Strange Historical Blind Spot

Various beneficiaries of Imperial largesse in the Caribbean have drawn up an action plan with prongs to stab yet deeper at the ghastly, gaping wound of post-colonial ingratitude. With their characteristic bias towards the negative, claimants for reparations over the transatlantic work ethic have pointed out that Jamaica became independent with illiteracy levels approaching those which the tech-bros and their minions would now like to impose upon the remainder of the species; while tendentiously whitewashing from history the three centuries during which the most well-meaning empire on earth confined the burdens of education to the grown-ups. With similarly flawed moral insight, Britain's refusal of reparations to former colonies is contrasted with the payments extended to the Jewish community after the Holocaust, and even with the compensation paid to slave-owners when the institution was so gloriously and boastably abolished; as if the recipients in both of those cases had hardly been white Europeans at all.

Royaume-Uni: nul points

Parliamentarians with the necessary spare time and cultural depth are poised to inquire into the nation's performances at the Eurovision song contest, which apparently have been letting the side down since the millennium. After a suitable and no doubt scrupulously proportionate expenditure of the taxpayer's time and money, judgement will eventually be passed on whose fault it all is. Should anyone in the realm be concerned about the state and future of British lierature, film, theatre, opera or broadcasting, they will doubtless be reassured that the House of Expenses Claimants' Committee for Tech-bros, Cultchah, Meedjah and Rah-rah has nothing more important to worry about than results in a campy international game show.

Hitting the Right Targets

New evidence of grown-upness in Team Starmer's foreign policy has emerged with the release of figures showing that the latest British decencies in the international aid budget primarily affected the poorest countries. If one wishes an effective use of welfare that isn't going to tech-bro squillionaires or water provision profiteers, it is clearly far better to enable the transfer of expendable populations from poverty into desperation and from desperation into starvation. More deaths will mean fewer refugees; and since efficient and economical military procurement is against the national religion, it will be so much the better if the surviving refugees are sufficiently emaciated for Britain's plucky little servicepersons to deal with in a fair fight.

Oh, the Injustice of it All

Whether through their own innate depravity or the subtlety and cunning of the Heathen Chinee, the beastly Euro-wogs are once more threatening to act as if the United Kingdom of Westminster, the Provinces and the Celts were no longer in charge of the European Union. Trade legislation intended to protect European markets against the yellow peril may also incidentally affect the mainland: a possibility that comes dangerously close to implying not only that Britain is a third country but also that its economy is no better than China's. So gross and blatant is the Strasbrussels dictatorship's diplomatic gaffe that Britain may yet flounce out of the talks about modifying the terms on which it flounced out of Europe. That will show them.

Oh, the Unfairness of it All

Questions (or, in Standard English, squeals of righteous indignation) are likely to emerge from Strasbrussels allies and the United Kingdom over the possibility of a unique alliance between Canada and the sovereignty-stealing Euro-wogs. Doubtless owing to the notorious French taint in their breeding stock, the Canadians may yet accept their servitude in preference to liberation by the empire of the head-tribble. Conversely, Britain's famous instinct for fair play will be roused to new heights of self-pity by the underhanded Euro-wog trick of inducing an English-speaking people to risk expulsion from the Commonwealth of Nations, despite their never having flounced out of the EU and despite their being as yet relatively unlikely to allow the shaping of their national policy by the Farage Falange.

Strange Tastes, Alien Values

State propagandists among the Heathen Chinee have very cunningly and insidiously insinuated real-world events into a TV thriller, without scrupling to put their own particular slant on the story. A series co-produced by the security ministry has had the effrontery to portray plucky little Formosa as an adversary, while gratuitously disregarding the famously objective image of the Heathen Chinee habitually promulgated by agents of public enlightenment in the West. Clearly the national mythography of that benighted culture has much catching-up to do before it can rival the historical honesty and moral sophistication of James Bond or cowboys and Indigenous.

Our Powers of Nuance Elude Them

It's all very laudable for the lesser breeds to adopt civilised values, but problems can still arise from forcing fine British wine into shoddy foreign bottles. Despite our shared Nordic heritage, Sweden's attempt at a hostile environment seems to have been taken to an undesirable extreme, causing large numbers of British residents to be treated with the kind of contempt which the mainland's Ministry for Wog Disposal habitually reserves for actual wogs. Evidently the declaration of independence from the Strasbrussels dictatorship failed to make sufficiently clear the vital distinction between British expats and foreign migrants.

Burning to Serve

One of the major contributors to the Grenfell disaster has accepted the very British penance of a new job in the public housing sector at a salary of a hundred and fifty thousand a year. As director of housing at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Laura Johnson pushed for cheap renovations and delayed the installation of fire safety measures; the fact that she presumably did so in order to save her employers money was doubtless the main, if not the sole, necessary qualification for her new role. It remains as yet unclear whether the nation's free and fearless Press have any plans to hound her to the grave like a Cambridge academic; happily, such zealous pursuit of justice may prove unnecessary, given that the survivors and the bereaved are still busy luxuriating in all those thoughts and prayers.

Too Much Leg

Among the advantages of living on the global side of the Irish border is apparently the right of schools to impose Victorian dress codes on female pupils. Alas, such decencies will soon be a thing of the past, as the Northern Ireland education minister has slackened so far as to legislate for girls to have the right of transsexualising the garments on their lower extremities. The minister is a member of the Diehard Ulster Protestant party, so the backsliding has no doubt been a painful one; and his Calvary will only grow harsher with posterity's inevitable linkage of his name to flared jeans in deportment class and fluorescent rock-and-roll hotpants during prayers.

From Sorrow to Joy

O rah for the tumbled twin towers
That fell twenty-five years this day,
And brought us emergency powers
To steer things our own godly way.

O rah for the forces of terror,
Who started the terrorist war
That made decent folk see the error
In granting due process of law.

O rah for the many demises,
A bounty not all statesmen win:
Near three thousand lottery prizes
For Business and War to cash in.

O rah for all freedomised masses
Who frolic on Middle East sands,
And all petro-profit that passes
Now freely into the right hands.

O rah for that spur to the nation
From which we have all done so well:
Three cheers for our civilisation!
Rah rah for the towers that fell!

Missy Cumplish