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Here’s a topical joke from The Ministry of Wit:
In case the link disappears, it says “Co-pilots must not stab the pilot. This is called assault.” It is parodying a Home Office leaflet called “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers” (non-illustrated version here), which helpfully explains on page 5 that “In the UK, both people must say ‘yes’ to sex. This is called consent.”
To be fair to the Home Office, given that the top ten countries from which asylum seekers come are, in order, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey* and Vietnam, there is a need to educate many men from the first eight of these countries that in the UK women have the legal right to refuse sex. In those eight countries marital rape is not a crime. The furore about the leaflets was because they reveal that the government knows damn well that education on sexual consent is particularly necessary for men from Muslim countries. It just doesn’t want to say so because the official ideology is that all cultures are equal. There is an ongoing legal case concerning the government’s reluctance to reveal crime figures analysed by nationality of offender.
It came after the Centre for Migration Control (CMC), a think tank, asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to reveal the total number of convictions broken down by nationality and offences for the seven years under freedom of information laws.
The MoJ initially refused, saying that to gather the data would be too expensive and that publishing the information could lead to the identification of individuals in breach of their rights to privacy.
Both arguments were rejected by the information watchdog. However, The Telegraph revealed last month that David Lammy, then justice secretary, sanctioned legal action seeking to overturn this ruling.
Opposition parties claimed the MoJ’s actions amounted to a “cover-up”.
One of the first political demonstrations I ever attended, over forty years ago, was in defence of refugees and asylum seekers. I still have great sympathy for those who seek freedom from oppression, such as Iranian Christians fleeing the Islamic Republic, and for the genuinely moderate Muslims – the almost comical over-use of that phrase does not mean they do not exist. But the current UK asylum regime is an illustration of the old medical saying that “the dose makes the poison.”
*My auto-correct tried to change “Turkey” to “Türkiye”. No.
“BBC removes 11 Mitchell and Webb comedy sketches from iPlayer,” reports the BBC.
You want to see the sketches more, now, don’t you? Thank you, “Basil the Great”.
Edit: And here’s the Civil War re-enactors sketch, courtesy of Giop Saus on YouTube.
Season 2 of “That Mitchell and Webb look” was made in 2007. At that time, TM&WL’s style of comedy was seen as mildly left wing and definitely anti-racist. They certainly saw themselves that way. Almost twenty years later, the Civil War sketch is genuinely thought-provoking comedy. Within the context of the sketch, I instinctively get why Mitchell’s character stops the re-enactment after Webb’s character says, “I am going to kill you with this big machete” in an African accent. I think the fake accent coupled with a portrayal of motiveless savagery tips it over to being racist (remembering that the whole thing is a act within an act, and the man waving the machete is portrayed as being frightfully worried that his portrayal of a “real” Sudanese machete-waver might be racist). But if asked to point out exactly why the whole idea of white British people re-enacting the Second Congo War is racist, my hand does several mid-air circuits without ever quite coming in to land. Why is it perfectly OK for a man to put on a great big wig and wave a sword about in order to play a Royalist officer in the English Civil War but not OK to put on a great big wig and wave a machete about in order to play a militia leader in the Second Congo War? Is it because the re-enactor played by Webb is white and presumably is descended from ancestors who might well have fought in the English Civil War but no one (so far as I know) looking like him fought in the Second Congo War? If so, would it be equally unacceptable to have a black British re-enactor play the Cavalier – as seems to be the fashion these days?
Related post: The fact that a British person’s ancestors were not British is not shameful and need not be concealed
I expect endless entertainment to follow in their wake 😀
Stop it, John Crace! I officially only read the Guardian to mock it. It’s confusing when I read a piece from the Guardian’s political sketch-writer mocking Nicola Sturgeon and find myself laughing out loud:
Nicola’s only crime was to love too much. And to not notice the Jaguar on the drive
You know how it is. You wake up and look out the bedroom window. You see a brand new Jaguar worth £81,000 parked in the driveway. You smile to yourself. That’s what you love about your husband. Always nipping out to the shops to buy himself treats. And where’s the harm in that? No one can say he isn’t worth it. And a new car is only a trifle compared with a motor home. That’s just Pete being Pete.
You get dressed and go downstairs. Your husband is already in the kitchen making you breakfast. “Fancy a coffee?” he asks. You nod. You’re busy not reading the SNP accounts. “Which machine would you like me to make it from?” he asks. “The basic Jura? The Jura Z8? Or the Miele? I always think the Z8 makes the best flat white. And what milk would you like?”
You open the back door and look at the Galloway and friesian cows he bought the previous week. Both are grazing on the lawn. You reckon you will try the Galloway today. You smile. You count yourself lucky that you are married to such an amazing man. Someone who can still surprise you after all these years you’ve lived together. Never change, darling man. Never change.
For those who ken not the tale of the Fall of the House of Sturgeon, Mr Crace explains in the next few paragraphs:
On Sunday morning, Nicola Sturgeon gave her first broadcast interview since her former husband, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from money donated to the SNP by supporters.
This was Nicola as a woman who had been badly wronged. Yet if you had looked behind the lights of the makeshift studio, you might just have been able to see the outline of a man in the shadows. That man was her lawyer, Aamer Anwar. Because who among us doesn’t need their brief on hand when doing a sit-down chat with Laura Kuenssberg? Probably just a precaution to make sure Laura didn’t nick one of the Montblanc fountain pens.
The interview basically consisted of just one question. How could you possibly not have known that your husband had been on the take? Your house was basically a multimillionaire’s remake of the Generation Game. A non-stop conveyor belt of high-value goodies. The garage alone was full of salt and pepper grinders worth more than £2,000 a shot. And even if it had never occurred to you Pete had basically stolen the lot, surely you must have thought his compulsive shopping habit had got badly out of hand?
Meanwhile, the writers at The National are making the best of things. One of yesterday’s headlines says, “‘Fundamental flaw’ in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles, says FM”. A Scottish friend gives rare praise to First Minister John Swinney and says, “He’s right. There was a fundamental flaw in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles. The flaw was that they were Sturgeon and Murrell.”
If you want to keep up with Scotland’s “ultimate power couple”, check out the brands listed in this article from the BBC: “Coffee machines, fountain pens and Grand Theft Auto: How Murrell spent the money”.
“Comedians tell ministers lack of funding is no laughing matter”, says the BBC headline writer. Do not judge him too harshly; hanging would suffice. The article continues,
Comedian Tom Walker, who portrays the fictional journalist Jonathan Pie, said the government needs to recognise comedy “as an important cultural thing from grassroots to sitcoms on the BBC”.
Walker suggested changing how stand-up comedians and others in the industry are viewed, explaining: “Essentially every stand-up comedian is a small business, they are an entrepreneur and that should be rewarded and acknowledged.”
“Should be rewarded”, that’ll get a laugh from the actual entrepreneurs. According to the Cambridge dictionary, an entrepreneur is “a person who attempts to make a profit by starting a company or by operating alone in the business world, esp. when it involves taking risks”. Get it? They take the risk, they get the profit if it works out, and they take the loss if it does not. By definition, no one who has a guaranteed income from the state is an entrepreneur.
Ro Dodgson said comedy is “often based on risk” and clubs and promoters who are struggling financially are less able to take a chance on new acts.
The comedian said if the government agreed funding to clubs “as almost a form of insurance” to keep trying new acts and supporting emerging talent “then we’d have an industry that can sustain itself”.
By definition, no industry that has a guaranteed subsidy from the state sustains itself.
Ill fares the land. Ominous tidings abound, such as MPs giving ministers powers to restrict the entire internet, World War III breaking out, and Winston Churchill being replaced by a badger.
But who could fail to feel hope stir in their bosom when the headline “Zack Polanski repeated claim hypnosis can increase breast size, BBC interview reveals” is a serious and genuinely consequential piece of political news?
Polanski the politician can be judged by the fact that he wants to arrest the president of Israel and build a relationship with Vladimir Putin. It becomes ever-clearer that before Polanski was a charlatan in politics he was simply a charlatan. But I am not convinced that his claim to have inflated women’s breasts by mesmerism is truly culpable. He seems to have half-believed it himself, alongside a more plausible theory that what he was actually doing was increasing the women’s self-confidence. There do not seem to have been many complaints from his customers. At some level I expect they understood that what they were buying from him was an hour with someone who would listen to them and then say soothing words. He should have stuck with his previous, more honourable profession. “With my help you can wish your boobs bigger” is less of a lie than “This time, rent control will work”.
BREAKING: Greta Thunberg reveals horrible torture at the hands of Israeli captors.
“They harvested every single one of my organs” she now says. “Then they forced me to work in a plutonium mine and we weren’t give any kind of protective equipment.”
News comes to me that an advert, a video in the style of a musical, for something called Coinbase, which I understand is some form of crypto set up, which is why the advert has been banned, and about which I know nothing more, (and this is not advice or recommendation on financial matters) is not permitted in the UK by the regulator, OFCOM. Not that I doubt that OFCOM are interpreting the regulations correctly. That the advert might be termed mildly satirical would be a fair description, and take a look at the shop names. It’s almost an updated Oliver Twist. Has it been made by people familiar with modern Britain? I would say so.
As Burns said in his ode ‘To a louse’:’O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’.
Thanks to comedian Andrew Lawrence for the tip.
George Monbiot writes in – I kid you not – the Guardian:
How does the right tear down progressive societies? It starts with a joke
Whether it’s bloodshed at Glastonbury or starving people on benefits, their ‘irony poisoning’ seeps obscene ideas into the range of the possible
An hour ago the Twitter account “NHS Nurses”, @SocialistNHS, posted a video to Twitter that shows a fat White British man with a can of Stella in his hand and a Union Jack painted on his belly complaining about immigrants.
“They’re taking all our jobs,” says the man.
“What qualifications do you have?” asks the female interviewer.
Our man replies with a choice piece of nonsense: “None – they are taking all our qualifications as well”.
The NHS Nurses mock this reply with the words,
“They’re taking all our jobs and all our qualifications”
Jesus wept… Our NHS and social care is made up of highly skilled migrant workers
How can this ever be a bad thing?
It is in fact possible to conceive of circumstances in which this would be a bad thing. There is an obvious conflict of interest between migrant workers and native born workers – or would-be workers. To observe this conflict of interest is not to take a side, but it is stupid to pretend it does not exist. A commenter called Robert Ferguson raises another way in which “Our NHS” being made up of migrants is not necessarily a good thing when he says, “Stealing other countries healthcare workers is not a good look.” I think Mr Ferguson’s belief that workers belong to their states of origin is fundamentally mistaken on moral grounds – and states which try to keep “their” workers by force are poorer than those which do not – but, still, the question of why this transfer of labour from Africa and South Asia to the UK takes place needs to be addressed rather than treated as a law of nature.
I found the tweet via this comment from a group called “Labour Beyond Cities”, who said:
A large swathe of the left is both too thick to realise this is an AI video and also too thick to realise that class hatred towards white working class people is strategically very poor, divisive and alienating.
So the stereotypical fat, white, useless, racist Brit in the video is not real. He was a little too exactly like a socialist’s idea of a Reform voter to be true. As one of the comments a proposed Community Note says, if you need confirmation, look at the gibberish written on the pub sign. And one can just about still tell it is A.I. by something “off” in the way the man moves.
In a few months we won’t be able to tell.
What difference, if any, does the man’s nonexistence make to the arguments involved?
In the comments to my previous post, Zerren Yeoville was inspired by the Pogues’ 1987 classic Fairytale of New York to pen the following lines for Birmingham in its current travails:
‘They’ve got rats big as cats
They’ve got rivers of mould
The smell goes right through ya
You’d best have a cold
When you first took the bins out
On a cold winter’s eve
You promised me dustcarts
were “waiting, you’ll see”….’
The rats as big as cats were also mentioned in the Sun‘s headline today:
NO END IN SIGHT Huge blow for locals in UK’s ‘third-world city’ where Army called in to tackle cat-sized rats & 21k TONS of rubbish
A major incident has already been declared by Birmingham City Council
Lest anyone think the Sun is being melodramatic, the BBC’s headline does not merely feature cat-sized rats but cat-sized rats who have begun their insurrection against humanity:
‘Cat-sized rats are attacking our cars’
NickM also provided commentary in verse on the Birmingham bin strike, but, unless I have misunderstood, that one was written by A.I. so it doesn’t count.
Gosh, ChatGPT is getting alarmingly good.
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