Change the World! Make America Great Again!

 

I did rather think this would happen - and that Trump's victory, which is on track to be overwhelming, will have consequences for the world, should he implement his policy objectives. Stopping being the world's police force, stopping the attempt to impose Western "Democracy" on autocratic regimes, closing down the never-ending war, dismantling America's military-industrial complex - well, that will leave Britain rather exposed. We've been a handily-situated military base for the States' war on Russia, and if they no longer need one, Britain may regret the provocative things said and done on Biden's behalf. Maybe Trump will preserve some fondness for the Benighted Isles, as he is half Scottish - but why should he when Scotland's SNP leaders have been downright rude about him? Toothless Sturgeon, prior to his last Presidential term, went so far as to say he would not be allowed to set foot in Scotland. Annoying bluster, of course, but Baldie Swinney is just as bad.

Anyway, unless there's a Civil War, we're about to find out what a Trump presidency will mean for Starmer's Britain. And for the Dwarf Zelensky, of course.

The Sunday Ishmael: 03/11/2024

Your whoreson Scot, now there's a feisty devil with no skin on his face when it comes to skelping the English. The spirit that took them riding across the Border to steal cattle from the Northumberlandish and consider themselves entirely in the right of it, for, whisht, wouldna' they do the same tae us if they weren't toothless, milk-fed, mammy's boys with their heids full o mince an their winkies up each other's airses and no mistake, has them demanding more money for the consequentials.

a wee scotch devil forging his credentials.

The bare-faced cheek of it will tak' yer breath awa'. Wait, while I tell you. 

Po-faced SNP Shona McRory Robison, former Health Minister, (fucked that one well up or, to put it politely, widely criticised for her poorly received tenure); former Deputy Minister (resigned recognising the public hated her - she called it being divisive) and currently Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, never seen on telly without looking as though she was smelling something disgusting (perhaps there's a special fluffer for SNP politicians, who prepares them for camera by smearing faeces and rotten milk on their upper lips),

said of the £3.4 billion being gifted to Scotland in Rachel Reeves' October Budget: "It's not enough. It's niggardly."

How So? Isn't £3.4 billion a lot of money?

"It may be a lot of money to you English, but we proud Scots in Smart, Successful Scotland need much, much more."

Why's that then?

"We need it to offset all the Westminster cuts. We need it to pay Winter Fuel Allowance to all our cold old people. We need it to bribe Scoatisch wummin tae have mair bairns. We need it tae provide free prescriptions and free Higher Education......"

Alright, stop talking now. Why should Scotland  have these things and England not?

"Because ye owe it to us. And the £3.4 billion has they strings"

Which are?

"We ha'e to spend it on public services".

And you'd rather spend it on luxury motor homes? Definitely stop talking now.

Over now to Ivan McKee, SNP Minister for Public Finance, whose principal duty is to support the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, that is po-faced Shona McRory Robison. (She had a stalker once, but he was returned to a psychiatric clinic.)

You know how when you go to the hairdresser's or the barber's, they produce a book of hairstyles for you to pick from? Well, Ivan McKee must have decided on a combination of A Boris Johnson and A Donald Trump - see what I mean?

Anyway, Ivan explained why £3.4 billion was not enough. You see, most of Scotland's workers are employed in the public sector, mostly the NHS. And dastardly Rachel Reeves has increased the National Insurance employer contribution. And the SNP think that Westminster should pay Scotland the N.I. increase. It's around £500 million. As well as the £3.4 billion. So instead of raising money by the increase, Westminster will have to pay it to Scotland. So the argument goes.

I was briefly interested in what these "mc" and "mac" prefixes mean. We don't have them in Orkney, where people are called Sinclair or Flett or Glue or Twatt. 

Mc means "son of". So Shona McRory Robison means Shona, son of Rory, son of Robi. I'd change it to something more girly. 

The Budget also wasn't popular with Scotch Whisky Association chief executive Mark Kent, who described the increase on spirits duty as a “hammer blow”. Bit dramatic, that. He accused Reeves of increasing “tax discrimination of spirits in the Treasury’s warped duty system, and with 70% of UK spirits produced in Scotland, that will do further damage to a key Scottish sector”.

Even more insulting was Reeves knocking a penny off a pint of beer. So the English working class can get bladdered on their drink of choice. Say you go out for your customary gallon, you'll save a whole eightpence. Whereas the middle class will have to pay through the nose to get hammered on posho whisky and wine.

And that's the thing - the Budget was an ideological redistribution budget. They tried to hide it behind all that fannying about  describing the beneficiaries of the budget as "workers" and defining workers as people who work and get paid a wage or salary - but they meant working class. And quite right, too. What's the point of a Labour Government if they can't bring in a bit of wealth redistribution? About time, I'd say. We've had Tories protecting their class interests, n'est ce pas?

Me and Rachel Reeves, we were educated in prefabs. She's cross about it and is redistributing a bit of the wealth of parents of public school kids into state school education, by making them pay VAT on school fees. You know how people say "and it didn't do me any harm?" Well, being educated in a prefab, in a class of 43 kids, with cruel boys who chased the girls with chicken feet from the neighbouring chicken farm (you pull the tendon, the claws open and close and the girl screams)

and hurl snowballs carefully crafted from stones embedded in compacted snow, and a paedophile headmaster who not only enjoyed the healthy physical activity of assaulting little children's open palms with a strap, but also had an end of term play staged in which the eleven-year-old girls wore grass skirts and went topless - well, it did do me any harm. Quite a lot, actually. It was a huge relief to get to an all female secondary school, run by the Sisters of the Cross and Passion with care, kindness, excellent teachers and too much religion. But no corporal punishment, paedophilia and boys. And I'm sure those children enduring an education in classrooms falling apart because RAAC concrete was used to save money 

- well, they are only children of the poor - 

it probably did do them some harm. And those kids whose education is disrupted by other kids playing up and uncontrollable by teachers - yeah, them too.

So a bit of redistribution from the public school sector into the state school sector should be applauded.

We'll see how it all works out in practice. Bound to be a few unintended consequences. Did you hear about Portugal being set on fire? The fires started in September this year - more than 1,000 fires spread through central and northern Portugal, burning more than 135,000 hectares of land, killing at least nine people, amongst them four firefighters, the evacuation of several villages and requiring the deployment of 5,000 firefighters. It was the unintended consequence of a bit of European legislation, which provided an enhanced rate of compensation to people whose crops are destroyed by fire, rather than drought or disease. Whoopy do - 14 arsonists were speedily arrested.

Staying with Scotland - Alec Salmond is still dead. Dead and buried, now, back in Aberdeenshire.

Being dead, of course, means he can't be prosecuted any more, presumably much to the regret of certain SNP factions. Today, Police Scotland stated: "We can confirm that we have received a report of a non-recent sexual assault. The information is being assessed."

After Salmond fell out with the SNP he set up the Alba party, the performance of which has been underwhelming. Salmond was tried in 2020 for 13 offences of a sexual nature, including rape, and was  acquitted of all charges. Chris McEleny, Alba Party General Secretary, said Salmond had been cleared by a court of law and claimed Salmond had been the victim of attacks on his reputation and character by allies of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - she of the ongoing police investigation into misappropriation of SNP party funds.

That's enough bare airses, mrs ishmael - ed.

Okay, Tories it is, then. No doubt wanting to outdo Rachel Reeves, who just can't get over herself - telling us all about being the first female Chancellor of the Exchequer since the post was created 800 years ago, and the first Labour Chancellor to deliver a Labour Budget in 14 years; the Tories have ticked not one, but two diversity boxes, and given themselves their first black female Leader. 

Kemi Badenoch is certainly very impressive. And very posh. She lounges in the interview chair like Jacob Rees-Mogg, unlike Rachel Reeves, who sits up very straight, like the head-girl of a state prefab school. And her voice is ultra posh. A delight to listen to her. Richly resonant, beautifully articulated, employing sentences that make sense. And big words. She is disarming in her ready admissions that the Tories have made mistakes, that they have suffered their worst electoral defeat since God was a boy and are having to muddle through with a mere handful of MPs. I like her. And she's seen off Jeremy Cunt and James Not-so-Cleverly. So that's a good thing.

Talking of voices, I know it is crass of me, but I do find Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer to be in dire need of elocution lessons. What is that flat, nasal intonation? Some variety of ordinary-people London, I suppose.

To turn to more pleasant matters, there's a general merchants' shop in Kirkwall called William Shearer. They've been in business since 1857 and sell pretty much everything - guns, fishing rods, seeds, neeps, bacon, bread, household goods, garden and pet supplies. Each Christmas they turn the upstairs of the shop into a dedicated Christmas shop, blending vintage artefacts from their early trading days with expensive, unnecessary but gorgeous Christmas stuff. Here's some photos: 

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber, 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: 27/10/2024: the Avaricious Children Edition

 

This won't have come as a shock to the medics and dentists amongst us, but I had no idea that this is what children look like underneath the nice skin. This skull is part of the collection of the Hunterian Museum in London, but they are all  like that, apparently. I was shocked rigid. Looks like an alien.

No jaw to speak of - just  full of teeth. Could take your leg off with a single bite. You wouldn't want one of them anywhere  near your soft bits, let alone try breast feeding. By inference, of course, I was like that once - these days I have to pay the dentist a fortune to have implants.

It being almost Hallowe'en, I was googling images for skull decorations and came across these toothed babes. I don't really understand Hallowe'en. It seems a nasty American import. Is the purpose to accustom children to death and decomposing bodies, or to the idea that begging whilst dressed up is a great way to score sweets and rot all those fine teeth their heads are full of? mr ishmael and I used to deal with Hallowe'en and New Year's Eve by closing the curtains, turning off the lights and locking the doors. We were especially apprehensive about drunken bonhomie by kilted Scotsmen carrying coal and demanding drams when we first moved to Orkney, but the New Year's Eve marauding is focussed on the towns, and apart from one little incident when a Scots nationalist demonstrated the correct way to don a kiltie - by way of spreading out the kilt on the floor then throwing himself backwards, naked, onto it and gathering it around himself - and he was a bit of a nutter, having had the Declaration of Arbroath tattooed on his chest; we were untroubled by the jollity. They don't like to get too pished in Kirkwall on New Year's Eve because the next day is the Ba', which is quite demanding enough without having been up all night. The rest of Scotland takes the welcoming of the new year very seriously, to the extent that two days public holiday are granted for recovery - not the measly one day doled out to the English.

Back to Hallowe'en and the avaricious children, with their buckets and demands. The older ones prefer to administer the trick, which in this part of the world consists of egging cars, houses, pavements and each other, followed up by bags of flour. The egg and flour combination is pretty slimy and resistant to usual cleaning methods, once it has hardened overnight, but a pressure washer will get it off. The supermarkets used to discount eggs and flour especially to encourage the kiddies to have fun, make it pocket-money affordable, but now that we are eco-aware, that is frowned upon. Kirkwall's communal bonfire, when we celebrate the judicial execution of Guy Fawkes, is also to be toned down this year, as we have 40 swans on the Peedie Sea, and they would be disturbed by the fireworks and screams of joy of little children. Bonfires are a survival of an old tradition whereby the bones of animals were burned in purification rituals to ward off evil spirits and ensure the fertility of the land. Samuel Johnston, silly man, thought the "bon" bit of the word meant good. 

Maybe it's because we are a predator species - as evidenced by all those teeth hiding in our jaws, maybe it is because of Margaret Thatcher and her selling off  the nation's housing supply to fulfil her dream of inherited wealth cascading down the generations - every ex-council house a proud inheritance, or maybe it is Britain's fixation on home ownership and the belief that some poxy 3 bed semi will ensure your fortune and that of your kids without you having to do a hand's turn other than to paint a wall now and then and to cut the grass; but avaricious children grow into avaricious adults, anxiously waiting for the aged parent to shuffle off the old mortal coil to step into an inheritance that will see them right. Needless to say, there is national resentment of the requirement to pay for care for long-lived demented or physically frail relatives - they won't look after the old dear themselves, but expect the tax-payer - that is, me, to pay up and therefore preserve their inheritance. That's why the hospitals are full - relatives prefer their elderly burdens to remain in hospital - which is free, rather than be decanted into a care home at £1500 a week. There's an idea for you, Rachel Reeves - impose hotel charges on longstay patients. And don't listen to all those idealists - it was a great idea to means-test the Winter Fuel Allowance.

And these avaricious adults have already had a good old whack during a lifetime of mumanddad paying for food, clothes, toys, holidays, education, driving lessons, cars, deposits on houses, weddings so they can pretend to be landed aristocrats (but its my special day - aren't I worth a ten grand wedding dress?), divorces, care of grandkids, etc, out of their earned income - and now the offspring are coming for the house. 

McCarthy Stone has had some criticism in the press about the financial model of their retirement communities. You know the sort of thing - old dear sells the family home and buys a leasehold retirement flat, which has some communal space and activities, to stave off the loneliness of being ignored by the adult children, who are busy with their own toothed monster offspring. There is a maintenance charge of £blah per month, which pays for upkeep, external painting, grass cutting, window cleaning, council tax and what not. If personal care is needed, additional charges apply. Richard Osman popularised the idea of the retirement community in his series of cosy murder mysteries, in which a friendship group of incredibly active and resourceful old dears solve preposterous murders that stump the police, and encounter romance along the way.

Problem with the model is that these retirement flats are quite hard to sell on - there's a limited market for that sort of thing - probably all the cosy murders and sleuthing and communal fun, so the flat can sit empty after the death of the aged parent, and the maintenance charges keep ticking up until the property is sold, eroding the equity for the adult kiddies who really did believe that "one day, my son, all this will be yours".

 Residents who bought flats at Oakfield Court, a McCarthy Stone property in Urmston, Trafford, compared the costs to having a mortgage. One resident, Veronica Williams, lives there with her husband, who has Parkinson's disease, said a 15.9% rise in a year was punitive. Another resident, Pat Burrows, said the owners of the complex "don't seem to care - that's the big thing - its just money, money, money." She also worried that her children would have to "pay the service charge even when we're dead, until they can sell the flat". Companies such as McCarthy Stone point out with some justification that buying into a retirement community provides help at hand, company and camaraderie. 

This is a section of the housing market which is not increasing in value - but why should it? It provides specialist housing for older people at the end of their lives, and that costs money, whether  in a care home or a private facility.  If people are not willing to pay what it costs because they want to leave their "estate" to their relatives, who then is to pay for it? The problem doesn't arise if you are destitute, because the state then steps in, and the tax payer - us- foots the bill. But your options are then limited to institutional care - which can be substandard, despite the efforts of regulators. This week, dozens of elderly residents were evacuated from the Gainsborough Care Home in Swanage in the night, to a church and village hall, after three residents were found dead and seven were taken to hospital. The police are investigating what is thought to be carbon monoxide poisoning, and a woman has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter (presumably by negligence).

If Rachel Reeves can tackle the national care disaster, she will have succeeded where all previous governments have failed. Go, Rachel! Budget on Wednesday. Can't wait.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber, 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: 20/10/2024: the ethnic slur edition

As ever, Andrei Kelin, Russian Ambassador to Britain, was kind and polite in the face of Laura Kuenssberg's hard-faced, sharp-nosed, downright rude questioning this morning. He did permit himself a little chuckle at the suggestion that President Putin would present himself to the Inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018. You'll recall that she died after spraying herself with the contents of a perfume bottle that her partner had found in a bin and brought home to her as a special present. It was initially thought that she had been poisoned by contaminated illegal drugs, given her lifestyle, but analysis revealed the cause of death was Novichok. Moral of that story - if it looks too good to be true, then it is too good to be true and bin-diving as a way of saving money is not a good idea, even in Impoverished Britain. The target of the special edition Eau de Novichok was Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, who was living in retirement in Salisbury following a career of leaking Russian secrets to the British. He survived his exposure to Novichok, as did his daughter and the detective who went into their home, so the dastardly mission of Russian intelligence officers (I think that means spies) Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin was a big fail. They had popped across to Britain from Moscow on the 2nd March 2018, under false identities, in order to see the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, returning on the 4th March. 

Nothing to do with spraying the handle of expatriate Skripal's door with Novichok, nor of carrying through Customs enough Novichok to kill thousands of British people.

Skripal had served 6 years of a 13 year sentence in a high security Russian prison for his traitorous activities when his release was negotiated in a prisoner exchange deal. The idea is that you then give up your spying activities and keep your head down, bloody grateful for your reprieve. Skripal, however, was actively and regularly meeting with intelligence and security officers from countries including the Czech Republic, Colombia, Estonia and Spain. He could not have been doing this without the instigation or approval of  the British secret services. Which rendered him a legitimate target for the Russian lot. We haven't heard anything of Skripal of late. I daresay his handlers have been keeping him below the radar. He won't be appearing at the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, although it could be argued that it was all his fault.

Did Putin order the hit? Does it matter? There's a marvellous statement of state-craft in Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra. Pompey was asked to authorise a dishonourable scheme, breaching the laws of hospitality, to murder his enemies who were currently drunk at a party on Pompey's boat. He replies:

POMPEY:   Ah, this thou shouldst have done

And not have spoke on ’t! In me ’tis villainy;

In thee ’t had been good service. Thou must know

’Tis not my profit that does lead mine honor;

Mine honor, it. Repent that e’er thy tongue

Hath so betrayed thine act. Being done unknown,

I should have found it afterwards well done,

But must condemn it now. 

Anyway, having dismissed the risible suggestion that President Putin would attend an Inquiry into the death of a woman he had never heard of, the Ambassador really got into it. He told Laura that  the UK is waging war against Russia by supplying Ukraine with weapons, saying: ‘My government firmly believes the UK Government is waging an aggressive war against Russia by the hands of the Ukrainians. This is a proxy war led by the United Kingdom’s Government by providing lethal weapons with which the UK Government is killing Russian soldiers and civilians. I think you are aggressive and waging a proxy war against Russia.’

Well, he's got a point, hasn't he?

At the time of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and consistently thereafter, the BBC - Britain's state television station, has urged indignation at Russia's actions, and support for Ukraine. There has been no attempt at balanced reporting and everything Russia has said has been dismissed as propaganda. I assume that this is at the instruction of the government, who presumably act at the behest of the USA and of its own security organisations. The upshot is that Russia now regards us as an openly-declared enemy at war. Which is not a comfortable position to be in.

Talking of the BBC, I had a couple of interesting conversations over the last few days with friends. Both are widely travelled, both have lived for many years overseas, both regard the BBC as dreadfully compromised purveyors of propaganda. One friend regaled me with stories of posed footage broadcast unquestioningly by the Beeb, telling me that one "corpse" having played dead in several funerals, miraculously recovered life when a bomb exploded a little too close to his bier, and ran off; and an ululating woman was told by her handler that she was doing a very good job, keep it up, a bit louder, please, out of shot of the Beeb camera, but within mobile phone camera range. That friend's view was that the Beeb was a propaganda vehicle for Hamas. The other friend was equally convinced that the Beeb is pro Zionist and supports genocide. Mind you, she did spend three-quarters of an hour once explaining to me that 5G would give me cancer, heat my tissues, give me headaches, nausea and dizziness.

It is all a question of perspective: of which tribe you support - probably the ones who look and smell most like yourself. It's an evolutionary thing - we had to be good at recognising enemies. I have recently discovered that I have a goodly smattering of European Neanderthal in my DNA. Ah - that explains a lot, mrs ishmael. Shut up. I will have you know that Neanderthals were very intelligent, with sophisticated tools, weapons and art, but became extinct around 40,000 years ago, out-competed by Cro-Magnons, who were more successful breeders, and therefore had larger numbers to network and work together toward survival. I've always been crap at networking - you know, those dreadful corporate events where you have to wear a badge with your name on it and make small talk with complete strangers. I have no small talk. Once I get past the weather - always a source of fascinating conversation here in the Bracing Isles, I head for the snack table. Or if it is really bad, go to the loo to fix my make-up for an hour or so. That's the Neanderthal in me. 

Having faced up to, and lost, the resource war with you Cro-Magnons back in the day, the squabblings between different human tribes fades into insignificance. That really was an existential crisis - using existential in the non-philosophical sense that they use it nowadays, meaning a threat to continued existence. Unless you are a Uyghur or a Tutsi. 

So I read Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race with appalled fascination. Reni Eddo-Lodge published it through Bloomsbury Publishing in 2017, so it is hardly cutting-edge, but I hadn't paid it no never-mind, until being entranced in Kirkwall Library by its tricksy cover - the text "to White People" appears in white text on the white background, making it invisible from a distance. The rest of the text is black. Renni Eddo-Lodge is a black Londoner, a graduate of the University of Central Lancashire, and a writer. Her book was generally well-received at the time, although Trevor Phillips claimed that it probed "delicately knotted issues with all the subtlety of a blunderbuss". I'm with Trevor on this. The book explores the links between gender, class and race in Britain and other countries, summarising the experience of Black and Asian people in the UK, institutional racism and definitions of class.

Eddo-Lodge uses the BBC's (yes, them again) definition of not 3, but 7, British classes, and measured economic capital - income, savings, house value; social capital - the number and status of people someone knows; and cultural capital, defined as the extent and nature of cultural interests and activities.

1. Elite - the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
2. Established middle class - the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital.
3. Technical middle class - a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
4. New affluent workers - a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
5. Traditional working class - scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
6. Emergent service workers - a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
7. Precariat, or precarious proletariat - the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital. 

How helpful is this new class definition to an understanding of Britain's ossified, class-ridden society and its class wars? If you have been  prevented from having the goods of society, access to a breeding partner, income, housing, well-paying job, nice car, respect of one's fellows, success in one's profession -  then it is pleasanter to ascribe this failure to fattism, misogyny, disablism, anti-Irish sentiment, xenophobia or racism, rather than just not being good enough to succeed in meritocratic Britain. I would argue, however, that Britain is no more a meritocracy than was pre-Revolutionary France, and that rather than blaming white people for black people's disadvantage, make common cause against the establishment, which has all the apparatus of state and law to maintain its privilege against both white people and black. 

Here's a few thoughts by mr ishmael on race, money, politics and power:

I have known for a while that the US had or was about to become a white minority nation and that the figures on property and land occupancy reflect that.

The U.S. demographics analysis is comparable with our own. Who, but the poor and state-dependant would live in densely populated sub-standard inner city Diane Abbott realms of bitterness and disappointment - and would they vote for Codger McCain or David Cameron whilst an alternative promised them jam today?

This is the elephant in the corner of the right-wing bloggers, they expect, insist that the poor vote for the rich, almost, bizarrely, on the grounds that It Is The Right Thing To Do. The tiny percentage on more than a hundred and fifty grand are deemed to be Middle England, and the tens of millions in poverty or relative poverty, the enemy within.  Go Figure.

I think that nationally and globally, the sheer weight of numbers involved who are hungry, dispossessed and desperate kind of invalidate the differences between twentieth century left and right wing dinosaur political parties. Who gives a fuck, a few pence on tax here, a few off there but pre-eminently the right of a self-selecting elite to sit on the same latrine and shit in our faces whilst pretending they differ from one another. The disappointment is that so many, claiming a fresh approach, shriek so loudly for more of the same. The big political parties got us here, innit; one of a minutely differing hue will not get us out.

Which brings me, neatly, to the strangest thing I've heard this week. The Labour Party is sending strategic advisers to assist Kamala Harris to win the US Presidential election. You'd think that would be illegal. The Democrats certainly complained loudly enough about the Russians helping out Trump. And Labour can no longer be seen as the party representing the working class if it aligns itself with the wealthy, elitist, internationally corrupt and corrupting, Democratic Party. Or have I got something wrong?

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

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Prince of Wales aircraft carrier - currently on training manoeuvres with NATO in Scapa Flow.

The Sunday Ishmael: 13/10/2024: The Scottish Edition

 Well, I know he was a wee fat fuck, but the way they've been going on about it is downright sizeist. "Huge figure" was quite mild compared with  Joanna Cherry's "huge influence" and "he was immensely widely read", while John Swinney, for whom wee fat Alex became Public Enemy Number One, considered him to be: "an enormously significant figure", which is downright rude; going on to describe (his dinners as) "the scale of demands you have to wrestle with as First Minister." 

The former Gnasher, but now Toothless, Nicola Sturgeon, described him as an "incredibly significant figure". The Business Secretary, Jonathon Reynolds, said he was "an incredibly big figure", Sir Keir said he was "a monumental figure", whereas Tony Blair didn't go for monumental, sticking with "huge".

But, mrs ishmael, you cry, you are deliberately misinterpreting the encomia heaped upon a skilful and orotund politician by his colleagues who were recognising his magnificent abilities. Oh no, I'm not, I sharply respond - you forget I have qualifications in this sort of thing. If they say 'huge', 'big', 'wide', 'monumental' etc. then that's exactly what they mean. Their subconscious minds, building upon enduring malice, are calling Salmond a fat fuck and they hate him.  Why so? Surely not fattyphobia?

Never underestimate the extent to which fattyphobia is a real thing, but, hey, not just that. Salmond's political journey, they say, was from rabble rouser to First Minister. And you can't do that without incurring a lot of enmity. Particularly in his own party, the Scottish National Party. They're a nasty lot, infighting, power-hungry and incompetent. Factions and cliques. Thievery, corruption and, I did mention - incompetence. And then Salmond was a bad man. His own lawyer, Gordon Jackson, was disciplined for comments he was overheard to make about him, following Salmond's acquittal for 13 serious sexual offences, including two attempted rapes. Jackson said: "I don't know much about senior politicians but he was quite an objectionable bully to work with.....I think he was a nasty person to work for...a nightmare to work for." The recording made by an eaves-dropper was unclear, but he was then  heard saying: "Inappropriate, stupid...but sexual? Unfortunately [he then names two of the women accusers] say it's sexual." His defence of Salmond during trial was along the lines of he's a bad man but not a rapist. In Jackson's  remarks to the jury he admitted that Salmond had sometimes behaved badly, calling him "touchy-feely" with one staff member and said he had what Jackson called "a bit of how's your father" with another - both younger members of his staff, neither of them his wife. In his closing speech Jackson said that the former First Minister "could certainly have been a better man". There was also confirmation that Salmond could bully colleagues and staff. Witnesses called him "extraordinarily pugnacious" and "extremely demanding".

That was in 2020, and basically marked the end of his political reputation and career. Downhill all the way. Russia kindly allowed him to host a chat show on Russian state T.V, he founded his own political party Alba, which had no Members of Parliament, and he  ended up in NorthMacedoniaforfuck'ssake, attending a conference at the Forum for Cultural Diplomacy, where he was addressing President Ivanov's Young Leaders Programme participants. He had a heart attack after lunch. Whatever did they give him for lunch that his heart, accustomed to delicacies such as deep-fried Mars Bars, couldn't take?

Back in December, 2012, mr ishmael considered Salmond's likely future, but, prescient as he was, here in his thought-piece he couldn't foresee the depths to which the wee fat fuck would fall:

SCOTLAND, BEST PART OF ENGLAND : ALEC SALMOND TOO FAT TO VOTE IN REFERENDUM.

Salmond is a one-trick pony, as we flounder in ruin, he wants a referendum, a referendum, of course, will divert the stooges in the press, McWhirter and Taylor and all the gabshites on Jock Newsnight, it'll divert them from the grim reality of redundancy and closure and insolvency, of blighted retirements, of futures gutshot by bankers and economists and politicians, like Salmond, and his chums. Every morning the Jock broadsheets opine about what it means to be Scottish, no, really Scottish, what does it really mean? It beats working. And it saves, or has saved, Salmond from figuring out how to re-shape an economy with a dwindling taxbase and a population drinking itself to death, driven into addiction by a national melancholy inspired, craftily, by its rulers.

He came in on a small, ambiguous wave of curiosity but mainly of fatigue with the Lib-Lab shitfest. He might have built on it, learned to do something other than soundbiting, but fat and indolent and self-satisfied, he thought the first hurdle was the last one. The sizzle has gone, now, from his haggis; his neeps and tatties are cold and lumpy and he'll go out on a tide of dissatisfaction with his nineteenth century nationalist tub-thumping and his cynical reforestations of the political landscape with Jam-Tomorrow empty promises. There is unlikely to be a huge Labour revival, nor a LibDem, McHooter-inspired surge but enough, however, are pissed with Salmond to send him to the Holyrood equivalent of the backbenches, soundbiting his fat wee head off. And serve him right.

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Only Geoff Aberdein avoided describing dead Alex in terms of his girth - he said the news that his former mentor had shuffled off his mortal coil in Macedoniaforfuck'ssake was a severe shock and a profound sadness, before succumbing to womanly tears, heaving shoulders and covering his face with his hands. On national television no less. No ullulation, thank god.

 

stanislav said...

 

From the Jocksman, one of the many British newspapers driven into the ground by MrJock Neil of the BBC:

"Scotland's McBaath party was celebrating in the streets yesterday after the beheading of it's sworn enemy, Wendy al Halibut, leader of the bin Alexander tribe; haggises were discharged into the air as grown men, sort of, wept for joy, their hands up each others' kilts, tongues down each others throats, in traditional McBaath fashion.

Vengeful, melancholy, embittered morons stormed the message boards of the Jock press, sat at home in their high-rise blocks, in the biggest council estate in England, eating lard pies, swigging Scotsmac and Irn Bru, the mad wee fantasists, probably wearing their skirts and their wee plaid socks, bless, and leapt on any who declined the poisoned Nationalist chalice.

Ranting of the coming one-party McBaath state, these poor semi-literate, peasant tribesmen, the al-See-You-Jimmies, cutting and pasting the Infidels' comments and adding: That's shite that is, you labour twat, - much too dumb to paraphrase or summarise, much less originate - gave a fair impersonation of 1930s Berlin or 1990s Baghdad, heedless that this is what poor Jock - like Fritz and Abdul - always does, follows some Messianic, jumped-up, cheesy sound-biting would-be Princeling into poverty and ignominy and while he often escapes to Europe, Jock doesn't.

Poor Jock cannae see that Kings, Princes and political careerists are just that. It is their own grandeur and conceit which concerns them, their own legacy, which, even should they raze and ruin all about, transcends.

Sitting, though, with his press secretary, Mr Ian Kneepads McWhirter of that ilk, surrounded by a crack regiment of the feared McBaath Revolutionary Guard (Grand Vizier Lady Sir Sean Connery and his Magic Sword, the hermaphrodite ginger singing duo, the al-Proclaimers and Lulu bin Botox ) and toasting events with a chilled glass of his own piss, the McBaath leader, Caliph Sheikh Ali bin Salmond, promised that he would sequester the salary and pension of the late Ms bin Halibut and add it to the three or four he currently received as leader of the Jock Caliphate, from the Infidel Englander taxpayers. As well as the five million dollars from his Local Democracy Secretary, Mr McDonald McTrump. He would do this, give this money to himself, he said, to cheers, for Scotland.

(The daft wee ginger bastards don't see that the bin-Salmond Jock Emirates will be merely a tiny dependent region of the unelected New European Order of Mandelson and Kinnock, Alec a fat, pompous satrap.)

 

He was now, he thought, smugly, the undisputed leader of the entire Jock Diaspora, which ran through job centres, battered wives refuges, prisons, detoxification units, STD clinics and mortuaries all across the known world. Crack open a barrel of my ain pish, the 2007 vintage, and drink ye yer fill, lads, mak' yourselves worthy of me.

Ye shall be my weapons of mass inebriation, my warriors of idleness. Awa' ye tae Coventry, Birmingham and London, knife folk in the back, head-butt the Infidel when he expects ye not. But dinnae say I told you or we're all fucked.

Sheikh Ali, a pretend economist and a short, balding, oily little chap in built-up shoes had even more reason than usual to be pleased with himself. His octogenarian pretend wife was in a tent at the far side of the camp, tending the camels, McWhirter of The Herald was pleasuring him and he had adoring ginger men in skirts and shiny shoes all around, joyfully complicit in their own great Caravan to Doom.

Alec Akhbar !Alec Akhbar! Alec is Great, went up the cry around the camp as Jock Suicide Drinkers assembled, anxious to enter MacParadise and claim their free seventy-two beating-wives.

Far away, in London, Ali bin Salmond's other sworn enemy, el Sultan al presbyterian Gordon bin Brown was in a most mighty, tumultuous strop, biting other people's fingernails, hurling telephones at his secretaries, dashing every few minutes into the toilet for a fierce bout of dry masturbation, cursing Donald bin Skinflint Dewar and Tony el Miranda Blair with equal venom.

They fucking bastards up there, they'll fucking do for us, they will, give 'em their own fucking bastards' parliament and look how the fucking bastards fucking well behave.

Regime change. That's the fucking answer. Send for the fucking army. Whaddayamean the army's no' fucking here, its stuck up some fucking wog mountainside in the arse-fucking-hole of fucking bastard fucking nowhere, where nobody, nobody, not even the whole bastard Red Fucking Army has ever beaten these beardy fucking wog arse bandits. What's it fucking doing there? What? John fucking Reid sent it there? For a nice, wee rest? The fucking useless, smelly little Weegie gangster, I knew he'd be in on it.

At the Zimbabwe Independent, Yasmin Alibhai Moslem and Jojo Lardboy Hari were quite lost for words. Yabbo hoped that, as Ali bin Salmond's co-religionist, she would be able to make-up some Speaking-as-a-Moslem-woman rubbish in advance of the next Question Time; JoJo took some more drugs, inhaling, he hoped, inspiration and not cancer.

Mr stanislav, the former artisan and now prime ministerial spokesplumber reflected ruefully that, having mentioned brother Mugabe's similarities to Mr Brown, the prime minister, at some length yesterday, he seemed to be getting somewhat out of sync with what passes in Britain for fucking reality and had better have a quick kip in the back of the van before he warped into another dimension, entirely.

 June 30, 2008 

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For our overseas readers - and, to be frank, everywhere is overseas to me, as I sit at my word processor on an island off the north coast of Scotland - Orkney is the archipelago at the top. Shetland is too far north to include on the map.

To continue - for our overseas readers and those who haven't being paying much attention, and who, indeed can blame you, a short contextual note. Queen Elizabeth I of England died in 1603 and was succeeded by her cousin, King James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth and Mary were both granddaughters of Henry VII of England. Elizabeth arranged for the judicial execution of Mary, fearing Mary had a better claim to the throne than she did. James inherited the thrones of Scotland through his mum and England as Elizabeth's heir. The two countries remained politically separate for a hundred years, until Scotland, in debt after trying to establish a colonial empire in the Americas, sought the assistance of Britain, as a greater marine power, to assist in establishing markets overseas. England agreed to pay Scotland's debts, thus establishing a precedent that persists to the present day and will stretch into the future, providing an annual block grant that has allowed Scotland to be "a socially progressive" country - the Scots don't pay for prescriptions, nor University tuition fees, unlike the English, for example. In  1707 England and Scotland united as “Great Britain” under Queen Anne and both countries’ parliaments passed the Acts of Union to become one nation. This worked quite well for sensible people for a long time, although there was always an independence movement amongst the tartan romantics, a movement that led to a majority of Scots voting for devolution in a referendum in 1997. The UK Parliament passed the Scotland Act in 1998 which established the Scottish Parliament which opened in 1999. This was accomplished under former Prime Minister Tony (a Scottish lad)  Blair's Labour government. A Downing Street source once said: "The PM has always supported devolution, but Tony Blair failed to foresee the rise of separatists in Scotland." Labour thought that devolution would "kill nationalism stone dead". The fact that it didn't was largely down to the efforts of wee fat Alex, who persuaded the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, to agree to a legally binding referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country. Cameron thought the result would be a resounding No - but, in this as in so much else, he was disastrously wrong, confusing his own thoughts, feelings and class interests with the majority view of the population. The 2012 referendum very nearly ended the Union, again down to wee fat Alex' efforts - the referendum resulted in a 55% vote to stay in the Union, versus 45% to leave. A very close call - but Alex took it as a personal failure, resigning the next day, in favour of his appointed successor, the former Gnasher, now Toothless, Sturgeon. He shouldna ha'e done it, as Sturgeon, her husband Peter Merrill, and current First Minister, John Swinney, made damn sure that Alex's political career in the SNP was a thing of the past. Merrill is still on bail in connection with criminal charges regarding a large sum of money missing from SNP funds and the purchase of a luxury motor home. Apparently, further charges are under Police Scotland's investigation.

How are the mighty fallen - from very almost nearly negotiating the end of Great Britain to dying of a heart attack in an obscure Balkan country after lunch.

Defence News

I previously reported that the British Royal Navy was coming to our rescue in Orkney - there was another localised broadband outage last week - but, hey - even better news -we're getting NATO! From tomorrow 35 aircraft, 2000 armed forces personnel and 13 vessels, including frigates, destroyers, tankers and submarines, led by HMS Prince of Wales, will be deploying around Orkney and through the Pentland Firth. I'll try and get you some photos.

Film Review

Staying with Scottish stuff, The Outrun is showing in cinemas. The title refers to a very local usage: the outrun is a stretch of coastland at the top of the protagonist's family farm where the grass is always short, pummelled by the wind and sea spray year-round. I read the book when it was popular a few years back - just because it was set in Orkney. It's a memoir, introspective, rambling and self-indulgent, with some interesting bits about Orkney folk-lore, wild life and wild swimming. I wondered how it could possibly be made into a film - just a lot of staring moodily out to sea with a voice over? It was made into a film by leaving out all the interesting bits, inserting a soundtrack of incredibly loud, incredibly nasty, music and lots and lots of bad weather,  doubtless a metaphor for the protagonist's emotional climate.

 The review website, Rotten Tomatoes summarises: "Benefiting from Saoirse Ronan's deeply committed performance in the central role, The Outrun proves a moving portrait of addiction in spite of its somewhat shapeless narrative". I was hugely disappointed by The Outrun - it not only made Orkney look bleak and poor, but the message was bleak. The friend I saw it with thought that there was a hopeful ending – but I just saw Rona becoming her mentally ill father, welcoming and conducting the storm and gale force waves, during a brief period of sobriety. All the things that made the book charming – the bits of myth and folklore, the descriptions of wild swimming and the countryside, were downplayed and the film focused on Rona's alcoholism, self-destruction and tentative recovery journey through Alcoholics Anonymous. It played to packed houses in Kirkwall – but that was because audiences wanted to see scenes of Orkney and recognise friends who were extras. I wouldn't recommend it, but make your own mind up. It won't do Orkney's tourist industry any favours.

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If the essays by mr ishmael and stanislav included in today's post have reminded you how great a writer and satirist mr ishmael was,  there are four splendid anthologies of his writings 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.

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And before you go, you should check this out:

SpaceX's Starship has completed its fifth test flight, as Elon Musk pursues his plan to take astronauts to the Moon – maybe even to Mars. During this flight, when the booster returned to the Indian Ocean, it slowed itself down and was gently received on its launchpad by a pair of giant mechanical arms  – in the "chopsticks manoeuvre".

It is a truly amazing, hair-raising moment. Thanks to editor mr verge for sourcing it.