The Sunday Ishmael: 14/09/2025: Entitled, Greedy and Frightened.

Unite the Kingdom

As of Sunday, September 14, 2025, the current population of the United Kingdom is 69,634,746, based on Worldometer's elaboration of the latest United Nations data. The population density is 745 people per square mile.

The total land area is 93,410 square miles. 84.54% of the population is urban  - 58,798,650 people in 2025.

The median age in the United Kingdom is 40.1 years.

Of those 69,634,746 people, only 364,000 people in Britain earn over £100,000 per annum. Only 8,800,000 people earn over £52,000.

 In the financial year ending 2024:

 Median household disposable income in the UK was £36,700.

 Median household disposable income for the poorest fifth of the population decreased by 2.6% to £16,800.

 Median household disposable income for the richest fifth of the population was £71,100.

 In the UK, approximately 1,900,000 workers earn £23,875 or less per year, which is around 6.5% of all UK workers. 

To help you out here, there are 604,707,46 people earning less than £52,000 per year ( 6.5% a lot less), with 9,164,000 people earning more than £52,000 per year (1.5% a lot more).

There are a lot more of us than there are of them. No wonder they are frightened. Those taking such a disparate share of the nation's wages are pretty keen on keeping their share, and, where possible, increasing it. Measures taken to ensure this can be unsubtle - turning out the riot police, 

sending in the horsed police, 

 - but more effective is persuading the overwhelmingly vast majority of the population that this disparity is right and proper, god-ordained and just the way things are - and you do this through church, education, the courts, newspapers and television. In Britain, propaganda is the currency of the establishment, and, as JD Vance pointed out to general embarrassment and denial, the suppression of freedom of speech. 

So that's dealt with Frightened. 

Onto Greedy. The Office for National Statistics in mid 2024, estimated that the average UK household budget is around £2,700 a month (or £32,500 a year) based on an average of 2.3 people per household. 42% is spent on rent/ mortgage, 11% goes on food, 13% on clothing, 7% on utilities, 6% on recreation and culture, 7% on eating out, 3% on clothing, 4% on holidays, 4% on insurance, 5% on Council Tax. Then there's other stuff. Doesn't add up to 100, but that's because the ONS has averaged out spends - for example, some will spend more or less on housing, council tax - in fact, any of the categories.

If the majority of people are able to meet their living expenses on £32,500 per year, then why are 9,164,000 people being paid more than £52,000 per year? 

Well, they would say, they need more. For school fees, to ensure their children get the right accent and meet the right people so they can get their snouts in the trough. To holiday in Tuscany, not some caravan park. To live in the right place, drive the right car, wear the right clothes.

But really -  they are trousering more than £52 grand a year because they can. And they can because of the number they've done on the vast majority of the population.

That's dealt with Greedy. 

Entitled? That comes with the turf in Britain, a direct consequence of and mainstay of, the class system. Thousands of years of stealing a lot and being made a king for it, and punishing those who steal a little by throwing them in jail. (Sweetheart Like You - Bob Dylan).

The establishment sent in 1,500 police in full riot gear to police a protest attended by 150,000 British people on Saturday, the 13th September in London. The protest was attended by old and young, men and women, and, by and large, went off peacefully. It would have been even more peaceful had it not been for police provocation and herding tactics, and the presence of a provocative counter demonstration by 5,000 individuals who were marching under the rubric: Stand up to Racism, under the illusion that they stood alone against an overwhelming tide of flag-flying racism. The peacefulness of the protest can be evidenced by the fact that only 24 individuals were arrested - not bad going for an event of this size.

Of course, the main stream media are depicting it as a horribly violent event, in which our brave bobbies were the only thing standing between civilisation and a dystopian Mad Max universe. 

Assistant Commissioner Twist said the arrests were "just the start,"  as the Met vowed to identify those involved in disorder. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood condemned "those who have attacked and injured police officers. Anyone taking part in criminal activity will face the full force of the law".
Around mid-afternoon, the two demonstrations were divided on Whitehall by lines of police officers. The Met said some officers had been attacked while trying to keep the two groups apart.

Which lefty liberal pillock gave permission for the Stand up to Racism protest? Couldn't they have said do it next Saturday instead? Couldn't they see there might be trouble? Or did the need to send a message that London isn't racist outweigh the most basic risk assessment?

The Labour Government, under its deeply unpopular robotic leader, should draw breath, and start listening to the grievances of Britain's core working class, the majority of the population, a population that Labour were elected to represent, but from which they have become entirely disconnected, seduced by the siren calls of the establishment. Instead, the establishment seems hell bent on treating Tommy Robinson as a reincarnation of Wat Tyler - murdered and his head displayed on London Bridge, Jack Cade - beheaded and quartered, or Bartholomew Steer - tortured to death in prison, all for opposing corruption within the entitled few. It won't end well.

Not a threat - just an observation.

The British people - that mongrel race - have for centuries absorbed peoples fleeing from persecution and poverty - not without a hiccup or two (just thinking about the deaths of 150 Jews in Clifford's Tower in York in 1190, or the murder of 500 Jews in London in 1265), or even those seeking to enrich themselves - the Windrush migrants were not actually called on by the motherland for help. But it does seem that the erosion of their standard of living coupled with post-industrial malaise and contempt for their culture, values and religion by the wealthier and more privileged classes, has led to the working class experiencing  a Damascene revelation of the truth of things. Precipitated, of course, by the invasion of Britain by thousands of men of raping age from mediaeval cultures. 

I heard a woman on Radio Smug the other day, explaining to the interviewer that her education work with what we must now call undocumented asylum seekers, involved her explaining, to her students' great surprise, that, in Britain, rape is a crime. The educator said she gets a great deal of satisfaction from helping these men understand the concept of consent.

Perhaps the Home Secretary might consider a new daily regime for our asylum seekers - whilst waiting for the system to grind slowly towards granting permission to remain in Britain (for few are refused), these undocumented men should spend their days in useful, closely supervised work - gardening, graffiti removal, litter picking, beach cleaning, tidying graveyards, for example, and their evenings in learning English, law, cultural norms, reading, writing and in studying comparative religion. Learning life skills. Keep them too busy to indulge in rape fantasies.

Not much to laugh at this week, I'm afraid, But - there are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, 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 Evil Baron

 So, Farewell, then, Dark Lord.
Didn't fall on your own sword,

You waited for the sack to drop.

And therefore off you pop.

Soaking the rich in public 
is a spoon you'll no more lick.

Just another greedy prick.

Why Hove?

Hove already has a Labour M.P. - a chap called Peter Kyle, who understandably declared himself ‘disappointed’ that someone had spray-painted (in pink) the words ‘Bitch’ and ‘Tax evader’ on a joint wall of the block while across the street ‘Tax evader Rayner’ was graffitied on construction chipboard, just to drive the point home. In interview, Mr Kyle said: "I’m really disappointed that the heritage wall has been defaced over this issue. Hove is better than this."

From BN3, Hove, up to Ashton-under-Lyne is 262.8 miles. You have to go via the Devil's Dyke Interchange (how appropriately named) on to the A27 to London, get on to the M23, then the M25 to Birmingham, onto the M42 near Solihull, crack on to the M6, then the M56, skirt Manchester on the A635, arriving in Ashton in 4 hours and 23 minutes, if the traffic has been favourable. It's not handy. But then, Alistair Carmichael, my MP, commutes from Orkney, where he lives (in his constituency) to London, a distance of 716 miles, which would take him 15 hours and 20 minutes by ferry and road, non stop. He flies, instead, at the tax-payer's expense. That's me. I'm a Scottish tax-payer. Has he ever said thank you? mr ishmael was with Carmichael and Lord Jim Wallace on an Aberdeen flight once, travelling to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for a fairly significant medical appointment, as were several others on the flight, which was running late (flying late?). When the plane landed and the doors opened, the stewardess prevented the passengers from leaving in order to let Lord Jim and Carmichael out first, as they had a connection to catch to London. The stewardess was sure none of the other passengers would mind waiting, given the importance of their business. She was wrong. There was muttering. And not just from mr ishmael. D'you know what? Everyone had appointments to keep or onward flights to catch, and everyone thought they were just as important as the Parliamentarians.

MPs do not have to live in their constituency. In fact, there is no residency qualification at all - an MP could even live outside the UK. 2020 figures offered us 32.7% of Tories and  64.1% of Labour MPs living in their constituencies. So the fact that Rayner proposes living in Hove as her sole residence should pose no problem, just as long as she pops back to Ashton now and then to conduct the odd surgery, refresh her Northern credentials and check in on the family. Funny that she is still registered with Tameside Council for Council Tax purposes. And the electoral roll. Rayner continued to declare the Ashton house as her primary residence, which allowed her to avoid paying Council Tax on her London grace and favour flat, as it was not considered her main residence. Presumably it isn't, now, as she'll have to move out. Has she gone, yet, or is she still packing?

However, her new Hove flat was registered with Brighton and Hove Council as a second home for council tax purposes, creating what critics described as an inconsistent classification of her residences across different tax systems - because she claimed the Hove place as her primary residence for Stamp Duty purposes. 

Hmm. Inconsistent classification. A bit like being economical with the truth.

So, assuming she has no plans to defenestrate Peter Kyle, why Hove? Certainly handier for London than it is for Ashton. Julie Birchill, writing in the Spectator on the 5th September, reckoned it is the poshness of the place that attracted her: "BN3, where we’ll be neighbours, is one of the most valuable and sought after postcodes outside of London..... It was a desire for gentility, as much as greed, that undid her, perhaps, which given her proud boasts of proletarian purity seem poignant. Even Red Ange, it seems, could not resist the discreet charm of the Hove-eoisie".

It all looks a bit holiday-homeish to me. Definitely second home vibe going on.

Then there's the vexed question of the means used to purchase the sunny Hove beach-adjacent property.

Rayner has three sons, the first,  Ryan, by her relationship with Neil Batty. As she is very fond of telling anyone who will listen, she gave birth to Ryan when she was 16, as a single parent. Ryan is all grown up now and has made Angela a grannie. GILF, anyone? Angela then married Mark Rayner, a Unison official. The couple had two sons, Charlie and Jimmy. As mr mongoose informed us on the previous thread, Charlie was born very prematurely. He is 17 now. He has life-long disabilities and the Rayners pursued an action against the NHS for 11 years, which was finally settled for an undisclosed sum. A court-instructed trust was established in 2020 to administer the compensation award. The trustees were both parents and a solicitor. 

Rayner said: "After I sold my stake to the trust, I bought a property in Hove in May 2025. I used the lump sum from selling my stake in my Ashton home, which was the only property I owned and where my savings were, for the deposit on my new one. I obtained a mortgage to finance the rest."

Hold up there. She sold her 25% stake in the family home to the trust of which she was a trustee,  for a sum of £162,500.  Okay. Self-dealing is the conduct of a trustee, attorney, corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of their position in a transaction and acting in their own interests rather than in the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, corporate shareholders, or their clients. According to the political scientist Andrew Stark, "in self-dealing, an officeholder's official role allows her to affect one or more of her own personal interests." It is a form of conflict of interest.

 Political scientists Ken Kernaghan and John Langford define self-dealing as "a situation where one takes an action in an official capacity which involves dealing with oneself in a private capacity and which confers a benefit on oneself."

Where a fiduciary has engaged in self-dealing, this constitutes a breach of the fiduciary relationship. The principal of that fiduciary (the person to whom duties are owed) may sue and both recover the principal's lost profits and disgorge the fiduciary's wrongful profits. Was the 25% share of the Ashton house really worth £162,500? Could that have been obtained on the open market? Should the value of the Ashton house go down and the Hove flat go up, Rayner would have made a profit from the transaction, which would be a wrongful profit.

Charlie isn't going to sue his mum. She's his mum. And he's got learning disabilities. The other trustees could, though, on Charlie's behalf.

The breach of the fiduciary relationship is not criminal - but it is contrary to Civil Law - and it stinks. Basically, Rayner has used her son's compensation from the NHS to buy herself a flat.

Then there's the reputational damage to the conveyancing firm involved - Verrico & Associates has said it did not provide advice and had been made "scapegoats" in the political row. It is a family business. Managing director Joanna Verrico stated "we are probably being made scapegoats for all this and I have got the arrows stuck in my back to show it."

The next thing to ponder is that Rayner is due a severance payment of £16,876 as former Deputy Prime Minister.  In February 2024 Rayner voted in favour of ministerial severance pay reform that would stop ministers who were found to have breached the ministerial code from receiving a payout. 

Anyway, an excellent outcome of this murky business is that it has allowed Toolmakersson Starmer to sack the oaf David Lammy from his high profile Foreign Secretary post.  He really was an embarrassment. He's been fobbed off with the unpaid Deputy Prime Minister role and made Justice Secretary, which should keep him in Britain and stop him from making undertakings that are contrary to Britain's best interests. Yvette Cooper has also been sacked from the Home Office, where she was doing a piss-poor job of keeping Britain's borders secure from rather large numbers of asylum seekers of raping age. She's going to have her turn at being Foreign Secretary, and although she looks like a spiteful little thing, she can't be worse than the Oaf Lammy. Shabana Mahmood has got Cooper's old job in the Home Office and we're told that she's a hard nut. Given the size of the Cabinet re-shuffle, we must hope that Starmer has got it right this time. I wouldn't hold your breath, though.

The Sunday Ishmael: 7/9/2025

When it comes to scandals, it is said that the Conservatives do sex, the Labour Party does money. Which is bollocks, really - think about the Tories with their hands in the till and Colin Smyth. Mind you, Colin combines the worst of both worlds, doing sex and money.

For our non-UK readers and those who haven't been paying much attention - and, who, indeed, can blame you, these are the facts. 

Just stick to the facts, Ma'am.

Colin Smyth is a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP). He's a former General Secretary of Scottish Labour, and was elected by the good people of Dumfries and Galloway as their Labour politician, until Scottish Labour sacked him for alleged outrageousness. He will be appearing before the Dumfries Sheriff court on September 24th, when he can explain to them that he didn't do it. Do what? Nothing. This is the statement he issued last week: 

“This allegation has come as an utter shock and one I strongly refute. For legal reasons, I can’t respond to specific matters or speculation, and I appreciate there is a process to go through which I am, of course, fully cooperating with. But I sincerely hope it can be concluded quickly and fairly. The speculation, and the recent decision by the police to publicly release details of their ongoing inquiries along with my home address, has been devastating and has taken a serious toll on my health. After my address was published with no warning to my family, I felt I had no choice but to move away to protect them. That has also meant losing the local NHS critical support I had been receiving for the past few weeks, making an already difficult time even more distressing. I would therefore ask that the privacy of myself, but above all, my family and friends, is respected while this matter is resolved. Having this hanging over them is especially overwhelming."

Everyone's a victim, hey? I never met a crim who didn't consider himself to be a victim. Colin is a former teacher of Modern Studies. Hmm, very modern indeed, Colin.

So this is what he says he didn't do and is utterly shocked by (and, as a side bar, me too - I'm utterly shocked by it.)

Colin Smyth has been charged in connection with alleged possession of indecent images of children and in relation to allegations that a hidden camera was placed in a cubicle inside the Scottish Parliament. Since news of the spycam became public MSPs have been asked to reassure staff working at Holyrood...At least five MSPs along with several journalists and staff were contacted by police over alleged secret toilet recordings in Parliament. I wonder how that went? "Excuse me, sir/madam, but we are working to identify the anus and genitalia featuring in video footage currently under investigation .... do you think this might be your poo? Would you identify this sanitary napkin? Is this your tattoo visible in this footage of a joystick being jiggled/ a flounder being pounded?"

Good gods, I have enough toileting issues already without having to check for spy cameras hidden in the toilet bowl. That's it. No more public toilets for me.

Anyway, officers were forced to carry out an emergency sweep of the building, but failed to find a spy camera in the Holyrood toilets. Colin's Holyrood pass was deactivated on August 28th, so Scottish Parliamentarians can point Percy at the porcelain or engage in the five-knuckle shuffle during breaks in the onerous business of running the Scottish government without worrying about who might be watching - or engaging in his own voyeuristic monkey-spanking.

So far, so gross. Then there's the paedophilia allegations - denied, of course. The former teacher and father of two daughters met a Girl Guide group of teenage girls at Holyrood only a few days after he was charged with possessing indecent images of children.

Colin is understood not to be contributing to parliamentary proceedings after being signed off work on medical grounds. Anyway, he can't get in, as he was stripped of his pass. For this relief, much thanks. Despite that, the Sunday Mail revealed Colin continues to live rent free in a flat near the parliament building. His most recently published Parliamentary expenses show claims of £865 a month for rent along with £2,308 a year for council tax and hundreds of pounds in utility bills for the property. The Sunday Mail turned up a source who said: “Most MSPs just stay in a hotel as and when their work requires it but given the distance to his constituency Colin has a permanent fully furnished flat with all bills paid for by the tax payer". 

That's me. I'm a Scottish tax payer.

The source continued: “He has been effectively banned from entering the parliament building and is not doing any work at the moment but he is continuing to take advantage of his free flat.”

Well, that will be the Labour financial acumen kicking in. 

Like with the Ginger Growler - just couldn't resist saving a bob or two. It will be the disadvantaged childhood, no doubt.

You'll remember the origin of Big Ange's affectionate nickname?

Back in April 2022, Westminster, the media and the bien pensants were up in arms about a rumour, or Outrageous Slur, circulating against the Deputy Labour Leader, Angela Rayner. How could such a thought pop into anyone's mind? What possible evidence could there be?

Just because Ange is very difficult to take seriously as a politician – the sheer aggression, the dated class war rhetoric, the name-calling, the refusal to dress appropriately and have a middle-class, middle-aged helmet haircut - that's no reason to suppose that she's been flashing Boris.

- even though she'd probably think it would be a hilarious thing to do. It gave the Prime Minister the opportunity to  send kindly, avuncular and reassuring tweets and assure the House that: “I did not look up the Right Honourable Grandmother’s Fundament”.

The Speaker of the House assured us that when he had uncovered the originator of the appalling, misogynist allegation against Growler Rayner there would be Consequences. He was egged on by Growler herself, who stated in the Tweetosphere that she was a victim of “sexism and misogyny”.

“I stand accused of a ‘ploy’ to ‘distract’ the helpless PM – by being a woman, having legs and wearing clothes,” Rayner said. She accused Johnson’s allies of “resorting to spreading desperate, perverted smears in their doomed attempts to save his skin”. “He and his cheerleaders clearly have a big problem with women in public life. They should be ashamed of themselves. I won’t be letting their vile lies deter me. Their attempts to harass and intimidate me will fail.”

Turned out it was Big Ange herself who originated the Outrageous Slur. Over a glass of wine on the Westminster Terrace.

Note - not being conversant with northern factory slang, I had to consult the Urban Dictionary for the definition of growler.

I have an English relative who firmly believes they are all corrupt. I think he speaks for the majority of the country. I suggested that some of them might not be corrupt. Just stupid. Or incompetent. "What," he said, "like Nicola oops, where did that £600,000 quid go and where did that campervan turn up from?"

So I looked up "corrupt", because I'd been thinking it was a term usually applied to leaders in more exotic countries, whose nests were well-feathered by international aid. Turns out my relative was right.

Here you go - 

Corrupt: Definition

1. having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain, evil or morally depraved
2. (of a text or a computer database or program) made unreliable by errors or alterations
3. (of organic or inorganic matter) in a state of decay; rotten or putrid: "a corrupt and rotting corpse" 

It has been said that the rules around the rate at which Stamp Duty is levied are complicated, that Big Ange acted on professional advice before making her stamp duty declaration and that she is a victim and it is all a shame.

The rules aren't that complicated. You buy one house to live in, you pay a lower rate than you do if you buy a second house. The idea being to deter people from having more than one house, to free up housing stock for people who don't have any houses.  It's a Labour idea. 

Rayner had removed her name from the deeds of the family home  she owned in Ashton-under-Lyne, before buying a flat for £800,000 in Hove and declaring that she was eligible for the single-property Stamp Duty tax rate. But... she had sold her £162,500 stake in the family home to the trust set up for the care of her disabled son, from compensation awarded from the NHS.

HM Govt.'s website states: "Where a minor child would be treated as owning an interest in land because they are a beneficiary of a trust, the parents of that child (and, if the parents are not married to one another, the spouses or civil partners, if any, of those parents) are treated for the purposes of Condition C as owners of the interest."

Not complicated - there on the website for anyone to read.

By this piece of finessing, Rayner had hoped to save herself £40,000. It actually lost her £67,505 - her annual salary as Housing Secretary. Her role as Deputy Prime Minister is unpaid, as is the role of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. She now has to rub along on her basic MP's salary of £93,904. 

The second leg of her defence was blown out of the water by the conveyancing firm, Verrico & Associates, who handled the purchase of the Hove flat for Rayner. They stated that they did not give Rayner tax or trust advice and that they always direct their clients to accountants or tax experts for such matters.

The third leg of her defence - that she's a victim and it is all a big shame - well, that's a matter of opinion. You could take the view that the Telegraph's role in uncovering this sordid and ultimately failed attempt at a bit of corruption was motivated by a certain witch-hunting zeal and class spite, and that Kemi Badenoch has been less than sisterly in the remarks she has made about Rayner in the House and elsewhere. But Rayner has said worse herself about her class enemies, the Tories.

Toolmakersson Starmer has publicly lauded her as a working class hero, while privately breathing a sigh of relief and sacking her. And I think she is a gobby, vicious, vulgarian gabshite, with an over-weening sense of entitlement, who has been incredibly lucky. But that's just me.

Talking of entitled, vulgarian gabshites, I've just finished Andrew Lownie's unauthorised biography of Prince Andrew; Entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York. 

Corrupt, greedy, stupid, sex-addicted and pompous, with a retarded sense of humour, Prince Andrew is a pretty good argument for the repeal of the monarchy. Why did he think it was ok to insult his staff and call one a fat lardy arsehole? Why did he think it was ok to ask Emma Gruenbaum, his sports massage therapist: "Do you take it up the arse?" Come to that, why does he need daily massaging? Just asking. Lownie suggests that Andrew's problems with sex stem from being sexually abused as a small boy. Maybe - more likely it was his stupidity, lack of any social skills, misogyny and having spent his life floating in privilege and deference. If he'd had a swift, solid punch to the nose - the sort where you taste blood - whenever he made an unwelcome sexual advance - ok, assault, on a girl or woman coerced by Epstein, or overwhelmed by respect for his status - maybe that might have helped him grow up. Do you know that this boy-man travelled with his own massage table and ironing board? Honest, not invent. A Buckingham Palace employee is quoted as saying: "If the unconditional truth is ever released I think the British public would try to impeach the royal family. A Frenchwoman called Janice, who was pimped to Andrew by Epstein said: " One day the entire truth will come out.....Now is not the time because Andrew seems to be above the law.." In 2007 Epstein was interviewed by Ian Halperin for his book . He described Andrew as: " like a brother to me but he has two dual personalities. On one hand he's Prince Charming and on the other he has the dirtiest mind I've ever seen." A dirtier mind than Epstein - that's going some. 

So, if you need  a good hate-brace, Lownie's book will do it for you.

Here's something different: Lou Reed and Antony:

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, 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.

look at the eyes. check out Andy's pupils.

So, Farewell

 

So, Farewell, then, Ginger Growler.
That really was a howler.

What will become of you?
Prince Andrew likes redheads.
And he's disgraced, too.

Beans Means Fuck

 Following yesterday's revelations by mr anonymous about Mr. Justice Bean's provenance, editor mr verge reminded me that m'learned friend has appeared in these pages before - back in November 2011 and that the following article can be found in the Collected Works.

Monday, 21 November 2011

MORE ALL COPPERS ARE BASTARDS. MR JUSTICE BEANS SAYS FUCK

 

BEANSMEANSFUCK.

Over at the Filth-o-Graph's Redneck Central poor old Janet Daly is wetting herself over Mr Justice Bean's comments that since police officers are grown-ups they can hardly be insulted by the use of the word fuck by those they are arresting.

When you can't sleep, which, given the times, is probably most nights, have a look at one of the gaycop shows, where Mark and Chris of Avon Police or Dean and Mitch of the West Mids Constabulary, all shiny clean and gelled-up,   are chasing twoccing teenagers at high speed or, more disappointingly for them, confronting gangs of  betrayed, disaffected, aimless youths who may - result - have one poxy joint between them.  What did you say, did you say fuck, I never heard such things, don't you know I'm a police officer?  You say fuck again and I'll nick you.

Fuck.

Right, I am arresting you for a breach of the peace and for disrespecting a gay police officer. Anything you say will be taken down in writing, altered  and used against you. And if you later say anything which you later rely on for your defence that will be altered too, by me and my mate, making it all up together, in the canteen.

They might not be gay and it doesn't matter if they are;  it's just that they are all this strange mixture of  macho, body armoured warrior and exfoliated, moisturised, close-cropped pansymen, and that they do all feign outrage and indignation when people swear, almost falling down in a swoon.

A spokesman for the police federation, Acting Sergeant Derek Gob said This is the thin edge of the wedge, this is, Kirsty. First my members are expected to put up with foul and degrading language which they would never dream of using themselves, even when kicking the shit out of people, and the next thing is they'll be ruling that getting your helmet knocked off whilst attacking people in wheelchairs is not enough reason for three months on sick leave or that complicity by my members in sustained serious criminality should no longer be dealt with by early retirement on health grounds with a golden handshake and a full pension.  Cunts, these fucking judges, that's what they are.

Daily Telegraph, Nov. 2011 :

The decision by the Court of Appeal to overturn the public order conviction of a young suspect who repeatedly said the “F” word while being searched for drugs, was described as “unacceptable” by police representatives last night. They said the ruling would undermine respect for officers. Overturning Denzel Cassius Harvey’s conviction, Mr Justice Bean said officers were so regularly on the receiving end of the “rather commonplace” expletive that it was unlikely to cause them “harassment, alarm or distress”. Mr Harvey was fined £50 after he bombarded police with foul language while they attempted to search him for cannabis in Hackney, east London.

Peter Smyth, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said :

“If judges are going to say you can swear at police then everyone is going to start doing it. I’m not saying that police officers are going to go and hide in the corner and cry if someone tells them to Eff Off, but verbal ab-use is not acceptable and this is the wrong message to be sending out."

The Sunday Ishmael: 31/08/2025

The Simpleton Classes

Mmm - turns out I was wrong in thinking the Flagsters are upholding the values of Olde Englande, standing up for English culture and espousing Christian ethics and values. Seems they are racist scum, just wanting a ruck. Who'd have thought it? How could I fall for such populist propaganda? Why did I let myself get carried away into thinking that 2025's 10,358 illegal immigrants, sorry, undocumented persons seeking asylum in our great country, fleeing from great harms in their countries of birth, wanting to join our secular liberal democracy, where gay people and women are accorded respect, property and voting rights; are any sort of a problem? I must have been reading the wrong sort of newspapers. I found myself on Nigel Farage's side of history. Whoops - how the fuck did I get there?

No, seriously, its complicated. I'm the daughter of a legal migrant, spoke a foreign language before I went to school and had that nonsense knocked out of me. A colleague's mum was German, a friend has a Spanish daughter-in-law, a murderer I knew shot his Ukrainian wife in the head, before engaging in a pen pal correspondence with a Russian lady looking for a husband, an acquaintance has a Thai wife, a chum has an Indonesian daughter-in-law.... I'm fairly sure that we can all come up with a similar list of foreigners who have married in (ok, maybe not the murderer). Then there's all the foreign workers, professionals and tradespeople we interact with on a regular basis. Mongrel race, we English. Of course, these instances are of legal migration - which is pretty hard to achieve these days - it was easier back in the day when my dad fell in love with my mum. 

The issue is not legal migration, although there's a lot of head shaking about the Boriswave, designed to replace the flow of cheap labour from Europe with cheap labour from Nigeria, India and Pakistan following Brexit. The issue is that of the daily invasion in small boats of young men of fighting age, young men not culturally aligned with our great nation's secularity, stupid but brave and intrepid followers of a stone-age religion who immediately set about predating upon the host nation. Silly fourteen year old girls feeling sorry for a newly arrived migrant who "looked hungry" so they offered him a piece of the pizza they were eating, and, in his gratitude, he invited two back to his hotel room and offered to make a baby with them.  But I'm only 14, one replied, aghast, to which he grandly responded, age doesn't matter. No, but, seriously, but. It does. Matter, that is. And immediately propositioning a chance-met new acquaintance in the park is just not the done thing.

Caused a bit of a fuss. Protests outside the Bell Hotel in which Ethiopian illegal migrant asylum seeker, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, had hoped to make babies, resulted in the arrests of some protesters and prompted the local Conservative Council to seek legal protection by the issuing of a temporary injunction to prevent the hotel from being used to house illegal immigrants. The High Court ruled last week that asylum seekers must be moved out of the Bell Hotel in Epping by September 12, after a challenge from the Conservative council. The Labour Government moved swiftly against the Epping Forest Council by expediting the appeal against that injunction by the hotel owners, Somani Hotels Limited.This is owned by Somani Holdings Ltd., a mid-sized holding company  focusing on hotels, care homes, and related hospitality services. It plays a central role in the Somani group's UK operations. The Somani family maintains close governance and significant ownership control (notably through Hassanali Somani).

As we are aware, the doctrine of the Separation of Powers means that the government should not influence the decisions of the judiciary. Therefore, the fact that the Court of Appeal overturned the injunction must just have been a coincidence. Lord Justice Bean, leading a panel of three judges, found the previous High Court decision relied on a number of errors - including ignoring the "obvious consequence" with regarding to asylum seeker accommodation capacity more widely.  Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said it "puts the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of the British people". Reform UK leader Nigel Farage criticised the judges’ decision, claiming the Government had “used ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights) against the people of Epping”. 

I suppose Sir Keir Starmer is pretty happy about his victory - but he may regret allowing his Home Secretary to declare war on the people - as he does still rely on them for voting purposes and he is the most unpopular prime minister in living memory. Labour long since cut ties with the working class of Britain - although still happy to take Trade Union funding; and has come to fear them, calling them racist and far right, with no attempt to understand their position. Basically, they regard the working class - a term that is no longer used - as the Simpleton Class.

Conference season is almost upon us and it is expected that Farage and Badenoch will both make a commitment to leaving the ECHR, which is widely regarded as being used to block the Home Office from removing failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals.

There's a vacancy in the top Anglican job, unfilled since Justin Welby resigned, disgraced, in January this year, following public disgust with his failure to control his paedophile priests. Doubtless, Fatty Cottrell, Archbishop of York, would like a promotion, judging by his willingness to weigh into the whole illegal migrant row. He paraded his stuff to Trevor Phillips on the Sky Sunday morning political show, attacking Nigel Farage's hugely popular plan to deport 600,000 illegal migrants through his "Operation Restoring Justice" should he win the next election. Pretty much in the bag, Nigel. Chubby Cottrell told the Sky audience, smugly, that Farage's proposals are "isolationist, short-term and knee-jerk". Yes, and what's your objection, Chubby? You are not going to get the top job by coming over all Christian, forgiving and understanding. Your dodgy decision to allow alleged paedophile and sexual enthusiast, David Tudor,  to remain in post as Team Rector for the parish of Canvey when you were Bishop of Chelmsford before getting the York archbishopric gig was just not cool. Maybe you should not allow this latitude to sexual offenders colour your approach to the Epping Forrest cluster fuck.

These archbishops, what are they like?

mr ishmael had Views on recent incumbents:

Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Beard has decided that we are no longer a Christian country.  

He has always disappointed me, Rowan Williams, firstly, by being Canterbury in the first place and then by being such a wimp at it; he is a Stringy, you see, like me,  a knower of the Riffs, Reels and Ragas captured from our common musicality and all writ down by the Incredible String Band, how could he still be a prelate, an Establishment toady, how could he be Vice's functionary, as, in his collusion in ecclesiatical beasting, he is.  Beardy, though, the most showily thoughtful of recent Canterburys, has now resolved  that C of E primaries must be outlawed, that King Brian must crown-ed be by Hindi and Muslem and Jewish clergypersons.  
Beardy, wedded for life  to the glaring preposterous contradiction that is ecumenism, serves none of the Abrahamic religions and betrays them all with his limp homogeneity, speed-blending imam and rabbi and vicar in some pseudo-spiritual NutriBullet, producing a universal person of Faith,  a GodlessHeathenBastard  for all seasons.

 Despite, however, diluting to  pointlessness the idea of Faith he now wants imams and rabbis to sit in the House of Lords, presumably on the Vaguely Good benches, bringing fresh, mad superstitions to the already corrupt, unaccountable and anti-democratic criminal institution. 
 Any rational person would see the Lords for what it is, a place of organised crime, rotten beyond remedy, peopled with sneering degenerates.  Jesus'd fire a round of fucks into them,  Beardy wants to make  them  a fully-representative, multi-faith LGBT knocking shop.
But bugger Beardy, we can all repudiate the church and abhor churchpersons  - his own gig, servant to degenerate, parasitic royalty, cost the hideous martyrdoms of his co-religionists, is rooted in lust and arrogance and like an American president with the Constitution, tramples upon its own founding document. One need not be a churchgoer, indeed, one need not even believe in God - Fuck me, I certainly don't  - to  despise the likes of Rowan Williams, contorted, as he is, in knots of cowardice, terrified that he might accidentally Stand Up! Stand Up for Jesus, snivelling and creepy-crawlying about, doing anything bar preaching the Gospel. But bugger him, he doesn't matter, save to those who hiss and simper and backstab at the Synod of  Depravity, who seethe and slander and see the  Church of England as a deliciously spiteful game of bridge, the faith it purports to safeguard no more than a moveable feast, laid to sate Debauchery's appetites.

How came we here, a place where we are taught to deride who we are and instead elevate some ragbag of meaningless, aspirational, inclusive, pluralist isms? How is it that somewhere along Ruin's  dark highway it was decided, without debate, that the very thing which attracts foreigners to Britain - its Britishness -  must be decried, degraded  and abolished and that those who still suffer from Britishness must be cured of it, must become healthily, sneeringly secular, which means, as far as can be deduced, that anything goes:  same-sex marriage; religious cruelty to animals, the explicit or implicit suppression of women and children by religious patriarchs; the refusal of even senior health service professionals to learn English;  the sprouting of alien places of  contrary and hostile and violent worship;  the farming of young British girls by alien men and the multiple bogus claiming of welfare benefits and  the utterly fatuous proclamation that any number of people may come and live here, without even let or hindrance, just because it's kind-of right.

  The detestable, money-grubbing bandits of the race relations industry have long since diversified into a multiplicity of shouty, blaming enterprises, damning the rest of us for our every waking decision, inventing  caricatures of disthinking and disfeeling, we are deniers of this or that, phobists of the other, they upend traditional, modest self-restraint and bawl abuse at those who see Pride  as unseemly at best;

Sisters of Mercy, the women-haters, the sex-haters; such a joyless bunch of tossers.

 who see cock-waving as immodest and improper, who resist the idea of family as purchaseable commodity  and who refute the desirability or possibility of trans-genderisation - butchering and inverting a man's penis does not him a her make - creating a lunatic, hyper-ethical, witch-hunting climate wherein, so long as they say the right words, mouth the right cliches,  the sharp operators, like Volkswagen, by pressing the right judgemental jargon buttons can delude us, extort from us  and fuck the entire planet at the same time.  Merely by paying lip service to the blame-babble of  poorly educated  lobbyists for Grievance and Pluralism and Renewables the very ground  - spiritual, educational and geo-fucking-logical - can be ripped from beneath us. Screeching, spiteful  queens or rapacious energy carpetbaggers,  they want to frack everybody, everybody's beliefs, everybody's values and they have devised the language by which to accomplish Ruin. Pluralism, this negligent, unsustainable, thoughtless and facetious doctrine is voiced  not only cynically and opportunistically by the predator but also as though 'twere a  wedding vow, by  the empty-headed. 

Founded for absolutely no other spiritual  or temporal reason than to facilitate the anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony  of syphilitic, headchopping monster, 'Enery the  the Aighf, the C of E, now in its dying days, aptly  represents  and promotes - the Gospels having been, like so much, hijacked by Ruin's highwaymen - frocked'n'collared, unbridled licentiousness; belligerent and  impertinent Sapphism  and doesn't even try to do God, just buggery and whatever is its Sapphic equivalent. Don't tell me, I don't want to know. Really, I don't. 
 That the C of E's mission statement is now a catechism of the sexually aberrant and bizarre - in Christian terms, at least - that its Moving with the Times  agenda - as we now call bad intentions - negates everything for which it once vaguely claimed to stand; that its most strident voices sing not Hymns Ancient and Modern but  Perversion's Praises, instead, well, it's all quite comedic, really,  the Established Church revealing itself as the overbearing, hissy freakshow its most powerful always knew it to be.

 I have personal reasons for asserting - insisting - that all clergypersons are  beasts, unrecognised nonces, either by deed or by omission, by collusion, denial and obfuscation.  If you think about it even for a minute or two - the costumes, the ritual, the incense, the falsetto chanting, the pseudo-solemnity, the intrusive power over the vulnerable - Vicaring, like showbusiness proper,  is just the sort of gig sought by the flashy, showy predator;  rubber-stamping for God the souls of the young, the bereaved, the hospital patient, the homeless and the hungry. Zoning-in, like a heat-seeking missile on Grief's inevitability, your whoreson vicar/chaplain/priest/padre can sniff out your sorrow and stick his cock in it. Pack up your sorrows, he'll simper, and give them all to me. But he'll minister, especially,  bless, to  the young.  Suffer the little children to come unto me. 

 Choirmasters and vicars, how many thousands of the fuckers were exposed by the old News of the World,  week after week, year after year?  And yet, still, as though we were mediaeval serfs, bishop-nonces and archbishop-nonces hiss and glide and simper among us,  lording it up  in palaces - y'ever see the Bishop's Palace at Bath and Wells?  FuckMeJesus, they have the cheek of the Devil, the churchly princes - and, all dragged-up, sitting even in our legislature, the cheeky cunts.  Fuck 'em, up against the wall with them.  Take our  money and property back from them, give it to the poor. 

 I do not believe  that homosexuality and noncing are the same thing, I do feel that the Anglican church's loving embrace of all things evolutionarily and scripturally aberrant must make it a hotbed of unnatural carnality, the sort of environment which sees paedophilia as part of God's rich tapestry, for Him to chastise or forgive and for the rest of us to meekly accept.

This newest gabshite, the old Etonian evangelical,  will be entertaining in a brisk, clean-shaven sort of way but his - or anyone's - capacity to reconcile the louche, sybaritic,  amoral, white, western Anglicanism with the diehard, punitive, reactionary, black  African  Church of England/Christ the Cannibal is so limited as to be irrelevant. The Church  of Christ Sodomite  and ChristCarpetMuncher is fucked, like Woolworths. 

Don't ask me, Chief, I'm outta here. Cannibals, arse bandits, surplice-clad, dildo-wielding dykes in the rectory. Fuck that shit. Amen

 It will matter fuck all to Justin, of course; he will have reached the second-highest position in the God-serving career ladder - woe unto ye, ye who see contradiction in such Godless,  heathenbastard,  hierarchical horseshit - and that, for a gobby alpha male like Justin, is the main thing;  the poor ye have with ye always, innit.

I was in York Minster on Easter Sunday and his grace, Archbishop John, was glad-handing the pilgrims on their way out. Acting in my capacity as a member of the counter-press, I asked him if he was sticking to his pledge of not changing his underpants until Bob Mugabe had been lynched, boiled-up and eaten. Bless you, my son, he grinned.  I couldn't smell his underpants, even though it was a hot day and he was well wrapped up in archbishop clothes, so who knows, him and his Saviour, I guess. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he was wearing underpants made of cloth of gold, handsewn by some scrubbed and shrivelled Anglican nuns, especially for him, fringed with diamonds, and had been bullshitting the Faithful all along, about him and Uncle Bob and his self-denial of bodily hygiene.  I mean, being an archbishop, he wouldn't expect to be walking around York, all greasy and shitty in the down below department. He certainly didn't look as though he hadn't changed his underpants for five years.  I missed his sermon but saw, instead, right afterwards, the Choral Matins, locked behind iron gates in the  Quire;  there were only about a hundred of us, virtually outnumbered by choristers and deans and precentors and crippled, old sidesmen demanding money.  I gave them a tenner, what his late revoltingness, the phoney reverend, Ian Syphilis Paisley, used to call a silent donation, and was glad to get out of there alive.  But the music was fantastic, I had never heard any of it, psalms and anthems in settings by Victorian devouts, as it was happening in the beginning, is happening now and will carry on happening, alleluia, amen. And there were only a couple of readings by the dean and some other dude, short and to the point - Do as God fucking tells you. That'll do until Christmas, save to reflect that a life ordered by the Church calendar obviously has its leisurely attractions, its comforts, especially when the regular rituals are performed in such a setting, glass and wood and stone, its shapers' hands long coffin dust, its restoration and repair as constant as Time.

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Amuse-Bouche

I was rather disgusted by the day's special offering on the blackboard, but my companions perked up no end and recommended that I order the Partan Toes. 

I didn't want to eat toes, but, you know, when in Rome - well, you've just got to eat the boiled sheep's eyeball. Or, in this case, Partan Toes. 

In the context of Orkney and Scottish seafood, "partan toes" refers to the claw meat of the edible crab (partan). These crab claws are sometimes served as a specialty dish in restaurants in Kirkwall. Jollys of Orkney, Shearer's and The Brig Larder sell them, alongside other fresh seafood such as hand-dived scallops. The Brig once had Cod Tusks on its A-board outside the shop. Well, I never knew that Cod has tusks, I exclaimed to my friend, who was momentarily puzzled before carefully explaining that Cod is one sort of fish and Tusk is another sort of fish.  Partan toes are prized for their delicate, sweet taste, are bloody expensive and are enjoyed as they are or used in recipes such as Partan Bree:

Ingredients:
1 large cooked crab
2 oz rice
1 pint milk
1 pint liquor from boiling the crab (or water, if you bought in the crab pre-cooked - recommended method - screaming crab is distressing)
¼ pint single cream
Salt and pepper
Chives (pull up from garden, discard weeds and snails, chop up with big fuck off knife)

Method:
Remove all the meat from the crab, keeping the claw meat separate. Cook the rice in a pan with the milk and water until tender. Liquidise this with the brown body meat from the crab. Add the white meat and cream and reheat. Add salt and pepper to taste. If the partan bree is too thick, you can add some more milk if required. Serve garnished with fresh, green, finely chopped chives. And a Partan Toe, if feeling generous.

Should you expire from a surfeit of partans - unlikely, given the cost, the independent retailers and florists' shops will post a small notice in their windows, headed up: "An Intimation and an Invitation", exhorting all passers-by to participate in your funeral rites at St. Magnus Cathedral. It's a thing. A big thing. The woeful loss of the dearly beloved (or absolute stranger) is mitigated by the opportunity to put on your best clothes and get down and sorrowful with the citizenry.

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Politics and Geology

I am the proud possessor of an A in A level Geography, so there's no fooling me when it comes to lies, damned lies and climate change. Why is there a hose-pipe ban in Yorkshire? Because privatised water has given all its profits to its shareholders and not re-invested in the infrastructure of reservoirs and the detection and remediation of leaks from old water pipes. Britain is a wet country. No, really. Just because August has been nice and sunny does not mean that Britain is not a wet country. Gods damn it, it rains. A lot. All bloody winter. And Spring. And Autumn. And a lot of Summer. Just catch the stuff, eh? How about that for an idea?  Why is there a massive fire on Yorkshire's Langdale Moor? Why is the peat burning two foot below the surface? Well, that's the Gods having a laugh. "I'll give you hosepipe ban", they chuckle, "Start spraying that water. Line up and piss on the heather. Get out the slurry tankers and drench the moors with effluent. Send up the helicopters with water balloons and water bomb that fucker". 

Do you think the Gods are anti-capitalist? Or just like a laugh?

Anyway, that Yorkshire stuff is a little diversion - the point of introducing my enviable Geography A level is to applaud Kemi Badenoch's latest headlines:

"No more net zero – extract every drop of North Sea oil"

"Fuck Ed Zero Miliband", Kemi may say in her planned Aberdeen speech next week, "I pledge to you, my people, that I will abolish great swathes of anti fossil-fuel extraction laws. There's oil in them thar seas and we are going to get it out. We are going to make Aberdeen great again. Once more will Aberdonian taxi-drivers ply their trade in Beamers and Jagwars. Once more will house prices rival London's. We will Make Aberdeen Great Again. We will stand firm against the Norwegians nicking our oil. It is going to be burned anyway, so we might as well have it and Miliband Minor can skip off, singing hello, twees, hello, fwowers."

The thing is, the oil and gas under the North Sea doesn't know it is Britain's oil and gas and will just stay there, since it is naughty to extract it. Nope,  the clever fellows with their clever machines will  suck it out and not stop to check whether it is speaking Norwegian or English. You can believe me on this, since I have an A level in this sort of thing.

What's black and leaps out of the North Sea, yelling Knickers?

Crude Oil.

Anyway, amongst all the fuss about the ECHR and Nigel Farage (get used to him - he's the next Prime Minister. If he can be arsed)

 Matthew Pennycook, an obscure housing minister, has stuck in his two-pennyworth. Matthew Two-Pennycocks said that leaving the ECHR would align Britain with Russia and Belarus. Maybe that's a good segue into seeing how far our favourite builders have got on the house they are building at the edge of a forest in Belarus.

You'll need to turn on the subtitles (hit the yellow CC button), because they speak Belarusian. Or Russian. Anyway, they say Da. It will take an hour of your life, but you may like it. It is very ASMR. ASMR is a subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". The acronym stands for 

autonomous sensory meridian response. There's building, outdoor cooking, gardening and Kittens.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend and editor, 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.