The Sunday Ishmael 2nd August 2020

"The Queen has been graciously pleased to signify Her intention of conferring the following Peerages of the United Kingdom for Life."

This week, the gravy train called in Ruritania, with the announcement of 36 nominations for the 2020 peerages. Included are: Little Arthur Askey,  for 'political service' to his wife, Theresa

  Boris Johnson's brother, Jo-Jo the Ho-Ho,

former England cricketer and Brexit supporter, Sir Ian Botham,

and Edward Lister, a long-term chum of the Prime Minister who supported him as London mayor.

  Mr. Tiny Speaker, who famously threw his toys out of the pram, did not receive any signal mark of Her Majesty's Royal Favour,  upon his retirement as Speaker and has not been included on the list once again.

 

Commenting on the nominations, Pete Wishart, SNP  said: "It's telling that in the middle of a global health pandemic and economic crisis that is costing thousands of people their jobs, Boris Johnson is handing out jobs for life in the unelected House of Lords to friends and those who have done him favours..... gifting his cronies and family members with jobs as legislators for life - with no democratic mandate or accountability to people across the UK....It's the worst kind of cronyism that only highlights the rotten Westminster system."

Lord Fowler, the Lord Speaker, said: "The result will be that the House will soon be nearly 830 strong - almost 200 greater than the House of Commons. That is a massive policy u-turn....This followed a report by a special Lord Speaker's committee chaired by Lord Burns proposing that numbers should be reduced to 600....The big opportunity was for the present Government to take forward this movement for reform. I emphasise that this is not a matter of personalities. It is a question of numbers and the abandonment of an established policy to reduce the size of the House. It is also a vast pity that the list has been announced within the first few days of the summer recess when neither House is sitting, and the Government cannot be challenged in Parliament."

Peers are not salaried, but they receive a tax-free income of £323 per day for attendance in the chamber - up from £313 at the start of April. Members of the House of Lords can expect tax-free income of £48,000 per year, as their base-line income for signing in.

Move along please, nothing to see here. The nomination list would not have surprised  Mr ishmael, writing in 2015: 

Peer on the Take shock

Once upon a time,  Peter Sissons used to  finish off his news bulletin  with a look at how the pound was doing, a basketful of currencies; I never understood even that, how you could  use one sort of money to buy another sort of cheaper money and make a profit on it, strikes me as delusional madness, which is what it is, of course, currency trading but, like the Flat Earthers, as long as enough people believe in it, that's all that matters.

Now, of course, every mad money-crazed bastard sitting in his Barrett Home broom cupboard study area, looking at the Dow or the FTSE, is a budding George Soros and all of us are, every fifteen minutes, kept acquainted, not only with Wall Street micro-ebbs and flows, with the pronouncements of copraphiliac Frankfurtians  and BundesBankians but through the wee small hours, by some resting porn star, with the doings of Chinky gangsters and totalitarians, beyond Singapore.

Finance, what used to be small section in the newspaper is now a global obsession, almost as big as sport.

Hard  to understand,  the presumption of purity among athletes or any other kind of professional sportspersons. Just because someone is fit, doesn't make them fit and proper. Alongside the simpering self-deprecation of the likes of Beckham and recently of Olympic champions has always run the naked greed of people who claim just to wanna win, like, for me country, and then  make a fortune sandwichboarding for Santanderre or Adidas or even, bizarrely, Quorn. 

It seems axiomatic that where there be sponsorship there be graft. And no wonder, that the spear-carriers connive to riches, just look at Sport's owners, the rancid  dwarf, Ecclestone, a walking cancer, buying himself out of jails, as well as marriages; look at Rupert Murdoch, decrepit Lothario, scandal monger and burglar of people's private lives, may God take him soon but not swiftly; look at the  carnival of corrupt grotesques managing British football teams; at Blatter's THEFA; at Russia's state-sponsored, sprinting junkies and at cyclings pedalling dope fiends. The sports fixers and owners, their corporate countries and their sponsors, their needs and not those of some mythical Olympian ideal, they run the game, they deliver us the mutant retards, Wayne Rooney, Jose Mourhino, Alex Ferguson and Petulant Torment Personified, Andy Murray.  No wonder that some flakey totty, some loveless, fucked-up diarrhoeaic automaton puts the fix into her own endocrine system;  No medals, no sponsorship deals

The rottenness of it all is rarely reviewed by MediaMinster, for  sport is big business, colonised now by the likes of Murdoch, and to be seen as anti-business in any way whatsoever is political suicide, blessed are the wealth  creators for they shall pay no tax, just bribes and bungs. And sport, too, narcotises the viewer; whose  year is mostly covered by snooker, football, tennis, motor racing, cricket. When there's not a good war on.

More than that, in the case of his lordship, Mr Coe, there is the pox-ed hand of Hague the Child-Mutant, William of Miscarriages, an undisguised, shameless,  baldpate vulgarian, a protector of beasts, a keeper of pretty young men and an ennobler of wanton ambition. Hague, it was, who granted Conrad Black's demands to take ermine, whilst simultaneously robbing his shareholders of their investments, bombasting-off his less noble critics. Even the clueless prat, Johnny Underpants Major, resisted Bullyboy Black's  demands for a peerage for he and his revolting doxy, Babs Amiel, a slapper more sadly brassy than is her namesake, Windsor, showbiz 's ooh-er, tits-out confection. William Hague, however, stooped at the chance of obliging a criminal millionaire, and created Lord Black of Crossharbour & Prison.

Shortly afterwards, as Tory leader,  Hague gave a peerage to his chief of staff, personal physical trainer, marriage guidance counsellor 

 and sweat buddy, the self-appointed national treasure, 
 Pretty Sebastian Coe. 

Pretty Seb and Hague

Pretty Chris and Hague

a man bearing a passing resemblance to Hague's Pretty Chris, of  shared double-bed infamy. I have never loved pretty men, myself, but maybe, as happens in the non-BGLT communi'y, gentlemen like Hague  favour a certain physical type of paid best friend, to follow in Power's slipstream, hoping, like the crooked Coe, for privilege and advancement, for graft.

Since his ennoblement Pretty Seb has, in response to absolutely no public demand, become the UK's Mr HonestSport.


 British peer gives Mr Blatter a hug of great integrity.
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Coronavirus News:

The seven-day rate is the seven days to July 20 compared with the seven days to July 27.

Blackburn with Darwen:  risen from 83.3 cases per 100,000  to 89.3. 133 new cases have been recorded.

Leicester: fallen from 67.8 to 60.2, with 214 new cases.

Oldham risen from 23.3 to 54.3, with 128 new case

Pendle risen from 27.4 to 42.7, with 39 new cases

Trafford risen from 15.2 to 41.0, with 97 new cases

Calderdale risen from 20.9 to 33.8, with 71 new cases

Swindon risen from 9.0 to 28.8, with 64 new cases.

None of this is a surprise.

The Government was criticised for announcing the local lockdowns only three hours before they came into force. Lucy Powell, Shadow Business Minister described the way in which the Government had announced the new coronavirus restrictions on parts of northern England as a "disaster". Nicola Sturgeon has told Scots not to travel to North West England, and urged any Scots already there to hurry home and enter a self-imposed quarantine.

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As discussed in the comments stream from last week's Sunday Ishmael, mr ishmael was no stranger to chronic illness and was all too familiar with the NHS, its structures, hierarchies and class system. As you'd expect, neither mr ishmael nor stanislav suffered fools gladly, not even when they were employed by the NHS, and therefore, as we are now taught, to be entirely venerated.

Diabetes – drafted 8/06/2013

What I used to hate the most about diabetes wasn't, as you'd expect, the doctors, although, thirty-five years ago they were much worse than they are now and  one geezer - pinstripe, patent shoes, bowtie, buttonhole, the works -  sticks out in my mind like it was yesterday.

 He was one of the consultants in Selly Oak Hospital and they were fewer then than now and he insisted on being called Mr Page, not Dr Page,  he was adamant that we, passing strangers, be initiated  into and familiarised with in his arcane professional nomenclature,  he was a fucking doctor as far as I was concerned and  I, therefore, insisted on calling him Mr Dr Mr Page, as unctuously as possible.  He was of the YouPeople school, we, the YouPeople, his patients, were the enemy of the NHS, we needed all kinds of expensive treatment and kit, and we had to be kept in line.  These needles, he ranted, holding up a packet of disposable syringes, cost a fortune, you must use them over and over again until the print has worn out and they are entirely blunt.  And these testing strips - less than a quarter of an inch wide - you can get three or four out of each one by cutting them carefully down their length with a sharp pair of scissors. Mr Dr Mr Page was the biggest, stupidest health professional arsehole I have ever met and, as well as my hospital dealings with these fuckers, I used to do business with them, furnishing and restoring their chintzy Victorian homes;  wifebeaters, drunks,  drug addicts and degenerates,  not all of them, but enough to make you want to keep well, healthy, out of their clutches.  To be fair, I did get to know the odd one or two who were tirelessly commited to healing people but most of them, away from their trade, were greedy and vulgar. When I tell young diabeticians of Mr Dr Mr Page's strictures I only do so when Mrs Ishmael is present, otherwise they'd section me.

I learned decades ago that consultants are all on the make for every fucking penny they can chisel out of anyone they encunter, you can be on Death's trolley and some cunt'll find something he's doing, writing some letter, or signing some form that he really has to be paid for,  they are shameless, money-sucking leeches. All this shit, about privatising the health service, it's already privatised, your whoreson GP and his partners are running private businesses already. Trouble is you can't complain about them and you can't go taking your business elsewhere.

But back when I was first diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic there had been a technological advance in insulin delivery,  it was called the Novopen and was basically a fountain pen, with a cartridge of insulin, a needle where the nib would be and a calibrateable plunger. It was no big deal but it made life a bit easier and it looked like the dog's bollocks, brushed steel, like something Q'd give James Bond.  But they're not cheap, growled Mr Dr Mr Page,  the greedy fucking bastard, charging me a hundred pounds, for something which I could've got from the dealer/manufacturer for fifty.  I have hated that bastard all my life.  Well, perhaps not hated, you'd never stop, if you started hating doctors;   I just hope he dies from some incurable and painful  disease, as I will. 

It is a terrible lottery, chronic illness; much later, a decade or more after Mr Dr Mr Page I got to see a really eminent diabetologist,  Professor Tony Barnett, at Heartlands in Brmingham and  his patients were not his enemies,  he was a man of much learning, patience and fathomless grace,  one of the exceptions and if I had ran into him initially, my life, today,  would be entirely different. Page must have caused the premature deaths of many of his unfortunate patients.

The nurses are pretty awful, too, something about diabetes nurses.  They are all bullies - well, all nurses are bullies - and uniquely among all the NHS trades, diabetes nurses are filthy bastards.  Like doctors, they perform their duties in street clothes or, by my observation, in the clothes they wore in the pub last night, OT people can't do this, nor can X-Ray people, nor fracture clinicians, nor can podiatrists, only diabetes nurses can do this and generally speaking,  in outpatient clinics, it is diabetes nurses who will most routinely extract blood from their patients, opening Infection's pathways.   I would sack any health professional who did not, before starting work enter  a dedicated dressing area, change into sterile clothing, laundry-washed at high temperature.   Seems obvious.  They don't wash their hands,either.

About ten years ago I finally reached a plateau of independence, I got to the stage that I wouldn't go near the nasty, dirty bastards.  I just told the doc.  I said, doc, these people are dirty bastards,  they don't or won't understand infection control,  they're trying to kill their patients.  Three times I've been there in the past couple of years,  three times I got an infection and was on antibiotics for months each time.  Okay, mr ishmael, OK, but don't say I said so.

My first diabetes nurse  was Mr Dr Mr Page's familiar, or he hers. Mrs Ishmael and I just looked at her and whispered to each other:  Rosa Klebb, honest.  She was a real dead ringer for the Russian lesbian spychief crone from From Russia With Love.  And I noticed we were both looking at her shoes, to see if she had a dagger blade popping out, dipped in deadly poison.

I am going to give you some training, she said, in injecting yourselves.  I will give you each an orange and a syringe and you just fill the syringe up with water, like so, and inject it into the orange, like so. And then you will know how to inject yourselves.  How's that, then?  Am I sort of all orangey, inside? Bit citrusy? 

That, then,  was the extent of the training-for-life-with-diabetes, an hour with the wretched Page and half-an-hour with Rosa Klebb but these two nightmares weren't the worst of it.

Once I'd injected myself, that was it, I never gave it a second's thought;  it doesn't hurt, well, only sometimes and then it's only in the mind, now and again, in the wee small hours, I think to myself Christ,  this is the HowManyThousandth time I've done this, slid a one-inch sliver of steel into my flesh?   But the alternative is to die so it is no big deal, it really isn't.  These days, furthermore, Mr Dr Mr Page's successors-in-trade insist that you only use a needle once and as long as you use a fresh one each time - about five times a day in my case, you should feel none but spiritual pain. There's a bloodletting, too, I should do it thrice daily but I never do.

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FRIDAY, 27 MARCH 2009

THE BOOK PAGE

LIKE RICHARD AND JUDY’S BOOK CLUB, ONLY YOU HAVE TO READ IT.

EVER WONDERED WHAT YOUR PLUMBER IS READING?

Most plumbers, it seems, are terrified of heart surgeons, or any kind of doctor.

Fuck serial killer and drunken driver and mad burglar. Fucking useless doctor bastard is most likely to kill you in whole of fucking world, says this week’s book-reading tradesman, young Mr stanislav.

Honest, not invent, give you wrong shit, too much wrong shit, not enough right shit, not see illness in front of fucking face, invent fucking illness that patient never even fucking have, send in hospital death camp for fuck all, chop off wrong fucking leg and say Oh, fuck me, but is professional chap of fucking integrity, best get fellow butcher-extortionist to make full thorough professional cover up and blame fucking patient. That’ll be ten grand please.

Mr stanislav’s chosen book, written by a doctor, is called How To Protect Your Heart From Your Doctor. Is fucking right, continues stanislav, fucking bastard chop you fucking open like a chicken and stop fucking heart and so patient is fucking toast right at the kick off and is only good luck if poor bastard get fucking jump-start back into life. And doctormonster meantime is got Bruce fucking Springsteen blasting in fucking theatre and chop fucking veins out from fucking leg and spot weld to heart, and stanislav can do better job on fucking boiler. Most bastard not need no fucking operation in first fucking place, just right medicine and live sensible and last just as long as fucking nutcase patient – Oh, fuck me, I made an informed decision, on balance, to have the operation, that’s the sort of person I am – who lets surgeon do life and fucking death disembowel job. Fuck that shit.

Seems that young mr stanislav’s choice is a bit of a good read, but always remember, readers, Doctor Knows Best.

Mr stanislav has asked us to make clear that he doesn’t obsess to fuck with doctor books; he also reads Viz magazine.

mr ishmael's writing:

Peer on the Take shock            drafted 12/12/2015

Diabetes                                  drafted 8/06/2013

The Book Page                        Friday, 27th March 2009