The Sunday Ishmael: 26/07/2026

 Now that A.I. has taken over answering all your internet queries, and, of course, A.I. is insufferably woke, pompous and fair, having been glutted with the oat-milk of human kindness, you'll struggle to find a definition of the term "common" that was perfectly well understood in the respectable working class in which I was hatched. 

My dad thought that everyone who lived in a council house was common. I thought that was going a bit far, myself, and often played on the Rec. with girls from council houses. There were the indisputably common women, flaunting their shelf-like busooms in tight dresses, drinking port and lemon and sporting bright-red nails to match greasy, bright red lips. They had affairs with common men who had tattoos. Everyone knew that only men who had spent time in prison or the merchant navy had tattoos. And only common women would go with them because they were alcohol-addicted, violent and sexually promiscuous. And maybe got up to unnatural practices. Chapel and the library were respectable. Betting shops and tap rooms were common.

My A.I. now tells me: "A common person refers to someone who belongs to the ordinary group of people, without special recognition, fame, or exceptional talents. They are the majority of individuals you encounter in daily life, such as neighbours, friends, family members, or strangers at the supermarket." 

A very useful category of class demarcation wiped out in fifty years. 

However, everyone still viscerally understands the old meaning, even though they dare not say it for fear of being re-educated.

And will probably agree when I say that The Burnhams are common.

No, really, that dress! Common. A Victoria Beckham number at £850, designed to make its wearer look like a Footballer's Wife, especially when coupled with the scraped back hair and enormous hooped earrings.

By the time one has attained a certain age, a certain presence of bullock-like buttock and belly, whilst retaining the absence of boobage, it is time to take Queen Camilla as a role model, especially when becoming a statesman's wife. Mrs Trump never looks like she married a footballer. Mrs Princess Middleton, despite being stick-thin, wears dresses that skim rather than cling.

Loudly let the trumpet bray

Tantantara, tantantara!

Proudly bang the sounding brasses,

Tantantara! Tzing, boom! As upon its lordly way

This unique procession passes.

Tantantara, tantantara! Tzing Boom, Tzing Boom, Tzing Boom.

Bloody common. Shipping in coachloads of family and friends to be hugged and pointed at outside Number 10 in a tawdry triumphalist spectacle: "I won! I won! I won! Yah Boo sucks to you!"

No, naff. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, For Fuck's Sake. Carrying on as if he's just brought it home. And speaking without notes and without a lectern might have been impressive if he'd had anything to say. Which would have required some serious economic thinking. Instead, he's going to sweep up rough sleepers from the streets. He'll have to incarcerate them in a secure establishment if he wants to keep them off the streets. After all, the streets are where you can take drugs and drink alcohol, funded by the kindness of oat-milk strangers. They used to be called Sturdy Beggars.

Now, Sir Keir Starmer. He's not common. Boring, yes. Managerial, yes. Touchy, especially when facing Kemi Badenoch's Fuck Gun at P.M.Q.s - well, yes.

Wrong, frequently. But Common? Nah. That's where he went wrong. Burnham has worked out that there are more of the people than there are of the rulers, and so he has set out assiduously to court them. Sacked all the Starmerites and appointed a set of people you would cross the road to avoid.

Big Ange, she of the Ginger Growler, is back. Now, she's common. Hilarious to listen to her justifying her stamp-duty avoidance that got her sacked by Starmer: "Tax is complicated. I didn't do anything wrong. I have learned that, being a woman with a woman's little brain, I should consult experts in the future." Hmm, yes. Can we have one of those experts instead of you, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government??

Louise Haigh, she's common, too - the box-dyed hair and the entitlement that had her committing fraud by false representation in 2014. Some nonsense about lying to police that she had been mugged on a night out and her mobile phone stolen. Ladies don't go on the sort of nights out that get them mugged. Came to light when she started using the phone again and her phone provider grassed her up to the police.  Starmer sacked her for it. Prime Minister Burnham has appointed her First Secretary of State, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Minister for the Cabinet Office. 

There's a pattern emerging here.  

I don't think John Healey is common, and he doesn't appear to have a criminal record. Despite his official mugshot.

Would you buy a bridge from this man?

But his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, thrusting aside Rachel Fromm-Accounts, the first female Chancellor as she never tired of telling us, is an insight into Prime Minister Burnham's dark sense of humour. Remember Healey resigned from his job as Defence Minister because Starmer wouldn't give him the money to defend Britain now that we are in an undeclared war. He stated that because Starmer was "unable" and the Treasury "unwilling" to match the funding required for this highly unstable security environment, he was left with no option but to step down rather than compromise national safety. By giving him the Chancellorship, Burnham was essentially saying, find the money yourself. Look under the Exchequer's cushions. Healey's response in cabinet was that the government would maintain "fiscal discipline". So, are we at war, or not, John? Is it a highly unstable security thingamajig or are we being fiscally disciplined?  Healey also announced that Digital ID would be scrapped and the funds used instead to cut VAT on electricity bills in an £850-million plan. It was rapidly pointed out that the Digital I.D. scheme was unfunded. Oops.

Chancer. 

Career politician since 1997. Served in Blair and Brown's Cabinets, Ed Milliband, Jeremy Corbyn and Starmer's Shadow Cabinets, then appointed by Starmer to be Defence Secretary after Starmer's landslide victory. Clearly a staunch Labour guy. So it must have hurt when he turned on Starmer to facilitate Burnham's power bid.

"Musei Wormiani Historia", the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Ole Worm's Cabinet of Curiosities

The Laura Kuenssberg Interview - more or less.

 "Well, Prime Minister, you're a bit of a light weight, aren't you? Will you be able to stand up to President Trump?"

 "Eh up, Laura, I'm from Northern and I take folks as I find them. That Donald Trump, he's got a personality. Well, I've got a personality too. And its a Northern personality."

So, Prime Minister, 9,708,716 people voted for Keir Starmer in the 2024 General Election. You didn't even stand. One of your mates had to resign his Makerfield seat to let you in. 24,937 people voted for you in Makerfield. Shouldn't you call a General Election to justify your usurpation of power?

"No, of course I'm effing not calling a General Election. Do you think I'm barking mad? Just because I'm from Northern? The however-many million voters who voted for Labour fell for our policy promises, more fool them, and I'm going to implement those policies or not so there's no need for a General Election, as you'll agree. That's a mandate, that is."

"On Monday, 20th July, the nation was treated to the sight of the magnificently bullock-haunched Mrs Burnham - if you can't persuade her to dress like an international statesman's wife, how do you think you can get the Cabinet to do as you want?"

"Well, Laura, being from Northern, we like a bit of rump 

and I can afford for my wife to dress like a tart, although if that Lord Ali wants to buy me a new suit, I wouldn't say no. This one's worn badly. As for the Cabinet, well, Laura, I've sacked all the ones who were beginning to know how to do their jobs; we have a political term for it - Starmerite defenestration - and the new ones will do as they're told or they'll be out on their ears. I've got 403 more of the buggers to choose from." 

The Cabinet, as we say in Football, is a game of two halves. The ones who want to keep their jobs on the Gravy Train and the ones who supported Starmer."

What's all this shit about devolution, Prime Minister? Bollocks, isn't it? Didn't you write to regional papers around the country last month - same article, just the address changed, promising "growth in every postcode, hope in every heart", failing to account for existing variations around Britain? 

"Aye, Laura, Number 10 North, or Manchesterism, as I like to call it, but really, it's just working from home one day a week for me, save me trekking down to London all the time."

You know nothing about  international politics, do you? Anything outside Manchester, let alone England, its just the Wild West to you, isn't it? Here Be Dragons, sort of thing.

"What do you mean, Laura, I've got no experience on the international political stage? Really? Really? I'll have thee know I've been to all the international games and played in a fair few of them misen."

"Man of the people, me."

Letter to Clarence House from the man of the people:

 In June 2009, Burnham was promoted to Secretary of State for Health, a post he held until the Labour government resigned following the 2010 general election. In July 2009 he launched an independent inquiry chaired by Robert Francis QC into unusually high mortality rates at Stafford Hospital (later renamed County Hospital). The inquiry uncovered systematic failures and heavily criticized the care provided by the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. A subsequent, wider public inquiry—also led by Francis—was launched in 2010 by Burnham's Conservative successor, Andrew Lansley. This wider inquiry also confirmed serious failings.

After leaving office, it emerged that Burnham and his predecessor Alan Johnson (soubriquet Alan Johnson Disease) had rejected 81 separate requests for a public inquiry into the Stafford Hospital deaths. Burnham was also heavily criticised for not visiting the hospital or meeting with the affected families. The Daily Telegraph reported that up to 2,800 more deaths than expected had occurred across 14 NHS trusts highlighted for high mortality rates since initial concerns were raised in 2005. 

Here's mr ishmael writing about the youthful Burnham in his earlier incarnation as Health Secretary. Opinion, innit. Here's what he had to say - 

And as for this arsehole, well, there aren't any words which would do justice to his performance, unless they are spelt BAFTA.  Bubbles Burnham sinking to the occasion. 
Andy Bubbles Burnham, NewLabour scoundrel and the most dangerous health seckatry in history, takes a Staffordshire bow.

  
That, of course, should read Faculty of Death, 
prop HM Seckatry of state for health, Andy Burnham.
Not very handy Andy Bubbles, incumbent health secretary, good at saying this is unacceptable and accepting it, Oxbridge, Oxbridge and useless, one of Incapability Brown's bunker barrel scrapings, currently working on a strategy for personal care for the elderly - other, we presume than killing them off in NHS hospitals staffed by babbling, hatchet-faced, money-grubbing, pinstripe Rotarians. Lord, have mercy, that our twilights be crafted by such as these. Up against the wall, motherfuckers.

MR ANDY "BUBBLES" BURNHAM, MP.

There is no need to worry, said the Plague Secretary today.

The UK is well placed to have a good plague, if we aren't seeing millions of deaths among the economically non-productive (formerly, hard-working families, the old, disabled and vulnerable) by Christmas, plans are well in advance to both deliberately infect people and withhold life-saving treatment. The prime minister will, hiding in the toilet, masturbating frenziedly and biting his nails until they bleed, demonstrate his strength in a crisis and prove to the nation that it is only by returning a NewLabour government that we will stop killing you. It is the right thing for the country.

Mr Bubbles continued by adding that he had plenty of mascara, more than enough to see him through any number of Crises, What Crisis television appearances with his fellow-cosmeticists, beauticians and slap-artistes, Messieurs Paxoman, BoultoLard and les Freres Dimbleby, the nation's favourite Chairmen.

I urge all cabinet ministers to apply their make-up carefully, the Death Secretary concluded; in Plague times like these the Prime Minister needs to see a pretty face or two, it's only natural.

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

Should this little amuse bouche from mr ishmael have you nostalgically pining for the old days, you can, courtesy of editor mr verge, the house filthster, have endless fun with the four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael. 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

mrs ishmael, among the dark satanic mills

The Sunday Ishmael: 5/07/2026

 I did it, I did it, I did it! 

Not that it has been easy, you understand.

But I have now successfully escaped from Orkney and relocated to the English mainland. So no more tales of derring do about battles and sunken treasure, Neolithic stone botherers and Viking

frog commanders. Mind you, as I've moved to  Yorkshire which was also much troubled by sea-faring men of the North, the odd Thorfinn or Ragnsvald might find his way into the narrative.

I'm astonished by the heat. I'm astonished by the sheer distances you have to drive to get to Tesco. I'm astonished by the traffic. And the fact that everyone speaks in a comedy accent. I find myself in ee, by gum country. And it feels like home. After a quarter of a century living in an archipalago that looks like dog droppings scattered across the sea from the window of one of Loganair's old rust bucket World War Two planes, or, to the less poetically inclined, the tops of a drowned mountain range, I'm back in the county where I were born and raised, lad. In my beginning is my ending. But not for a bit yet.

There's been a lot of cleaning. And painting. And unpacking. When my dad was busy bringing peace to Berlin and cleaning out the concentration camps, he found much to deplore in the habits of the Russian soldiers who were also bringing peace to Berlin, much against the will of the Berliners. When the toilet broke in their requisitioned rather grand house, the occupying Russians made no attempt to get it fixed, but simply dug a hole in the garden and squatted. When the shower head fell on my own head the other day and I discovered that the fitment was broken long ago and cunningly disguised, I was convinced   the previous owners of my new house had something of that same Cossack spirit of derring do. 

There I was, bowling merrily along the winding, tree-lined (Trees!!) country roads, on my way to IKEA for a design consultation to purchase a PAX system. My friend and I set out at 1.00 for a 3.00 pm appointment, thinking plenty of time, can get to B&Q for painting supplies first. Constant need for painting supplies. Off we went, in ferocious heat, down the aforesaid wind-ey country roads. A great big truck loomed up behind me, pushing me to go faster. Everytime I glanced in the mirror, there he was, a bloody great malevolent truck, straight from Duel. 

I eventually lost him after overtaking the tractor that had been slowing me down, leaving him to deal with the tractor. So  I resumed the merrily bowling until I became aware of a car behind me flashing its lights. Here we go again, thought I, fuming and swearing, enduring the flashing until a convenient lay-by allowed me to pull over to let the car pass. You can imagine my terror when the car pursued me into the layby, again just like Duel (which is the most absorbing and terrifying piece of nonsense ever filmed. Steven Spielburg in his 1971 feature film debut, with Dennis Weaver as a traveling salesman pursued through rural California by a sentient devil truck with an extreme case of road rage.) The flashing car pulled in behind me. Thinking quickly, I offered up my friend to the mercy of the enraged, entitled road hog - well, some duties fall naturally to the bloke. As usual, I had drastically misread the situation, and the kindly lady driver explained that she had started flashing me when she saw my number plate drop off in the road. So I had to turn around and go look for it, with no idea where it had come off. After  driving for about two thousand years, I turned round again, covering the same ground, and spotted the plate. I pulled in as soon as I could, put on the hazards and sent my friend out on bloke duties. He went back, picking his way through the long grass - no verge, uneven ground - countryside, innit. Watching him in the rear view mirror, I saw him take a detour. He retrieved the plate and returned rather more briskly, to report that the detour was to avoid the large and rotting corpse of a road-kill deer. No deer in Orkney. Lots of road-kill cats - it is a competetive night time sport among  Orcadian young drivers to destroy cats strolling across country roads. And shooting seals. Honest, not invent. The South Ronaldsay seal rescue sanctuary sign is peppered with bullet holes. Next best thing to popping a seal in the head. Seals have the annoying habit of regarding salmon farms as an outdoor larder. 

We then had the problem of sourcing tape to stick the number plate back on again. Good news, though - we did manage to get to the appointment in time, taking 2 hours on a 40 minute journey, and my new wardobe is being constructed on Tuesday.

Whilst I've been enjoying myself, it seems there's been a big football competition. And Scotland lost. Oh dear. What a pity. And the politicians have been amusing us as ever. 

I wish I'd seen Starmer's resignation speech - he believes he has saved the Labour Party and the country. And now it is the turn of gorgeous, pouting Andy Burnham, he of the sincerity and eyelashes, to be War Leader with an unfunded defence budget. Seems we are replacing our defence capability with drones.

Sorry for absence in these stirring times- I hope you haven't all run off and left me.

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: 07/06/2026

On the 21st  June 1919  a funeral was being conducted in the Orphir kirkyard by the shore. The deceased had just been laid to rest and the minister was in the middle of the committal service when a whisper went round the mourners – ‘Boy, the Germans is sinking their ships’. When the minister opened his eyes he was shocked to see not a single mourner left at the graveside – they were lining the kirkyard dyke above the shore gazing out at the sinking German High Fleet. Mrs Hester Scarth of Binscarth, who was at Swanbister that day reported being particularly impressed by the British destroyers which had been on exercise in the open sea coming back at full speed and "simply tearing across the Flow, throwing up tremendous bow waves." 

Captain R C V Ross, on board one of those destroyers, said: “On 21st June 1919 the big ships and destroyers had proceeded to sea for gunnery and torpedo practice.....we were actually picking up our torpedoes after a run when we received the electrifying signal: ‘German Fleet sinking. Return to harbour at full speed.’ We were back inside the Flow far ahead of the battleships...... In all directions the great German super-dreadnoughts and cruisers were indeed sinking: some rolling over and going down with great bubbles, others settling on an even keel, or sliding under bows first.” 

Chaplain G L Bourdillon, on board HMS Royal Sovereign, wrote to his wife: “The first sign we saw was the masts of a ship at a sharp angle over Flotta. Half the German ships had disappeared and several of the remainder were in a sinking condition! One battleship had her quarter-deck awash, and as we watched thro’ glasses, we saw her gradually lift her bows out of the water, roll over and disappear below the surface, leaving nothing but a vast patch of bubbling foam. It was one of the most thrilling sights I have witnessed… I then came down to see the prisoners coming aboard. Boatload after boatload, in they poured, officers and men, till we had over 400 of them on board! They were quartered mostly in the batteries both sides. All the arrangements worked smoothly, but there wasn’t much sleep for anyone last night." 

They left at 6 am to take the Germans to Cromarty, arriving at noon and heading back to Scapa by 5 pm, to undertake salvage work and save what they could of the fleet. 

Bourdillon said: “We are now tidying up. The mess everywhere was awful, and the odour!!!”

The First World War ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The Allied powers agreed that Germany's U-boat fleet should be surrendered without the possibility of return, but could not agree about the fate of the surface fleet.  The Americans suggested that the ships be interned in a neutral port pending a decision. Following the refusal of  Norway and Spain to host the fleet, it was agreed that the fleet be interned at Scapa Flow in Orkney with a skeleton crew of German sailors, and guarded in the interim by the Grand Fleet. The terms were forced on the Germans by the threat that failure to agree would result in the invasion by the Allies of Heligoland.

176 U-boats, which began arriving at Harwich on 20 November 1918, were surrendered. The surface fleet was met by the light cruiser HMS Cardiff on the morning of 21 November, and was led to the rendezvous with over 370 ships of the Grand Fleet and other allied navies. There were 70 German ships in total; the battleship König and the light cruiser Dresden had engine trouble and had to be left behind. The destroyer V30 struck a mine while crossing, and sank. The German ships were escorted into the Firth of Forth, where they anchored. The fleet was then moved between 25 and 27 November to Scapa Flow.  Eventually, a total of 74 ships were interned there, König and Dresden having arrived on 6 December accompanied by the destroyer V129, which replaced the sunken V30. The last ship to arrive was the battleship Baden on 9 January 1919.

Over the next two months, sailors who had brought the Fleet in were repatriated, leaving some 1700 men as skeleton crews. Conditions were dreadful. The men were not treated as prisoners of war and were considered to be the responsibility of Germany. Germany was in chaos following its defeat and provisioned the men with the scantest of rations on a monthly basis. Sailors were forbidden to fraternise with the crews of the other ships or to leave their ships to set foot on Orkney. They fished from the deck of their ships and caught gulls, but abandoned that when they discovered gulls made poor eating. Defying orders, they went in the ship's boats around the guard ships, asking for food and saying they were starving. They put ashore on Hoy and stole sheep. The Navy responded by taking all the boats and beaching them on Hoy. Discipline was poor, the men were bored and they had no soap, hence the appalling smell described by Bourdillon.

Meanwhile, the Allies continued to squabble over the spoils of war. At the  Paris Peace Conference, the French and Italians each laid claim to a quarter of the ships. The British wanted them destroyed, since they knew that if the others got their hands on them, the British Navy would lose its proportional advantage over the navies of their allies. The Armistice forebad the Germans destroying their ships. It was feared that scuttling would be attempted; Admirals Keyes and Leveson recommended that the ships be seized anyway and the crews interned ashore at Nigg Camp, but their suggestions were not taken up.  

The Treaty of Versailles was scheduled to be signed at noon on 21 June 1919. Rear Admiral Ludwig Von Reuter, fearing that the terms of the Treaty would be unacceptable to Germany, in which case hostilities would be resumed and the British would seize the German Fleet to wage war on Germany, issued his orders to the Fleet on the 18th June. "It is my intention to sink the ships only if the enemy should attempt to obtain possession of them without the assent of our government. Should our government agree in the peace to terms to the surrender of the ships, then the ships will be handed over, to the lasting disgrace of those who have placed us in this position." 

This is the scuttled battlecruiser, SMS Hindenburg, resting on the sea bed of Scapa Flow.

Preparations were made. Stopcocks were greased, sledge hammers placed ready, and holes knocked in bulwarks to facilitate incoming seawater flowing into the ships. Arrangements for abandoning ship were put in place.

Oberbootsmannmaat (Petty Officer) Franz Müller was shot by a British guard aboard SMS Markgraf when he refused to stop opening the seacocks.

 During the afternoon, 1,774 Germans were picked up and transported by battleships of the First Battle Squadron to Invergordon. Admiral Fremantle had sent out a general order declaring that the Germans were to be treated as prisoners-of-war for having broken the armistice and they were destined for the prisoner-of-war camps at Nigg. Reuter and several of his officers were brought onto the quarterdeck of HMS Revenge, for a good shouting at by Fremantle – through an interpreter – denouncing their actions as dishonourable while Reuter and his men looked on "with expressionless faces". Admiral Fremantle subsequently remarked privately, "I could not resist feeling some sympathy for Reuter, who had preserved his dignity when placed against his will in a highly unpleasant and invidious position."

Of the 74 German ships at Scapa Flow, 15 of the 16 capital ships, 5 of the 8 cruisers, and 32 of the 50 destroyers were sunk. The remainder either remained afloat, or were towed to shallower waters and beached. The beached ships were later dispersed to the allied navies, but most of the sunken ships were initially left at the bottom of Scapa Flow, the cost of salvaging them not worth the potential returns, owing to the glut of scrap metal left after the end of the war, with plenty of obsolete warships having been broken up. After complaints from locals that the wrecks were a hazard to navigation, a salvage company was formed in 1923, which raised four of the sunken destroyers.

In 2019, the three battleships Markgraf, König and Kronprinz Wilhelm were sold on eBay (by the retiring diving contractor Tommy Clark) for £25,500 each to a Middle Eastern company. The cruiser, Karlsruhe, sold for £8,500 to a private bidder in England.

The low-background steel harvested from the ships is used in the manufacture of radiation-sensitive devices, such as Geiger counters, as it is not contaminated with radioisotopes, having been produced before any chance of nuclear contamination.

The Treaty of Versailles  imposed harsh penalties on Germany, including war guilt, reparations, territorial losses, and military restrictions. We've seen how Reuter responded, by scuttling the Fleet.  The Versailles settlement failed to establish lasting peace, the humiliation creating a desire for revenge and national restoration, which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party exploited to gain support. The German resentment and loss of face as a great Power was exacerbated by the severe economic crises, including the Great Depression, of the Twenties and Thirties.  Germany and Italy, facing economic pressures and limited access to resources, pursued aggressive expansionist policies to secure markets and raw materials, continuing the imperial rivalries that had led to World War I and seeking to overturn the Versailles territorial settlements and rebuild their influence in Europe. 

The First World War led to the Second World War, as night follows day. Essentially, World War II was a continuation of World War I because it arose from the same unresolved issues: punitive peace terms, economic hardship, nationalism, and imperial competition. And the Second World War led to the migration crisis of the twenty-first century. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the immense loss of life created labour shortages in Britain, France and Germany and Sub-Saharan Africans began migrating into Europe. The French, in particular, welcomed workers from its former Empire, as part of the Françafrique system of retaining ties between France and its many colonies in West Africa, like Senegal, Mali and the Ivory Coast.

 Following the Second World War and the breakup of the British Empire, Indian migration to Britain increased through the 1950s and 1960s, partly due to the British Nationality Act 1948, which enabled migration from the Commonwealth with very few limits. In the aftermath of the Second World War, these links facilitated significant flows of people from across the Commonwealth to Britain, helping to rebuild the economy, expand public services, and address acute labour shortages. Britain’s labour shortages shaped post-war migration patterns from the subcontinent. It was primarily men from middle-ranking peasant families in Punjab – many of whom had previously served in the colonial army – who came. They found work in manufacturing, textile mills, and the service sector. The textile mills of Bradford and the foundries of Birmingham became magnets for Indian workers. 

There is no labour shortage in Britain now - but there is a labour imbalance, which is disadvantaging white indigenous young people, who seem unable to find the entry-level jobs any more.

My dad was with the Royal Army Medical Corps at the D Day Landings in June 1944. He described the sky black with gliders towed by bombers, providing air support and parachutists in Operation Tonga and Operation Overlord. The D-Day landings,  involved over 156,000 Allied troops storming five beaches in Normandy. Of these, 4,414 Allied servicemen died during the initial 24 hours of the invasion, including 2,501 Americans, 1,449 British, 391 Canadians, and 73 from other Allied nations.  Total Allied casualties, including wounded and missing, were around 10,000 on that day. German losses on D-Day are estimated to be between 4,000 and 9,000 killed during the landings 

The D-Day invasion was the largest seaborne assault in history, involving 7,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft, and over 150,000 troops. 

The operation started the beginning of the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi occupation. My dad marched with that Army of  liberation across Europe to Berlin, where he assisted in the cleaning out of the concentration camps.

D-Day should be commemorated every year. Damn it, it is personal. It lives in the memories of Britons and Europeans living today. Every family remembers their menfolk who fought and died together. Or survived, coming home changed and determined to build a better world. The start of the death of deference. The collapse of empire. A world in which the state is responsible for its citizens rather than seeing them as cannon fodder or breeders of cannon fodder.

So, and this is where I've been aiming through this essay - did Pete Hegseth  desecrate that memory in his D-Day speech yesterday? He criticised European nations about migration for allowing what he described as an "invasion" of their shores. "Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies. Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?" 

And should he butt out, as the Sage of Tottenham opined this morning? This is European stuff, after all. And Hegseth's a Yank. 

Hell, no. D-Day belongs to the American allies as much as to the European allies. And he's right. Hegseth’s speech argued that the Second World War shaped the modern world, that the consequences of that war still reverberate and that today’s geopolitical and demographic realities are rooted in the twentieth century’s conflicts. Here's the structural link:  empire led to world wars which led to decolonisation which led to migration.

Migrant tents in Paris. May 2025. Now that's not right. 

 Hegseth said that in the years since D-Day some European capitals have grown too "comfortable" with their hard-fought freedoms, forgetting that "freedom is not free. The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters or what they fought for was merely temporary."

He's right.

I'm moving house, so I'm going to be very busy for a while. Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves, as I'm away for a few weeks. 
.............................................................................

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: 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.

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

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. 

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

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