The Sunday Ishmael: 31/05/2026

She appears to have doubled her body weight since escaping Scotland and taking up residence in a luxury apartment in London; as demonstrated by the BBC's cruel choice of  past images of her prancing like a tit on triumphalist platforms in her neat little suits and her neat little mouth.

The neat little mouth is more of a clenched thin line these days, but now she has to go in for the big, blowsy male-cut jackets and trousers to drape her rendition of a rather large dominatrix in vertiginous heels. She ticked the boxes in her carefully-managed, sad presentation on the Laura Kuenssberg Show today: 

• Look, I'm a working class girl from Glasgow
• I'm a loyal and trusting wife whose husband deceived her 
• We never had holidays because I worked so hard as First Minister for Scotland
• We never socialised for ditto reason 
• We don't have children(sob in voice, pause, tears filling eyes, leaving the audience to remember the Miscarriage) 
• I believed the Accountants and Auditors, so its all their fault. 
• No, I haven't formed a new relationship.

It was only when Laura suggested that Nicola may be facing the sequestration of the suburban marital home to recover the £400,000 her husband spaffed on  fancy watches and gold inlaid pepper grinders, not to mention the electric Jaguar and the fancy motor home that we saw a return of the feisty Sturgeon.

 It is ma hame and Ah havenae committed any offences. I was exonerated and fully co-operated with the Polis. The Nae Comment interview Ah gave was on legal advice and didnae mean I was not co-operating. It was all on Peter and he has pleaded guilty and that is that. I liked that necklace and Peter gave it to me as a surprise present when I admired it in that Shetland shop. D'ye think I would hae worn it or used the £5000 pen if I'd known Peter had bought it wi' embezzled funds?

 Did you visit your mother-in-law at all?

 A handfu' o' times.

 Didn't you happen to notice a sodding great luxury motor home parked in the front drive?

 It was parked round the side and I thought it was the neighbour's. And Peter said that because of Covid it would be good to have a motorhame to go campaigning in. Keep us out of hotels, like.

 But you surely noticed a top of the range new Jaguar parked on your own front drive?

 I wasn't a driver and I'm nae interested in cars so I didnae notice it. And Peter said we needed to hae an electric car and this one had a good range. 

 

It really was as bad as that. Nicola Sturgeon's very own Prince Andrew makes an embarrassing tit of himself with Emily Maitlis moment.

The magnificent Joanna Cherry (okay, a nationalist, but nobody's perfect), saw straight through the theatrics, tears and attempts at self-exoneration. Sturgeon's either corrupt or incompetent, she said. If she wasn't complicit in the corruption at the top of the SNP, then she utterly failed to provide oversight, scrutiny and due diligence. Cherry is calling for an Inquiry into what went wrong. John Swinney, First Minister, has refused to have an Inquiry. He says he knows what went wrong. Peter Murrell. Murrell's a self-confessed criminal and there's no need to bother about an Inquiry. Cherry says Swinney's sole purpose as First Minister is to cover-up the mess of the Sturgeon years. Don't forget that John Swinney (former Finance Secretary, former SNP Leader), Colin Beattie (SNP Treasurer), Peter Murrell (former SNP Chief Executive) and Nicola Sturgeon (former First Minister and Leader of the SNP) were best buddies, SNP aristocracy, a powerful little Gang of Four, who hounded Salmond into Court to face charges of which he was exonerated, but which successfully ended his political career. 

Joanna Cherry is reminding us that although Murrell is a useful scapegoat, the question of the missing £600,000 remains unanswered. What happened to it? 

Sturgeon's answer to that is that the SNP party finances went up and down a lot.

Then there's the neat little fact that Murrell's court appearance was "continued" until after the Holyrood elections were held, presumably so that the facts would not be known by voters in case it prejudiced them against the SNP, which, I remind you, has just achieved its fifth consecutive term of office. Swinney is busy pretending that his bare majority, achieved by the votes of a very small turn out, and therefore cannot be seen as the "will of the Scottish people", has been given a mandate to request Westminster for permission to hold another referendum. Well, it will distract the voters from Embezzlement, Incompetence, the Missing £600 grand and the Motorhome. When Westminster refuses, as we can only hope they will hold firm, then the Nats can distract themselves by vilifying the English. 

As usual.

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The 5th June 2026 will be the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the death of Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, at the age of 66. He went down with his ship, the HMS Hampshire, off the coast of Birsay in Orkney, together with 737 of the 749 people aboard.

HMS Hampshire

When I started work in Orkney, I had the privilege of sharing an office with a chap who regaled me with many tales of my newly-adopted homeland. Back then, I didn't know my Royal Oak from my Hampshire and was enthralled by my colleague's tale. In June, 2016, midway through the First World War, HMS Hampshire sailed out  from Scapa Flow on a secret mission to our ally Russia, via the port of Arkhangelsk, loaded with gold for the Russians, carrying national hero Lord Kitchener to do the deal. Kitchener had travelled up  from London by train, before embarking on the Hampshire. Due to the gale-force conditions, Hampshire's route would take it through the Pentland Firth, then turn north along the western coast of the Orkney Islands, accompanied by escorting destroyers,  Unity and Victor. The destroyers  fell behind Hampshire due to the weather conditions and were ordered to return to Scapa Flow.

Alone in heavy seas, Hampshire was approximately 1.5 nautical miles off Mainland in the Orkney Islands between the Brough of Birsay and Marwick Head at 19:40 on 5 June when a devastating explosion occurred, holing the cruiser between bows and bridge, and the lifeboats were smashed against the side of the ship by the heavy seas when they were lowered. About 15 minutes after the explosion, Hampshire sank by the bow. Of the 735 crewmembers and 14 passengers aboard, only 12 crew survived after coming ashore on three Carley floats. A total of 737 were lost, including Kitchener and all the members of the mission to Russia.

It would still be daylight until 11.00 pm at that time of year, and onshore observers from the Royal Garrison Artillery had seen the Hampshire explode. 

Palace village, Birsay

  The postmistress in the remote settlement of Birsay sent an immediate SOS by telegraph to Kirkwall to alert the naval authorities. But the Hampshire went down quickly – time only to launch three small life rafts, which were soon hopelessly overcrowded with desperate sailors. Interviews in the local archives hold the recollections of some of the Orcadians who braved the howling winds and torrential rain to try to rescue those sailors who might make it to the few inlets between the cliffs. They found the life rafts dashed on the rocks, one thrust by the enormous waves into a crevice in the cliffs high above the sea. The official report lists 643 dead, though local historian Brian Budge believes the true figure to be 725. It is certain that there were a mere 12 survivors. Of Lord Kitchener there was no sign at all. Though corpses continued to wash up on Orkney's shores  for weeks afterwards, Kitchener’s body was never found.

Crofters and fishermen ran down to the cliffs with ropes, lanterns, blankets — anything they could grab. But the cliffs at Marwick are sheer, and the sea was smashing against them with such force that no boat could be launched. Soldiers formed a line and barred the Orcadians from the cliffs, some with bayonets fixed. One man said he felt “as if we were watching men die and could do nothing.” Another said the cries of the survivors were carried on the wind but faded quickly.

Local people desperate to rescue the sailors reported their experience of being turned back at the point of a bayonet.  Orcadians believed that British military headquarters ordered the local lifeboat not to put to sea to attempt a rescue.

It was believed that the explosion had blown Hampshire's hull outwards, indicating sabotage. It was reported that two smaller explosions followed.

The wreck is designated as a controlled site under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 at coordinates 59°7.065′N 3°23.843′W and diving is forbidden without a licence. The ship is upside down at a depth of 180–230 feet (30–38 fathoms; 55–70 m) of water.

 According to two men who dived the wreck before the current ban was introduced, she lies upside down on the seabed and you can swim straight into the cavernous engine rooms (“like Westminster Hall”, said one of them.) The ship’s coal-fired boilers hang from the roof above. The bow is severed from the rest of the ship – “It’s a huge hole, almost a third of the length of the ship,” said John Thornton, a Scapa Flow diver.  Veterans of shipwreck investigations say the first thing that sailors do when abandoning ship is to kick off their sea boots: the seabed at the scene of a disaster is generally littered with shoes or relics of shoes. There were none at the site of the Hampshire – evidence, says Thornton, that “the ship went down very fast indeed”.

My colleague told me that day trip outings for old people from the care homes would never go up to that spot because it brought back dreadfully distressing memories, particularly of being prevented from helping the survivors by soldiers. So distressed were local people that they raised the colossal sum of £700 to build a monument. A tower was erected on Marwick Head in 1926 by the people of Orkney to the memory of Kitchener and the officers and men of Hampshire. The Kitchener Memorial is a square, crenellated stone tower with the following inscription:

This tower was raised by the people of Orkney in memory of Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum on that corner of his country which he had served so faithfully nearest to the place where he died on duty. He and his staff perished along with the officers and nearly all the men of HMS Hampshire on 5 June 1916.

Twenty  five years ago I walked up to the Kitchener Memorial on Marwick Head with my dog boys. I don't think I could do it now - it is a very steep climb.
The two files in the National Archives concerning the sinking of the Hampshire remained closed to the public until the end of 2015 and 2025. A  Freedom of Information enquiry after the files were opened revealed nothing to justify the sealing of the records for one hundred years. Had the compromising material been removed?

What was going on? Who wanted Kitchener dead? Where is the gold that Hampshire was carrying to seal negotiations with our Russian ally?  It was said that an expedition jointly sponsored by the arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharov and the German industrialist Gustav Krupp in the 1930s recovered good quantities of it. Was there a German spy on board who set bombs to sink the ship and was taken off the ship by submarine? Fritz Joubert Duquesne – a Boer and German spy – claimed to have assumed the identity of Russian Count Boris Zakrevsky and joined Kitchener in Scotland. Duquesne supposedly signalled a German U-boat shortly after departing Scapa Flow to alert them that Kitchener's ship was approaching. He was then rescued by the submarine as Hampshire sank. 

Was the hull blown out or blown in? Divers are not allowed to go down to check that out.  

 Oscar Wilde’s former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, published a pamphlet setting out his belief that Churchill had plotted Kitchener’s death, engineered the sinking of HMS Hampshire, and had done so for sinister wartime motives. He  alleged Churchill was responsible for “World War I misconduct,” sending the ship  to its doom in return for £40,000. Churchill sued Douglas, who served 6 months imprisonment.

The official story is that much of this is nonsense. Hampshire struck one of several mines laid by the German minelaying submarine U-75 on 28–29 May, just before the Battle of Jutland. 

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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.

Marwick Head

The Sunday Ishmael: 24/05/2026

 

It costs £63,000 per year, per child, to attend this establishment. That cost includes board and lodging and  tuition. You have to buy your own clothes. There is a strict dress code.  To attend you must be male and aged between 13 and 18.  The cost of attending falls on the parent of the child unless a scholarship or bursary is made available. Without such, and most children are not in receipt of those benefits, a  family needs to earn £143,386 per year to send one child there and still retain sufficient income for the necessities of life. The median average salary in Britain is £37,430.

It costs £72,198 per year, per child, to attend this establishment. That cost includes board and lodging and tuition. You do not have to buy your own clothes, which are provided. There is a strict dress code for visitors. You will not be allowed to visit your child unless you adhere to the following guidance:

modest dress only, no work clothes (including uniforms and trousers with multiple pockets), no sports shirts or football shirts, no jumpers or shirts with hoods, no mobile phones, no offensive logos, no sunglasses or headscarves unless worn for religious reasons, no ripped jeans, no vest tops, no short skirts or dresses, they must be knee length.

To attend this establishment you must be male and aged between 15 and 18.  The cost of attending falls on the State. The boroughs supplying the largest numbers of young offenders to this institution e.g. Hounslow, Ealing, Brent, Croydon, Lambeth, Southwark, Newham, are in the bottom 10–20% for income. Because the majority of boys come from these areas, the best evidence‑based inference of household income  is likely to fall in the region of £18,000–£24,000 per year.

Eton, the first establishment, rigorously excludes the academically challenged and, upon leaving Eton, 80 to 90% go straight into Higher Education. Feltham, the second, and more expensive establishment, has a reoffending rate of 70% within a year of release.

Two institutions 20 miles apart. Two utterly different social worlds.

Measure	Feltham Boys	Eton Boys
Household income:	£18k–£24k	£200k+ typical
Neighbourhood deprivation:	Bottom 10%	Top 1–5%
Reoffending rate:	70%	negligible
University entry:	<5%	80–90%
Likelihood of custody:	extremely high	effectively zero

Two groups of boys, 20 miles apart, living in entirely different countries in terms of opportunity, risk, and outcomes. How very British.

Now, are Eton boys essentially more law abiding than the boys who end up in Feltham? Given what we know about the maturation of the brain, that's unlikely. A teenage boy is emotionally immature, neurologically impulsive, driven by peers, unable to link actions to consequences, shaped by pornography and lacking empathy and boundaries. A boy doesn't finish growing his brain until he's in his twenties. So what is going on with the Eton boys that keeps them out of Feltham?

Er- could that be class bias?

Middle‑class boys have better legal representation, parents who advocate, write letters, hire experts, schools that excuse behaviour as “out of character”, judges who do not want to disturb their career trajectory into university, more likely to get community sentences, rehabilitation, sealed records. Whereas working‑class boys have less effective advocacy - the overworked legal aid solicitor, schools that have already excluded them, histories of generational police contact, the stigma of their postcode, judges who see a “pattern” rather than a “mistake” and are more likely to get custody, even when the offence is similar. And, this is a seriously significant factor, middle class boys are more likely to have two parents in the home, whereas Feltham lads are more likely to have been raised by a single parent.

A Utopian solution might be to empty out Eton and replace its customers with the Feltham children. It would be cheaper for the state and if the fabled Eton education lived up to the promise on its website that: " we proudly offer a unique and outstanding education with endless opportunities. Growing up in our boarding community develops personal growth and lifelong friendships in the safety of our wrap-around pastoral care, while nurturing the value of leadership and service", then the saving in human misery to the countless victims of Feltham's graduates reoffending, would add to the jollity of the nation. Wouldn't work, of course, because by the time a child is sentenced to a Young Offender institution, he is already beyond redemption. Even at Eton. Although it would be nice to see them try, instead of wasting all that outstanding education and pastoral care on the already deeply-privileged.
You see, Feltham doesn't rehabilitate anybody. It contains the bodies of the imprisoned, whilst doing worse than nothing for their minds, souls and spirits. It is a horror show of violence and drug addiction. It takes dangerous children and turns them into dangerous men. There are reasons for this. YOIs are not therapeutic environments, staff turnover is high, boys are moved frequently, sentences are often too short for engagement in meaningful change work, the environment is violent, chaotic, and traumatising, group work is unsafe and privacy and trust are impossible.
YOIs are the worst possible setting for treating sexual offending in adolescents. They cannot rehabilitate sexual offenders. They can only punish them. And punishment in and of itself increases risk.
All this was in Judge Nicholas Rowland's mind on Thursday when he sentenced three teenage boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, convicted of raping two girls in separate attacks. They were nasty, nasty offences, made worse by having been carefully planned, the use of a knife and filming the rapes. The film showed the boys, who were 13, 14 and 14 at the time of the rapes, laughing and encouraging each other. The victims, their families, the public, media and pundits are all agreed that the sentencing was ridiculously lenient and only a prison sentence would meet the gravity of the offending. Reading the comments, you'd think the three boys, who have 10 rape convictions between them, had got away scot free. Far from it. The two older boys, now 15, were given three-year Youth Rehabilitation Orders - the longest standard term for a YRO - with 180 days of intensive surveillance and supervision. The youngest boy was given an 18-month YRO. All three boys were also made subject to a three-month curfew and given a restraining order for 10 years not to contact their victims.
That sentence is serious and stands the best chance of changing the life course that they have been pursuing. The Youth Justice Board and NSPCC are very clear that the most effective interventions for child sex offenders are community‑based, specialist programmes delivered by trained psychologists over many months with family involvement, stable education and trauma‑informed practice. Programmes that work on empathy, consent, boundaries, pornography, peer pressure, and distorted beliefs have very low reoffending rates — often under 10%. Contrast that with custody, with its 70% reoffending rate.
The current media-led outcry wants none of those pesky fact thingies. It wants punishment, and will only be satisfied by the reintroduction of 18th century punishments: birching, transportation, hanging. Even though those savage punishments didn't deter children from offending. Historical criminology shows that Victorian youth offending rates were extremely high, pickpocketing, burglary, violence, and sexual offences were common. So why didn't harsh punishments deter children? Because the drivers of youth crime were the same then as now: poverty, neglect, lack of education, trauma, unstable homes, exploitation by adults, peer pressure, lack of opportunity and the use of alcohol and drugs. Punishment didn't work then and doesn't work now. If the media frenzy results in the sentencing being recalled and a Young Offender Institution sentence substituted, then be sure that the custodial sentence will be shorter and will have the effect of making bad worse.
In the meantime, just as householders have had to install Ring doorbells and burglar alarms to protect themselves from burglary, teenage girls should take from this sorry tale that they should protect themselves from rape as far as they are able - don't meet three stranger gypsy lads in an isolated place because they've sent a nice text, for pity's sake. It shouldn't be like that. But it is. ..................................................................................................

They really do take their politics seriously in America, don't they? Another attempt on the President's life. Another assassin shot dead. Some people just don't deserve democracy.

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

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sunday Ishmael: 17/05/2026

 Apologies, Commentariat, I'm aware that I have been neglecting you, but just to let you know I'm in the throes of an imminent house move. It has been creeping up on me, like Christmas does - one day it is January and you are eating up the festive left overs, but before you know it people are organising parties and ordering turkeys. Again. Anyway, I'm in full panic mode. Even the post delivery functionary runs away after throwing letters into the house for fear of being bubble wrapped and boxed.  

That's how the post is delivered here - the door is flung open, the parcel or letters dropped on the floor and photographed and off they go. The other day I received one of those self congratulatory emails from Royal Mail: "We have delivered your parcel, mrs ishmael, how did we do?" And there's a photo of the parcel inside the hall. Except it wasn't my hall. It was some generic white-painted hall, with absolutely no identifying features. Fortunately, the driver had several deliveries in the immediate vicinity and I was able to leap out at him before he could make his getaway. Puzzled, he got out and approached. "Look", I said, "I've got an email saying you've delivered my parcel. But you haven't."

"There's a photo, showing the delivery."

"Maybe so, but it isn't a photo of my house. And there's no parcel."

I was going on to explain about the lack of identifying features and offer to show him the photo, but he held up his finger and said; 

"Stop talking now."

"What...."

"No, Stop Talking. I'm Thinking."

And so he was. I could see the Thoughts going on across the troubled brow. Abruptly, he stopped Thinking and turned to his van. "But my parcel" I wailed.

"I will go and look for it," he reassured me and drove off.

Despite the bubble wrap, I have been aware that it has been a spiffing week in politics. Everyone conspiring and lying and doing the noble thing. Who is running the country while this is going on? Why, the Civil Service, of course, like they always do. Thrown into a frenzy by the Local Elections and Plaid's Welsh triumph, the Labour lot believe that all they have to do is to find a more charismatic leader than Starmer the Nasal Borer and they won't be out of a job. As mr ishmael said: " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men think of their careers."

Joker Josh Simons - he it was who suggested that Channel smuggling gangs should be put on a barge and sent to Scotland. Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, said that was "stupid" and "cringe". Labour MSP Monica Lennon said: "There should be no place in the Labour Party for these disgraceful comments." Simons apologised, saying the remarks were made "in jest". The Scottish Labour lot don't do humour. That was in February 2024. Two years later it was reported that Simons had been responsible for investigating the private affairs of journalists who had published an article unfavourable to Labour Together, a think tank he ran. Simons was accused of naming them to British intelligence, and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda. On 28 February 2026, he resigned his ministerial positions, stating that while he had been cleared of breaching the Ministerial Code, the allegations had become a "distraction" from the government's work. So when gorgeous, pouting Andy Burnham needed a seat in Parliament so that he could save Britain, the obvious candidate to resign his seat and do the noble thing was Jesting Josh - being a bit of an embarrassment. Burnam's not necessarily a shoe-in, though, despite being Northern, playing football and having pretty eyes.

Burnham  told a national newspaper in 2008: "I had an email in my constituency office saying 'what mascara do you use?' I can only say, hand on heart, that I have never, ever worn mascara."

The problem is that Joss' sacrifice may be in vain, because the Makerfield constituency is now strongly Reform, as demonstrated in the local elections last week. It would be just too, too amusing if Burnham resigned as Mayor of Manchester, Simons resigned as MP for Makerfield and the upshot was that Nigel Farage gained another Parliamentary seat, Manchester lost a Labour Mayor and Starmer remains Prime Minister.

The other candidate who would like to be Prime Minister is Streeting - a gay Metropolitan elite Europhile. He, too has pretty eyes and is careful always to wear blue ties and a blue suit, despite being Labour, to enhance his blue eyes.  

He is chubby, charming, chubby, a good communicator, chubby, but despite all these good attributes he blew it by assuring the nation that he would have Britain back in Europe as soon as possible. Which bit of the Reform message did he not understand?

Which bit of Reform's success did he not get? Starmer said he got it, he really got it, and his work to subvert the will of the anti-European British public has been stealthy and covert. Chubby Wes, a stranger to subtlety and the fact that the powerful Red Wall - which elected the Labour lot with a majority to die for - has now turned in force to a party that is specifically anti-European, led by a man who understands the power of  a pint and a fag.

And is Britain ready for a Chubby Gay Prime Minister?

Then there's this. A mandelsonian connection. Julie Birchell described it as Streeting's "Albatross with an unusual interest in Farrow and Ball paint colours."

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." (Helen Keller)

Kemi Badenoch, who just gets more and more Prime Ministerial, summed up Labour's problem beautifully today. She said that it is all very well having a plan to get elected, but you then have to have a plan to govern. I thought that is what a manifesto sets out to do. But, having been elected, they so far failed to meet the legitimate expectations of voters who thought they had voted for a Labour Government, they are now scratching round like Tories to find someone who can pull the trick off again. 

 Lugubrious Will Self on Kuenssberg looked like a hirsute Ancient Mariner who has spent the night lecturing passing sailors on the moral failings of the electorate.
His eyes said: “I have read more books than you, and frankly I regret you.”
His beard said: “I have been lost at sea since 1998.”
His tone said: “Why must I explain democracy to people who insist on participating in it.”

He actually said, more or less, never mind all this pissing about with personality leadership contests, like a political Miss World - doesn't anyone realise we are at war and do something about governing this country? I have blood cancer and the Russians have hacked London's blood data.

Are they trying to get you, Will? 

Interviewed in February this year by the Telegraph, he required the interviewer to sit at a safe distance on the opposite side of the room to him, whilst as a precaution against infection he sat by an open window. The interview was to promote his new book, The Quantity Theory of Morality, which he wrote in six weeks (“and it’s as tight as a trap”). He seems to have overcome his infection worries, for this morning he larged it on the Kuenssberg Show, cheek by jowl with Joss Simons, Laura and Jo Coburn, and within waving distance of Kemi, and he may have mentioned the book and the blood cancer. And the Russians. 

There was a time when mr ishmael would mention, almost en passant, Will Self in these columns. Here's  mr ishmael, at his most coruscatingly contemptuous.

"Nothing, neither the work of God or man, is safe from New Labour, all is now the servant of government, the land as well as the people; whence came such tyranny?

The entire apparatus of Power, as never before, skews all before it, towards its own interests. A handful of malevolent freaks owns the national press; the national broadcaster run by effete totalitarianistes nouvelle, fronted by Establishment gabshites, ensures that political coverage stops far short of reporting - much less interviewing - Difference, broadcasters and Westminster politicians all joined in a gross daisy chain, each up the other’s arse, like some devilish, de Sadeian tableau from 120 Days of Sodom, de-coupling occasionally, to shit in our faces.

The hereditary Dimblebys, arguably the most influential current affairs broadcasters - by dint of their father’s connections - studiously leaping on any voice of dissent which has not been, in advance, excluded from their dreary pretend shows and strangling it, maintaining, at all costs, a status quo of filthy, smirking, Hoonish rottenness. On next week’s Question Time the panel will consist of War, Plague, Famine and the broadcaster and writer Will Self. Clap when you are told to by the floor manager. Or else.

We now have a twice-disgraced Gilbert and Sullivanesque baron, a First Secretary of Everything, a freaky blackmailer, a man brilliant enough to run Trade and Industry like none before – Oh, Peter is so wonderful - yet too fey to understand his mortgage application form, scolding and tut-tutting us for our impertinence in questioning him; his shabby, snot-eating, putative master skulking in dark places, shredding his nails, grinding his teeth in misery, yet unembarrassed that his former tormentor now keeps him in place and keeps him in line;

Mandelson and Brown in happier days. Not gone. And not forgotten.

this, the United Kingdom, is gay Ruritania, closet pansies bitching at one another over the national corpse; gay wives, gay husbands, a cottaging elite, gay admirals and field marshals posturing and twittering, this way and that, at the prime minister’s bidding; select committees flirting outrageously with this ghastly man, Mandelson, as though parliament was Danny le Rue’s nightclub, whilst chiding us that we should do better by them, tighten our belts, that they might slacken theirs. 

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Ah, the politicians and commentators of yesteryear. Where are they now, I wonder?  Wonder no longer, mrs ishmael. They are still here.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sunday Ishmael: 10/05/2026

  Even though he lost, he thinks he's won, puir wee deluded little tortoise heid. 

"Ye see, the people of Scotland have returned us to government for another five years, in a landslide.  It is a resounding vote of confidence in the SNP."

"Oh no it isn't. Only 53.2% of the electorate bothered to vote."

"Oh, yes, it is. It is an overwhelming mandate for an Independence Referendum. If Westminster refuse it, that's a massive democratic deficit."

"Bollocks. They'll just say no. How many actually voted for you, Swinehead?"

"I'm not telling."

" Okay, how many seats have you got?"

"58."

"How many seats did the others get?"

"71, but, no matter, we are experts in running a minority government."

"Hmm. What does that tell us? Oh, yes, most people don't want you in power. No majority for you, Swiney."

"Our minority government will be successful at furthering the SNP's progressive agenda."

"God help us, then. I'm already paying more tax than I would in England, and now I've got to pay for the SNP's bribes - ten grand to everyone buying their first house, and an extra 40 quid a week for new babies, and there's already a 5 billion Black Hole in the Scottish finances."

"We achieved 38% of the vote."

"See? Most people don't want you. 53.2% who turned out to vote of the 3, 784,094 registered Scottish voters is 2013138. You got 38% of that - which is 764992.44. That's all."

"We will talk to all the parties. Except Reform. They are rude. Divisive and discriminatory. Racist. Not like the Greens. The Greens will side with us."

"The Greens are as anti-semitic as Jeremy Corbynites."

"That's not racist."

Seriously - it is the only form of racism that is entirely acceptable to the progressive liberal establishment. Not just in Islington, but also in Holyrood. 

Anyway, it is not the outcome I'd hoped for, but you know I'd anticipated it, the Scots being so forgiving of incompetence, fraud and cronyism. The nationalists secured 58 seats; Scottish Labour and Reform came joint second with 17; the Scottish Greens won 15; the Scottish Conservatives ended with 12 and the Scottish Lib Dems 10. The Greens and the SNP both want to break up the United Kingdoms, so they are natural bedfellows. Reform did astonishingly well in Scotland, securing almost 400,000 votes and winning 17 seats - having had only 1 seat previously - a turncoat Tory. They are rude, though. There was lots of shock and horror at the reported twitterings of one new Reform counsellor in England, who opined on social media that Nigerians should be melted down and used to fill in the potholes. Richard Tice, Farage's Deputy, (do you think he uses Grecian 2000, or is it a full hairdresser job?)

laughed it off, preferring to focus on "thank goodness someone cares enough about our Nigel to give him £5 million for his security. No, honest, not a scandal, he wasn't an MP at the time so the question of declaring it in the Member's Interests register just didn't arise."

 I must say, I personally would feel much more secure if a kindly benefactor gave me £5 million. I'd feel better with a mere £5 grand. Hell, yes, even £500 would be welcome. 

I've probably confused our foreign readers and those who would much rather not be paying attention. Britain had two different sorts of election on Thursday last. Scotland and Wales had their national elections, and England had local government elections. Local government, or, The Council, attends to local issues for local people. Schools, roads, dustbins, planning. Proper Government is Westminster, down London. Pretend Government is Scotland's Holyrood in Edinburgh and Wales' government is The Senedd in Cardiff. The Welsh have booted Labour out and voted in a chap with an unpronounceable name and extraordinarily large ears.

Rhun ap Iorwerth - ssh, don't mention the ears.

That's enough Welsh nonsense, it's bad enough keeping up with Scottishery. 

The BBC have a spiteful little arrangement in the Scottish politics studio. 

They have a very high desk with high stools for the interviewees to perch on. Like one of those godverdomme kitchen islands. The purpose is clearly to render uncomfortable the interviewees as their buttock cheeks clench to hold them to the stool. Maybe the producers hope they will be so worried about falling off that they will let slip important items of Government policy. Long-legged blokes are usually ok, but it goes hard on short fat girls in skirts.

Gillian Mackay, MSP, Scottish Green Co Leader.

Gillian Mackay did the buttock clench dance this morning on the Sunday Show, while seated next to her was 

Scotland, not a country for beautiful men

Thomas Kerr, MSP (Reform). Reform's exclusion from political co-operation and people not talking to him was dismissed by Kerr as "political posturing before we set foot in the chamber." He added that:  "scunnered and angry people are." A bit Obi Wan Kenobi, that. And he didn't want them to have the free bus travel the Greens had promised them.

The forced proximity to the deplorable Reformite, coupled with the high stool and  the need to display demonstrably contemptuous body language resulted in Gillian leaning perilously further and further away from her offensively bearded fellow guest.  Oh, I wish she had fallen off. But no, she remained fully in command of stool and brief. She told us all about the cohort of new transgender MSPs. I think I have mentioned how forgiving the Scottish people are. But Q.'s election really does take the biscuit. Q is an Indian citizen, who does not hold British citizenship or permanent residency, but nevertheless was elected to serve the good people of Edinburgh and Lothian East as their MSP. He or she attends the University of St. Andrews on a student visa and is fundraising for a graduate visa to remain in the UK after the student visa expires. Asked why the Greens had fielded him/her as a candidate who might well be required to leave the country before the parliamentary term expires, Gillian responded that she was confident that the Home Office would extend the visa to allow Q to remain to continue his/her Parliamentary duties. Alas, she's probably right. But really, is Q. a politician or a student? How can he or she concentrate on his/her studies whilst representing his /her constituents? Isn't studying the whole reason for him/her being in Scotland? Is this whole thing just a little bit Alice in Wonderland? 

Q. Mannivannan. Fucked if I know.

The other transgender Green MSP is Iris Duane.

I remember when the Green Party were all about pretty flowers, saving whales and not using hairspray.

Labour took a beating, in the national devolved nations and in the local elections. Fortunately, Keir Starmer is not letting it get him down, nor is he taking it personally. He is committed to staying in Downing Street for ten years. He has a plan. That plan is Gordon Brown.

No, I know. Really. The fiscally prudent former Prime Minister. The one who burned all the money and saved the world. Sir Keir Starmer's Master Plan is to get him out of retirement and ask his advice. Just as he was enjoying his retirement, up there in Kirkcaldy - here's mr ishmael reporting on the Brown retirement back in May 2010.

Sunday, 23 May 2010

SNOTTY IN RETIREMENT.

"No more than two garments in the changing room"

Hello, Gordon here, Prime Minister Emeritus, and as I said, not for me the glittering prizes of the speaking circuit, Oh, no, not like some people I could mention. Who have NohVaaahl-ewes. No, I always said it would be charity work for me. And here I am, my first day, volunteering in Oxfam, Kirkcaldy, or wherever the fuck this shithole is,

No, no, I'm sure it's a very nice place, full of people I put on the dole and made homeless, it was the right thing for the country. And, more than ever, they need my help and that's why I am here, sorting out the bri-nylon shirts for them, some of them, you know, they're not too bad at all, a bit smelly and sort of yellow under the armpits, rather like a tired old government full of thieves and arseholes but, Hey, beggars can't be choosers. And that's what we are now, thanks to me, a nation of proud beggars in second-hand clothes, forced into driving little MickyMouse cars, because of the price of petrol, I don't drive, myself, being too stupid, and so the Mrs, who looks after me, dropped me off here at ten o' clock, we don't open earlier, because the old people who work here are often up all night being incontinent, or having nightmares about means-tested benefits and can only manage to totter in here at ten, and anyway, that's the time that their bus passes start working, thanks, I might add, to me, eleven million pensioners lifted in to poverty, meanest pension in Europe, that's what we can do, together, as Labour, Och, would you listen to me, sounding-off like I was still prime minister. Which, of course, I am. But nobody is to know, until I have helped Mr CallMeDave and Mr IAgreeWithHim sort out this pickle they've got themselves into, with the NoMoney business, Don't know what they're complaining about. When I took office on that bright, glorious May morning in nineteen-ninety-seven, there was plenty of money, burnt a treat, it did. And anyway, they can always get Mr King to print them some more.

There's quite a lot of stock, here, it's almost as if it was worthless, like the government bonds, and the pound; there's these things, here, piles of them, all folded-up by the volunteers, hankies, they're called, can't imagine what they're for, one of the nutter volunteers - they've all been out in the Sun too long, you know, apart from me, or else they've missed their medication, which is something they shouldn't do - said they were for blowing your nose into but I can't see the point of that, why would you do that when there's so much hunger in the world, best to just eat those bogies right up and afterwards wipe your fingers on your tie, like I do. It's the right thing for the country. And the world. Which I saved. And don't you forget it. Talking of which, I phoned my friend President Obama, the other night, to offer him some advice on the global situation but it must have been a crossed line because all I could hear was some rather unpleasant coloured people, laughing and swearing at me. I must get my new government to look into these communications difficulties. Only not Mr Blunkett, the blind bastard. Or Mr Reid. Maybe my old friend Peter Mandelson, he's very good at communications.

Well, there's some Danielle Steele books just come in and some Wilbur Smith, too, so I'd better go and dust them off, put those sticky wee price labels on them - although I do think two pounds ninety-nine is a bit stiff, even if the money does go to the savages out in Africa - and put them over here with the James Galway cassettes and the pink bedside lamps, funny how one generation's sought-after and hard-won belongings are so swiftly revealed as worthless trash but still, that's the miracle of economic growth, or Boom, which I invented and Bust, which is nothing to do with me. Look around, if only there was a poet, here, like my former young friend, stanislav, how he might mock these greasy Brevill sandwichmakers, these made-in-Taiwan brass plaques and magazine racks, displaying Constable's England, blurred wee prints of Mr Breughel's Hunters In The Snow, once delighted-in, now discarded, like a reviled and useless prime minister. It's one of the great strengths of the family, you know, of which I have a young one, that when parents die the children can't even be arsed to look at their parents' treasures but just fuck them all off down the charity shop, quick, so they can get the house sold-off, before Mr Osborne wants a chunk of it. The embellishments of family life, ghastly, cheap and vulgar, hastened away by grasping kin, to charity shops: it's a sort of a metaphor, really, for people who aren't up to the job, and just cling on, being a nuisance. But I'm not like that, I still talk to my father, John, up in Heaven, he made me what I am, I owe it all to him; well, I owe quite a lot to you, too. But you've no chance.

I think I'll like working in Oxfam, I've already made some new friends

My new Cabinet at a working lunch. I was in charge.

and they all do exactly as I tell them to. It's an onerous responsibility on me, me being barking mad and a criminal lunatic but I had a wee fish supper with the manager the other night and he said that after he'd had a good go at being in charge and when the place was about to go bust then I could be in charge. But to start off I'd better just come in two half-days a week. Taking things easy, that's the thing for old people like me, with a young family. Divorce, what, me and Sarah-George, no, well, she hasn't mentioned it to me, anyway.

Well, I must rush, I'll just go and Hoover round those people, the ones trying to look at the books. Best to let them know who's Boss of this charity shop. (Me.)

And then I'll go home and have a wee sit-down, and hold my willy, for a few years.

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There’s something very Starmer about calling in Gordon Brown when things feel wobbly. He tried Mandelson, and we know how that ended. And now he's reached into the Kirkcaldy Oxfam shop and pulled out Gordon Brown like a smelly old winter coat.

But here's the catch - he really is old - well, he's only 75, but he's really not aged well. It must be all those years in the charity shop. So, the Cabinet need to order a nice new Ouija board from Amazon, just in case Gordon shuffles off to his final reward. Is there anybody there? Preferably with economic experience? But who else might manifest alongside Gordon, like a Victorian ghost in his nightie, shuffling and muttering about fiscal prudence? Next week: Harold Wilson appointed Minister for AI. The week after: Clement Attlee brought back to steady the ship. By June, Starmer will be consulting Pitt the Younger.

Sharon Graham, Unite's General Secretary, reckons Labour is about to become extinct. "(Labour voters) didn’t expect their Labour Government to pit pensioners against the disabled. They didn’t expect accounting rules to be the top priority. They are asking what Labour is for. Labour lost the towns, swathes of the Midlands and the north. They are becoming the Party of the professional middle class. Not a cross-class coalition, but a strictly middle-class centrist party. Rootless. Unmoored from its history and from the working class."

On the Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, she reminded Starmer that Labour's job is to represent working people. That's why the trade unions set it up in the first place and why they continue to provide its funding - funding raised by the subs of trade union members. Should the unions choose, they could turn off that tap.

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

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.

Me, next, Me.