The Sunday Ishmael 3/10/21

 

What it is to have a learned Prime Minister. But that Andrew Marr; he didn't turn a hair when Johnson lobbed Hecatomb* into the argument that they were having this morning. Indeed, Marr was very brave when Johnson's body language became positively adversarial:

Well, Marr had persisted in goading Bojo about the pigs: 120,000 pigs to be killed and incinerated in 10 days' time if Bojo doesn't solve the driver crisis - to which he responded:

"I hate to break it to you, Andrew, but our food processing industry does involve the killing of a lot of animals. Your viewers need to understand that."

Fighting back gamely, Marr attempted to explain the difference between killing to provide food and killing wastefully, when Boris assured him that: 

"I wouldn't dream of blaming you, Andrew, in spite of everything you are trying to do."

When throwing in the hecatomb of pigs line didn't shut Marr up, Boris told him "you are talking total nonsense".

As usual, attempting to interview Johnson is like herding cats.

Not the finger!

Marr threw in - "This is bluster" to which Johnson replied magisterially, "No, it's not."

The hand

When Johnson deployed the hand things looked tough for Marr, but realising that it wouldn't make great PR to physically attack, on camera, a man with left-body paralysis sustained in a stroke, Johnson restrained himself. Good practice, no doubt, for the Conservative Conference.

 

 *Hecatomb: a great public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen, now 120,000 pigs.

 

Anyway, our Prime Minister has instructed the nation to trust the police. In the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, including the current advice to women approached by a police officer to shout Help, knock on nearby doors, jump on a bus or run away, Bo-Jo the former Ho-Ho would like us  to trust the police as they are "overwhelmingly trustworthy". Andy Burnham disagrees, accepting that women are not safe in Manchester, that misogynism is rife in all police forces and that he had to sack Ian Hopkins as Chief Constable after Greater Manchester Police Force was effectively placed in Special Measures in December 2020 when a damning inspection found that one in five crimes were not recorded and more than 80,000 crimes had not been properly investigated. Burnham  appointed Stephen Watson as Chief Constable, and today linked his fortune with Watson's, declaring that if things had not improved in two years' time, they would both go. Watson has already had to "humbly apologise" after another highly critical report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services which said that GMP was still failing in its response to vulnerable victims of crime.
Since Sarah Everard's abduction, rape and death at the hands of a serving police officer, jocularly known to his colleagues as "the Rapist" whose habit of exposing himself and driving semi-naked was widely known; 79 women have been murdered. That was only six months ago. In the last five years, 26 police officers have been convicted of sex offences. Between 2009 and 2021, 16 women have been murdered by serving or retired police officers. 13 of them were killed by a current or former partner, one by a social acquaintance, one by her son and one, Sarah Everard, by a stranger. Violence against women and children by police officers that falls short of murder includes domestic violence, rape, voyeurism with hidden cameras, the accessing and making of child pornography, taking and circulating offensive photographs of female murder victims, dismissive and disbelieving attitudes towards women who report rape, and a locker room culture that supports colleagues when women report crime.  The term "thin blue line" refers to the concept of the police as the line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos. Increasingly, it is becoming understood that the police are a part of and perpetuate that violent chaos. The blue wall of silence refers to  the code  among police officers not to report a colleague's errors, misconducts, or crimes, including police brutality, and, when questioned, to perjure themselves by feigning ignorance of another officer's wrongdoing. 

Information from the Femicide Census

 

There's more - undercover police officers who, on instruction from their senior officers, dupe women into false relationships. 

Kate Wilson, who worked in the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, has just won an Investigatory Powers Tribunal case for breaches of her human rights. Mark Kennedy, a married serving police officer, posed as an environmental campaigner in Nottingham in 2003 to infiltrate the Sumac Centre on the instructions of his senior officers. He duped Kate Wilson, along with 10 other women, into sexual relationships during his deployment. Ms Wilson discovered the truth of the situation in 2010 and took legal action against the Met and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC). In its ruling, the Tribunal found the Met's claims that undercover police officers knew sexual relationships were banned were "materially undermined by the sheer frequency with which (Kennedy) (and other UCOs) did conduct sexual relationships without either questions being asked or action being taken by senior officers".
"We are driven to the conclusion that either senior officers were quite extraordinarily naive, totally unquestioning or chose to turn a blind eye to conduct which was, certainly in the case of [Kennedy], useful to the operation," the Tribunal added.

The Sumac Centre, by the way, provides resources and a meeting space for groups and individuals working to promote social justice, environmental awareness, peace and animal rights. 

 

The Tribunal also found the Met and NPCC's failure to guard against the risk of undercover officers entering into sexual relationships with women amounted to unlawful discrimination against women, concluding: "This is not just a case about a renegade police officer who took advantage of his undercover deployment to indulge his sexual proclivities, serious though this aspect of the case unquestionably is. Our findings that the authorisations under [the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000] were fatally flawed and the undercover operation could not be justified as 'necessary in a democratic society' ... reveal disturbing and lamentable failings at the most fundamental levels."
 

The "one bad apple" defence, so beloved of Cressida Dick, is wearing thin. We have always known, here in ishmaelia, that all coppers are bastards, but wider society is now increasingly becoming aware that the whole barrel of apples is systemically, institutionally, rotten to the core, and is demanding that something be done about it. Make a start with sacking Cressida, all the Chief Constables and senior managers and appointing instead graduate managers who have never worked for the police or any other uniformed institution.

 

Boris, sir, your exhortation to the nation to trust the police is falling on deaf ears. 

 

Do you remember the case of Custody Sergeant Mark Andrews and his very bloody handling of Pamela Somerville who was arrested for sitting in her car in 2010? mr ishmael had a few words to say:

Official: All Coppers are Bastards. But its Okay. 21st November 2010

A DUTY OF CARE.
I HAVE IT, YOU HAVE IT,
 HE DOESN'T HAVE IT.

The judge said that after the four-day hearing he was satisfied that Andrews did not intend to throw Somerville into the cell and that injuries she suffered were probably caused by her falling to the floor after letting go of the door frame. Or some such bollocks.

Maybe, after Sergeant Plod had thrown her to the floor, she got up, got hold of the doorframe, let go of it again and threw herself down again. So it was all her fault, clearly.

Never mind, Judge Bean said that Sergeant Plod might have done things better.  These wimmen, eh, we all know what they're like, such a trial to a man doing a difficult job.

mrs ishmael's note:

Sgt Mark Andrews was jailed in 2010 for assaulting 60-year-old Pamela Somerville, then had his conviction quashed on appeal. He was sacked by Wiltshire Police but an appeals tribunal ordered him to be reinstated.

We demand a full and far-reaching cover-up

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

 

 As the BBC is broadcasting  their own series Blair and Brown: the New Labour Revolution, you may be interested in mr ishmael's review of a book that documented those exciting times:

The Book Review:

THE TURD MAN 16/11/2010

`A compelling account of the New Labour years...nearly every page is illuminating.' --Steve Richards, Independent

`He has written a good book...informative, clear and containing refreshing doses of self-knowledge, occasional regret and thoughtfulness.' --Andrew Marr, Financial Times

`A revealing and important book by a more winning individual than I had expected to encounter.' --Matthew Parris, Spectator

`The Third Man contains enough gossip, intrigue and scandal to keep the cognoscenti titillated...there are valuable nuggets scattered throughout.' --Peter Hain, New Statesman

`An utterly absorbing read, a rich and satisfying page-turner ...this is a vital book, and a pleasure to read.'
--John McTernan, Scotsman

`A very good book...fluently written and substantial, this is a serious book by a serious man.' --Matthew d'Ancona, Sunday Telegraph

`Mandelson has added heavily to the sum total of political knowledge...The Third Man is well-written, pacier in parts than others, particularly those where the author deals with the psychodrama of which he was an integral part...a significant contribution to our understanding of the Labour years.'
--Philip Webster, The Times.

Shit, innit, all of it, fucking rubbish, a nuisance, like pisstain on trouser of History. - the Polish Plumbers' Weekly.

I doubt that any of these critics read Mandelstein's book, apart from me, it's nearly six hundred fucking pages. Maybe Marr got one of his unofficial wives or children to read it for him, maybe Matthew Dreary read it whilst cruising Clapham Common but it is hard to imagine any of these bozos reading every word of every page, as well as all the other books which they are paid to review; no, it's bollocks. I read at slighlty above the average rate - 300wpm and with a comprehension rate of 90%, considerably higher than average - and I couldn't finish this in a week.

This is a book which suffocates the reason. Mandelstein does not - cannot - ever consider the possibility that he may have been wrong, personally or politically or that his birth into privilege may have blighted normal judgement, that a spoiled Momma's boy like he would only ever view the world as his personal plaything.

Every aspect of his pampered existence is blessed, his wonderful parents - a pair of pushy political toads - his wonderful grandfather, a postwar, minor Labour figure and more very dear friends than one could count; excellent school, blissful holidays, feasting at Oxford with shitbag luminaries like David Aaronobitch, media sinecures, divine meals, scintillating conversations with important people - in short an utter fucking waster, never done a day's work in his life, good for fuck all; much in common, one suspects, with the turd polishers above, all, one way or another, sucking the Murdoch Knob of World Domination.

Mandelstein sees nothing awry in he and two co-conspirators, Brown and Blair, spinning, as he tells it, old Labour out of existence, is entirely unapologetic about lying, as a matter of course, to journalists - many of them, of course, like Jon Snow, the insufferable Job-For-Life arsehole at Channel Four News, very dear friends - because he was, and how could he be other, doing it in the national interest, it was in the national interest that he and Brown and Blair piss all over the country, all he had ever wanted to do was serve the best interests of the country.
 

 Slithering up - and down - the greasy pole, Mandelstein describes his cronies as dear friends, as if their mutual back-scratching, pocket-lining and cocksucking was thus made noble, all the Labour luvvies seriously relaxed about people being filthy rich, especially themselves. How much was it, again, that the ridiculous ClearBlue John Birt charged us, via the BBC, for his wisdom and skill?
It has long been an article of faith, here, that the NewLabour Project was devised and executed by four seriously aberrant, disturbed individuals, well placed, by accident and media, to suborn normal political checks and balances and to be panderers to a media long past shame. Mandelstein and poor, drunken, bullying, depressive, closet gay, Big Al Campbell, played pass the shit parcel with Truth.

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

Obituary.

 

REJOICE, WE ARE A CORPSE 8/4/2013

Alas, the lady is for burning.  Nasty, divisive, oppressive, even among the sycophantic spivs who mourn her, her only turning now will be in the grave.

 

mr ishmael and stanislav's essays today are:

 Official: All Coppers are Bastards. But its Okay.      21st November 2010

THE TURD MAN                                        drafted   16/11/2010

Rejoice, We Are a Corpse                     drafted 8/4/2013

"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."

And you can buy both anthologies of the books of mr ishmael and Stanislav :  Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack from 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.) 

Link for the paperback:

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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