…..and a final citizenship ceremony.

Have you ever in your puff seen such a perfect perisher?

British citizenship, for those born here, is not something which is in the gift of the Government. It is not the State’s to award or deny. It is something held as of right.

We are that State, we the citizens of the country simply hire the superstructure of the Government to do society’s scut work for us. There is not, and cannot be in a free society, a requirement for us to devote 6 months or a year of our lives in order to earn our citizenship. For there is no one for us to earn it from except ourselves.

The concept that it is the State which validates our citizenship is one which is deeply fascist. That only if we are good little boys and girls, only if we do our exercises, show the appropriate genuflection to community, to the order that righteously guides us, are we therefore full members of the society. Absolutely not so, we are, whether we are miserable individualistic misanthropes like myself or Fotherington Thomas types wishing the sky and the clouds good morning that society and we need no permission or ceremony to take our place in it.

The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting "Heil, Spode!" and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?"

The inaugural black footy bags award goes to Frank Field.

Sadly, given the state of the nation, I have a horrible feeling that the inaugural award will not be the last.