury's excessively Christian behaviour towards a now deceased barrister with some convenient ready cash and a penchant for turned cheeks. By allowing the abuser to continue his little hobby, and by subsequently refusing to resign, the Archbishop has of course shown strict adherence to the teachings of Christ, which specify that within the Church the onus is upon victims to forgive their persecutors even unto the seventy-times-seventh dereliction, and that a single grovelling apology is worth more than a lifetime of righteousness. As a result, one bishop has expressed the fear that the Church may lose that staunch moral voice which has done so much for the life of the nation with its eternal displays of spiritual strength over the status of women and non-heterosexuals, and suchlike second-order human beings.