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.