St Michael's Anathema

As one would expect from the party of working people, Team Starmer has responded to the latest economic difficulties by asking corporations if they would very much mind not making quite so much profit for a while; and the chief executive of Marks and Spencer has responded in the expectable manner. Thanks to global headwinds and the Persian Crusade, the retailer is expected to profit by a beggarly eight-tenths of a billion rather than the anticipated nine-tenths, so any talk of cheaper necessities for the poor is completely preposterous. Like many other corporate complainers, Marks and Spencer are in the process of automating and AI-ensloppifying their business, viz. depriving working people of the living that would enable them to spend money, expand the economy, and profit corporations. It's difficult to sell merchandise when you're busy making sure that most people can't afford to buy it; so the obvious answer is, as always, lower taxes and less regulation. That's how we got to where we are today; and as one would expect from the party of working people, Team Starmer will most likely beat a hurried retreat from any whimper of a hint that any moderate or sensible non-antisemite might wish to try making the situation even slightly otherwise.

Another Triumph

Negotiators for the Strasbrussels dictatorship have been rubbing their greatest victim's noble Britannic proboscis in the fact that the evil, dirty, filthy, nasty, Nazi, Stalinst, sovereignty-sapping terms by which the mainland previously condescended to remain in the EU are unlikely to be available should it ever deign to rejoin. Even in the face of Russian militarism, Chinese economic coercion and the Trumpster's America First policy (there are, of course, no such things as NATO militarism, American economic coercion or Beijing's China First policy) - whatever new betrayals may be in store from the communistic crypto-Islamazoid lizards who rule our great Nation, a return to the status quo ante Nigellum will not be among them. Never let it be said that Britain achieved nothing by its independence from the beastly bureaucrats of Brussels.

A Diplomatic Exit

Quasi-British historical justice is alive and thriving among certain élite strata of the beastly Euro-wogs. Whereas on the mainland no real people are ever likely to suffer inconvenience over the murder of a post-colonial African statesman, in Belgium the one man to be charged in the case of the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba has had the good taste to expire before any trial could take place. According to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, Lumumba's murder was a dark chapter in Belgium's colonial history, which until that unfortunate aberration had evidently been a model of humanity; at times perhaps even more so than Mr Churchill's great feeding time in Bengal. The late lamented was a viscount and junior diplomat in 1960-61, and was no doubt merely obeying orders. After a long and successful career subsequent to Lumumba's removal, he was promoted to count by the current occupant of the throne of Leopold II; the diplomatic timing of his demise should elevate him to posthumous marquis at the least.

Pious Felony

Other than worldly power and cold hard cash, there are few more enduring enthusiasms in the Church of Rome than the fetish for anatomical specimens. This little kink seems to have turned the head of a pious gentleman in the Czech Republic, who took exception last week to the public exhibition of a saintly skull. Having apparently prayed to God for an opportunity to rescue the relic, he was granted his wish and managed to encase the consecrated cranium in concrete, but was headed off before he could sink it in the river. The saint in question is the patron of those ridiculed for their piety, and also of difficult marriages; although since she was one of the vast mob of persons canonised by the de facto patron saint of sex abusers, John Paul II, she presumably grants her favours more to those who perpetuate the difficulty than to those who attempt escape.

Too Trumpian for Texas

According to a database run by a non-profit organisation, more than thirty of those pardoned over the Epiphany Treason are facing criminal charges for other offences; and at least five have been accused or convicted of some little indiscretion after the monarch exercised his head-tribble's clemency. One made death threats against a Democrat congressman; another got seven years' imprisonment for burglary; and a third has allegedly threatened someone with a handgun in a church parking lot while out on bail over harassment offences against other people. The gentleman in question also ran a short distance for Congress last year before deciding, possibly with justification, that he lacked "the ability to properly lead this country," and has been known to talk about himself in the third person. Eminently compatible as all this may be with the MAGA brand both of government and of the Abrahamic superstition, local authorities in Texas seem to be taking a dim view of the matter.

Democracy in Adversity

It's all kicking off in the Righteous State, where the various right wings of the Netanyahoo's coalition seem to have turned on each other; although it remains as yet unclear whether the opposition parties, like all other critics of the Netanyahoo, are paid-up members of Hamas. Political fanatics are angry because not enough Muslim nations have been wiped off the map; while religious fanatics are annoyed because no law has been passed to let them use their religion as a permanent excuse for avoiding military service and the concomitant risk of being moved prematurely closer to God. For his own part, the Netanyahoo has no plans to relinquish power, despite being embroiled in a corruption trial and despite facing possible blame for the security failures in October 2023 that enabled the Arab Untermenschen to mount their unprecedented and (it goes without saying) entirely unprovoked attack. Given that Iran is, as always, a few minutes away from developing a nuclear bomb, it is to be hoped that chaos does not descend, as we are assured it will in Britain should the empty suit now in charge be replaced with a slightly different one.

More Sunlight on Nigel's Uplands

Those who recall the shifting justifications for Brexit (It'll solve all our problems! Well, at least most of our problems! Well, at least some of our problems! Well, at least it'll get the wogs out! Well, at least it hasn't turned out quite so badly as the absolute worst that was predicted!) will not be surprised that the godfather of our national triumph is proving equally flexible in justifying his acceptance of a substantial expatriate squillionaire bung. The strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange originally claimed that the money was to hire goons to protect him against dusky types armed with milkshakes, but has now changed his story to claim that it was a reward for twenty-seven years of campaigning against the beastly Euro-wogs. However that may be, the man of the people spent at least some of the money in solidarity with victims of the housing shortage, by adding one more to the quantity of his non-constituency residences. A parliamentary inquiry is under way to determine whether such rules as remain have been seriously breached; if it turns out that they have, the voters of Clacton may be given an early opportunity to make dupes of themselves once again.

Honourable Intentions Gone Astray

Since 1959, Cuba has famously posed a looming existential threat to the United States arguably in excess of the threats variously posed by Iran, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. So grave was the danger at one point that the sainted John F Kennedy attempted an invasion, which backfired and left to subsequent administrations from both wings of the Republicrat Demoblican Party the task of punishing the island for its unsympathetic attitude towards US interests in the region.

A mere six and a half decades on, with the Trumpster and his head-tribble in China, thirty-odd members of Congress feel safe enough to petition their frères et semblables to the effect that the current escalation goes too far. Extra sanctions against the Cuban population, and threats of military intervention to remove the government, are denounced on the grounds that they constitute a potential cause of migrants; while the use of Guantánamo Bay as a beaner warehouse is "not a response to migration - it is an attempt to contain the consequences of the exact policies that are driving it." If nothing else, the assertion that one does not respond to a policy by attempting to deal with its consequences should have some appeal for native speakers of Trumpsterian English.

Criminal Inflation

Judicial Britishness has set another example for the lesser breeds in the case of four Palestine Action protesters convicted of criminal damage to Israeli government property. Before the organisation had been proscribed, the judge in the case determined that their offence included a terrorist connection, apparently on the grounds that terrorism means attempting to influence a government and that interfering with the Gaza cleansing constituted an attempt to influence the government of the Righteous State. So as not to complicate matters or bother anyone too much, the trial jury was not informed of this codicil, which could mean swingeing penalties and life-long restrictions on the protesters' liberty if upheld. Fortunately, judges and juries will soon be released from all such cruel dilemmas thanks to the forthcoming abolition of jury trials, and eventually of all legal proceedings which do not contribute to the nation's economic growth.

Newly Unreformed

By a supremely unfortunate coincidence, one of the Farage Falange's shiny new councillors has had to resign for "personal reasons" before even dipping a toe in his time-consuming, non-grandstanding, unsalaried duties. In an unrelated matter, the patriot in question had allegedly posted on social media celebrating the rape of a Sikh woman and referring to Muslims as "dirt" and "rats." He has denied the allegations; and the Cadre of Directors at the Farage Falange has expelled him from the corporation, so presumably they believe the denial. The patriot also allegedly committed the indiscretion of claiming white people, rather than rich people, as the master race; which would be unlikely to help his case in any of Britain's three or four national right-wing parties.