Find Your Proper Place

The best army in the world (for those who came in late, that would be the British one) continues be short of volunteers, and continues to rely on child soldiers to make up the numbers. Although the Ministry for Wog-Bombing has no particular interest in the social background of its cannon-fodder, the Child Rights International Network has found that nearly thirty per cent of those who enlisted last year were not old enough to vote. Not even the most primitive and ruthless of our allies in the North Atlantic Bear-Baiting Club allows direct enlistment into the US Army at the age of sixteen. The best army in the world times its recruitment campaigns for the announcement of GCSE results and carefully targets the more expendable income brackets with advertisements offering the chance to make friends, play with exciting toys, and by no means be bullied to suicide at a training barracks or maimed for life in the interests of fossil fuel shareholders. Nevertheless, more than half of the army's infantry regiments are at least one-fifth below strength, and in some units the deficit is as much as forty per cent. If we are to fight the beastly Euro-wogs and their collaborators effectively, surely National Service for those who fail the eleven-plus cannot be far away.

Our Nation's Pride

Although many EU citizens remain at large to pursue their nefarious agenda, bogus asylum seekers (viz. asylum seekers, according to the religious orthodoxy that has prevailed at least since the earthly ministry of the Blessed Tony) are a different kettle of rust. Foiled job-stealers and their health-tourist spawn are warehoused in overcrowded rooms where they can enjoy the close company of their fellow cockroaches, and at a profit too. Naturally, the Ministry for Wog Control is more than happy to throw taxpayers' money at slum landlords for the maintenance of these salubrious conditions; and so concerned is Her Majesty's Government for the culprits' welfare that it employs all of nine officials to monitor the conditions of more than thirteen thousand bed spaces. Patriotic believers in British justice and fair play will be proud to note that the treatment of at least some felonious foreigners retains the morally necessary aspect of punishment.

British Delight

Having taken back control of a great British industry by flogging it off to a foreign firm, Her Majesty's Government has naturally done its best to ensure a stable and secure working environment in which its grateful beneficiaries may grow and thrive and grow their inevitable thrivingness. A major factor in this master-stroke of political economy is of course the approaching apocalypse of Britain's independence from the quasi-Mongolian hordes of the Brusso-Strasbourgian axis; and the new owners of British Steel are already looking for ways to mitigate the dubious if epoch-making blessings of that great British event. So far only sixty-four jobs are at risk from these precautions, and even those are only in the north; so nobody who matters will be much affected. Besides, British Steel's prospective new owners are a military pension fund with a record of corruption, disrespect for labour rights and ties to the Turkish armed forces, whose last attempt at a coup d'état took place all of three years ago. For Her Majesty's Government, doing business with such people is not only a privilege but a pleasure.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Canines xvii-xxxix

When the Father of Teeth sojourned among the Hittites, on the other hand, he was witness to a great battle which left the field strewn with corpses both living and dead. The foot-soldiers of the victorious Hittites strutted among them, hacking the left hand off each; and at the behest of the Hittite king the Father of Teeth joined in the happy work, gnawing at bony wrists but respectfully refraining from ingestion of the whole appendage, though he did sneakily swallow an occasional finger. By evening each corner of the field of victory was glorified by a great pile of severed hands; and the following morning the hands in each pile would be carefully counted and itemised by the king's own accountants, thus ensuring the accuracy of the casualty figures when immortalised on the great stone stelae.

"I hear," said the Father of Teeth, "that anyone whose body is incomplete must enter the world of the dead as a maimed soul, and suffer throughout eternity the affliction of his flesh."
"That is so," said the Hittite king, who was a stickler for tradition. "It is to be regretted, no doubt; but enemies are enemies, and statistics are statistics."
"Your chivalry in taking only the left hands is to be commended," said the Father of Teeth, "but does your Majesty really consider it prudent to sacrifice only those to the gods of numerical infotainment? It is decreed that shields can be borne on the forearm and that most men are right-handed; hence your slain enemies will await you in the world of the dead with their left arms still able to bear a shield and their sword-hands still intact."

So the Hittite king ordered the Father of Teeth to go out onto the field of victory and bite off all the right hands of the enemy dead as well; but to take care and eat them all, so as to keep pristine the statistics for the great stone stelae. The Father of Teeth obeyed; and when the Hittite king died his enemies were waiting for him, grinning and waving their stumps from which the bone splinters glinted like bloody fangs.

Doctrinal Fallout

The defence minister of India's Hindu nationalist government has celebrated the country's status as a nuclear power by implying that the present policy of not striking first with weapons of mass destruction may be about to undergo a Narendran modification. India developed its capacity for justifiable genocide twenty years ago in order to deter what it claimed was a threat from the Heathen Chinee; nevertheless, and despite the subcontinent's long and enviable heritage of British imperial values, Pakistan was somehow prompted to develop its own nuclear weapons in order to deter the threat from India. The re-definition of deterrence as "striking first if we should happen to feel like it" has precedent among the similarly primitive Christian nationalists who run the United States; fortunately we are all aware, because the pious and the patriots never tire of telling us so, that the two great peacekeepers in human affairs are religion and nuclear weapons.

Earth-Shattering Logic

Having recently got through one symptom of climate change (the hottest July day in recorded history) and with another on the way (a month's rain in one day, at least for a few expendables), it's natural that Her Majesty's Government should be concerned about the fossil fuel industry. Shale fracking has caused earthquakes without producing any gas, but fortunately only in Lancashire; which doubtless explains why the ever-gormless Andrea Leadsom regards the methane-pumping pseudo-industry as yet another great British opportunity, to rank with such great opportunities as Brexit, the Osbornomic Miracle and the Apocalypse of John Bolton. As one would expect from so brilliant a source, the reasoning is as solid and self-evident as the walls of a padded cell. Since no gas has been produced, it is obvious to Her Majesty's Government that the frackers are too tightly regulated; specifically, that they are too restricted in the magnitude of earthquake they are allowed to cause.

Trusted Chums

Well, here's a thing: mere experts have investigated the conduct of Her Majesty's Government's favourite Islamic fundamentalist head-choppers and have concluded that, as regards the ongoing rampage in Yemen, the moderate reformers of the House of Saud have taken a rather moderate and reforming attitude to the truth. Evidence compiled by a Yemeni human rights group contradicts the assertions of the Saudis, even though the Saudis were investigating themselves and therefore had better access to the facts. This is certainly a conundrum, especially as the assertions of the Saudis have formed the basis of Britain's thriving arms trade with the head-choppers. Thanks to British values and all that, weapons exports cannot be licensed except for legitimate wog-bombing; fortunately, the idea that the Saudis might have said the thing that is not is unlikely to cause too much bother, because Her Majesty's Government has neither the time nor the inclination to bother with such minor and unprofitable questions as what may or may not be true.

Virtue in Excess

By refreshing contrast to the raucous rah-rah that inevitably greets each anniversary of Britain's various victories over beastly foreigners, the bicentennial of Her Majesty's Government's massacre of its own citizens at St Peter's Field has been missed altogether. Manchester city council has spent a million pounds on a pile of tiddlywinks to commemorate the festival of law and order, but has sneaked it into the pubic eye three days early and without a formal opening ceremony. The monument's design has brought complaints from disabled people who will be unable to march themselves to the top of the pile and then march down again, wherein apparently all the purpose and joy of the thing resides. "The council has acknowledged that the innovative and imaginative interpretation of the design brief," proclaimed the council's executive member for culture, "with a greater emphasis on interaction than originally envisaged for a public artwork, meant that not enough consideration was initially given to accessible design issues." There is nothing like an emphasis on interaction for distracting one from the needs of fellow citizens. Fortunately, councillors are already working to purge themselves from their damaging overabundance of imaginative innovativity.

Small but Dangerous

Our most Britannic Government, true servants of Her Madge,
Who staunchly bear upon their brows the plucky British badge;
Elected representatives of all that makes us great,
Those leaders of the world and punchers well above our weight;
The occupants for ever, as is only fit and meet,
Of one United Nations Baddie-Bombing Council seat;
Those Ministers and Secretaries, Statespersons and Spads,
Protecting all of Albion from criminals and cads,
Purveying prophylaxis from the terrorist disease,
And soaking all the planet in the Freedom of the Seas -
They cannot be persuaded, and will never be prepared
To bring some British children home, because they are too scared.

Minnie Brownlow

Trampling the Allotments of the Mighty

For all their trendy sentiments about respecting the rights of others, the Stalinist ideologues at the top of today's Labour party have always had one helpless minority firmly in their firing-squad sights. Decades of racist persecution have culminated in yesterday's culturally-insensitive threat, on the very eve of the holiest day in the calendar, to institute a Great Purge against wealthy landowners. Particular refinements of torture are no doubt plotted for the most vulnerable group of all: those who like to drain or burn an occasional moor in order to have specially-fattened birds driven within convenient distance of a shotgun. In these times, of course, one expects nothing better from the Left; but yesterday will have been a day of profound disillusionment for those who trusted and believed that the Labour tent was broad enough for a wide range of sexual proclivities.