Sunday 17 July 2022

The Sunday Ishmael17/07/2022

 The Hustings.
Liz Truss is unpardonably ugly. Not in that accident-of-birth-and-genetic-inheritance ugly, like Rishi Sunak, eyes too close together, jugears, malformed head on skinny little tiny body. No, I daresay Lizzie was a pretty baby, and as a young woman photographs show someone you wouldn't immediately want to hurl a brick at whilst shouting yeuch, get it away from me. Nope, Liz has built her ugliness as her Unique Selling Point, her physical face and body an external manifestation of her inner self. You know how you were told as a kid not to make faces, cos if the wind changed, you'll be stuck like that? Well, the wind must have changed a lot around the aspirant Prime Minister. The white, shiny face evidencing an aversion to sunlight, the hooded eyes disguising her thoughts and over weening ambition, the trap-like mouth the consequence of her perpetual contempt and sneer. And she has starved her body into submission, dressing herself in those narrow little trousers that flatter no-one and seem to have been designed by a woman-hating couturier of the formerly alternative and now main-stream persuasion, paired with spike heels. She's been campaigning for the top job for a year, according to the Spectator, schmoozing in chichi private clubs with her targets, buying them £20-a-throw gin and tonix in an effort to build a fan base. It must have been very uncomfortable for her on the front bench, sitting next to Boris, the bumbling liberal who denies his body nothing, having to support him in public, whilst her maggot thoughts seethed within her: when will I Be Recognised, and her wormlike ambition plotted insurrection and photo opportunities in tanks, wearing a comedy tank-hat.
 We haven't a dog's chance if Tank Girl Truss gets the Leadership. She has no coherent, consistent set of values and principles: she describes her parents as left of Labour, whilst she is right of Attila the Hun and supports whatever policies seem fashionable and popular enough to keep her in power. She used to be a very outspoken Remainer and now she is a committed Brexiteer. 
 
I can't take Sunak seriously. He appears to suffer from advanced hyper-activity, his spider limbs clad in tubes of black cloth and flailing wildly around, barely anchored to the podium, whilst his unfortunately-ugly face is so mobile that one fears that the individual features will leave base and start attacking his opponents - take that, Tugendhat, as an ungroomed very hairy Sunakian eybrow lands on the upper lip of that formerly-military gentleman, whilst the ears flap away to administer a good slapping to the tank Truss and the large and protuberant eyes roll off to up-skirt the Mordaunt. He tells us he knows what he is doing when it comes to managing the money and we've got to pay off the covid-debt that none of us wanted to incur in the first place, so he is sticking to his fiscal policies of sticking it to the poor. He is, we infer, culturally insensitive to the privations of the poor. He is unique amongst the candidates in adopting this bank-manager approach to our money: the rest all want to revert to traditional Conservative low-tax values - Tank Truss wants to borrow us out of debt as Covid was a once in a hundred year phenomenon - really? How does she know? In that she departs from her role-model, Mrs T, who subscribed to the Micawber principle: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."
 
Penny Mordaunt, who, as you know, I had formerly rated, failed to impress. Large, bovine, slow and dressed for a funeral, her Catherine Deneuve good looks did not compensate for her lack of flash and fury, although I did catch her giving little Kemi that Tory sneery gaze - what are you doing here, my good woman? At least the Mordaunt has gravitas. And doesn't have a Willie.

Kemi Badenoch clearly doesn't think her candidacy is serious enough to warrant expenditure on a funeral suit or pair of black stove-pipe trouserings. She's right. She turned up in a bright yellow outfit and relied on a sort of school-girl eagerness to attack the Mordaunt on her trans credentials. When she attempted to call in aid Tank-Girl, crying tell the truth, Liz, Truss haughtily responded that she's not going around criticising other candidates in what she seems to think is a race, whereas we all know it is Tory in-sack fighting. Twas ever thus.
 Which leaves Tom Tugendhat. Who looks like a Prime Minister of the Conservative persuasion. Average looking bloke, nicely turned out in a conventional suit and military tie - Did I mention I served my country in the military and now I'm willing to serve my country as Prime Minister? White, male, middle-aged, can do persuasive talking. Betcha he gets the job.
 
 “The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
 Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
 
 Well; the Tories did what they do - they unseated a sitting Prime Minister, because they thought Boris wouldn't keep them their jobs at the next election, and because they are all as ambitious as fuck. Captain Hindsight and Ginger Growler egged on the process and are now, in all probability, falling about laughing whilst uncorking the brown ale, because they know fine well that Boris was very popular with the people, despite (or because of) his peccadilloes, and that whichever scum-bucket the Tories replace him with, time is now running out for the Tory administration. The only thing that will grant them perpetual control is a declared war and emergency powers.
Which brings me to -
 
Wot's on Telly
The Undeclared Fuck -Up
Was it the Ipcress File without Michael Caine and with a sprinkling of Ethnic Minority characters to bring it bang up to date? We have a Black African Prime Minister, the Muslim heroine and her family from Pakistan and the American spy descended from the slave diaspora to America, before Britain put a stop to the international trafficking of slaves on the high seas. So that's two continents and a sub-continent  covered for the important roles. All the grunts and the Russians look like White Caucasians to me.
It is again acceptable to hate Russia, now that London is not financially supported by oligarchs and Putin looks to be including the Donbass into greater Russia, so this re-working of a theme that had us terrified of total global nuclear war back in the Sixties, when everyone over the age of twenty-something vividly recalled the horror of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (by the good guys, wanting to test the efficacy of this exciting new weapon - god knows what devastation would be caused should the bad guys decide to unleash nuclear Armageddon), is having an outing dressed up in new clothes with a very manipulative sound track. 
As a concept, it breaks no new ground. Sure, we've got the whole terrified-of-computers thing going on, it's fun to see inside GCHQ, but really - it is old, rotten meat. 
As yet another example, however, of what mr ishmael called the Grooming of the Nation, it is fascinating. What themes are we being groomed into accepting as normal? The sexual thing, of course - the depiction of lesbianism as entirely usual, and that casual lesbian sex by a Muslim girl, who strictly observes the halal dietary laws but doesn't bother with sexual religious constraints (she's also cohabiting and having sex with a white bloke who is her lecturer at "Uni") is nothing to raise an eyebrow about, let alone elevate security concerns. The flouting of sexual boundaries is also just taken for granted - there's a reason that there's a taboo on people not having sex with people that they are in power over, have teaching or supervisory responsibility for or line management duties towards. That reason being that such an imbalanced power relationship might just not be consensual, but, more importantly, will create bias towards your fuck-buddy, thus rendering entirely impossible the impartial marking of their work or correction of their mistakes and management  of their work performance. "Yeah, babe, have a blow job and forget about all that." This is why we despise dapper little Macron - not because his beautiful and glamorous wife is so much older than he is, but because she was his teacher, for fuck's sake. We can only think of him as her little puppet.
The other bit of nudging, which I lampooned in my previous reviews is the thin expectation.
The average British man is 5 foot 10 inches and weighs 13 st. 3 lbs. The average British woman is 5 foot 4 inches and weighs 12st 4 lbs (an increase of one inch and one stone from 2010).
Of course, we know that the average human being has less than two legs, so averages can only take you so far. There'll be skinnies at one end of the data and fatties at the other end. Divide the total of their weight by the number of people you are counting and you arrive at a figure that is fairly useless - less than two legs per human. The bell curve is a more useful tool to chart the distribution of any human attribute, including weight. The bell curve refers to the bell shape that is created when a line  is plotted using the data points under scrutiny:

Using this paradigm, we can conclude that all the actors in The UnDec have been recruited from the bottom 20%. Now why is this?  Does the writer/director Peter Kosminsky have a fat phobia?
See the source image 
Or is he a tool of the Government thought manipulators? (I refer you to the SPI-B lot and their paper: SPI-B: Current adherence to behavioural and social interventions in the UK, 22 March 2020)  
Is The Undeclared Fuck Up part of the Government objective to tackle obesity? If so, its on a hiding to nothing. When humans have access to nice food, they eat it. It's an evolutionary hard-wired thing. You eat now, because there might be another famine round the corner. When humans get enough to eat, they get bigger than they were during periods of acute food-deprivation - the Second World War, for example.
Only in comedy are we allowed to see actors looking a bit like you might see on the street:
Community Payback supervisor (far right) in Outlaws season 2
or in the convent:
Sister Michael, Derry Girls
The Grooming of the Nation message is clear - if you don't want to be an under-class comedy character in life, then get yourself into that bottom 20% and lose your bottom.
What did I like about the Undeclared War? Russian characters spoke Russian to other Russian characters and only employed a heavy accent when speaking English. What did I not like? Practically everything else. Re-warmed manipulative Cold War vomit. 
At least The Archers made no bones about its agenda - it was established to educate farmers following the Second World War. Just think of the UnDec as a dystopian, urban The Archers.
all episodes of the Undeclared War are streaming now on All 4 without subtitles.
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Orkney News

The Balfour Hospital, designed to echo the shape of waves and molluscs and sitting with great integrity in the landscape, was opened in June 2019. Three years old, it had its teething problems - sewage pouring out of the ground floor toilets and rolling down the corridors - that was a memorable glitch. Radio Orkney reported this week that the hospital is now so dangerous that if you need to wash your hands you are strenuously advised to use anti-bacterial and anti-viral gel afterwards and on no account to drink the water. Bottled water has been provided in pallets-full. There's a bug in the water that they can't get rid of.
 
You remember the mv Alfred disaster on July 5th? The 84 passengers aboard have been reporting tales of mayhem and confusion aboard the stricken vessel, as they scrambled for safety on the lifeboats. There was some elbowing aside, apparently, by the English. Those left behind on the ferry, as it disengaged itself from the rocks and resumed its journey to St Margaret's Hope were fearfully wondering if it had been holed below the water line and would sink in the Pentland Firth. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is all over it and have deployed a team of inspectors. All Pentland Ferries sailings have been suspended until tomorrow.

Further maritime matters - we've had a Second World War Mark Eight torpedo blow up in Scapa Flow. The mv Athena, whilst surveying the seabed in preparation for cable-laying found it in a very degraded condition only 210 metres from an oil pipeline. The Royal Navy  came up and removed it, despite a sea-state two-three and wind gusting at 20 knots, then carried out a controlled explosion.
 
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Here's a Treat: summer cooking with stanislav, first posted August 2009.

COOK WITH STANISLAV

This weekend, celebrate Gordon Brown bringing about the end of the recession and winning of the war on terror by making some garlic-infused oil, for frying steak and chop and sausage and bacon for butty and other healthy dinners up. Also can mix-up with Balsamic vinegar and serve with chopped up baguette and butter as hors d’ouevre, if pate and prawn cocktail cannot afford, or even Brown Windsor soup. Oh, fuck me, do try some oils and breads, is very sophisticated. And cheap, too, for miserable jumped-up dinner partying sonsoffuckingbitches. Have some bread and dip in oil.

Can buy in TESCO but is shitty little bottle with two eggcupsfull of oil and not last five minute and cost too much, best to make few litres at home and shove in front of dinner guests.

Here is stanislav method of preparation.

Tools required:

BIG FUCK OFF KNIFE IS ALSO GOOD FOR JEHOVAH'S WITNESS, MORMON AND LIB DEM PPC. (NEVER COME FUCKING BACK.)

Go in garden, taking dog, Buster, for piss at same time, have to go on lead because naughty old dog is and run back in house for piss instead of do in garden, like good boy does; is only sometimes but pain in arse is. Old bloke now, Buster, and gets confused.

Go down in garden admiring last of Lupin and Highland daisy, pulled up from A9 and spread now, like fear and loathing in cabinet.

Locate some garlic among weeds and maverick potato and not worry, is not so bad as it looks

Pull up garlic from ground. n.b. is easy thing to grow garlic, just break big bulb in little clove and stuff in raised-up bed and forget about while writing blog and doing plumbing, come back in few months and pull up by neck. Can leave longer and bigger will be, but nice and young is sweetest and best, like this.

Take up in house, chop from stem with big fuck off knife and wash off from dirt, taking good care to put waste bits in compost bin.

Split in cloves and crush a little with big fuck off knife and drop precisely good handful in bottle of olive oil, any sort will do and leave for ten days, infusing to do.

 

ROSEMARY INFUSED OIL AND GARLIC ONE, TOO

Can do exact same process – Go down garden, pull-up from ground etc with Thyme, for frying or roasting chicken and stanislav favouritest of all is Rosemary, just do exact same with handful of fresh picked Rosemary and is good for Roast Potato a la Cardiac Arrest, Roast Lamb and almost any white or oily fish, only not smoked, can use any herb-infuse oil for oil-an-bread and for dressing-up salad leaf, either alone or in combination with other stuff. Can pour in mashed potato and fry up cabbage and stuff like that, cover with black pepper, ground up in mill, like Dago waiter does and say Enjoy, cheeky fucking bastard, get punch in fucking mouth off stanislav, enjoy or not enjoy is stanislav business and not oily fucking Dago in apron.

If not garden has just buy stuff from TESCO and make up as before. But garden is best and anyone herbs can grow, on windowsill even, only not hemp or Old Bill come in will bashing down fucking door and retrieve few grammes of weed with street value of ten billion pounds. All that shit. Fucking wankers.

Anyway good happy cooking from stanislav. Herbs are best medicine, look good, taste good and by Golly, does you good. Granma’s pharmacy was hedgerow, innit.

Later this weekend, Zen in the art of the Kilner Jar.

Author: Stanislav, a young Polish plumber

 Now Available

If the above essay has whetted your appetite for more from the originator of Call me Ishmael,  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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The nightmare outcome of a bizarre mating experiment between Chucky and Gnasher

 
God help us all.

21 comments:

Mike said...

If this "contest" were the Grand National, would anyone hazard a shilling on any of these nags? I doubt it.

I said in earlier threads that we always hopefully say it can't get any worse, but it always does. FFS, even Cameron or May, God forbid Blair, are looking safer pairs of hands.

I'm reading so much bollocks at present from the UK it makes my eyes bleed. For example: some idiot, I think he is an Admiral/General, the chief of the UK Defense forces, states that the UK must confront Russia militarily. Someone should explain to this peacock that the UK by its own estimate is able to field ONE BRIGADE of combat capable troops (which I think is optimistic). Informed estimates vary from this being a small speed-bump to a force that (under best case estimates) would last 1-2 weeks against Russia.

On the economic front, the simple fact is that Russia hasn't started. If it doesn't re-start NS1, and cuts oil exports to Europe, then its literally lights out. People will be hunting cats and dogs for food.

In this "beauty contest" I don't see a single individual with any real grasp of the UK's place in the world (ie inconsequential) and who is able to be realistic and seek some security for Britain's future; in fact, I see exactly the opposite. They are all deluded and/or mad.

ultrapox said...

backbenchers have reportedly raised complaints about the rather strong scent of bullshit emanating from cap'n penny pungent

mrs ishmael said...

There was another leadership debate on Sunday evening, when Sunak and Truss really had a go at each other. On the basis of that performance, neither of them should get the job. Tugendhat, despite being a former remainer, is my horse in the race. He has never had a Cabinet job, therefore he is not tainted by Johnson's team, philosophy, compromises and goals.
And as for Britain's "place in the world", mr mike, you paint a sorry, albeit accurate picture, and I think all the General/Admiral/Commanders HuffnPuff and the Governmental nincompoops have a fairly clear understanding of the reality - but there are a few factors at play here - firstly, in order to secure Britain's safety, especially after Brexit, we have to ride on Uncle Sam's coat tails and do as we are told, which is to fight their proxy war with Russia for them, secondly we were driven right into supporting Ukraine's view of their sovereignty because Boris seized it as his opportunity to maintain his popularity in the teeth of criticism of his integrity, and thirdly, the media has created such an upsurge of populist support for plucky little Ukraine that no politician can now retreat from that position. We're fucked.

mrs ishmael said...

You are not keen on the Mordaunt, mr ultrapox. I thought, apart from her position on transrights and subsequent retreat from that position, she was fairly ok. What else do you know about her?

inmate said...

Mordant is is hewn from the same lump of jelly as Lies Truss mrs I, follows the herd, groupthink and fibs about her military past, a typical politician.
She’s also one of Uncle Klaus’s young future leaders as is Goldman Sachs placeman, fishy Sunak.
Tommy Tugitoff, like fishy, holds dual residency. His wife is a french high court judge, his family are French, he’s french ffs. An is it wise to have a military minded pm at the present?
As for Kemi, she’s not high profile enough, doesn’t dress like fatcher doesn’t sound like fatcher, will never, however hard she tries, look like fatcher, so...no chance.

ultrapox said...

whilst i agree with you that, in his capacity as nato-placeman, the cia-servile tugendhat turned out the best performance of the first leadership-debate - with sunak shading the second - it rather behoves me, mrs ishmael, to mention that the lightweight ms mordaunt has been roundly condemned, by lord frost, as a total waste-of-space - notably for the breathtaking incompetence which she displayed in undertaking brexit-negotiations, and her perplexing propensity for 'not being on the job' - let alone up to it.

so what 'job' was penny in fact 'on'? and is she actually just another party-animal relishing the luxuriously corrupt opportunity to hold a permanent piss-up in the inebriate's sanctum of 'number ten'?

in addition, there are consistent claims being made, including by conservative christian candidate kemi baden-knockers, that the over-lax morbunk has been caught lazily lying on the record, and indeed that the tricksy trade-minister has been telling these parliamentary porkies in order to conceal the ideologically liberal position which, back in 2019 as equalities-minister, she had been quite happy to adopt regarding transgender-rights. unfortunately for the promising shampoo-promoting career of penny progressive-whistle, the curtailment of such pansexual liberties has, for the grassroots-conservative-membership, now become not only a politically polarizing issue, but indeed a common-sense cause célèbre, and therefore the meandering minister of doctrinal malappropriation is duly being martyred on account of her ethically-fluid orientation.

no, i'm sorry, but i consider lady penelope's dissimulating and disingenuous demeanour all a bit too borissesque, and brimful-of-balderdash bombastic...

nevertheless, i admit my personal perception of this relapsed royal navy reservist to be not well-aided by her being named after an arethusa-class light cruiser, which whilst on wartime-service with force k was holed so many times by bomb-fragments that the poor vessel ominously acquired the nickname "hms pepperpot" - until, of course, being torpedoed and sunk off naples by german u-boat u-410, with great loss of life.

mrs narcolept said...

You wouldn’t trust any of them to look after Mr Harris for an afternoon, never mind a country, though the two younger ones do seem the at least likeable. I suspect the party members will take one final look at them all and then vote for Penny on the grounds that even Mrs T was thought not entirely sound when she first emerged, and see how she turned out.

Lovely to see Buster again.

Hope all is as well as possible in ishmaelia.


Mike said...

Mrs I: you may well be right that an explanation for the UK's excessive rhetoric against Russia maybe the feeling that post-BREXT (has the post stage been reached?) the UK needs Uncle Sam's warm embrace.

I simply ask the question: when has that ever worked for the UK, or indeed any other country?

Recall WW2: a condition for the US entry into the war was that the UK would give up its Empire. Then the US proceeded to bankrupt Britain by selling rusty old ships under the guise of Lend Lease. That debt (plus interest) has only relatively recently been repaid. Whereas war debts owed by Germany and Japan were written off after WW2.

The US knew only too well it would be the only major power to emerge from WW2 unscathed, and that would result in decades of world domination. Only now this period has ended - hence the petulance.

The there was the shafting over Suez, which effectively ended and British ambition east of the Med.

Britain has been on the wrong side of history for so long it is now terminal.

ultrapox said...

having been a torrid tangle of tory ambition, the conservative leadership election is now quite straightforward to understand, since:


a) if all the right-wing conservative mps abandon trad tory kemi badenoch in order to throw their neo-imperialist nato-nurturing weight behind crypto-remainer liz truss, then the mad war-horse from the foreign office will defeat penny mordaunt in the parliamentary elimination-rounds, but could ultimately proceed to lose against rishi sunak when, in the final ballot, the votes are cast by party-members.

b) if all the right-wing conservative mps abandon crypto-remainer liz truss in order to throw their true blue britannic weight behind trad tory kemi badenoch, then the nigerian briton will defeat anglo-irish-norman rose penny mordaunt in the parliamentary elimination-rounds, and definitely prove victorious against rishi sunak when, in the final ballot, the votes are cast by party-members.


so i wonder what these silly sozzled backbench-sods will decide to do for the greater good of brock britain?

you see, whilst truss and sunak are tainted by their horrible historic association with johnson-incompetence-and-corruption, mordaunt is just so busting full of bungling bollox that she has effectively become boris in a dress...

and therefore the only 'fresh' face left in this pack of pathetic establishment-poodles is that belonging to badenoch the babatunde - who at the last hurdle has sadly cemented her neo-liberal credentials by falling for the clinton climate-hoax...

silly girl: it is the effect of a weak solar cycle upon the jet-stream which causes extreme climatic variability - and in the uk can lead to either very hot or very cool summers, alongside either very cold or very mild winters.

ultrapox said...

quite so mr mike, and before perhaps we ask what the united states ever did for us, we might equally enquire as to what-the-fuck the romans, the normans, and the kingsize-krauts ever contributed to this country.

Anonymous said...

At least the Romans gave us a lingering taste for cruel and unusual verbal abuse, mr ultrapox - something those gathered here will surely grant a modest hat-tip.

cheers

v./

Bungalow Bill said...

Fine writing that, Mrs I. The Deadly Parts of Sunak is inspired.

As for the contenders, soon now to be 2 - this is New Britain and we have what we deserve, they've been gestating many decades. Of course, they decide and lead nothing anyway.

mrs ishmael said...

Thanks, mr bb - too kind
Increasingly looking like Sunak is our next Unelected Prime Minister.

mrs ishmael said...

mr harris would give the lot of them dog's abuse, mrs narcolept, before enquiring: got a beef sandwich anywhere about your person?
He's a very different person from Buster, and yet they are all Yorksters, with their busy little self-important walk and utter refusal to acknowledge how small they are; and so they fill a Yorkshire Terrier-sized hole in your heart.

Mike said...

Sunak will be a disaster. He's out of his depth completely, and has no political or policy philosophy - other than being elected. By any metric the UK economy is worse now that when he took office. Butletzberealistic - we all know, absent leadership, his only job is to sign papers he doesn't read that are put in his quaint red box.

Ironically, the UK (and Europe) suffers record temperatures (mild by Aussie standards I would add) which puts great additional strains on energy. Inflation is out of control. Interest rates will have to rise significantly not just to curb inflation (they won't, because there is a structural shortage of key supplies) but to avoid a buyers strike on Govt borrowing - printing can only go so far in the UK. Strikes and demonstrations are now on the rise, and Govts across the EU are looking shaky. The idea that the UK and EU can look to the US for salvation is a fantasy. The US will only look after itself, as it always does, and has enough on its plate anyway.

All this in train now, then Gazprom announces its cutting gas supplies to Germany and hence the wider EU (incl UK). This is just the beginning in a very painful lesson, long overdue, that there is a fundamental difference between paper economies based on bullshit. and real economies based on resources, skills and manufacturing. And I would add, based on proper cultural values and proper education.

When I say Sunak will be a disaster, I'm not suggesting that there is a better alternative. Most of this has self-induced over several decades, and will take decades to resolve, even if this is possible.

In my comment to Mr verge on Ishmael's Blues I made the remark that it was a reminder of happier times when would could laugh at stuff as if it didn't really matter, but that I now realise it was showing us going to a much darker place. I'm even more convinced of this now.

Anonymous said...

If further proof were needed, mr mike, that the string-pullers have a sick sense of humour, look no further than the way Sunak, if you close your eyes, sounds very much like Blair.what a choice - Blair Redux, Boris Redux, or Chucky Truss.

v./

mongoose said...

You have to worry about the intelligence of your average Tory MP. Liz Truss will wipe the floor with Rishi in the Party vote and then where will they be? I think that it would be a smart move on Truss's part to defenestrate both Sunak and Javid and ram the NIP removal through the Commons by the end of her first week. But she won't have the balls for that and so death by a thousand snipes and leaks awaits her. Jeez, they've just thrown Starmer a lfeline too. And it's going to be so boring and tawdry. A poundshop Maggie.

Mike said...

So there we have it: Truss v Sunak.

I suggested to mr ultrapox on an earlier thread that is like choosing between death by cancer or death by heart disease.

Mike said...

In other news, the Charity Commission has determined there is no questions for it to examine in the bags-o-cash scandal. I don't think there is a single other person in Britain who could bank 2.5M in cash. When I was last in the UK I couldn't get a pub or shop to accept a 50 quid note; and Natwest refused to exchange it for smaller notes. But, all above board.

mongoose said...

Much more worryingly, mr mike, is WTF can the Prince of Wales want to do with 2.5 mil in cash? There are only so many types of chaps who accept that sort of payment and none of them are good.

ultrapox said...

you're not wrong about this conservative leadership election, mr mike: whittled from a large undistinguished field of jabbofascists and nazi-arming pro-war nutjobs, the final pair of political apprentices remaining is duly comprised of liz "truss-in-me" snake-eyes and rishi "the bionic mouse".

of course, were sunak and badenoch to have been chosen for election by the membership, middle-class multi-culturalists would now be madly masturbating throughout the land.