Sunday 13 June 2021

The Sunday Ishmael: 13/06/21


 
Whether a German-controlled EU will be better or worse is open to debate: you could argue it will be more coherent, even if it lacks democratic legitimacy. But there can surely no longer be any debate about whether German domination is happening.     Matthew Lynn in the Spectator 7/6/21
 
Friday
Spiced melon, gazpacho, coconut, high note herbs
Turbot roasted on the bone (caught off the Cornish coast by a fisherman from Newquay) with Cornish new potatoes and wild garlic pesto with local garden greens
 Cheeses - Cornish cheese, Gouda, Cornish yarg, helford blue
English strawberry pavlova
clotted cream fudge, clotted cream ice cream cone, chocolate Earl Grey truffles

Saturday
Sparkling scallops, Curgurrell crab claws, Portscatho mackerel
seared and smokey moorland sirloin, Newlyn lobster and scorched leeks with  layered Cornish potato chips, StJust purple sprouting broccoli and salt baked beetroot
Beach Hut Sundae
 
Around firepits on the beach: Baked Brie, hot buttered rum and toasted marshmallows
 
These people eat too much. Boris really shouldn't have had them over - it's like giving a dinner party to people you are obliged to have round: they eat your food and drink your Cornish beer and hedgerow fizz, then proceed to piss on the furniture. That Macron, he can't tell his arse from a hole in the ground: "Nothing is negotiable. Everything is applicable" - that is just rude. We'll see how he gets on with Germany in charge this time round. And how very dare he suggest that Northern Ireland is not part of the same country as the United Kingdom. The Foreign Secretary, our Dom, was moved to extremely undiplomatic language this morning:  "I think it is offensive... what we want is a bit of respect from the other side, a bit of flexibility, a bit of goodwill"
 
Look, they may not be everybody's cup of Earl Grey, they may be a bit looney-tunes, they may be a bit Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but they are our looney-tunes, and we're proud to have the six counties as part of our glorious nation, so we are. mr ishmael, a son of Belfast, touched on its specialness - not often, because they are downright scary. He told me that his mother would alert the family to the Orange parades with the cry of "The men! The men are coming!" as they processed with sashes, bowler hats, instruments and intimidation through Catholic residential streets.
Do you remember Irisgate?  Peter Robinson, a founder member of the Democratic Unionist Party, together with the downright terrifying Ian Paisley, was the First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2008 until 2016. In 2010, his wife, Iris, a serving MP and Member of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly for the DUP for Strangford, had an affair with  19 year old Kirk McCambley and procured £50,000 in loans for the boy so he could start his own restaurant. She failed to declare her monetary interest in the restaurant, despite serving on the council which leased the premises to her teenage lover.
The Official Assembly Commissioner's Investigation and Report completely cleared Robinson of any wrongdoing.

 
THE SWISH FAMILY ROBINSON POSE OUTSIDE ONE OF THEIR MANY VULGAR HOMES.

It turns out that Pete and the babyfucker, Iris,  still embody the brutal ethos of orange presbyterianism after all; the same sort of attitudes which sparked the Troubles in 1967 and led, eventually to the virtual apotheosis of Mr Kneecaps McGuinness, Mr Gerry Adams of the Noncing Adams Family, the ghastly Paisley horrorshow and themselves.

This writer is of these people and knows too well their tight-lipped, rictus smile, judgemental, tut-tutting hypocrisy, their sense of historic entitlement,  their Masonic carve-ups and vendettas, their bent cops and judges, their apartheid wrapped in a Union Jack.

Robinson and his clan, in my lifetime, argued that one person one vote  had no place in Northern Ireland;  that businessmen, like themselves, should continue to have a vote in every constituency in which they had premises - democracy minus zero, no limits.

They argued that a special, armed, sectarian police force, the B Specials, composed of their most loutish cousins and nephews and uncles, should exist to control the Catholics by means of beatings and shootings and framings-up in the courts.

The Orangemen, flushed still, from their (Dutch) victory in a minor military skirmish nearly three hundred years previous, insisted on their right to annually terrorise their Catholic neighbours by marching, pissed-up and belligerent, through their neighbourhoods, insisted on the legitimacy of their control of housing, policing and employment - which worked to the advantage only of themselves and to the active disadvantage of the Catholics. A shower of fucking bastards, supported by a Westminster Tory shower of fucking bastards and a vicious  Orange hoodlum regiment in Glasgow; it was a civil rights movement as legitimate as that in the United States which was hijacked by the Provisional IRA  and which led to a bloodbath so gross that the current Northern Ireland Police Service has just announced the abandonment of  investigations into three thousand deaths in that benighted province
.

I'm not a violent man, never have been, never had to be, I was always, from about eleven, over six feet tall.  I've had the odd incident, was charged, once, with attempted murder but that was just Old Bill, doing what he does, lying his arse off;  it was self-defence and the judge threw it out, laughing.  I hit this guy - who was attacking me with a deadly weapon - as hard as I could, just the once, broke his face in bits - teeth, jaw, cheekbone.  'Salways made me think twice about that stuff,  And the other thing is that the older I've become the more I realise how utterly miraculous is Life, Creation, how our self-repairing systems are hard-wired, clever beyond belief and how a punch in the gob is potentially an act of heinous vandalism.

That's not to say that some people don't deserve to have their beings vandalised;  we can all think of six-hundred and fifty of them, immediately - thieves, ponces, slags, war criminals, Earth criminals, blackmailers, extortionists and child molesters;  there's a giant-sized A&E department's worth just sitting there, lying and bragging and guffawing on the green benches.


But some people, the nerve of some people, they really need singling-out for special treatment, for cruel and unusual punishment.  If I was ever alone in a room with this guy, I would gouge his eyes out, cut his tongue out,  smash every bone in his body and bury him alive:

 Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has been challenged by Taoiseach Enda Kenny to make a statement to the Dail on the disappearance of Belfast mother-of-ten Jean McConville.
“There’s a challenge for you now,” Mr Kenny said. “Say it on the record.”
Fianna Fail Micheal Martin leader also told the Dail: "Nobody except Deputy Adams believes he wasn't in the IRA."
Before her death, IRA bomber Dolours Price publicly alleged that Mr Adams ordered Ms McConville's kidnapping and killing.
Mr Adams has consistently rejected the accusations.
It comes just days after recordings of secret interviews with the late IRA bomber Dolours Price were handed over to police in Northern Ireland investigating the disappearance of Ms McConville.
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers travelled to the US to collect the tapes from the US Justice Department, after they had been secured by subpoena from Boston College.
The Taoiseach has urged anyone with information about those abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles to help end the decades-long suffering of their families.
Relatives of the victims, known as the Disappeared, met Mr Kenny and presented him with a copy of a recently published book setting out some of their stories.
Afterwards, in a statement, Mr Kenny said he expressed his sympathy to the families and supported their ongoing fight to have the remains of their loved ones located and returned for burial.
"I am glad to have the opportunity this evening to meet with and to hear the stories of those families whose loved ones were taken, killed and then hidden from them in such a callous and tragic way," he said.
"Information from the public is absolutely essential to help to bring an end to their pain."
Mr Kenny called on anyone with information about any of the cases to contact the Victims' Remains Commission in strict confidence.
"I also call on anyone who knows anyone else who may have relevant information to use their influence to encourage them to make it available to the commission," he said.
"This is a matter of common human decency. These families have suffered enough and somebody out there can help to bring an end to that suffering."
The Taoiseach also said in the statement that he met the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) and was updated on their work."
By Fiach Kelly – 09 July 2013
..........................................................
mr ishmael's essays today were:
 
NO SURRENDER. THE THIEVING RED HAND OF ULSTER  drafted 31/03/2010 
 
WOTSONTELLY drafted 9/11/2013
 

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: 

Please register an account with them first. This will save you a couple of quid, as going straight into the link provided below seems to make paypal think it's ok to charge in dollars, and apply their own conversion rate, which will put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow our link; a pop-up box asks for age confirmation - simply set the date to (say) 1 January 1960, and proceed. (If you type the title, the anthology will not appear as a search result until the "show explicit content" box - found at the bottom left by scrolling down - has been checked.  You may also see the age verification box, as above, at this point.) 
 The full title is "Vent Stack love from stanislav" by ishmael smith, and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of Buster the Previous Blog Dog having a green thought in a green shade.  


Link for the paperback:

 https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/vent-stack/paperback/product-q8jzk2.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Or...

shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to paste it into an email and tell a friend:

 https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu

 Honest, Not Invent is available in paperback or hardback.

Link for Hard Back : 

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html

Link for Paper Back : 

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html

At checkout, try WELCOME15 or TREAT15 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, the book (including delivery to a UK address) should cost £10.89


 

8 comments:

Mike said...

Just like the fascination with Scotland (no offense intended Mrs I) I cannot for the life of me see the lure of N Ireland. Its alright saying that these people have fought wars with us, on our side, but so too has almost every country in Europe and beyond at some stage in English history, and they are not part of The Union, and many are now enemies or adversaries. England would be far better off just being England - fuck the others. Albeit England is no longer England.

mongoose said...

The maritime strategic significance of Jockland is also pretty much gone, mr mike. Apart from oil and gas. Oh, oops. Ssshhh!

The G7 was good fun, I thought. Let's get the Red Arrows out and they can do their delta formation thing like it's still 1966. And plenty of social distancing not going on. Sleepy Joe did alright. They must have had more juice in him than Air Force One.

Speaking of light entertainment, I was at Edgbaston last week and 18,000 of us were crammed in there. The Barmy Army were up to their beer snake antics from before midday. I saw one pair of lads taking their seats at 11am with four pints each. Now I like beer but not in the morning, and I've never felt the urge to buy myself four pints at a time. They were sunburnt and yelling by the end of lunch. Knowing what cricket grounds are like regarding separation and hygiene, I think that we may have been an experiment.

inmate said...

Well, well who would believe it, that far, far right of centre blog,/sarc, run by mr Swiss bob, Going Postal no one reads the comments, have done a book review of Honest not Invent. And it would seem that even far, far right Nazis,/sarc, enjoy the acerbic wit, sarcasm, beautiful writing and even the occasionally used sweary words of stanislav and mr I.
Who da thought it?

Mike said...

I've enjoyed the cricket, Mr mongoose. NZ were good. Looking forward to the India game. On the other hand.....England must be having nightmares.

mrs ishmael said...

Hi, mr inmate,
mr swiss bob used to be a regular, much valued member of the commentariat here, back in the day. It's a tremendous review that he's posted - I hope that it brings the great work to the attention of the wider readership that mr ishmael deserves.

mrs ishmael said...

I do understand why you find the Celtic countries that surround England to be irritating, mr mike, and downright dangerous at times. But what is to be done? Cede the Six Counties to Eire, to be sure, right enough, but what about the Protestant Unionists? Can't just go giving their country away, not after all the blood that has been spilled. Kind of disrespectful, innit? A bit like the Falklands. If ever there was an anomaly, it's the Falklands. Other side of the world. Maintaining it as a part of the Motherland is expensive, to say the least. But what about all the British people that live there? Damn it, we fought a war not so long ago, to retain the Falklands. I know someone who worked out there for a couple of years. Just like a cold, windswept corner of England, he said, with red post boxes and everything.
The United Kingdom is a bit of an inaccurate name. Of the countries that are united under that name, isn't England the only one to have a monarch, and isn't she a woman? The United Queendom might be more pertinent these days.

Mike said...

Mrs I: prompted by the recent death of de Bono, here's a lateral thought. Its time to re-colonise Eire and re-unite it with NI. A confident England would do this. Ditto Jockland.

mrs ishmael said...

Now that's thinking outside the box, mr mike. A truly Elizabethan thought, but I don't think there's sufficient in our military capability to do it successfully. Unless, of course, you are thinking of re-colonising by surreptitious New Plantations of woke young people from Lahndun?