call me ishmael: September 2021

Wednesday, 29 September 2021

Caption Contest

image courtesy of mr verge

Sunday, 26 September 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 26/9/21: Scum news

Starmer's useful "Win Woman"- a female John Prescott.

"We cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute vile [inaudible] Banana Republic, vile, nasty, Etonian [inaudible] piece of scum.”
To applause, she added she had "held back a little".

It's just not elegant. Two scums, two viles, an incorrect adjectival usage and two inaudible insults. At least a public school education confers the ability to insult with wit, grace, panache and a sprinkling of Latin. Anyway, should Sir Keir find himself in the unlikely position of occupying the top job, he intends removing charitable status from the public schools to yield £1.7 billion to invest in the state school system, to level up and therefore improve the quality of insult. Well, that's what he's saying this year. Remember his Ten Pledges in the 2020 Labour leadership election? Good, cos he doesn't. Here they are:

"Based on the moral case for socialism, here is where I stand.
1. Economic justice
Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations.
2. Social justice
Abolish Universal Credit and end the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime. Set a national goal for wellbeing to make health as important as GDP; Invest in services that help shift to a preventative approach. Stand up for universal services and defend our NHS. Support the abolition of tuition fees and invest in lifelong learning.
3. Climate justice
Put the Green New Deal at the heart of everything we do. There is no issue more important to our future than the climate emergency. A Clean Air Act to tackle pollution locally. Demand international action on climate rights.
4. Promote peace and human rights
No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.
5. Common ownership
Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.
6. Defend migrants’ rights
Full voting rights for EU nationals. Defend free movement as we leave the EU. An immigration system based on compassion and dignity. End indefinite detention and call for the closure of centres such as Yarl’s Wood.
7. Strengthen workers’ rights and trade unions
Work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay. Repeal the Trade Union Act. Oppose Tory attacks on the right to take industrial action and the weakening of workplace rights.
8. Radical devolution of power, wealth and opportunity
Push power, wealth and opportunity away from Whitehall. A federal system to devolve powers – including through regional investment banks and control over regional industrial strategy. Abolish the House of Lords – replace it with an elected chamber of regions and nations.
9. Equality
Pull down obstacles that limit opportunities and talent. We are the party of the Equal Pay Act, Sure Start, BAME representation and the abolition of Section 28 – we must build on that for a new decade.

10. Effective opposition to the Tories"

You see, it doesn't matter. Say anything to get the job, then forget all the pretty, empty promises. If his strategy to effectively oppose the Tories is to have Attack Dog Rayner as his Deputy Leader with her uncouth playground name-calling, and his only remonstration is to say, "I wouldn't have put it that way myself", then we can be assured that the top job will forever elude him. His present position is hardly a job for life. They are calling it Starmer's Last Chance Conference.

This morning, Andrew Marr

reminded Sir Keir of Pledge 5 - Common Ownership, which ordinary people might construe to mean nationalisation. Not so, as Sir Keir was at pains to point out, especially when it comes to the energy crisis. I couldn't follow the reasoning, which was as sophisticated as one might expect from a Knight Commander of the Bath (a prestigious award that the British ruling class award to themselves, stemming from the ritual bathing of candidate knights. I know, I know, shakes head in despair) and Queen's Counsel, (a senior barrister appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor); but he was pretty emphatic that there would be no nationalisation. Oddly, in light of Pledge 7, he also emphatically expressed his opinion to Marr that even more foreign drivers, poultry workers and hospitality staff should be shipped in to do the jobs that are paid at a level that excludes the British worker. Which, even more oddly, left Grant Shapps, Conservative Member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield since 2005, and Secretary of State for Transport, to give us the traditionally Labour line that the Conservatives want to skill up our own labour, improve pay and conditions and stop undercutting jobs with foreign labour, whilst granting 5000 visas for foreign drivers and 5,500 visas for foreign poultry workers.

Has anyone else noticed that something terribly strange seems to have happened to Shapps?

He used to be quite a personable young man.

In a move borrowed from the doomed Matt Hancock, he broadcast from a carefully-curated nook in which the Union Jack was strategically draped, a book on railways was prominently displayed, face forward, to remind us of his job,

his red boxes were open, their confidential documents spilling out

and, peeping out of the bookcase behind him, could be seen a book cover bearing the top of his head from healthier days and his name in very large print.

Anyway, Grant says there's lots of petrol. The country is awash with petrol. There's plenty to go around. These apparent shortages are created by panic buying. What you must do, you panickers, is to take a deep breath, focus on your breathing and buy your petrol in a calm, possibly sedate, manner. Be Sensible. Fill up only when you need petrol. Do not fill up when you already have a full tank of petrol, because that just won't work.

Yes, its Conference Season! Brighton! Hotels! Late Night Drunkenness! Promiscuity! (oops, sorry, networking). Here's mr ishmael on Conference:

WHERE'S THE UNIONS? drafted 9/12/2010

Sometime in my lifetime, maybe before, trades union leaders, most of them, came to see themselves as an informal arm of govament; it's true, there was McGahey and Scargill and Red Robbo, but there was also Len Murray, Lord Murray, eventually, if you please, slithering in and out of Downing Street; there was Tom Jackson-Moustache of the Post Office Workers but there was also the repulsive and incompetent Alan Johnson, currently doping so well as shadow to wee George Spunkface.

Before the 2005 election something called the Warwick Agreement was struck between union bosses and the Labour Party*.

I remember, once, seeing a letter from Harry Fletcher,* lifetime deputy boss of NAPO, the probation officers' union, or professional association, as they prefer it to be styled; it was in response to a very genuinely urgent grievance felt by a member: I am sorry I have been unable to get back to you, I have been busy lunching with ministers; honest, not invent, helping to formulate strategies, or some such, he would have been, useless little turd. On another occasion, at a NAPO conference, word went around from the leadership, then the unpardonably loathsome Judy McKnight, that angry members should not heckle and barrack the pipsqueak, NewLabour arsehole, Paul Boateng, as he angrily threatened to draw a ministerial red line through the entire probation service; we shouldn't heckle him because it would seem racist, him being a Man of Colour and everything, and probably mess up hers and little fat Harry's chances of a peerage, or a QUANGO, at the very least.
Or that we would all be bamboozled by his nauseating, ever so humble performance at the TUC - which in every previous year he had always treated with absolute contempt?

A few years ago a speech from the PM would still have generated a polite ovation. Not any more. For the most part, delegates sat in stony silence and, as the BBC's Nick Assinder reported, even when promised that the government would not renege on pledges in 'the Warwick agreement' made in June, 'they were far from overcome with excitement or gratitude'.

What seems to have escaped the New Labour policy wonks is that trying to shift the focus of the debates that are likely to take place in the run-up to a general election away from the war and onto domestic issues does not necessarily make anybody feel much better. Most right thinking punters are every bit as pissed off with privatisation, tuition fees and government-inspired hysteria over the 'war on terror' as they have been appalled at the unremitting carnage in Iraq.
Even for a Blair at his smooth talking best, winning the hearts and minds of a hostile TUC was never going to be easy - the forked tongue being especially visible given that all the pally chat came at the same time as 104,000 civil servants face the sack.

But that would be to miss the point. Blair's main purpose was to lend credibility to the Big Four union leaders whose loyalty to the Labour Party has been put under enormous stress in the last couple of years because of their own members' bitterness at New Labour's agenda. This anger has erupted on the industrial front in the last few weeks with very successful strikes on the Yorkshire buses and at British Airways. And the political expression has been evident in the sensational results for Respect candidates in Stepney and Millwall.

Despite all the assertions of still being completely in charge and raring to go, Blair is actually up to his eyeballs in the brown stuff and that is the real reason why, as one commentator put it, 'he presented delegates in the Brighton conference centre with a notably different prime minister from the one they have come to expect... there was no lecturing, threatening or casting aside. And there was absolutely no reference to the "forces of conservatism" or "wreckers". Calculated, deliberate and utterly self-serving as usual, the distinct shift of tone adopted by Blair actually marks the culmination of a long spell of backdoor scheming all designed to bring leaders of the four biggest unions - Amicus, Unison, the TGWU and GMB - back on board in the run-up to an election. Those with any sense inside the New Labour machine realise that the support of the Big Four is absolutely essential. Like it or not, the party still relies heavily on union cash to survive. If the recent disaffiliations of the RMT and FBU were to spread to the GMB, Labour HQ would be driven to panic stations. The Big Four are every bit as important when it comes to the Labour Party conference because of the block voting system. Yet according to one 'senior union figure' quoted in the Guardian, 'The new generation of union leaders don't have any personal loyalty to Tony Blair... they may not have moved against him over Iraq, but the war legitimised their thinking that they owe him nothing and they don't have to be deferential towards him.'

But rather than press home their advantage and blow Blair out of the water, leaders of the Big Four - and Brendan Barber of the TUC - have settled for a bit of pretty shabby horse trading. Tony Woodley of the TGWU made this clear in the Morning Star on the same day as Blair's speech to the TUC: 'The disappointments the movement has with the government's record - and there are many - will be tempered by the realisation that we have to work for a Labour victory at that election, whenever it comes.'

In the weeks since the Warwick agreement leaders of all the main unions have gone out of their way to talk up the concessions which they said had been made by the government. Woodley claimed that ministers had made 'several significant concessions'. Similar claims have been repeated by Prentis, who states categorically that the net result of the concessions made at Warwick is that 'it will be harder for PFI to be carried out at the expense of the workforce and that it will be easier to invest in public services without using PFI'.

Yet the Warwick agreement is not really an agreement at all. It is more a shopping list of demands put in front of the Labour Party chairman, Ian McCartney: issues from skills training to rights of migrant workers, action to tackle workplace violence and uprating of redundancy. All very laudable aspirations in their own right (56 of them in all) but you will have a job finding a copy of an actual agreement anywhere, least of all from the Labour Party.

One or two very minor concessions have been made on employment rights at Labour's conference and some of these might even find their way into the manifesto, but what happens after that is anybody's guess. It certainly doesn't seem to fall into the category of 'major concessions', let alone herald the death knell of New Labour's market-driven manifesto. Away from the national policy forum, every other indicator points to the fact that both Number 10 and Number 11 Downing Street have not the slightest intention of budging from their 'reform agenda' for public services. Why bring Milburn and Mandelson back and why line up 104,000 civil servants for the sack if what you have in mind is to head for what Derek Simpson dreamily informs us is going to be a 'historic, radical and progressive third term'?

Warwick actually provides a very dangerous smokescreen for the government to neutralise the Big Four, all the better to leave Mark Serwotka and the Public and Commercial Services' Union out on a limb. This would be a disaster for every other union. It would put the government's privatisation plans right back on track. Rather than spending hours listening to Wee Ian McCartney, the Big Four would be much better employed getting round a table with all the other unions in the TUC and making joint plans for mass demonstrations and strike action in defence of the PCS.

Too late, now, of course

mrs. ishmael's notes:

*The Warwick Agreement, named after the University of Warwick, where it was made, was agreed in July 2004 prior to the 2005 General Election, between many of Britain's main trade unions and the Labour Party, which helped form Labour's 2005 election manifesto.The affiliated trade unions were organised into a group called TULO (Trade Union & Labour Party Liaison Organisation). The Agreement covered five policy areas:
Fairness at work
Pensions
Public services
Manufacturing
Other commitment

It brought Blair's New Labour Party in for a third consecutive victory.

*mr ishmael trained blog dog, Buster, to bark at Harry Fletcher whenever he appeared on the television: Harry Fletcher Alert, he would cry, take cover.

* Paul Yaw Boateng, Baron Boateng (born 14 June 1951) was the Labour Member of Parliament for Brent South from 1987 to 2005, becoming the UK's first Black Cabinet Minister in May 2002, when he was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In 2003 he was named on the list of "100 Great Black Britons" Following his departure from the House of Commons, he served as the British High Commissioner to South Africa from March 2005 to May 2009. He was introduced as a member of the House of Lords on 1 July 2010. In November 2011, Boateng's son Benjamin, aged 27, was jailed for almost four years for a sex attack on a woman.

Baron Boateng

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mr ishmael's essay today is:

WHERE'S THE UNIONS? drafted 9/12/2010

"Why don't you write a book, my friend said to me, for forty years. There's enough books, don't need any more fucking books, books're the last thing we need more of. The last time he asked, a couple of years back, I wanted to say Well, in a sense, I have, it's called stanislav, a young Polish plumber."

Both anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and Stanislav : Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - are available to purchase for mere money at Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Register an account with Lulu to save 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 PROWRITINGAID15, WELCOME15 or TREAT15 in the coupon box, which 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

Birmingham Pride 2021. Shame I missed it.

Sunday, 19 September 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 19/09/2021

Well, that's a relief - we can get back to hating the French now that we've chummed up with the former colonies. And now that Macron has made such an international tit of himself.


Macron, looking all broody and Napoleonic: Respect le coq!

Here's an Evensong that mr ishmael prepared for you on the 21st August 2010, but didn't get round to posting. He loved the old, cracked voices of the Copper Family, the harmonies, the unaccompanied tradition of English working people singing the seasons, the wars, life and death. mr ishmael included the words as it can be difficult to make them out. Their sheer, naughty triumphalism over the French seems entirely apposite this week, as Biden, Johnson and Morrison declared the formation of AUKUS, the new defense and security partnership which will "protect and defend shared interests in the Indo-Pacific". The first initiative of the Alliance is the creation of nuclear-powered submarine technology for the Royal Navy of Australia, our former penal colony. In a delightful piece of collateral win-win, the Australian Government has abandoned the $66-billion agreement reached with the French for the construction of diesel-electric submarines. Macron was not dignified in defeat, withdrawing his ambassadors from Australia and the US and cancelling a party in Washington. China urged the new Allies to stop being so Cold-War-ish and to please stop picking on us.

EVENSONG, THE COPPER FAMILY OF SUFFOLK, IN ENGLAND, WARLIKE SEAMEN.

Come all you warlike seamen that to the seas belong;

I'll tell you of a fight, my boys, on board the Nottingham.

It was of an Irish captain, his name was Somerville,

With courage bold he did control, he played his part so well.

'Twas on the eighth of June, my boys, when at Spithead we lay,

On board there came an order, our anchor for to weigh.

Bound for the coast of Ireland, our orders did run so:

For us to cruise and not confuse and face a daring foe.

We had not sailed many leagues at sea before a ship we spied.

She being some lofty Frenchman come a-bearing down so wide.

We hailed her off France, my boys, she asked from whence we came.

Our answer was, “From Liverpool, and London is our name.”

“Oh pray are you some man of war, oh pray, what may you be?”

Oh then replied our captain, “And that you soon shall see.

Come strike your English colours or else you shall bring to.

Since you're so stout, you shall give out, or else we will sink you.”

The first broadside we gave to them, it made them for to wonder.

Their mainmast and their rigging too a-rattling down like thunder.

We drove them from their quarters, they could no longer stay.

Our guns did roar, we made so sure we showed them British play.

So now we've took that ship, my boys, and God speed us fair wind

That we might sail to Plymouth town if the heavens prove so kind.

We'll drink a health unto our captain and all such warlike souls.

To him we'll drink, and never flinch, out of a flowing bowl.

The sea battle between HMS Nottingham and the French ship Mars in 1746. The Mars was returning to Europe after the failed 1746 Duc d'Anville Expedition attempting the recapture of the w.Fortress of Louisbourg.

Anyway, in other news, Scotland seems to be falling apart under the weight of Covid and the entire inability of the NHS and the Scottish Ambulance Service to cope with both Covid and the usual ills that beset mankind. For the week to 11th September 2021, the ONS Infection Survey estimates that 1 in 45 people in Scotland had corona virus. Paramedics have been deployed into vaccination centres; the ambulances that can be crewed are queuing outside A&E departments to offload their emergency patients and get back out to the next job, patients are waiting hours for assistance - in one case, 3 days. The Army has been called in to assist.

So Gnasher has decided that the best thing to do in this crisis for her personal credibility and popularity is to announce a referendum in 2023. Fuelled entirely by emotion and not a whit by the financial reality, the legal and bureaucratic entwining of Scotland and England over 300 years, or the subsequent hardship that independence would deliver to the people of Scotland, Gnasher has done it again.

This is a country that worries about the negative or positive consequentials to the Barnett Formula of any tweaking in the National Insurance rate.

Negative and Positive Consequential armies battling.

So how about No Barnett Formula? No block grant? No Army to call on when you can't cope? The SNP has not developed an economic strategy to support its case for independence. That's because it can't. But the promise of a jam referendum tomorrow will distract from the total absence of jam today, from the utter stupidity of walking away from discussions on two Scottish Freeports, from endless preoccupation with transgender rights, from the smoke and mirrors of the whole Fat Alec botched and malicious prosecution, from the Covid chaos created from a refusal to curtail the Tartan Army, from the financial catastrophe that is the SNP, and so on and so forth.

COP26 is to be held in Glasgow from the 31st October to the 12th November. The website states: "Glasgow was chosen by the UK to host COP26 due to its experience, commitment to sustainability and world class facilities...it is the perfect place to host a sustainable and inclusive COP."
Some sort of joke, surely? 30,000 people from over 200 countries, businesses, NGOs, faith groups and activists will converge on the city, the majority arriving by air transport, in a mass gathering to address the issue of human involvement in climate change.

Just have to hope none of them are struck down by a sudden Accident or Emergency during their stay.

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Cabinet Reshuffle Comment.

Good to see young Gove getting a new job. He will protect us from the upstart Scots and frustrate their knavish tricks.

That little transgression in the summer vac. wasn't held against him by Headmaster Johnson:

Michael Gove, Conservative MP for Surrey Heath since May 2005

We have paid him very well to grace some fine governmental jobs, although he did have a little confusion over claiming his expenses - but then, didn't they all?

Secretary of State for Education 2010 to 2014
Chief Whip of the House of Commons 2014 to 2015
Secretary of State for Justice 2015 to 2016
Backbencher 2016 to 2017, a temporary career blip after Prime Minister Theresa May sacked him in a two minute meeting when she told him to "go and learn about loyalty on the back benches".
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 20to 2019
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 2019 to 2021
Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government 15th September 2021 to present, with special repsonsibility for Levelling Up and Minister for InterGovernmental Relations and telling the Scots Nats to fuck off.

Not bad for an Alien. mr ishmael had his number back in 2010, when he got the schools job:

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE - 9/6/2010

I AM SPIT-GOVE. SMELL MY BREATH.

MMMMM, FOUL, ISN'T IT. AND RANK.

MRS GOVE AND THE JUNIOR GOVES LOVE IT.

HOT AND HORRIBLE, IN THEIR FACES.
SPERMY AND BOWELLY AND GARLICKY.

No, I know best; no, really, I do. About everything. Please, be quiet and listen to me. No, really. And as Mr Liam Byrne said, there is no money left. And though he was only joking, we are basing our whole wretched, punitive ideology on his one throwaway remark; that's how clever we are. And it shows how clever we think you are, doesn't it, every time we use it as an excuse for some wholly unnecessary cruelty.

We are having to close the schools building projects because we need the money to bribe people with the new free schools for fuckwit pushy parents, the ones who think they are clever but are just greedy and stupid and say clearly a lot. You know, the ones who were Blairite, a few years back, idiots. They won't actually be free, the schools, the money will come from the poor people, the ones with stupid children - although, I must say, given the current, national appetite for brutality it seems that everybody's stupid. And we need to punish the teachers because some of them didn't vote for us. And that's what democracy's all about. Nasty, vindictive, little cocksuckers. Like me.

Mr Michael Spit-Gove. In his bob-a-job days. He knows best.

I AM GOVE, SMELL MY BREATH - 5/7/2010

Yes, the hospitals, let me finish, burn them down, no, blow them up, that's it, blow them up, no, let me finish, I am very clever, shut up and listen to me. Blow them up, y'see, it's actually the best thing to do with them. If you have hospitals people'll go in 'em, see, when they're ill, and that costs money, and that's money we could be spending on other things, private schools for instance, for your children, who are like many of my supporters' children, gifted, in the very real sense that they have me as their father, and another thing, people expect not just to go in the hospitals but to get treated in 'em, y'see, and get better, and probably come home and want sickness benefit, which we must scrap. Because we 're all in this together. We can save the money the hospitals cost and give it to wealth creating demolition companies, instead, or as well as, doesn't matter, just as long as we wreck things for ordinary people. Who don't know any better. And the best thing of all is we can blame it on thepartyopposite, who are every bit as bad as us but worse. Health service, no, absolutely ring fenced, best Tory invention ever.

Now I don't suggest for a moment that we are gonna target the poor and defenceless but that's exactly what we're gonna do, after we talk to them about it, or, not really talk to them, just talk about talking to them about it - as if - and getting them to agree that them losing their benefit is the best thing since sliced bread, not that they'll be getting much of that down at the very necessary soup kitchens which we are tasking the private sector with establishing.

It's tough times ahead all around and I for one am going to enjoy them hugely, that's what I came to Earth, sorry, into politics for.

What's that? My ears? No, of course I don't breathe through them. Well, not on this planet.

For more news on the terrible,savage and hurtful cuts:

Read the Times. Or the Sun.

All human lies are there.

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Why Don't You write a Book?

LEAVE OF ABSENCE 28/8/10

My oldest and dearest friend died suddenly. Okay for him, really, he'd had a few drinks, was well in himself, aboard a ferry with his family, bound for his beloved France; just went to bed happy and didn't wake up, one of Death's wee surprises, see? You can go swimming every morning, walking every night, be as fit as a fiddle and still, when you're not looking, when you think it's safe to go to sleep, Whoops, one quick yank, from the Dark One's chill, bony hand and you're over on the other side, one of the tyrannical dead, the ones for whom things are done, because that's what they would have wanted, as though they weren't really dead, just watching us, from the other side of the crematorium, their ashes crinkling in pleasure as the living, for once, are obedient.

Drives me mad, that 'swhat he would have wanted shit; doesn't matter a fuck what he would have wanted, he is no more, he has no wants, there is no him, that's why he's dead, that's why we're here, at his fucking funeral, because he is no more, you can play MyWay at a million watts, the bastard's not gonna hear it. Do fucking behave yourselves. The infantilisation even of Death, the failure, the refusal to understand the simplest of Life's truths, it bespeaks Ruin.

Years ago, I walked up to the site of an Iron-Age fort at Presteigne, in the Welsh Marches, with a friend and the ashes of her late husband. It's what he would have wanted, she said. Yeah, but whaddabout what you want, he's dead, doesn't matter what he woulda wanted. You're right, he is dead, doesn't matter what he woulda wanted, it really doesn't, and it's alright to say that. She cast the ashes up into the hilltop wind and they blew away, dazzling, in the Sun, she did it a few times, and they were gone. I don't know if it was the right thing to say, she seemed grateful for it, liberated from cliched helpless widowhood. Don't get me wrong, I am quite Oriental about the ancestors and I keep my dead close, within, Oh, they come out in speech but there is no public performance of their ante-mortem wishes or requirements, that's just stupid.

Shocked as I am by this news I also think, Oh, to be so lucky. Not for him the hospital, its smells and pans and masks and blades and the ghastly, hopeless optimism, the dreadful hospital radio and the ghoulish chaplain, hovering, seeking frightened souls to rubber-stamp; the terrible, waxen camaraderie of the near-dead, forged in feeble resistance to the doctorbastards and the cheerily impertinent nurses, embellished with catheter and bedpan, a fierce alliance, yet routinely ruptured with the arrival of visitors, or not. It's shit, all that, dying in hospital. Best avoided. And hospices, how did that happen? Respite and palliative care, this is a grim, meddler's lexicon, some symbiosis of horror, incorporated, dying-by-numbers. How did we cope, before hospicers selflessly invented themselves, built their death chambers ? Anyway, none of that for him, no saddle-seat on Death's Carousel, round and round, how are you, a bit better, good, you're looking better, they can do wonderful things these days, a bit tired, it's the medication I expect, they're doing some more tests, you have to try and eat something, keep your strength up.

But for we who survive, all of a sudden there are gaps which will never be filled, just constantly regretted, at Christmas and at birthdays, which we must and shall live with, a voice we shall hear no more, save within, stilled and silenced, in the blink of an eye.

He managed a wood, in retirement, and he hoped to live to see great grandchildren. I entertain no such hopes but had hoped to sit with him in his wood, or mine, maybe in my late sixties, old friends, sat on their park bench like book-ends, a sharp and cynical dotage, mine, antidote to his very genuine, Hail, fellow, well met bonhomie. He was much-loved, gracious and polite, warm, a toucher, a clasper, a hugger, almost living every day as though it might be his last, not wishing to leave any sour memories.

Why don't you write a book, he said to me, for forty years. There's enough books, don't need any more fucking books, books're the last thing we need more of. The last time he asked, a couple of years back, I wanted to say Well, in a sense, I have, it's called stanislav, a young Polish plumber, but I didn't. I think stanislav, in toto, was a tad profane for him but some of the bits were written with him in mind, he was the young probation officer, hating the sinner but loving the sin, or even about him, his was the motorhome which irked stanislav so much and I am sure that at some of the commentaries he would have, as did so many, as did I, spit his coffee out over the keyboard. But now I'll never know. It's probably what he would have wanted.

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mr ishmael's essays today are:

EVENSONG, THE COPPER FAMILY OF SUFFOLK, IN ENGLAND, WARLIKE SEAMEN. drafted 21/08/ 2010

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE - published 9/6/2010

I AM GOVE, SMELL MY BREATH - published 5/7/2010

LEAVE OF ABSENCE - drafted 28/8/10

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

With the 15% voucher, the book (including delivery to a UK address) should cost £10.89

Liz and Boris fly off to charm Biden.Best of luck with that one.

Sunday, 12 September 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 12/09/2021

"And forgive us our Westminsters

As we forgive those who Westminster against us."

Remember when the Labour Party stopped being the Labour Party in order to get elected? They could have called themselves the Conservative Party, but that name was taken, so they settled on the New Labour Party, to attempt to retain some connection with the party the Trade Unions created back in 1900. To remind you, here is mr ishmael on what happened:

THE SUNDAY ESSAY, IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID. 20/3/2010

It was Clintonitis, The Third Way bullshit, which inspired the Mandelstein Project in the UK, a foolhardy focus on spurious economic growth as a means of funding criminally mismanaged public services whilst simultaneously sanctioning corrosive, ruinous greed, indeed applauding what Mandelstein thought of as the innate virtue of the filthy rich.

Because the Third Way was fronted by a draft-dodging, coke-snorting, womanising, saxophone-playing arsehole sucking capitalism's dick whilst relative children sucked his, NewLabour succumbed immediately and tore-up it's historic raison d'etre, frenziedly jerking itself off as the Tory, Blair, shat on Clause Four and it's bleak recognition of injustice via economics.
We are the party of the wealthy, they simpered, but look, we have John Prescott aboard to fool the proles; former Marxists and Trotskyites, now clad in Armani or Boateng, built property portfolios and consultancies and directorships, as they holidayed with gangsters and pimps and junkies and put fifty pence on the old age pension.
Moronic, coked-up popstars were soireed at Downing Street, the shitbrained, neanderthal Gallagher brothers talking riffs with Tony, the man, typically, stupidly unaware that they were invited only to window dress Corruption, Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll; a former call girl was drafted in as Imelda's paid best friend, add a soupcon of glamour to her dowdy, fathomlessly greedy, whining, slotgob repellence; an Aussie ex-con came as part of the deal, as her property adviser, securing accommodation for one of her fucked-up spawn; seven grand was hoisted from Labour Party subs to pay for her hairdresser and the Labour movement, typified by Tony's make-believe agent in Sedgefield, the stupid fucking bastard, primped and preened itself, swallowing Power's ejaculate, as the young warmonger fellated business and money and Power, round the back of Chequers, on their yachts, flying out to Australia to lick Murdoch's arse, on behalf of - what was it now? - the many, not the few, as though the proprietor of skymadeupnewsandfilth had Labour running in his syphilitic veins.
(To this day I - no homoerotocist, I admit - find Tony Blair a deeply unattractive man, bug-eyed, buck-toothed, jug eared and in his speech and mannerisms - body language - completely untrustworthy; telegenicism, as the media folk call it, however, proved very swiftly to be Blair's trump card, people thought, it is said, that he was lovely, would never do anything wrong; me, though, I always knew he would do something terribly wrong, only have to look at him, hear his voice. But he had big allies. He was good TV.)
Almost overnight, it seems, now, most of the nation aped the extravagance of the ruling party, an unparallelled borrowing and spending binge was hailed by the likes of Simon Heffer and the unspeakable Murdoch barrowboy, Jeff Randall, as an economic miracle; you had to hand it to that Gordon Brown, he was prudent, he was the iron chancellor, they chorused, every last one of them - even though he was an innumerate, profligate, iron hoof; bullying and tantruming like some bloated, nail-chewing, snot-eating diva, cross-dressed in a lounge suit and a red tie, mincing and pouting across the demi-monde of the financiers like a great big flabby whore, a rentboying son of the fucking manse, pimping the nation to the soundtrack of a light regulatory touch in the City. It's the economy, stupid. Jesus fucking wept.

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

Anyway, the reason for mentioning it is that The Conservatives are at it now, voting for the largest tax increase in the last two millenia. Or something. To fund health and social care. To protect rich people from having to sell their houses (well, that bit is quite conservative, grant you.) No longer the party of small government and fiscal responsibility - that's the logo on the can within which lurk the usual worms of self and class interest, The New Conservatives under BlairBo-Jo are doing what they can to retain power and are secretly praying, like the feral school boys in Lord of the Flies for the grown-ups to step in and take over. Trouble is, they are the grown-ups, they are no longer in public school, and they really shouldn't be going away for the holidays - eh, Dominic?

For our non-UK readers, let me explain: public schools are not public. They are intensely private, accessed by the expenditure of many, many thousands of pounds during the education of a child, and, due to a historical quirk, they are charities, with special tax status. Although the UK has an excellent state system of education available to every child, wealthy parents choose to send their children away from home into a boarding school total institution (Ernest Goffman) at the age of eight, despite the very well documented physical and sexual abuse of children attending these schools, neglect - both emotional and material, and the psychological condition known as Boarding School Syndrome. This syndrome is characterised by difficulties in relationships and parenting, workaholism, inability to relax, isolation, being experienced as a bully, substance abuse, a sense of failure, sleep and sexual problems. It is thought that it is caused by a toxic mix of neglect, exile from home, exposure to bullying and abuse coupled with an instilled sense of privilege, entitlement and elitism. Boarding School Survivors lack the emotional equipment to be fully functioning adults. They haven't grown up.

Why would a wealthy father, who is usually himself a survivor of this form of education, inflict it upon his sons?

Answer: In order to give his sons entry to Britain's ruling class.

And it works: Boris Johnson and David Cameron attended Eton and Tony Blair attended Fettes College. 64% of Johnson's first Cabinet were public school alumni. Britain's public school system is the bedrock upon which Britain's class system is built.

We are being governed by a caste which is cut off, emotionally and materially, from the majority of the people they have to hoodwink, each election time, in order to maintain their power and position. Harsh? I've been reading Sad Little Men by Richard Beard, himself a survivor of this privileged education, who does not hold back.

Caption Contest

(contributed by mr verge)

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So Prince Andrew has been served court papers alleging Virginia Roberts Giuffre was “forced to have sexual intercourse with Prince Andrew against her will” at the behest of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and accused procuress Ghislaine Maxwell. The lawsuit alleges that Prince Andrew's actions constitute sexual offenses including first- and third-degree rape, citing New York penal code, under which rape includes sex with someone “by forcible compulsion.” Cesar Sepulveda filed an affidavit confirming he had served the papers to Prince Andrew on August the 27th, having been repeatedly rebuffed in his previous attempts to effect service, as the Queen's favourite son instructed his police guards and security not to accept them.

Gordonstoun - if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

The Review Corner:

Mr Ishmael reviews some television shows.

WOTSONTELLY, THE METHANE LAKES OF TITAN 23/03/2010

WONDERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

is a five-parter on the the BBC, one of its 2010, Year of Science series, dealing with the Solar System in a breathtaking, entertaining and accessible fashion and worth the entire license fee, if only for the novelty of its engaging presenter, a teenage professor, Brian Cox, who resembles an angelic singer-songwriter, c. 1976 and says astonishing an astonishing number of times in each episode.

Professor Cox,

a cross between Jackson Browne

and Patrick Moore.

Cox's facial default setting is a smile, as constant as the Sun which dominates the series and that in itself, in a medium swamped by scowling, perplexed Schamas and pouting Bettanys is a joy; his revelations too, are joyous. in a sharing sort of way, not Aren't I Clever, more Isn't This Amazing Shit, This Solar System ?

The last episode dealt with the recently discovered, improbable methane lakes on Titan, one of Saturn's moons, and as these things do, left one in awe of Uncle Sam's NASA, if only they'd put those guys in charge of Health Care......

As with every new BBC series the presenter has been jetted, helicoptered, jeeped, hang-glided and sailed all around the world but in Cox's case the effort has been worthwhile. Enthusiastic - theus - means filled with God and Cox's shows sparkles and crackles with his delight, his enthusiasm, he really does take you places you've never been.

It's still running on the box and probably on the Ithing,*

take it where you find it, don't leave it alone.

*There's a book and a DVD

WOTSONTELLY. NOT GARDENERS' WORLD 5/7/2010

Mrs Elisabeth Primrose Banks, new boss of the Royal Horticultural Society, has said the the BBC's flagship gardening programme, Gardeners' World, was shite, pure and simple, Fuckwits, 'swhat they are, that fucking barrowboy, the bald git, Joe Wotsit, and that wheezing, old baggage, Carol Klein, they're good for fuck all, wouldn't let them trim my privet, let alone prune my bush or put a seep hose under my Rhodedendrons. And as for that ginger totty in her see-through 'forties dresses, well, it was her got Monty Don sacked, wasn't it, him playing around in her compost heap, that's what done it. And now the poor mad bastard's rampaging all around Broadcasting House with ideas for programmes about helping heroin addicts and lunatics who wanna be fucking craftsmen, even though they're not and nor is he, fucking treatment's what he needs, not playing at being a tellyshrink, sanity through digging with Monty, never heard such fucking rubbish. I mean, I love Cruelty TeeVee as much as the next lesbian but Monty fucking Don, telling suburbanite shitbrains that, No, they're not actually cut out to be master stonemasons or Llama farmers so they can just fuck off back to working in Lidl, well, that's too much, even for me. The convention of these programmes is that by the time the programme is over the punter has a new, sparkling glass home standing with integrity in the landscape, a blend of Rococo and Art Deco and a hint of Swedish minimalism all topped-off with solar panels. Or was that a different show? How can you tell?

WOTSONTELLY 20/1/2016

Up, all last night, leaning on the windowsill, and blogging, here, looking at the moonlit ocean, within my bower, at th'accustomed hour, a show came on in the background, turned-down soft, after Family Guy had finished.

I paid it no mind for a while, focussed on the improvement of mr mongoose's haunted musical mind and then, intrigued by the halting, unscripted, YorkieBar ordinariness of the commentary, moved, to check it out, take it further.

It was Simon Robert Armitage CBE, an English poet, playwright and novelist, elected on 19 June 2015 as Oxford Professor of Poetry, succeeding Geoffrey Hill. How dare there be poets, I thought, not for the first time, but Simon wasn't a-poeting, just slumming, as a TellyHistorian, joining, temporarily, the outbreak of mange, symptomised by Drs Lucy Lisp, Tubby Ramirez and that scrawny, gobby blonde one, in the Victorian bondage bustier, as well as by Peter's boy, Yachting Dan Snow, passionate about being on telly, I mean history; Mincing Queen Starkey, hissing that all Kings and Queens are gay, oh, really, how could they not be, you silly audience? There's bossy Simon Schama and dozens of other low-rent, verminous jumped-up cruise liner lecturers now stooging around TeeVeeLand. And Rock God, Neil Oliver, mustn't forget to name-check him, or he'd forever stalk the helicoptered skyline, angrily tossing his hair at us, like a good 'un.

Squeeze my history lemon baby,

'til the juice run down my leg.

Simon didn't do any of that, just wandered through Southern England and parts of Wales, pondering the myth of King Arthur, as told by Mallory, in his Morte d', of how, true or false, it captivated and informed and influenced the national imagination.

It was a lovely, gentle meander with a man who knew and cared about that of which he spoke aloud. There was obviously a shooting script and there was some of that walking towards and past the camera but all in all it seemed unforced, amateur in the best sense of the word. There should be more such - The Making of King Arthur, BBC4.