The Sunday Ishmael 6/06/2021

THE GREAT CHILDREN'S REBELLION OF 2011.

A MINDLESS VANDAL ON HOLIDAY.

If there's any looting to be done it'll be done by families like mine and Mr Osborne's and Mr BoJo's and by honourable and right honourable members of this house, Mr Tiny Speaker;  it's the way we've always done things, as a look at our expenses will reveal, even today. And as unelected prime minister I will not sit still for a load of niggers and benefit cheats muscling-in on my act, and that of  very decent international financiers who are, at this very moment, wrestling with weighty matters as they seek to find new ways to rob working people of such advances as they have made this last sixty years.  We will arrest and lock-up anyone who tries to do inappropriate looting, even if there's nowhere to put the little bastards;   that will be a matter for my fat friend, the Justice Minister, Smoky Ken Clarke, if he can be prised out of some seedy jazz club. We can always build some of those, whatchamaycallems, concentration camps, that's it, only temporary, of course, until I'm properly re-elected without any of this Coalition nonsense - and did you see the barracking that old Gimpy got in Birmingham, I bet he wishes he'd stayed at home in Madrid or wherever the fuck it is - or we can house them in some of the many hospitals which are insufficiently profitable for the private sector to take over and destroy, like it does everything else;  train fares going up, energy prices going up, British Telecom a laughing stock, inflation going up, unemployment going up,  stock market fucked, London on fire. Glad none of it's my fault. And isn't it time, Mr Tiny Speaker, that the former unelected prime minister, the member for the Kirkcaldy Oxfam shop, came to this house and apologised for all my secret meetings with  NewsCorpse which unfortunately did not result in  Mr Murdoch taking over BskyB and then the BBC.  All of which, of course, is now forgotten about as honourable and right honourable members vie with one another to  find new ways to punish the very poorest, most hopeless members of society, or the enemy within, or the sick section of a broken society, only not in Chipping Norton obviously, where we can swim in champagne if we want to, robbing fucking bastards. No, I mean them, not us.

 A GANG OF MINDLESS CRIMINALS PREPARES TO TRASH PUBS

AND RESTAURANTS IN OXFORD

AND NOW A MESSAGE FROM COLONEL GADDAFI

Inshallah, Bismillah, Salaam eleikum, whatever, man, like, do your own shit when it comes to those religious salutations, man, don't sweat the God vibe.  But no, really, man, this is heavy shit,  the young brothers and sisters trying to throw off the yoke of fifty years of consumerist oppression - every time you open your eyes there's somecat telling you you gotta have this shit or that shit, this car or that phone otherwise you ain't nobody, and it don't matter a fuck if you got no bread, you just borrow it off some  thieving dog in a suit and so whaddathey expect young cats to do,  they see them dudes in the  parliament looting the public purse and bein' punished with a week off work, and they see the so-called royal family consorting with jetset nonces and flogging-off favours and blowjobs to gangsters, and they see the chief of police taking bribes and just getting a thankyouverymuchhere'sagoldenhandshakeallmenoftheworldpayoff, they see the newspapers crawling up people's asses and bugging their every private conversation and getting rewarded with knighthoods, course they're gonna riot, man,  the thing is, is why the whole fucking country ain't going up in smoke? And now the dictator Cameron's police and army is  beating-up on them.

  What'd be like really cool would be if NATO could just surgically bomb the shit out of New Scotland Yard and the Palace of Westminster and protect the young hopeless kids who've just been shat on all these years by fat fuckers like the infidel pigdog Prescott and the NewLabour Gang of Four and now the carrion  tyranny of what they call the Coalition. It's like really heavy, there in GeeBee,  they're doing shit that like nobody but nobody voted for,  they're all like sucking on the Man's dick dumping on the guy in the street and now they're talking about arming themselves against their own people, for the revolution that everybody knows is coming down the highway, right at them. NATO gotta get the fuck off its arse and protect the citizens of the YouKay 'cos, like you know, like the Prophet said, peace and blessings be upon His name, in sleepy London town, there's just no place for a street fighting man.

drafted by mr ishmael 11/8/2011

Wot's on Telly 

Bent Coppers

 

This a BBC 3-parter, still available on i-Player and well worth watching.The Beeb tells us that it "explores the dirty secrets behind London's policing with a story of corruption that goes to the very top of the Met and leads to the formation of the first internal anti-corruption unit, A10, which inspired the BBC drama Line of Duty...It begins in 1969, at a time when the British police were held to be the most trusted and effective force in the world.... A desperate South London villain tips off the Times that he is being extorted for money by a detective in the Metropolitan Police, (The Times investigation) discovers that at the heart of the Metropolitan CID there exists a "firm in a firm", a secret network of corrupt coppers." The documentary uses insider interviews, archive footage and secret recordings.  Listen out for the aggrieved officer who complains "I'm getting fucked for my wack"  meaning he is not being bribed enough. The Met's senior officers distributed the bribes amongst colleagues, saying "Here's your drink".

Lord Denning, who died in 1999 at the age of 100, actively perpetuated the public myth of incorruptibility that protected the police for decades. In 1979 he refused the appeal of  the Birmingham Six, wrongfully convicted for the Birmingham pub bombings. Famously, he said that to overturn the conviction would mean that "the police are guilty of perjury, that they are guilty of violence and threats, that the confessions were invented and the convictions erroneous....that is such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say it cannot be right."

As we know, the appalling vista was the truth.

I've never been offered a bribe, so I can't tell you how I'd react. I suppose, like the political elite, it would depend on how large the bribe was. I have, though,  had pressure brought to bear, back in the day, when a senior manager in the West Midlands Probation Service attempted to secure a more favourable report for his Masonic chum's Court appearance for dealing significant quantities of cocaine by phoning to explain to me that this defendant was a good bloke, really, did a lot of good work for charity, he'd just been Living in the Fast Lane. He went down, the dealer - there was no other possible outcome, given the vast quantities of marching powder that he'd purveyed at significant, untaxed  profit, but his Lodge brother had attempted to do what was in his power to help out.

Police clear-up rates are a source of mirth to those, like me, who have worked in the criminal justice system. Back in the day, for the price of a packet of fags a couple of officers visit a convicted prisoner, selected fairly well at random, and present him with a list of offences to sign off, to help with the clear-up rate. The same officers visit a remand prisoner and tell him that if he coughs to these 99 offences and asks for them to be taken into consideration (T.I.C.'d), he'll get a lighter sentence for being co-operative. Doesn't even cost them a packet of fags.

Then there's the tricky issue of evidence. I worked with a chap on probation who complained bitterly to me about the police methods of obtaining evidence. He was a drug dealer, right enough, in a very small way of business, before heroin and crack became ubiquitous, dealing a bit of dope to supplement his benefit giros. He heard the knock on his door, but before he could get it open, the battering ram caves it inwards - Lads, lads, he remonstrates, there was no need to do that, I was opening the door - nothing to hide, here, I haven't got any shit in the place. Not to worry, comes the reply, it's okay, we brought our own. And from round the back of the telly, one officer produces a substantial quantity of rather good resin. My probationer thought that this was just not fair. Enough to get me sent down, he grumbled. And I'll have to pay for the door.

Denning would have found the casual violence of the police to be unbelievably a part of the appalling vista. I worked with this one chap, Lionel, a rent boy, who got himself very worked up about the possibility that he had contracted AIDS - that was two or three pandemics ago. He presented himself at Selly Oak Accident and Emergency Dept, drunk and tearful, asking to be examined. He was told to go away and see his GP, they were busy and didn't deal with drunks. Lionel persisted. They called the police. Two big brutes swagger in, each of them twice the size of Lionel, one each side of him. One takes his arm, twists it behind his back. Lionel screams, you're breaking my arm. Police Officer says, no, we're not, and twists it higher, whereupon there's an audible crack. Oh look what we've done. You've broken my arm, sobs Lionel. What, like this? says Officer Thug and does it again. 

Lionel presented himself in my office a couple of days later, sober, bandaged, and on heavy duty pain meds. I want to make a complaint he said.

 I'm not surprised, but you'll need a good lawyer. It's not easy to complain about the police. So I phoned a criminal law legal practice that did a lot of work in the Birmingham Courts, and got him an appointment. They were very sympathetic. We've got a paralegal working with us who'll be able to really help, because he has lots of experience of these complaints. 

Lionel attends for his appointment. 

He came in to see me the next week. So how'd it go? I'm not proceeding, says Lionel. They put me in a room alone with this massive retired Police Officer and he explained that if I brought a police complaint, I would be stopped, searched, questioned, maybe arrested every time I went out of a night. They'd turn the flat over. In my business, I can't afford that.

Now, Selly Oak Hospital, a former workhouse, doesn't have a good reputation for kindness and patient care. Not surprising they called the police on Lionel. Some years after his miserable experience there it was reclassified as a Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and was officially opened by Princess Anne in 2001. By March, 2007, the families of injured soldiers were complaining that the hospital was not treating Iraq War veterans properly. There were reports of servicemen being verbally abused in the hospital by members of the public opposed to the war. Jeremy Clarkson wrote to the NHS complaining that injured servicemen were treated no differently from "a lad who got drunk and smashed his Citroen into a tree". (Nor even a drunken, frightened, tearful teenage rentboy) A House of Commons Defence Select Committee blamed the allegations against the hospital on a smear campaign. Of course.

Selly Oak Hospital closed  in October 2011 and the site was sold to Persimmon in 2015 with outline planning permission for 650 homes. If ghosts linger to remind the living of their pain, I wouldn't want to buy one of those houses.

That was long ago and far away, and, as the Beeb tells us when confronted with its support and promotion of sex offenders, the past is a foreign country, where we did things differently.

This is little dog Harris, last Thursday evening, taking the air in a charming small wood in Kirkwall.

 

 

This stone is set into the wall by the wood, claiming that a total of 1200 trees were planted to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935 followed in short order by the Coronation of George VI in 1937. No trees in 1936 for the ne'er do well Edward VIII, who loved not wisely but too well, and could well have sighed bitterly, a hoe, a hoe, my kingdom for a hoe.

There certainly are not 1200 trees there now, but the ones that survive have done very well indeed, considering this is Orkney Where No Trees Grow. (That's a myth, put about to deter inward migration)

 

 

The trees are home to a large rookery - look carefully to see their big, messy, twiggy nests high in the canopy. 

And the Willowburn stream meanders through this dear green place, crossed by a couple of bridges.

The New Orthodoxy

 Black Face Morris is characterised by blacking up to disguise your identity, wearing rags and top hats and is maybe more athletic than the "England, my England" Morris of white shirts, colourful ribbons and flower-decked hats. It has its own historic tradition and is a darker thing altogether; begging with an edge of intimidation. Katie Kedward, 28, from Leeds, chanced upon Black Face Morris and immediately decided it was on a par with the Black and White Minstrel Show. So, in order to avoid spectators and chance passers by taking offence, would this do instead?

In 2013, Channel 4 brought us Educating Yorkshire, a warm and humorous exploration of what it's like to grow up or work in a secondary school in the heart of a diverse northern community. At least, that's what how they described it. The headmaster, Jonny Mitchell, dedicated to enhancing the lives of his Thornhill students, buggered off to Leeds two years later, to become Head of the Co-op Academy in Leeds. Five years on, he was appointed Head of Netherwood Academy, an Astrea Academy Trust school. The interim CEO Benedick Ashmore-Short, said of the appointment; "Mr Mitchell stood out head and shoulders above the rest. .. he has a clear determination to accelerate the academy's improvement journey. I am confident that under Mr. Mitchell's leadership, the academy will  go from strength to strength." Had he read mr ishmael's review, Mr. Ashmore-Short might not have been so confident:

THE NAUGHTY STEP

Thrust into TeeVee's mincing machine as they are one cannot help but feel, I dunno, more sorrow than irritation for the pupils in this grim show.  

They are all Ruin's spawn, empty-headed, functioning only superficially, walking cliches in scruffy school uniform.  I went to one of the so-called best grammar schools in the country and I hated almost every second of it, relieving my misery only by acts of disobedience and rebellion;  I am not sure, even now, if that was the fault of the school or if my unhappiness stemmed from a variety of external factors but what I do know is that the teachers were well qualified to teach and that the pupils were pupils and not figments of their fuckhead parents' consumer imagination, stars in their own pathetic and corrosive and probably life-long soap operas.
Pupils?  I mean students,  don't I,  that's what we call them.  They're not students but Hey, who cares? 

That bloke, by the way, the gabshiteing slapheaded Yorkshireman, who plays the Headmaster in Educating Yorkshire, he is an actor isn't he? Because the character he plays would not, could not, at his age, forties, whatever it is, pass the eleven plus which I passed at ten.   A headteacher who  simply cannot speak English brings out my inner Gove;  it's not much to ask, bare minimum, really. Verbs, tenses, articles, clauses, nouns, interrogatives, comparatives - he knows nothing of them,  he just slangs his way lazily through the working day, inculcating his charges with his own feely-feely, bullying stupidity, the shiny-headed, snufflers'-bearded cunting imbecile. He strikes me as not only pigshit stupid but also sinister, menacing, bestial, like he would fuck a dog, or a donkey;  talk about creepy.  I only have to catch a glimpse of him and I recoil. Hopefully, you ghastly jumped-up imbecile, is a fucking adverb, although you wouldn't know what a fucking  adverb is. And as for filming and broadcasting this arsehole's charges, 

well, this is incalculably bad for them and the parents should hang the producers from the school railings, except that their parents are self-evidently morons.

 I will just console myself with the thought that there really cannot, really  cannot be a headteacher as stupid, as vain, as lacklustre, as careless and as vandalistic as this character and that he must be acting  in some comedie noire.  I could believe he was a cook, or a makeover artiste, but a headteacher, responsible for children's emotional and intellectual wellbeing, no, you're 'avin' a laff, innit. I know you're a good kid really. But you're going out in the big world and it's hard out there, yeah? And not everyone is as easygoing as me, yeah? And it's my job to prepare you, yeah? So, whaddarewegonnado, yeah? And on and on, ad nauseum.

 

Wrong Mitchell. Ed.

Still wrong Mitchell. Ed

Stop it. Ed.

mr ishmael's essays today are:

The Great Children's Rebellion of 2011  drafted 11/8/2011

The Naughty Step                                     drafted 26/9/2013

Both anthologies of the work  of mr ishmael and his young Polish friend, Stanislav, Plumb Cheap for You:  Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - are available to purchase for mere money at Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Here's how to buy your own copies: 

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