tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post3853923030152032435..comments2024-03-28T10:14:23.792+00:00Comments on call me ishmael: JOKE ON THE WATER.call me ishmaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-40788325065449741272016-01-04T22:18:16.123+00:002016-01-04T22:18:16.123+00:00A last word on the wateriness.
http://www.floo...A last word on the wateriness.<br /><br /> http://www.floodpreventionsociety.org.uk/FLOOD%20REPORT2015a.pdf<br /><br />They are a bit precious and do not give much thought to the regulatory constraints on the EA that stop them dredging and clearing but the drift is accurate. mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-20984880950000145702016-01-01T14:14:00.029+00:002016-01-01T14:14:00.029+00:00Sorry, I do not follow, mr mongoose, can you expan...Sorry, I do not follow, mr mongoose, can you expand a bit, please?call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-75659957461902319492016-01-01T12:05:25.439+00:002016-01-01T12:05:25.439+00:00A good example there, Mr I, of the socialist abili...A good example there, Mr I, of the socialist ability to score a fruitless point at the expense of whoever is nearest just so that they can feel better in their political oblivion. And if Darcus Howe is on your team, you are fucked for sure. Still whining about the Thatcher years three decades later. Dear me. What about those Corn laws, eh?mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-33811346430503172122016-01-01T02:44:04.458+00:002016-01-01T02:44:04.458+00:00Still waiting for that, mr sg, to find myself, hop...Still waiting for that, mr sg, to find myself, hoping I never do. Wishing you a good 2016.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-74246051235005519622016-01-01T00:16:48.818+00:002016-01-01T00:16:48.818+00:00I expect you're correct, Mr Ishmael. I've ...I expect you're correct, Mr Ishmael. I've just accepted now that things are not going to get better. Most things are out of our hands, but in those things that are not, let us quit ourselves like men. <br /><br />VincentAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-67681102434547757552016-01-01T00:14:17.719+00:002016-01-01T00:14:17.719+00:00I think that one was from the Telegraph Obituaries...I think that one was from the Telegraph Obituaries Mr Verge - still the best place for them and surprisingly resistant to the influence of the 'New People'. An 'Evensong' suggestion, though perhaps not for tonight as you have already posted one up Mr I:<br /><br />https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1iwC2QljLn4<br /><br />Lemmy, thrashing the fuck out of that Rickenbacker with, what I think, was the band's best line up. I hope the bar in Valhalla was well stocked in anticipation of his arrival! <br /><br />Happy New Year to all Ishmaelians wherever you may be and in whatever condition you may find yourself!SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-4556540060500723682015-12-31T23:47:12.576+00:002015-12-31T23:47:12.576+00:00Thank you, mr verge, for everything.Thank you, mr verge, for everything.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-61926719549026320552015-12-31T23:46:15.487+00:002015-12-31T23:46:15.487+00:00Thank you, kindly, mr vincent and although I expec...Thank you, kindly, mr vincent and although I expect we are due more hard times, I wish you the same.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-41262550447733242512015-12-31T23:43:41.084+00:002015-12-31T23:43:41.084+00:00I wish a happy New Year to you Mr Ishmael, and all...I wish a happy New Year to you Mr Ishmael, and all those you hold dear. I hope it's a good one.<br /><br />Vincent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-49905114780210299352015-12-31T23:17:12.607+00:002015-12-31T23:17:12.607+00:00According to one obituary, Lemmy took great intere...According to one obituary, Lemmy took great interest in the Anglo-Saxon kings and Cromwell's military campaign in Ireland. I suppose there's only so much Jack Daniels, speed, & cooch a man can take, and everybody needs a hobby. The likes of McCartney, Jagger, Sting, & everyone's favourite Young Parent, do not do well in comparison.<br /><br />Best clock-rocking wishes to all in Ishmaelia, especially the Orkney branch.<br /><br />verge.//Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-56707167259531844122015-12-31T22:04:33.388+00:002015-12-31T22:04:33.388+00:00Thank you, mrs woar, and to you and the other raft...Thank you, mrs woar, and to you and the other rafters.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-48140025517398262472015-12-31T21:44:23.885+00:002015-12-31T21:44:23.885+00:00Best wishes for the New Year, Mr Ishmael.
Mrs R...Best wishes for the New Year, Mr Ishmael. <br /><br /><br />Mrs RaftAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-51139462531212869322015-12-31T16:33:04.696+00:002015-12-31T16:33:04.696+00:00Thank you for all that, mr mongoose and I am sure ...Thank you for all that, mr mongoose and I am sure that what you say is accuurate but I remain firmly in the camp of the something Must Be Done-ers; Hitler only comes along once in a century, yet if he had been stopped, if Something Had Been Done, a hundred million would have been spared, the Cold War avoided, along with the current conflagrationj in the Middle East.<br /><br />I know that bureaucracies exist, eventually, only to service and ensure themselves, regardless of how well-disposed are some of their members - no use seeking environmental remedy within the Environment Agency, that's not what it's there for.<br /><br />We need someone ex-offcio, someone like Red Adair, to sort this shit out, and a national resolve to, at the very least - fuck Afghanistan and Syria - make the country waterproof.<br /><br />Good to see you vindicated, by the way, in your assessment of Olly Letwin, Master of the Queen's Austerity.<br /><br />A safe and healthy 2016 to all in the Mongoose House.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-32389855924461770772015-12-31T12:08:40.689+00:002015-12-31T12:08:40.689+00:00You bang-on as much as you want, mr sg, them's...You bang-on as much as you want, mr sg, them's sound words, about cock-waving and such.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-75008675183912991292015-12-31T01:49:20.997+00:002015-12-31T01:49:20.997+00:00The Environment Agency, Mr Ishmael, sprouted from ...The Environment Agency, Mr Ishmael, sprouted from what used to be called the National Rivers Authority, and had added onto it a few bits and bobs from what was ludicrously entitled Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution. One imagined Brenda skulking about the roadside ditches with a royal magnifying glass inspecting stuff. I was there when it happened - upon God's work. It is a public body, a quango plain and simple. Although they will try to sell you your own data if you let them. So as it happens, I know plenty of them, have dangled their babies on my knee, and I have worked with a good many more, and some of those are quite senior now. These are the gentlest creatures you have ever met. Scientists and innocents, unable to lie or steal a teabag. A lot of what they do is meddlesome shite that really should not be done at all but that wasn't my call, and, yes, I did tell them at the time. Jeez, they'd draw up a project plan for the opening of a Kitkat. Hugely wasteful and mad bureaucracy is what they do but you know what, that means that they tend to get the big stuff done right. Expensively right. Eventually. Flood Defence is the big spend - or was when I was about there - because carving the earth about is heavy work, they are big toys and do not come cheap. They suffer from the scientist's disease of mission creep - first sighted at NASA.<br /><br />So the rain falls and the water gouges and floods a channel to the sea. Generally speaking nothing much happens but of occasion too much water falls from the sky is collected by a river catchmeent and is too voluminous to fit in the channel. The tension, as we say in the trade, is currently to be found in the adverse effect that dredging has on habitat. It is not my argument but it has been lost. If you want less flooding, dredge the fucking rivers. Not so they can hold more water, although they will, but so that the water can get away more quickly. There is fuck-all that can be done without that unless we knock down all the houses and build them at the tops of mountains. Dredging BTW is relatively cheap, or it would be if one did not have to dispose of the silt as if it were radioactive waste. And all because some meddlesome cunt once thought of it as a way of screwing the whole job up on the pretext of saving a grasshopper or two. Long ago btw by another river, my hooky garden extension disappeared one day under a foot of silt dredged and discharged on the river banks.<br /><br />Rainfall at Shap in December was over 30" (779mm) against an average December fall of 220-odd millimetres. That's three-and-a-half times the average amount. If you want to spend your pennies to defend against these levels of rainfall, and it can be done, then so be it but I fag-packet reckon it would cost 20 times the current FD budget and it would be useful a few days in a century. What is your pleasure, Sir? The engineers of the EA will do it for you just fine; you just have to find the coin. <br /><br />And you should know by now, mon vieux, that I am seldom to be found suckered by much of anything. In this instance, not all of it is somebody's fault, and as ever, I doubt the ability of public expenditure to solve all our ills. The prat on his hols in Barbados OTOH has a political tin ear and should be fired to encourage the rest.<br /><br />Happy new year to youse all, comrades.mongoosenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-83845045250222694422015-12-31T00:48:33.470+00:002015-12-31T00:48:33.470+00:00Noted Mrs Raft. I shan't bang on about Mr Kilm...Noted Mrs Raft. I shan't bang on about Mr Kilmister anymore - other than to leave us with a couple of gems from amongst the many quotations attributed to said Gentleman:<br /><br />"I don't think it's fair to be waving your dick around when people are minding their own business and might not want to see it".<br /><br />"Fuck God and Fuck the Devil and Fuck the Church too. I'm responsible for my actions. I don't need to hide behind nothing. I did it... whatever I did".<br /><br />Did you issue him with an Ishmaelian passport when he entered the departure lounge Mr I?SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-73422336183446198362015-12-30T23:58:57.531+00:002015-12-30T23:58:57.531+00:00York, in that sense, m alphons, is true to its med...York, in that sense, m alphons, is true to its mediaeval roots, if we merely substitute pilgrim for tourist. call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-35592471188687233322015-12-30T23:56:11.580+00:002015-12-30T23:56:11.580+00:00Bruce Langhorne, Bringing It All Back Home's g...Bruce Langhorne, Bringing It All Back Home's guiding musical spirit - and the Tambourine Man - is dying, poor, in a New York hospice.<br /><br />As I said, I pretend to no knowledge of Mr Lemmy but it is good to hear of one, at least, who eschewed the trappings of rock'n'roll celebrity.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-49671841057276337492015-12-30T22:41:28.001+00:002015-12-30T22:41:28.001+00:00Years ago an interviewer wrote a touching piece wh...Years ago an interviewer wrote a touching piece which compared Lemmy's flat - or bedsit really - to what other rockstars have. They noted that there apart from a superior music system of the time, there were none of the trappings of stardom. No bad art, expensive furniture or even women. Just an average bed - suitably unmade - a few clothes, a couple of guitars and the music.<br /><br />Mrs RaftAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-53180540684326545032015-12-30T21:57:05.711+00:002015-12-30T21:57:05.711+00:00A one-man ENSA, 'sgood, mr yardarm, I have bee...A one-man ENSA, 'sgood, mr yardarm, I have been finding him a lol out loud comedy gift, too, of late.<br /><br />I expect that any such chorus of ridicule would swiftly end with arrests under security legislation, D notices and the rest. Remember, I was scared to upbraid two cheap wiseguys like Big Al Carmichael and Smiley Jimmy Wallace, for fear of being shot by airport-security psychos.<br /><br />Abuse and venom are all any of us have, shame that so many channel it into Guardian comment threads, joining UKIP and blogging. call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-9092881242818065052015-12-30T21:48:44.829+00:002015-12-30T21:48:44.829+00:00Ah, Lemmy, now I understand, mr sg, Oliver Cromwel...Ah, Lemmy, now I understand, mr sg, Oliver Cromwell with a Fender Precision bass. I know nothing of his career, save that some sci-fi wannabee, was it Michael Moorcock, was a Hawkwind groupie and that he, himself, was unpardonably ugly, in the manner of Straight Simon Hughes of blessed septic memory. At least he was, as you say, a sticker to his guns, an adept, a believer, and probably, as you say, to some at least an holy man.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-67178973558119280752015-12-30T20:19:54.653+00:002015-12-30T20:19:54.653+00:00Sorry Mr I - it was an oblique reference to the la...Sorry Mr I - it was an oblique reference to the late 'Lemmy' out of Motorhead! Glad to see you have access to the Net etc. I gather it has been a bit rough up there weather wise with resultant power outages but doubtless you have everything battened down in the Ishmaelian Realm...SGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-21257551217998970562015-12-30T19:39:49.184+00:002015-12-30T19:39:49.184+00:00Spivery, the flogging off of what we own to suit w...Spivery, the flogging off of what we own to suit wearing parasite layabouts, I call it grease grubbing. Greasy little parasite clerks grubbing our money from their politician bumchums( often, as with civil servants, one and the same) then having the fucking nerve to call themselves the private sector, compare themselves to real business and workplaces. The PFI bastards, the ambulance chasers, consultants, beancounters, banks, dipping their hands into every privatisation, every service, HS2, BBC. Redistribution of wealth Robin Hood never dreamed off: from the rich to the even richer.<br /><br />Cameron is like a one man ENSA; whether its visiting the waterlogged in his green wellies or getting his arse kicked around Europe by everyone is a great comedy character, the gift that keeps on giving. Ealing, the Boulting Brothers, Perry and Croft couldn`t create such a fatuous nincompoop, a prating berk. Trouble is, he is for fucking real. <br /><br />Abuse and venom is all I`ve got so it`s all I can do. At the very least a crowd of York residents should have drowned out the nincompoops jibberings with a rendition of the Eton Boating song. And tarring and feathering...fuck, all the filthsters, all the greade grubbers should be stripped, tarred and feathered then turned loose into the streets, their assets and property seized. We`ll see who`s entrepreneurial then.yardarmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08700165830593026578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-35028092922635256242015-12-30T14:23:39.520+00:002015-12-30T14:23:39.520+00:00Sorry for the delay mrs woar, my internet has been...Sorry for the delay mrs woar, my internet has been in a state of creeping failure since the other night, it will all probably be my fault, I am the client, after all, the ontrapranoorial providers my masters, some consortium of psychobastard, sneering mongrel thieves such as appear on the hugely popular TeeVee show Dragons Den, with Evan the erlderly Rentboy.<br /><br />My understanding however, one which now seems to be more widely shared, is that the unrestrained flooding in the North is simply criminal. Why has no-one noticed or had the courage to say that since Thatcher and Tebbitt and the Years of the Spiv, nothing works properly, not energy provision, not telecommunication, not utilities and certainly not bog-standard, common or garden infrasructure, like roads, trains, airports and the miost basic of all fucking flood prevention.<br /><br /> And what I find so distressing about all this is that the normally wise and compassionate, like mr mongoose, are suckered, by their own profession, into Ah-butting, about detail and practice when the fact is that all of these endeavours and services have been stolen from us, sold knock-down to bandits who cheesepare, cut corners, reduce staff and maximise profits whilst not giving a fuck about service, shifting the response for all their failures to a string of unaccountabe call centre skivvies in fucking Bombay, Good morning, my name is Keith, they bleat, or Wendy, even when it's not, and how can I help you today Sir or Madam or worse still a recorded message saying our calls are very important to them even when the only important issue in their poxy lives is making sure they make the protection payments to govament and opposition alike. This is organised crime we are seeing, not freak weather.<br /><br />Too many of the populace most damaged by this crookery are happy to gob-off to skymadeupnewsandfilth about What Needs To Happen, like they were on fucking Question Time, stupid cunts, like anyone gives a fuck what they so reasonably say, when what they should be doing is tarring and feathering their councillors and MPs' What a large paert of the nation is enduring is a resuklt of decades of financial terrorism, a couple of people got twenty-five years this morning just for thinking about terrorism, the great and the good, entirely responsible for the flooding of the North, get knighthoods.<br />call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6065998731267025499.post-64377154834599597292015-12-30T13:58:42.511+00:002015-12-30T13:58:42.511+00:00I know nothing of Mr Kilminster, I will take a loo...I know nothing of Mr Kilminster, I will take a look, mr sg.call me ishmaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14369028864168461729noreply@blogger.com