Four Legs Good
A radical new philosophy sweeps New Britain.
According to Prime Minister Starmer’s decree, our new national dish is mushy peas smeared on an unpretentious white roll.
This no-frills meal, popular on the terraces of provincial lower-league football matches, will represent the no-nonsense, that’ll-do-me philosophy of New Britain.
Following unhelpful accusations that he’d milked his short time in office by hoovering up £100,000 in Taylor Swift tickets, hospitality boxes at Premier League games, designer threads and fancy spectacles, Sir Starmer announced a new mode of thinking for the nation.
Accordingly, his Labour government has banned ‘subversive’ elements such as garlic, olive oil, herbs, spices, and condiments. Such divisive substances ‘sow discord and promote hierarchy.’
At a press conference this week, Sir Starmer mapped the harm-free landscape of new, dynamic Britain. Sage and thyme, and even salt and pepper, are now problematic substances.
Why? Condiments suggest that one can improve on nature. In Starmer’s New Britain, nothing is improvable. Everything is as perfect as the day it emerged into this plane of consciousness.
“From this day,” said Sir Starmer, “We shall abolish the spectre of sensory prejudice. Why, I ask you, should a chicken breast go through life encumbered by the false belief that its natural, unseasoned state is not sufficiently appealing to the human palate?”
This radical new philosophy inverts John Stuart Mill’s harm principle. In therapeutic Britain, nobody shall ever feel inadequate or less than perfect between the cradle and the grave.
In The Sun, a populist tabloid newspaper, rumours swirled suggesting Starmer had Stilton, an irrepressibly sensual blue cheese, in his sights.
The Prime Minister confirmed the speculation: “When confronted with the so-called ‘complexity’ and ‘depth’ of blue cheese, many New Britons feel a pang of culinary inadequacy,” he said.
“Well, my friends, I say, ‘No more!’ If such a sophisticated taste is not enjoyed by all in New Britain, then it shall be enjoyed by none. How long, O sensory snobs, will you go on abusing our patience?”
Supporters and journalists erupted into rapturous applause. In the front row, fanatics of the new thinking appeared to speak in tongues.
Outside the press conference, the streets of New Britain flowed with the thick slurry of mulched cookbooks.
Announcing an inclusive culinary philosophy, a slew of celebrity chefs released the official cookbook of a new era: Anti-Sensory Cooking for New Britons.
This comprehensive tome includes useful tips such as how to boil prejudicial flavours out of the most recalcitrant, difficult-to-subdue foodstuffs. From now, all recipes must promote inclusion and best practice.
This radical mode of thinking emerged from debates surrounding the English language. Over recent years, a thundering cacophony of talking heads has questioned why we don’t spell words as they’re pronounced. This, the activists claimed, was a relic of the exclusionary age. So-called ‘incorrect’ spellings caused harm and damaged self-esteem, they said.
With the backing of many prominent academics, the activists got their way. Accordingly, ‘Britain’ is now spelt ‘Briton.’
We’ve also adjusted ‘lose’ to ‘loose,’ as over half of Britons preferred the previously incorrect spelling. Additionally, ‘their,’ ‘there,’ and ‘they’re’ all now mean the same thing.
I hear the word ‘pretentious’ will be stripped of its haughty Latinate origins and reimagined in Saxon form as ‘pruhtenshus.’ And yet, this displeases the militant elements who busily claim ‘pretentious,’ deriving from the French Prètentieux, which itself derives from the Medieval Latin, Praetensus, is unforgivably pretentious.
They propose to replace the word pretentious with ‘Finkbetter.’ As in, ‘Jonathan Swift wrote books. He thought he was better than everyone else. Jonathan Swift was finkbetter.’
Few question the new mode of thinking. On a recent current affairs show, one doomed panellist referred to ‘logical fallacy’. His suggestion that some strains of thought are perhaps not as fruitful as others provoked the audience into an untameable wrath.
In a public statement, the BBC apologised to the entire nation of New Briton for subjecting millions to such backward, harmful rhetoric.
It is that harmful rhetoric which animates the marauding gangs of fanatical teenagers who roam the streets looking for harm to prevent.
As I write, seven of these hoodlums are chapping doors along my street, quizzing the occupants on the contents of their pantries.
Suspicion fell upon my street after last week’s incident. A neighbour of mine, a minor celebrity chef in the sensory age, lost his marbles. He opened his kitchen window. On to the street wafted wave after wave of what was obviously garlic simmering in olive oil.
In school, his seven-year-old daughter learned that garlic is a pretentious substance. According to the national curriculum, garlic looks down with unbridled arrogance upon less naturally flavoursome foods, such as turnips.
Rumour has it that his daughter sketched a self-portrait in which a haughty bulb of garlic wagged its judgmental fingers at a weeping child. Her teachers informed the local Wellness and Best Practice committee. A van took my neighbour away.
Following his lunatic antics, through the letterbox dropped a suggestive note: ‘Gentle Reminder: It is not best practice to possess any substance that suggests difference, contrast, quality, or improvability. In New Briton, we are all just as good and capable as everyone else. Nobody or nothing is preferable to anyone or anything. Remember, if you suspect harm, text HARM to 150.’
Yesterday, the absurdity broke the Geiger counter. At a press conference, top journalists asked the minister for sensory prejudice for her take on the cult practice of refrigerating water.
“According to YouGov,” said one journalist, “a growing proportion of New Britons—two-thirds—think chilled water is pretentious.”
She replied: “That’s a fair point and one this government has been considering. Cool, crisp water may suggest that room-temperature water is inadequate or that chilled water is better than tepid water. We all know that water is literally life. Are we really saying that the source of all life is subject to the preferences of the few rather than the many?”
The media pack ummed and ahhed and ahhed and ummed.
“Further to that point,” she broke. “What about all the New Britons who have sensitive teeth and therefore cannot drink chilled water without slight discomfort? We need to have a conversation about chilled water,” she said. “Personally, I think chilled water is finkbetter.”
The clip in which chilled water earned pariah status went viral. Every news organisation splashed the story on its homepage. Thousands of column inches surrendered to mania, with each author confessing their long-held and hitherto unexpressed loathing of chilled water.
Within moments, a furore erupted on my street. Chilled water (the only liquid to so far escape the Fairness in Consumption Committee) was insufferably bourgeoise.
Swinging a thermometer in her hand as if it were a baton, my neighbour’s daughter swanned from door-to-door, chanting: “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Finkbetter water has got to go!” A brigade of howling, maniacal children joined the procession.
Surrendering to the primal whims of these brutal sprogs, my neighbours ceremoniously carted their ice trays out on to the street. Glassy-eyed and entranced, they raised the ice cubes above their heads before smashing them off the pavement.
“I’ve always hated chilled water!” said one.
“Actually, I’ve hated it longer than you,” said another.
“I prefer tepid water!” cried an older gentleman. On the word prefer, the scene froze in time.
‘Prefer’ is one of the most notorious entries in the Dictionary of Prejudicial and Unfair Words, an ever-mutating tome on its eighth reprint in as many weeks.
“Actually,” he ventured. “I prefer nothing. There is no such thing as an ideal temperature. Everything is as good as everything else.”
Clearly, the doddering old fool missed last week’s memo. ‘Ideal’ burst into the top five ‘most violent words.’ (The very existence of a ‘top five’ was not lost on those who still enjoy illicit irony.)
The revolution continued accordingly. To prevent harm occasioned by violent speech, the fanatics beat him into a crimson mist.
Harrison Bergeron, eat your heart out.
Brilliant piece of work! Lots of great quotable lines in here, but I loved the whole section about the garlic. “his daughter sketched a self-portrait in which a haughty bulb of garlic wagged its judgmental fingers at a weeping child” - fantastic! Really captures how stupid all this is that on a random Tuesday a new word or phrase is declared verboten. In Rules for Radicals, Alinksy says that people can take being yelled at, but not being laughed at. Look forward to more satirical pieces from you!