call me ishmael

Sunday, 4 October 2026

The Sunday Ishmael: 04/10/2016

What the hell were they thinking? Oh yes, they weren't thinking at all. On account of not having grown brains yet. Brains that can detect acts of provocation, can link actions to consequences, and can advise caution. That can think beyond money and celebrity.

Narcissistic, smug, self satisfied, failed and/or disgraced former politicians "acted" in a dangerous piece of television nonsense that aired on Sky television between the 21st to the 24th September 2026. The concept was that a fictional Russian attack was launched on Britain by Russia in 2027, and that bloody Michael Gove was Prime Minister.

A post that he was never able to achieve in real life, despite wishing really, really, hard.

Mind you, he was not the only one of the crew of failed/and/or disgraced former politicians to give themselves fantasy jobs in this alternative reality.

Nicola Sturgeon got to be Deputy Prime Minister. No, really.

That's the campervan bought with SNP party funds by Sturgeon's jail-bird husband, being seized by Scottish police.

Jim Murphy got to be Foreign Secretary, while Harriet Harman played the Home Secretary. Sadly, Penny Mordaunt, Sword Bearer,

appeared as Defence Secretary. She isn't my hero anymore. Especially after her bit on the Laura Kuenssberg Politics Show today, when she revealed her ambition to get back on what she called "the squad" and has applied for selection as an MP, having promised to change all her former policies and principles and do anything Kemi demanded.

Wiki's episode by episode description will inform you - if you can be bothered - how the story unfolds to the point of Michael Gove declaring war on Russia, resulting in strikes against Kaliningrad and Murmansk inflicting heavy casualties on Russian forces and hitting targets in close proximity to Russian nuclear weapons facilities.

Sky has admitted the heavy use of generative AI to produce scenes showing Russian attacks on targets in the United Kingdom and fake TikTok clips from real-life influencers demonstrating public reaction to government decisions.

What the actual fuck, as the young people say nowadays? What did they think Putin was going to make of all that? The notoriously thin-skinned Putin, who has already withdrawn his ambassador from Britain?

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow on Thursday, Putin warned the Western allies to cease their escalation in Ukraine, stressing he's willing to use "all weapons" in the Russian arsenal in the scenario that Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad comes under attack.

"The drills in the Baltic Sea, following one another… Then the attempts to arrest our ships and vessels. All this is an escalation. And then we began to hear statements regarding the Kaliningrad region. If it comes to direct attack against the Russian Federation, in this case on Kaliningrad and possibly some other territories, of course the issue of using all weapons in our country’s arsenal will inevitably and unavoidably emerge on the agenda. This is unavoidable."

NATO held recent military drills near Kaliningrad which Putin referenced in his remarks.

The warning sent to NATO echoed statements issued by several Russian embassies in Europe this week which said that Moscow has "information that NATO is preparing (an) air and naval blockade of Kaliningrad and Kaliningrad region."

Moscow at the start of the week took the rare step of sending a formal letter to NATO leadership in Brussels.

The letter accused NATO of an "unprecedented escalation of the military-political situation around Russia's region of Kaliningrad accompanied by highly provocative public statements by NATO Allies' officials. This dangerous and reckless course entails high risk of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict with the possibility of Russian strikes against decision-making centres of the alliance's member states right from the outset of the conflict."

I hope Sky is congratulating itself on a job well done. Was it any good, this show that seems to be precipitating World War Three? Lucy Mangan reviewed it for the Guardian. "Gove, Harman and Sturgeon are fabulously awful. Stiff, self-conscious, self-important, entirely unable to give any portion of themselves up to the purported reality or the flow of the thing. Sturgeon is an alternately whining and furious goblin, Harman a disappointed schoolmarm and, though I suspect he is desperate to do so, Gove cannot modulate his perma-condescending tone – whether he is addressing his fellow cabinet members, his military advisers or the nation."

There will be plenty Sky viewers out there who now believe that Gove is indeed Prime Minister and that Russia has engaged in an escalating series of attacks on Britain and those viewers will be clamouring to join up to do their bit. Maybe that was the purpose after all.

OBITUARY CORNER: Another National Treasure Dies.

From mr ishmael's archives.

Aghast and open-mouthed I can watch all sorts of rubbish on the box. mrs ishmael often enquires You gotta brain the size of the planet, why're you watching this shit and I always respond Because it is; even so, I have never been able to tolerate Cruelty TeeVee and have been banging-on about it for as long as me and stanislav have been blogging.

I guess it started in this country with nonce-lover, Esther Rantzen, and her hideous smirk-show, That's Life.

this below, from Victor Lewis-Smith in the Evening Standard:

THAT'S LIFE!

In life, there are some certainties. Tributes always flood in (they never trickle), lucre is always filthy, virtues are always extolled, rises are always meteoric, gauntlets are always run. And on That's Life!, no matter how pitifully tragic a story they might be relating, you won't have to wait long for a gratuitous mention of either willies or titties. This week we had both.

It's significant that the first word in the opening titles is "Help" because Esther and her catatonic catamites desperately need some. For twenty-one years they've been getting away with murder - shamelessly repeating the same shallow format of vulgar misprints mixed with tales of stupid people who've given money to clever people - but now their show is on Death Row, with the execution date already fixed. On Saturday night, the Patron Saint of Patronisers appeared, wearing a startled expression usually only seen on the faces of blow-up sex dolls, and dressed in a yellow number that made her look like a tube of mustard surmounted by Shergar's teeth. She'd even chosen to make her entrance through the studio audience; presumably, she thought ordinary people might like a last chance to touch the hem of her garment, before she departs at Easter.

By piggy-backing on Atrocity Ratso managed eventually to deify herself, well, in her own eyes, anyway.
Her dodgy past, though, as dodgy pasts do, caught up with her and with her customary psychopathic bare-faced cheek

the mangy old crow claimed that when, years ago, she was sucking Sir Nicky Fairbairn, MP's cock she didn't know that he rammed it up children, was a child rapist and maybe much worse.
Well, how would she?

Rantzen, had not at that point opportunistically developed her self-glorifying, phoney Childline persona and the ability to spot a nonce at a hundred metres, unless it was Sir Jimmy Savile.

I can do this to your cock, I'd love the taste of broken children on it. Why don't we start a charity. for abused children, yeah, I know, hilarious. But we'd make a fortune.

No, you're alright, love, a bit old for me; twelve, thirteen, that's my top limit.

or indeed any other pushy, showy pervert fingering, buggering and murdering his way through a gilded career in MediaMinster.

Rantzen's That's Life schtick was as Lewis-Smith describes, the cruel and spiteful presentation of the foibles of the poor by the mocking rich. The flea-bitten old slag can take historical credit not for helping children but for inventing Cruelty TeeVee, a genre in which people who have been to university, people who have had the good fortune to receive a bit of education mock, lampoon and ridicule those less fortunate.

Arise Dame Esther.

Rantzen, after a lifetime of trashing around with filth, has been made one of our betters, or that's the theory; now all those screeching panel show hosts, on whose shows the ghastly old crow continues to sicken the nation will have to refer to her more respectfully. A manky old cheapshit dame for cheapshit telly.

Run by Oxbridgers, homosexuals, child molesters and thieves, the PBC is Rantzen's home away from home and it was there that she revealed her true grimy, showbiz colours; she was reading the notification of her bauble, she hissed, and her daughter started dancing round the kitchen in delight and then, as the news sunk in, Esther, too, started dancing round the kitchen with her. Rantzen the nonces' friend and champion had been given an award in recognition of her role in a showbiz child protection scam; dancing, mind, dancing.

GOOD DOG, ESTHER

A mad dog is to stand as an independent candidate in Luton, should there be a general election. Well, you know, everybody says I'm crazy and I am, says the horrid, mouthy old bitch, but you see I just can't fade away and go into an old dogs' home, not after I have been so famous. Do you want to see my thong? Grrr, grrrr. Vote for me, help teach an old dog new tricks.

Emeritus professor of Newsnight Review and ludicrous Big Brother contestant, Dr Germaine Greer, below

said "That toothy old Sheila bangs like a shithouse door in a gale, probably fuck her way through the constituency, if she can be an MP so can I, 'strewth, I been on as much telly as her. (sings) Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters..."
Professor Greer has issued this leaflet as the opening shot in her election campaign,

which, it is said, has Ms Rantzen, seventy-tooth, sorry, seventy-two, biting her tail in rage.

Yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, whine, whine, whine, whine; over-rehearsed, platitudinous, corny, tub-thumping, shameless, self-promotion after over-rehearsed, platitudinous, corny…. etc., etc..

God Al-fucking-Mighty, cry Havoc and let slip the Dogs of Ruin; Esther fucking Rantzen, Jesus fucking Wept.

I WANNA BE ELECTED, MS RANTZEN, 71.

It's all quite appalling, said toothy old dog, Esther, a fierce self-publicist, I haven't been on TV for ages, despite my thong and everything, at least this way I shall be on TV all the time, again. Wanna see my teeth, big boy ? I'm a widow, y'know.

Fuck me, no, said the Luton voter, first Mags DryRot and now this brazen old minger, shouldering her way in. Next thing it'll be Wotsername, the old drunk, FagAsh Lil, Germane Greer, the female bollock, her, off the telly. It's the BNP for me, lads.

Revealing her true colours in an interview with the PBC:

Well, Jonathan, and I agree with all the other members of the panel, except that I'd like to talk about myself, now that I'm a politician and people in my constituency tell me that it's time I did something Rantzenish. And that's just what I'm gonna do. No, I'm not gonna show you my thing, I mean my thong, however (ghastly, nightmare, coquettish grin-cum-snarl) much you'd like me to. But instead I'm gonna do something which showed just how wonderful and caring and suited for Power I am. Listeners may remember...

If you could get .....

....no, Jonathan, I am, really I am, and let's face it, I did run the most successful television show ever, for forty years, so I'm sure I can hold down this little slot, here, on Radio Fuddy-Duddy, without boring too many of your one-foot-in-the-gravers......

.......to the point

.........and so the thing is, that, you know how we did KidsLine, or whatever it was, and immediately stopped all forms of child abuse, or at least got my picture in the paper - still does, actually, from time to time - and gave the little darlings something to talk to strangers about, on the phone, I mean, does it matter if it was true, it's the kids who matter here...

..if you would just

......and so I thought I'd do the same with the boys - and maybe the girls, but I'm not too sure about them, bit butch, by all accounts - out there in Kuwait, or wherever, and that I could be their sweetheart, I could be there, on the end of the Troopsline telephone, I mean they're not all gay, not even the First Batallion, The Queen's Own Nancyboys, and maybe they'd just like to talk privately to a hot-blooded, mature woman who knows what makes men tick and who might be able to offer them some relief from all that dreadful stress, I mean seeing how they're fighting and dying for us I could do them at £1.50 a minute, Troopsline With Esther, the Forces' GrannySlutBint....

......shut the fuck up.

TALK TO THE MERRY WIDOW OF LUTON

£1.50 PER MINUTE.

NATURE CORNER

By way of a palate cleanser.

Climbing the hill that rises behind my Yorkshire village the other afternoon, we noticed a wind hover riding the currents, high in the intense blue October sky, swooping and soaring. Just then, like two fighter planes scrambling to intercept incomers, two crows launched themselves at the kestrel, one feinting, the other swooping down and driving it back. It recovered and returned to the fight, when, amazingly, one crow flew in close and pecked its wing, causing its complete retreat.

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

Emily Bronte

And in Orkney news, the Genesis fishing boat struck rocks off the west coast of the island of Hoy and issued a mayday call last week. The RNLI lifeboat from Stromness turned out, along with coastguard helicopters from Sumburgh and Stornoway, and the Northlink passenger ferry Hamnavoe, which launched its fast-rescue boat.

All of the crew members were winched to safety by a Coastguard helicopter and taken to shore.

The fishing boat remains grounded and the coastguard tug and counter pollution teams have been sent to the scene.

A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: "Just after 06:30 on 1 October, HM Coastguard received a report that a fishing vessel with 17 people on board had gone aground at the Old Man of Hoy, Orkney Islands and was in need of immediate assistance.

"The vessel also issued a Mayday asking for assistance to evacuate the people on board."

A rescue helicopter hovers beside a fishing boat near towering red sandstone cliffs, while a lifeboat waits nearby on the sea.

Police Scotland and Scottish Ambulance Service were also in attendance.

The HM Coastguard Emergency Towing Vessel (ETV) has been dispatched and the HM Coastguard Counter Pollution team and other relevant authorities have been informed.

Mark Wrigley, from Leeds, who was on the Hamnavoe said an announcement was made telling passengers the ferry was going to assist. He said: "It was quite a distance but you could quite clearly see a boat on the rocks and there was a couple of boats in the water. The RNLI were there and then they were joined by a coastguard helicopter."

He said rescuers winched the fishermen into the helicopter two at a time very close to the Old Man of Hoy rocks.

"I was absolute in awe of the people who were doing the rescue," he added.

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

Sunday, 27 September 2026

The Sunday Ishmael: 27/09/2026

Conference season in full swing, with Andy Burnham delighting everyone by telling us how much he loves being Prime Minister. Because, Laura, it is for the people, I love being Prime Minister so I can create change for the people. Yes, Prime Minister, but which people? And what sort of change? Because we've not been too chuffed with the kind of change already perpetrated on the people.

Here's Andy, in his contact lenses, skipping along and holding firmly onto Mrs Burnham - she of the very strange dress sense. Is that an enormous purple pretend-leather skirt she's wearing? Why? A bit chilly in Liverpool's conference centre? Here's a close-up of the happy couple

No, really, that's a bit much. There's too much of this slop in public life.

Stop it, mrs ishmael. It is too, too upsetting - ed.

I warned you - just cut it out.

Ok. Back to Mr and Mrs Burnham. She's just given up her job to support Andy in being Prime Minister. Honest, not invent. That, presumably, is why he is clutching her hand. She is his support person.

Mrs. Burnham, aka Ms van Heel, 56, has worked for Be.EV, a Manchester-based electric vehicle charging network since 2024. Greater things have called her, however, and she went with Andy to the UN general assembly in New York where she held meetings with the Dwarf Zelensky's wife, Olena, and Diana Carney, wife of the Canadian prime minister. And she went to a lunch hosted by Melania Trump. Soft power, eh, girls? And purpleleather skirts.

Back to Conference. Everyone is happy that Starmer's been defenestrated and that Andy Northern will win them another election. Hah. That depends, dear boy, on events. All very well you snuggling up to your low IQ backbenchers with promises that "National security cannot come at the expense of social security". Neat little soundbite. But, maybe, just maybe, it should. If we have no defence capability then another, better armed and more belligerent nation unconcerned with welfare but utterly committed to warfare, might decide that now is the time to snap up Britain and be buggered to the triple lock pension, and the 6.9 million people on disability benefits out of a total population of 69.5 million people.

Burnham's Big Idea for Conference is to sort out social care by setting up a national social care service, on the same lines as the national health service - free at the point of need, the whole nation sharing the costs of someone's grandad's care home. Given the Labour Backbenchers' visceral rejection of means testing, presumably this means additional taxation to fund the care needs of those well able to afford it, but reluctant to do so as they want to leave their nest egg to their own progeny and want me, the taxpayer, to pay up.

Burnham has cited the success of the Scottish care system, where personal care is free. What he does not mention is that personal care - the hands on, dirty stuff, is free, but everything else costs. Hotel costs, rent, domestic tasks, shopping, gardening etc. A care home in Scotland costs as much as a care home in England, despite these "free" personal care tasks. And the local authority book keepers take great care to ensure that anything that can be charged for, is charged for. The bed blocking in Scottish hospitals is caused in part by relatives reluctant to get their fit family member out of the hospital and into the care home because the care home costs money and the hospital is free. That is the bit that needs reforming. The NHS side of the equation. Charge for the beds, the laundry, the cleaning, the food, the potted plants, the heating, the water and the rates in the same way that care homes do. Disincentivise long stay bed blocking. Provide medical care free, but charge for the rest. Scotland's system is in utter chaos - last year they abandoned their expensive plans to create a joint Health and Care Service because it is unworkable given the contrasting funding structures.

But Andy doesn't want to deal in facts, just soundbites. And no-one is allowed to mess with the hallowed NHS.

Mark Carney and Andy Burnham, doing politics differently. This is only appealing if you happen to like football. And I don't.

Northumberland was fabulous, as always. I'm going back in early May to see Alnwick Castle Garden's Cherry Orchard in full blossom.

It was fabulous in September, with the leaves just turning and the swings moving in the breeze through the orchard.

But the blossom is the real thing. The Cherry Orchard was planted in 2008 and has the largest collection of 329 Taihaku trees in the world. Also known as the ‘Great White’, Taihaku are large and sturdy trees, that bloom for two weeks in spring with huge snow like clusters. In autumn the leaves turn a beautiful coppery colour. In Japan, cherry blossom has a deep cultural significance and represents the exquisite beauty and also the fragility of life. But the Taihaku became extinct in Japan. Captain Collingwood Ingham (known as Cherry Ingram, on account of his preoccupation with cherry trees) visited Japan in 1926 to give a lecture to the Sakurai Society. He was shown an illustration in an 18th century book of the extinct tree and recognised that he had seen it in a Sussex garden, where it had been imported in 1899. Cherry Ingram took cuttings from that tree and reintroduced it to Japan in 1932. All the Taihaku in cultivation today are descended from that lone Sussex tree. Yes, of course I want one! Unfortunately, my tiny courtyard garden is too small to invite a Taihaku to move in.

Alnwick's Cherry Orchard

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.

Friday, 18 September 2026

All the leaves are brown

That's summer done with for another year. As you know, I'm off on holiday, so I thought I'd leave you something to read in my absence. No apologies for re-posting, as it is stanislav on cracking form.

Summer with stanislav, a memoir.

stanislav visitors have, come up in Scotland, best part of England, from Western Middle Lands. Is old chum and Mrs but fuck me, is pain in bastard arse. Drive down in stanislav lane ripping-up hedge with big fuck-off mobile home, not Winnebago or anything, just load of plywood and teak-effect plastic shoved inside big, noisy Citroen diesel van, banging and fucking clattering to wake the fucking dead, engine sound like someone shaking set of spanners inside biscuit tin – come in, mind your head, whoops, watch that step, look, looks like cupboard but press this handle and look...... is ok, work in a minute..... stick sometimes, have to take back to dealer and get fix, is only toothing trouble, three-piece suite and coffee table normally fold out from tiny little cupboard so guest and fellow campervanners can sit around in shorts, singing and having good time, like fucking Hitler Youth - cost forty fucking grand, honest, not invent, forty fucking grand, can buy stonking BMW and still stay in top jolly hotel for forty fucking grand and also not be driving about with shit cassette under feet.

Is call cassette but is shit bucket just as same. stanislav plumber is but draw fucking line at driving around in mobile toilet and need airfield to turn around in bastard thing. How would look in car crash, shit flying all over the shop and bog roll, only is not proper bog roll but that stuff, thin and cold, IZAL, good for fuck all, not even for wiping of arsehole which is supposed to be; every bastard with mobile home has IZAL toilet paper, only isn’t toilet paper but bad fucking joke, like in Viz magazine, or Jeyes, sometime is Jeyes but same old fucking rubbish is. What for you have this fucking rubbish? Is bad enough take dump in van like fucking savage but then can’t even wipe rusty sheriff badge clean but instead smear shit all over bottom, like Jock, or finger go through and get all filthied-up with spread-out bit of shit, better would be with handful of grass from roadside and never mind IZAL trick bogroll. Manufacturer of IZAL is rolling about on floor, laughing off bollocks at mobile home driver and boy scout. Fucking stuff medicated is called, IZAL Medicated, like arse and fingers and underpant covered in shit is some kind of medicated.

Is all to do with weight, says chum, like was fucking Apollo mission and not rust-before-your-eyes plumber van conversion, it’s lighter. Lighter? Is fucking rubbish is what it is. Is better off not wipe arse at all and hope for best and have good half hour in bidet at home than fuck about with IZAL. Can stay in Travelodge for nearly fuck all and take dog, Buster, and get breakfast…. Ah, but we were able to pull over by a lochside and smugly make a cup of smug tea and no milk because I am watching my cholesterol and I drink Redbush tea because I like to think that everytime I have a cuppa some money is going to those huge traditionally-built women in Botswanaland, even though it isn’t. So fucking what, is fucking Thermos flask in Tesco for fiver and not forty fucking grand. And not get disenfranchised in great arse-wiping democracy of Life.

And mould is growing all around windows, would be alright on narrow boat down canal with old codgers in waistcoat and moleskin trouser and kerchief round fucking neck, like cunt, walk upside-down through fucking tunnel and stop at Black Country pub like was Fred fucking Dibnah and eat faggot and fucking pea, mould is quite decorative but rubbish all the same, never get mould growing on BMW. And can sleep, reclined, in shiny black Seven series bought for a few grand and park near public toilet - only not in Wales or anywhere is lorry drivers, could solve all murder or nearly all, apart from people killed by constabulary in split-second, life-saving, empty-magazine-in-skull decision, just by putting all lorry driver in fucking Dartmoor, just round the bastards up, especially those cunts in ties, lorry driver in fucking tie, who ever heard of such shit, needs quick rub-down with housebrick, fucking bastards, "wear this fucking tie under your brown overalls and salute every bastard who look in your cab". Best is to go in fucking hotel with four stars on, like Christian and not sleep in smelly old van like Pikey. Maybe Pikey is Christian but act even less like Christian than proper Christian, like Presbyterian nutter in Downing Street, horrible fucking bastard. stanislav have many disagreeable encounter with Pikey and is unfailingly bastard and put in jail should be. Is only any good for go and live next door to Tessa fucking Jowell and burn tyres in field. Get Pikey come and do tarmac in plumbing yard once and fuck me was like surface of fucking moon. Is rude, ignorant, thieving, cheating, smelly useless bastard and sonoffuckingbitch, every single one has ever met is nasty arsehole, is not prejudice, is what clever bastard call empiricism, never in whole life has met Pikey was good for fuck all - And also in Beemer can go up motorway at hundred and twenty miles an hour at 500 rpm and not trundle along at sixty with engine banging and shit bucket slopping everywhere and exhaust fume pouring in. Fucking rubbish. Can buy eight good BMW for cost of smelly old van falling to bits and never in a hundred years work right; wiring is always wrong, turn on tap and hazard lights flash, fridge is always fucked, cooker only fucking work on fucking Wednesday, never mind, can get fish and chip, and eat in van, all relaxed, maybe with door open and swarm of midge sucking blood from fucking body and transfusion will need from nearest hospital a hundred fucking miles away, and if shunt has fucking thing falls apart like was made by life-sentence prisoner out of Swan Vestas and blow away down fucking motorway in splinter and bits of shit plastic and gay crewcut Motorway Old Bill in hi-vis jacket stand smirking, looking to make arrest, because all copper is bastard, right? as if forty grand blowing away down Southbound M6 is not enough shit for one day. Allo allo allo, sir, what's all this not here then ? Can’t stand-up and walk about in BMW but can’t stand-up and walk about in camper van, either, only after fashion - stoop over, just right to get slip fucking disc and scream like bastard and wind up with blue badge on car and every bastard saying You ain’t disabled, disabled people no legs has, look, you legs has got, is fucking cheat and steal my parking space, I could go in there - or if is dwarf, like Hazel Blears, can jump up and down in campervan. But no use is to normal-size person. Fred West had fucking camper van and look at him, spent his spare time chopping people up, squeeze into box and bury under patio, like on Brookside. Fred was made mad having to cope with life inside rubbish camper van, driving round Forest of fucking Dean, banging fucking head and choking on shit fumes and pots and pans falling out from cupboard every time is a bend, no fucking wonder was serial killer. Was very nice bloke by all accounts, apart from being raving lunatic and him and Rose killing people, mainly children. Bit like Tony and Imelda, only not so accomplished.

Retirement, something happens and every bastard wants to sleep in van at lochside, is like Candice Marie and Keith, from Nut in May, pair of stupid, fucked-up, calorie-counting, bird-watching, shitbrain useless mouthy bastard, only on wheels, Look at Us, here we are in our camper van, Silver FoxesRus. Can’t change fucking fuse at home and have to become best friends for life with builder and electrician and Godfather to all their horrible bastards or else house fall down but see a camper van and metamorphose into capable, derring fucking do Kings From Wild Frontier.

Often see iron-muscled, greyhair German lesbian professors riding round High Jocklands, crying, on big, farty Harley-Davidsons and that’s OK, apart from being Dykes and Hermans, of course. Always seem to be crying over some lost Helga, I giff her all zat money und pussy-munching und still she haf run away mit filthy man, Donner und Blitzen, mit nasty cock und balls, ze dirty bitch, how I loved mein Helga und zis how she treat me is, I vill ride up to John of Groat and drive into ze Pentland Firth und drown, or maybe I vill go back in Stuttgart und check-out zat little minx, Heidi, mit ze pigtails. And is other band of nutters who jump on bicycle and pedal like demented hobgoblin speedfreaks up highest roads in the country shouting Gimme A Fucking Heart Attack, I Can’t Stand Being A Teacher For Another Twenty Years! Is fucking rubbish, driving in High Jockland in Summertime. Road is rubbish at best of time but filled-up with Herman lesbian Hells Angel and demented lunatic nutter on bikes and smug bastard in camper vans is like something off Prisoner programme with Patrick McGoohan, dead now, of course, but was nearly a hundred and so never mind. I’ll be seeing you. But not for a very, very long time.

These two are old friends otherwise should have said when they arrive, OK van is so good, sleep in fucking van and not come in stanislav gaff with proper toilet and bathroom and quadruple thickness Andrex bogroll and bed made from treewood with sheet and pillow made of Egyptian fucking cotton from Mark and Spencer and not made from Jap wipe-clean fucking plastic, like in van and Mr not have to go and stumble round in dark, thistly wilderness while Mrs takes dump in van and vice versa, look, is toilet each, both can go and dump, and not in fucking bedroom. Joined together in holy deadlock is all very well but is only for sick and health and rich or poor and not for content of bowels, unless, of course, is Liberal Democrat.

stanislav and Mrs stay in hotel often and is always en fucking suite arrangement, as though having shithouse in bedroom was great idea and height of civilisation and everything and get extra stars off extortionist bastard at JockTourist Board and AA, as though ancestors come crawling out from sea and into cave and up fucking tree and across plain and make tools and farming and Internet just so’s can have shit in bedroom, fuck me, was better off in fucking ocean at least can swim away from turd and not have to pretend is no smell. Oh, fuck me, visitors, this is the Executive Master Bedroom, look, has fitted wardrobe and matching bedside table all made from best compressed Executive cardboard to match and tone-in with the one-inch skirting board, and this, this little plywood cupboard over here, in the corner, this is the shithouse, opening right up into the bedroom, it is a miserable stinky little shithouse but we call it the Ahn Sweet, windows? no, fuck me, it doesn't have any windows. But it has an automatic six-volt extraction fan which sometimes works but not very well. Soundproof? No, not really, the Mrs and I just love to lie here listening to each other farting and splashing and splattering away, it's quite romantic really, especially after a night on the Vindaloo and we both have a case of le posterieur flambee and it sounds like the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is rehearsing in there. We call it a pebble-dashing moment. Quite romantic. Clean my teeth ? Course I clean my teeth. And yes, I do keep my toothbrush in the Ahn Sweet shithouse. What of it?

But Mrs and stan would rather have third degree constipation than use ensuite for anything else but having shower in, and maybe steal towel or two. Is easy to go down to shithouse in bar or dining room and not stink-up bedroom which is bad enough, anyway, with dog, Buster, is old boy now and sometimes stink like rotten hedgehog although since several hundred pound of VetBastardUlike dental work is not so bad, or only from one end anyway. Can never understand why anybody would think that combine shithouse and bedroom is good idea. But is better than ensuite camper van. Imagine, on some lonely mountainside, is in pitch black and hubby goes for walk with dog, so Mrs can dump in private and comes back and find Mrs sat outside van in gale and is saying Would give it half of fucking hour, darling, before going in there is.

But it wasn’t just the van. Fuck me, no.

To be continued........

Anyway, bad from fucking worse is gone to. This year is outbreak of SilverFox Hell Angel lunacy. Is not just poxy shit van clogging-up on fucking motorway and can’t even stop in layby because of too many smug old bastards sitting at table outside van, drinking FairfuckingTrade cuppa, not too strong and made with pissmilk and handful of sweetener for heart and horrid old legs all fucked-up with varicose veins and every bastard can see because of shorts, even though brass bollocks would freeze-off from monkey, up here in Scotland, best part of England, Is fucking nuisance, vanhome driver, no fucker wants to see countryside all fucked up with horror show of pasty old bastard sunbathing in fucking public and probably pile has got, too, all around arsehole, and maybe hanging-out, from sitting outside in short and fucking gale blowing is up arse from Arctic fucking Circle and mean tight-fisting use of Izal joke bogroll but isn’t roll but leaves of piss-thin hard shiny so-call toiletpaper and good for fuck all is and not only hand goes through and covered-up in shit is but fucking watertap in van not working as usual is and no matter what vanman does, is standing with cheeks of arse as far apart as possible is, which is not very much, and keeping shitfinger hand up in air and trying hard not to do breathing-in and stomping on little foot switch to make water come and at least can wash fucking shit off from hand but instead of water coming from tap fucking hazard light coming on is instead. And radio. Is Radio Scotland and, believe stanislav, is worst noise since beginning of time and big fucking bang. Radio Scotland is all run by homo, in skirt, call Jamie and Fergus and Donald and just dreadful noise is of bagpipe, fuck me, sounds like massacre in cat sanctuary, run by mad old lady who is dead in living room from hypothermia from spending all money on Kit-E-Kat and cruel, wicked bastard at Scottish fucking Gas has cut off power and local nutter with chainsaw bought from car boot sale has seize golden opportunity and old lady’s assorted cats disembowlered is being, one at a time, by giggling nutter, Here, Kitty-Kitty, Here Kitty- Kitty so even cats not actually being mutilated to death is all freaked out and screeching and climbing up cage walls, Radio Scotland bagpipe concert is worse than massive cat massacre. And then is worse, is fucking Jock Polka music, play on wheezy old accordion, made from shiny tin and plastic and sacking and hundreds of fucking keys and buttons so many that playing it must hit and fucking miss be, sounds like it, anyway, is like Oompah band from Black Forest, but backwards. And is for decrepit old Jock in wig and false tooth and skirt to seduce old lady Jock down in Clackmacfuckery Village Hall and feel-up have of her bony old arse before the bus comes to take him back to the old Jocks’ home. The one with the Polish nurses. And would ye be doin’ me the honour of having the next Polka with me, Jings, but you’re a right bonny lass, indeed y’are, he leers, at a spindle-thin, one foot in the grave, eighty year old, the dirty filthy old bastard, Bagpipe, fiddle and accordion Polka music. Is Radio Scotland music, hour after fucking hour, is worse than Hell. Anyway hazard light flashing off and on, is nightmare noise from radio, and can’t wash hand or wipe arse and better off dead would be, or at very least in fucking prison where vanmadness opportunity is minimal, so bloke has to go outside with shorts round ankle and grab handful of grass and wipe arse and fingers like fucking savage is and fucking van cost forty fucking grand and every bastard knows that grass up arse is primary cause of pile, especially when is not even fucking grass but fucking thistle. And people going past in proper car all shouting and hooting is, Look, silly old bastard, sticking thistle up arse, must demented be, maybe is Terry fucking Pratchett and suicide attempting is by anal lacerations off thistle, is fucking really mad, fuck me, don’t wanna get that dementia rubbish and run around like loony, with shorts round ankles and thistle and nettles up arse and shit on fingers.

Best thing in situation like this is stick shitty fingers in ground as if shovel was and keep on stabbing in ground until has hand covered in just dirt and not shit and can touch clothing, then is to remove short and use y-front underpant to wipe off arse and when no-one passing is in proper car, throwaway in hedge, only not where dog, Jasper, can go and pull out and start to eat and maybe get Y-front stuck over head and normal bastard, going past in proper car is on mobile phone to cop and RSPCA, Allo? Allo? ….Is polis? Right… SeeYouJimmy?..... Is fucking pervert here, on A9, and dog has got head in underpants and poo…. Nah, is not skidmark,……is proper poo…dunno…..might be dogpoo…but might be yuman poo…bloke looks like fucking nutter and thistle has sticking out from arse…I know….all sorts takes,….but fuck me, Jesus….and shit has got all over hand….no….is not car………van is….with awning and elevating roof….no, is not Volkswagen…..is Hobbyhome….no…straightup….is call Hobbyhome, Yeah, is plumbervan, all filled up with plywood furniture and things that don’t work. Better come and arrest him, aye, before he starts sticking yon fucking thistles up the puir wee dog’s ….Aye, English by the look of him.

But the main innovation in vanworld this year, was the motor scooter, all tied-up on the back, clever, see, when you get to favoured lochside cup of smug tea position - assuming is space and not all occupy is by other greyhair, varicose-vein, pile-smitten SilverFox, Hell Angel, stupid old vanster - can just wrestle motorscooter off from van, is easy, really, not really heavy, just awkward, is all, could lift motorscooter up an down all day fucking long, no sweat.

What? Can ride motorbike with pile, or several? Round arse? Oh, there's creams, and sprays, they're very good. Would want to be very fucking good, good like diamorphine is, zonked from fucking mind stanislav would want to be, riding motorbike with thistle-aggravated pile round arse on bumpy Jock road. Can go on S and M holiday, you know, even old bastards like you, can dress-up in leather and rubber and plastic and some bastard can smack arse with thistle and no danger is of falling-off from motorbike, probably even have proper toilet in S and M hotel and not shit cassette, sliding about, under driving seat; is much easier than this shit and not cost forty grand and then ten grand for motor scooter to tie on back. No, it's cool really, we just drive where we wanna be and then go off and explore, on the bike. Like in Easy Rider. And you know what happened to them, innit? No, bike on back of grossed-out plumbervan with inoperating integral sanitation and plywood furniture and trick toilet paper, is all bollocks.

Is brilliant new solution and little cost is to LibDem planet of Future and billion of horrible little LibDem grandchildren, for whom selfish, smelly old pensioner must now freeze to fucking death and starve, both all at same fucking time. SmartCar can fix-up on back of Campervan, with A-frame, lots of people do and go off in Portugal, maybe help give with search for McCannBastards child, has to be out there somewhere, that's what Gerry and Cilla say. And they should know. Doctors and everything. Wonder they was not here in UK, to get blessing off Pope Noncio. And maybe few quid, out from poor box, expensive business, defending doctorvirtue. But Smartcar on Campervan idea has one big flaw, would be better, especially for pile on arse, to just leave campervan at home, on the drive, blocking the neighbours' light, or maybe halfway on the drive and halfway on the pavement, so's the pushchairs and the old people have all the excitement of walking out in the road and maybe being killed or crippled just so's you can have a cheap, Andrex-free holiday - Oh, they're magic, Ken and Yvonne, they really don't mind the neighbourhood looking like a campsite, no, really, just a happy-go-lucky, park that fucking vehicular abortion right next to my front garden, go on, 'swhat good neighbours are for couple...What...lend them the campervan? Ken and Yvonne? Well I would, of course, it's just the insurance....

Go on holiday in SmartCar and stay in proper fucking hotel.

Sunday, 13 September 2026

The Sunday Ishmael: 13/09/2026

Sorry I was missing last Sunday - I had a friend staying and she had to be shown some Yorkshire - we visited the Open Garden at Clifton Castle last Sunday. Do you know about the Open Garden scheme?

The National Garden Scheme gives visitors unique access to over 3,300 exceptional private gardens in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, on specified days and raises impressive amounts of money for nursing and health charities through admissions, tea and cake. The 2026 season is just about finished but bear it in mind for next year, if you like noseying about in other people's gardens. And we did Rievaulx Abbey ruins, and Mount Grace Priory, a little light shopping and drank copious quantities of red wine. So I've been in recovery.

It still seems to be the silly season although Parliamentarians have gone back to work, having had their 6 weeks off. The story much occupying minds is the news that AI will kill off the human race in 10 years. Oh, no, it won't. Oh yes, it will. What, Pantomime season already? Why would AI do such a silly thing? AI does not have desires, goals, instincts, agency, self‑preservation or consciousness. But humans love a good Frankenstein story: the worry that something we build escapes control. Sometimes it does - take Covid as a case in point. Or industrial revolution steam engines and factories destroying society. Or nuclear technology - total annihilation being a bit of a worry. So, although AI won't go on a killing rampage, human actors could use it to blow stuff up, close stuff down, destroy crops, etc. It's humans you have to worry about. The gun doesn't have agency. But the human who uses it to shoot an animal or fellow human, does.

The other matter that is causing the Omni-Party a headache is the irresistible rise of Nigel Farage and the fact that billionaires will keep on giving him money. So upset are Labour that they are about to introduce legislation to take Nigel's donations away. Retrospectively. Big Ange turned out to be surprisingly erudite on the politics shows this morning, using the word "donator" to describe said kindly billionaires. Donator is seldom seen these days, appearing only occasionally in legal writing or older texts. The dominant and preferred term is donor. As in blood donor, organ donor, major donor. I think she just fell over her tongue again. No wonder Labour are frit. With the sort of money Reform now has in its election battle chest, it is a done deal. Especially with Ed Miliband, the evil fucking bastard, doing his damnedest to destroy Britain. Burnham had him out of his

Energy Secretary role, thank god, so there's a chance now for the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas sites to start generating some fossil fuels and save Britain. Trouble is, Milipede has taken his zealotry off into the Foreign Office - did Burnham ever really think that would end well? And now he has alienated Israel and America by imposing sanctions on the settlements in Judea and Samaria in order to placate left-wing Labour and bring back the Muslim vote for Labour. So now all the major world powers hate Britain. Way to go, nutjobs.

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." William Morris.

Doesn't apply to Trafalgar Square, obviously.

The perpetrator of this "statue" that now occupies the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is Tschabalala Self. She says that she designed Lady in Blue as a monument to an “everywoman” — a young, metropolitan Londoner, not a hero, monarch, or military figure. Self said she wanted to give “a woman that many can relate to” a monumental presence in a space normally reserved for historic power. Oh no, it's not. For several years now the Fourth Plinth has been occupied by a succession of concepts mocking the West, capitalism and consumerism. Here you go:

Boy on a Rocking Horse - subverting the military equine statue

The End (Heather Phillipson, 2020-2022) A giant whipped ice-cream swirl topped with a fly, a cherry and a drone

Gift Horse (Hans Haacke, 2015–2016)A skeletal horse with a live stock‑ticker ribbon.


Really Good (David Shrigley, 2016–2018) A giant elongated thumbs‑up.

The economic, political and philosophical systems that these artists are mocking are the very systems that allow the artists to produce their work. Biting the hand that feeds them.

The problem lies not with the artists, who are just trying to make a living by hitching their artistry to currently fashionable concepts, but to the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group.

The panel is chaired by the Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries (currently Justine Simons OBE), and includes senior figures from major London art institutions.

Ralph Rugoff — Director, Hayward Gallery

Iwona Blazwick — former Director, Whitechapel Gallery

Hans Ulrich Obrist — Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries

Andrea Rose — former Director of Visual Arts, British Council

Ekow Eshun — writer and curator (Black British)

Louise Shannon — curator, Museum of London

Clare Lilley — Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Simon Groom — Director, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Nicholas Cullinan — Director, National Portrait Gallery.

And they all think the same way. It isn't a conspiracy, there doesn't seem to be any bribery and corruption, it isn't even, despite the appalling thunder-thighed and massively-buttocked black woman in her lapis lazuli dress, an over -reach of racial ideology. The committee share a very specific worldview that contemporary art should be international, not national, that public sculpture should disrupt, not celebrate, that identity politics is culturally relevant, that traditional British symbolism is outdated, that Trafalgar Square should be “reframed” and that conceptual art is more important than craft. This worldview comes from art‑school theory, curatorial fashion, and the globalised museum circuit — not from ethnic politics.

Shit, really. Ruin. Trafalgar Square taken over by a bunch of people who hate Britain, its history, its indigenous art and beauty.

Middle-class England hates it. They buy William Morris wallpapers. They spend their weekends in National Trust and English Heritage Arts and Crafts houses.

Amusingly, although she would never admit it, Self has pulled a blinder on the selection committee. Because her inspiration, we could safely assume, springs from plebeian, populist roots.

Beryl Cook

R. Crumb

Jeff Koons

I'm away next Sunday, in Northumberland - beaches, castles, Craster kippers. So please excuse me, there'll be no Sunday Ishmael next week. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves - of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.