Sunday 21 March 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 21/03/2021

 Who Are these People and How Dare they?

 

Judge Lady Smith has led the inquiry since 2015 

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is investigating the abuse of children in care stretching back decades. Since it opened in 2015 it has heard evidence relating to institutions including orphanages and private boarding schools. It reported some of its findings on Wednesday. Particularly loathsome are the accounts of children suffering  physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at the hands of members of the Catholic religious order of St Ninian's in Falkland, Fife, who were able to "pursue their abusive practices with impunity." Lady Smith described the evidence as shocking and distressing." 

Seven institutions are being investigated as part of the inquiry, including some of Scotland's most prestigious private schools, prompting "unreserved" apologies to former pupils who were abused while in their care:

  • Fettes College "accepts and recognises that in the past there have been occasions of sexual abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse." 
  • Loretto School in Musselburgh also offered an unreserved apology, saying it acknowledged pupils had been abused by one of its teachers in the 1950s and 60s. Angela Grahame QC said there had been flaws which allowed "despicable abuse" to take place and said it acknowledged that it had let down the victims. 
  • Morrison's Academy in Crieff said it wanted to make "a heartfelt and sincere apology to each of the individuals who have shown the strength and courage to share some of the most damaging experiences of their lives". 
  • Queen Victoria School in Dunblane was founded in 1905 for children of services personnel.Lawyer Graham MacIver said the school recognised that instances of abuse had occurred, expressed its deep regret and apologised to the individuals concerned.
  • Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, said that, with hindsight, it was clear that warning signs had been missed and "it was clear with at least one former member of staff the dots were never to be joined." Mr Reid offered the school's "unreserved apology". "The school profoundly regrets and sincerely apologises for the fact that such experiences were endured by some pupils," he said. 
  • Gordonstoun said that "Individuals reported serious allegations of sexual abuse.Some experienced severe bullying, and adults neglected their responsibilities to protect them. For this Gordonstoun is sorry."
 Fettes College fees per term are £9,975 for a day pupil and £12,165 for a boarding pupil. So, if there's 3 terms per year, that's £36,395 per child per year. That's more than the average wage in this country. To be in a financial position where £36,395 to educate one of your kids - and you may have more than one - when education is free in this country for everyone, seems like a reasonable and necessary expense, means that you are eye-wateringly wealthy, incredibly stupid or expecting a substantial return for your money. Beyond your child being beaten, buggered, bullied or irrumated, that is.
This is the Gordonstoun lot. Taken from their web site, which trumpets:

You can’t put a price on friendship. Or success. Or the feeling of sailing a 80 foot ocean-going yacht around the islands of the West Coast of Scotland.
They do, though. Put a price on it. Gordonstoun fees are £9,950 per day pupil and £13,750 per boarder, per term. That's £41,250 per year.
Here's an alumnus of Gordonstoun:
He didn't like it there.
Neither did this alumnus of Fettes College - and they didn't like him, either. He may not have enjoyed his expensive education, but it certainly did the trick:
According to CelebsMoney.com, using estimates from Net Worth Stats, at the age of 67, Tony Blair's net worth is now $60 million. Some of this he earned through public speaking engagements, at £300,000 per event. There was a lot of housing jiggery-pokery and his global consultancy work. The great work continues through Tony Blair Institute For Global Change. The wife and kids are doing pretty good, too.

 In other Scottish news, Derek Mackay went to Renfrew High School, which, being a state-run secondary school didn't cost his parents anything.  Education Scotland describe the school as good; the headteacher gave strong leadership of school improvement, and  worked with staff to embed a positive culture. There was very effective use of information about young people’s wellbeing which ensured that their needs were well met, and that they make good progress. There was no suggestion of child abuse within the school.
On 5 February 2020, the Scottish Sun alerted the office of Nicola Sturgeon about a story they were planning to run revealing Mackay had sent a 16-year-old boy messages via Facebook and Instagram in which he described the boy as "cute" and offered to meet up with him in person. The Scottish Government was accused of trying to stop publication of the Scottish Sun article, questioning the "justification" of intruding into Mackay's private life and claiming the Scottish Sun had a “moral obligation" to share the material in order for them "to offer any form of substantive response or view". The paper defended its position, stating that Alan Muir, its Scottish editor, had read out the "most significant and damaging messages" to Sturgeon’s office in two 15-minute phone conversations.
On 6 February, Mackay resigned hours before the Scottish budget was due to be announced. Sturgeon announced he had been suspended from the SNP and she had accepted his resignation, recognising his "significant contribution to government" but admitting his behaviour "failed to meet the standards required". The Scottish Conservative acting leader Jackson Carlaw suggested the messages could "constitute the grooming of a young individual" and called for Mackay to resign from the Scottish Parliament.
 Patrick John Grady is a Scottish National Party politician who  was educated at Inverness Royal Academy, a comprehensive secondary school. (No fees). He was elected in 2015 as the MP for Glasgow North, re-elected in 2017 and in 2019. After the 2017 election, he was appointed as Chief Whip of the SNP Westminster Group, and was re-appointed to this role after the 2019 election. Grady resigned his position as Chief Whip in March 2021 to fight allegations of sexual harassment against two male SNP researchers. 
Didn't want to embarrass a party that is beyond embarrassment.

 

Just because Alec Salmond did not commit any criminal offences of a sexual nature, just because the Scottish National Party conspired to identify additional female complainants against him, just because the Judicial Review into the conduct of the Scottish Government into their investigation of complaints against him found in his favour and awarded him more than £500,000 in legal costs, just because the Holyrood Inquiry into what Sturgeon knew, when she knew it and what she undertook to do to save him from his peccadilloes has found that she did, indeed, mislead the Scottish Government; doesn't mean to say that Salmond is anything other, by his own admission and that of Gordon Jackson QC, his defense lawyer, a sleazeball. Filmed on the Edinburgh/Glasgow train during the criminal trial, Jackson was overheard (and recorded) saying of his client:  "He [Salmond] certainly was... I don't know much about senior politicians but he was quite an objectionable bully to work with....I think he was a nasty person to work for...a nightmare to work for." The audio is then unclear but he is heard adding: "... a sex pest, but he's no charged with that....Unfortunately, [named withheld] and [name withheld] say it's sexual."

Whilst we're slagging Salmond off, here's the master of insult and invective, describing the wee chap in 2009:

Sir Alex Lard, of Donald Trunp, plc, Chief of the Jock Tribesmen, also part-time prime minister of Scotland, part-time MP and part-time MSP and full-time cross-dressing, obese, inebriate, gluttonous monster, poses in a neat,wee, below-the-knee, Jock S&M outfit, designed for the shorter man with the fuller figure and revealing a tempting glimpse of fetching white calf. The sporran, swinging gently against the genital area, adds a frisson of exhibitionisme-lite for those jaded with beating their wives, interfering with their nieces and nephews or brutally attacking their opponents in the sectarian divide which so characterises Salmond's Smart, Successful Scotland. Asked about this strange apparel one of the Tribesmen's spokespersons said it was a means by which Jock men could announce their manliness to the world, by dressing like big girlies. Sir Christopher Kelly last week ruled, among other things, that MPs could not also sit in the Jock half-billion pound parliament, the one overseen by the BBC's grunting hunchback transsexual, Mr Kirsty Wark, off Newswank, the Corporation's sinking flagship nightly current affairs comic strip. This will be hard for Lord Salmond to take as he likes to watch the pennies, just in case he upsets his boss, Mr Donald McTrump, who owns Aberdeenshire, and is thrown off the US-owned McTrunp payroll. English readers will recall that the lardy wee bastard, living in a splendid palace in Edinburgh, charged them eight hundred pounds a month for his London food during the months when Westminster wasn't even sitting, not that he ever goes there when it is sitting; still, we are in a recession, albeit that the brilliant, trained economist, Salmond, didn't see it coming until it was here, at which point he of course knew exactly what to do, the useless fat cunt and times being hard, he needs every penny from his three public sector jobs - the three salaries, the three sets of exes, the three pensions and so on. When told of Kelly's ruling (itself subsequently downgraded to non-binding guidance, more of a suggestion, really) Salmond's sycophants said that Salmond was standing down from his Westminster perk at the next election, by which time he would have only been drawing his triple salaries for about three years. The extra food allowance, however, would have to be found from somewhere, a smug, wee fat fucker had to eat, after all, and the English had better stump up with some grub money, they had stolen his oil, after all. 

 People up here, in Scotland, some of them, the tribesmen, bless their tattooed arses,

actually believe that lardy Alec Salmond is different, forgetting entirely that he learned his grimy  trade in the bars and knocking shops of Westminster, long, long before he ever set foot in the fantastical world of Holyrood.  

mr ishmael's essay today was:
Scotland, Best Part of England        drafted 16/11/2009 

There's a whole lot more from mr ishmael in the anthology: Honest Not Invent, which  is available from Lulu, Amazon, Blackwells and the Book Depository.

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12 comments:

Mike said...

At the risk of causing offense, I have to say that Scotland is a pimple on the arse of the UK - ie not wanted. After all, what has Scotland ever done for England - that's apart from Rab C.

mrs ishmael said...

James the First? Berserker Scots soldiers in kilts fighting the Union wars? Fish? Tony Blair? Gordon Brown?
Anyway, mr mike, I do agree that it has mostly been English wealth flowing up the Great North Road, and for the average English person who doesn't have a sentimental attachment to the Union, a term deriving from James the First, who unified the crowns in his own self, and dropped everything in Scotland to hurry down to England to help out when Elizabeth the First died without issue, the response to the news that Scotland wants to secede from the union might well be a shrug of the shoulders and "off you go, then".
I have to confess that I am only bothered about it because I'm an English person living in a part of Great Britain and I don't want to live in the bankrupt foreign country that the SNP seem determined to turn Scotland into. But this political struggle is the most exciting thing that has happened for decades - certainly a damn sight more exciting than Westminster, populated by politicians who seem to agree about everything and have no policy differences, whatever the colour of their ties.
It's been raining a bit down your way, mr mike - hope you are keeping dry.

mongoose said...

It does me 'eart good, mrs i, so it does, to see that righteousness has prevailed and that the saintly Mrs Fish has been exonerated by an open and independent enquiry. That's independent - as the right cheek of an arse is independent of the left cheek. It is a completely different and separate arse cheek. I am glad to see that the truth hounds of the Press are united in their belief that her honour is, and has always been, intact. Let us now move forward together to the broad sunlit uplands of McFreedom.

In other news, Sleepy Joe Biden has now fallen over in public more times than all of the previous presidents of the US added together.

mrs ishmael said...

There's a rather wobbly circle to be squared, mr mongoose, as the Commission is very shortly to report that she did indeed mislead Parliament.
She's very jolly chipper, isn't she?
It is so depressing. Watching football must be like this - down one minute, up the next. I don't think I'm strong enough for this.
Poor old Biden - it is painful to watch. Maybe some nice social worker can apply for Guardianship for him and get him out of the clutches of his cruel puppeteers.
And in Glasgow, I see that the Children's Hospital has managed to fatally infect children with some death bug through dirty water.

Mike said...

I gather the wee hen has been "exonerated" only to the extent that the remit for Hamilton was exceedingly narrow. Technically she's still in it upto her neck. It won't be spun that way though.

The rain has been biblical down here. Normally Aussies welcome the rain, but enough is enough. Tomorrow (Weds) the forecast (for Sydney) is 28C and sun and sunny for the next few days. Fortunately, we live on one of the higher points overlooking the harbour, so we are OK, but a lot of people elsewhere have been evacuated as dams and rivers have overflowed. But that is the nature of Australia - always extreme.

mrs ishmael said...

'Morning, All,
Today, on the Scottish Radio phone-in programme hosted by Kay Adams, they have been munching and chewing at the Hamilton and the Commission reports. Circle-squaring being played out, much to the evident irritation of Kay, who eventually snapped at the umpty-ump claim that the politicians have been politicking. "it's what they do," she patiently explained. "Politicking. It's the job. Politicians. Of course they are politicking."
Have you got the Bench saw and the de Walt drivers out, mr mike, to build your Arc? I hope the sun keeps shining - but your winter is on the way. Just as our summer is creeping closer, together with the Scottish election.
Did you notice, ishmaelites, that whilst England and Wales held a census the other day, the Scottish census won't be happening until 2022? Anything to be different from England. Westminster said that they wanted a census at this time because they wanted a handle on the impact of Covid on the population. Holyrood said that Covid had caused such change that it was best to wait until things have settled down.
Politicking - it's what they do.

mongoose said...

All the calculations now are about how badly the election results will be with a wounded leader a) safe in place, b) out, c) still clinging on but scandal ongoing, d) in jail. OK, maybe not d) but a lad can dream. The timing suggests that it is not over. It's the hope that does them in. Just when they think that they are free and clear - that's the time to put the boot in.

Normally a politicking person would want the major fan splatter to happen about ten days out, which is two weekends before the Thursday. So that is something like Sunday 25th April. So three more weeks of moaning, lying, and leaking, and then we should all get up early to watch the Sunday morning politics progs. Perhaps even trek to the West End Saturday night to get the Sunday papers early as we did in times of old.

inmate said...

Sorry mr mongoose, nothing’s gonna change, same as it ever was. The govament will still get in, whether in England or fuckin Scotchland.
Wee nippy is bulletproof, ‘‘twas all a concoction to get the fat man some dosh, buy him off, after the fishwife appeared to be more popular than him and might achieve independence. The Scotchish Nationalists don’t want independence, there’d be no one to blame and a lack of English taxpayers money to waste.
They, govaments, all of ‘em, have gotten used to this rule by tyranny; flip flopping, build up hopes then cut you off at the knees, promises made then dashed.
“No holidays for you this year matey, unless your Dad owns a villa abroad, like mine, then it’s ok to visit there, make sure everything’s kosher, just for a couple a months mind, no £5000 fines for you chummy, izzit ok if me n the bint n a couple a sprogs borrow it, during school ‘olidays, just forra couple a weeks like, oh an can we use the private jet? saves all that booking an queuing shit, like ordnary folk.”
Boris, Sturgeon, and the cunt from whales are lapping this up, more power than old Stalin ever dreamed of, loadsa money, from backhanders and future directorships; if all turns to shit, blame the scientists.

mrs ishmael said...

"I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

The scottish play.

mongoose said...

My, you're a cheery pair this evening.

I thought that I detected attempted McTreason at PMQs earlier. The SNP oaf whose name escapes me - the fat, pompous one - prattled some yeck about a Tory standing for the Edinburgh Talking Shop at the same time as keeping his Westminster seat. Apparently this is a waste of dosh of approximately 175k. (That were he to resign his Westminster seat a by-election would be needed costing presumably a similar sum had eluded him. Or perhaps I was failing to pay enough attention because my ears were bleeding. Anyway.) The obvious riposte was to mention that Mrs Fish had wasted half a million quid on lawyers due to her ongoing chicanery and banana republic corruption. It was an open goal. Boris either failed to see it - which I doubt - or chose not to tap the ball into the net.

IMO Mrs Fish is due for filleting as per the calendar set out above.

You are right though, mr inmate, that key folk among them do not actually want full independence. It is a carve up of English dosh they seek.

mrs ishmael said...

Well, mr mongoose, dearie, I was thoroughly depressed by Sturgeon emerging victorious from the vote of no confidence. This was compounded by First Minister's Questions at lunch time. Ruthboy made entirely sensible, statistically supported, attacks on the SNP’s abysmal educational record and the widening attainment gap. All Sturgeon had in response was to sneer at Ruthboy's elevation to the Lords. So nasty was she that the Speaker admonished her. Whereupon Sturgeon's next remark to Ruthboy was prefaced by “at the risk of offending the Speaker...” before further sneering at Ruthboy, whose last day and last question at FMQs it was before ermine calls. When the leader of the SNP is admonished by the Speaker, defies him with impunity and the best she can do is catcall Davidson for going to the unelected Lords. In England.... and yet a victory for the SNP is still predicted, is that not cause for curses, not loud, but deep?
But I quite cheered up this evening when Salmond pops up to say he's instructed his lawyers and he's swimming in for the kill.... which is what you were saying yesterday evening, that "Just when they think that they are free and clear - that's the time to put the boot in." Who's a clever old 'goose, then?

Mike said...

Mrs I: its clear that Salmond has all the incriminating doco. He will still have allies in positions of power who leak him stuff. He's going for the death by a 1000 cuts strategy. This is far from over.

We have our own version of Holyrood down here at the moment. All sorts of investigations into historic rapes by politicians; even political staffer performing "sex acts" in ministers offices and then posting selfies - just goes to show the caliber of the fuckwits who think they know best. Two ministers are on "sick leave" - the Attorney General and the Defense Minister (she looks like a fat version of Sturgeon) and she has already settled defamation claims for calling one of the rapees "a lying cow". This is the same Defense Minister that has just let a contract of tens of billions to upgrade our few submarines - it came as a surprise to many that we needed submarines to protect our water from invasion from Japan or China or wherever.

In other news down here the rain has abated, and in NSW (Sydney) now afraid of running out of water we are now firing up the desalination plant. Elsewhere there are plagues of mice/spiders/snakes etc. In the good old days it was just plagues of rabbits (and mice) and battalions of killer cane toads marching south from Queensland. To think that only 12 months ago all we had to worry about was bush fires, each bigger than the UK. On that occasion the emergency services gave up the struggle and we were save by, what else, but rain.

Meanwhile it seems that Europe is falling apart.