THE WARLORD OF CHIPPING SODOM..

PM WINSTON SIMPLE,

ON  HOW ISIL CAN HELP US BEAT THE ENEMY.

Well, I would just say to  this house that as your prime minister and commander-in-chief it is my foremost duty to  start wars, wherever and whenever and upon whomever ...is it whomever, whose ever?  upon whoandwhomsoever I can.  And thus invite retaliation, here, at home. Not exactly here, in the Palace of Westminster, sewn-up tighter'n  nun's knickers, this place, but generally, among people who travel on the buses, and walk down the streets.

(Torybastards cheering )

Wosssat? Win them? Win the wars? Good God, no, we don't win them.  Didn't win in Egypt, did we; didn't win in Malaya,  certainly didn't win in Northern Ireland; Iraq, didn't win there. Afghanistan, we never, ever win there.  
Libya?  What's to win? 



And actually, d'you know what, none of these are actually our wars....whose are they?  Fucked if I know.  Israel's, America's ? We just tag along, so's not to be left out. But as the great Shakespeare said, They also serve, who only stand and lose. And that's what we do so well, lose. Lost in Ulster, lost in Iraq, lost magnificently in Afghanistan.  And do you know what, when I visit our servicemen and women abroad, that's what I say to them:  We can rely on you chaps to lose for us, and since that's what's gonna happen,  there's no point in the Chancellor spending good money on supplying you with proper gear, y'know, boots, that sort of thing, the right toothpaste, carrier air support, we needed that money for the bankers' bonuses.  I mean, lessbeclear, if it wasn't for the army you'd probly all be in Mrs May's young offender institutions.
As it is, keep your nose clean, lose your legs, and you might get to shake hands with Prince Harry Hooligan. Just the once, he's a busy man.


 

 And Syria, no, we haven't a snowball's chance in Hell. 
Not against hundreds of Russian Migs or whatever they are and hundreds of Uncle Sam's  stealth fighters  and attack helicopters and what have you.  No, no, they won't actually be shooting at our Spitfires and Hurricanes, not as such,  but there's always Friendly Fire, at which Uncle Sam is most proficient.  And Mr Putin does seem to have his arse in his hands, just because a few hundred of his citizens were blown out of the sky.  That's the thing, with the Russians.  I mean, the French, they lost far fewer citizens than were in the Russian aircraft and they're hardly making any fuss at all, are they? Apart from demanding that everybody join them in World War Three, which we are happy to do. Let me inform the house, it beats the arse, this WarLording,  off negotiating a new Euro-treaty. Not that we will,  because we can't, but a good world war'll take people's minds off that, I should think.

 But at the end of the day, as we used to say at Eton, it doesn't matter how you play the game as long as somebody else loses and the right people make a fortune. 

(cheers, Tory benches and some Labour benches  erupt in song, Give us Money, that's, whatwewant, that's whatwewant, that's what we wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-nt, yeah, that's what we want .)

I mean, I simply say, Mr Tiny Speaker, in reponse to my honourable friends, that all of us in this house have had to make do with a miserly eleven per cent pay rise, whilst those whom we were quite proply elected to rule over are clamouring for what they call a living fucking wage, if you please. I hesitate to call that Treachery in Time of War but I shall, in a week or two. Older members may recall a previous prime minister, the Earl of Haliburton, who has been such an inspiration to us all, when he helped invade Iraq, he lost no time in calling the striking firefighters the Enemy Within.


Strikers?  Yes. Time of War, we can shoot them.
Doctors? Any bastard.

But yes, whether you win or lose doesn't matter because for a certain type of person it is simply impossible to lose.
  Just look at Mr Grant Schitts, 



and wossisname, Lord Somebody, 


His Grace, the Lord Bully. 

the cunt  in charge of the Conservatives. 

No? No, that's me, isn't it. 

I'm the cunt in charge of the Conservatives. 
Well, me and Mr Murdoch, and my dear neighbour in Chipping Sodom, Mrs Rebeka Witch. No, no, 'snot as if they want a war at the Sun, but it does always sell a few more copies.  Yes, that's right, the good people of Royal Wootton Gruesome, them, too.

No, I mean the chap who chairs the party, and sells the peerages,  Lord Wossaname,  yes, and squashes those, in my view quite improper claims that the Tory party is full of nonces. I mean, quite clearly, Mr Tiny Speaker,  they should all be in prison, not the nonces,  him -  Mr Lordy and Mr Schitts - but they're just not the sort of people to go to prison, are they, and so they won't.  
And that's as it should be.  If we were to start jailing politicians for committing criminal offences, well, very shortly there'd be no-one left to make the laws

(from all sides: hear-hear, hear-hear.)

Who's Mr Schitts?  Oh, come on now, honourable and right honourable members must know him,  the oily little bastard,


he's also known as Mickey Green, the PonziMan,  yes, that's him, Schitts the crook, yes, that's true, he was a minister.  But lessbeclear, if we didn't have crooks in the cabinet, who would we have?  'Snot like there's any honest people in parliament, is it?

Chance would be a fine thing.

But no, a very clever man, Mickey, or Grant or whatever he called himself, no names, eh, no pack drill.  It was Mr Schitts who first acquainted the nation with equine carnivorism.  Yes, at the time when our friends and donors in the supermarkets were flogging horse meat as topside, you remember, and the silly customers were falling all over themselves to buy ten top quality beefburgers for fifty-pee. And everyone was then getting their knickers in a twist?  Well, Mr Schitts went on Question Time, Mr Tiny Speaker,  and  explained to Mr Dimbleby, quite proply, in my view,  and the audience-numpties - I mean, do they really think they're going to be allowed to ask serious questions, that's not what the 

 
Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby.....

Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby.....

Dimblebys are paid for, promoting disobedience in the population, I mean, they're jolly sound Bullingdon chaps, too, after all -  that people didn't like eating animals, such as horses, who ate other animals. 

Well, actually David, if I might talk facts, here, and not hysteria, the issue  is that  the British people have always been averse to eating animals which eat other animals....What, you mean horses don't? You sure? No, I think you'll find that they do.

(honest, not invent. cocaine or stupidity, maybe both)

 I mean, lessbefair, whatever Mr Schitts may or may not have said, even horses have more sense than the traitor, Mr Corbyn, who only eats lentils.

  

 ( Tory benches erupt in song: 
That ole black magic has me in its spell....)

Wossat? Yes, and Mrs Abbott. Yes, I do believe he has a nosh on black pudding from time to time.  But let's not go there, Mr Tiny Speaker, eh, the ways of the fair sex, or in the right honourable lady from Tower Hovels case, the darker-fairer sex......

 (Hysterical Tory laughter)

......can be a mystery. 
As you, yourself, Mr Tiny Speaker,

 starring in your own soap opera,
 know only too well.

 

Order, orrr-derrrrrr.
The prime minister will confine himself to matters in hand, which, as far as one can see, do not contain any portion of my good lady wife's admittedly well-documented anatomy.  


Yes, yes, Mr Tiny Speaker, and I apologise to the house for suggesting that your Mrs is a slag

 even though she is, and does, in fact, give decent slags, 
like Mrs CurrieArse,

 a bad name

doing it even  with illustrated gippo criminals.

But no, it was a mistake having her in the shadow cabinet, the right honourable black lady from the slums, yes Tower Hovels or whatever it is.  Yes, my honourable friend makes a very good point, she did send her own kid to a private school, as far the fuck away from her constituency as possible, but let's face it, we all do that.

But back to Mr Schitts. And, anyway, quite unforgivably, in my view, quite a few people disagreed with him, saying some nonsense about horses being vegetarians.  Which, lessbeclear, they are not.
I must say that wisdom such as Mr Schittses will be sadly missed as we now have a pretend debate about the furtherance of World War Three.

But no, Mr Schitts won't be punished for some  little fairy having killed himself and his parents claiming that he was bullied by senior Tories.  As if my party would ever do anything like that, apart from all the time.  There'll just be a full and far-reaching cover-up, not unearthing any facts and clearing anyone of any deliberate wrongdoing. In fact, I have just announced one.  Who? Who'll be in charge?  Oh, fucked if I know, they'll find some worthless old Mr Justice Slag and bung him a few quid, maybe find him a young man, to take his notes, so to speak, and he'll do what's required of him, quite proply in my view.  I mean there's no point in having a full and far-reaching cover-up, is there, if it doesn't cover everything up? Be a waste of taxpayers' money, that.

But as to winning wars, things have moved on a bit, since the days of my namesake, Sir Winston Simple, and the point of wars, now, is that you don't win them.  I mean, take the War on Drugs.   We've been fighting that one since  Mrs President Reagan's astrologers invented it, having seen  Jupiter aligned with Mars or something, 

and she told the old boy, Ronnie,  

 
to declare a Mighty War on Drugs. 

Over the past four decades, federal and state governments have poured over $1 trillion into drug war spending and relied on taxpayers to foot the bill. Unfortunately, these tax dollars have gone to waste. In 1980, the United States had 50,000 people behind bars for drug law violations – now they have more than half a million. 


Here at home, we spend only 16 billion pounds a year on the War on Drugs.  



And yes, I know, half the legislature is on cocaine. 
 But they only use taxpayers' money for it.  Quite proply, in my judgement.

 Yes, I know, it is mad, isn't it, Mr Tiny Speaker, declaring war on inimitable  things. No, no, I mean indeterminate things. Wossat?  Inanimate things. OK. Woddever. But it's what we do now, declaring War with a capital doubleyou on things. Yes, War. On things.  Yes, yes, and where was I?  Yes, the War on Drugs, after having spent a fucking fortune  the fucking things've never been fucking cheaper or more fucking  plentiful. Yes,  even though we've spent - wossmore'n'a trillion, George? 

A gazillion, boss.

 Chancellor ObeahMan Osborne, in charge of HM Voodoo Economics policies.

Right, right, thank you, Chancellor,  we've spent gazillions of your taxpounds on the War on Drugs, here, in this theatre of operations, and it's made  drugs easier and cheaper to come by than even when I was at Oxford. 

 

Not that I was. 

No, I was at Oxford, yes, getting the best degree you can buy, a double-triple, I believe it was called.  Only not taking any of TheGoodStuff, I mean cocaine. No, no, my sepsus, I was born with a perforated sepsus, and if you don't believe me I can show you an X-ray of Lady Hague's uterus, to prove I'm not gay, and sleeping with a pretty young blade, I mean aide.  I think you'll find that  was Mr Schitts, doung the coke. And no, it is simply not fair to describe the Chancellor........

 

An' I'm gonna be hi-i-i-igh as a kite by then.
The Regency RocketMan.


...........as a victim of the War on Drugs.

 

He's always had enough money to buy them, 
whatever the price. 
Not that he does.

And that, Mr Tiny Speaker, Mrs Reagan's War on Drugs, is what you call a hugely successful failure of a war. Costs the fucking Earth and makes things worse. And yes, I assure the house, we can and indeed are  doing  just the same thing with Terror, and in my view quite proply. Spending a fucking fortune and making things much worse.

But joking aside this is a serious matter, the one facing our nation.  We face a truly great peril.  Yes, worse than what the Nazis were,  or would have been, if America had not won the Battle of Britain for us. And I do think that ISIL can help me beat the right honourable terrorist opposite, Sheikh bin Jeremy Corbyn, who, lessfaceit, is a Marxist traitor and the biggest threat ever faced by this great nation of England.  What? What about Scotland? I shouldn't worry about Scotland if I were you.  I don't.

Now, I am a great believer in my enemy's enemy being, what is it? My enemy, too? No?  Right. Of course, in my friend being my enemy. Yes, like Mr Clegg, whom I have never met. Yes, Mr Coulson too, he was my true friend and enemy. And I have never met him, either.

But no, the enemy are not overseas.  I mean is not are overseas.  He are at home, here, among us. And I can see how, proply handled, the gentlemen in ISIS could help us in our gravest battle, which is to beat the Labour party.  No, it's quite true, Mr Corbyn is a terrorist.  He has a beard, he doesn't take bribes, his expenses are a joke, hardly anything in fact, and he eats lentils, as I said.   Why would a member of this house, or indeed, the other place, who can eat whatever he wants, at no cost to anyone, apart from the taxpayers, why would anyone eat lentils instead of oysters, chateaubriand, asparagus and a decent Mouton Cadet Rothschild,

followed by a line or two snorted off the arse of some pretty young researcher, yes, of any gender? 
I mean, it's what people come into politics for.



I say to the house that this cowardly, underhanded Marxist vegetarianism simply beggars belief. I mean, what're animals for, if not for serving at the best tables? And that Comrade Corbyn is,  therefore,  a very real threat to national security.  Now, you ask for reliable intelligence, well, in my view it doesn't come any more reliable than that. By his own admission, Jeremy Corbyn is a lentil-eating,  bomb-throwing menace, a threat to the way of life of all six hundred of us, here. And what we really must do is encourage our many friends in the Labour party to destabilise him.

So, by declaring war on ISIS,  and causing division between him and the many jolly decent Tories in his party, say, the members for....well, most of them, actually,  we will succeed in defeating the terrorist sympathisers, all six hundred thousand of them, outside,  who have cynically joined this once-great party of ours  in the hope of making it a voice for ordinary, working, that is to say terrorist people.

(cheers from NewLabour  former cabinet ministers and  their husbands, sitting  in the gallery)

Fatman and the IcePixie
Mr and Mrs HouseFlipper, 
shameless, money-grubbing proteges of Mr Snot, both.  

 
I can honestly stand before this house and promise that a vote for  bombing wog babies guarantees that terrorism won't win in the Oldham election, I personally guarantee it.  Yes, I will gladly give way to the gentleman for Spermy Underpants.

Tiny Speaker: 
I call Mr the Reverend Gay, Mr the Reverend Gay. 



Members on all sides WILL contain themselves, the right honourable exhibitionist WILL be heard......


Rt. Hon  Chris Bryant with his ministerial package.

.......once he has covered himself up  
Who DOES he think he is? Mrs Speaker?




Oooh, thanks ever s'much, Mr Tiny Speaker, 
n'I'd  just like to record  that no matter what others  say, there's at least one of us thinks you're actually quite  a BigBoy.
But no, as a gay Anglican vicar from the dark valleys, Oh,  stop it, Hilary,  not those kinda  dark valleys, and just you take your eyes off my arse,  wouldya,  I would just like to ask the prime minister if those, like little ole me, always the bridesmaid, never the bride,  who vote for him will be entitled to round-the-cock, I mean clock security.  It's just that some of my party's members are starting to demand a say in what I do, actually in what I do, here, in this place, and quite frankly, Prime Minister, I'm starting to feel a teensy-weensy bit  uneasy, if you know what I mean, dear.  They're starting to say that going to war is something that matters to everybody, acting like flamin' great queens, if you ask me, they are, demanding a say in things they don't understand. Like all of us,  I didn't join the Labour party to take any notice of what its members say....

(Labour cheers, waving of order papers; 
singing: For he's a jolly good fairy, for he's a jolly good fairy... )

And so I simply ask the prime minister, if I do vote for his hunky war, and all those really fit pilots and Oh, the oily groundcrews, some of them stripped to the waist, with lubricating fluid on their nipples and spanners in their hands, to just go and bomb civilians, will he protect me from the anger of my constituents and other citizens?  I mean, it's not as though we work for them or anything,  is it, dearie?


Well, yes of course and the right honourable ladyman makes a valid point which I assure the house I shall ignore, although a stern police action against terror-democrats is always an option  open to we, we blessed few, here, holding the line against Decency. But I would say that these so-called members of the Labour party are merely sending members pictures of incinerated wog babies; we on this side of the house offer the real thing.

So, we are all agreed then,
or enough of us.

(cheers, applause,  shouts of: time for some bubbly)

We shall join a war with no end, just because it is the right thing to do, for the Conservative party, to which we all belong,  against whoever we say  is the enemy at the time.  In this case, Mr Corbyn, opposite.  A war which we shall never win. Why not? Well, because  it's just fucking stupid, that's why not.  Nobody can beat these fucking lunatics. Even thick people know that, like me and the govament.

I commend myself to the house and  I rest my face, I mean case.

---------------------------------------------------------

Over now to the White House for President Obama's take on Cameron's Puny War. 

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address.

 

My fellow motherfuckers.

 God Bless White America

and God Bless White England, too.

Only not quite so much. 

England ain't special, like we are, here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Y'know, folks often don't unnerstand quite what Uncle Sam's done in the cause of Freedom.

We are the birthplace of ethnic cleansing, slavery, extermination, segregation and we are  the ongoing flame-carrier for racial murder by lawnforcement, for arranging unlawful coups d'etat, kidnap and torture by state agencies and for financial terrorism against all the peoples of the world. Now and forevermore, so help me God. 

No wonder so many of our folks is runnin' around, shootin' each other's asses stone dead. 

Dave Cameron, on the line,

 he da Limey President, right?  

The barbecue guy, wid da hot bitch, Sammy?  That him?

Right, he can join-in, got a few bi-planes, don't he, left-overs from the Boer fuckin' War or somethin', and some mad crazy sonsafuckinbitches gonna drop hand grenades over the side, down on the niggers? 

Yeah, OK, maybe his rusty old crates'll provide target practice for the Russians, 'sabout all they're good for. 

Him, too.

D'we still own them aircraft?  

We own mosta that Limey shit, don't we?

Shit, guys, you gotta deal with him for me,

 

I'm whacked, need to pop me a few a them little yellow ones and  lay me down easy.

That was the leader of the free world, there, for us, suffering a touch of Osborneitis.

And joining us now, from our Westminster studio, where he has never worked,  and really has no right to be, we have Sid Poundland, founder of Poundland Cheap  Bargain Slogans And Accusations.

Lord Poundland, you've been the UK's Prime Minister-Elect for quite some time, now.  What's your take on the Oldham by-election?

Well, the first thing I would say is that it was a resounding victory for my hugely principled  decision to resign and then swiftly unresign. Look, let me put you straight on this great language what we speak, most of us, immigrants excluded, of course, no disrespect to them, something to do with their palates, I should think;  the language of Shakespeare, and of  the founder of our business, Sir Alf Garnett.  Just because someone resigns on principle, as, to be fair, I did, 

doesn't mean that he has to stop doing the handsomely-paid thing from which he is resigning on principle; y'see, that's the principled thing, about resignation on principle,  the saying of it, not the doing of it.  D'yunderstand, now, I actually did the principled thing, I resigned, but carried on in the job;  takes a bit of character, that, even if I say so, m'self, not that I would.  

But the by-election.  It was a huge victory for me, I mean us. The Poundland share of the Oldham vote went down and we didn't win the seat, again. And let's be honest, it doesn't get much better than that.

Apart from that, it was all fixed, obviously.  Look, just look at the facts, 'sall I'm asking you to do.  There were loadsa nignogs, who in any other election would have voted for us, but in this one they voted for Labour. Smells a bit, doncha think?

 Lessface it, you don't need to be a wossaname   a psephologist - not that I am one, just an ordinary merchant banker, me, doing his very best for his poorer  and not so clever fellow-Brits, and at some personal cost, did I mention that I could be earning much more than my million pounds a year and free totty, if I was still working in the City? I did? Many times? Well, the truth can stand repeating, even if it's not -    you don't need to be a genius to see that this is the most shameful and disgraceful and frankly the most crooked by-election in history.  

Right, it's nine am, fuck this, time for a pint or six. 

(an hour later) 

Christ, thank God for that, keep 'em coming, that's what we say in Poundland, keep 'em coming.

The free drinks, I mean, obviously.

Not the Pakis and the Romanians.

Pile 'em high, and then fall over in the gutter.

By-election?

Whassa by-election? 

--------------------------------

I don't suppose it matters, now, about Hilary Benn's hear-a-pin-drop speech.  I didn't see it, didn't see any of them. The Oldham result will put him back in his calculating box and is overall a good thing.  Matey, the winner, looks like one of those Gnasher folks, just switch  Oldham for Scotland and he could use her speeches, last refuge of the scoundrel stuff, never heard of a career politician, council leader who wasn't a pile of shit in a suit, 

 

and his Mrs looked double-dodgy, a Northern lass, come over all 'Illary Trousers, like,  bah gum. 

Like Hartlepool, returning Peter Mandelstein, Oldham electing, time after time, Michael Meacher and his property portfolio, must be one of the stupidest electorates in the country, in the world, but it doesn't matter. Politicians are rotten, greedy. self-centred, thieving, lying, child-molesting bastards and as such will have sniffed the wind and decided that they better make a pact of whatever sort with Jeremy Corbyn, he might just keep them living in luxury, after the next election.

It is a small victory over MediaMinster, which had hoped that today, Corbyn would be on the way out and one of their own on the way in.

Its Let's Go a-Bombing campaign was more successful, lying its rotten face off about events in Syria and Turkey, planting the seed of inevitability,  the fear of terror attacks at home and the unsuitability of any but their own to defend against them.  Guts will be spilt and limbs rent, abroad and probably at home, they just won't be  those of the inhabitants of the charmed circle of shite.

I trust that moves are afoot to deselect, unseat and shame those who really, really should know better.  That they witter on about their  consciences is laughable.  Joining hands with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel is not an act of conscience or even pragmatism but a hop, skip and a jump closer to Armageddon.

Some argue that:

 Ring a ring a roses, 

a pocket full a posies,

 atishoo, atishho,

 we all fall down

 dates from seventeenth-century Plague-times, many of the street songs ring to a dark tuning fork

Cold War science fiction adapted and produced:

Ring-a-ring of neutrons

A pocketful of positrons. 

A fission, a fission

We all fall down.

Our masters insist that we are past the time of a possible nuclear attack but that nukes or bug bombs, with which the former USSR 'stans are littered, are not or will never  be in the hands of  Ahmed is most unlikely.  We have already seen that, over him, Death has no dominion; he is not defeatable by those means which defeat us, the more of him we kill, the more of him there will be;  there are one and a half billion muslems.  We need to find someone among his cadre with whom we can make a deal. 

Either that or we nuke every last one of them

Oily patter from sleasy, clapped-out Labour aristocracy or thicko tub-thumping from  Cameron will delight those in MediaMinster who see life and death as showbiz - darling, the house was at its very best, such oratory, it was positively Churchillian. 

No, I must say, I agree with Andrew, it was utterly, utterly, completely and totally  compelling, bewitching, in fact. 

I'd go so far as to say it was divine.

Me an' all, I agree wiv Michael, it was pure feater.

No business like showbusiness.

I can play us out wiv that, if you like; 

got me guitar.

MORE OSCAR NEWS

We said at the time that she was out of her depth,  her summing-up illogical.  She couldn't even read-out accurately her own judgement.

Maybe she was unnerved by the global attention to the case;  if so, she should have excused herself in the interests of justice, as should our own,  recent Judge Weepy.

Her failure to try this case properly has caused distress to the relatives of the victim, to groups already feeling hard done-by:   women victims of violence; more harshly sentenced black South Africans; ordinary citizens concerned by levels of firearms-related violence and, poignantly, to Pistorius, himself.  

Obviously a fuck-up, he believed he had won yet another victory against the odds, now he's facing  maybe another ten years or more in prison, having been released under house arrest. His career is now obliterated, not even Nike or Adidas or Rolex will sponsor a murderer, not even the criminal organisation, FIFA, would give him houseroom.  Better by far that he had been dealt with justly in the first place, he would now be settled into his sentence and realistically considering life after release, perhaps confronting his own offending behaviour.  It is never pleasant to see a rash young man being sentenced to a long period of imprisonment but if anybody needed to go away it was Oscar Pistorius; 

 confused and bungling, JudgeThokozile Masipa, failed him, too.

 

Maybe his resentencing will take into account the impact on him of Judge Masipa's incompetence and partially mitigate the new sentence.
If that happens he will have been much more blessed than was his victim, but we should expect more from the state than from the offender.

A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY.

O, WHAT IS THAT  SOUND?

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
Down in the valley drumming, drumming?
    Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,
    The soldiers coming.
O what is that light I see flashing so clear
Over the distance brightly, brightly?
    Only the sun on their weapons, dear,
    As they step lightly.
O what are they doing with all that gear,
What are they doing this morning, this morning?
    Only their usual manoeuvres, dear.
    Or perhaps a warning.
O why have they left the road down there,
Why are they suddenly wheeling, wheeling?
    Perhaps a change in their orders, dear.
    Why are you kneeling?
O haven’t they stopped for the doctor’s care,
Haven’t they reined their horses, their horses?
    Why, they are none of them wounded, dear.
    None of these forces.
O is it the parson they want, with white hair,
Is it the parson, is it, is it?
    No, they are passing his gateway, dear,
    Without a visit.
O it must be the farmer who lives so near.
It must be the farmer so cunning, so cunning?
    They have passed the farmyard already, dear,
    And now they are running.
O where are you going? Stay with me here!
Were the vows you swore deceiving, deceiving?
    No, I promised to love you, dear,
    But I must be leaving.
O it’s broken the lock and splintered the door,
O it’s the gate where they’re turning, turning;
Their boots are heavy on the floor
And their eyes are burning.

WH AUDEN, 1907 -1973


That our killers go uniformed still, career mercenaries, blessed by poncing monarch and beasting  prelate, makes them no less murderous; that our targets are smartened for destruction leaves then no less wasted; that we behead with hot shrapnel rather than cold  steel is irrelevant, 

the decapitation is equally, unnervingly final.

From  the bombing of Dresden to the Bogside,

 from Harfleur to Hiroshima 

our sorriest martial triumph is in 

the massacre of the innocent.

That we unleash Slaughter most noble and worthy upon others
forbids our complaint when he is  turned upon us. 

EVENSONG, HOSANNAH IN SUSPENDED FOURTHS. THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, Traditional: Ding Dong! Merrily On High

A HEATHEN'S HAMLET. BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH SHOWS WHAT HE'S MADE OF.

The game's afoot, Watson.
To Denmark.
Me.
But not you.

Watching Benny Cumberbatch perform Hamlet was like watching Andy Murray storming around a tennis court, smashing his racquet,  cursing his ghastly mother for having turned his life into a competition,  with himself. 

Cumberbatch's Hamlet has, like Murray,  the subtlety of a Jihadi beheading, 
everything is full-on, coarse, harsh and outraged; 
speeches in which the self-discovery in each  line should reveal its successor were delivered  like a shouty catechism, so well-learned as to be listless, an empty, noisy recital;  

he is of the Branagh school of Shakespeare, Benny: 
Loud Equals Good; 

Roaring, Arms Up To Heaven,  Equals Genius.

Seen in the local cinema, mine was not a theatre experience but a broadbanded film of a National Theatre performance at the Barbican and its presentation was about as cheesy as showbusiness gets, prefaced by self-congratulatory trailers and teasers and tasters and worse than that, Lord Belbin Bagg, looking like a corpse fitted with those unnaturally white and even teeth favoured by US Senators, essayed an all-in-this-together-approach to his SkyArts interview with Benny and we were treated to part of this before the play proper commenced, a sort of a play without the play.  BelbinBagg is repulsive at the best of times, even on the radio,   but here, almost live, 

he was zombie-in-a-fright-wig, blood-curdlingly terrifying, 
the luvvie undead.

Give him his due, Benny swatted away BelbinBagg's questions, treating the wretched  old fraud  just like the impertinent showbiz slag that he is.



BelbinBagg, hinting that he, too, could play Hamlet, if he could be bothered, utilising his own sweeping  knowledge, not only of Shakespeare but of everything theatrical, comical-theatrical, tragical-theatrical, historical-theatrical, never mind of science architecture, philosophy, music, litereature and theology, BelbinBagg, NewLabour peer and a skidmark on culture's underpants,

 
 the most gorgeous polymath of our time, 
cosied-up to the callow youth, Cumberbatch, and enquired: 

But how does it  feel,  after three hours on stage, exposing yourself, playing the role to which so many aspire, perhaps the greatest role in drama, which is a hoop of fire, that you gotta jump  through.  Woddisit that you really feel?


Hoop of fire? 
It's not the circus, Melvin. 


  Yes, but how do you, y'know, feel?


Hungry.

You what? 

Hungry, I feel very hungry.

Ha-ha, but I'll haveta ask you the question again, the question which I ask all the great performers who come on my show.....


......
Writing Yesterday, Paul McCartney,
how did that feel, no, 
how did it really feel? 


How do I feel, after playing Hamlet?
Well, ask me when I''ve just done it;  

 
I dunno how I feel.
I feel hungry. 
Ask anybody, they feel hungry.

I suppose that the people in charge of the global broadcast, as opposed to the play's theatrical producers, thought that BelbinBagg might lend the imprimatur of a popular arts commentator to a film being shown simultaneously in cinemas around the world.  
Only if they were zombie fans. 
The man's a  tedious, vain prat, BelbinBagg. Worse than Michael Parkinson. And unnatural-looking, too.
Not a person I want to see, 
not when I've gone to see Hamlet.


Another pre-play taster took the Great Thespian to be worshipped by an inner-city school drama group, young teens, rehearsing their own inversion of the Unhappy Prince, in which Hamlet's unstifleable angst is collectivised, the other characters saying his lines for him, pointing at him accusingly, as though he were RD Laing's Identified Patient,  a WickerMan sacrifice.  It looked like strong stuff, their drama teacher enlivening an over-revered text, and showed that even the holy scriptures of literature can be re-invented, made darkly evangelical - here be sanity, madness and the family; here be tribes and states; here be the Blues; here be Death's indeclinable Invitation.
 No such imaginative departure,  however,  sullied Benny's Hamlet; as predictable, lacklustre  and artistically unrewarding as would be Dr Who on Ice, Cumberbatch merely took Buggin's Turn in the long line of stale, shouty Hamlets - knights of the stage, peers of the screen, dullards, mostly.

Like many, I suppose, maybe even most, I love the text more ardently than the performances,  often resenting the latter,  and, searching for a good one, I can only think of Jonathan Pryce's

1980 Hamlet-with-the-Voices-talking-to-him, internalising his father's ghost, which brings more to the play than I might, myself, reading it on the loo or muttering it sotto voce at a thousand of Ruin's insults.

It is an unsettling oddity, in passing, seeing someone talking to voices which sound only but undeniably in his head.
I remember onesuch:

Morning, Fred, how are you?
Awww, I got them bleedin' voices at me agin. D'you ever 'ave 'em?
No, I don't, Fred.
At me all the bleedin' time, they are, never bleedin' stop. Canchoo 'ear 'em?
No, Fred, what're they saying?
'Ang on... wossat...this bloke?  This bloke 'ere? Phwoar....Kill that bloke, they're sayin',  that bloke what's talkin' to ya. What a bleedin' thing to say. I 'ave 'em all the time, sayin' that, saying' kill that bloke.  Else I'll go barmy on me bed.  That's what them sayin' now, I'll g'barmy on me own bleedin' bed.
Canchoo 'ear em? 
Dunchoo ever 'ear em? 
I 'ear em all the bleedin' time.
Bleeders dunt leave me alone. 

He'll be dead, now, Fred Bachiocci;
I hope the bleeders've now shut up.

His much reported offstage pleas to his teenybopper audience - that he be allowed to perform his magic without being captured4twitter

 - 

show Cumberbatch's self-absorption, as does his dreadful curtain-call exhortation to  give to his current,  favourite charity, Syrian refugees, 


Give us yer focking money!

reminding his audience that their diversion, his performance and that of the ensemble, were as nothing, compared with refugeeism,
 as if  the world needed some overpaid luvvie to so inform it. Whence cometh this dire rite of passage, through which the celebrity-wealthy excuse themselves to the NewPeople of  their fortuitous and often undeserved richness by claiming ownership of a charitable cause and defying them  not to support it.  



It's not as though Cumberbatch is Ruritanian-Windsor, a tribe whose entire raision d'etre is to deflect scrutiny of it's parasitical vileness by attending ten-course charity dinners with their tits hanging out.

Mrs Prince Gormless, doing good in the world, 
for others.

 The nerve of some people, who do they think they are?
  


I'd have booed him, Cumberbatch,  had I been there and paid good money to see a performance of Hamlet,  these self-aggrandising charity bandits, they know no shame. 

It's like if I won the Lottery, tonight, and came on here, tomorrow, saying, C'mon, mr mongoose, lessaveafewquidoffya4acharideeofmychoice. 
Fucking madness is what it is.


Much too fast, rather like one madly imagines Status Quo performing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, this Hamlet scrambles and leaps through a static but adaptable set which serves as grand hall, battlefield and graveyard, merely by the use of inventive lighting.  As if announcing the  speed and dynamism of the performance the play opens not with Bernardo and Francisco on the Elsinore battlement but with Hamlet, the student, 



musing to a song coming from  a nineteen-forties or fifties gramophone.  
The props and costumes veered vaguely, all over the place, 

 
from Hamlet's contemporary hoodie,  
to nineteenth-century Ruritania

 

and Ophelia's 'forties cocktail dress.

 
 


Weaponry ranged from antique  sabres and daggers to automatic pistols; 

it would not have seemed out of place to  see Claudius, in his three-piece suit,  praying regretfully into his iPhone.  



Claudius, played with some craft and subtlety  by  Ciaran Hinds, shed a light obscured by the shouty Hamlet,


the shouty Gertrude and all the other shouty bastards, 


Horatio, 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and a hammy, much redacted Polonius -  and was played as much victimised as villainous, acknowledging the offences which had him  trapped, as King and thus State, within them,  and his was the most revealing character, igniting both outrage at his venality and sympathy for his predicament,   Hinds  exercising a sense of pace and rythmn, light and shade, perhapsing this and perhapsing that, a skill which one might expect from any middling playactor but beyond my discernment in Cumberbatch. 


 Overall, the generous staging was most impressive, serving as grand hall, 



battlefield and graveyard, changes being wrought in full-view by scampering ensemble members lugging props, obscured only by tricks of  lighting;

 
The ghost of Hamlet's father  departing, unshriven,  not into the mist but heading below-stage,  down Purgatory's stairs was one of the better  dramatic moments.  

Much was made and to good effect of shatteringly loud noises-off and skeins of modern dance music being woven into points of  the highest drama.  It hardly mattered, though, the stage; Hamlet can be played anywhere, with or without props and costumes, it is all in the spoken words and could be perfectly adequately presented by a wheelchaired company of Prince Harry's limbless irregulars, in  a darkened room.

Is it worth seeing, then, this latest celebrity vehicle, either in the theatre or on-screen? 
Depends on whether you have already seen Hamlet, I suppose, and on your funds.  I guess  that among  lovers of Hamlet more will have been disappointed than delighted by this show. And for those seeking Occasion, rather than mere cinema attendance, there will be local Am-Dram productions of it from now until the End of Days, some of which will be more servant to the play, than, as was this, to its principal actor. There is nothing whatsoever remarkable about Cumberbatch on screen and it is hard to see that, live, in the theatre, he would be any better, and in any event, celebrity Hamlets are like buses, there'll be another along shortly. If we can have the unspeakable Lenny Henry as Othello, we can have  Bruce Forsyth  as Julius Caesar. Alleged to have an impressive stage background it is, nevertheless,  one must assume, Cumberbatch's  Sherlock heartthrob celebrity and his Hollywood success which delivered him the role of Hamlet at the National, an institution, now, like so much else,  incentivised  and commodified.  The over-commercial approach to the cinema broadcast  was certainly irritating and distasteful, more like an advert for Cillit Bang than a presentation from the nation's  best.

If you haven't seen Hamlet performed then this is visually, at least, a fair introduction to playacting the Bard, although so fast and furious is the endeavour - maybe it was done in a rush to get to Benny's charity-hustling finale - that  a reading of the text, or a summary thereof, would make intelligible those matters skated-over or taken-as-read.  For those, like mr mike, Down Under, with an interest in Decline, Back Home, then a look at what was the fastest-ever sold-out West End show might prove more illuminating than did the show itself.

I am not sorry I saw it at the cinema but if I'd paid a hundred quid plus hotel and travel fares to see it in the Barbican I would be seriously disappointed.

Cumberbatch, himself, simpered that he had participated in order that a new audience - his fans - might be delivered to serious theatre, Bless,  and although one would have thought that veneration of this pampered dickhead and a likely enthusiasm for Shakespeare would be qualities mutually exclusive, he and his fans are the NewPeople and will allow New Ways to be mapped-out for them by their oppressors;  if even some of them, though, a handful,  are as unnerved by Hamlet  as I have been then their miserable, enslaved, consumer lives may yet find  Dissent.  Getting a bit late, though.

What is incontrovertibly delightful, however, from all this, is not only the big-screen, global simulcasts from the National Theatre but the fact that any school in the country can arrange to have anything from the NT's  recorded repertoire streamed to the classroom and supplied with teaching notes and aids freely, or  as Benny would probably say, for free.
 If there are teachers - and from the clip shown prior to Hamlet, there is at least one - who will take up this opportunity  to revive interest in literature, then GlobaCorp's barbarians, standing at the door, may not so easily kick it down.

As for the luvvies, in Shakespeare's time and up until quite recently they were known for the shallow, incontinent, dissolute and licentious fools that they are; nationally a Lord Chamberlain and locally a Watch Committee would police their amoral and delinquent  comings and goings and doings in-between; now that Filth  censors only Inconvenient Truth and not Obscenity, the players are become distinguished, Lords and Ladies of Light Entertainment.

I thought, finally, a bit harshly, I suppose, that the only good thing about Cumberbatch's Hamlet was that it didn't have Dame Helen Mirren in it, nor Dame M, aka Judy Dench from the Secret Service.

The institution itself, playacting, will simply adore, with gritted teeth, the business brought to it by a dreary celebrity taking a role to which many, many others would bring something fresh. 
 There is no business like showbusiness  and the spells of rivalries and opinions and spites and jealousies, although impellers of dramatic excellence,  do not bewitch those concerned with bums-on-seats and with mortgages-to-be-paid.
Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, then, I must suppose, for all its repetitive and thoughtless, uninventive inadequacy is, in the end, good for the theatre business; whether that is a good unalloyed remains to be seen.

Regardless, anyway, of commerce-over-art, Benedict Cumberbatch seems to differ only in his privileged background from any other irritating playactor, hungry for applause, Oscars and money and should be dealt with in his own facetious coin: 

Report me and my cause aright,
 moans a dying Hamlet. 

OK, then Sherlock; 
if you insist.
You were fucking awful.