The Sunday Ishmael: 27/11/2022

 

This is the sun falling into the sea, photographed from Scapa Beach at 3:15 on Saturday afternoon, and this is a kite surfer, making landfall before the night pushed all the light away.

Orkney - best part of Scotland. Here's the waterfall, cascading from the fields around the Scapa Distillery into Scapa Flow.

Once you're north of Dundee, Scotland is utterly beautiful - it's a failed state, none the less. Under the control of the Scottish National Party since 2007, and of Nicola Sturgeon since November 2014, it has become a failed state - or would be, were it not for its big friend in the Union, England, which subsidises Scotland to the tune of £38 billion a year. The arrangement is that for every £100 per head that the UK Government spends in England, Scotland will be given around £129 per person. This is the result of the Barnett Formula, intended to  reflect the additional costs of delivering public services in Scotland. The SNP is a nationalist, centre left, social democratic party which campaigns for Scottish independence. Should they ever succeed, England would be the richer and Scotland the poorer. This simple financial fact is continuously obscured by the SNP in all its publications and campaign polemics. Their continued political existence - their jobs - rest on convincing sufficient Scottish voters that independence would create a wealthier, happier, fairer and healthier country. All bollocks,  of course - and the probability is that they know it is a con job that they don't themselves believe in, whilst in their privy closets they pray that independence is never achieved so that they can continue to campaign for it and never suffer the utter ruin and catastrophe that separation from the United Kingdom would visit most awfully upon pretty little Scotland. This week saw the decision of the Supreme Court ( all five Justices agreed), that the SNP cannot legally hold a referendum to ask Scottish voters if they would like to leave the United Kingdom without the consent of the Westminster Government. It is a reserved matter. God, you should have heard the outcry, the sulking, the outrage, the indignation. 

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boys!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      She chortled in her joy.

 

Not that easily slain, however. As if her job depended on it (it does), Gnasher Sturgeon has transitioned to Plan C - that the next election will be a de facto referendum, as the SNP will campaign on one issue only - the independence of Scotland. A very exasperated Martin Geissler cross examined Keith Brown, the Deputy Leader of the SNP, on The Sunday Show this morning.

What do you mean, you ridiculous over-dressed popinjay  a de facto referendum? What the fuck are you talking about? Don't you always campaign on Scottish Independence? And are you going to be counting in Alba's votes and The Greens' votes? Do they know? Have you asked them? Look, pillock, if you want an election, you could do it tomorrow. Tomorrow. Why wait? I'll tell you why - because you'd lose. You need months and months to convince the turkeys to vote for Christmas. You're going to waste billions on the project. Meanwhile, NHS Scotland is crumbling - your think-tankers even discussing making the better-off diseased and injured pay for their treatment. And now you are fantasizing about a National Care Service. Which you can't pay for and can't staff. Ah, whisht, awa and boil yer 'eed. 

Scotland has a massive demographic problem which is not being addressed. Easier to blame it on Westminster and whip up anti-English sentiment. 17% of people living in Scotland in 2011 were age 65 and over. 16% were aged 15 and under. In 2038, there will be  25% aged 65 and over, and 16% aged 15 and under. The working age population - the ones servicing both young and old, will constitute only 59% of the population in 2038. One in three women  will die of dementia. There are 90,000 people in Scotland living with dementia. So, calloo, callay for long lives - but boo hiss for long lives with dementia - and all the other ills that flesh is heir to.

This is why the NHS and care services are falling apart. The present model simply doesn't work. Too many leaking and dribbling old gits, too few working age people to look after them, far too few babies being born to redress the situation going forward. It's a temporary problem - as the baby boomers pop their clogs, fall off the twig, shuffle off their mortal coils, presumably the young/old ratio will right itself. But it will be a while yet. And there's no European slaves to pick up the slack and do the (literally) shitty jobs. Which is one demographic reason that Scotland is so furious about Brexit. 

NHS Scotland could just about work if there was a functioning care system to decant the leaking, dribbling and demented gits into. As there isn't, hospitals have been turned into de facto care homes - bed blocked by people who have no medical needs, but can't look after themselves, whose families don't want to look after them and don't want to pay for them to be looked after. It is not sustainable. There are some possible solutions. Take your pick:

• Impose hotel charges for NHS bed blockers at the same rate as care home charges - thus reducing the incentive for families to leave their "loved ones" in hospital.
• Pay women to have babies and provide free child care so parents can care for someone else's parents on a paid basis.
• Accept Jeremy Cunt's plan to enter into a "Swiss-style arrangement" paying the EU for open borders and free movement of labour. 
•  Throw more money at the Care System - increase numbers of beds and increase wages of workers above inflation, effectively poaching them from better paid industries - that will, of course, move the problem on.
  
•  Bring in the army.
• Deploy illegal migrants into care homes. Never mind the language barrier and the inherent racism of our elder population.
• Do something different. Deploy the huge resource of the advertising industry to persuade the population that multi-generational households are normal and desirable, all year round and not just for Christmas. If you live in Inverness and your old parents live in a Glasgae tenement, a burden on the State, then social opprobrium should be your lot. 

By the way - Scotland today, the UK tomorrow - the demographic time bomb is just ticking a bit louder in bonny Scotland.

Religion used to hold all this together and still does in poor Catholic countries, where the black clad nonnas look after the bambinis whilst boiling up vats of pasta. We know better in the potato-eating Protestant countries, where even the priests (particularly the priests?) have no belief whatsoever in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, but do like dressing up and doing deep thinking. Like Junior Research Fellow, Joshua Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, better known in these columns as Archbishop Beard.

Josh seems to have looked at the Pieta with the Holy Trinity by Jean Malouel, a 14th century devotional piece, and immediately seen a vagina on Christ's body. Look for yourself.

What d'you mean, you can't see it? Obviously not thinking deeply enough. The Pietà is a specific form of the Lamentation of Christ in which Jesus is mourned by his mother, the Virgin Mary, after his death by crucifixion by the occupying Romans. His death was confirmed when a Roman soldier, wanting to move things along as a holiday was coming up, inserted a spear into Christ's side and water and blood were seen to flow from the wound. For believing and practicing Christians, this is miraculous and sacred. For Josh, who seems to be seeing vaginas everywhere, not so much. In his Sunday sermon to the devout at Trinity College Chapel,  he claimed:  'In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,' The congregation was more than a bit upset by the suggestion that Christ had a transgender body, never mind the tangled syntax. The Dean of Trinity College, Dr Michael Banner, stepped in to support Josh, saying that it was legitimate to view Christ as transgender.

A Trinity College spokesman said: “The sermon explored the nature of religious art, in the spirit of thought-provoking academic inquiry, and in keeping with open debate and dialogue at the University of Cambridge.”

So where's the vagina? you may ask. It's the wound in Christ's side. Now I know mediaeval religious painters probably didn't have a comprehensive working familiarity with vaginas, but surely Josh has seen some and can see the difference between the Pieta and the miraculous portal from which all babies make their difficult and painful journey onto the shores of time. 

And it isn't in the side.

Josh also called in aid  Henri Maccheroni’s 1990 work 'Christs' - which seems distinctly blasphemous and a lot more like a vagina.

No wonder the congregation were in tears. One woman wrote to the Dean: 'I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman. I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ’, a new heresy for our age.'

I'm not a Christian, haven't been for decades, but I used to be, and I understand the depth of pain that this nonsense has caused people of faith who sat in a church with their embarrassed children and listened to blasphemy. The Moslems, who seem to have a far more robust faith, wouldn't put up with it for a moment. I can't imagine that the Russian Orthodox church would give it the time of day. March the perpetrators into a cellar and shoot them.

This pursuit of identitarian politics, this whole silly business of declaring the sun is the moon, an old lady a fair young maid, this Petruchio-led conspiracy to deny reality in the name of fairness and inclusivity - no wonder Putin considers the West to be decadent. Well, even if he doesn't, we've handed him an easy target.

 mr ishmael,you will recall, also had robust views about organised religion. Here's a short piece I found in the drafts, so you won't have encountered it in this form. The state visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom was held from 16 to 19 September 2010, on the invitation of Gordon Brown, at a cost to the tax payer of £10 million, excluding policing costs.  

 

Pope 

ishmael smith 22/8/2010

 

Nervous, eh? poor Padraig. Not as nervous, I'll venture, as infants confronted by tumescent menbeasts in frocks; not as nervous as superstitious believers, threatened with excommunication and Satan's fiery Eternity, should they continue to protest the violation of their children's bottoms and mouths.  Such are not events isolated, rare, confined to Ireland, this is pan-global, historical and current organised crime, involving, through commission or omission,  all in this organisation, either actively and viciously lifetime noncing or wickedly turning a blind eye to protect, what is it, now, Holy Mother Church; how, in the name of God, can it have been otherwise?

Ratso, in the mid-nineties was JayPee2's consigliere, charged with burying this shit, making it all go away, so's il Papa might continue slobbering all over airport tarmac, delighting the believers and filling the front pages and screens of skymadeupnewsandfilth, Popes and Circuses, no business like show business. Ratso declined to bust - or defrock, as they call it, as if losing a job was adequate punishment -  countless brutal career nonces - instead, shifting them to other parishes and dioceses - go away, my son, and sin elsewhere, suffer some other little children to accommodate your engorged Holy Ghost.  Ratso it was, further, who advised dioceses confronted with massive compensation claims from hundreds of  victims, to seek US Section 11 bankruptcy, protecting the Church's assets from legitimate, compensatory seizure.  It was entirely predictable that qualities such as his would result in Ratso occupying the highest office, that of Vicar of Christ and Nonce-Protector General.

Dawkins is neither here nor there, he and religion are two cheeks of the same AlphaMale arse, both insist: Don't believe that other shit, just believe in what I tell you. And his TeeVee shows are a remorseless battering of elderly narcissism masquerading as scholarship. Vanity, thy name is Dawkins.

Large numbers of people are appalled by the imminent Papal visit, not on theological grounds, not as part of a sexual-orientation agenda, nor from a contempt for people who need a blessing from the Invisible, in order to deal with Life's ultimate, unavoidable  betrayal. Lots of people just look at what is known, incontrovertibly, of the Papacy's part in organised crime and say to themselves: 

 Jesus fucking Wept.

Editor's note:Retired Pope Benedict XVI admitted to giving false testimony in a German sex abuse case. A report from law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl on sexual abuse in Germany’s Munich diocese criticizes the way the former pope, whose original name is Joseph Ratzinger, handled four cases of sexual abuse by priests in the 1970s and 1980s when he was archbishop there. The report was commissioned by the archdiocese to investigate sexual abuse between 1945-2019. 

Thanks to editor mr. verge, there are now three books of the collected works of ishmael smith:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues all 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 :
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.
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.

 

 

The Sunday Ishmael 20/11/2022: It's Not the Economy, Stupid, it's the Tories

 

Working 9 to 5, with an unpaid  hour off for lunch, five days a week - that's a 35 hour week. Chance would be a fine thing. 

Making ends meet on 35 hours x £9.50 (the current National Living Wage, not yet implemented by many employers) = £332.50. That's £17,290 a year gross. Tax and National Insurance on that income is  £1926.00, thus leaving £15,364 per year in your pay packet or £295.50 per week. 

Average UK Weekly Expenditure:

Food = £53.00 ( the average adult male spends around £35 on groceries and £18 on pre-prepped food (e.g. Tesco's £3.00 lunch meal deal, comprising a sandwich, a bottle of juice and a packet of crisps, now costing £3.40, a fish supper from your local chippie now £8.50 at the Happy Haddock)

Rent = £110. 50. 

Electricity & gas per week = £52. 

Commute to work = £37 (based on a daily return journey of 31miles)

 Clothes and shoes per week= £11. 

 

So - income =£295.50, expenditure = £263.50. That leaves £32 per week for savings and frivolities: TV, Insurances, soap, haircuts, cleaning products, phone, internet, finding a mate. Should you be sexually successful, then the bills really ramp up:  £234 per week on average for full time childcare.

 

I used to do this all the time when preparing Social Inquiry Reports or Pre-Sentence Reports for the Birmingham and Solihull Magistrates courts - a little table of Income and Expenditure, so that the Magistrates  knew what level of fine repayments to impose on the latest poor sod standing in the dock. Everyone knowing it was all just a game, as there simply wasn't any spare income available to pay a fine; everyone going through the motions, knowing that sooner or later the defendant would be back in the Fines Court and heading off to Winson Green, where the costs of his detention would far exceed any fine he had defaulted on.

This simple arithmetic demonstrates why people are working two jobs, or claiming state benefits whilst in employment. Why we're on the verge of a General Strike.  Politicians - at least the ones who sit in the Cabinet - and senior civil servants, simply have no idea about the conditions that the majority of the people in the United Kingdom live in. Nor do they care. Like the Polish and Ukrainian war gamers, casually killing a couple of farmers in a neutral country - minnows sacrificed to draw in the big NATO fish. Doesn't matter. Collateral damage. Oops. Accident.

Back to my theme.
Jeremy Cunt's Autumn Statement fits sweetly into the traditional Tory loathing for the annoying, but necessary, working people of the United Kingdom. Clearly on the side of those benefiting from Truss' economic crisis,  Cunty has started the ball rolling on a new Austerity Game, with his own rules. Here we go again, with public services slashed, stealth taxes on wages, real wages shrinking year on year, whilst banks report leaping profits from high interest rates, record bonuses in the City and profiteering energy companies, according to Treasury estimates, making £170 billion in “excess profits” in two years. The wealth of UK billionaires grew by 22% over the pandemic. And the Labour Party has swallowed Cunty's line, accepting the basis for austerity and inevitable cuts to public services.

Cunty has invented the concept of the fiscal hole, which he wants to fill in. This hole is the amount his Treasury thinks it will need in extra tax income or spending cuts each year in order for debt to fall as  a share of GDP by 2027/8.   Why 2027? No reason.  Cunty could choose 2029/30, say, or change the target entirely. He's not going to fill in his hole by meddling with banks, bankers' bonuses or financial investment rules - perish the thought. No, he is going to:
 “deliver public finances markets expect”, basing his spending and tax plans on what he thinks financial markets want, running scared after the markets flexed their muscles after the Kwarteng debacle. But Austerity is not a recipe for growth, which is needed to get us out of the recession. Simply hoping it will be shallow and short is not enough, I fear. Anyway, The Tories liked the Autumn Statement, and Cunty sat down to a round of pats.

Do you ever get the idea they don't really know what they are doing? Oh, we tried that and it didn't work, so let's try this. 

Round and around we go. Has it occurred to anyone that in order to let some take big slices of pie, others must have slivers? And it is a finite pie - infinite growth is impossible, despite what the growthers tell you.  

Time for a quick rubdown with a housebrick -
 

RECESSION, IT'S OFFICIAL. AT LAST.  

Ishmael Smith 26/11/2011

The OECD, a respected economic forecaster, whatever one of those is, and where have they been this past fifteen years, has reported that after Christmas the UK will be in double-dip recession, due to, well, due to everything being shit  and being run by an international kleptocracy.

The OECD has also said that in order to make matters no worse than they inevitably will be due to the Euro and all that nonsense, the UK must develop a Plan B, including a drastic slowing of public sector cutbacks.  The chancellor, below  and his economic team consisting of the foxtrotting, elderly  nitwit Vince  Cable and the former skis monitor in the Cairngorms National Park, Master Danny Alexander, have all said that there is no alternative to what they are doing.  That's what they were elected for. Even though they weren't.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. George Osbo, prepares his Autumn Statement.

There's about three - or maybe a hundred and three - strands here on whateverwecall it, the shitstorm, the impertinent volte face of the kleptocracy, no longer promising us even a share of the fruits of our own labour, not even a fragment of ownership of our own resources,  hooting at us, scorning our natural kindnesses. It's all our own fault that they've been shitting in our faces all these years, we have left them no option and now  our only hope is to crouch back under the latrine, our faces upturned, our mouths open.

survival differentials and the power of money

The advances we have seen, real advances, in health care, in  longevity, and in women's and workers' and children's rights,  these have all come from the people we are now told to hate, from the unions, from the NHS, from the Old Labour Party, from people we are now told by the likes of Danial Hannan* are unproductive, 

Hannan,  the worthless, overdressed, overpaid overgobbed - you know the rest, fucking shit-eating bastard, moonlighting as an MEP, but really a paid propagandist for Money -  journalists, bloggers and broadcasters, they call themselves, patting their lips with Andrex.  These advances have come in the teeth of opposition from the likes of Hannan and Heffer and Cameron and Lansley; yet they insist that they will protect them for us by hacking them to pieces, by slandering the impotent poor, ennobling the rancid rich.

Those who screech hysterically that you cannot possibly do without profit are the direct descendants of those who burnt Wycliff and Tyndall,  of the people who insisted that slavery was sent from God,  that feudalism was irreplaceable and that the minimum wage was ruinous.  These people are not only bad, they're fucking stupid.

*Daniel John Hannan, Baron Hannan of Kingsclere wrote in March 2011, criticizing anti-austerity protesters, stating they "have decided to indulge their penchant for empty, futile, self-righteous indignation". Writing on the 30th September 2022,in support of the Truss/Kwarteng budget, he wrote: "The current trend is to insist that any change in tax policy should be primarily designed to help the poor. That assumption is flawed." Not changed your spots, then, Dan?

I came across this exchange, somewhen in the Comments:

call me ishmael said...
How can you say such things, ms agatha? What have I done, that you would consign me thus, to skymadeupnewsandfilth?

Agatha said...
I was thinking more in terms of a book, dear sir: The collected insights of Ishmael and his good friend Stanislav, with occasional contributions from Buster.

Twelve years later, thanks to editor mr. verge, there are now three books of the collected works of ishmael smith:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues all 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 :
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.
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.

 

 

Did You Know You is Living inna Surveillance Zone?

 You remember how I had the Scottish Government round the other week, checking if I was doing the housework? They must have grassed me up to the proper Government, because yesterday I had a letter from Nobel House, 17, Smith Square, London, SW1P3JR, wanting to know how I am looking after my chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, quail, partridges, pheasants and pigeons. There was a form to fill in and return, together with a map.

Just as I have been suspecting for some considerable time (it is the suspicious cracks, pops and splutters on the phone line), I am under Surveillance. The letter-writing branch of the United Kingdom Government goes by the acronym APHA*. It isn't headed up by Judi Drench, but, nevertheless, it is working tirelessly, so I am informed, to surveil me. And they would like my cooperation and support.

Day before yesterday, Radio Orkney reported that they also have received the letter and have to complete the form. No stamped addressed return envelope, though - times are hard. As Radio Orkney operate out of tiny, cramped premises on Castle Street in the heart of Kirkwall, God only knows where they are keeping their chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, quail, partridges, pheasants and pigeons. Maybe they've been fattening up a flock of Christmas birds in the cellar.

On the off chance that I do not keep poultry or other feathered pets, I am required to report to the helpline any dead wild birds, swans, geese, ducks, gulls and birds of prey that Harris and I may come across on our walks. Bit late, really - the beaches have been strewn with feathered corpses all year. 

My APHA surveillance letter informed me that "High standards of biosecurity should be maintained as good practice...... Good biosecurity is an essential defence against diseases..."

*APHA - Animal & Plant Health Agency. (not birds, you notice. That would be BAPHA)

 

Here's Stanislav, many years ago:

 

Fuck me, bird 'flu now, as well as Alan Johnson's disease. Good job we have hereditary Plagues minister Rosemary Benn at the helm, as we slide back into Middle fucking Ages. Maybe Lady Sir Iain MachineGun Blair send merry men out, blast birds from sky with Hoekkler and Koch. At least do something useful with mad gunslinger psycho-cops. Maybe Tony Benn wrap-up warm in cardy, go out in field with flask of tea and shout at naughty bird, go away, I am old Labour. And vegetarian. Maybe Foetus Hague go and point finger.

On the bright side, though, a good outbreak of plague would clear out the old and the sick and the poor - although, thankfully, none of the establishment who will be inoculated up to their bollocks - and leave so much more money for houses of parliament pensions.

Leicester Royal Infirmary, flagship NewLabour disease pit, has a mission statement which says: Doesn't matter if our incompetent actions result in your death as you would have died eventually anyway. Honest. Stanislav not invent. The government could display real vision by adapting this to any outbreak of plague. Hard choices. Not come in Downing Street to be popular (just as fucking well, really, considering.) Trust me I am son of fucking Manse. Many must die in order that few remain rich. More joy in heaven over poor bastards flung in plague pit and cover-up with lime and forget about. May as well go now as hang around with arthritis, dribbling. Only die in hospital anyway, lungs fill up, limbs drop off from AJD.* Better off fucking dead, really. Not like us who is left behind to grow old and spend pension. At going down of sun and in morning will remember bird flu death millions. Age shall not wither. Maybe dig-up Bernard Matthews and give peerage for solve pension crisis. Lord Levy negotiate price with family, oi vay. Have Nagilah. Don't work Saturdays.

Stanislav go now in Tesco, buy whole stock of own brand Beechams Powder, come home, seal-up doors and window, not go out, not do plumbing job. Kill budgie.  

 

*AJD - Alan Johnson's Disease. During Alan Johnson's tenure as Health Secretary in Gordon Brown's Government, the intractable outbreak of C.difficile in the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells hospitals led the Trust to unlawfully dismiss their chief executive, agreeing to a pay-out of £250,000. At Johnson's  intervention more than two-thirds of the severance payment was withheld, only to be restored by the Court of Appeal,  in a judgement  highly critical of the Department of Health.

The Sunday Ishmael 13/11/2022

 Learn Economics with mrs ishmael

 

Jeremy Cunt was on the Laura Kuenssnose show this morning. He accused her of having a hard nose. Steady on, old boy - pots and kettles, not so bad in the hard proboscis department yourself:

Anyway, turns out Britain is suffering from Inflation and Recession. Which is a bit of a problem, the remedies for I&R being diametrically opposed.

Inflation = Caused by too much money chasing too few goods. Remedy -  stop people spending so much. Increase taxation and increase interest rates so they haven't got any bloody money.

Recession = Caused by people not buying stuff because they haven't got any bloody money. Remedy - get people to spend more by reducing taxation and interest rates.

 

There you have it - the impossible equation. Jeremy Cunt will give us his solution on Thursday. He's already told us that everyone will pay more taxes and that there will be spending cuts. This will inevitably cause the existing recession to worsen. Cunty said that he hopes that it will be shallow and short-lived. Yes, I hope so, too. Not holding my breath, though. 

Also appearing on the Hard-Nosed Laura Show was Simon Bloody Schama, there to promote his latest TV piece of popular history. He told us that the Arts are not a luxury. Oh, yes, they are, dearie - just ask the single parent in the substandard tower block or the Albanian migrant in the Dover processing centre. He wanted to address the elephant in the room,

 Sweet Old Simon Bloody Gay-Schama saying the crops are rotting in the fields due to a post-Brexit lack of European slaves to pick them. He hasn't moved on to the current Ukrainian Elephant.

The huge drain on the economy of supporting the belligerent Dwarf Zelensky with weaponry and military training; the consequences of sanctions against Russia and the downright idiocy of blowing up the Nordstream pipelines seem to have slid right on by Simon Bloody Schama.  (Why is he Simon Bloody Schama, mrs ishmael, you may ask? Seems an inoffensive old git. Now that you ask, 'twas all that striding prettily along Orkney's beaches, hair twirling in the breeze, camera lingering on stone circles, stone tables, mysterious monoliths and burial chambers

that brought Orkney to the attention of mr ishmael. And the rest, as Simon Bloody Schama might say, is history.)
Fortunately, Radakin was there, all medalled and poppied up,  

to let us know that there's a war on and that we have to resist the assault to our beliefs and values that's going on, not just in London, but in Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff and our towns and cities all across the globe. Bit worrying that the Chief of the Defence Staff appears to be labouring under the misapprehension that Britain has towns and cities across the globe - but then he's not looking too good these days - it must be the strain of running the secret war. Laura Hardnose told him that last week a Russian aircraft released a missile in the vicinity of a British plane, at which the good Admiral looked a little surprised, but rallied rapidly and riposted that we have to be clear with our leadership. Undaunted, Laura told him that he had been to speak to Prime Minister Rishi and Jeremy Cunt last week to tell them how much money he wants to run the war, and could we know how much, please? Struggling to avoid any sort of meaningful answer, Admiral Tony committed to saying that the Ministry of Defence doesn't want any cuts in defence spending as there are long-term threats so there must be long-term investment.

There always are. Threats, that is. And if there aren't any, the clever fellows with the medals will poke about until there are some. I have come to the conclusion that human beings, a fairly flawed species, enjoy war. It is just the way of it. Human nature. I was at a Remembrance event in a little, isolated church, where the tiny congregation had knitted 600 poppies to commemorate the fallen of their parish. The local children had researched the stories of the fallen. One widow's three sons had all gone off to the Great War and, one by one, each had died. It was policy to keep brothers and friends in the same unit as they would be less likely to run away - the only sensible action, having committed the folly of going in the first place.

Oh, the pity of it, the pity of it. 

 

9,750 veterans were expected at the Cenotaph in London today, parading for an audience of 10,000. See, Simon Bloody Schama, you can make Art out of anything. The number of veterans the highest ever. Why's that? Because we have been in a state of perpetual war during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 

 

The War Queen

Apparently someone chucked eggs at Mr & Mrs KC3 in York earlier.  Missed, of course - probably went to the wrong sort of school and never learned to throw properly. This is the statue of the QE2 that the Betters were on their way to view. She looks up for a scrap. That's what you need in a War Queen - belligerence in a long dress with a ceremonial doughnut on her shoulder.

 

Here's a poem and an essay by mr ishmael.

 AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN

11.11.2010

 

I wrote this last year, Kipling's not the only poet I know, some of my best friends, if I had any, would be poets.  I say I wrote it but maybe I just, what's the word, channeled it, wrote it straight down without a correction. I like it better this year, it rolls along with an unstoppable venom, who knows where it came from, the shitegeist, maybe.  And given the rubbish that will be published along these lines, I make no apologies for posting it again.  The names and faces have changed, even though it's the same old names and faces, spouting the same old cant, just playing musical chairs, with the quick and the dead.

It is now  the eleventh day of the eleventh month; if you are visiting here,  maybe summonsed by a cyber prompt, maybe just wandering, spare a moment or two.

POPPIES.

Oh they're wearing fancy poppies, as they're lined-up in the Mall
But they're no-good, thieving bastards, rotten cowards one and all
Rotten cowards one and all,  lads, rotten cowards one and all
And they're wearing solemn faces, as they're standing in the Mall.

And you'd think that they was 'oly, with their kissers all turned down
And a look so bleedin' pious you'd think the angels 'ad come down,
The angels 'ad come down, me lads, the angels 'ad come down
And blessed 'em all, for bein' such a sorry bunch of clowns.
A sorry bunch of clowns, me lads, all standin' in a row.
Got-up like tailors' dummies, the lowest of the low.

They do this once a year, me lads, the flags and all the tears
But we live with their rottenness, for years and bloody years.

Was the improvised explosive, done the damage to the lads
And they might have fared right better had they been in armoured cabs,
But they never spent the money, so the lads all 'ad it rough
While Bobby Bleedin' Ainsworth, 'ad is nose stuck in the trough,
'is nose stuck in the trough, me lads, 'is nose stuck in the trough.
'E 'ad 'is fingers in our pockets, an' 'is nose stuck in the trough.

Some is living in an 'ostel, some is livin' on the street
There's some 'as got no ears, no eyes, and some 'as got no feet.
And some 'as got no feet me lads, and some 'as got no feet.
Oh, it's hard to go a-marching, when you hasn't got no feet.

And some 'as melted faces, make the children look away,
Make their wives and girlfriends shudder, though they'd never like to say
That there's worser things than dyin', like comin 'ome this way.
They can do wonders, now, with plastic
Or so the doctors say.

And some is off on jailhouse leave, and can't be here today,
The Judge, y'see, he banged 'im up for ever and a day.
'E banged 'im up for fightin; but that's what soldiers do
And when he's got no war to fight, 'e 'as trouble getting through
Trouble getting' through, me lads, when all the shootin' stops 

And no-one wants to know 'im, just the prisons and the cops
The prisons and the cops, me lads, stick in a soldier's craw
Cos those what sent 'im killin' is far beyond the law.

If I but stole a fiver, now, from comrade next to me
I'd be on charges, sharpish, there, for everyone to see
They'll never get their collars felt, however much they steal
It's like that Alan Duncan said, a splendid fucking deal.
They write the rules, then break 'em, say they didn't understand.
They're shitting in our faces, up an down the bleedin' land
Shittin' in our faces, just as hard as e'er they can.

Pissin' in our pockets and spitting in our eyes
And travellin' on the gravytrain to the house of bleedin' lies.
An Armistice, all of their own, and no-one got no blame
They just paid a few shillings back and carried on the same.
Carried on the same, me lads, for now and evermore
Stuffed like pigs and drunk with power, while we go off to war.

The members and right honourables know only how to lie
And cheat and steal and fornicate, whilst we march off to die
In some benighted wogland, some jungle, veldt or bush
Or in the hills and mountains of the Hindu bleedin' Kush
The Hindu bleedin' Kush, me lads, you'd think they'd understand
That the killing fields of Afghannystan are No Man's Bleedin' Land.
No Man's Bleedin' Land, me boys, and it was ever thus
They shoot from caves and run away, in the Hindu bleedin' Kush.

There's Charlie in 'is medals, heir to the bleedin' throne,
The one what we're out fightin' for, while he's sitting safe at home.
E'll 'ave yer Mrs, like as not, you give 'im 'alf a chance
He just takes what he wants, you see, it only takes a glance
For he is true nobility, the country's pride and joy
Whilst we are noble savages, cannon fodder to deploy.
They'll send us up to fiery death, and out in unsafe trucks
And when we're blown to Kingdom Come, why, no-one gives a fuck.

But when we come in sixes, with coffins draped in flags
They look a bit embarrassed, like, they're just a bunch of slags
Just a bunch of slags, me lads, all standin' ramrod straight
They'll smile and say So sorry, just a simple twist of fate
I would have gone myself, you know, but I'm important here,
We also serve, we lousy pricks, who only stand and wait.

You can put your bleedin' poppies where the Sun don't never shine
For hypocrisy's your only creed, you ain't no friend of mine
You ain't no friend of no-one's, if the truth was only told
To the boys you send to bleed and die and never to grow old.
It wouldn't do for your sons, all to the manner born
To die alone in foreign fields, forgotten and forlorn
To die alone in foreign fields, forgotten and forlorn
That's the stuff for me and mine, our bodies ripped and torn.

So you can put your bleedin' poppies where the monkey put his nuts
The only thing we've seen from you is cuts and bleedin' cuts'
And some ain't got no bullets and some ain't got no boots
And some are boys of seventeen, just bleedin' young recruits
Bleeding young recruits, me lads, all blown to smithereens,
They never saw their twenty-first, they never left their teens.

See, they're only paper flowers and you're only paper men
And if the call to valour came you'd cut and run again.
But paper flowers, that's the thing, to show you are sincere
And shiny shoes an' overcoats, that's why you're standin' ere.
We're soldiers of the Queen, me lads, and not this sorry bunch
Who steal their houses, dodge their tax and steal their bleedin' lunch
They're one step down from parasite, a squalid learning curve
Lets hope before they meet their end, they get what they deserve.

Oh they're wearing fancy poppies, as they're lined-up in the Mall
But they're no-good, thieving bastards, rotten cowards one and all
Rotten cowards one and all, lads, rotten cowards one and all

And they're wearing solemn faces, as they're standing in the Mall.

 

I came across this exchange, somewhen in the Comments:

call me ishmael said...
How can you say such things, ms agatha? What have I done, that you would consign me thus, to skymadeupnewsandfilth?

Agatha said...
I was thinking more in terms of a book, dear sir: The collected insights of Ishmael and his good friend Stanislav, with occasional contributions from Buster.

Twelve years later, thanks to editor mr. verge, there are now three books of the collected works of ishmael smith:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues all 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 :
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.
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.