The Sunday Ishmael: 3/07/2022

Five sexy Tories and a financially outrageous McFuckery.

 (this year,so far, that is)

 

Introducing this round-up of this year's sexy Tories, let's look back to former Tory MP, fun Charlie Elphicke, who received a two year sentence of imprisonment in September 2020 for three sexual assaults, during which he asked one of his victims for bondage and sex, before kissing her and groping her breast before chasing her around his home, chanting: “I’m a naughty Tory.” Just got to admire your style, Charlie. Then there's Romantic Rob Roberts, stripped of the Tory whip last year, suspended for 12 weeks and sitting as an Independent having resisted Jacob Rees-Mogg's urging to "do the honourable thing" for making repeated and unwanted advances to a man. He apologised, whilst insisting his motivation was romantic, not sexual. He remains a closet Tory.
Onto this year's crop:

1. On the 2 April, David Warburton, Tory MP for Somerton and Frome, was suspended  after a series of allegations relating to sexual harassment and cocaine use. A investigation by Westminster’s independent complaints and grievance scheme is continuing.
2.  Imran Ahmad Khan, Tory MP for Wakefield, was found guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy after plying him with alcohol at a party in 2008. His resignation on 28 April gave his constituency to Labour in a by-election on 23 June.
3. Tractor-porn-boy  Neil Parish, Tory MP for Tiverton and Honiton, resigned his seat after being outed for twice watching internet porn on his phone in the House of Commons chamber. The resulting by-election gave his constituency to the Liberal Democrats on 23 June.
4. On the 17th May an unnamed Tory MP was arrested on charges of rape and other sexual offences. The MP, currently remanded on bail is ordered to stay away from Westminster while the Metropolitan police investigation continues. 
5. And on the 30th June Chris Pincher, the Tory deputy chief whip, resigned after having “embarrassed myself and other people” by drunkenly groping two men at a private club. It is the second time Pincher has resigned from the whips’ office, having previously stood down as part of the October 2017 sexual misconduct scandal, after reportedly making an unwanted pass at Alex Story. An investigation into his conduct has been launched, following 6 fresh allegations. We are told (mainly by Dom Cummings) that Boris, being a bit of a pork swordsman himself, albeit in the field of fragrant delights, thinks all this hilariously funny; allegedly saying "He's handsy - Pincher by name, Pincher by nature" before re-appointing him as Deputy Chief Whip on the 8th February 2022.
   

Is it the heady aphrodisiac of power that leads all these Tories into unconsidered and unwise sexual behaviours? Do they imagine they are desirable sexual partners? Or do they just not know how to go about considerately asking for a date? You know - "can I buy you a coffee" rather than going straight for the groin?  Sasha Swire, wife of then Tory MP,  Sir Hugo Swire, has informed the nation that David Cameron told her that her perfume made him want to push her "into the bushes and give you one". Subtle, David.

 

 What do they teach them in these public schools? 

 

It is said that scandals involving Tories are always about sex, whereas Labour scandals are about money. And now, it seems, the Scottish National Party scandals are about both sex and money, although not necessarily at the same time. Last week  cheery, chubby, bald Patrick Grady made it into these pages for stroking an unwilling teenager on his staff. This week we bring you another McFuckup, this time of a financial nature. Basically, the former SNP MP for Glasgow East, Natalie McGarry, has stolen a total of £24,635 from charities for which she was treasurer. She is just starting an 18 month prison sentence. Good thing that one of the charities to whose funds she helped herself is  Positive Prison, Positive Future.  

Honest, not invent.

 

Maybe this is why Gnasher is hell-bent on finagling a second independence referendum, a scant 8 years since the last one. She'll keep us at it until we get the right answer. And she will tell us what that is. She is bent on blaming inflation, covid and the national health service crisis on Westminster, and, in so doing, distract from the massive fuck-up that is the SNP, its handling of the devolved economy and its dodgy MPs. Madame le Gnasher has set the 19th October 2023 for the referendum. If she cannot legally hold a referendum, she will hold an election when the SNP will stand on only one issue - independence - and if everyone votes SNP, take that as a referendum. 1 in 18 people living in Scotland is currently suffering from Covid. 100 in 100 people living in Scotland are currently suffering from Gnasher.

 

Moving rapidly on, before I burst into tears; to American news, those stone-mad religious fanatics seem to have decided that its female population should undertake the useful role of being incubators, irrespective of any personal wishes. This will then achieve a surplus of unwanted babies which can be re-assigned to happy, stable, loving male couples, thus avoiding the need for chaps to have anything to do with women. Other than inseminating them and running away fast.

This has caused quite the furore in the United Kingdom, where commentators are outraged at American conduct of its own affairs and management of its own population, whilst remaining indifferent to the situation in our own country. In Northern Ireland, despite abortion having been decriminalised in October 2019, (I know! 2019!) provision for abortion was not made, thus requiring unwillingly pregnant women to sort it out for themselves or travel to England for the necessary health care. In July 2021, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland issued a direction to the Department of Health, the Minister for Health, the Health and Social Care Board, and to the First and Deputy First Minister, to “commission and make abortion services available in Northern Ireland as soon as possible, and no later than 31 March 2022”. A week before the deadline, the Northern Ireland Secretary stated that it was “increasingly clear” that the Northern Ireland Department of Health was not going to ensure abortion and post abortion care was available in Northern Ireland by the end of March. He added that he was left with “no choice but to prepare work on further Regulations to ensure services are commissioned […] as soon as is reasonably practicable” following the Northern Ireland Assembly election in May 2022.

Sophie attempted to interview General Mark Milley this morning on the Not the Sophie Raworth Show.

He is American. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he is the highest-ranking officer in the United States Armed Forces and, god help us, the principal military advisor to POTUS, the Secretary of Defence, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council. All America outfits. Not Britain. Yet.

"Well,little lady, I cannot answer that question"

 

But, General.....

I have told you that I cannot answer that question. That is private. That is for me and my counterpart. 

Him speaking American, I had a moment's incomprehension whilst I tried to work out what a counterfart was. He narrowed his piggy little eyes and barked out his pre-prepared, well rehearsed answers, his green baseball cap perched on his fat, frightening, brutal, jowly, trap-mouthed  boar head like a pea on a bowling ball. 

Made one appreciate our subtle, elegant, well mannered, deferential, English jolly good chaps - or was that a Cold War Alec Guinness film?

Talking of which......... 

Wot's on Telly?

Tosh, that's what. A pretty thin idea, stre-e-e-etched out over god knows how many episodes - (I've watched 3 so far), and adorned with a tricksy workaround of the indisputable fact that, to ordinary human beings, staring at lines of computer code is deeply, deeply boring. Watching a bunch of geeky actors staring at computer code is coma-inducing. The protagonist's mind palace (thanks, Mark Gatiss' Sherlock, unaccredited in the Undeclared Rip-Off) is a place of gymnastic, physical obstacles, including lifting a man-hole cover (them's heavy, man) which the frail little protagonist must negotiate; all this work-out shite being an external metaphor for sitting down and key-boarding. If you are attempting to engage with this lot after your accustomed half bot. of Mad Fish Sauvignon Blanc (I like the name, but prefer the Marlborough Sauvignon, which is just heaven in a cold glass), then you will have some difficulty in understanding the sequence in which the protagonist traverses a fairground, breaks into a beach hut and climbs through the ceiling, which morphs into ..... and onandonandon.

Anyway, it seems that Russia and Britain are engaged in a cyber war. We're two years in the future, Covid is still a problem,  we have a black Prime Minister - Adrian Lester is chillingly brilliant as the billionaire Tory who overthrew Boris (what could Peter Kosminsky be hinting at?) and the Ukraine War is a thing of the past. I did like the device that Russian characters speak to each other in Russian and we find out what they are saying through English subtitles. Being able to read and occasionally being a little fuzzy of hearing, I like subtitles, which is why I deplored the streamed version going out without subtitles. And isn't it much better to hear the language rather than have the actors indicate they are talking foreign to their foreign mates by speaking their lines in comedy heavily-accented English, like 'Allo, 'Allo. That was back when all foreign was funny to true-blooded English men who couldn't read subtitles. Now all foreign is just frightening.

That was about all I liked. Granted, I haven't seen the whole thing, but I could not suspend my disbelief when Vadim, the spotty and geeky Russian hero, code-embeds a meet-up message to his geeky erstwhile pash, Saara, who just happened to start work at GCHQ on the day of the cyber-attack and he just happens to have spotted her on a spy screen in Moscow (oh, for fuck's sake) and - AND his scary bosses just let him go to the meet-up to warn the West that another cyber attack is imminent. Oh, do grow up. 

Anyway, there's a real problem going on with Saara. She is narrow. Her head is wider than her shoulders. She is dreadfully, dreadfully thin. All bones - long, thin, delicate bones with absolutely no meat on them at all. Think chicken feet. 

She is what clinicians working with anorexics would call a trigger. She comes from a normal-looking British Muslim family who quite clearly have enjoyed a fair old share of dahl and chapattis in their time - suicided dad was quite stocky, mum is a round bundle, sister a chubbily massively preggers young woman. But Saara inspires one with a desire to spoon feed her a good gravy dinner. The show may get around to addressing her anorexia. There's a scene in the GCHQ canteen where all the clever fellows wot listen to lies and pump out their own go for their pie and chips, and our girl has a green apple on a white plate on a tray for her lunch. She explains to the older gentleman whose solitary lunch she has invaded that she doesn't eat meat because she's a Muslim and that she doesn't like vegetables. Now that's a thin story - I've enjoyed many a meat and spinach balti down the Ladypool Road that deffo had meat in it. The elderly gent, whimsically played by Sir Mark Rylance, doesn't challenge her thin story, but later takes her for a picnic in the ruinous old GCHQ building and provides her with a sandwich carefully prepared to pander to her dietary preferences, and what does she do with it? Waves it about in the air before restoring it to the plate. There's a story line waiting to be unfolded here - suicided dad, anorexic daughter - can't wait. 

Saara has already corrupted Vadim's sexual preferences - they were at University together, where he would moodily sketch her instead of paying attention to the lecture - well, he didn't need to, on account of being brilliant and all that; and when he finds himself back in Moscow against his will because Putin recalled all Russians from foreign parts (yes, Putin, it's 2024 and Putin is still in charge), he takes up with an anorexic widow, who he moodily sketches and whose cooking is so diabolical that neither of them can eat it, just summoning enough energy for a bit of under-the-blankets action and a trip to the zoo, where healthily-nourished predators gaze condescendingly on the emaciated forms of Vadim and his gloomy widow. Would you eat that? Nah, mate, break your teeth on all those bones. 

The zoo? The widow has a female child, whom Vadim carries around on his shoulders like a trophy girlfriend at Glasto. Does anyone else find that a bit creepy?  So, the zoo - another metaphor, I suppose, for Russian aggression. And if you didn't catch that, Vadim attends a lecture given by a swivel-eyed loon, who is working up a pitch of enthusiasm for all this cyber warfare, chaos, confusion and despair that will soften the West in preparation for the declaration of open war. By Russia on the West. No, really.

You can catch The Undeclared War on Channel 4 or on All 4. Will I bother with any more episodes? Hell, yes - I need to find out if Saara is hospitalised for her eating disorder - so brave of them to tackle these mental health issues in the middle of an old-fashioned Cold War propaganda vehicle.

 Now Available

If you've missed a contribution from mr ishmael this week, look no further than  Ishmael’s Blues - which is now published, in both paperback and hardback editions; both editions are immediately available from lulu.com.  The paperback is also listed on amazon. Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack, the first two books in the sequence are also available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

 Unless you’ve done this already, please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box.  Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed. 

The book’s full title is "Ishmael’s Blues – further Chronicles of Ruin", and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of blogdog Buster retiring from the fray, cat gloating from a safe distance. The cover is the same for both editions.

Link for Hardcover :  https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage.  If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.  

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

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Hetero Pride week. Endangered species.