The Sunday Ishmael: 01/06/2025

 

Showing the perfidious Scot a little bit of muscle this morning, John Healey, Defence Secretary of Great Britain, informed the Scottish politics programme that the Scottish National Party's "government" sounded a lot like student union politics. D'you know, I've often thought that myself, with their espousal of an extreme wokista agenda - a man can be a woman if he says so, Scotland must not extract any more fossil fuels because that is naughty, Scotland's fishermen cannot fish in the 240 Marine Protected Areas around Scotland, as that is equally naughty - and the policy that caused Healey's contempt today - the Scottish Government will not, as a matter of policy, allow public money to be spent on munitions production. It refused to invest £2.5 million in a specialist skills centre - a welding college to train  Scottish shipbuilders, supported by Rolls-Royce. Healey said the UK will kick in the cash if the SNP continue to refuse.  We Scots must be grateful that Defence is not a devolved power, now that we're at War. Healey was all over the politics programmes this weekend, in preparation for his launch of the Strategic Defence Review tomorrow. He said:

“Russia is attacking the UK daily as part of 90,000 attacks that we get that are linked to different states on our defence system in cyberspace. It’s one of the reasons that we’re acting already by putting an extra billion into creating a new cyber command and to link our Armed Forces with the digital connections that make them more effective in the future. We’re in a world that is changing now and we’ve got to respond. It is a world of growing Russian aggression, it’s those daily cyber attacks, new nuclear risks and increasing threats in other parts of the world as well. The government will build at least six new munitions factories and thousands more long-range weapons as part of the defence review."

There's going to be new houses for married squaddies, to make a career in the armed forces more palatable, new aircraft to drop nuclear bombs on our enemies (we can only launch them from submarines at present), and lots more conventional weapons. This will create lots of jobs and is A Good Thing. Despite all this gung-ho-ness, it will still not amount to the 3.9% of GDP that NATO's Mark Rutte has said would be a good idea, and nowhere near the 5% that Donald Trump requires his NATO allies to cough up, to make up for having taken the U.S. for granted all these years.

The best thing to do, in the event of a nuclear war is to get outside and enjoy the nuclear sunset. You really don't want to survive it. A conventional war is pretty bad, as the citizens of Gaza would tell you, but survivable. Is the best strategy to say - hey, lets not fall out, can we sort out a deal? Or to muscle up and "send a message to Moscow" as Healey puts it?  It's all looking a bit dodgy and public opinion is being nudged war-wards.

Blessed are the War Mongers, as Christ didn't say. Or maybe He did?

The Problematic Teachings of Jesus Christ. 

Lets' start with the non-unionised Labourers in the Vineyard. This teaching can be found in the Gospel of Matthew 20:1-16. A farmer needs to hire in some casual labour to work in his vineyard. He hires some lads at an agreed rate of one denarius each for the day. He drastically underestimates the number of workers he needs, so he gets back down the Job Centre no less than 4 times, at the third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours, hiring on lads, promising to pay them "whatever is right". Comes time to pay them and he gives all of them one denarius each, which causes the workers who've been at hard, back-breaking work all day in the heat of the sun, to complain. The farmer says: "Fuck off. My vineyard, my money, my terms." No, really? And he gets away with it? No unions, you see. No contracts for casual day labourers. 

Moving on to the Pigs Don't Fly story. You can read this in the  Gospels of Mark 5:1–20, Matthew 8:28–34 and Luke 8:26–39. Jesus had just disembarked after a short sea journey when he was met by a troubled man, given to self-harming and not wearing clothes, whose neighbours didn't like him and kept trying to chain him up in the graveyard, but he would break free, being a strong chap. Jesus said to him: What's your name? and the bloke replied: "My name is Legion, for we are many". I told you he was troubled. Schizophrenia? Multiple Personality Disorder? The bloke begged Jesus not to send him/them away, but to send him/them into a nearby herd of 2000 pigs, grazing contentedly in the sunshine. Jesus did so, (How?) the bloke got dressed and the pigs raced to the clifftop and flung themselves over, drowning themselves. Poor pigs. Poor pig-farmer. No compensation. No criminal charges for destroying 2000 pigs, probably the pig-farmer's entire livelihood.

Then there's the Fuck the Poor story, which you can read in the Gospel of Mark 14 3-9, although there are other versions in the other gospels. All feature a woman, a jar of expensive ointment and anointing either the feet or the head of Jesus. In one story she's a prostitute, which makes things worse, in one she's Lazarus' sister, Mary, but I like this version best: this woman comes in when Jesus is having his dinner and breaks open a perfume jar and spreads it on his head, which not unnaturally upsets the blokes that Jesus surrounded himself with. "This cost more than a year's wages," they said, "it could have been sold and the money given to the poor". This does not go down well with the Boss, who says: "Leave her alone", and, with a touch of the Donald, added, "She has done a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing to Me. The poor you will always have with you. But you will not always have Me." Hello? Ego, much?

Now, the washing-up you will always have with you - I can relate to that - the damn washing-up breeds, if you take your eye off it for a moment. Don't Blink. But the Poor? Always with you? That's really negative, that is. That's a god-ordained licence to fuck the poor, which advice has been freely taken by greedy capitalist bastards (sorry, wealth creators) for 2000 years. As Edmund Sears has it in his 1849  poem It Came upon a Midnight Clear:

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not....

And how about hard working Martha? You can read this one in the Gospel of Luke 10: 38-42. Jesus and the usual gang dropped in at Lazarus' place, to see if he was still not dead. All these blokes turning up unexpectedly caused a great deal of work for the household, and Martha asked Jesus if he would tell her sister, Mary, who was lolly-gagging as usual, to help her, instead of just sitting there, listening to the boys' banter. Jesus refused, admonishing Martha: "Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." So, next time you ask the kids to help with the washing-up, which, as we know, is always with us, don't be surprised if they say Jesus says its ok to watch TV/go on the PlayStation/check Facebook.

In Acts of Thomas, chapters 1-3, we find Jesus instructing his followers to go into the world to spread his word. His twin brother Thomas (slow down. Who? Twin? How'd that happen? Well, that's what it says) balks a bit. "No", he says, "not India. Anywhere but India". (I really feel his pain. India!). So Jesus goes up to this merchant from Afghanistan, and says, "Need a carpenter? 'Cos I've got one here that I can sell you." The deal was struck and Thomas was sold off and left on the next ship to India. As a slave. Honest, not invent (no, but maybe someone did). And there's a bill of sale to prove it. It reads: "I, Jesus, son of the carpenter Joseph, declare that I have sold my slave to you, Abban, a merchant."

Acts of Thomas also describes the occasion when a newly wed bridegroom was surprised to catch Jesus sitting on the nuptial bed with the bride. Jesus has turned up to deliver a lecture on family planning. He told them that children are, without exception, awful: "they become either lunatics or half-withered or crippled or deaf or dumb or paralytics or idiots". Children inevitably do "unprofitable and abominable works. For they will be detected either in adultery or in murder or in theft or in unchastity, and by all these you will be afflicted. Therefore refrain from this filthy intercourse."

As the Saint Thomas Christians still thrive in the state of Kerala, tracing their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century, we can assume that the teachings of Jesus on sex never caught on.

So, the Problematic Teachings of Jesus Christ do not fit neatly into our increasingly secular Christianity - oh yes, we are all cultural Christians  - we like the smells and bells, the music, the architecture - but the weird teachings - well, that was all well and good two thousand years ago, but really, darling...... we don't mean any of it. When I was in Siena last month, I saw the little finger of St Catherine in a glass case in her Cathedral. My travelling companion, a cradle Catholic, now as lapsed as it is possible to be, had nostalgically inhaled on entering the Duomo and said, ah, the smell of a Catholic Church, said authoritatively, its a bit of wood, mrs ishmael, cleverly carved, quite a work of art. 

  Looks like the vacancy created by this  abdication of belief from the heart of Christianity may be filled by a more committed religious group - although, as ever, religion is politically driven.  You remember the Charlie Hebdo attack? On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted in a terrorist shooting attack by two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi  and Chérif Kouachi. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they  murdered 12 people and injured 11 others; motivated by rage against satire directed against their religion. They fled after the shooting, triggering a manhunt, and were killed by the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group on 9 January. The Kouachi brothers' attack was followed by several related Islamist terrorist attacks  between 7 and 9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, in which a French-born  Muslim took hostages and murdered four people (all Jews) before being killed by French commandos.

Here's mr ishmael in 2015 on matters religious and Je Suis Charlie Hebdo.

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

I don't know quite how to caricature les caricaturistes Francaise;  worthless,  decadent,  layabout  dilletantes; publishers' ink-stained rentboys, drawing dirty pictures, but not too dirty, whatever they do it's not a proper job, doesn't produce anything, doesn't serve anyone.  What's the point, today, of a dead-tree press cartoonist, if it's not to become not a recreational but an occupational martyr?

I don't give a fuck about a handful of French scribblers, Christ, I'd be hard-pressed to care if the entire British press corps was put up against the wall and shot;  these guys, actually, were asking for this to happen to them, they knew, everybody knew that you can't argue with those who don't care if they live or die;  now that it's happened, why must we beat our breasts?

And there is a wider, more realistic view of la Belle France, in which she is not, never has been Freedom's last redoubt.

France's aggressive secularism, its historical repression of religion, its own glorious head chopping past and  its recent denial of religious expression through clothing and diet are hardly emblematic of a   nation wedded to freedom of speech, thought and expression, of a nation  which we are now urged, commanded to admire, a nation in whose hysteria we must all painfully  share, lest our arses fall out, a nation with whom we must all, twittering,  solidarize.  I saw several of the New People interviewed, 

they said they'd queued all night to get a copy of Charlie Hebdo's Greatest Hits, took a bloodbath, mind,  for them to even be aware of political satire but now that they had a hold of it they were all gonna soundbite the fucking thing to death, whatever it was. 

Solidarity, they intoned, with some idiot editor, that's what counted; values, freedom, rights; all that was missing was Gordon the Ruiner, mincing onstage and  gobbing-off about his moral compass, his mad father and the right sol-you-shun for hard-working families. Christ, have we ever been so platitudinised, and by such  brain-dead, Twittering imbeciles?  They couldn't even spell sanctimonious, most of them, jerking about in the moveable maelstrom of a crass shitegeist. Death to the NewPeople 'swhat I say, stone them with their i-things, their latte coffees and their moisturising products. Solidarity with racist, Nazi-loving scum bags, that'll do for them, until the next thing comes along.

The recent Frog banning of the burqa and the hidjab are redolent of  surrenderiste Nazi France, in which only a few bravely resisted while  the many collaborated with Hitler's Godlessheathenbastards, sucking Hermann's bratwurst and rooting-out French Hebes for the death camps. 

Now, it's How dare these Muslim bitches dress as they wish?  We, their masters, must be able to see into their eyes, and mebbe 'ave a peep at their duskee tits, too, for aren't we Frenchmen, a-ha-ha-ha and uzzerwise we do not know if zey are planning to bomb our arses off. Ah, oui, d'accord, le freedom de speech and  de thought, c'est magnifique, but not for ze niggers and les Allah-bothereurs,  merde, non.  Whaddayoumean, zey are as French as moi, moi, Jean-Claude de Paree?  'Ow can zey be French, when zey are fucking niggers,. eh, vous etes 'avin ze laff, n'est ce pas? 

In some regions, M'sieu Frog has insisted that - in mainly Muslim schools -  pork must be on the menu, for true secularism demands that religious dietary concerns have no place in public life.  Aye, tolerance, freedom, rights.  Cunts is what they are, these Frogs with their nasty, cowardly bullying.

There have always been racists, the French, they've always hated the Jews.

 The slopes in Indo-China and the wogs in Algeria gave them a good kicking, denying their supposed military superiority and despite de Gaulle skulking away the Hitler war in London - at my parents' expense - the haughty monsterqueen barred his former allies and protectors from entry to the then Common Market, hard to believe, now, really, when you think of the boys gutted on the Normandy beaches, that the French would shun the British so. Must be their concern for rights and freedoms and tolerance which excluded us from their private cosying-up to Hermann, post-war.

And le premier frog, Hollande, he wasn't in office five minutes before he wanted to bomb previous colonies, massacre the natives and then suck Obama's cock all the way from Washington to Damascus; socialiste, he claimed to be, internationaliste, he claimed to be, now, having betrayed both causes he has leapt on this relatively minor contretemps murdereuse as though it was his electoral salvation.

So, mind you, has everyone else, 
from old HamFace, CallHimDave

Lessbeclear about this, if, back home, you believe in Freedom I order you to vote for me.

to Bibi The Crook Netanyahu;

Vote for me or its fire and fucking brimstone, a murrain of frogs, burning bushes, all that shit

 Although, in Paris, this was the reality,
 

  back in BibiLand

all the gentile whore leaders
 had been photoshopped out of reality,
maybe by Jehovah, Himself.
Values, you see, solidarity.

Even Andy, the other night,

Did I ever tell you I went to Glasgow University before helping Mr Murdoch destroy Britain?

betrayed his true, vile self - was so outraged by a French totty calling him  what he is, a white, elderly, comfortable entitlementista, living in middle class environs that I was sure the hateful old playboy was going to have a stroke, maybe next time, if it please God. 

Freedom of speech is all very well, Mademoiselle, but not on my show.

And now, as if all that Je suis Charlie shit was not enough, we must endure this further abomination, first compulsory Froghood, now compulsory Judaism. If I was Jewish I'd kick their fucking teeth in, these two, resurrect Irgun and the Stern Gang, hang these two  from the nearest hotel balcony.

No, Eric, you're not, you're a fat, lying, worthless, thieving, opportunist  old cunt, for which God, if He is, will punish you by making your arse fall out.

No, you're not, Tracey, you're just a decrepit old Tory slapper, one blessed with the Everything-I-Touch  - border controls, passports, immigration, extraditions,  police reform - Turns-To-Shit magic of the wannabee prime minister.

This Tracey May shit, this mad, screeching  old crow, vowing to eradicate something which no-one has been able to eradicate for at least two thousand years, even by the miserable standards of the Coalition of Greed, this takes some beating. She can't even  manage to count the immigrants in and the emigrants out, how's she going to perform this miracle.  Doesn't matter, logic, history, none of that matters,

Have-nagilah, have-nagilah, have-nagilah ve-nismeha

cos Tracey, the dancing queen, is  gonna stomp out anti-Semitism;
even though the Jews don't want it stamped-out, it is central to their faith, their scriptures and their politics, their exceptionalism, as God's favourites, just them, mind, not us, for even though their connection, one to the other, is religious, they insist, bizarrely,  that they are a race; a mad, inverse racism. A race is something that one cannot convert to. But never mind that. What's love got to do with it, one for another? Those mad fuckers'll see us all blown to Hell, Jews, Arabs and  Christians; Abrahamians, what are they good for?

Burbling about Freedom, what they're interested in, all of them,  those orchestrating Charlieism and Hymieism,  is ever greater control, ever greater censorship, ever more intrusive and brutal, militarised  policing.  The NewPeople, of course, complicit in their own degradation, believe whatever they are told, as long as it's vaguely sentimental, each passing, viral banality a Beautiful Obsession.

I am so often reminded by current events of George Steiner's remark that the Holocaust happened because the 'Thirties Berlin intelligentsia was too busy listening to the string quartet in the salon to hear the cry in the street; the NewPeople,  shoulder-to-shouldering, are equally immune to Reality's signature notes, indifferent, in their stupidity, to the hot breath on their cheeks, of the Jihad. Serve 'em right if Ahmed, bringing it all back home,  visits their local Free School or worst of all possible big bads, takes a stroll through the quadrangles of Harrow or Eton or the colleges of Cambridge.

Always dreaming of another, vaguely better, more reformist world, we are told, endlessly,  that there was a time, before photography, an eighteenth and nineteenth century time, of pamphleteers and broadsheeters, when cartoons made monarchs quake and politicians cower but there never was such a time, political satire has never meant anything, never achieved anything, always been done amongst and to a tiny,  political chattering class, then, as now, gleefully and pointlessly fucking its own arse. And the self-acclaimed successor, the inheritor of this mythical, satirical greatness is the public schoolboys' co-operative known as  Private Eye, itself so radical that it  engages in some  annual, Westminster Oscars-giving political celebrity dinner,  its smirking editor nothing more than  a wealthy, Oxbridge PBC Tory on a nice little earner, Villainy's licensed Fool, pretending to be bold, rather like this jerk

Apres moi, le deluge racialiste

leading his friends and employees to  a bloody, pointless death;  bestowing their friends and family  grief and bereavement and gifting to the PBC, skymadeupnewsandfilth, C4 News and the entire ghastly political establishment, at home and abroad an unexpected but entirely welcome New Year thoughts'n'prayers  jamboree. 

I would rather they were all still alive, the doodlers; I'd rather that Obama shut Guantanamo, jailed the CIA torturers, that Bibi stopped expanding into Palestine and that......fuck it, it doesn't matter, what I'd rather.  mr mongoose and others have described this as the time of the Islamic Reformation;  we had ours, we may not deny them theirs, no matter how hard we try.

  JeSuising his scabby arse off, Hislop said, last week, that nothing seemed very funny, just now; 

welcome, FatBoy, to the real world.

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

To read more of mr ishmael's fawts n' prares, there are four splendid anthologies of his work, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sunday Ishmael: 25/05/2025

 People are shitheads. No, really, utter shitheads. You've probably come to that conclusion independently, so don't need me to state it, but there you have it - shitheads. When something happens that beggars belief and someone asks Why? Well, it's because people are shitheads. Short-termist, greedy, lying shitheads. You won't go far wrong if you remember this cardinal rule: People are Shitheads. Apart from me and you, of course. Although.... it is always possible that you, also, are a shithead. Which just leaves me, the only living boy in New York.

And I have had my moments. Like the embarrassing public jubilating I went in for whilst addressing a Trade Union meeting the day after Tony Blair swept into power 28 years ago this month. Oh, dear. He actually meant all that stuff. Not learning from past mistakes, being a little bit of a shithead, I also jubilated when the Dread Sir Starmer swept into power last year. Turns out there are worse things than a Tory Government. You know the joke? Bloke dies and goes to the Judgement Seat in fear and trembling. Fully aware of his flaws, peccadilloes and downright shitheadedness, in fear and trembling he approaches God: "Please, please, please don't send me to Hell. I'm sorry for everything. Even for voting Labour. Just please don't send me to Hell." Puzzled, and wryly compassionate, God says -"What d'you mean? You've just come from there."

Where to begin with this week's shitheadedness? Let's go with the Justice Secretary Shithead Mahmood. She's got a tough gig, no mistake. As of June 2023, the United Kingdom has the highest per-capita incarceration rate in Western Europe. England and Wales imprison 159 people per 100,000; Scotland, with its utter badness, locks up 162 people per 100,000; whereas the law-abiding Northern Ireland sees the need to jail a mere 97 people per 100,000. Britain has the largest prison population in Western Europe - In June 2023, it was 95,526 people, held in 141 overcrowded prisons. The total usable operational capacity is 89, 442.  This costs, on average, £57,000 per prison place per year in England and Wales. Its a bit cheaper in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Remember Michael Howard, Conservative Home Secretary, and his famous Prison Works speech in 1993? It went like this: "I said at Blackpool that prison works - and it does. First, it deters many people from crime. If the sanction of prison were not available, who can possibly doubt that many more would be tempted to commit crimes? Secondly, while they are in prison, criminals cannot commit further crimes against the public. That can have a real and quantifiable effect. Our research into a sample of burglars given community service orders in 1987 suggested that, had they been in prison for a year, we could have prevented between three and 13 crimes per burglar. A recent survey in Watford showed that just 25 burglars admitted between them to committing 1,124 offences - more than 44 offences per burglar. Of course prison is expensive. Of course it does not prevent all criminals from offending again, any more than fining, cautioning or punishment in the community. What are those who oppose prison saying ? Are they saying that society cannot afford to protect itself ; that, to save money, dangerous criminals should be allowed to walk free?"

Well, Michael, if you wanted to lock up more people, you should have built more prisons. As it is, there have been successive waves of early release schemes in an attempt to create enough prison places for new incarcerates. Or, as Michael put it, "to save money, dangerous criminals should be allowed to walk free." And prison doesn't work - in 2019, the recidivism rate in the UK was close to 50%, while the number of released prisoners recalled to prison for further offending or breach of their licence conditions now comprises 13,583 inmates. The Government has said that it is now going to limit recall conditions for some inmates.

Keeping prison officers safe in prison seems to have become an impossible task. 18 year old Axel Rudakubana, serving a life sentence in Belmarsh for murdering three small girls at a dance class and stabbing their instructor five times, recently attacked a prison officer with boiling water. At Woodhill Prison, a prison officer was assaulted and injured by an inmate detained under the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. In another incident at Woodhill, a prisoner lashed out after being ordered to return to his cell. The officer was slashed with an improvised weapon and sustained injuries to the neck and ear, requiring hospital treatment. Four Woodhill officers were treated in hospital in consequence of the assaults. At Gartree prison staff attended a medical emergency where an inmate reportedly faked an epileptic fit. A male prison officer was assaulted before having a TV thrown at him, while a female officer suffered a broken arm.

It is even harder to keep prisoners safe. 18% of prisoners are Muslim, an increase from 10% in 20 years, some of the increase being attributable to forced conversions of non-Muslims by Muslim prisoners who threaten violence in support of their religious missionary zeal. "Convert or get hurt" is a commonly used phrase by Muslim gangs according to an independent report published by the government. Prisoners who refuse to convert or who stand up to Islamic gangs are at risk of being attacked and face death threats. Some prisons have been unable to cope with the rise of Islamic gangs, and have opted to place threatened inmates into isolation units for their own safety.

So, back to Justice Secretary Shithead Mahmood. She's going to build more prisons, release more prisoners early and limit recall for breach of the conditions on which the prisoners were released. To add to this tsunami, she is extending an experiment of chemically castrating sex offenders.

Apparently the experiment, which administered anti-libidinal chemicals to sex offenders at their own request, was wildly successful. (Really? "Oh, please, rid me of my evil sex drive and let me out of prison"). As letting them out will ease overcrowding and reduce the costs - remember Michael Howard? Society cannot afford to protect itself? - and also satisfies the public, who, granted, would prefer actual, physical castration, then it is a sure fire win-win for the shitheads. Shabana Mahmood told the Commons: “The review (by David Gauke) has recommended we continue a pilot of so-called medication to manage problematic sexual arousal. I will go further with a national rollout, beginning in two regions covering 20 prisons. And I am exploring whether mandating the approach is possible."

That means compulsory. That mandating word.

Doctors, who have always queued up for iffy employment by various unpleasant regimes, will doubtless be entirely happy to administer a drug/chemical/hormonal cocktail. 

The only drawback is that it won't work. Reducing testosterone is a tricky business, takes time to achieve an effect and can be countered with a quick testosterone injection. The male sex drive is a complex, delicate, multi-faceted affair and can fixate on some damn strange objects. Sex offenders lie to everyone, particularly to themselves - I've spent more hours than I care to recall talking to paedophiles, and it doesn't matter how preposterous the explanation, the offender implicitly not only believes it but also firmly believes they are the victim of the three year old's  seductive ways. Preposterous? How about this one - "I was just drying myself off after a shower and she came in and was talking to me, so her mouth was open and I just turned around and it just went in, because she was the same height as my penis."

Then there are the ones who get off on the power and the fear they instil - and downright cruelty. Oh, of course, Shithead Mahmood is going to set up a positive brigade of psychiatrists who will weed out the psychopaths and keep them in prison whilst referring the ordinary ones who just fancy little children for early release on chemicals. I should mention at this point that psychiatrists - they know nothing. As one psychiatrist once explained to me, "Psychiatry is a protean science. In its infancy". In this context, he used protean to mean  "tending or able to change frequently or easily". In other words, they make it up as they go along and dish out the drugs with extreme generosity.

So, here's a possible solution that I proffer to the Justice Secretary. One that will be wildly popular with the public - and no, it doesn't involve the re-introduction of capital punishment, which, we all know, debases everyone involved in it. Take all the male Lifers and transplant them to a remote Scottish island - god knows there are enough of them. Build some nice accommodation, stock the fridges, freezers and pantries with lovely food, lots of beer and whisky, set up a clinic with everything a small hospital might find useful and lots of opioid medication (after all, some of the Lifers will be doctors, knowing their proclivities. Probably a few psychiatrists and definitely some male nurses formerly employed in mental hospitals). Build a cinema. Provide fishing equipment and fishing knives. Guns in case the lifers fancy shooting a few rabbits to add to their diet. Lots of cameras. And leave them alone. It will need a couple of gunships, maybe submarines, to patrol the waters around the island to prevent Iran launching a rescue attempt. 

I'm pitching the idea to Channel 4 for a reality show. We'll call it Murder Island. First the terrorists will kill the nonces. Everyone hates the nonces. Bottom of the Lifer hierarchy. Will the Rapists be the next to be offed? Or will it be the Domestics (she had it coming, shouldn't have provoked me). The Drunks will probably take to the opioids, but the Muslims can't be tolerating all that. Finally, the terrorists will fight amongst themselves, depending upon which valley they hail from.

No? What's not to like? If the action slows down, a psychiatrist could be parachuted in.

Nothing from mr ishmael this week, because I got carried away, but if you would like to refresh your memory of some of the finest satirical and comedic writing available, then 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. 

Evensong: Time Makes Fools of Us All

 Turn the Lights Back On
Billy Joel

What to say?  He made this before his diagnosis of Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. He has problems with hearing, vision and balance. He has cancelled all his scheduled concerts. 
He was such a beautiful boy - but then, weren't we all? Time makes fools of us all. 

See? Beautiful boy.

The Sunday Ishmael: 18/05/2025

 Travel Narrows the Mind

(and the bronchi)

The Gare du Nord smells very strongly of stale piss. In the heatwave week before last, the stench was choking. In the environs of the station are deposits of human excrement. The streets and pavements are stained. My first thought was that maybe the French aren't good sanitation engineers? Maybe their hauteur doesn't unbend to actually dealing with shit and piss? Then, from the coach windows as we negotiated the transfer between the Gare de Lyons and the Gare du Nord, I saw the lines of pop-up tents. 

Hundreds of them, sheltering under bridges and underpasses, hard by the traffic. Where else but the streets to fait vos pee-pee and poo-poos? Not surprising the French police make null effort to stop migrants boarding rubber dinghies and setting off for Britain. They're glad to be shut of them.

Whilst I was away in foreign parts, having my mind narrowed, 18 year old Maheen Kamran was elected as a councillor for Burnley Central East with 1,357 votes, taking the seat from Labour in the Burnley Central east seat. 

She said she wants to encourage public spaces to prevent “free mixing” between Muslim men and women.

“There’s a big aspect of free mixing, Muslim women aren’t really comfortable with being involved with Muslim men. I’m sure we can have segregated areas, segregated gyms, where Muslim women don’t have to sacrifice their health.” 

 She's got the right idea. And it's not just Muslim women who don't want to share their spaces with Muslim men. 

They are everywhere in Paris, Muslim men, looking dark, aggressive and dangerous, shouting and gesticulating, taking up all the seats in pavement cafés, no women in sight. Then there are the pop-up tents, lined up in tent-streets under arches, under bridges, in doorways of abandoned buildings. 

And the thieves - we were warned, repeatedly, but it is still surprising- the boldness of the thieves. One of our party, standing on a train platform, grabbed the hand that was in his shorts pocket - the bloke ran off. One woman had her rucksack opened by two young women who had cut into our group as we walked along a street, one holding up a black umbrella to disguise what she was up to. The same woman had her purse stolen from the same rucksack in another city. You learn to carry your bag in front of you and never to take your hand off your suitcase. The tour guide instructed us in the sport of spotting pickpockets at the Gare du Nord - we stood on the mezzanine, looking down at the crowds - the thieves have no luggage, eyes everywhere looking for their next victim, often in groups, usually barging into the victim, passing the goods on, then striding away. I spotted one thief - male and Caucasian,  but he clocked me and moved quickly out of my line of sight. 

On the railways, when the train stops at a station, you have to watch the luggage racks, because they are just by the doors, thieves hop on the train from the platform, grab a bag,  then jump off - the doors close, the train moves off and there's another holiday ruined. The police, who are everywhere, and armed, seem unable to stop the thievery.

The Eurostar, au contraire, was rather marvellous. Very swift, comfortable seats, leg room and toilets. No views, though - just a long, long tunnel of blackness. I had hoped for external lights to see the configuration of the tunnel, but non. I was served a little meal of soft French cheese, salmon flakes and pearl barley with a small roll, a third of a bottle of white wine and a madeleine with a spoonful of blackberry jam in its innards. The waiting person was a tall and stylish black Parisian in lipstick, bleached white hair and nipped-in jacket - I think he was a bloke - but all I know for sure is that he was very elegant in his tight Eurostar uniform. Around me my male fellow passengers competitively advanced their anecdotes - all retired, they were trotting out tales from the classroom, (there were a lot of former teachers) - stories already old as they had been advanced, raised and trumped at the dinner table in the hotel. As Sartre told us: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" 

The French Riviera in the morning, England in the evening - 14 hours door to door. Absolutely exhausted. Me and trains - we're done. 

I picked up another virus on my holidays and I've been strenuously coughing up my lungs for the past week - hence today's  subtitle - travel narrows the bronchi; so apologies for being absent from duties.

Most of my holiday was spent in hilly Tuscany, where the little girls, it seems,  traditionally were gun-toting.

So. Italy, France - been there, and, to misquote Marvin, from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Europe. Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Sir Bloody Starmer does like it and is busily rowing back from Brexit. He is meeting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa in London tomorrow, to negotiate away our hard-won freedom from Europe, a Europe sinking in a morass of illegal migrants, pickpockets, train thieves, Muslim discontents and stale piss. He is insisting that closer ties with the EU will be “good for our borders, cut bills and boost jobs”, ahead of a summit where he could announce a deal. 

God knows how he makes that out. 

The disconnect between the political classes of Great Britain and Europe and their peoples is so huge that aforesaid political classes have no idea about the daily reality of the lives of those people who work for a living - apart, of course, from Big, Black, Beautiful Foreign Secretary Lammy, who has had an embarrassing and expensive encounter with a taxi driver.  Lammy tried to extract maximum benefit from his attendance at  King Brian's state visit to Italy last month. Having had their travel to Italy paid for by the British tax payer, Lammy and his partner (I think that means sexual partner rather than business partner) decided to go off for an extra holiday in France - taking a taxi for 360 miles. Expensive form of transport, hein? 1,550 euros to be precise. Lammy kicked off and refused to pay 700 euros of the bill, so the taxi driver, in fear of Big Black, Beautiful etc, and his gun (yes! the taxi driver alleges our Foreign Secretary was gun-toting - must be the Italian influence) drove him to the nearest police station. 

Bet he wishes he'd taken the train.

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

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. 

mrs ishmael is going on holiday again

Poor old Starmer – being a lawyer, he has to support and obey the Supreme Court’s ruling. Being a politician, he has to provide a kindly listening ear to the male rage of the scorned transwomen. How to square that circle? Well, he’s not managed the juggling act, much to the mockery of Kemi, first among many. At least he is now clear on the vexed subject, and no longer believes, as once he purported to believe, that 99% of women do not have a penis. And mr mike's revelations, in the last thread, kinda indicate that he carried his former confusion into his private life.

But no! It is all a nasty AI-generated slur. Whilst there is no doubt that Lord Ali bought Starmer expensive clothes (£16,200) and specs (£2,485) and London accommodation during the election campaign (£20,000), Dr. Adrian Wong of Techarp has shown that the video, at least, is fake news. Which is not to say that Starmer and Ali are not chums.

Dr Wong tells us that the video was originally posted on 20 April 2025 (now deleted), by @_head_full-of_dreams on TikTok, which has also posted AI-generated fake CCTV videos of Jesus Christ, Pope Francis, Jay Z and Michelle Obama. The video itself reveals its origins - the timestamp is nonsense - it showed 1219:13 instead of 12.19.13 and remained static,  not advancing as the video progressed.

The man on the left has a pair of interlaced hands on his neck, even though the other man’s forearm isn’t attached. The arms closest to the camera appear merged - another sloppy AI characteristic. The doors are significantly smaller than the two figures and the transom  is distorted. And the bushes aren't really bushes, but AI-generated junk.

So, it's Not Guilty on the tryst, but dodgy on the expensive gifts.

And it turns out that the late Holy Father, whose dead body is currently on display in the Vatican (so European, that) was a reforming radical, although not by his actions – eesa no change. The next Pope will need to busy himself, (one thing's for sure- it won't be a woman) overturning Frankie's reforms and restoring the financially corrupt practices of the inner Vatican circle. How entirely appropriate that God called him home on the fourth day, having concluded all the third day celebrations – I do reckon that it was a dodgy business, making the poor old chap go through all that, with him half-dead after the pneumonia. He was always susceptible to pneumonia, from boyhood. When he was 21, he had part of his lung cut out, after a bout of pneumonia and three cysts. They should have taken better care of him, particularly after the direct intervention of God in his election, according to Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, who said that Bergoglio was elected following two supernatural signs, one in the conclave—and hence confidential—and one from a Latin-American couple, friends of Schönborn at Vatican City, who whispered Bergoglio's name in the elector's ear; Schönborn commented "if these people say Bergoglio, that's an indication of the Holy Spirit". 

Eh, what? A secret miracle and an anonymous couple's tip off from the Holy Spirit? You don’t need to read Dan Brown to know that the Vatican Mafiosi are a bad lot. Murderous, self-flagellating god-botherers. Although it helps – the Dan Brown.

Anyway, I'm off on my hols now and there will be no Sunday Ishmael until the 11th May. Should there be no post then, you'll know that god has finally had enough of me.

Please do continue to talk among yourselves.

Easter Monday: 21/04/2025

Another Incredibly Old Bastard Dies.

 

Of Death, that's what. And, quite possibly, whisper it, being made to sit there whilst some ambitious underling delivered the Urbi et Orbi Easter speech and then having to drive round St Peter's Square in the Popemobile, an almost-corpse being displayed to the mob faithful. The poor old bastard was not long out of hospital where he was treated for double pneumonia - I know how rough I felt, and I just had an unspecified virus (probably Covid. Again. Good thing I had all my vaccinations, eh?), and I wasn't in an Italian hospital, nor am I 88 years old. Unlike il papa. Friends like he had, you wouldn't need enemies. Get out on that balcony, it's your big moment, no, I'll read the speech - you just croak Buena Pasqua and the crowds will just love it. Whadya mean, you don't feel up to it? The show must go on.

If you haven't seen it, do watch Conclave with Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. It'll bring you up to speed on what happens next, when they've locked all the Cardinals in to fight it out. 

Anyway, it's a great opportunity to look back on the career of Pope Fray Bentos, as told by mr ishmael......

 His Holiness Pope Frankie de los Fray Bentos.
Time Magazine's Nonce Protector General of the year.

Giving his Christmas orders to massed pilgrims in Rome and to believers around the world,   man of the people, Pope Frankie, said, muy caballeros, we are the veecar of Kar-ist, and eet ees the first time for an Argie,  best is not to wreck the boat, eh? And so ees all full ahead with same-as-before reforms, uzzerwise ees  my cock on ze  sacred choppin' block, eh, and then pop in some reliquary casket for fuckwits to pray at for hundred an' hundred of fuckin' year, eh? Is like that  instrument of Satan, mr ishmael, always say,  eesa no business like-a showbusiness. Fucking-a dog bones and-a bits of-a dried-up snot, and millions of silly, daft fuckers have-a been a-praying at this shit for-a fucking millenia. Por favor, Iyam  only ay poor peasant and not even wear ze posh red shoes, not like some fuckin' popes, eh? Am not namin' no popenames but FuckMeJesus, zis 'avin' a Pope fucking Emeritus, is taking the fuckin' piss, no?

both: Heavenly Father, make this bastard die.

No other poping bastard have had to put up with this shit.  

Previous pope should be fucking dead, no, and having serious bit of arse-roasting down there with competitor?

 Not fucking about, getting under feet of busy man like Frankie.

Anyhow, here they is, my list of reforms for new papacy. An' God bless everybody, especially priests, nuns and any other  mad bad fucker working for me. Not get no money y'know, priest and nuns,   not even minimum styarvation wage, like in UK, not on the fucking books, anyhow, otherwise would be paying tax. Render unto Caesar?  Fuck that shit.

Dominus vobiscum.

Frankie Reforms:

Proscribing birth control:  eesa no change.

Forbidding women priests and bishops: eesa no change.

Forbidding married priests: eesa no change.

Church co-operation with torture,  juntas, dictatorships and totalitarianism: eesa no change.

Vatican bank money laundering: eesa no change.

Redistributing Vatican  wealth to the poor: eesa no change.

Prosecution of Pope Nazi for long-term paedophile cover-up: eesa no change

Facilitating and protecting global noncing network: eesa no change, except-a maybe work a bit harder. 

Frankie always say You gotta love the sinner and hate the sin, so best thing is excommunicate moaning little brats and move noncing bastard to another diocese or maybe move to other country, or else bring to Rome and-a make him Cardinal in  fucking nonce's hat. 

 
 Princes of the Church,  O'Brien and Savile
You may kiss my ring, child.
An' mine, too, an' how's about that, then? 

and over now to the Vatican where the late Jimmy Savile has just been made a double saint, not only by Pope Nazi but also by the current Nonce Protector General, Pope Frankie de los Fray Bentos, 

How do we get away with this shit?
Fucked if I know but don't knock it.

 the Morecambe and Wise of Holy Fathers. They are having a laugh, aren't they,  making saints of child molesting former CEOs?  Nil desperandum, as they say in the noncing business. Stay tuned.

The Noncing Monsignors, though, of Popes John Paul, Benny Nazi

JohnPaul2's Man In Boston, Benny, managed to get the Boston Diocese into Voluntary Protective Bankruptcy before those pesky children could claim compensation.

and Frankie Fray Bentos, they've got things back on track, now, while here at home our insipid, Godlessheathenbastard clergy, 
 
happy to splash holy water on the Tornadoes,  claim Christianity is now antique, almost irrelevant, just one aspect of   FaithCorp, worthless fucking bastards.

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

 Here's some more pictures of clergy in their working clothes - just for a laugh.

The Easter Sunday Ishmael: 20/04/2025

It's Spring! It's Easter! And Monty Don is being more than usually aggravating.

In this weekend's edition of Gardener's World, the 69 year old presenter had a nice sit-down on his mound, and confided in the viewers that he was very happy with the yellow at this time of year. He added that he liked "to have the yellow wash over him".

Unlike Alex Van Duyn, of Portland, Oregon, who made a heartfelt plea on KKTV(Colorado) last month. He said that his recycling bin had not been collected one day in September, and, on opening it, he found it contained, in addition to his own recycling, six gallon-sized bottles of urine - the recycler had refused to take the piss, it being a bio-hazard. The anonymous urine donor continued to drop off bottles of piss in his bin each week, until the enraged Mr. Van Duyn gave up on recycling, after which the pisser transferred to his neighbour's bin. But Mr Van Duyn has installed surveillance cameras and is hoping to get identifiable evidence of who the pisser is. He ended the TV interview with the plea: "please stop. Please, just don't do it anymore. It's really pissing me off."

I had a little think about why the pisser is doing this. Apparently he drives up in his car, jumps out and puts the bottles into the bin. If its six bottles each time, then it is likely to be a week's worth. It is not a personal grudge against Mr. Van Duyn, as he's transferred his deposits to the neighbour. The only explanation I came up with - apart from the pisser being quite mad - is that he is living in his car and pissing in bottles. If that is the case, what is he doing with his shit? Maybe he's got a steaming compost heap somewhere. Which brings me neatly back to Monty Don.

Don's latest wheeze is that he is entering a garden in the Chelsea Flower Show next month. It's a special garden, which he has co-designed with his dog, Ned.

Ned's paws not being adapted to holding a pencil, Monty Don watched him running about and captured his routes to transform into paths, which he drew out so that the chap who is actually building the garden, Jamie Butterworth, could incorporate the runs between the trees which he has grown and bagged ready for transfer to Chelsea. This most recent blatant appeal to maintain his special place in the hearts of his adoring legion of middle-aged British women in sensible shoes follows his other initiatives: the carefully curated gardening clothes, his unfortunate, but well-publicised, episodes of depression, appointing Alys of the floaty transparent frocks as his "head gardener" to appeal to the occasional gentleman viewer, a whole series devoted to introducing unemployable young drug offenders to the healing benefits of gardening, endless series - Monty Don's Italian Gardens, Monty Don's French Gardens, Monty Don's Paradise Gardens (for Islamic gardeners), Monty Don's Japanese Gardens, Monty Don's American Gardens, Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens, Monty Don's Spanish Gardens, Monty Don's British Gardens, and a whole slew of books with lots of pictures of Monty posing prettily. Not a bad career for an untrained gardener and former jewellery maker. Anyway, as Monty said about his Chelsea Flower Show Garden: "the British like gardens and they like dogs". What's not to like?
This is, I think, a good opportunity to revisit -

The Collected Monty Don thoughts of mr ishmael. 

"If you're like me, the sort of person who combines farming and helping people and modestly curing drug addicts with saving the planet and somehow managing to do it all on TeeVee or in lavish, glossy books with sometimes literally thousands of pictures of myself, showing me in my carefully battered, old, woollen and corduroy clothes, caring about what I do, then like me, you, too, will have a staff of gardeners, provided by the BBC, who devise all the plans, do all the work, make sure all the crops are perfect, leaving me to do the really important, caring pieces to camera. It is a great life, being winsome, environmentally responsible and standing in the flower beds surrounded by lights, cameramen and sound recordists and producers and script and make-up people.

Suddenly, everyone is doing it, hedges, planting them, growing them, trimming them, grubbing them, as we say, up. And when I say everybody I really do mean everybody, the nice people at the Guardian and the BBC all have their gardeners working flat-out and do you know they find it really therapeutic, watching their staff work so hard because it's really on behalf of you, the license payer, who, let's face it, at the end of the day, pays for it all, and you can't get much better than that."

Monty Don's bland erasure of any other labourers in his vineyard, as though it is he and he alone who so perfectly plans and manages, weeds, digs and mulches his vast garden, as though his really is a horticultural labour of love and not a teevee show with limitless funds, with scores, if not hundreds of production assistants doing the work, off-camera, shredding license-payers' fifty-pound notes into compost. Consumerism's deceitful oddjob man, is Monty.

Posing, of course I'm not posing, I'm being earnest.

There was even some snooty old trollop at the Chelsea Flower Show, angling for business, hungry for recognition, enunciating to Mad Monty Don all the ways in which her Chelsea Garden, her tarted-up bits of grass and flowers movingly evoked the spirit of her great, great something or other who fell at the Somme; you'd think she spent her every weekend volunteering to maintain the Commonwealth war cemeteries of the Western Front.

If I'd been there I'da run a hedge-trimmer down her face. I don't know, maybe - probably - I have some distant connection to a white stone cross atop a bag of bones in Flanders but even if I don't, we have mrs ishmael's grandfather's death medal hanging behind glass in the hall with later medals awarded to her father, for hosing-down and mucking-out Auschwitz. Most people are connected, quietly, one way or another to Slaughter, although few are lavishly paid for rehearsing their own distant genealogy, building a memorial garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, make you puke, really, the New Britons. Anything for a few quid, sell anything, steal anything; Larceny in Virtue's clothes; Thatcher's legacy. And Blair's. And Brown's. And that other prick. The bloke in the underpants.

With Monty, though, he's pure, unadulterated showbusiness; be it gardens about poverty, disability, heroin addiction or, as now, the annihilation of a generation, Monty has an earnest horticultural aperçu with which to lighten our collective, human load: "At the end of the day, viewers, for me, it's what gardening's all about and what better way to commemorate all those dead blokes than for you all to buy my books and watch my shows, whether you're a pacifist - as I obviously am, look, I even have a dog - or whether you're another sort of person - and that really is a matter of personal choice- gardening, through feast or famine, high or low, war and peace, is what it's really all about. Everyman, down his garden with his dog, a camera crew, a producer, a scriptwriter, a make-up girl, a director and a team of sturdy workers to do the actual digging, y'know, the gardening part, rather than, though I say it myself, doing the most important part, the presenting; well, what could be more diligent and painstaking and honest and virtuous and quintessentially British than that?"

Join me next time on Gardeners World for some more well-rehearsed, spontaneous, specious and insincere homilies and you, too, could live a life like Monty - humble, sincere, worthy, essentially carbon-neutral, compostable and completely cuntish.

Viewers grow addicted to the stupidest, most vapid, contrived, worthless and narcissistic filth, to people, for instance, like Monty Don, the Guardian readers' Face of Gardening, year after year peddling his simpering but actually quite shrewdly-reasoned sincerity, his earnest environmental realism, challenging but do-able and his all-round, well-balanced, impeccable but harmonious worthiness, as though he was God's Own Ethical Gardener and not an every-word-scripted, cosmetically enhanced, costumed, floodlit and soundtracked, neurotic, fucked-up, typical telly personality who couldn't, unassisted, find the hole in his own arse. He presents, Monty, as though he has kept, for centuries, Botany's ancient secret, has taken holy horticultural orders, is in some shrubby, composty Noble and Chivalrous Order of the Knights Gardener. He belongs in a loony bin, picking the weeds out from between the slabs, with a blunt knife, so he doesn't harm himself; yet we are taught to worship him, Monty, the luckiest costume jeweller in history.

I'm not Earnest and Worthy Monty Don but we do grow herbs and eat loads of them; this is as we have done for decades, just without the flesh on the plate and when the cows stick their heads over the wall or I meet the sheep in the lane I can pat their heads without guilt.  The Gospel of Monty Don, which saith, never ye an opportunity miss to stress thine own virtuous, ethical and most earnest worthiness, to the planet and its teeming programme schedulers. Yes, more of a ministry's how I see my tenure at Gardeners World, 'sall about responsibility, caring, very deeply I might say, for the garden that is our planet, wearing carefully selected pre-worn clothes and talking like a cunt. 

I don't do clothes in any fashion sense. I hate the fashion industry as much as the arms or the halal meat trades. I used to do clothes, in my twenties, suits and cufflinks, ties'n'hankies, but that's long ago and far away and I don't do them anymore. But I don't not do clothes in a Monty Don way.

Maybe the BBC pays production assistants to locate for him battered old linen shirts, Fred Dibnah jackets, frayed braces, old cardies and worn cord trousers, so's he can continue his poseur's existence, worthy and sincere,

ethically photogenic, green and right-fucking-on, committed to leaving a light carbon footprint.  Wryly, chiding her about GardeningPorn, I bought mrs ishmael one of Monty's huge, millstone doorstop books, must have been six-hundred pages and there were pictures of him on every page, bending, stretching, leaning, more bending, must be over a thousand of them, in the one book, all of them in what we country house owners call shabby-chic, except that you know Monty's get-ups will have been checked and co-ordinated by lighting cameramen, directors, fruit and vegetable stylists, continuity personnel, his publishers, BBC producers and people from the Radio Times.

Adamant agronomy porn-toy

That's not not doing clothes, that's doing clothes Bigtime, image creation and consumer manipulation - Monty's just like you, really, gets his old clothes on and pops down the garden, doing some organic stuff, for the planet and for the children, just forget the squadrons of writers who script his every word, his every conscientious, planet-friendly aside; forget the storyboarders who choreograph his every lithe step, his every wheelbarrow pushed between two epic trees or hedges or sculptural garden features, knocked-up for Oh, just a few pounds, really, and some stuff you can easily get down the local garden centre.

He's an ordinary guy, Monty, just like us, in his shabby old linen. Clothes maketh the man.

There is a pretence that some presenter or other has some specialist knowledge, that Monty Don does do his own garden, for instance; never runs out of compost, although, one man toiling away there in his cardy, he uses tons of it, tons. I make compost in my walled acre and I can never make enough of it, never; have to buy as much from Lidl as I make, at least as much, and I don't have to make teevee shows and write books and columns and save heroin addicts from destruction, like Earnest Monty does. No, it's bollocks, of course; Monty has a team of gardeners doing the work, he's a presenter, leans on his shovel and sighs worthily about how good life can be, if only we do like him, magic gardening with invisible labourers, scriptwriters, producers and the best horticulturalists that your licence fee can buy.

 Let me entertain you.

Mrs Elisabeth Primrose-Banks, new boss of the Royal Horticultural Society,  said the BBC's flagship gardening programme, Gardeners' World, was shite, pure and simple. She probably didn't say:  "Fuckwits, 'swhat they are, that fucking barrowboy, the bald git, Joe Wotsit, and that wheezing old baggage, Carol Klein, they're good for fuck all, wouldn't let them trim my privet, let alone prune my bush or put a seep hose under my Rhododendrons. And now the poor mad bastard's rampaging all around Broadcasting House with ideas for programmes about helping heroin addicts and lunatics who wanna be fucking craftsmen, even though they're not and nor is he, fucking treatment's what he needs, not playing at being a tellyshrink, sanity through digging with Monty, never heard such fucking rubbish. I mean, I love Cruelty TeeVee as much as the next lesbian but Monty fucking Don, telling suburbanite shitbrains that, No, they're not actually cut out to be master stonemasons or Llama farmers so they can just fuck off back to working in Lidl, well, that's too much, even for me."

The convention of these programmes is that by the time the programme is over the punter has a new, sparkling glass home standing with integrity in the landscape, a blend of Rococo and Art Deco and a hint of Swedish minimalism all topped-off with solar panels. 

Or was that a different show? 

How can you tell?

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

What, mrs ishmael, has all this to do with Easter? The celebration of the most significant event, the founding event, in the Christian religion? Bigger than Christmas? You know how it goes:

"He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried. He descended into hell and on the third day he rose again from the dead...."

Well, apart from just annoying the living daylights out of me, and mr ishmael, as is apparent from the Collected Thoughts, above, I began musing on why I'm drawn back to Gardener's World and to its High Priest, Monty Fucking Don. He is avuncular, he is kindly, but firm, signing off each episode with his "jobs for the weekend". He is very English, in an Archetypal way, and his programme, his since 2003, when he ousted Alan Titmarsh -

A Darkie? In the bushes?
I daresay you're right, your worship, I'll fetch your twelve-bore.

yes, him - is very beautiful and educational. How to adore the compost, grow things to eat and flowers to beautify and bushes to hide in. If Monty - or George, his given first name, is a high priest of anything, it is not of Christ, but of of Ēostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess mentioned by Bede in his 8th century work The Reckoning of Time. He wrote that pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in her honour during the month named after her: Ēosturmōnaþ (April), and that this became the English name for Easter.

You'll recall the quotation famously attributed to G.K. Chesterton (although the Chesterton Society can't actually find it in the Collected Works):

When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.

Well, it seems that Monty has now stepped up into the vacant god-shaped hole in our hearts. His signing-off words in the Easter edition of Gardener's World were:

"Take time to relish the Blossom. And to get stuck into the garden".

Back to mr ishmael for some Easter thoughts from long ago. Well, not that long ago - and the politicians mentioned, while not in office, mostly, are still breathing God's good air and enjoying their money.

THE ART OF EASTER

It is the end of Holy Week, the fantastical Resurrection remembered, by Blair and Bush and Brown and Obama as they go about their works of Devilment, pious and punitive and profiteering. He is the abomination of our times, Blair. And Imelda, let us not forget Satan's very own working mother, cajoling the MPs' wives to vote for Inferno in Baghdad, the horrible poxed-up crone. Funny how the viler people are the graver, the more public is their piety. And it is darkly meet, fitting that at the height of their crimes, the Blairs joined Pope Nazi Benedict in his monstrous, bloody, infant-buggering hypocrisy. A religion made for these two, full of theatre and threat, superficially benevolent; heaving, beneath, with menace. Il Papa, the Nonce Protector General, is now, in Holy Week, baring his diseased fangs, snarling at his critics, the horrible old bastard. And Blair, too, is demonstrating his vacuity, his hammy worthlessness, with his gobby, meaningless tosh from behind a wall of expensive security, preposterously in his old constituency, surely the stupidest Britons outside Hartlepool, as he half-heartedly extols the Godly to Vote for Snot.(Gordon Brown, famously caught on camera picking his nose and eating it in the House of Commons - ed.) 

There is early Christian art, in the Middle East and Africa, or so it is claimed by the telly scholars as they jet around the world being scholarly and there are the cathedrals, many commenced a thousand years ago but there's nothing which impinges hugely on our pop-art consciousness much before the Renaissance. Most would recognise Dali's Christ of Saint John of The Cross or this fragment of Bach's St Matthew's Passion - O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden - if only from Paul Simon's reworking of it as his whining, white man's blues, American Tune. There are scraps of doleful, pre-harmony music and bits of bloody paintings but the popular Christian art, the everyday imagery, sound and sculpture was largely made a millenium and a half or more AD and made in the service of the State. 

Happy Easter, Ishmaelites, and take time to relish the Blossom.