tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post1629866246764993939..comments2024-03-29T05:24:12.453+00:00Comments on call me ishmael: A DENIAL OF PERSPECTIVE.call me ishmaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-30877635620571649582011-02-08T20:20:59.585+00:002011-02-08T20:20:59.585+00:00Dick the Prick said...
You wrote to a headmas...Dick the Prick said...<br /><br /> You wrote to a headmaster saying lad's a fucking numbnuts'?<br /> 8 February 2011 08:34 <br /><br />No,mr dtp, more that he was.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-91869582659729870332011-02-08T09:02:39.199+00:002011-02-08T09:02:39.199+00:00I don't think we're allowed to change a pl...I don't think we're allowed to change a plug in Englandshire any more Mr Ishmael. Some new electrical regulations or other. Some MP's daughter got electrocuted several years ago and, well, you know how it is, something-must-be-done. And if denying 60 million people the option to legally do the simplest of tasks saves just one life and generates screeds of compliance, health and safety bullshit and unnecessary cost then surely it's worth it.<br /><br />We're allowing ourselves to be rendered increasingly fucking helpless. The better for the bed-wetters to look after us. Because they care. Because they're caring people. Not like the wicked Tories who want us to all be poor all our lives and then die poor. For no good reason obviously. Because they don't care. Just because they're nasty.<br /><br />Not like Labour. Who truly care. Because they say so.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-87043139804368674742011-02-08T08:34:17.089+00:002011-02-08T08:34:17.089+00:00You wrote to a headmaster saying lad's a fucki...You wrote to a headmaster saying lad's a fucking numbnuts'?Dick the Prickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02683095612320513712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-33682543316409623702011-02-08T03:54:01.047+00:002011-02-08T03:54:01.047+00:00I don't depart too far from most of this. I ha...I don't depart too far from most of this. I had a boy working for me, once, about fifteen, on work experience, bright lad, lyrical and confident but he could wield neither hammer nor screwdriver. I wrote to his headmaster. Few will be poets or philosophers, I said, but everyone will need to change a fucking plug, what are you playing at? There was no reply, which, of course, was a message in itself.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-2958211970363163412011-02-08T03:12:41.619+00:002011-02-08T03:12:41.619+00:00This comment has been removed by the author.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-88111052015864206072011-02-08T03:06:17.527+00:002011-02-08T03:06:17.527+00:00Here in Ruin, sympathy and compassion are infinite...Here in Ruin, sympathy and compassion are infinite, mr yaic. The bell tolls for us all.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-82702832057552374922011-02-08T02:58:20.843+00:002011-02-08T02:58:20.843+00:00You seemed to have attracted a lot of us boot-stra...You seemed to have attracted a lot of us boot-strappers, Mr I.<br /><br />Sympathy in short supply, it seems.a young Anglo-Irish catholicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-7311983858878482732011-02-08T02:49:36.347+00:002011-02-08T02:49:36.347+00:00Well, I must admit, you have me there, that Al Sha...Well, I must admit, you have me there, that Al Sharpton, what's he like, doing all that complaining on behalf of the niggers? Doesn't he know that as recently as in your lifetime, mr jgm2, those white folks have almost entirely stopped lynching niggers, castrating them, burning them alive and laughing, free, from good ole boy judges and juries courts. Jesus, anybody'd think they'd been mistreated. All those Ivy League boys, from good American families, grown rich on centuries of slavery, what possible advantage could they have over the negro, ain't this the land of the free?<br /><br />In my lifetime all this shit was going on, segregation and the Klan, the official face of the Southern States, fuck me, it's a good job that niggers aren't Jews, or they'd a had some other people thrown out of their country and taken it over, we'd all be creeping around observing Nigger Holocaust Day, just that the Nigger Holocaust lasted centuries, not a decade or two. What was it we called this post, it's so long ago, now, Denial of Perspective?call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-51392577308604369722011-02-07T23:00:12.200+00:002011-02-07T23:00:12.200+00:00It is a shame, Mr PtB, that the young are not wise...It is a shame, Mr PtB, that the young are not wiser but it is one of God's better jokes.mongoosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14173341928744479143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-10524595083570324222011-02-07T19:59:05.830+00:002011-02-07T19:59:05.830+00:00It can be ignited in many ways, but it can also be...<i>It can be ignited in many ways, but it can also be dowsed with a single word, be it scum, failure, loser.</i><br /><br />Colin Powell seriously toyed with running for president on the Republican ticket - indeed he may have been set up to fail by Bush when he had Powell present his risible Iraq 'evidence' to the UN. Barak Obama is black(ish) and actually <i>did</i> get to be US president.<br /><br />The difference these black guys had compared to tens of millions of other black Americans? Both were only first generation black American so they hadn't grown up with the likes of Al Sharpton and all the rest of the cunts telling 'em they're doomed to failure from the start. So, you know, why bother?<br /><br />The same way the immigrant Irish who mobbed the grammar schools in my day and the Indians of Birmingham who are mobbing them today didn't have the likes of Clare Short or John Prescott 'feeling our pain' or 'empathising with our predicament' and generally fucking well patronising us. Fuck no. We had parents who believed in education and who told us to pay attention at school and to try and make a better life.<br /><br />So we did.<br /><br />The biggest cause of the dearth of expectation is actually fuelled by the self-same well-meaning, bed-wetting, patronising liberal-lefty wankers who claim to give a shit. Oh, poor you, you're doomed to failure, here have some fucking money - that'll fix it.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-82120683636034699432011-02-07T19:13:32.223+00:002011-02-07T19:13:32.223+00:00During my two decades as an academic I taught the ...During my two decades as an academic I taught the children of titled folk and the older offspring of the urban working class.<br /><br />The former were 'entitled', sneering at anyone different, just getting by with enough work or pleading for special consideration, taking skiing holidays in term time, in possession of cars, monthly allowances, daddy's bank account.<br /><br />The latter? Some I count as among the most amazing people I have ever met. Men and women, written off by their schooling or family backgrounds, thrown out of work, or injured in workplace accidents, driven into the world by abusive husbands, taking a risk on reinventing themselves and remaking the lives of their families. Giving them even a little (time, help, encouragement) was met with such gratitude it was almost embarrassing. And they worked harder and better than any other student, however gifted, while caring for children, elderly parents, working part-time.<br /><br />Providing the means for the 'idle' to discover that spark in themselves, for whatever it might be, could be what makes the difference. It can be ignited in many ways, but it can also be dowsed with a single word, be it scum, failure, loser.PT Barnumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-39337059852148593742011-02-07T17:58:24.043+00:002011-02-07T17:58:24.043+00:00'I'd rather spend their benefits money on ...'I'd rather spend their benefits money on some training and a box of tools but it is the step from here to there which is proving so difficult.'<br /><br />Would not all of Ishmaelia not agree? That people can still be pumped out of schools not being able to do at least one thing really well is the biggest scandal of our times.<br /><br />That struck me most forcefully when I left school. I couldn't do one thing really well. And deep down, people know when they are useless. And when they know they are useless the trouble starts.a young anglo-irish catholicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-6952244352858026832011-02-07T17:41:17.630+00:002011-02-07T17:41:17.630+00:00It is as you say, Mr yaic, the Luvvies really do h...It is as you say, Mr yaic, the Luvvies really do hate the Tories. It is at the very pinnacle of their hatred that they know that the Tories don't care about them either way. No fury hath Hell like a Luvvie ignored. But we must take no comfort; they are all cunts and do not give a shit about anything or anybody. In any decent country, nobody would have voted for a single one of the thieving bastards. <br /><br />In the time of Margaret the She-Wolf, there was a cartoon in the papers. A horde of flat-capped, fag-smokers were drawn outside a dole office. A bowler-hatted flunky with a clipboard was organising them into two queues "...those wedded to the work ethic and those not." That we are all sometimes idle swine is fine but I have always fed and clothed my kids. Met whatever were my responsibilities as I guess, have you, Mr jgm2. Social protection seems to have run riot and removed from some that element of self-respect which drives most of us out to toil of a winter's morning. How this self-respect and drive is to be rekindled is the question we must face, and this, I think, is the thrust of Mr I's point. I'd rather spend their benefits money on some training and a box of tools but it is the step from here to there which is proving so difficult.mongoosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14173341928744479143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-5751590463215066102011-02-07T17:02:38.862+00:002011-02-07T17:02:38.862+00:00A gem, Mr jgm2.
I've come to believe that the...A gem, Mr jgm2.<br /><br />I've come to believe that the current Labour party - now without an historic purpose because there is little more social protection that could be invented - is controlled by people who have no other motivation than their uncontrolled, eye-rolling, hatred of middle england and conservatives.<br /><br />These people are quite happy to use the blue collar as a wedge in their battle against the Tories. Hundreds of thousands will be sacked to once again paint the Tories black, while the white collar public sector management protects its own.<br /><br />They couldn't give a shit. It's the as if the WW1 Generals were replaced by Fabians. Let the masses be slaughtered so the enemy might be vanquished.<br /><br />Lower than vermin, Fabians.a young anglo-irish catholicnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-668858120791431202011-02-07T16:36:49.631+00:002011-02-07T16:36:49.631+00:00As you say Mr Ishmael - idleness is not a natural ...As you say Mr Ishmael - idleness is not a natural human condition. Even I, as idle a fucker as you could hope to meet (or not) spend time walking the highways and bye-ways, mending my own cars, growing my own veg (a bit), shooting my own game (a bit) and even occasionally reading for pleasure.<br /><br />Which is why I say that the kindest thing that could be done for many folk is to light the fucking metaphorical fire under them. We had ten years of 'boom' albeit a bogus boom perched on a pile of printed cash - we had a million, two million maybe more folk traipse in from Eastern Europe - many of them degree-educated and do all those jobs that we, the great British doletariate, are 'too good' to do - or, more accurately, doesn't pay us to do because by the time you've factored in your free housing, free council tax, free this, free that you'd be working for nothing.<br /><br />Two million jobs that our indigenous 'economically inactive' (hidden from the unemployment stats by any number of mechanisms) would have benefitted from doing if only they could be made to believe there was any advantage in doing so.<br /><br />I believe your story of helping the indigenous of Brum who had written themselves off. But that's my point - they should never be getting to that stage. The ones who 'made good' should be shining beacons of what is possible but instead they're characterised as class traitors. <br /><br />What are you doing you wanker? Think you're too good for us? Studying hard and getting a good job and fucking off? Fucking traitor. You're 'working class' you are. Be like us.<br /><br />It's fucking insane.<br /><br />Anybody who tries to break through and explain that the greatest impediment to most of these people's lives is their own lack of ambition is immediately criticised (by Labour) as being some preachy class-traitor or 'out of touch public schoolboy' or any number of other pejoratives rather than facing the fucking truth.<br /><br />And who benefits from the status quo? Not me. Not you. Not them. Not the fucking banks. They don't benefit from having several million 'economically inactive'.<br /><br />The 'rich'? They don't benefit from having a shit-load of poor people cluttering the place up and living in shit-holes. Why would they care if everybody was naice and middle-clarse?<br /><br />The <i>only</i> people who benefit are the fucking Labour party because several million poor people and the bed-wetting 'something-must-be-done' industry they beget provide an endless excuse for pissing away money buying votes. <br /><br />Just as if, in the morning, we could suddenly run all our cars on tap-water then by the afternoon tap-water would be £1.30 a litre 'because we need the money' then so it is with 'the poor'. If we didn't have them already then Labour would fucking well create them.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-60484465771873937772011-02-07T15:01:10.016+00:002011-02-07T15:01:10.016+00:00It is a grisly fucking club that we would yearn to...It is a grisly fucking club that we would yearn to join it, is it not? Well, I fucking don't. Bastards, thieves and fucking traitors is what they are. <br /><br />That the idle are idle is just a truism - a consequence more like it of the fuckwittedness of the ruling elite. We have talked here before, often, of the simple things. There's a film out "Company Men". I seem to be the only sod in this whole town who can lay a floorboard, mix muck and change a light-fitting. Everybody used to be able to do some of these things and if push came to shove a modest living could be earned doing such things. Even now, I want to lay all this paper shite down and make sticks of furniture for a living but it cannot be. "Fuck me, yes, I will make you a Shaker-style dining table. Mind, it will take me six months." Maybe when the kids are gone, maybe when I'm dead.<br /><br />But one thing is for sure and it is that the honour and nobility of labour - all labour, from rocket science to mucking out stables - is a thing of the past. There is only one badge of honour now and it is money.mongoosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14173341928744479143noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-44745792233670717262011-02-07T14:01:32.048+00:002011-02-07T14:01:32.048+00:00I did that, too, mr ptb, spoke Brummy on the stre...I did that, too, mr ptb, spoke Brummy on the street and Belfast indoors, even then, at five or six, I felt I was betraying my Mum, and felt ashamed, little knowing that all I was doing was an early example of Cameronism, poor litlle bastard.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-24495522568761970292011-02-07T13:40:44.987+00:002011-02-07T13:40:44.987+00:00Back in the '80s, mr jgm2, whilst Whisky Maggi...Back in the '80s, mr jgm2, whilst Whisky Maggie and her spivs were gangfucking British industry, I worked in a Voluntary Projects Programme aimed at getting long-term unemployed people not back into work but into work for the first time. It was funded by the Manpower Services Commission as part of SEMAG, the Special Employment Measures Action Group and had close connections to various Community Programme Schemes which offered part and full-time work for up to a year and sometimes longer for supervisory, managerial grades. Before I could steer people to the CP, I had to source or provide basic skills training and generally a couple of days a week on voluntary community projects, some manual, some domestic, some admin. Through these simple, structured activities people learned the comradeship, the regularity and the self-esteem which accompany regular employment and I never knew one single soul who did not benefit hugely, either in the short-term or, in many cases, the long. I used to hustle money, too, from charitable trusts, particularly the Cadburys, to take these less than privileged people to see Shakespeare or the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; my office was run a bit like this blog, ongoing conversations in which some engaged and some just watched, all of an anarcho-plumbing bent, all eventually insisting that survival required at least a degree of conformity, not to govament but to one's fellows commonly agreed purposes. Work was good in and of itself, even done voluntarily, education was good, in and of itself, the arts were for everybody, not just for Kirsty Wark's opulent wankers.<br /><br />There were lots of these projects, up and down the land, once I knew the stats, which proved their worth, but it's a long time ago and I forget. What I know, though, mr jgm2, and when I say know, I mean know, you know, as night follows day, beyond sophistry and rhetoric is that people are not naturally idle - we would not have survived all these centuries if that was the case - but people are often denied opportunity and then eventually shut out and called names. <br /><br />I have nothing against employment programmes, sensitively and efficiently and productively run. But if they are used punitively, to bizarrely aggrandise the spiv and the financial terrorist to whom, seemingly, we owe our very fucking lives, who adjudicate on our rights to services paid for with our own money, whilst they piss champagne down each others' throats and blow cocaine up each others' arses then we deserve to lose everything they steal from us, in the name of book balancing, the fucking bastards. It is not the impotent poor whom we should thrash but the idle fucking rich.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-63618219519958463592011-02-07T10:21:02.297+00:002011-02-07T10:21:02.297+00:00To be fair Mr jgm2, I saw 3 lads in Hull use their...To be fair Mr jgm2, I saw 3 lads in Hull use their mate's head as a battering ram and we were introducing ourselves to each other whilst his head was being used to open a toilet door to get their bud with the drugs - Temazepam! Highly comical. I think it's a little bit untoward to think of a lot of people except base, popular, infantry, soldier - there in a crisis but every other time, fucking useless.<br /><br /><br /> It's no fun taking the piss out of people who can't protect themselves. I find men a poor indicator of a familial situation; always better to talk to the lass. If men want politics they can have it but i'm so old that all I care about is if the toddler's got enough toys. Global warming can come and go if we invest in decent drainage.Dick the Prickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02683095612320513712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-66867385024390877262011-02-07T10:06:32.778+00:002011-02-07T10:06:32.778+00:00Fuck all this - the Huff Post has just been sold f...Fuck all this - the Huff Post has just been sold for $200 million?!?! Have the dumb fucks not read it? I love that Groucho Marx quote 'I wouldn't be a member of any club that'd have me as a member'. Ah, discrimination is such a conceit - get over it, move on. First thing to do is kill all the lawyers!!Dick the Prickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02683095612320513712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-48760909872234960822011-02-07T09:43:12.188+00:002011-02-07T09:43:12.188+00:00There's a link on the BBC at the moment about ...There's a link on the BBC at the moment about the decline of 'Anglo-Indian' cooking.<br /><br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12369759<br /><br />The majority of Indian/Stanis will, in a generation or so probably be as Anglicised as the rest of us. The schools, grammar schools, medical school, dentist schools, legal courses of Birmingham University are packed to the rafters with Indians just as they were, in my day, with the kids of Irish immigrants.<br /><br />The ghettoes of Birmingham and the UK though are still packed with the nth generation jackasses of the natives for whom the entire world still seems to owe them a living. When they said 'from the cradle to the grave' they didn't actually mean it literally you idle cunts. It was supposed to be for emergencies only - not a fucking lifestyle choice.<br /><br />Cunts sitting in Birmingham and Newcastle and Hull, never worked a fucking day in their lives - never worked a fucking day in three lifetimes in many cases - all sitting on their fat arses screeching that it's the wogs and Pakis and Polish plumbers (like the Micks before them) who are taking 'their' jobs. When they're not spitting tacks about having 'their' money used to bail out the banks.<br /><br />In a meritocracy the fuckers would starve or freeze to death. But they're kept just warm enough and fed on lard, sugar and salt based microwave food from Iceland (because they haven't the time to prepare a proper meal) so that they can be fussed over by legions of concerned bed-wetters from the bed-wetting middle-class 'doing something' when the kindest thing that could be done for the majority of the fuckers is absolutely nothing.jgm2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-12122587409555879632011-02-07T09:21:55.675+00:002011-02-07T09:21:55.675+00:00This discussion has taken an interesting turn over...This discussion has taken an interesting turn overnight. I have never been a racial or national outsider or new arrival, but I recognise some of what Mr ayaic describes as a phenomenon which occurs when you move out of your class position (rural manual labouring classes) into another class (grammar school and friends who lived in the kind of houses which my relatives could be found charring in). <br /><br />Accent, clothes, manners, home address, parents, assumptions all were subject for mockery and worse, and to survive it was necessary to learn to 'fake' middle-classness. <br /><br />I don't know if this is a true parallel but perhaps there is a shared experience of the incomer. The insiders react with aggression or hostility until the outsider conforms. Group-think of an ugly kind.PT Barnumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-21140388800106621732011-02-07T09:09:52.752+00:002011-02-07T09:09:52.752+00:00Mr I., the closest I can get (apart from the paper...Mr I., the closest I can get (apart from the paper media) is Trevor-I'm-Black-But-Proper-English-Me-Philips being emotional with the Marr monster (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12376300) yesterday. The problem being that no cameras in the chamber captured the gurning faces of faux palsey. But those who were reprimanded by the Deputy Speaker agreed it was happening, it just wasn't them.PT Barnumnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-51938438271253802612011-02-07T09:00:47.897+00:002011-02-07T09:00:47.897+00:00I applaud your vision Mr.Ishmael. Progress and com...I applaud your vision Mr.Ishmael. Progress and compassion would slow our downward progress.<br /><br />Unfortunately, not enough people share your vision nor noticed the good intentions that smoothed the entrance to this road. Once started on this journey all attempts at changing direction have failed.<br /><br />We need to stop then start again on a better path, how we achieve that from where we are now is not clear.The big Dnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-53822156626687959792011-02-07T08:09:59.251+00:002011-02-07T08:09:59.251+00:00Mr I + YAIC - you have given me much to cogitate u...Mr I + YAIC - you have given me much to cogitate upon between you. Much more than anything else I have read or heard the entire weekend. So if you hear of a truck full of LPG cylinders arse end up in the SW somewhere, it's your fault, OK? :)Caratacusnoreply@blogger.com