Long to reign over us

English literature, like other literatures, is full of battle-poems, but it is worth noticing that the ones that have won for themselves a kind of popularity are always a tale of disasters and retreats. Sir John Moore’s army at Corunna, fighting a desperate rearguard action before escaping overseas (just like Dunkirk!) has more appeal than a brilliant victory. The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction. 

-George Orwell, ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’

1am last night, and Lulzsec – which no-one above the age of 30 seems able to pronounce, let alone understand – have with casual ease brought down every News International website, mining their databases for passwords, replacing The Sun’s front page with a poorly punctuated story (kids ey?) about the death of Rupert Murdoch.

In the background, you have the full-throttle multi-institutional catastrofuck of our entire, forever-mocked, never-impeached establishment, developing with such breathless pace none of us can begin to keep up, nor look away for a minute without someone being arrested or tumbling from grace, and then, THEN, as the deep, deep sleep of England resumes, BBC Radio 4 wind up the day’s programming by playing what The Home Service have always played at the close of play, in times of war and in times of peace, hurtling headlong, eyes wide shut in total defiance of the inevitable, they punctuate their irrevocable decline with 'God Save The Queen'. It has honestly never sounded more poignant.

Fingers in ears, trumpets blaring louder than ever, as the ridiculous Britain which our ridiculous anthem represents charges half a league, half a league, half a league onwards, Crimean moustaches bobbing proudly as they gallop stoically into the jaws of death. I fuckin LOL'D m8



This is Britain, and everything’s alright. Everything’s alright. It’s okay. It’s fine.