Unparalleled Depravity

Theatre-goers in Stuttgart have been gagging for medical attention after witnessing a gory mutilation of a 1921 Hindemith opera. Despite warnings of content including sexual violence and loud noises, a number of patrons became unwell when the performance turned out to contain exactly those; although it remains as yet unclear how far the malady was merely corporeal. The creator of the piece has suggested that her intention is to explore parallels between the Catholic church and kink/BDSM subcultures; nevertheless, Austrian bishops have already criticised it as a disrespectful caricature of a cannibalistic ritual which is performed in fancy dress and fetishises the bodily piercing of a man reportedly conceived via non-consensual ghost sex.

All the Profits of Arabia

In keeping with the current status of British public office as a networking opportunity, a former Minister for Wog-Bombing has availed himself of the chance to invest in the neglected aspects of his life by filling his boots courtesy of Westminster's favourite Islamic fundamentalist head-choppers. The eminently forgettable Sir Ben Wallace, who prudently jumped the sinking ship of government last year, is now employed by the House of Saud, which will doubtless benefit from his expertise when further flattening Yemen or taking its customary no-nonsense attitude to womanly wokeness. Just in case he gets his enemies of human rights mixed up, Wallace is forbidden to lobby the British government or give advice on British miltary prowess for slightly longer than Fishy Rishi clung to office, on pain of receiving some very stern looks from the advisory committee on snout and trotter placement in post-political troughs.

Available Now

Visitations of the Muse are strange and unpredictable events; Stephen King, with characteristic delicacy, once compared the process to a gremlin evacuating its bowels on his head. I am usually able to complete at least one new book each year; but last year's belated release, for all its moral and philosophical bite, was a recycling of already-published material. This March I started something new, without the encumbrance of a plan; by the end of June I had about twenty thousand words, but was stuck as to what happened next.

Then I saw this on Twitter (X be xxxxed):

It's an extract from a book on William Blake, who either saw visions or had hallucinations, depending on whom you believe; and my personal gremlin went YEEEEE-HAH! and, to put it mildly, unloaded. Between 30 June and 16 August I wrote 27,696 words of first draft about a philosophy professor who sees crabs; and in keeping with the absurdity of the enterprise, on the morning when my print copy of the final version arrived a complete stranger sat near me on the tube and opened a copy of Adam Nicolson's Life Between the Tides to the beginning of the fourth chapter, which is titled Crabs. I haven't read Sartre except for his play The Flies, which I liked; but the coincidence would have appealed to Arthur Koestler, of whom I have read quite a bit and who didn't much like Sartre.

Anyway, not to clatter chitinously on, Seeing Crabs is now available in paperback and PDF ebook, and would make an ideal gift for that special crustacean-oriented someone in your life; and unlike Amazon I pay my taxes.

Captured and Stalled

Although Labour may have abandoned the twenty-nine-billion climate pledge on the grounds that it was a pledge, that doesn't mean there is no more money; oh dear me no. In the accustomed Team Starmer spirit of change, the Government will be spending more than three-quarters of that amount on a BP-approved continuation of Conservative energy policy. Encouragingly, the major fossil fuels profiteers have all increased their construcive input over the past year or two, while tree-huggers, scientists and other antisemitic influences have been largely marginalised. Last month a few such pariahs warned that the policy would allow corporations to continue destroying the climate in the name of an unproved technology; although to their credit they were impartial enough to point out the overriding advantage that the taxpayer would be covering the cost.

Sustainably Social, Profitably Pragmatic

Astoundingly enough considering the pure and pristine conduct of the profteering sector in every other enterprise from moisture provision through infantine shelf-stacker training to the fair and above-board purchase of Government ministers, it seems that entrepreneurial involvement in social care has been carried out in accordance with priorities somewhat other than the dignity and welfare of social expendables. In the past dozen years, ninety-eight per cent of adult warehouses and ninety per cent of children's warehouses which have been closed for endangering their inmates were run by private companies. What can be the explanation? On the bright side, market forces have also ensured that homes for the elderly are concentrated where firms can exploit wealthy residents, while homes for children are concentrated where firms can exploit low property prices, leading to ever more incentives for vulnerable children and non-wealthy wrinklies to work hard and play by the rules.

Harsh Lessons

Team Starmer's plans to impose VAT on education profiteering are ghastly and awful and horrid and have caused a fall in registration numbers even before being definitively watered down. Team Starmer has even threatened to channel the money stolen from profit-making infantine development enterprises into, of all things, teachers in state schools. Have the pleblings no mobile phones? Is there no internet? Thinking of the children, or anyway the sustainable ones, the Independent Schools Council has issued a pre-emptive squeal about the paltry merchandise being directed to its members' classrooms, which could have apocalyptic consequences should the iceberg knock on across the entire sustainable juvenile training industry. Naturally, the ISC did not deign to notice that registrations in the state sector are also falling, thanks in large part to the decline in British breeding stock; although its chief executive did note tactfully that there were lots of young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and that it would be a shame if anything were to, like, happen to them.

Hoo Ha

For patriotic Britons who don't know what it's like to live in a society of masters and servants whose rulers would rather bury their wealth than distribute it, the project must be about the most rah-rah that can be imagined: to manufacture an exact replica of the Sutton Hoo ship and set it afloat. Obviously, so little of significance has changed since the Anglo-Saxon era that simply oodles will be discovered about what life was like, besides all the useful information to be gathered about the capacity of mediaeval vessels to sail through industrial sewage. By the same brilliant logic, a rich idiot who recreates Buckingham Palace on his Texas ranch will thereby absorb the Almanach de Gotha. As one would expect of a British project, it has naturally taken six years to notice that English oak is not quite so prevalant as it once was, and there doesn't seem to be the budget for buying in wood of the requisite stoutness, hardihood and entrepreneurial gumption. In theory it could be mined from the heads of those who think historical research means building fancy toys; but in practice, alas, there would be insufficient length and too many knots. The nearest remaining European oak forests are in France and Denmark, neither of which had anything remotely to do with Anglo-Saxon England.

Change from Chickenfeed

Faith in British politics looks set to be sensibly, moderately and forensically restored with the CEO of Team Starmer condescending to repay a full six per cent of the value of all the bungs he's received over the past five years. Having accepted more than a hundred thousand in advance payments for his services since pledging his way into the leadership in 2019, the Prime Minister has now refunded the value of the six thousand sterling reminders of who his paymasters are which have dropped through the letterbox since the beginning of July. Team Starmer extruded a flunkette from the industry ministry to reassure the Government's employers that ministers are still a good commercial proposition, even though the transition from opposition to government may mean a change from payment in advance to cash on delivery. What percentage of Labour policies will henceforth serve interests other than the corporate remains as yet unclear.

Sacred Bonds

Marriage in the eyes of the Vatican is of course a holy institution, provided that it takes place exclusively between pairs of heterosexuals to the accompaniment of the correct magic words. Even so, there are contexts in which love and sanctity must yield to higher powers, and since it's the Vatican mammon is naturally an overriding concern. Staff in Vatican institutions cannot marry one another and keep their jobs; both halves of one couple declined to resign on each other's behalf, so both have been Solomonically fired. Despite objections from employees, the rule is being strictly enforced because the Church, whose doctrines preach salvation at the hands of a Father through the intercession of His one-night stand and her Son, is morally concerned about the risk of nepotism.

Ovine Intervention

A district court judge in the USA has confessed himself in some doubt as to what sentence should be imposed upon an octogenarian rancher for the crime of creating unauthorised hunting sheep. The condemned pleaded guilty to having used tissue and testicles from a Pamir argali ram to cross-breed with a ewe and create a hybrid hitherto unknown upon Earth. Native to central Asia and first described to Europeans by Marco Polo, the Pamir argali is the biggest extant wild sheep species, and the miscreant's plan was to breed the hybrid for hunting in Minnesota and (where else?) Texas. In the end the judge overcame his discombobulation sufficiently to impose a sentence of six months in prison plus $24,000 in fines and payments, presumably on the grounds that there are more than enough oversized sheep in American blood-sports already.