The Sunday Ishmael: 06/04/2025

 

It certainly is a very beautiful bridge.

From a distance, its pure white cables seem to hover like seabirds' wings; as you drive across it, high above the Firth of Forth, it is simultaneously magnificent in its strength and scary in its fragility. Once your wheels are on it, there's no turning back (a bit like going into labour), you have to keep up with the capricious traffic all around you and keep your eyes firmly on the road, whatever your acrophobia or your satnav is telling you. It has an "Intelligent Transportation System"- active traffic management, enabling variable speed restrictions and lane closures to be displayed on overhead gantries - so if you are not paying close attention, the surrounding traffic, bowling along at pace, seems capricious indeed. Opened by the late Queen in 2017, the Queensferry Crossing is a three-tower cable-stayed bridge with an overall length of 1.7 miles. It carries motorcycles, cars and heavy goods vehicles, while public transport, cyclists and pedestrians use the old Forth Road Bridge. Wind shielding has been built into the design, supposedly to enable use of the bridge in high winds, but I certainly wouldn't want to cross it in a high wind- it's bad enough in flat calm. The bridge was closed for the first time on 11 February 2020, 30 months after opening, due to ice on the towers. Some of the ice fell onto the carriageway, damaging eight vehicles. Which may explain the panicked reaction of my satnav, first time I took it across the bridge. "Off Road, Off Road", it shouted at me. "Make a U- turn". None of the usual "when it is safe to do so, make a U-turn". Nope, it demanded I make a U-ey in the middle of the Queensferry Crossing, 207 metres above high tide, which is 683 feet high.

And it kept up its skriking for the full 1.7 miles. Who says machines don't have feelings? It believed that we were in the river and about to die. This is because it had been born 3 years before the bridge had been opened. I tried to have it updated, but it is too old, Mercedes Benz sympathetically told me. So now I use the satnav on my phone.

I've told you about this before, but my memory was prompted by my chums, who recently set off from home in good time to attend a hospital appointment about 40 miles away. (This was in England - I don't believe there's anywhere in Orkney 40 miles away). They kind of knew the way, but, to be on the safe side, they engaged their satnav, which, in the upmarket car that my chums drive, has a name and has to be addressed, responding, as it does, to verbal commands. Whimsy had led to their satnav being named Keir. "Keir, take me to Blah Blah Hospital". There was a short pause, whilst Keir checked things out, before replying: "Certainly, sir. Your route is displayed. Your arrival time may be tomorrow." Before the car's occupants would reply What? Keir added: "There is a ferry."

We can only be grateful that Keir was unable to lock in the inmates and take them to Brussels, which, they learned, on panning out the display screen, was his intended destination. For the following hour, Keir kept insisting that they did U-eys, book ferry tickets and leave the roundabout at the sixth exit. He would not be dissuaded. But did they try turning it off and turning it on again? Of course they did. He didn't get upset, calmly informing them that their route was being re-calculated and they would reach their destination tomorrow. Perhaps if they succumb and do go to Brussels, Keir will smugly inform them: You have reached your destination.

I used to have an Australian-dialect satnav, which would exclaim joyously: You're here! Windows up, sunnies on, mate!

Should you choose to interpret any of the above as an extended metaphor, you are, of course, at liberty to do so. It is a matter entirely for yourselves.

It was left to Jeremy Vine, of all people, on this morning's Laura Kuenssberg show, to bring a modicum of sense to wild talk of coalitions of the willing and standing with Europe against Trumpal tariffing. Maybe this is a bit of an opportunity? he tentatively suggested, in words to that effect, you know, chum up with Trump, who's levying only 10% on our exports, and will probably drop that if we give him his own apartment in Buckingham Palace. After all, he's half British, through his mum. None of that would do for Lady Nugee, who has brought frothing at the mouth to a fine art. You don't know Lady Nugee, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire? There's a British Empire? Still? Have I strayed into Bridgerton?

Lady Nugee, married to the Lord Justice of Appeal, prefers to be known as Emily Thornberry. She failed her 11+ (I didn't!), had to resit her O levels (I didn't!), but did pretty well after that (I didn't!). They like her in Islington South and Finsbury, which has continuously elected her as their Labour MP since 2005, when she benefitted from an all-woman short list. Jeremy Corbyn liked her well enough to give her Shadow Cabinet posts, but Sir Keir removed her to the back benches.

Thornberry never really recovered from widespread accusations of snobbery which forced her resignation from the shadow cabinet in 2014. She published on her Twitter (now X) account a photograph of a house in the constituency of Rochester and Stroud adorned with three flags of St. George (the patron saint of England) and the owner's white van parked in the drive, captioning it "Image from Rochester"

Ed Net Zero Milliband, then leader of the Labour Party said her action conveyed a sense of disrespect, Captain Underpants Chris Bryant 

(who is now a sir and a pillar of the establishment despite posting a selfie of himself wearing only his tightie whities on the gay dating site, Gaydar "it was a wound but it's a rather charming scar now") said that it broke the first rule of politics* (he can talk, much), and Simon Danczuk (then Labour MP for Rochdale, up North, until December 2015, when his Labour Party membership was suspended following reports that he had exchanged sexually explicit messages with a 17 year old girl, for which he apologised, saying his behaviour was inappropriate and stupid. He then had a go at being a Reform Party MP, but that didn't work) said that the Labour Party had been "hijacked by the north London liberal elite" - not wrong there.

*first rule of politics: don't get caught.

So, yes, Emily Thornberry

Not only cross about Trump, not only wanting to get back into bed with the Europeans, despite that 20% tariff, but really, really cross about Israel refusing to allow two potential Labour criminals to set foot in their country.

In an utterly hilarious decision, Israel decided it did not want Abtisam Mohammed, MP and Yuan Yang, MP, to leave the airport on arrival and sent them straight back to Britain. Would that Sir Keir exercise the same decisive ruthlessness in his dealings with illegal and legal migrants - he welcomes migrants, who, it seems, are our strength, because British women won't have babies and British youth are too sick to work. Abtisam and Yuan said they were utterly astonished that Israel wouldn't let them in. Now, girls, girls, we all know that actions have consequences and if you insist on bad-mouthing Israel, what the fuck do you expect? So, why did they want to go to Israel in the first place? Because they were planning to "document Israeli security forces and spread hateful rhetoric against Israel", as the Israeli population authority said. Seems fair enough to me - but not to Frothing Thornberry, nor indeed to David Lammy - luckiest man alive. Fortunately we have Tiny Kemi Bad Enoch - speaking on Sky News' Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips ( ah, that's where he ended up), Kemi said: " I think every country should be able to control its borders, and that's what Israel is doing, as far as I understand. They gave reasons why they didn't believe that those people should come in based on their laws and it's really important that we respect other countries enforcing their borders." Asked whether the decision seemed a bit odd, Kemi responded "I'm not surprised." Lucky Lammy thought that this response was "disgraceful - you are cheerleading another country for detaining and deporting two British MPs".  Lucky Lammy is Foreign Secretary, you know. Obviously, diplomacy, politesse and intellect are no longer attributes required of a Foreign Secretary. 

The Man is a Plank.

Whilst we are discussing MPs who have an interest in matters foreign, you would be entitled to think what the blue blithering fuck, what the dry-wank jaw drop, what the hell are British MPs - British Parliamentarians - doing lobbying the Government of a foreign; like, a really foreign country, with an exotic religion, antediluvian views of women, outrageous punishments for pretty normal behaviour; to build an airport, contrary to their stated views on climate change and their opposition to the expansion of British airports? The letter was drafted by Bedford and Kempston MP Mohammed Yasin and was signed by 20 parliamentarians, including Labour’s Ms Qureshi. It said the signatories were concerned that “long standing” pledges to build an international airport at Mirpur have yet to be realised, with the nearest airport 80 miles away in Islamabad. The letter said: “The Kashmiri diaspora in the UK, including significant numbers of our constituents, have concerns regarding the journey times by road. 

Eight of these MPs campaigning for an airport to be built in Mirpur, Pakistan, voted against Heathrow expansion in 2018 - 

Mohamad Yasin, Debbie Abrahams, Rosena Allin-Khan, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, James Frith, Imran Hussain, Afzal Khan, and Yasmin Qureshi – all Labour MPs – signed a letter this week calling for an airport to be built in Mirpur, Pakistan. They were joined by a number of Labour and independent colleagues, as well as two Lib Dem peers.

I mean, what the actual fuck? 

I blame Empire, myself.

First rule of politics: don't get caught.

Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury was all over the Sunday morning politics programmes this morning, uttering statements along the lines of:  “Clearly we’re all shocked and personally saddened by the serious allegations that have been made. It’s right that the Labour Party suspended the whip immediately when police informed the party of Dan Norris’s arrest. But, as the police have said, this is a sensitive investigation and we shouldn’t be commenting further at this stage.”

Yeah, sure. In the public domain - and on Norris' Wiki page, is the following information:

Dan Norris, born 28 January 1960, is a British politician who has served as Mayor of the West of England since 2021. He has served as Member of Parliament for North East Somerset and Hanham since 2024, having represented Wansdyke, one of its predecessor constituencies, from 1997 to 2010. Formerly a member of the Labour Party, he was suspended in April 2025 after being arrested by Avon and Somerset Police on suspicion of rape, child sex offences, child abduction and misconduct in a public office...Norris had an interest in child safety and regularly campaigned against paedophilia.

What the hell is the matter with these people?

Anyway, I've been ill. Apologies for not posting a Sunday Ishmael - but I really couldn't. I've been so ill that I turned to Netflix for distraction - where I found Bridgerton. I've watched 3 series and the mini-series, Queen Charlotte. There is a great deal that I want to say about Bridgerton - but I'm all wore out from catching up on politics, as we laughingly call it, so I'll postpone it. I'm particularly angry about its laziness - to demonstrate the stupid vapidity of several debutantes, the show has them engaging in a conversation about embroidery - and not as a textile art, and not in a good way, merely perpetuating the stereotype that women's art is fit only for ridiculing.

Oh, by the way, can I ask you to exercise your customary restraint and politesse in any comments you care to make, as the Online Safety Act will send me to prison and/or levy a huge fine upon me should you overstep or make a comment on matters not related to the post. What sort of country, friends, is this? J.D. Vance has the right idea.

This is Illyria, lady.

And what should I do in Illyria?

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, from the writings of our founder, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet 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.

it's wild garlic time again. Does anyone have a great recipe?

No Sunday Ishmael: 23/03/2025

 

mrs ishmael is unwell.

The Sunday Ishmael: 16/03/2025

 Down the Swagger and Pose  to catch up with the grandiosity news. It's just across the street from the Judge's Arse - a very different establishment, where the clientele are counting down the days until they can resume their God-appointed position on the gravy train. 

I've been listening to Barclays Johnson reading his strangely unchronological memoir of his glory days, thrilling to him recounting his battles with the Tory Establishment and their determination to get Brexit Undone so they could continue to milk the European Project, sympathising with his nervous uncertainty when he stayed with the late Queen, god rest her soul - (God didn't actually agree to Her Living Forever! Forever! but certainly acceded to the constant request of "long to reign over us"), with his pregnant girlfriend in tow - would they be allowed to sleep in the same bed, in the same room? But the Queen, of course, being Aristocracy, graciously allowed them to bunk up together. Thrilling again, nail-bitingly, as Barclays Johnson sat up all night awaiting the landslide results that took him back into Downing Street with a humongous majority, because he knew What Worries the Working Class, not like the Lefty Lot. And admiring his Mayoral devotion to bicycling around London, his favouritest city in the world and his bonzo idea to get London moving - on bicycles, for which he charmed Barclays into stumping up squillions to set up the scheme. And then, when he needed as much again to continue the scheme and Barclays refused because they were pissed off that the bikes were referred to as Boris bikes, not Barclays bikes, he charmed the money out of their trousers by promising to change his name by deed poll to Barclays if they would pay up.

And did you know that only 18 of the bikes went missing and of those, one turned up at the Everest base camp? No? 

Not surprising, since it isn't true. A Freedom of Information request revealed that between 31st July 2010 and May 2021, 69,483 bikes were reported missing, of which 64,755 were found and recovered, with 4,728 missing. One Boris bike was found in Gambia in Africa in 2013 and another one was found in Jamaica in 2021.

19,470 bikes were commissioned since the scheme went live in 2010, up to September 2021. The fact that more bikes went missing than existed is because many bikes went missing multiple times. Londoners, eh? 

The cost of the scheme was £140 million to set up, including buying the bikes, creating 338 docking stations and buying a fleet of trucks to distribute the bikes between stations. Ongoing costs include the control centre staffed by 20 staff and bike maintenance. Each bike is also equipped with a radio frequency tag that registers its location. 

All this costs Transport for London £11.1 million per year, despite the sponsorship - Barclays kicked in only a sixth of the costs - and user charges. 

But why are you bothered, mrs ishmael? You never go to London, on account of it being a desperate hole where the teenagers knife each other to death, despite Boris Johnson's Mayoral pledge to remove knife crime.

Well, I'm not. Bothered, that is. Londoners can cycle into the Thames, up Everest, across to Africa and the Caribbean on their Boris bikes for all I'm concerned - I only looked into it because of Johnson's lordly claims in his memoir.

And now I'm wondering what else he has lied about? 

Anyway, leaving the Judge's Arse and crossing the street to the Swagger and Pose,

we're all back to worrying. I do appreciate that all this must be desperately exciting for the son of a tool-maker and that he basically inherited a foreign policy set up by Johnson and Biden, which has  become frighteningly unfeasible now that Johnson is writing equally unfeasible memoirs and Biden has checked into the Assisted Memory Facility. But, please god, will someone tell him that the situation has changed? That being a European is not as sensible a position as being on Trump's side? That Putin has absolutely no intention of abandoning his war aims now that he is winning and holds Britain's swagger and posturing in amused disdain? And that Britain really doesn't sit at the Big Boys table anymore? And that Putin has nuclear weapons? And that if Putin is de-throned, there are nastier and louder politicians who would replace him? And that Zelensky does not have popular opinion on his side any more?

By the way, I did think it was absolutely hilarious that Trump dealt with Macron by way of 200% tariffs on Champagne and fain wain. As he says - he holds all the cards.

There's more than Starmer worrying me down the Swagger and Pose.  

That's Ed Miliband with Starmer. He's been around forever - Ed, together with his brother, Dave. He was even leader of the Labour Party once over, and we could have had him as Prime Minister back in 2015 had he been able to speak properly, instead of sounding like he had stuffed his mouth with marbles, and, whisper this, the latent anti-Semitism of the Great British voter. There's only been the one Jewish Prime Minister - Benjamin Disraeli (1868 to 1880 - two terms, with a gap).  Miliband is not a bad egg, never fiddled his expenses, seems to be a conviction politician, with his heart in the right place. Back in 2015 he gave five pledges to the electorate, which would form his policy basis should he got into government: he was going to tackle deficit reduction, living standards, the NHS, immigration controls and tuition fees. The following month, he added an additional pledge on housing and rent. All of which remain desperately relevant 10 years on. He's tall, handsome, lean, assured...... What's the problem, then? What's worrying you? 

Well, he's looking increasingly mad -

You've got to query the judgement of anyone who would allow that to be released as his official photo. And, amidst the shininess, you can see the light of zealotry in his eyes. He loves his job. And his job is Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. And he means it. He's committed to achieving a total renunciation of the use of fossil fuels in Britain, as quickly as possible. This is climate change politics, an ivory-tower, ideal world position in a cold Northern country. And he justifies his opposition to fossil fuels thusly: in the House on the 4th February 2025, he said: 

"In recent weeks, we have seen continuing rises in prices in global fossil fuel markets, with wholesale gas prices last month 60% higher than a year ago, which is caused by a number of factors. I want to be clear with the House: as long as Britain remains so dependent on fossil fuels, we will be in the grip of these global markets controlled by petrostates and dictators, with direct impacts here at home. The only way to get off this rollercoaster is with clean, home-grown power that we control, and that is what the Government’s clean energy mission is all about."

Maybe so - but it will take time to build the nuclear reactors to produce electricity, to build the wind and solar farms, and the infrastructure to move all this clean home-grown electricity across the country from the delightful, remote countryside where it is generated to the stinking, overpopulated cities of the south. And, in a supreme cut-your-nose-off act of economy-sabotaging wilfulness, the Right Honourable Ed, through the North Sea Transition Authority, has ordered that on Monday, concrete will be poured into Britain's last two shale gas wells in Lancashire, for the specific purpose of ensuring that the wells can never be used to extract natural gas at any point in the future. The Bowland shale formation could provide Britain with 50 years of natural gas. More than 80% of British households use gas for heating and hot water, accounting for over 75% of household energy consumption. After having had all sorts and combinations of household energy systems in the past, I now live in an all-electric house, serviced by a massive great air-to-water heat pump, solar panels and the Grid. Moving all Britain's households into that same position will take time and require financial support for households to swap out their existing energy systems. And this Government is not in a financial head-room space to provide that support, as it wrestles with the unpopular issue of reducing welfare benefits to Britain's chronically sick, elderly population and stripping out jobs in yet another NHS re-organisation in order to increase defence spending against the Russian threat.

The eye-swivelling Mililoon has firmly set out his stall: it is the Government's intention to ban "fracking for good". Even though it could create jobs, growth and produce home-grown natural gas instead of importing it at great cost from those "petrostates and dictators". Pouring concrete down the wells is a move reminiscent of Maggie Thatcher's spiteful pouring of concrete down the coal mines. Her ideological zealotry was to break the working class and their Trade Union representatives. Miliband's zealotry seems to be in service to further hampering the economy.

This Labour Government seems to be borrowing Tory clothes.

There you go, hen, after a chequered reign, you've made the right decision not to stand as an MSP in the next election. Following three decades in Scottish politics, you've no' achieved Independence, you've run NHS Scotland and Scottish education into the ground, you've unsuccessfully pursued a personal vendetta against Wee Fat Aleck Salmond - which may have contributed to his untimely demise, you've utterly failed to provide Scotland's island archipelagos with fucking boats, you've farted about with LGBTQ+ politics, unisex bathrooms and gender recognition bollocks, you've entered into an unholy coalition with the Green loons, resulting in all that bottle return business, stopping Scotland's fishermen from making a living, and destroying the fossil fuel industry, reducing Aberdeen to a ghost town; and, worse of all, you are the only, the only serving First Minister - or Prime Minister, for that matter, to have the police search your house, dig up your garden, pitch a forensic tent outside your front door, remove crates of documents and IT equipment, tow away a motor home, allegedly bought by embezzled funds, from your mother-in-law's drive, be questioned under arrest, as was your husband, who is now charged with the criminal offence of embezzlement, and be forced to resign as First Minister because of that embarrassment, whilst spouting bollocks about your tank having run out of whatever you keep in your tank, and having to shed that self-same husband in a shameless attempt to save your political career - or maybe your marriage tank just ran out of whatever weird juice it was running on.

Way to go, girl - it's been fun. No, actually, it hasn't. But I have had free prescriptions ever since moving to Scotland 24 years ago. Thanks.

Dundee University has fuck all to thank the SNP "Government" for. The University has a £35 million deficit and, in a hopeless attempt to balance the books, they are going to lose 632 jobs - that represents 20% of the University's workforce. They're going bankrupt, basically. Edinburgh University is going the same way. St Andrew's is not looking healthy. The problem is that the SNP will not charge Scottish students tuition fees. It pays the Universities £1,820 per eligible student in a tuition fee, which has not changed since 2009-19. So Universities make up their income by charging fees to foreign students, including the hated English, and they have not been able to recoup enough cash from this route to subsidise all the Scottish little darlings. 

Way to go, Nicola. 

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, from the writings of our founder, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet 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.

The Orkney Coat of Arms.
On the left side of the shield there is the gold galley on a blue background, representing the ancient Earldom of Orkney. The right side of the shield has the Royal arms of Norway, the lion rampant with a battle-axe on a red background, which recalls that Orkney was once a Norwegian province. The Latin motto ‘Boreas Domus Mare Amicus’ means The North our Home, the Sea our Friend is added to the compartment, or base. The shield has two supporters, a 15th century udaller or free land-owner under the udal system of land tenure. He is dressed in his best clothes (braws) and is wearing seal skin boots. The other supporter is a Scottish unicorn, which wears a badge with the Scottish Saltire on its collar. It is common to all the Islands Councils’ coats-of-arms.

The Sunday Ishmael: 09/03/2025

 

So, I was listening to the wartime news on the radio the other day when I was struck by the phrase "Five Eyes". I'd heard it before, of course, and I thought I had a pretty good idea about what it means, but it suddenly struck me as an utterly risible phrase for something so deadly serious, so I thought I'd better look it up. 

Apologies to Ishmaelians who already know all this stuff, but for those who haven't been paying much attention, and, as usual, who, indeed, can blame you, here we go with the origins and meaning of the phrase. 

The Five Eyes, Wiki tells me, and yes, I bung them a fiver whenever they are hard up and ask me; is an Anglosphere intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, all party to the UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Signals intelligence is defined as a category of intelligence comprising all communications intelligence, electronic intelligence and foreign instrumentation signals intelligence, however transmitted. Informally, "Five Eyes" refers to the intelligence agencies of AUSCANNZUKUS - basically, a bunch of spies, all speaking English. Not French - no, Macron, you can't join, with your late-night broadcasts to the benighted French people, in French, trying to drum up support for the Dwarf, when all your citizens want is for you to do something about the Islamist terrorism which is eroding the French mode de vie and blowing them up, stabbing, raping and beheading them. And not Ukrainian - you can't join either, however much you want to get all that US signals intelligence back. Shouldn't have been so disrespectful, huh? Huh? Nope, it's an English-speaking spy club.

I went out with a retired spy once. He was in his forties - incredibly old, svelte and sophisticated he seemed to my 18 year-old self, with a Pathé News  voice.  I met him at work, where he was supposed to be mentoring me, but instead fell hook, line and sinker for my aforesaid 18 year-old self. He was married, but didn't let that hold him back. He fancied himself as James Bond, but without the Scottish accent.

Everybody smoked back then - it was compulsory.

He'd been a spy for Her Majesty in Rhodesia, before being retired and having to take up post as a Civil Servant back in Blighty, and never got over the sprawling bungalow, the bleck servants, the manicured gardens, never having to do any housework or shopping, and spending his days sipping martinis and spying - like Our Man in Havana,

you know, when James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Cuba, coerced by British Intelligence into being their Havana operative, invents agents for his "cell" and submits his sketches of plans for a rocket-launching pad based on vacuum cleaner parts to make more money from the rather dense British Intelligence establishment. The film isn't a patch on Graham Greene's book, which is decidedly more menacing, particularly in its depiction of the sadistic and charming Chief of Police, who has a lampshade made from the tattooed skin of a political enemy he has had tortured to death, and divides the citizenry into the torturable and non-torturable classes. As well as playing checkers with miniature whisky bottles, thus creating a built-in handicap for the better player, as they have to drink the pieces they take.

Anyway, back to my spy - who we'll call Ted, because that was his real name. Ted decided that the best thing was for me to run away with him to Rhodesia, where he would set me up in my own bungalow and we could have a perfectly splendid life, getting pissed and bossing the bleck servants around. Good thing I wasn't tempted, despite the spy thing and the  Pathé News  voice, because Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and it wouldn't have ended well. Just goes to show you the moral and intellectual calibre of our Great British Spies.

So why is it called Five Eyes? It is one of those baby-talk American things, like No Fly Zone. It is shorthand for "AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US Eyes only" releasability caveat (classified information). It started with secret meetings between British and American code-breakers during the second World War, was formalised in 1946 by the UKUSA Agreement, and again in the 1960s under the ECHELON surveillance system, which was developed by the Five Eyes or FVEY to spy on the communications of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc and is now used to monitor communications worldwide. So if you hear clicks and hisses on your phone line when exchanging endearments with your sweetheart or firming up jihadi plans with your best bud, it'll be ECHELON. Surveillance was ramped up during the "war on terror", which started in 2001 when those big American buildings surprisingly and neatly collapsed into their own footprints after having been flown into by inexperienced pilots. Five Eyes was able to identify the culprits when a foreign passport fluttered to the ground from one of the aircraft. Just saying. The Five Eye alliance is now a global spy mechanism, keeping its Eyes on international terrorism, cyber attacks and regional conflicts. They try to keep their activities secret, for good reason, because if the general public became aware of the extent of their reach, the shit would hit the fan, presumably. As it is, the impact of their activities on privacy and civil liberties has sparked legal challenges.  Edward Snowdon, who brought all this shit to light and was remorselessly hounded across the globe, threatened with charges of treason and hanging, by the US Government for exposing nefarious surveillance practices, described the Five Eyes as " a supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries." Disclosures in the 2010s revealed Five Eyes was spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other.

The picture heading up this blog has 9 eyes, not 5. That's because there's another secret surveillance society, consisting of the Five Eyes plus Denmark, France, Netherlands and Norway. They are not in the inner circle, but they are affiliated. Then there's the 14 eyes, which has Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden tacked on to the Nine Eyes - kind of sub- sub- spy circle.

One could ask oneself why, since Five Eyes (9 Eyes and 14 Eyes) is  the most comprehensive espionage alliance, with breath-taking surveillance tools at its disposal, does shit continue to happen? 

One conclusion could be that it is allowed to.

Another, less conspiratorial conclusion could be that they are all as shit at spying as the Bulgarians.

Vanya Gaberova, 30, Katrin Ivanova, 33, and Tihomir Ivanchev, 39, Bulgarian spies who were all living in London, were part of a group who travelled Europe carrying out surveillance on journalists, a former politician and a US military base in Germany between 2020 and 2023. But why do you say they were shit, mrs ishmael? The Metropolitan Police's Commander Dominic Murphy said the methods they used were the sort of thing you would expect to see in a spy novel, and was an extremely sophisticated operation.

Because, during their trial, Ivanova and Gaberova admitted spying but said they didn't know they were spying for Russia. Ivanchev had said the same thing in police interviews, but didn't give evidence during the trial. What sort of a spy do you have to be not to know who you are spying for? A rubbish one, that's what. Anyway, they were found guilty this week and the case has been adjourned for sentence at a later date, together with three other spies from the same ring. Can't wait for the film to be made.

On the last thread, mr mike recommended the 1957 film, The Cranes are Flying, a Soviet war drama. I watched it the other evening. It is available on Youtube - either follow the link provided by mr mike, or just ask Youtube's Search box for it. It is available in the original, black and white version, in Russian with English subtitles, or a colourised, dubbed version, which is possibly more accessible.  It was directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, availing himself of the directorial freedoms afforded Soviet film-makers following the death of Stalin, who had rather idiosyncratic views about what he liked to see in a film. The cinematographer was Sergei Urusevsky, who achieved some amazing effects before there was access to CGI and  drones - having seen his gravity-defying sequences, particularly where the heroine is closely tracked whilst pushing through a crowd, then the point of view lifts to film her from above as she runs through the dust between tanks, you can trace his influence on subsequent directors and cinematographers. 

The heroine, who looks like a normal-sized Audrey Hepburn, endures the destruction of  her home and the death of both her parents by Nazi bombs, rape by her fiancée's cousin, resulting in a forced marriage, and the death of her fiancée on the Ukrainian muddy frontline. There are harrowing hospital sequences, reminiscent of the wards that Florence Nightingale set about cleaning during the Crimean War, a century earlier. Wounded soldiers are bussed from one full hospital to another. The destruction of Moscow

and the comrades taking shelter in the subway remind one of the hammering inflicted upon London and other British cities by the same adversary. Britain endured 150,000 military deaths and 300,000 civilian deaths, whereas the figure for the Russian death toll is unclear, but enormous: in 2020 the Russian Federal archival project stated that between 15.9 to 17.4 million civilians were killed by Germany on Soviet territory, and the Russian Central Defence Ministry Archive has a database listing the names of 14 million military dead. A further 2.4 million are still officially considered missing in action and that of the 9.5 million buried in mass graves, 6 million are unidentified.  

The Cranes are Flying won the Palme d'Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. To a modern eye, it is a bit melodramatic, a bit monumental, the music a bit heavy-handed - but it is a significant film, I'm glad I watched it, and it helps explain Putin's fear of the West and its intentions. After all, Germany, the nation that inflicted unbelievable levels of damage upon Russia, is now totally rehabilitated, everything explained as the work of the bad evil Nazis, nothing to do with the hard-working, clean 'n' tidy Germans - yeah, sure - just like Hamas isn't synonymous with the people of Gaza. And Russia is regarded as the enemy of the West. The post-war relationship with Russia was handled so badly by the West that we now find ourselves teetering on the edge of the Third World War.

It is dismaying that Starmer is in bed with the Europeans, instead of making nice with the Five Eyes nations. Especially the big one.

Not much to laugh at in today's post, I fear, but  the four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber are available, as ever.  The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet 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.

The Sunday Ishmael: 02/03/2025

 Oh fuck, fuck, fuckety-fuck. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

What is it, mrs ishmael? 

Oh fuck, fuck, fuckety-fuck. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Calm down, mrs ishmael.

No, you calm up, for  fuckety-fuck's sake. The Chairman of the Republicans Overseas UK,  Greg Swenson said: the worst case scenario is World War Three. 

Let that settle for a minute.

This morning on the Laura Kuenssberg politics show, Starmer said Nobody wants to see that. He said it many times. He's wrong there. Everyone wanted to see it. Such theatre. Such larks. Sheer magic from the moment Trump sarcastically said to the Dwarf Zelensky, clad in his usual stinky T-shirt: I see you've dressed up for the occasion, right up to Zelensky sitting in the Oval Office chair, on the edge of his seat, covering his privy member with his hands while Trump and JD harangued him for his taking ways, his refusal to make any concessions that might appease Putin, and, worse of all, his lack of gratitude, or thankfulness, in Trump speak - but Trump doesn't need to be worried about his grammar, on account of being in charge of America. 

No wonder Trump was enraged with Zelensky -  the One Hundred Year Partnership Agreement was signed on 16 January 2025 between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ukraine, (here's a link: One Hundred Year Partnership agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Ukraine - GOV.UK ), with accompanying secret provisions: "The signing of the 100-year partnership agreement marks a fundamentally new format of relations. Relations between Ukraine and the United Kingdom are now closer than ever," said Zelensky in a video posted on his Telegram channel. "There is also a classified, secret part of the agreement". 

The non- secret bit is pretty outrageous, stating that Ukraine will be a future NATO ally and that Britain will assist it on that path: "REAFFIRMING their support for Ukraine’s European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations, with NATO membership being the best guarantee of its security and the UK being dedicated to supporting Ukraine’s irreversible path to NATO membership." Is Starmer mad? Which bit of Putin started his special military operation to prevent Ukraine becoming a member of NATO did Starmer not understand? And didn't he notice that Trump has clearly stated that NATO membership is not on the cards? The cards that Trump has assured Zelensky he doesn't hold? The classified secret bit isn't too hard to guess at. Probably has something to do with exploitation of Ukraine's mineral resources to reward the U.K. and exploitation of  seized Russian finances to feed into Ukraine's corruption machine post-war reconstruction. So the 100 Year Partnership (grandiose or what - Britain still hasn't got over itself) - pre-empted Trump's attempts to broker his own deal. Fortunately, the 100 Year Partnership can be dissolved immediately with the agreement of both parties, and unilaterally with 6 months notice.

Smarmy Starmer fancies himself as a Churchillian war leader, for fuckety-fuck's sake. He said that after Zelensky's dressing down, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work. His use of the word "work" is a bit specialised. He rolled up his sleeves and made some phone calls, he said. Why you need to roll your sleeves up to make a phone call, fuck knows. Ask Starmer. He'll say his daddy was a tool maker so he knows all about rolling up his sleeves. Anyway, the interfering bastard has invited Zelensky and the European leaders to London to form a coalition of the willing - a phrase invented by Lincoln Bloomfield in July 1971, when he and his colleagues described the need for a coalition of willing nations to support UN peacekeeping or conflict stabilization goals. The infamous Henry Kissinger jumped on the idea in a 1973 letter to Bloomfield, acknowledging his "proposal for coalitions of the willing." So that's us, fucked. Starmer will probably have Britain back in Europe.

Baldie Flynn

and his puppet-master, Grandma Swinney,

smirking all over the Scottish politics show because a new grandbaby has been born to the tribe of Swine; have certainly not helped matters by calling Trump rude names and wanting him disinvited from a second state visit with King Brian. Of course, they want back in Europe as well and never did like Trump's politics or personal style.

So, as mr mike frequently reminds us: we're all doomed.

If only Smarmy Starmer, in his sleeves-rolled up phone calling had rung President Trump and said, well done, sir, jolly good kicking you gave the Dwarf, and how can Britain help? Pass me my kicking boots, Angela,

and then followed it up with a phone call to Putin. Instead, he runs out into the street and gives Zelensky a good hugging when he rocked up in Downing Street, engulfing the little chap in his big, expensively-suited arms. Now that he is no longer allowed to let kindly benefactors buy his suits and specs, maybe he could adopt the military-fatigue Zelensky look, as he seems all set to launch the frigging European allies on yet another war to end all wars.

...............................................................

Book Corner

I've just finished Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue.

Lots of interesting facts about the development of language, too many to cover here. Suffice it to say that Trump follows a long and distinguished line of neologism creators, including Shakespeare, who invented about 1,700 words including barefaced and pedant (which is what I am, I suspect, as well as being a TERF). Bryson doesn't tackle the misuse of the third person plural, because it is quite an old book (1990) and therefore predates Critical Theory. It is dreadful to me, being a pedant, to contemplate this misuse becoming compulsory, punishable by imprisonment - but there you go, language evolves, and if you want to be known by a word which evolved to describe more than one person - (they, them), well, you are allowed to nowadays. English, however, has a perfectly good word instead of straying into plural forms - he, she, it. Interestingly, despite his scholarship, Bryson believes that English does not have a second person plural form. It exists and is still used in the Black Country, an area of England's West Midlands, now mainly urban, covering most of Dudley and Sandwell. The Black Country dialect preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English. Thee, thy and thou are still in use, so in Dudley (pronounced Duddloi) you can choose, just like the French, between the formal you (Fr. vous) and the familiar thou (Fr. tu).

"'Ow bist," or "Ow bist gooin" (How are you/ How are you going), to which typical responses would be "bostin', ah kid" (bostin' means "busting", as in breaking, and is similar in usage to "smashing"; and "ah kid" (our kid) is a term of endearment) or "'bay too bad," or even "bay three bad" ("I be not too bad"/ I'm not too bad). And that second person plural? Youse.

I know this, because, unlike American Bill Bryson, I used to live and work in the Midlands.

There's an area of the United States where they still speak Scottish, reflecting the Scottish diaspora to Southern United States, which had such an unpleasant and long lasting consequence in terms of the slave trade, the Scots being intimately involved in the plantation economy. Even the word plantation is a plantation from Scotland. There's a lot of Scottish gingers and the Scottish words ockster (armpit) and poke (bag or pocket, as in a poke of chips) are routinely used. Americans call trousers pants, waistcoats vests and braces suspenders, having preserved these archaisms from the English that the early settlers took with them - together with their religious mania, their English and European neighbours having had no time for their extreme nonsense and encouraged them to seek a fine new home in a beautiful place, a better place.

I was taken with the explanation of why Americans talk about their ass, whilst the English have an arse. It seems to have derived from those transportees who employed Cockney, a coded language designed to exclude outsiders. Here you go: Aristotle rhymes with bottle, which is accompanied by a glass, which rhymes with ass, which sounds a bit like the Aris- prefix of Aristotle. Whereas posh and southern English speakers maintained the long a - as in arse. You couldn't make it up. Maybe Bill Bryson did.

The other thing is that we know how early English speakers pronounced their words because of poetry - scansion and rhymes betray how a word was pronounced - which has often drifted hugely over the centuries. Modern poetry, of course, having no rhythm, rhyme, scansion or verse form will leave no clues to guide language archaeologists of the future.

Spring has sprung,

The grass is riz,

I wonder where the boidies is?

The birds are on the wing.

Oh, jeez, I thought the wings was on the boid.

Don't forget your copy of one of the four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. Or buy the set as a luxurious indulgence for yourself or as a gift for a broad-minded friend. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet 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.

Young swans on the Peedie Sea, Kirkwall, part of a 40 strong flock.