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| Strawberry picking whilst lying prone in a solar-powered picking assistant machine. |
In the United Kingdom in the three months leading up to June 2021 there were approximately 530 thousand unemployed people in the age range 16 to 24, 321 thousand in the age range 25 to 34 and 404 thousand in the 35 to 49 age group. That's a total of 1,255 thousand unemployed people aged under 50.
The Road Haulage Association says there is a shortage of about 60,000 lorry drivers.
Fruit and vegetable growers are reporting a 30% shortfall in labour to harvest crops.
At Tesco today, the only frozen green vegetables in the cabinets were packs of brussel sprouts. Honest, not invent. No peas, no beans, no spinach, no mixed veg.
The reasons given for the shortage of labour, goods undelivered, crops rotting in the fields, empty shelves in the supermarkets; tend to cluster around the dastardly consequences of Brexit, with a dollop of Covid on the side. Basically, Europeans either can't or don't want to come to Britain to do the shit jobs for shit wages. British people don't want to do the shit jobs for shit wages, although the statistics in the first paragraph kind of demonstrate that there are Britons who might be available to do jobs with decent terms, conditions and pay, should the employers in the shit industries put their hands in their pockets to make these jobs more attractive to folk who rely on the subsistence-level income that the State provides through its complex welfare systems designed to prevent people from starving, but not to be so comfortable that they happily embrace remaining unemployed as a long-term strategy. Those employers will have to pass on increased labour costs to consumers. That's right and proper. Why should food be cheap? I was reading that the average adult woman in Britain spends £25 per week to feed herself and a further £13 on takeaways and restaurants. How is any of that possible? Or desirable? My supermarket bill is around four times that average spend - okay, it includes wine, toiletries, cleaning materials, dog food, magazines and newspapers, but still - and I have top-ups in the week, when Harris eats all his chicken up or I run out of Earl Grey and butter, like today, when a supermarket run was necessary in case I needed some buttered Earl Grey, and thought a pack of frozen peas would be a good idea, only to discover there were only Brussel sprouts or, weirdly, diced onions, available. Should I go to my favourite restaurant in Kirkwall and ask to see the £13 menu, short shrift would be my lot, and even the Best A1 Orkney Turkish Kebab shop charges £13.90 for a Doner Kebab.
Something is terribly wrong and the fix will not be easy because it seems that poor people from horse and cart economies are no longer able or willing to cross Europe to take our rubbish jobs at rubbish wages. Blair led the nation into believing that a University education was the right of every young person and that it would automatically lead to high income, middle class jobs. Instead, our ridiculous young people have been educated in ridiculous sit-on-your-arse studies and taught to despise trade skills and manual labour, whilst waiting for their parents to die so that the small fortune locked up in the parental home will become theirs, in the "wealth trickling down the generations" philosophy extolled by Margaret Thatcher, when she released the nation's stock of council houses to be bought by their tenants, thus creating a new property-owning class to vote Conservative. Bo-Jo the Ho-Ho is toying with appeasing property owners by assuring them that they won't have to sell their homes to pay for their care home fees. The beneficiaries of this munificence aren't the property owners, who won't be returning to their owner-occupied homes once the doors of the care home have closed upon them, but their adult children, who don't like to see the value of their inheritance reduced by the costs of the old dear's care - which is very expensive, and, indeed should be - think hotel costs plus 24/7 care, plus personal care, plus training costs. But tell me why the tax payer should bear those costs rather than the recipient of the care?
Scotland is consulting on its plans to set up a National Care system, following the Review of Adult Social Care. The 135 page document, available here, A National Care Service for Scotland: consultation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) if you are interested, has a breath-takingly wide remit and never once mentions the issue of protecting wealthy people from selling their houses to fund their care home costs. Although it does pose the consultation question: "Most people have to pay towards the costs of where they live, such as mortgage payments or rent, property maintenance, food and utility bills. To ensure fairness between those who live in residential care and those who do not, should self-funding care home residents have to contribute towards accommodation costs?" That's a key question. Personal care in Scotland is free.
The proposed Scottish National Care Service will mirror the National Health Service and cover social work, social care, nursing and allied health professionals. It's operating principle will be Getting It Right for Everyone (GIRFE) and the consultation is on cradle-to-grave stuff, joining up of services, training and regulation. Justice Social Work will sit in there, alongside Early Years, Mental Health, residential and supported care for the elderly, those with learning disabilities, acquired brain injury, physical disability - as I said, the remit is breathtaking. The National Care Service will provide care and support to everyone at some point in their life journey.
Scotland. Best Part of England. Did you note that prisons are seen as residential care in Scotland, that Community Justice falls within Social Work, not some special branch of Lets Be Particularly Horrid to Offenders, Cos That's Bound to Cure Them, as in England, where the Probation Service has been the football kicked by various Home Secretaries into dirtier and more punitive ditches over the years. Someone should read the Consultation to Boris, as he mulls over how he is going to wring most votes out of the English care home disaster by appeasing his conservative constituency by allowing them to hang onto their homes and savings after they no longer have any personal use for them. Whilst fulfilling his election promise not to increase taxes.
Of course, the other solution is to have an official cut-off date for life - remember the Life-Timers in Logan's Run? And the ceremonial extinguishing of life once you'd run out of time?
Young Liam McArthur, MSP for Orkney, is pushing an Assisted Dying Bill through Holyrood, to legalise assisted suicide for the terminally ill in Scotland. It is well received. Back in 2014, Lord Falconer introduced an Assisted Dying Bill, which initially went well, but seems to have petered out. Here's mr ishmael's thoughts on the matter:
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY, THE FILTH-O-GRAPH. IS THIS THE REAL LIFE?
Heart-pummeling
stuff, this story, about two elderly cousins. They had lived
together and supported each other these forty years; now, aged 84,
they were terrified that her injury and his illness would mean them
being sent to different care homes and so they called LifeBusters, in
Switzerland, who came for them and facilitated their hand-in-hand death.
Euthanasiabuggers are hailing this as wonderful, others as dreadful. I am with the dreadfullers. I hate that worthless Blairite shit, Charlie Falconer and am incensed that merely by dint of his friendship or worse with Tony and Imelda Scum he is in a lordly position to urge death upon the weary, in their own interests, which is what he is doing. A bill bearing his name is going through the motions presently.
Euthanasiabuggers are hailing this as wonderful, others as dreadful. I am with the dreadfullers. I hate that worthless Blairite shit, Charlie Falconer and am incensed that merely by dint of his friendship or worse with Tony and Imelda Scum he is in a lordly position to urge death upon the weary, in their own interests, which is what he is doing. A bill bearing his name is going through the motions presently.
..........................................................................
And in other news, there are yet more revelations about what the men in lacy frocks, that is, the clergy, otherwise known as Horrible Fucking Bastards, have been up to with the children to which they have been given access by their fond and foolish parents, who, presumably, themselves believe the preposterous mythologies of this Stone Age religion. Church is so entwined with State and Establishment that it is astonishing that we are being allowed to learn of their feet (and other body parts) of clay. Here's an invigorating rant by mr ishmael:
LOVE LIFT US UP WHERE WE BELONG - 9/11/2015
It
is another form of DeadPigFucking, bowing one's knee to whichever
rancid, degenerate parasite occupies the Glorious Ruritanian Throne, the
seat of a Thousand-Year Banana Republic. Sadists, misogynists, drug
addicts, child molesters, Nazis, blackmailers, sluts, traitors, ponces
and thieves. And that's just in my lifetime.
Queen-bowing is a ritualised self-degradation, a kowtowing abasement in which far too many are happy to indulge, in hope of being granted Inclusion. Quite why anyone in possession of their reason would wish to be included in the doings of the British monarchy will be forever a mystery to me, a more filthy bunch of outlaws from Decency is difficult to imagine, yet thousands piss themselves in delight at the thought of an MBE or a knighthood, bestowed on them by this mean, grubby old woman, or her meaner, grubbier son, or his gormless, nincompoop son.
Queen-bowing is a ritualised self-degradation, a kowtowing abasement in which far too many are happy to indulge, in hope of being granted Inclusion. Quite why anyone in possession of their reason would wish to be included in the doings of the British monarchy will be forever a mystery to me, a more filthy bunch of outlaws from Decency is difficult to imagine, yet thousands piss themselves in delight at the thought of an MBE or a knighthood, bestowed on them by this mean, grubby old woman, or her meaner, grubbier son, or his gormless, nincompoop son.
Only
the other week, it emerged that Jimmy Savile's acolyte, Prince Brian,
had compensated a beasting bishop for his troubles by giving him one of
our houses on one of our estates, there to fulminate over the
impertinence of his teenaged accusers. Oh, I am all for hating the sin
whilst loving the sinner, somebody must or we should all be lost but we
must care, also, for the children buggered and beaten by those set
above us and I don't recall Brian and his tribe of ugly, inbred retards
throwing open the palaces to those whose lives are wrecked by peers,
bishops, parliamentarians and princes, any number of whom seem to be
welcomed, historically and currently, into royalty's charmed circle of
depravity.
Oh but, mr ishmael, he does so much for charity, even has his own, just to help young people. Yes, the Prince's Trust, The Prince's Trust, Brian's own charity, an interminable PR scam, providing him with an opportunity to manage the charges against him that he is an idle, not-very-bright, poncing, cock-waving elderly slob, trapped in an endlessly protracted adolescence, a stupefyingly boneheaded liegeman of the woman he would most love to see dead, while providing all sorts of business and showbiz filth, from Status Quo to well, anybody, really, any smirking Rotarian, with the chance to hoist their own charitable colours, as if they had a charitable bone in their diseased bodies. Couldn't put a pound in the poor box without announcing it from the stage of the London Palladium, people like Jimmy Tarbuck and Bob Geldof. Not that their sort actually put their hands in their pockets, which are sewn-up, usually, they give their oh, so precious time. Worth so much more than mere money.
The Prince and the Filthsters, two cheeks of Charity's scabby arse.
....I wonder what ordinary French people would make of the heir to the British throne and his charming younger brother being friend and confidante to such high profile child abusers; off with his fucking head, probably. And I think that it is actually quite kind of them to allow we frankly mediaeval, superstitious barbarians to have joined their Common Market. Had I been Georges or Helmut I'd have said, On your bike, lads, 'til you've had a proper revolution.
Oh but, mr ishmael, he does so much for charity, even has his own, just to help young people. Yes, the Prince's Trust, The Prince's Trust, Brian's own charity, an interminable PR scam, providing him with an opportunity to manage the charges against him that he is an idle, not-very-bright, poncing, cock-waving elderly slob, trapped in an endlessly protracted adolescence, a stupefyingly boneheaded liegeman of the woman he would most love to see dead, while providing all sorts of business and showbiz filth, from Status Quo to well, anybody, really, any smirking Rotarian, with the chance to hoist their own charitable colours, as if they had a charitable bone in their diseased bodies. Couldn't put a pound in the poor box without announcing it from the stage of the London Palladium, people like Jimmy Tarbuck and Bob Geldof. Not that their sort actually put their hands in their pockets, which are sewn-up, usually, they give their oh, so precious time. Worth so much more than mere money.
The Prince and the Filthsters, two cheeks of Charity's scabby arse.
....I wonder what ordinary French people would make of the heir to the British throne and his charming younger brother being friend and confidante to such high profile child abusers; off with his fucking head, probably. And I think that it is actually quite kind of them to allow we frankly mediaeval, superstitious barbarians to have joined their Common Market. Had I been Georges or Helmut I'd have said, On your bike, lads, 'til you've had a proper revolution.
.........................................................................
Last week's cryptic crossword clue was:
We picketed dim strike-breaker here for golden wino. (3,6)
Solution: Cow Corner
Here's the explanation from mr verge: "we picketed dim" is an anagram of deep
mid-wicket. The answer - cow corner - is a fielding position between
deep mid-wicket and wide long-on; "golden wino" being
an anagram of wide long-on.
He had hoped this would be in messrs mongoose and mike's field of interest, but it was clearly jolly difficult.
mr ishmael's essays today are:
What the Papers say, the Filthograph. Is this the real life? drafted 5/9/2015
Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong drafted 9th November 2015
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:
Or...
shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to
paste it into an email and tell a friend:
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,
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With the 15% voucher, the book (including delivery to a UK
address) should cost £10.89
35 comments:
Britain should start importing proper, cost-effective food from Russia - which is now a major food exporter. And GM is outlawed in Russia, only proper fresh stuff. And they have loads of land (steppes they call 'em) so no need to feed the crops with chemicals. But it won't happen, obviously. The PTB would rather import Russians to pick the GM, herbicided, pesticided, antibiotic fed shit.
I gave myself a headache on Mr verge's last clue - to no avail.
Food miles, mr mike. I'd rather we had a sustainable domestic food-producing industry in Britain, employing local labour at reasonable wages in acceptable conditions and with decent terms of employment - hours, sickness pay, paid leave - just as public sector functionaries enjoy, and the great British public got accustomed to paying considerably more for animal protein, produced under humane conditions, and ate less of it. And this business of flying fruit and vegetables around the world to provide bored consumers with out of season foodstuffs just cos they fancy them and there are profits to be made has to end. No, really - New Yorkers have maybe become more sensitive to issues of global warming in consequence of the flash floods that tore into subways and basements.
Tesco sells asparagus flown in from Peru during the British asparagus season. How is that ethical? Supporting Peru's agricultural sector and labour force at the expense of Evesham's principal product? If you are looking for a culprit for global warming, start with big business.
Mrs I: I doubt Britain is big enough to grow enough food, properly, at a price that can support the population. In fact, I'm sure it can't. Also its been captured by big-Agri - coincidentally after mad-cow when all the farms were sold off cheaply. Its all pesticides, herbicides, and now GM. And battery animals. The water supply is contaminated. Not stuff I would want to eat. Same with the fishing industry. I can't quite see your objection to buying food from countries which have abundant land, water etc and want to sell at a reasonable price. What makes food different from any other commodity that supports life? If food from Russia is not to your taste, then what about NZ? The protectionist policies of the EU in particular have destroyed the third world which produces good food at reasonable prices. And where in the UK do they grow bananas, for example?
Last week, I discovered a wee packet of mushrooms in the fridge - "Produce of Poland". What's that all about?
No, I couldn;t do it either, mr mike.
Not sure if I should apologise or gloat. Probably the former.
cheers
v./
Nah, you're allowed a gloat, mr verge. But they are all awaiting the chance to get you back, so, the next clue, please.
Gloat by all means, mr v. Although the linking middle bit was not your best work.
'Mixture the Spanish girl spread is backwards.' (7)
Better at concocting than solving, mr mongoose, but I'll have a bash. Thanks. (Shame about the disappointing bridge you mention - I'd hoped strike-breaker would do as code for someone in the field. Overcomplication seldom works, though, as you imply.)
btw I've now learned to check for Bob Dylan when editing Ishmael essays, and a phrase in a 2014 piece eviscerating Miliband ("goodness behind its gates") sent me to the full transcript of It's alright Ma (I'm only bleeding); another bit caught my eye - "And if my thought-dreams could be seen / They’d probably put my head in a guillotine", which I now realise mr ish paraphrased or quoted quite a lot. Apt for the current climate, and then some. I doubt I'll find anything better as an epigraph for the next instalment.
v./
although, owing to your persistent expression of fanatically anti-human views, i am not entirely certain whether i here address a homo sapiens or an alpaca, mrs ishmael, i find myself nevertheless obliged to take issue with your stated position on various matters:
1) akin to some seismically cynical scientific hoax - such as the postulation of a geo-centric universe - the cia-promoted climate-emergency is in fact a carefully and fraudulently fabricated myth, the perpetuation of which in the modern era is only performed by a range of rather ridiculous individuals - who shall henceforth be identified as members either of the hominid-sub-species peltdown man or its sororal sub-species meltdown woman.
2) the unusual recent weather-extremes are not in any degree due to - the fictitious neo-liberal threat of - co2-fuelled global warming, but are in fact a scientifically quantifiable result of the current solar-minimum - and as such, their cyclical occurrence comprises a strange meteorological phenomena reliably and repeatedly confirmed by historical observation.
3) the slight global rise in modern temperatures is a natural consequence of the 20th century grand solar-maximum.
4) thanks to being emancipated from the economically protectionist and oppressive shackles of the european blood-mineral-emporium, we in the united kingdom are presently set to engage - or perhaps re-engage - in worldwide free trade of staple-foods - and not least those grown in an african continent hitherto economically sterilized by the mercantilist might of this rancid resource-raping race-hating european union.
5) whilst it cannot be denied that hard-working tax-payers - whose family-capital is already clobbered by inheritance duties - may wish, as a family, to avoid paying the entire bill for their elderly parents' personal care, it is equally true that these careful and hard-saving citizens might reasonably wish to avoid footing the entire bill - presented to them as tax-payers - for the state-funded personal care - albeit now downgraded to the service-level of newgate prison - which is routinely afforded to the elderly, but welfare-dependent, parents of other citizens - indeed, in the case that these other citizens are themselves benefit-reliant and their parents have never sought to make any provision for retirement, this desire to avoid subsidizing the care home costs of other families could well prove even more intense.
You can do it, mr v. there's not a word wasted in that one.
Mr i was always weaving the Sainted Bob in. Barely a paragraph got by without some abstruse reference or cheeky quote. Don't say i didn't warn you.
It is no longer fashionable to be a Climate-Change-Denier, mr ultrapox.
And Boris has jumped off the fence right into a puddle quite up to his middle, and, like Dr Foster who went to Gloucester in a shower of rain, he'll wish he hadn't.Sir Keir is making much of the election-pledge breakage.
Messrs verge and mongoose - many shelves were filled with the compleat works of Mr Dylan, in vinyl, cassette and DVD formats and there were rows of critiques and biographies. He left his collection to a fellow Dylan nut-job, with whom he had spent many a happy time discussing the oeuvre. I believe mr ishmael knew by heart all the early work - when Dylan was a great poet, satirist and social commentator, but he became very disillusioned with the older Dylan.
I think that we agreed, he and I, back up the road, that even the greatest only have five or six albums in them. After that it turns to dross, reinvention, repetition, and before you know where you are, a Christmas single. Bob had near twice that many at the start, and then a few more in the Seventies revival of spirit culminating in Blood on the Tracks. After that it was a hard slog but the odd fine track sneaked out of the old boy.
The line "his clothes are dirty but his hands are clean" came to mind t'other day, as I realised Dylan was contrasting his protagonist with the political class, whose clothes are very clean, whilst their hands reek with blood and corruption. And all these decades I was thinking it was just a pretty love song.
Not just the spokesperson of his generation, mr mongoose, but a significant thinker, contrarian and poet - is there a degree being offered in Dylan studies?
You could try Christopher Ricks, mrs ishmael. Bound to be a book. (Just checked : "Dylan's Visions of Sin".)
Still no joy, mr mongoose. In the meantime : "Unlikely story where the Spanish party doubled up on sun god." (8)
v./
I see that Geronimo was innocent all along, and was executed merely for having once had bTB. "Do you now or have you ever had...? McCarthy would be proud. Oz could well adopt such an idea for the rampant Rona.
Could well be "eldorado", mr v.
in common with considering carbon-dioxide a life-giving chemical compound - as opposed to an evil global-warming pollutant - it transpires that the denial of carbon-dioxide-controlled climate-change is now also no longer considered cool.
arghhh...
my god, i am just so terminally embarrassed to have made such an awful fashion faux pas...
and in such eminently polite company too.
thank you, mrs ishmael, for rather tactfully enlightening me as to my error-in-étiquette, and for preventing me from unwittingly causing myself any continued socio-political self-harm.
the london jewish hospital
"the london jewish hospital association was formed in 1907 with the aim of establishing a hospital to serve the needs of jewish immigrants from eastern europe.
funds for the hospital were raised by penny and sixpenny donations from the jewish poor."
if you can't help yourself, it's highly unlikely that any other bastard will.
at the crux of this argument about national insurance lies the old-fashioned notion that - rather than risk the drip-fed dry rot of institutional corruption by relying for social subsidy upon the neo-nazi-establishment's acrid financial accruement from slavery, colonialism, neo-imperialist oil-wars, and other blood-mineral-conflicts - we plebs should fund our own integrity-based healthcare - lest of course we wish our cherished welfare-state to become progressively modelled on the bargain-basement health-system expediently adopted by the socially avant-garde auschwitz-extermination-camp.
save for those whose struggle originally delivered it, britain's welfare-state - like independence for the colonies - was a self-funding medical mirage designed to buy off a politically percolating population of highly trained, heavily armed british citizens who, after the criminal churchillian shambles of two world wars, were not-so-covertly contemplating an imminent empire-wide revolution against an increasingly incompetent and callous ruling-élite.
i used once to believe that the welfare-state was bestowed upon empire-obedient commoners by the largesse of a bountiful, but socially blackmailed, british establishment, however, i have subsequently come to realize that - since members of the posher-'n-privileged classes have opportunely employed each other as extremely well-remunerated nhs-medics - our imperial health-service was actually more a self-servicing, sub-harley-street-standard gift to british people from themselves, hence the inordinate national pride invested in this notionally communistic institution by this same british citizenry - a conceptually inclusive ethnicity, in which i naturally also bunch those who faithfully travelled from the, former, british colonies in order to service our imperial health-system on the cheap...
and indeed, i would furthermore contend that, whilst granting every due respect to those who directly suffered from its disingenuous and murderous gangster-manifestation, so also did the mythical british empire merely consist in an ideologically ill-conceived illusion - just as the bloody good-for-nothing british establishment and ethnically allergic european union both continue to do today.
incidentally, i hear that dirty hancock made a cameo-carry-on-appearance in a swiss chalet - where he was enjoying a cheap-and-nasty weekend with his pandemic-promulgating cia-handler.
Nicely done, mr mongoose, eldorado it is. Yours defeats me. Words beginning with el, ending in le or si, chica maybe, melange my best guess, though wrong. Maybe someone else will get it before you have to tell me.
cheers
v./
Ah, mr ultrapox, no need for embarrassment - the nuances of fashion can be hard to keep up with. Take, for example, the Anti-Vax trope. It is unfashionable amongst those of more mature years, but if you want to be down with the kids, it is fashionable to adopt the anti-vax rhetoric,admit to fear and be a refuse-nik. Which is why HMGov't is nudging the night club generation with the requirement to have a double-vax passport before entering those places that amuse young people and Spit-Gove. Nudge? More like an almighty shove. This frightened generation of clubbers, however, are very brave when ingesting illegal, untested drugs of variable strength and purity and boatloads of super strength alcohol.
Interesting thought of yours - that the well-paid echelons of the NHS are a lucrative career destination for the sons and daughters of the British Establishment, alongside Westminster, the Armed Forces, banking, the law and, less popularly these days, the Church. As ever, the lower paid grades are reserved for the Grunts. The hippopotamus nurses, thundering through the wards, the comedy porters, always on a fag break and the catering staff, serving up unspeakable, unhealthy, uneatable, bland pretend-food. Carry On Up the NHS. If ever an institution needed root and branch reform, that's the one.
You mention Handcock's Swiss holiday, which was his second one this summer - his proper, respectable summer holiday was in Cornwall with the kids - that's what you do when you are a product of a public school education. He's back to work now, got the cheek of the devil, congratulating old Bo-Jo on his tax rises to stuff the ever-hungry maw of the NHS. They laughed at him. His colleagues. Roaring and hooting. There's public school manners for you. If they'd had bread rolls, the air would have been thick with missiles.
Raab is a horrible bastard. We haven't had anyone up the gallow's steps for a few months but he richly deserves it. The ghastly, smug, mediocre twerp.
"Anagram", mr v. The Spanish for Ann and them marg backwards. Or indeed both of them and then backwards, for that matter.
Pretty good, mr mongoose. I probably would have gone with "filth lacking Latin bull" for the ana bit. Thanks for spelling it out.
v./
Here's an easy one to lift spirits:
Exhortation to succeed in blue at the coast. (10)
Oh, look. We've started a club! Mr I would have hoiked the three of us out of here and off down a mineshaft.
I shall give it a go, mr mike, but at the moment my mind can't let go of the irrelevant 'aquamarine'.
Mr mongoose: Winchelsea
Unlikely to ask for the mukluk a kulak had split, mr mike. (6)
v./
Good one, mr mike! I am not sure I would have got there very soon.
Wow Mr verge; have to get my thesaurus out.
The sports pages should do it, mr mike - it's a tributary clue that follows your bootboys.
v./
united?
Hard one that, Mr verge. I'll sleep on it.
Hidden in plain view, mr mike, & helping Chelsea Win : Lukaku.
v./
Very good Mr v. I was very close. I suspected it had to be embedded with the strange juxtaposition. If only I followed football - difficult from Down Under.
I thought you might have taken a liking for Chelsea with you when you left, mr mike. I see he scored again tonight, by the way, so I was on topic at least.
cheers
v./
Being a northern lad, Mr v, we regarded the upper class London clubs with contempt. But, as football seemed to lose its way - whole teams now comprised of foreign mercenaries with allegiance only to money - I lost some interest. Upto a few years ago Premier League and Champions league matches were shown live on free-to-air Down Here, but no longer, having been bought up by the pay channels. The same trend is evident in Rugby Union and cricket.
It's much the same back here, mr mike, as you may know - without a Sky Sports subscription you can forget about live Test cricket, or the Lions rugby tours, or PL football. No great loss, perhaps, but still. (Roman Abramovich, by the way, anagrams to "Nova Mob armchair", which will tickle any passing William Burroughs fans.)
v./
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