Vexatious Legalities

Although it has been made clear many a time that the petty provisions of international jurisprudence cannot be allowed to hinder the entrepreneurial pluck and gumption of the master race, the Stalinist bureaucrats of the Brusso-Strasbourg Reich perversely persist in their pedantic insistence upon the letter of treaties originally signed as long ago as ten whole weeks. There are even signs that the enemy may seek to use that very same treaty as an excuse for dilatoriness in ratifying the evil empire's limited and specific trade and security obligations towards Her Majesty's Government. Some peoples never learn, and it seems there are still those among the beastly Euro-wogs who have yet to assimilate the lessons of two world wars, one World Cup and the Irish Question.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

Our noble and virtuous Prime Miniſter hath pledged upon his Honour as a Gentleman, and his univerſal Repute as a publick Servant of the moſt ſupreme Competence, Diſcretion and Foreſight, that the Pluckineſs of our Britiſhneſs will enſure and guarantee, that by Midſummer Day the Woo Han Peſtilence ſhall ſuffer its final and ultimate Vanquiſhment. Theſe Tidings have occaſioned much Rejoycing at the lateſt Meeting of the Claſsical Liberal Society of Maſqueleſs Defiants, whereof from the Bloater and Blueſtocking Coffee-Houſe yeſter Night iſsued much good-humoured Banter and harmleſs Kicking of Beggars. Indeed this conſtituted the firſt Occaſion theſe many Months gone, when the Vagabonds condeſcended for the moſte Part to forſake their cuſtomary Indolence and beſtir themſelves beneath the reſpectable Brogues and Boots of their Betters. At which Circumſtance the acknowledged Miſtreſs of the Surgeon General and ſundry Gentlemen of ſimilar Credentials, my Lady ffryghtenynge-Dymwytte, was taken with the Screeching Vapours and would not be calmed until the verie laft of theſe Vagrants and Gypſies ſhould be ſummarily hanged or in other Wiſe ejected from the Realm. Accordingly within the paſt few Houres I have, with ſome good quality American Cotton at my Eares, compiled ſeverall dozen Petitions for cleaner Streets and a Final Solution to the Homeleſsneſs Problem, which I hope may receive due and prompt Attention. For in the approaching Abſence of the Woo Han Peſtilence there will be a renewed Neceſsitie of tough Deciſions concerning the Queſtion of the Breeding Poore and how to reſtore the proper Balance of Demiſes to their pullulant Numeroſity, particularly if the preſent Spate of temperate Winters ſhould perſiſt in its inconſiderate Continuation.

Queen of Hearts

One of the less defensible fronts in Britain's ongoing statuary war has now been closed thanks to a strategic retreat by councillors in Margaret Thatcher's birthplace. Faced with a global pandemic and the worst economic recession in a generation, an iconic Conservative council has responded according to its primitive fetishistic instincts, by trying to raid the public purse for purposes of partisan rah-rah. Initial plans to soak the taxpayer for a hundred thousand in order to raise the old bag's image in ten feet of bronze have now been scrapped in favour of sponging on the private sector, though not before an enterprising local sculptor was moved to set up a plaster head on a pike, complete with handbag at the base, for a fraction of the cost.

Decent Chaps Doing Jolly Things

Long a happy hunting ground for Her Majesty's Government's favourite fundamentalist head-choppers, Yemen is to receive a further invigorating dose of Global British fair play. Since the situation continues to worsen, there seems little point in throwing good money after bad, so the Symonds-Stratton administration is cutting by half its already meagre humanitarian dole. It is to be hoped that this compassionate and foresighted gesture will compensate in some measure for any losses incurred by the wog-bombing House of Saud through the unconstructive attitude of the Biden administration. Although the World Cop has bestowed a Richard Nixon pardon upon the Saudi crown prince for his part in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi rampage in Yemen may in future be forced to confine itself to defensive measures. Presumably we may safely conclude that the tools of Khashoggi's disposal were purely defensive in nature, but it remains as yet unclear whether the head-chopping House of Saud will continue to be permitted the kind of defence that the US is wont to deploy against such menaces as Latin American voters and Iraqi weapons of mass nonexistence.

The Father of Teeth

Text for today: II Caries cxvii-cxxxix

At a considerably earlier date, therefore, the Father of Teeth spent a gap year as a minor village deity, scaring off those spiritual enemies which were most conveniently dispatched by virtue of their nonexistence. It was only when a swarm of locusts descended, and devoured not only the year's entire crop but the sacrifices around the fertility totem at the centre of the village, that certain doubters began to call the arrangement into question.

Prominent among these was the fertility god's high priest, a venerable gentleman whose pious sensibilities were so deeply shocked by the vanishing of the sacrificial meat and cakes that his stomach had not stopped growling for three days after the débâcle. While his parishioners cowered at their hearths and did obeisance to the fertility god by breeding more mouths for the non-existent crop to feed, the high priest tottered indignantly to the residence of the Father of Teeth in order to demand an explanation, an expiation or, failing both, a compensatory lunch.

He found the Father of Teeth at home, squatting in horrid complaisance before the fire, on which rested a hissing cauldron full of locust parts.
"Knave," fulminated the high priest, "knowest thou not that the gods are displeased and that we languish and starve through thine exceeding negligence? Why squattest thou thus idly in thine indigent indigence and slothly slothfulness, while thy chosen people face a hungry demise amid a most demising hunger? And why didst thou not perform thy divine duty of protecting thy chosen village from these pestilential arthropods?"
"The locusts are no concern of mine," said the Father of Teeth; "there is a reason for everything, or very nearly, and certainly there is a reason for the fact that nobody calls me Father of Mandibles."
"It was thy sworn and contracted purpose," reprimanded the high priest, "to protect our village and all its gods, against all perils and dangers that might threaten us with the threatening of their threatening."
The Father of Teeth snatched a locust from the air, bit off its legs with six cracks and half a dozen crunches, and tossed it in the cauldron. "The locusts, whatever one may say of their table manners, have not burned your houses to the ground," he said. "Your village is still standing and the fertility god is as rampant as ever."
"But what of thy chosen people?" demanded the high priest. "Deprived of their worship and propitiation, the gods will grow angry and the entire world may be imperilled with peril by the wrath of their wrath. Wilt thou take that upon thy carnassial conscience, even in the squatting of thy squatting and the impudence of thine impudence?"

So the Father of Teeth seized the high priest and bit through his Achilles tendons with a snap and a twang, and hung him head down over the fire until he was considerably kippered and even more morally indignant. "The wrath of the gods is harder to arouse than is generally thought," the Father of Teeth reasssured him. "There are many in the world who eat their gods, and who believe that a change of diet is enough to warrant divine punishment; but happy are those who can adapt their appetites to the whims of fate."

The shrieks brought the villagers from their houses to the house of the Father of Teeth, where he served them nauseating rations of locust pulp which kept them alive until next planting season. By the time the crops began to sprout again, the locusts were practically domesticated and would not touch a vegetarian diet. Meanwhile the villagers revered them as protectors of the fields, devastators of enemy mealtimes, and punishers of absconding high priests; for theirs was never seen again.

We Sovereignly Bask in our Plucky Little Shrewdness

We are all aware, because the censored and silenced protectors of our sacred slave-holding statuary never tire of reminding us, that the process of regaining British independence from the beastly Euro-wogs was the titanic result of an unsinkable will of the people, motivated entirely by an enlightening and efficientising concern with cutting red tape and preventing free movement of the lesser breeds. By one of those strangely benignant turns of fate, of that divinely mysterious variety whereby the beneficiaries of government contracts frequently turn out to be chums of the relevant ministers, the timing of the revolution has enabled Global Britain to avoid the latest self-inflicted torpedo to rock the foundering Graf Spee that is the Brusso-Strasbourgian empire. Ever attuned to the latest trends and always ahead of the games of lesser breeds, the great British public's will to leave the Nazi-Soviet stranglehold coincides more or less exactly with the Trumpian will of corporate tax-dodgers not to vulgarise their fiscal affairs by exposing their nakedness before the prying, prurient eyes of unelected bureaucrats. Once properly acclimatised to the sunny uplands, no doubt the gratitude of British business will be palpable.

Journal of the Plague Year

continued, by a Gentleman

We heare much loud and traytorous Complayning, that Her Majesty's Government doth prize the Lives of its fiſcal Inferiors according to the Seniority of their Age, rather than by whether each Subject of the Realm be a School-maſter or a Governeſs. Alack, that the Day ſhould have dawned, when the Stoick Britiſhneſs of our Britiſhneſs would be ſullied by Sentiments of ſuch unpatriotick Puſillanimity! For it ſhould be cleare even unto the Underſtanding of the ſimpleſt Chylde, ſuch as the ſeventeen pin-headed Daughters of my Lord Splyce-Chyldebryde, that we muſt preſerve the Bleſsings of long accumulated Experience and Tradition, above all groſs materialiſtick Conſiderations of mere commercial Competence at procuring a Wage. I will wager, that there is to be found within the entyre Realm, ſcarecely a Governeſs who hath led a Troop of Horſe into Battel againſt the beaſtlie French; yet were one to take a Survey or Cenſus of the Quantity of purple-viſaged jowl-quivering Martyrs to the Gout which have achieved the ſame, there would be ſuch a Sufficiency of Sword-arms, as to reſtore forthwith to our American Colonies and all their uppity Niggers the ſweet uncompromiſing Truncheon of Statue-reſurrecting Amity.

Mere Materialism

We are well aware, because the censored and silenced victims of woke cancellism never tire of telling us, that the British Empire was a force for good. Hence it will come as no surprise that the former British colony of Nyasaland, which we ran for sixty years and whose simply adorable commie-bashing dictator we simply adored for twenty more, is now among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, where even the abortionists have to find cheap substitutes for the virtuous Christian coathanger. Accordingly, a powerful god-bothering lobby is doing its best to prevent the passage of a liberalising abortion bill which would advance law and justice in the republic of Malawi to a point slightly ahead of the republic of Poland. Since the bill is concerned merely with such gross worldly concerns as saving women's lives, Christians and Muslims have joined their spiritual forces to protect their nasty little god from any usurpation of His murderous prerogatives.

Caudillo Kaput

Even as the mainland battles to protect its history from re-writing and its heritage from de-whiting, culture warriors among the beastly Euro-wogs persist in their genocidal war on statuary. Though lacking the pluck and gumption inherent in the slave trade, General Franco's memory has hitherto been held sacred because of his no-nonsense attitude towards Arabs and leftists. However, the Nazi-Soviet régime in Brusso-Strasbourg has forced present-day Spain into a hideous orgy of inquisitorial iconoclasm. In a particularly tactless touch, the successful terrorist's last remaining public monument was vandalised on the fortieth anniversary of the Tejerazo, when a group of patriots attempted to reinstate the moderate and sensible British values of parliamentary prorogation and reasonable military precautions against Communism.

Pessimism of the Will

Since Her Majesty's Government has no particular interest in mitigating the climate emergency, the chief executive of the Environment Agency has had a bit of a chat with the Association of British Insurers instead. He repeated the part which motivated the recent flurry to set up a sort of Conservative conference rah-rah thingy in London, namely that climate change causes refugees; and he added a good deal more bad news to which the Association of British Insurers will doubtless respond by covering themselves as public-spiritedly as possible. Perhaps most notable among the dire tidings was the assertion that the best we can hope for is that Her Majesty's Government and the great British public put the same effort into tackling climate change as they have into bringing about our world-beating casualty figures during the pandemic.