The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire Read Free Page B

Anglo-American Iran, the shah was hosting the latest French fashion designers (well, since we had the oil, we had to allow the French something) for “Catwalk Tehran.” The shah was promoting Tehran as something like a
Paris sur la Caspian (Tehran, of course, was not actually on the Caspian, but one had to make allowances). The theme of Catwalk Tehran, at which famous British models were appearing, was “Lifting the Veil of Eastern Mystery.” It appeared from The Telegraph ’s photographs that veils were not all they were lifting. My goodness....
    Turn the page. Ah Rhodesia, the farmland of Africa, bursting with produce, sponsoring an Imperial Agricultural Exhibition, with farmers, ranchers, and tea planters from all over British Africa and the world... which reminded Mr. Potter that he needed to pop over to Harrods for some Kenyan beef that he planned to wash down with that new Cape Pinotage he had bought. Always something new out of Africa.
    Oh well done! The Australians were whacking holy hell out of India in the test match—and served them right too. He didn’t like the behavior of some of these new Indian cricketers; lying down on the pitch, Gandhi-style, to protest decisions from the umpires. Disgraceful. If they can’t behave like gentlemen, well then....
    Let’s see, Asian news: Hong Kong’s borders had expanded yet again; having annexed all of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hainan, it had now grabbed Zhejiang and Jiangsu, the provinces bordering Shanghai. The Dalai Lama in British Tibet was hosting a rock concert, of all things—trendy vicars apparently weren’t just an Anglican phenomenon. And the governor of British Singapore, in a friendly bit of rivalry, pledged that Singapore would displace Hong Kong as the chief entrepôt of the Far East. Well, it looked as though he had his work cut out for him.
    In the Americas, Britain and the United States were conducting joint naval operations in the Caribbean and South Atlantic. Jamaica was debating whether its police force should be armed given the slight uptick in crime, caused largely it seemed by a small group of drug-addled ghetto dwellers who worshipped as a divinity an obscure American radio show host named Rusty Humphries—these of course were the Rustyfarians, and
they had gone on sprees of burglary to buy radios with which to tune in to their god, who kept them abreast of American political news. The Falkland Islanders, meanwhile, were hosting an International Southern Hemisphere Highland Games competition, which included the rarely performed event of speed-castrating sheep—a competition dominated by the Australians, who weren’t called “diggers” for nothing.
    And then, of course, there was Ireland. Ireland, it had to be confessed, remained in the Empire largely by force. It was essentially self-governing, but foreign policy belonged to Westminster, which retained an inveterate suspicion of the Emerald Isle (too many Irish politicians had taken a shine to the kaiser in 1914, Hitler in 1939, and later the egregious Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Republican Army—who had worn a green-checked keffiyeh “in solidarity with the oppressed masses of Ireland”). Britain’s role was to restrain Irish excesses (save for those related to drink) and encourage the sport of hurling (mandatory in all Irish schools) so that running around the green fields of Ireland bashing each other’s brains out would be the favored recreation of most Irishmen, keeping them well out of trouble. Ireland remained a wonderful recruiting ground for the Army. In fact, the latest news from Ireland was that the Army was expanding to create a new Irish Regiment, Prince Charles’s Own Tipperary Armored Cavalry (or Tipplers in Tanks).
    And speaking of tipplers, he had tickets to tonight’s NFL Europe game at Wembley: the London Monarchs versus the Amsterdam Admirals. The game was