The Sunday Ishmael: 03/11/2024

Your whoreson Scot, now there's a feisty devil with no skin on his face when it comes to skelping the English. The spirit that took them riding across the Border to steal cattle from the Northumberlandish and consider themselves entirely in the right of it, for, whisht, wouldna' they do the same tae us if they weren't toothless, milk-fed, mammy's boys with their heids full o mince an their winkies up each other's airses and no mistake, has them demanding more money for the consequentials.

a wee scotch devil forging his credentials.

The bare-faced cheek of it will tak' yer breath awa'. Wait, while I tell you. 

Po-faced SNP Shona McRory Robison, former Health Minister, (fucked that one well up or, to put it politely, widely criticised for her poorly received tenure); former Deputy Minister (resigned recognising the public hated her - she called it being divisive) and currently Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, never seen on telly without looking as though she was smelling something disgusting (perhaps there's a special fluffer for SNP politicians, who prepares them for camera by smearing faeces and rotten milk on their upper lips),

said of the £3.4 billion being gifted to Scotland in Rachel Reeves' October Budget: "It's not enough. It's niggardly."

How So? Isn't £3.4 billion a lot of money?

"It may be a lot of money to you English, but we proud Scots in Smart, Successful Scotland need much, much more."

Why's that then?

"We need it to offset all the Westminster cuts. We need it to pay Winter Fuel Allowance to all our cold old people. We need it to bribe Scoatisch wummin tae have mair bairns. We need it tae provide free prescriptions and free Higher Education......"

Alright, stop talking now. Why should Scotland  have these things and England not?

"Because ye owe it to us. And the £3.4 billion has they strings"

Which are?

"We ha'e to spend it on public services".

And you'd rather spend it on luxury motor homes? Definitely stop talking now.

Over now to Ivan McKee, SNP Minister for Public Finance, whose principal duty is to support the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, that is po-faced Shona McRory Robison. (She had a stalker once, but he was returned to a psychiatric clinic.)

You know how when you go to the hairdresser's or the barber's, they produce a book of hairstyles for you to pick from? Well, Ivan McKee must have decided on a combination of A Boris Johnson and A Donald Trump - see what I mean?

Anyway, Ivan explained why £3.4 billion was not enough. You see, most of Scotland's workers are employed in the public sector, mostly the NHS. And dastardly Rachel Reeves has increased the National Insurance employer contribution. And the SNP think that Westminster should pay Scotland the N.I. increase. It's around £500 million. As well as the £3.4 billion. So instead of raising money by the increase, Westminster will have to pay it to Scotland. So the argument goes.

I was briefly interested in what these "mc" and "mac" prefixes mean. We don't have them in Orkney, where people are called Sinclair or Flett or Glue or Twatt. 

Mc means "son of". So Shona McRory Robison means Shona, son of Rory, son of Robi. I'd change it to something more girly. 

The Budget also wasn't popular with Scotch Whisky Association chief executive Mark Kent, who described the increase on spirits duty as a “hammer blow”. Bit dramatic, that. He accused Reeves of increasing “tax discrimination of spirits in the Treasury’s warped duty system, and with 70% of UK spirits produced in Scotland, that will do further damage to a key Scottish sector”.

Even more insulting was Reeves knocking a penny off a pint of beer. So the English working class can get bladdered on their drink of choice. Say you go out for your customary gallon, you'll save a whole eightpence. Whereas the middle class will have to pay through the nose to get hammered on posho whisky and wine.

And that's the thing - the Budget was an ideological redistribution budget. They tried to hide it behind all that fannying about  describing the beneficiaries of the budget as "workers" and defining workers as people who work and get paid a wage or salary - but they meant working class. And quite right, too. What's the point of a Labour Government if they can't bring in a bit of wealth redistribution? About time, I'd say. We've had Tories protecting their class interests, n'est ce pas?

Me and Rachel Reeves, we were educated in prefabs. She's cross about it and is redistributing a bit of the wealth of parents of public school kids into state school education, by making them pay VAT on school fees. You know how people say "and it didn't do me any harm?" Well, being educated in a prefab, in a class of 43 kids, with cruel boys who chased the girls with chicken feet from the neighbouring chicken farm (you pull the tendon, the claws open and close and the girl screams)

and hurl snowballs carefully crafted from stones embedded in compacted snow, and a paedophile headmaster who not only enjoyed the healthy physical activity of assaulting little children's open palms with a strap, but also had an end of term play staged in which the eleven-year-old girls wore grass skirts and went topless - well, it did do me any harm. Quite a lot, actually. It was a huge relief to get to an all female secondary school, run by the Sisters of the Cross and Passion with care, kindness, excellent teachers and too much religion. But no corporal punishment, paedophilia and boys. And I'm sure those children enduring an education in classrooms falling apart because RAAC concrete was used to save money 

- well, they are only children of the poor - 

it probably did do them some harm. And those kids whose education is disrupted by other kids playing up and uncontrollable by teachers - yeah, them too.

So a bit of redistribution from the public school sector into the state school sector should be applauded.

We'll see how it all works out in practice. Bound to be a few unintended consequences. Did you hear about Portugal being set on fire? The fires started in September this year - more than 1,000 fires spread through central and northern Portugal, burning more than 135,000 hectares of land, killing at least nine people, amongst them four firefighters, the evacuation of several villages and requiring the deployment of 5,000 firefighters. It was the unintended consequence of a bit of European legislation, which provided an enhanced rate of compensation to people whose crops are destroyed by fire, rather than drought or disease. Whoopy do - 14 arsonists were speedily arrested.

Staying with Scotland - Alec Salmond is still dead. Dead and buried, now, back in Aberdeenshire.

Being dead, of course, means he can't be prosecuted any more, presumably much to the regret of certain SNP factions. Today, Police Scotland stated: "We can confirm that we have received a report of a non-recent sexual assault. The information is being assessed."

After Salmond fell out with the SNP he set up the Alba party, the performance of which has been underwhelming. Salmond was tried in 2020 for 13 offences of a sexual nature, including rape, and was  acquitted of all charges. Chris McEleny, Alba Party General Secretary, said Salmond had been cleared by a court of law and claimed Salmond had been the victim of attacks on his reputation and character by allies of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - she of the ongoing police investigation into misappropriation of SNP party funds.

That's enough bare airses, mrs ishmael - ed.

Okay, Tories it is, then. No doubt wanting to outdo Rachel Reeves, who just can't get over herself - telling us all about being the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer since the post was created 800 years ago, and the first Labour Chancellor to deliver a Labour Budget in 14 years; the Tories have ticked not one, but two diversity boxes, and given themselves their first black female Leader. 

Kemi Badenoch is certainly very impressive. And very posh. She lounges in the interview chair like Jacob Rees-Mogg, unlike Rachel Reeves, who sits up very straight, like the head-girl of a state prefab school. And her voice is ultra posh. A delight to listen to her. Richly resonant, beautifully articulated, employing sentences that make sense. And big words. She is disarming in her ready admissions that the Tories have made mistakes, that they have suffered their worst electoral defeat since God was a boy and are having to muddle through with a mere handful of MPs. I like her. And she's seen off Jeremy Cunt and James Not-so-Cleverly. So that's a good thing.

Talking of voices, I know it is crass of me, but I do find Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer to be in dire need of elocution lessons. What is that flat, nasal intonation? Some variety of ordinary-people London, I suppose.

To turn to more pleasant matters, there's a general merchants' shop in Kirkwall called William Shearer. They've been in business since 1857 and sell pretty much everything - guns, fishing rods, seeds, neeps, bacon, bread, household goods, garden and pet supplies. Each Christmas they turn the upstairs of the shop into a dedicated Christmas shop, blending vintage artefacts from their early trading days with expensive, unnecessary but gorgeous Christmas stuff. Here's some photos: 

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.