‘Is Salisbury Cathedral part of a new Axis of Evil?’

Iran did a deal. Iraq got bombed back to the Stone Age. North Korea was invited to tea.

Into the void where the Axis of Evil once terrified the world, a new existential threat to civilisation has been born. And it has a spire 123 metres tall.

Unbeknown to the 500,000 tourists who visit it each year, it seems that Salisbury Cathedral is built on an inter-dimensional whirlpool which sucks evil down towards hell like sand in an hour-glass. The presence of these unwitting pilgrims, walking widdershins around the cloisters, merely speeds up the spiritual centrifuge.

Hence the bemusement of Russian spies who, on an entirely-heterosexual visit under false names to the East End of London, found themselves dragged towards the bewitching building. They broke free of its unearthly tractor beam only when they dropped a bottle of perfume that Ruslan had bought as a gift for his mother, and was unfortunately past its sell-by date.

Caught in the Salisbury swirl, the liquid mutated into a battlefield nerve agent with unforeseen deadly consequences when it was dropped on the doorstep of a building that happened to be home to a Russian defector.

They didn’t get to see the spire. Which is a shame, because they’d heard it was the tallest in Britain.

The vortex is felt across the world. It drew a team of 15 assassins from Riyadh to Istanbul, where CCTV was disabled when an unfortunate journalist tripped and fell over a discarded bone saw, several times, and then cut off his own face and thew it down a well.

It also compelled his accidental murderers to flee before the Turkish authorities could persuade them to headbutt a bullet, develop a sexual attraction to mincers, or perhaps most suicidally of all, announce they were taking up careers as journalists.

The evil eddy even forced an otherwise-gentle and liberal soul entirely in tune with 21st century social norms to scream "UGLY BLACK B******!" at a Windrush migrant.

The more cynical corners of the internet have whispered that Ryanair flights are the twisted children of Salisbury’s malevolent maelstrom, producing miniaturised tides of despair and misery, but the company’s official ouija board insists in the face of all the evidence that it is just a coincidence.

Now it appears Salisbury’s undertow to the underworld has drawn someone all the way into the cathedral itself, there to smash two holes in the specially-toughened glass box in which lies one of only 4 remaining original copies of the Magna Carta.

At time of writing no-one has been charged in relation to the Get Carta incident, but there are three madcap theories of who could be responsible:

1. A grammarist insistent on adding the definite article to the document’s customary description, because if "the" is written on the bloody thing people can’t not use it

2. The ruler of a nation in political crisis who wants to add a 64th clause stating ‘Brexit means Brexit’ on the basis if they didn’t know what it meant in the 13th century she cannot be blamed for making it up as she goes along in the 21st

3. Nicholas Cage on one of his many flights of fancy, trying to crack a hidden medieval code that links the Founding Fathers to Jesus’ secret lovechild, whose ultimate descendant turns out to be Indiana Jones’ dad.

Of course, that’s all ridiculous, isn’t it? As mad as finding someone in Old Sarum wants planning permission for an underground shark tank, or that Kim Jong Un has moved his embassy to Middle Wallop. Or genuinely thinking that because both Porton Down and a village called Palestine are in the vicinity, Salisbury must be on speed-dial to the Devil himself.

There are no forces of evil. Salisbury is no more be a wormhole to the netherworld than it is a coral atoll in the South Pacific. Whoever tried to steal the Magna Carta was too dumb to realise it was alarmed, it would disentegrate within 5 minutes and would be harder to sell on than Philip Green’s used undercrackers.

Evil is a supernatural force which means some people are born beyond redemption – destined for corruption and amorality, and liable if caught to be crucified, electrified, poisoned or shot because they’re something other than human. But evil is just an excuse.

Humans are merely bad. They make bad decisions and do bad things, making bad excuses along the way. Vladimir Putin ordered the elaborately-difficult murder of Sergei Skripal because he thought the defector was evil, and evil deserves the effort. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the elaborately-messy murder of Jamal Kashoggi for the same reason.

And people like the Ryanair racist aren’t evil, either. They’re angry, ignorant, unsocialised outcasts, often sick and usually screaming at the world for not being nicer to them.

When we say something is evil we refuse to take responsibility. We say it was out of our hands when the Twin Towers fell or the policeman was knifed or the terrorists got through. We don’t say: "How did we make that terrorist? Why don’t we spend money on people who do bad stuff? What has to change before we accept that guy other there goes to the toilet just like I do?"

Whoever tried to steal the Magna Carta, whoever is sending bombs to Donald Trump’s enemies, whoever strokes Tommy Robinson’s cancerous ego is not evil. They’re us, with a few things gone wrong. A lost job, a last straw, a loose wire.

If we stop saying it’s evil – if we stop saying maybe that’s just Salisbury for you – we might be able to fix it. You don’t solve problems with an excuse.

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