The House of Lords have today announced they plan to replace their famous red leather benches owing to the strong odours of urine being reported in the chamber.
The 'Urine Crisis of 2020' as it's being coined by some, began in August when the familiar aroma was commented on by Baroness Forsyth of Clandestyn. "One ought not to be subjected to such smells when one is in one's place of work. One detected a pungent and rather disagreeable smell emanating from the opposition benches."
Baroness Forsyth, who was appointed to the House of Lords in 1925, sits on the Conservative benches. Although her claims would suggest the urine smells emanated from the Labour benches, several sources have suggested otherwise. Lordswatch, a nonprofit organization which regularly surveys the House of Lords chamber for structural inadequacy or signs of archaic obsolescence, said they believe the unfortunate miasma to have originated on the Conservative benches.
"We believe quite firmly that Baroness Forsyth's assertions are categorically untrue", the organization told us by fax. "We performed several tests in the chamber, collecting samples from the seats, swabbed spittle from some geriatric Barons and asked Bishops to urinate in a test tube during morning prayers. As a result of this rigorous and time-consuming research, we can say with 100% accuracy that the urination happened on the Conservative benches. Who'd have thought octogenarian Tories could be responsible for such a pungent and suffocating smell?"
Workmen will need at least four weeks to work on maintenance to eradicate the parliamentary pong out of existence. While this maintenance work will be fairly easy and cheap to undertake, a problem has arisen. How does one temporarily accommodate 796 members? And how does one ask the members already situated in the chamber to leave?
Colm Caoihmin, CEO of Wiltshire Antique Relocation Ltd. (WAR) has been called upon by the Leader of the House of Lords to find a solution. "I have to admit, when I took this job at WAR, I didn't think I'd one day be tasked with shifting aging bureaucrats from luxurious chambers of carved wood, gold leaf with embossed leather seats". Caoihmin accepts that he'll receive some considerable opposition from more stubborn peers. "I have a blacklist of around two dozen members who might raise a stink, so to speak". This blacklist is said to include Liberal Democrat peer Lord Flopsweat of Sprite-Marigold de Clune, Labour's Baroness Gillette of Paris Saint-Germain and the Lord Bishop of Colchester Sponsored by Uber Eats.
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| The urine smell is said to have happened during this particular session. Any guesses which one it might be? |
The House of Lords has historically been a controversial constitutional talking point. When Tony Blair crusaded to power in circa 1997 AD, one of the promises in Labour's manifesto was to remove the hereditary peers from the Lords entirely. After a long and bitter war between the reformers and the more conservative peers, during which many Labour members' pints of IPA were contaminated with spiteful aristocratic ejaculate, it was agreed 92 hereditary peers would be able, at any one time, to sit in the Lords. The House of Lords Act 1999 marked a drastic and hugely watered-down historical change for UK politics.
Analysis: Alejandro Hitchens
First of all may I just say it's about time I was invited to write for an esteemed publication like News, News, News, News? I've spent my career writing horoscopes for dentist waiting room magazines and creating fake Twitter accounts to influence elections and public opinion. Remember Brexit? You're welcome lmao. It feels good to finally step out of the shadow cast by my two older brothers.Well, the dead one at least.
Right, so this urine debacle. Honestly, I turn away for one second and the next thing I know bodily fluids are testing the strength of our democracy. Talk about a 'golden age'. For fuck's sake. I remember back in my college days, Thatcher was banning milk in schools, The Aristocats was in cinemas, you were able to wear a balaclava and throw bricks at the local Pakistani-owned corner shop and not be called a racist by the PC liberal media. The good ol' days.
Back in the good ol' days the House of Lords was a great and mighty institution filled to the brim by proper upper class, upper crust gentlemen who actually gave a toss about ol' blighty and her beautiful complexion. The Daily Mail recently did a study, funded by an anonymous donor known as 'A Banks', which showed the House of Lords will be entirely populated by people born after 1960 by 2050. Am I the only one who won't let this stand? Why won't athletes kneel for this cause?
So why has the Lords reached rock bottom? Well, to answer this question we'll need to examine power. Those who have it, those who wield it, those who want it, those who crave it, those who forsake it, those who want it back and those who can't make up their minds.
Jordan Peterson, my spiritual Daddy, the modern day Aristotle and the sexiest, most telegenic piece of meat academia has ever seen, said "Power is competence". I wholeheartedly agree with Daddy Peterson and I don't care if his critics say he only appeals to white, adolescent, empathically-challenged, far-right, gullible teenage men obsessed with the grievance studies affair (did you know that Peter Boghossian, one of the philosophers involved in the affair wrote a foreword for Stefan Molyneux's book? Stefan Molyneux, the white supremacist, the eugenecist?) because he appeals to me too, and i'm in my 60s. As far as i'm concerned his word is gospel. I'm currently working on a marble statue of him standing 7ft tall in a heroic pose, naked as the day Mama Peterson birthed him, with chiseled, glistening abs, hung like a Playboy-Mansion-Minotaur-gigolo with golden locks of lustrous, silky hair meandering down to his firm buttocks.
But I digress.
Power is indeed competence. But what is competence? One might say competence is being able to sit through a 15-minute speech in the House of Lords without pissing oneself. I would. Even if the pissing culprit has 50 years of experience in British political life, isn't it right that they forswear all 'pomp and majesty' when the gremlins of incontinence whisper in their ear? Isn't it right that they 'deny their sacred state' when crucial legislation isn't being debated due to the chamber smelling like the urinals at a Championship football club's stadium? I bloody well think so.
Power is meant to be ethereal, fleeting and temporary. It's meant to be handled responsibly and passed on to the next geezer when the time is right. It's not to be coveted and gripped tightly with both talons.
The US has just elected a 78 year old president, who'll succeed a 74 year old. Granted, the 78 year old isn't obese and he doesn't believe physical exercise wastes the finite energy of the human body (that's not a joke, Trump actually believes that, go check it out, this is the guy you love, Karen).
Joe Biden has run for president three times, in 1988, 2008 and 2020. He was elected to the US Senate at 29 years old and has been a major figure on the US political stage for over half a century, mainly being on the wrong side of history for most of that time. Judging by these facts, it should be abundantly clear that Biden's always aspired to the top job.
Now, let me talk about castration, political opportunism, Machiavellianism and opera.
Castrati (plural) were male opera singers who could achieve notes similar to those of sopranos or contraltos. How did they achieve this, you ask? Ho ho ho! Are you sitting comfortably? Well, then i'll begin.
Castration before puberty.
(No, again, this is real, this actually happened. This is the music you love, Karen).
One of the most famous Castrato singers was Farinelli, who became a court favourite of Spanish King Philip V. Philip's wife, Elisabetta Farnese believed Farinelli's voice could cure her husband's deep depression. It's an incredibly poignant story and the subject of Claire Van Kampen's 2015 play 'Farinelli and the King'.
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| Farinelli, (real name: Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi) the most famous castrati singer of his time (1705-1782) |
The only Castrato whose voice is on record is Alessandro Moreschi, who made the recordings in 1902 and 1904. The practice largely fizzed out after the 18th century. It was made illegal in Italy in 1861, and after that, only a few Castrati could be found in the darkened corners of the Sistine Chapel, lamenting their outcast state.
In Martin St. John Travers' 2006 book 'The Castratocracy: A Dystopian Britain Imagined', he envisages a political system whereby politicians can only achieve certain ministerial jobs if they've undergone castration. The book is part narrative, charting the political rise of the fictional Bernard Jones, MP for New Sarum, who is forced to choose between ambition and his genitals.
St. John Travers also devotes a large portion of his book to theorizing the constitutional ramifications of such a system. Would the term 'Machiavellian' be common parlance? Would journalists accuse ambitious politicians of 'climbing the greasy pole'? Would Michael Gove even exist? Who would occupy these positions of power? What seems at first like a silly, futile, nonsensical dystopian fiction could actually reveal a lot about power, human nature and who we elect to make key political decisions.
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| Michael Gove, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, has often been included in 'Weird Crush' lists in women's fox-hunting magazines found in the Cotswolds area. |
In the opening chapter he asks us to take a look at today's government, mainly the four 'great offices of state', prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer, foreign secretary & home secretary, and determine whether the current occupants would still hold those jobs if the law required they underwent voluntary castration. In the home secretary's case it wouldn't work as 1) she's a woman, and 2) she'd be the one doing the castrating, as Philip Rutnam would attest.
If one thinks about St. John Travers' hypothesis, one would very much doubt that any one of Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Demonic Wrath would happily forswear their nutsacks for the trappings of office. This was certainly my initial thought. But then I realized it's the other way round. We currently have a government (woman aside) full of politicians who would gladly be castrated if it meant ascending the ranks and gaining power. In case you're wondering, St. John Travers does briefly go into how this affects Machiavellian female politicians, but not very satisfactorily. In my review of the book in 'The Times Literary Supplement' I criticize the glaring omission of gender balance in the book.
The book has been compared by critics to George Orwell's '1984', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Donald Trump Jr's 'Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us' and I can see why. St. John Travers has asked some very timely and relevant questions: how do we, the public, really view our politicians? Do we think they deserve the offices they hold? Would we idolize them if we knew they'd made such a life-changing bodily sacrifice? How differently would they make decisions in the national interest if they'd forfeited their bollocks? Would Boris Johnson be our prime minister? Or would he just be a lowly Sun journalist, living off his family's wealth and donating his sperm every week with the hope of building a dynasty of Etonian crooks, then realizing what he thought was a sperm clinic he'd been sending his samples to was actually a local launderette?
Of course, there are several conspiracy theorists who believe world leaders have actually undergone voluntary castration to attain their power. The 'Illumicastrati Theory' spread online in the autumn of 2014 when a photograph circulated of the PM at the time, David Cameron, appearing to add some sort of balm to his genital area. Several anonymous users in various Internet forums pointed out that the area where his penis and scrotum should be was surprisingly smooth. George Osborne, the Chancellor at the time, lent credence to this theory when a leaked audio tape was released of him saying, albeit in a muffled tone, "He doesn't have any balls, for goodness' sake. If he did, he'd tell the ERG to stick it where the sun don't shine, but no, David chooses to acquiesce to the far right of his party. he's ball-less I tell you!"
While this is certainly interesting evidence of a wider Illumicastrato world order, I wouldn't spend too much time following any of these leads. St. John Travers' book has caught the British public's imagination. All other political literature centering on power and decision-making is now embarrassingly obsolete. The book devotes an entire chapter to the House of Lords and how it would function in a castratocracy.
Needless to say, we would have no constitutional urine crisis if all the Lords were castrated.
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