Some Ishmaelites will remember that on the 5th October 1974 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated two 6-pound (2.7-kilogram) gelignite bombs at two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, England. The pubs were targeted because they were popular with British Army personnel stationed at Pirbright barracks. Four soldiers and one civilian were killed. Sixty-five people were wounded.
The bomb in the Horse and Groom detonated at 8:30 pm, killing a civilian, two members of the Scots Guards and two members of the Women's Royal Army Corps.
A near-by pub,The Seven Stars, was evacuated after the first blast, and a second bomb exploded at 9:00 pm while the pub landlord
and his wife searched the pub. The landlord sustained a fractured skull
and his wife a broken leg, whilst five members of staff and one customer
who had just stepped outside received less serious injuries.
At that time, the Provisional IRA had separated from the Official IRA and were engaged in a campaign they called the Long War. Beginning in 1970, they considered bombings, assassinations and ambushes to be legitimate means to achieve their war aims, which were the establishment of a republic, the end of British rule in Northern Ireland, and the reunification of Ireland. In 1973 they expanded their terrorist attacks to mainland Britain and eventually even to Europe. It was estimated that, between 1969 and 1994, the IRA killed about 1,800 people, including approximately 600 civilians. The IRA was funded, in part, by the United States of America.
The Guildford pub bombings were perpetrated by an IRA active service unit which became known as the Balcombe Street Gang – arrested in December 1975 after the Balcombe Street siege, leading to their trial and conviction for other murders and offences. Although they admitted responsibility for the Guildford bombings, they were never charged. This is because the police had already fitted up four other people, and, as Lord Denning commented in respect of the similarly wrongly convicted Birmingham Six:
The Guildford pub bombings were perpetrated by an IRA active service unit which became known as the Balcombe Street Gang – arrested in December 1975 after the Balcombe Street siege, leading to their trial and conviction for other murders and offences. Although they admitted responsibility for the Guildford bombings, they were never charged. This is because the police had already fitted up four other people, and, as Lord Denning commented in respect of the similarly wrongly convicted Birmingham Six:
"If
they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that
they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were
involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the
convictions were erroneous… That was such an appalling vista that every
sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should
go any further’.” Despite Denning's appalling vista, the convictions of the Birmingham Six were quashed in 1991. In 2001, the men received approximately £1 million in compensation each.
Back to the Guildford Four, arrested in December 1974. One of them, Gerry Conlon, had been in London at the time of the bombings, and had visited his aunt, Annie Maguire. A few days later, Annie and her family were arrested, becoming known as the Maguire Seven. The Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of the bombings in October 1975 and sentenced to life imprisonment. They were imprisoned for 15 years. The convictions were eventually overturned years later in the appeals court after it was proved that their confessions had been obtained by torture and evidence that specifically cleared them had been suppressed by the police. They were released in 1989, having served a combined sentence of 60 years. The case is now a staple in the discussions of miscarriages of justice. Despite this, the infamous Lord Denning said that the Guildford Four were "probably guilty".The Maguire Seven were wrongfully convicted in March 1976 of providing bomb-making material and other support and were sentenced to terms varying between four and fourteen years. Their confessions had also been obtained by torture.
Back to the Guildford Four, arrested in December 1974. One of them, Gerry Conlon, had been in London at the time of the bombings, and had visited his aunt, Annie Maguire. A few days later, Annie and her family were arrested, becoming known as the Maguire Seven. The Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of the bombings in October 1975 and sentenced to life imprisonment. They were imprisoned for 15 years. The convictions were eventually overturned years later in the appeals court after it was proved that their confessions had been obtained by torture and evidence that specifically cleared them had been suppressed by the police. They were released in 1989, having served a combined sentence of 60 years. The case is now a staple in the discussions of miscarriages of justice. Despite this, the infamous Lord Denning said that the Guildford Four were "probably guilty".The Maguire Seven were wrongfully convicted in March 1976 of providing bomb-making material and other support and were sentenced to terms varying between four and fourteen years. Their confessions had also been obtained by torture.
Why am I reprising this now? Because it was 48 years ago, and memories fade - and Mongosling 3 didn't know about the Dog Shooter's Party, so I can't assume that the events are remembered nor why I assert that the police detect nothing, just wait for folk to be dobbed in or fit up if they have an Irish accent. Mainly, though, we are revisiting this because Her Majesty's Senior Coroner for Surrey, Mr Richard Travers, has just concluded his resumed inquests into the deaths of the five young people who were killed in the Horse and Groom pub:
Paul Craig, plasterer to trade,
Guardsman William Forsyth
Private Ann Hamilton
Guardsman John Hunter
Private Caroline Slater
Private Ann Hamilton
Guardsman John Hunter
Private Caroline Slater
And with the inquest's conclusion has gone the last opportunity to lift the veil of secrecy which has shrouded the deaths of five people and injuries to 65 people. The families of the five dead young people were refused Legal Aid so were not legally represented at the inquest. They could not afford transport and accommodation, so could not even attend. The establishment, however, was thoroughly legally represented by Queen's Council, their Juniors and Solicitors - attending, at taxpayers' expense, to represent the Surrey Police, the Ministry of Defence and the Metropolitan Police. The inquest ignored two documents recently come to light: one showed that finger print evidence gathered at the time proved that the Balcombe Street Gang had carried out similar attacks throughout 1974, both before and after Guildford. The second revealed that Hampshire CID and Special Branch had alerted the military to evidence that the terrorists responsible for the March 1974 Ripon Army barracks bombing were planning an assault on the barracks near Guildford - yet no action was taken and the threat alert level was not elevated.
Coroner Travers also had the opportunity to review the over 700 confidential files on the IRA's English campaign, due for release in 2020, which had been reclassified for another 75 years. He handed them over to the Surrey Police and asked them to decide which were relevant. They identified only 2 documents.
Coroner Travers also decided it was not in the public interest to hold an Article 2 inquest under human rights legislation. Article 2 would have allowed him to poke around in the events leading up to the bombings, whether the security services held information about who the bombers were and how they were able to plot, prepare and perpetrate the bombings. Whether they could have been prevented. Instead, he confined himself to looking at the facts that were already known.
Anyway, the Government's Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, introduced for its Second Reading in March this year, when enacted, will close down all these troublesome inquiries, civil claims, judge-ordered inquests and police investigations and victims and survivors can just shut the fuck up, in the interests of reconciliation, avoiding blame and protecting the guilty.
Ishmaelites new to this topic may note with some amusement the euphemistic appellation of Troubles to what was a bloody civil war, at the same time as the establishment deploring the Russian habit of referring to the Ukrainian upset as a Special Military Operation. Since the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, open hostilities by the IRA against the United Kingdom have ceased, with republicans agreeing that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom for as long as a majority of the population so desire. It is not going well, though - Stormont is not functioning, with the Democratic Unionist Party still blocking a restoration of power-sharing in protest over Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol. As recently as 2015 an investigation into the murder of a former IRA leader revealed that the organisational structure of the Provisional IRA is still in place and the IRA has resisted decommissioning its entire armoury.
mr ismael would have been raging at both Coroner Travers' conclusions and the forthcoming Legacy and Reconciliation Bill. Here's his thinking from 2014.
Ishmaelites new to this topic may note with some amusement the euphemistic appellation of Troubles to what was a bloody civil war, at the same time as the establishment deploring the Russian habit of referring to the Ukrainian upset as a Special Military Operation. Since the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, open hostilities by the IRA against the United Kingdom have ceased, with republicans agreeing that Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom for as long as a majority of the population so desire. It is not going well, though - Stormont is not functioning, with the Democratic Unionist Party still blocking a restoration of power-sharing in protest over Brexit's Northern Ireland Protocol. As recently as 2015 an investigation into the murder of a former IRA leader revealed that the organisational structure of the Provisional IRA is still in place and the IRA has resisted decommissioning its entire armoury.
mr ismael would have been raging at both Coroner Travers' conclusions and the forthcoming Legacy and Reconciliation Bill. Here's his thinking from 2014.
MURDER, HOW TO GET AWAY WITH IT. AND HOW NOT TO.
ishmael smith 26/10/2014
 | |||||
| Martin McGuinness, Provisional IRA leader & Deputy First Minister, | died 21/3/2017 | |
The
deputy first minister of Northern Ireland is handsomely paid,
resourced, pensioned and protected by the British taxpayer. As is the
case with Tony'n'Imelda Blair, the security costs in relation to
McGuinness will be unlimited and will be paid until his death. Millions
and millions of pounds, to protect an acknowledged mass murderer, the
most successful criminal of our time.
Serial
killer, Marty Kneecaps, has never worked, is a career revolutionary
sadist and, at my expense, leads a life of luxury, fawned upon, even
though his psychopathy is ill-disguised and although cruelty, menace and
viciousness crackle around him, like electricity. McGuinness is a
freak. Although, by any evaluation, he should be held in a secure
institution for the criminally insane, this psychokiller is welcomed
and entertained by the British monarch
and by our motley crew of first and prime ministers.
First ministers 4 Justice.
Och, aye, intimidate our electorate and tell them lies, well, that's just what you have to do for their own good and anybody says otherwise is scaremongering; Project Fear.
Aye, yer no' wrong there, so yer not, Alec.
Och, aye, intimidate our electorate and tell them lies, well, that's just what you have to do for their own good and anybody says otherwise is scaremongering; Project Fear.
Aye, yer no' wrong there, so yer not, Alec.
Marty
is also feted abroad, by a community of fellow monsters, anxious to
acquire from him what he impudently describes as his conflict resolution
skills, his knack for peace-processing, by intimidation, by torture
and by murder.
During
the Ulster war, largely instigated and waged by the now deputy first
minister, then commander of the Provisional IRA, nearly fifty thousand
civilians were injured and of the three and a half thousand killed,
eleven hundred were members of the official security forces,
approximately three hundred police officers and eight hundred members of HM armed forces.
Challenged
about his astonishing criminal record, Marty, the repulsive shit,
counters that he deplores the killings on all sides, so he does; many
bad things happened on both sides, so they did, as he bombed and shot
his way to power, but since he wasn't responsible for all of them, he's
not responsible for any of them, sure, how could he be? British
Govament, it was all their fault. When it comes to effrontery, even
Gerry'n'Cilla could take lessons from this monstrous piece of filth.
Nearly fifty thousand civilians were injured during
what is euphemistically termed The Troubles. Many of those responsible
for this orgy of largely nationalist slaughter were either not
prosecuted or were released early from prison sentences, prime minister
Blair's and president Spunky Bill Clinton's view being that the only
way to burnish their piss-thin, tinny legacy was to stop the IRA
killing, torturing and maiming people. And the only way to accomplish
this rudimentary compliance with Decency's rules was to pardon their
previous crimes in the hope that they wouldn't commit any more; it is a
stratagem unique in British jurisprudence, the pardoning of mass
murderers, torturers, arsonists, bombers and vigilante kneecappers in
order to ensure their future good behaviour. Oh, yes, and then
permitting them to frighten and persecute their way into elected office. Bit of a mixed message, that, to put it mildly, from an establishment which never does deals with terrorists.
Harry
Roberts, on the other hand, a London criminal, during the commission
of a 1966 armed robbery, participated in the murders of three police
officers, sounds a lot but it wouldn't even be a practice run for
Ulster's deputy first minister; he'd manage three before breakfast.
Since his conviction, Mr Roberts has been in prison for forty-eight
years, and at the age of seventy-eight has been granted conditional
release on parole. One would think that the Devil, himself, after an
Eternity of murder, mayhem and noncing, was being granted a Royal
pardon, a seat among the beasts in the House of Lords and a country
estate.
Marty Kneecaps is immune from prosecution for hundreds of times as many police murders as Harry Roberts committed. He enjoys similar immunity in the matter of tens of thousands of people maimed, burned, blinded and seriously injured, as well as in the matter of billions of pounds worth of security costs, of damage and compensation claims - more than enough to fund a five-star health service - being borne by we, the taxpayers. This startling state of affairs is hailed as a triumph of statespersonship. And while it is second-nature-easy for Spermface Osborne to blame poorly-paid dinner ladies and cleaners for their greed, blame the weakest for NHS decline, you'll never hear the pasty little crook say, Actually, D'YouKnowWhat, it's partly Martin McGuinness's fault that we are short of money, even though, obviously, it is.
It
is hard to find official figures on the costs of the Troubles, troubles
which, incidentally, could and should have been avoided, could easily
have been short-circuited in 1969 by the arseholes then in
MediaMinster, had they simply extended universal franchise to Ulster -
one man, one vote - none of this McGuinness shit would have happened. I
was there, in Belfast, when it started, a perfectly legitimate civil
rights protest by nice, mainly young, non-sectarian people; met by
government intransigence, it was allowed to be escalated and hijacked
by the then marginal Provos. Maybe it is government's collusion in
stupidity which makes it reluctant to provide proper accounts. But fuck
them, the bent politicians and crooked mandarins, we can make a guess.
Academics'
estimates of the military bill range between half a billion and a
billion pounds but, as we know, courtesy of prime minister Snot, War
Money is Magic Money, comes from contingency funds, doesn't therefore,
really exist, doesn't actually cost anything; half a million pounds
missiles, they are not paid for with real, schools'n'ospitals money, but
with contingency funds which never run-out, never need replacing,
don't actually exist; but, look, lessbeclear, you can't expect
ordinary stupid people to understand that, they must just be told. And
on top of that, Brigadier General Rupert Golightly-Jockstrap often says
that wars like this provide valuable training for his chaps, or is it his people, these days, - in passing, I think the Army was fucked from the moment its members started talking of one another as colleagues not comrades, but
that's another story - one linked to the army widows' TeeVee careers, the
exhibitionist Amputees 4 Harry and the Royal Cheshire Torturers
Regiment, aka The Queen's Own Beasters - giving them an opportunity to
get in there and do a real, magnificent, professional job of work and
anyway, we already pay for the forces, may as well get some service
out of the bounders; doesn't really cost anything, y'see, because we
have the soldiers anyway, so what's the point of a standing army if it's
sitting down on its arse, may as well get their balls blown off in
Ulster as anywhere else. Actually, therefore, according to Whitehall,
the thirty-year war in Ulster and on the Mainland didn't cost a penny in
military terms; we could just as easily have sent eight hundred Tommies
off to their deaths practically anywhere and as for all the guns,
armoured vehicles, helicopters, body armour, we would have needed all
that anyway; Golightly-Jockstrap, in fact, was actually, at the end of
the day, when all's said and done, the bottom line is, that he was only
sort-of spending his own pocket money; the Devil, as we MenOfTheWorld
say, is in the detail, detail which, on the grounds of national
security, we never release. But take our word for it, we wouldn't lie to
you. And as for looking after the hitherto healthy but now limbless,
eyeless and bowel-less squaddie, well, that's what the Poppies are all
about, isn't it? Ulster, then, probably a net profit, miltarily
speaking, we should, as a matter of fact, shake McGuiness's gravedigger
hand, old man; wossat, we often do? Yes, yes, I suppose we do. Yes,
even her Majesty.
But what about the decades-long blitzes,
But what about the decades-long blitzes,
on Belfast, Enniskillen, Lisburn,
Omagh, Warrington, Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry, Guildford,
Now youse had better just pay attention.
Them two wee lads in Warringtom, they just had to be blown to fuckin' bits, so they did.
For Ireland's Freedom.
And let me tell youse, there's nobody in Sinn Fein regrets them deaths less than me.
Mr Gerry Adams, responsible for thousands of murders.
Years spent in custody for same - none.
Fought a war of terror against the British state, its security forces and civilians, men, women and children, their lives, limbs and properties. Fifty thousand assaulted and wounded, four thousand murdered.
Years spent in custody - none.
One
of the McGuinness expenses is the still-ongoing search for Ulster's
Disappeared, IRA victims snatched, tortured and buried in the bogs, on
his orders.
And what about Canary Wharf,
Hyde Park?
We have already established that murdered troops and civilians don't matter but lots of these locations have been completely rebuilt, must've cost billions. Billions of pounds of schools'n'ospitals money. No? Oh, right, city centres need rebuilding anyway, so Marty and the Monsters did us all a favour, hurrying us along, towards a shiny, glass-fronted Cathedral of Consumption in every town. The construction industry and the citizens of these places, they should shake Marty's widowmaker hand? Yes, of course they should. And it is of course tragic that children were blown to smithereens, of course it is, but we mustn't get involved in the blame game, must we, gets us nowhere, quite frankly.
Hyde Park?
We have already established that murdered troops and civilians don't matter but lots of these locations have been completely rebuilt, must've cost billions. Billions of pounds of schools'n'ospitals money. No? Oh, right, city centres need rebuilding anyway, so Marty and the Monsters did us all a favour, hurrying us along, towards a shiny, glass-fronted Cathedral of Consumption in every town. The construction industry and the citizens of these places, they should shake Marty's widowmaker hand? Yes, of course they should. And it is of course tragic that children were blown to smithereens, of course it is, but we mustn't get involved in the blame game, must we, gets us nowhere, quite frankly.
Mr Tony Blair.
Instrumental in the deaths of tens of thousands, instrumental in creating millions of refugees and in inflaming, prolonging and spreading multiple conflicts in, so far, the Middle East and Southern Asia.
Years spent in custody in respect of same - none.
But back to the question of what it all cost us and we are making progress, now, on the matter - the military costs were non-existent, soldiers' resettlement costs are a matter for charity and the reconstruction costs are, in fact, a blessing; Angels in disguise, actually, saved us some of the demolition costs, Marty Kneecaps and his Torture Brigade, the HardMen of West Bulfaaaast. Well, nancy boys, really, if you ask me, cruel, cruel arse bandits,
Instrumental in the deaths of tens of thousands, instrumental in creating millions of refugees and in inflaming, prolonging and spreading multiple conflicts in, so far, the Middle East and Southern Asia.
Years spent in custody in respect of same - none.
But back to the question of what it all cost us and we are making progress, now, on the matter - the military costs were non-existent, soldiers' resettlement costs are a matter for charity and the reconstruction costs are, in fact, a blessing; Angels in disguise, actually, saved us some of the demolition costs, Marty Kneecaps and his Torture Brigade, the HardMen of West Bulfaaaast. Well, nancy boys, really, if you ask me, cruel, cruel arse bandits,
taking BDSM to stunning, exotic new heights;
burying
people alive, what a rush that is, slapping women around in front of
their children, and there's just nothing, nu-thing com-pares2 drilling
though a young man's knees with a Black and Decker. But no, it was a
dirty job, murdering and torturing and somebody had to do it, even
though they didn't, not really, not in the sense of being held
responsible, and that's the thing that counts, no, if they haven't been
charged and convicted and done time they're not criminals, and in fact
they did us all a great favour, actually. And we should be proud to
shake their hand, yes, that's good, that is, proud to shake the hand
that held the drill. Pure poetry, so it is.
And all the health and social security costs attendant on fifty-thousand casualties and four thousand deaths? Yes, but they woulda had to be paid sooner or later, everybody gets sick, everybody dies, right? So no cost there, to the taxpayer, either. And actually, members of this house should know that, challenged by the results of the unimaginable cruelties perpetrated by the deputy first minister and his bumchums, surgeons in Northern Ireland were able to develop a whole raft of treatments for extracting bags of broken nails from the bodies of teenagers and children and old people, for repairing and rebuilding joints and tendons patriotically ruined by a power tool's intrusion and expert twisting about. Aye, conflict resolution, 'swhat we call it.
President Hillary Trousers courts the American-Irish vote.
I am sure she's kissed worse things.
But probably not for a long time.
I am sure she's kissed worse things.
But probably not for a long time.
And
surgeons, surgeons es-pecially, them's the ones, so th'are, as should
be proud to shake the mutilator's hand, for if it wasn't fer us, me an'
yon brave boys, there, sure they'da had hardly any work to do. Patron
Saint of Surgery? Saint Marty? Aye, well I wooden mind, so I wooodent.
Only be the right thing, after all, so it wood. Fair's fair.
Our national debt of honour, therefore, is owed not just to Tony'n'Imelda but also to the saintly Marty McKneecaps, a man who has demonstrated, time and again, that Yes, you can torture and kill hundreds of police officers and hundreds of soldiers, year after year after year; yes, you can kill thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children, injure tens of thousands, year after year after year; yes, you can destroy city centres like you were Hermann fucking Goering; there need be no limit to your own personal and political depravity, clad in Nobility's balaclava, you can bomb the nursery's comfort and the sickbed's sanctuary; young, old or ill, combatant and civilian alike, shoot them in the back, bomb them in the dark, bury them alive. And not only will it not cost anything but you will never, ever, ever go to jail, so you won't.
Mr Harry Roberts, however,
Harry Roberts.
Committed two murders, convicted of three.
Time spent in custody - forty eight years.
and his partial release at the end of his life and for a year or two at best, is damned as an outrage to Decency and has led some lardy, embarrassingly ignorant and fearfully stupid Poundland bint
Committed two murders, convicted of three.
Time spent in custody - forty eight years.
and his partial release at the end of his life and for a year or two at best, is damned as an outrage to Decency and has led some lardy, embarrassingly ignorant and fearfully stupid Poundland bint
to
call for the reintroduction of the death penalty, although if it wasn't
this that prompted her immoral indignation it'd be something else; for
Sergeant Filth and his union to insist, again, that his life and his
members' are more valuable than that of any other murder victim's; best
of all, this tiny act of tiny mercy has chorussed together all the
rotten, wormy, inebriate, poxed-up, crooked and rotten tub-thumping,
rabble rousing voices of skymadeupnewsandfilth - what ToryTurd Ian
Hislop describes as the free and independent press - as they scream
and howl for the devising of Infinite Punishment.
Briefly,
on the box, I saw some silly old cunt, a child in the vicinity at the
time of Mr Roberts's offences, still, fifty years on, engaging in
recreational mourning for the cameras, I never got over it, he wailed,
why should he be allowed out? I don't know what that fucking numbskull
would do if he'd lived through the Blitz or been born in Belfast at
the time I was.
I
knew a young social worker in Selly Oak, in the mid-'eighties, she and
all of her young, female - and male - colleagues would, almost daily, in
the line of duty as officers of the court, go to places to visit or
supervise those whom Old Bill would only visit tooled-up and
mob-handed; Francis and the perpetrator's wife were
murdered, by a man who had been in my office a week previously, I did
tell his caseworker that I thought him highly dangerous but she and the
victim had many such on their swollen case-loads, many such but
potentially worse; the Police Federation, never too keen on equal
opportunities, had nothing to say about the murders but then even the
trauma of having his helmet knocked-off generally leads constable Filth
to six months' sick leave, his being caught in criminality to early
retirement on health grounds. I don't deplore and regret the killing of
a police officer any less than I do that of any other victim but I
certainly don't deplore it any more and there is, indeed, a perfectly
reasonable argument which says Better Him Than Me - he voluntarily
joined-up to protect me, he is trained, equipped, he is paid and
pensioned to protect me, he retires early as a result of having
protected me, his wife or partner and his dependents will be well
provided-for should he die in the line of duty; nurses die in the line
of duty, are killed by their patients, social workers, teachers, too,
risks of the job to which, clearly, there is no absolute deterrent; if
you don't want to be killed as a police officer then simply don't be a
police officer, job done, evenin' all.
The
random apportioning and non-apportioning of guilt has become a
commonplace of Ruin, successive home seckatries hating the petty
benefits cheat, pursuing the impoverished non-BBC-taxpayer to the ends
of the Earth, whilst endlessly and guilefully deflecting any scrutiny of
My Noble and Learned Friend, the Lord KiddyFucker, QC, PC and so on;
the disabled are paraded naked across the pages of the Daily Filth,
nonces and war criminals spirited away to Brussels or the Middle East,
their dodgy personal relationships, like their expenses, accidentally -
Oh, Whoops! - shredded. Or closed to public scrutiny until after all
concerned are dead.
McGuinness,
though and Adams and all their ghastly fraternity, their pardoning is
the most cynical reversal of Decency and Common Sense that I have ever
witnessed - torturers, proud of their scourges, cigarette ends and
power tools, waltzing and fucking each other around the legislative
palaces, rebuking us for even knowing of their Devilment, threatening
us, should we complain, with more of the same. Yet a one-time
conventional criminal with but three deaths to his account - nothing,
compared with McGuinness's rapsheet - has leapt over Mayhem's Premier
League to colonise our attention, our outrage.
For
the Parole Board to have reached this decision about Mr Roberts' final
years - that he must be deemed as not presenting a risk, that he understands
the seriousness of his offences and is remorseful. One would imagine
that Mr Roberts' forty-eight years in jail would satisfy even the most
vengeful among our punishment-fixated society, that in a country which,
though largely faithless, now, more than ever, boasts implicitly of
its white Christianity, a simple, end-of-life mercy such as this would
not be controversial; shame on Poundland, shame on the coppers, shame
on skymadeupnewsandfilth, shame on Joe fucking Bloggs, drunk,
wife-beater, bigot and ignoramus, shame on them that they would piss on
even a moment's Mercy.
What
they want, these insatiable punishment arseholes, what they really,
really want is Sharia, dressed in a Union Jack; as mr tdg said, were
they not too stupid to recognise it, what they will see is the face of
their own slavery, leering back at them from Poundland's dark mirror.
They
are not all Poundlanders, of course; Colonel von Fawkes, this year's
model Kelvin Mckenzie, for all his Newsman of the People schtick, is
Bigotry's Fool, the Brute in Liberty's stolen clothes; vast swathes of
the Redneck Forest on the Tory benches would wet themselves at the
thought of a good hanging, a flogging or a thousand -year jail
sentence, the Daily Mail panders to I'd Pull The Lever Myselfers, Life
Should Mean Lifers, Spare The Rod And Spoil The Child-ers, people who
daily, credulously fork-up and swallow-down the Peace Process Can of
Worms whilst working themselves into apoplectic stupor at the thought of
one old man enjoying a few months of tightly-regulated freedom outside
Custody's walls.
Fuck
UKIP, fuck the gutter press. When they pursue well-connected criminals I
will join their hue and cry. In the meantime, I hope Harry Roberts
scents a Spring or two's blossoms, knows, once more, the feel of the
wind on his face and sniffs a fragrance more wholesome than those of
other men's piss and sperm. Forty eight years of that is enough.
......................................................................
mrs. ishmael again - "when I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11
I used to think that we British - we were the good guys. But now I have put away childish things, I know that we never were the good guys, that the Kingdom is DisUnited, that war is embedded in our footprints. The Irish Question is not resolved. The Scottish Question annoys the fuck out of me, and the last time I paid attention to Wales, the nationalists were burning English property.Here is a Song for Summer: a lullaby for a white baby being raised by enslaved black people on behalf of its parents who can't be bothered.
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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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