Samizdata

Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans!
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun!
– Noel Coward

Former celebrity brain tumour sufferer and Labour politician Dr Mo Mowlem reportedly believes that we need to “negotiate with Bin Laden”, along the lines of terrorism appeasement in Northern Ireland.

I agree.

In the spirit of reconciliation I propose the following gestures of good faith:

1. Remove all British forces from the Middle East and Afghanistan.
2. Break off diplomatic relations with all non-Islamic countries.
3. Ban women from holding any educational qualifications past primary school.
4. Ban women from holding any jobs other than primary school teacher, nurse or doctor in women only clinics. Especially remove all women from political office.
5. Ban all Jews from holding political office, working in the public sector, the media and the legal profession.
6. Prohibit the sale or consumption of alcohol between 3pm on Fridays and noon on Saturday.
7. Release all Moslem terrorist suspects.
8. Order the Archbishop of Canterbury to publicly abjure Christianity [Editor’s note: is this not already the case?] and exhalt the supremacy of Islam. Convert the established churches of England, Scotland and Ireland to Islam.
9. Prohibit all religious education in schools, except Islam.
10. Order the abdication of Her Majesty the Queen in favour of a male relative (her husband perhaps).

Obviously, we should hold back on some Islamist demands until we have some reciprocal agreements from Mr Bin Laden, for instance:

1. No mass public executions of homosexuals and female adulterers.
2. No public flogging of drug or alcohol addicts.
3. No enforcement of the veil for non-Moslem women.
4. No declaration of war on Israel and the USA.
5. No handing-over of British nuclear, biological and chemical weapons technology to al-Qaeda.

After all, we must have something to bargain with!

Just an after-thought. Am I confused, or did negotiating with the IRA lead to a split with even more violent factions launching even more deadly bomb attacks?

The good Professor Bunyip has a modest proposal for reforming the welfare state:

Fire all the public servants, social workers and ministers of the new and godless Christianity and replace them with the very people to whom they have been sending everyone else’s money.

The newly uplifted wouldn’t actually have anything to do, since there would be no further funds to distribute, but they would have salaries and somewhere to go in the morning. Meanwhile, those laid-off social engineers could sample the poetic justice of penury — the very condition they have encouraged in the underclass whose positions at the bottom of society’s ladder they would assume.

We taxpayers would notice no difference but a positive one: Bureaus of social engineers would cost less to support while achieving just as little. And we could also expect to see crime rates diminish, since the pool of formerly downtrodden malefactors would be otherwise occupied giving each other tattoos with government-issue ballpoints and microwaving infants in their departments’ lunchrooms — a kinder, quicker, cheaper and altogether more efficent way of squandering human potential than the current method. As a final advantage, the newly designated poor, being composed of a better class of person, would be less likely to burn down railway stations.

I say its worth a try.