The Sunday Ishmael: 28/05/2023

 A Dog's Breakfast of a Cuntry.

Have you ever found yourself watching politicians on t'telly and wishing for your magic sword/laser beam/ atom disruptor to reach in and separate yon gabster's heid from his/her neck?

I was seized with such a desire this morning whilst watching the Scottish Minister for Circularity - honest, not invent, Scotland does indeed have such an office and the current incumbent is the slab-faced Lorna Slater.

Slater, which, incidentally, is Scottish for wood louse, was interviewed by Martin Geissler on the Sunday Show - the weekly Scottish politics round-up, without once cracking her face. I don't think she likes him. It was pretty clear that he thinks she's an arse. The interview has been described as "extraordinarily hostile". It is available on i-Player if you want to see a master at work.

The red hot issue in Scotland at present is the refusal of the Westminster Government to allow Scotland to recycle glass:

 

It's just spite, Glass gets broken and is dangerous on the pavements for pedestrians and their pets. Without Glass, the whole spirit of Devolution is undermined. The UK Government is interfering with Scotland's democracy by blocking Glass from being recycled under the SNP's Deposit Return Scheme. 

Bollocks, Minister, cuntish waffle, knob-gobbling sophistry. You just want to be first nation to introduce the DRS. Never mind the manufacturers and retailers being driven into bankruptcy by being unable to punt their product across the Border. It's like the Highly Protected Marine areas you want to introduce - happy to see the end of the Scottish Fishing Industry in pursuit of your bilious Green policies. The Government of the United Kingdom "argues there does have to be a bit of a leash that can be tugged when they think it's going too far. Is that not reasonable? This is exactly how devolution works."

"And that's exactly why Scotland needs to be an Independent country."

Well, that outcome is becomingly increasingly unlikely, as allegations against the SNP of theft, corruption, mismanagement and incompetence proliferate and the other pro-Independence parties - Alba and The Greens - are tiny and ramshackle, the Greens wedded to increasingly radical, hard-loony policies, and Alba propping up Salmond's ego. Labour is currently predicted to win 23 seats from the SNP at the next general election.

Geissler also had a go at Assistant Chief Constable David Duncan, whose boss, Sir Iain Livingstone, told the nation on Thursday that, after six years of  him leading it as Chief Constable of Police Scotland, the force is institutionally racist and that "institutional racism, sexism, misogyny and discrimination exist." 

Geissler, enraged by this fashionable admission, demanded to know what this means, as Livingstone had been quick to say that individuals are not racist or sexist. With his back against the ropes, the unshaven Duncan (must have been a heavy night) had to come up with an example of how a Force can be racist, without the individuals employed by the Force being racist and/or sexist. The best he could do was to cite body armour that had been designed for the male form and not for boobies. 

It's a bit more than that, son.

Private Eye magazine revealed the charming practice of police officers having the inside of their helmets and caps embellished with pornographic art work, all the better to intimidate rape victims. "Mind if I take my helmet off?" "For God's sake, no, officer, just keep it on."

Livingstone is retiring in August, at the grand old age of 56. Police Scotland is looking for a replacement for this exceptional leader, offering a salary of £232,000.

Over on the Laura Kuenssberg show, Andrei Kelin, who has been Ambassador of Russia to the United Kingdom since 2019, maintained admirable calm in the face of Laura's bullying, mildly remonstrating "I think I have told you if you will try to offend me once again we will just stop this interview."

Accused of lying to others and to himself, the worst Kelin had to say to Laura was that she wasn't a very experienced journalist, demonstrating why he holds the rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. He, himself, studied at the Faculty of International Journalism at Moscow State Institute of International Relations back in the Seventies. Harried by Laura about the circumstances in which the war between Ukraine and Russia could be ended, Kelin stated that all it would take would be for the West to stop supplying arms to Ukraine and then it would be stopped the day after tomorrow. 

Please God.

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mr mike on pilgimage

Sadly, mr mike has not been able to get a bulletin through to us, but says he will give us an update when he's back in Australia. 

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Tulippery

Ishmael Smith: A Mayday Essay. It's Not the Economy, Stupid. 

4th May 2009

SUMER IS A I-CUMIN IN (A 14th. century Toppe of Ye Pops.)

The daffodil harbingers are gone over now but the Whitebeam avenue springs into leaf, spiky, urgent, hurrying, soon to be lush, in a few days it will unfurl, obscure the path, it's blossom fragrance intoxicating, uplifting and sensitising like the most delicate, angelic hash; soothing, like Sweet Sister morphine to a soul in agony; mischievous and exciting, a walk in a magic glade; no business like show business. Every year a miracle, tulips from Amsterdam, rhododendra from the Hindu Kush, sharp, spiteful thistles from Scotland; all appearing from nowhere, thrusting, erect, showing-off, scenting, firing seed everywhere. In Spring the fancy turns....

There was a point in living memory, maybe before the Labour Party got it's Equity card, when the changing seasons still retained some power over us, when they were marked and celebrated; hints of the pagan, of riotous, Jesus-free sexuality, of the elemental; Maydays and Solstices, Harvest Homes; ancient, starborne, prehistoric survival rituals - which had been colonised, hi-jacked by Pope Nazi's predecessors, parcelled-up with Feast Days, Saints' Days and Guilty Days - marked periodic awareness of the cyclicality of creation, of death and renewal, or of, as the Noncing Monsignors would have it, the craft of the Divine Watchmaker; you know, He who's gonna forever roast your arse if you don't do as we, His kindly minders, say. Dominus vobiscum.

These Stone-Age festivals, these seasonal forebodings, joys and obeisances formed a truly British, truly European - or Northern White - culture, long before John Bull and immeasurably more valid, more connected than the morbid, touchstone, tribal posturings of the SNP, the BNP, Plaid Cymru, Ulster's pestilential Kneecappers and sour-faced, joyless Orange undertakers, all rooted not in Earth, Water, Fire and Air but in hangings, arson, rape, torture, mayhem and martyrdom, Christian Age alpha male shit.

As the Green Man carved surreptitiously by apostate joiners in ostensibly Christian Saxon and Norman Churches hung-on, in hiding, these pagan seasonal customs clung, too, Bowdlerised and adapted, the Furry Dance, the joyful Mayday cock-worship, a clandestine, Earth-worshipping Resistance movement; the ringed stones of Wiltshire and Gloucester and Orkney attracting all sorts, freaks and Wiccans and libertines but many more just vaguely aware of bigger, eternal patterns, of a pre-programmed, stellar air-conditioner, whirring through Time, ventilating Life.

For the longest time, perhaps until the gaudy arriviste iconoclasm of Thatcher's brigandage, we - maybe unknowingly - heard the old prayers, feared the old gods. Soulless monetarism banished much that was good, essential, leaving little but - as we see, the noo - doomed Avarice.

Now, our lives are measured, instead, by the Dow-Jones Index, whatever the fuck that is, some micro-calibration of greed, and the Footsie One Hundred - how rich are the rich, today ? Fuck me, no, dropped a few points ? Aw, shit.

Green Man, St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney, 12th to 13th Century.

Mr ishmael's whitebeam  avenue and his tulips, black, purple, scarlet and gold, will forever renew each spring without him. Such is the way of things. 

Still Life with Flowers (1639), by Hans Bollongier (1623–1672)

Sarah Raven sent me an email last year, extolling her collections of tulips, curated by colour, height, flowering period, exquisitely photographed and lushly named. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I bought a collection called Byzantine (20 bulbs £19.95), described thus: "This is exquisitely beautiful. The exotic and glamorous Black Parrot and Queen of Night, mixed with the chestnut-maroon Ridgedale and purple Caviar. Swoon!"

The packaging was equally gorgeous, but the bulbs were disappointing: a couple had rotted and had to be discarded and two others had a suspicious discolouration. So I started the Great Tulip Experiment and sourced some similar tulips from  Mr. Tesco - Queen of Night and Grand Perfection  (2 packs for £5) and black Labrador (7 bulbs to a pack for £3.99) from my local garden centre. Total = £8.99 for 23 bulbs

I planted them in identical containers and identical compost, same number of tulips per container, same position. Each container had only 18 bulbs, as 2 of the Sarah Raven bulbs had rotted. This left 5 cheapy bulbs to go in the garden.

Here's the results:

25th April 2023 Sarah Raven's Byzantine on the right

8th May Sarah Raven's Byzantine on the right

28th May Sarah Raven's Byzantine on the right

The three volumes of  mr ishmael's Collected Works, selected, edited and anthologised by mr verge, the House Filthster, are now available.  

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack  and Ishmael’s Blues are 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 I tell you to keep a diary?