The Sunday Ishmael: 28/01/2024

 A few decades ago, when working as a Probation Officer in England, part of my role was to prosecute breaches of Community Service Orders and Probation Orders in the Magistrates Courts.

Here's how it goes: a chap (statistically, its usually chaps, not totties,) commits an offence. He would be very unlucky indeed to be caught. When someone is described as a "first offender" it is more accurate to say that this is the first time he has been caught. So he will go on to commit more offences, becoming increasingly more careless, or until someone dobs him in. Don't believe all that stuff in TV dramas about clever insightful police - that's entertainment, not real life. The police don't detect anything - they wait for someone to tell them who dun it, and now, I understand, they put up pages on social media requesting information about the offence.   Anyway, when your man eventually arrives in Court, charged with an index offence and a string of other offences that he has asked to be "taken into consideration" (T.I.C.s - they assist the police clear-up rate), he pleads guilty in order to get the discount for an early guilty plea, the case goes off for reports, and your man then does his best to persuade the Probation Officer tasked with writing the Pre Sentence Report, as it was called, that he is the real victim here and that he made a mistake. He is never bad, wrong, cruel, greedy, vicious, or a scofflaw, but he  did make a mistake and will never do it again if he is given a chance to redeem himself, he has a girlfriend/wife, several children, a flat, a job to go to and is in treatment for drugs/alcohol. The Magistrates, who have read this sort of thing more times than they care to remember,

are not legally qualified, and are advised by the Clerk to the Court, who is so qualified, on the law relating to the case and of the sentencing options available to them. The offender, now legally known as the defendant, would be really, really unlucky to receive a custodial sentence (as the prisons are full and the courts have strict guidance to limit the numbers sentenced to imprisonment), and will get an absolute or conditional discharge, or a fine, or Probation Order, with or without conditions - like live in a Probation hostel. If his offence is deemed imprisonable he may receive a Community Service Order as an alternative to that sentence of imprisonment. Or a Pick and Mix of Orders and fines. Then, job done, Magistrates, Clerk, Crown Prosecution Service and Police, hand the offender over to the Probation Officer. 

Once, on Saturday morning Court duty, when there's only a skeleton staff, I had to transport the offender to a Probation hostel without an escort. He was pleasant enough, but as we drew up at traffic lights, he opened the car door and was away on his toes. Should the offender fail to comply with the terms of his Court Order, the Probation Officer's job is to summons him back to Court and ask the Magistrate to revoke the order and deal with him for the original offence as if that Order had never been made. All sorts of sentencing nonsense then ensues: maybe a fine and continue with the Order, maybe more hours of unpaid work, maybe a telling off. They never pull a prison sentence on a first breach. Maybe a third. If the offender really wants nothing to do with the probation service, he will not comply with the order and then not turn up at Court for the breach hearing. The prosecuting probation officer will then ask the magistrates for a warrant for the offender's arrest and production before the next available court. The magistrates sign the warrant which is then sent to the police. Who, almost invariably, ignore it. Even when they know where the chap lives and the chap is actually living there, as opposed to living with his girlfriend and claiming double benefits. The police have a hierarchy of importance and urgency which they apply to stuff arriving in their inbox. And warrants to bring offenders  to court for breaching a Court Order are way down that hierarchy. Even if the Court Order was made for offences deemed so serious that the defendant stood in danger of imprisonment at his first hearing. Much more fun to race down the motorway at 120 miles per hour, deploy stingers, break doors down and plant drugs behind the telly and shout hey sarge, look what I've found!

So I was not at all surprised to learn that the arrest warrant issued for Valdo Calocane after he failed to attend Court in September 2022 had never been executed. They are just low priority. In June 2023 Valdo Calocane then fatally stabbed three people in the street, obeying the voices in his head that had instructed him to kill these strangers in order to avoid harm coming to his family. He then used the van belonging to one of his victims to escape. A police chase ensued until Mr. Calocane drove the van into three more people, causing injuries. Had the warrant issued nine months prior been executed, it is possible the tragedy could have been averted, as he might have received a sentence of imprisonment for the offence in respect of which the warrant was issued (an assault on a police officer as he was being conveyed to a mental health facility), or, as Nottinghamshire Police's Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said: " an arrest might have triggered a route back into mental health services, but as we have seen from his previous encounters with those services, it seems unlikely that he would have engaged in this process." Well, that's alright, then, nothing to see here, move along now please.

 An investigation by the police watchdog has concluded officers following Mr. Calocane in the van could not have foreseen he would drive at pedestrians.  The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said its three-month review had not identified any conduct or performance issues in relation to the incident. Once again, that's alright, nothing to see here, move along now please.

Mr. Calocane was given a hospital order after he admitted that he had committed manslaughter whilst suffering from diminished responsibility in consequence of his mental ill health. He will be detained at a high-security hospital, very probably for the rest of his life, as sentencing judge, Mr. Justice Turner stated. His sentencing remarks are readily available. He quoted from the psychiatric report prepared by  Dr McSweeney:
“ He was under the false impression that his thoughts and actions were under the control of artificial intelligence and that his family may be in grave danger. By definition, a person experiencing acute psychosis is not able to accurately test reality or distinguish reality from an abnormal perception. It seems likely that Mr Calocane’s decision-making was largely governed by his psychotic experiences.
“Mr Calocane has an established diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. This is a chronic and enduring psychotic mental illness. His illness will never be "cured”, and he will require long term, very cautious management with antipsychotic medication and appropriate psychological and supportive interventions (almost certainly for the remainder of his life).”

This was not enough for the bereaved families, and once again we have been treated to *kymadeupnewsandfilth whipping up anti-Christian emotions. It is not enough that the perpetrator was seriously mentally unwell, nor that the police could have avoided this tragedy had they acted timeously on an arrest warrant, nor that they failed to stop the van before Mr Calocane drove into three pedestrians. Nope, the bereaved wanted a murder charge and they feel seriously let down. What would have been the outcome of a murder charge? An expensive trial as Mr. Calocane would have been advised to plead not guilty. He would not have been convicted as he was clearly too ill to have formed the requisite mens rea for murder. For goodness sake, the poor chap had even gone to M15 headquarters in London to ask them to stop messing with his mind and thought processes.

I seriously think that we should hear much less from the bereaved in these matters. It is ill informed and unhelpful. 

It is not victim justice, but victim vengeance, orchestrated by *kymadeupnewsandfilth. And Mr.Calocane's case was just so telegenic - three white victims, two of them pretty young University students, killed by a black man of ferocious appearance - the optics were just so wonderful, darling.

Here's mr ishmael, writing on the 24th January 2011:

The target, in these quarters,  of more invective than any other single subject is skymadeupnewsandfilth.  Murdoch - and his repulsive stooges, from Larry Lamb and Kelvin McKenzie to Tony Blair -   has, in my opinion,  contributed more to Ruin than any other single individual or institution. Murdoch has coarsened the public discourse so severely that it may never recover, has cheapened traditional British values - far beyond the cessation of deference, this vulgar man has devalued human life, trivialised suffering and mocked fairness. Gotcha! he gloated, the cunt, as Argentinian conscripted teenagers  drowned in the South Atlantic, no patriot, he, neither Aussie nor Brit, assuming US citizenship for business reasons, marrying a chink for same, what a fucking monster. And first through the back door of Number Ten, after the Coalition Coup, giving his Filth Agenda to the inbred, fishfaced mutant, Cameron.... Anybody come in here telling me that former unelected prime minister Snot is somehow deeper in villainy, more ruinous than Murdoch, well they can go and fuck themselves for Ruin's servants.

.............................................................................

More sardonic wit and biting cynicism from mr ishmael in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) 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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

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.

In Memoriam

 

Ishmael Smith, 1950 to 23rd January 2020

Writer and Satirist

Much missed.

"Call me Ishmael.... whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth ....... and it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then I quietly take to the ship." 

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Across the dark seas of night to the bright shores of morning, mr ishmael.

The Sunday Ishmael: 21/01/2024

 

We've been having some snow here in the Bracing Isles. For more than a week, snow has fallen, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, but not long, long ago. Now. I last battled into Kirkwall on Monday, 15th January, in order to get some supplies in, as the weather forecast was appalling. 

Sadly, there were few supplies to be had, as the boats hadn't made it in with our food. There's nothing like gazing at row after row of empty shelves in the supermarket to ram home the words of that call centre operative when he failed to book an engineer visit: Did you know you is livin' on a island?

On Monday and Tuesday the schools were open but the school transport wouldn't go. On Wednesday the schools closed for the rest of the week. Everything was cancelled. There were no flights. No ferries. Radio Orkney ordered us not to drive. 

When it wasn't snowing, it was galeing, the wind driving great waves of snow across the fields, dropping birds out of the skies. 

On Friday, the snow started turning into water and the roads were running like rivers with melt water.

On Saturday, it had more-or-less cleared, so I went to Tesco. And so did everyone else. There were no bananas in Tesco, but Lidl had some. Doing two supermarkets rammed with people who had been confined to their cabins for a week was exhausting. Everyone wanted to talk and share their snowed-in experiences. One acquaintance told me she had been delayed in Aberdeen for four days, waiting for a flight that only arrived yesterday. One chum was buying large plastic storage containers for her husband who had been driven by the extreme weather into sorting his stash in his man cave. They turned out not to be for storing his dismembered body, (as I saw him later in the car park), but for his car parts. Everyone scrutinised each other's trolleys, to see what they'd managed to glean from the still-sparse shelves. Nobody said global warming. It was too damn cold.

Weather, of course, is not the same as climate. Weather can do all sorts of terrible and temporary things. Like the Frost Fairs, held on the River Thames when it froze solid - a combination of bad weather, the absence of embankments on the Thames, so that it flowed slowly, and the narrow arches of the old London Bridge, which allowed ice to form and to dam the river. 

Londoners being entrepreneurial Londoners, they set up booths, sold food, and during the 1814 Frost Fair walked an elephant across the river and had an ox roast. Earlier frost fairs also featured the blood sport of Cock throwing.  A rooster was tied to a post, and people took turns throwing coksteles (special weighted sticks) at the bird until it died. A contributor to The Gentleman's Magazine in 1737 was of the opinion that cock throwing arose from traditional enmity towards the French, for which the cock played an emblematic role. 

 If the bird had its legs broken or was lamed during the event, it was supported with sticks in order to prolong the game. The cock was also sometimes placed inside an earthenware jar to prevent it from moving. (Bastards!) In 1660, an official pronouncement by Puritan officials in Bristol to forbid cock throwing (as well as cat and dog tossing) on Shrove Tuesday resulted in a riot by the apprentices. The past, as they say, is a foreign country, where they do things differently. Whatever you may think about football, and personally speaking, I don't think about it much, but I have a friend who does, if pushed, I'd say that football is a huge improvement on cock throwing and cat and dog tossing. 

Despite the above video being widely shared on social media, the Ministry of Defence is sticking to its "Nothing to see here, move along now" story. Just when we need all our warships to protect our shipping from the Houthi pirates, 

HMS Chiddingfold reversed into HMS Bangor while docking in an unnamed Bahrain port. Both are specialist minesweeper vessels, trying to ensure the safe flow of trade through the Middle Eastern waters. The Royal Navy said: "We are aware of an incident concerning two minehunters alongside in Bahrain. There are no casualties as a result of this incident and it would be inappropriate to comment further whilst investigations are ongoing," 

That didn't stop Rear Admiral Edward Ahlgren saying the cause of the collision "is still to be established. We train our people to the highest standards and rigorously enforce machinery safety standards, but unfortunately incidents of this nature can still happen. In the meantime, the UK will continue to play a key part in ensuring the safety of merchant shipping in the region."
Whoever was reversing HMS Chiddingfold into the Bangor needs a refresher high standards training course - especially as it is the second time the Chiddingfold has attacked a sister ship - she crashed into HMS Penzance in 2021 off the coast of Bahrain. 

The Bangor sustained a large hole in her fibreglass hull. She was due to be decommissioned next year. It is all very embarrassing. 

Talking of embarrassing, the Covid-19 Inquiry has now moved to Scotland.  The Inquiry is an ongoing, independent public inquiry into the United Kingdom's response to, and the impact of, the pandemic, and to learn lessons for the future. It was instituted by Boris Johnson in May 2021  and public hearings began in June 2023. Much has been revealed of a government chaotic and unprepared, and of former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock's foul language and high handed contempt for practically everyone.  

Anxious to avoid future public scrutiny of the Scottish "government's" inability and incompetence, far-sighted Ken Thomson, who then held the post of Director General for Strategy and External Affairs for the Scottish Government, advised governmental participants in a "Covid Outbreak group" chatroom in August 2020  that their messages were discoverable under Freedom of Information law and told them to use the "clear chat button". He then boasted "plausible deniability is my middle name".

John Swinney, dubbed "Honest John" by The Scotsman newspaper following last year's Edinburgh Tram Inquiry Report's criticism of his "lack of candour" that called into question his integrity, and the former, allegedly disgraced First Minister Nicola Sturgeon,

have been unable to produce their WhatsApp messages. Alex Cole-Hamilton, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said: "deleting messages on an industrial scale represented one of the biggest scandals in Scottish political history. Even Richard Nixon didn't destroy the Watergate tapes."

So we are left to surmise what the fuck was in those messages that led Sturgeon and Swinney to conclude that their political reputations would be so damaged that  it was worth defying the Inquiry's clear instructions from June 2021 that destruction of messages was illegal. I suspect the messages would have revealed their continuous positioning to appear more able, thoughtful and prepared than the UK Government and their cynical exploitation of a national emergency for their political (and therefore personal) advantage. We'll call it the Baroness Mone of Mayfair Motive.

Humza Useless, the current First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, has the entirely unenviable job of attempting to render the SNP electable after the unprecedented spectacle of its three senior members being interviewed under arrest by the Scottish Police in connection with the disappearance of large sums of money and the purchase and subsequent hiding of a luxurious motorhome which was then very publicly impounded by the Police. Humza, 

who seems like a nice boy, although way out of his depth with the poisoned chalice he was so keen on inheriting, has come up with a great new wheeze.

He has assured the Scottish Peepul that as Sir Keir Starmer will be the next Prime Minister, without a doubt, absolutely guaranteed, it is okay for Scots to vote SNP, and not waste their vote on Scottish Labour, as Keir doesn't need it, what with England turning out to vote for him en masse. And he's written to Sir Keir, inviting him up to Edinburgh for a chat.

.............................................................................

No selection from mr ishmael this week, but there's lots of sardonic wit and biting cynicism from him in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) 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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

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.

“It’s my birthday. The Doctor took me ice-skating on the River Thames in 1814. The last of the great Frost Fairs. He got Stevie Wonder to sing for me under London Bridge.”

The Sunday Ishmael: 14/01/2024

 

Woops, he's done it again.

"He's smooth, he's persuasive, he powers along, the great Rolls Royce is back," according to Geordie Greig, editor of The Independent, for some strange reason, interviewed today by Laura Kuenssberg. 

Well, that's one way of looking at Ham Face, graduate of the Bullingdon Club, 

Cameron second from left, back row. Johnson, right, front row.

survivor of the great pig initiation scandal, (illustration removed to comply with Blogger's good taste policy. "porcine fop boning a torn monarch" anag. Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton. ed. verge) and frustrated Romeo (who could forget his immortal chat-up line, "I want to push you into the bushes and give you one" or words to that effect).
And now he's dragged us into another Middle Eastern war, without even discussing it with Parliament ( issues of security).Here's another way of looking at Cameron's abilities:

The US is clearly telling the Baron what to do. My concern is that Parliament was not consulted before The Baron launched the US/UK joint military action against the Houthis on Friday. Had Parliament been recalled, it is just possible that someone might have piped up and said - Hang on a minute, is this a great idea? Really? Stephen Flynn, for example, the SNP Westminster leader. I don't usually have much time for him, but who could disagree with his comments to Martin Geissler today on The Sunday Show? He described the UK government's decision to launch air strikes without consulting MPs as "farcical" and said he was looking for answers on the UK Government's long term aspirations in Yemen: "What comes next  and how does this feed into the wider regional picture, which we know is extremely volatile?" the Aberdeen South MP asked. 

Volatile? Understatement, or what? I would have inserted the Houthi banner at this point, but have desisted, in order to comply with Blogger's community guidance, so here's the translation instead:

It translates, from top to bottom, as:

God is the Greatest
Death to America
Death to Israel
A Curse Upon the Jews
Victory to Islam

I suppose they'll add in another line now - Death to the U.K.

For those who have been living in a news-free zone lately, and who can blame you, the Houthi movement, officially known as Ansar Allah (Supporters of God), is a Shia Islamist political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s as an opposition movement to the then Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who they accused of corruption and being the puppet of Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Houthis have now taken to piracy in the Red Sea, attacking shipping, claiming it is a reaction to Israel's response to Gaza following Hamas' invasion of Israel on October 7th 2023. And so it continues - attack, counter-attack, counter-counter attack, any old excuse for a good ruck, looting, raping and so on and so forth.

I wondered if it would be possible to send protected convoys of shipping through the Red Sea, you know, like in the Second World War, and charge China for the costs - on the basis that it would be enhanced Post and Package costs, and most of the goods are heading to the West from China. My chum reckoned that would be seen as escalation - what?- and dropping bombs on the Houthis wouldn't? Or the goods could go the long way round, round the Cape of Good Hope. Or, of course, we could buy local, and try wanting less stuff. All and any of that could only be an attempt at mitigation - the bit is firmly beneath the teeth of the Middle East and we're stuffed. America is being confronted everywhere by the consequences of its interference in the domestic affairs of foreign parts - the turned worm, and, unfortunately the UK is seen as its best chum, especially under the smooth and persuasive hand of the Baron of Chipping Norton, the great Rolls Royce.

A couple days ago, mr inmate sent me down a rabbit hole with his recommendation of the documentary Creating Christ.

You know how it is with YouTube - one thing leads to another and before you know it you've binge-watched the entirety of the history of the first century A.D. or Common Era, everything Mary Beard has to say about the Romans and a side order of the Minoans, courtesy of Bettany Hughes, when she was a fetching young classical historian photographed in deep cleavage, clinging dresses and diaphanous skirts against ancient sunsets.

and she can speak classical Greek and Latin, honest, not invent.

What I've learned from my deep Youtube dive is that we're fucked. Those Middle Easterners are stone mad, addicted to religion, violence and politics, noisy bastards who enjoy killing, not shaving, ululating and worshipping a mean old God who has weird ideas about eating, sex and being revolting to animals and your neighbours. The Flavian Emperors invented Christianity as a religion of peace in order to draw off the pus and fever from the East and its opposition to the conquering Roman Empire - it worked for the north western European countries but the East remains just as cantankerous and opinionated as it was 2000 years ago. Like the multi-headed Hydra, cut off one head and another one grows. At the moment, we seem to be up against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Taliban, the Islamic Jihad and all their splinter  groups. None of them are cults of peace and coexistence. None of them admire the Western ways of secularism, tolerance and making large profits. All of them seem to have sprung from, or exploited, idealistic students. None of them seem too keen on women.

mr ishmael would say nuke them all.   

When Harry Windsor was a mere ginger child, he was provided with a weapon and instructed how to shoot and kill wild animals, up there in the Highlands. His nanny, Tiggy Leggy-Totty-Burkey (four O levels and finishing school), instead of telling him that psychopaths start by torturing and killing animals before moving on to people, praised him for his manliness and wiped the hot blood of the just shot rabbit onto his forehead and cheeks, murmuring, there, darling, you're blooded now. A few summer holidays later and he's graduated to roaming the Cairngorms all day in the sole company of a grizzled old ghillie, stalking and shooting deer. When he killed his first deer, the old family retainer cut open its abdomen and stuffed Harry's head into the stinking hot body of the beast. When he finally let him out, he refused to allow Harry to wipe the guts and gore off his face, telling him that now he's properly blooded.  They really aren't like normal people. Then they let him go to kill people in Afghanistan, in furtherance of America's wars. No wonder he's bonkers in the nut.

 Laura Kuenssberg was dressed in an all-encompassing voluminous black neck-to-ankle outfit this morning, obviously not wanting to arouse the Baron's lusts. She put it to him that for his dodgy role in the dodgy Greensill enterprise, which he undertook after leaving political office, whilst putting his erstwhile colleagues and contacts to good use, he had earned round £10 million. The Baron muttered that he hadn't, so she asked him how much he had earned. Petulantly sitting on his dignity, he said I shan't tell you. I was a private Citizen, and that's private.

Laura didn't get much further with her interview of Sir Keir Starmer, who contrived to carefully and precisely say nothing very much at all, other than that he deserves to win the next election because he has completed a root and branch reformation of the Labour Party, thus alienating the left wing of his own party and disenfranchising anyone who would like to vote for a candidate who isn't yet another Shade of Tory. He also wouldn't confirm that, in office, he wouldn't forbid British arms manufacturers selling the weapons to the Middle East with which they will do their level best to kill us. He used to think that not selling guns to the Saudis was a good idea. No doubt he was grateful to the Baron this morning for his advice on how to win the next election - "you have to have a plan". I fear that Starmer is the Tories' best election-winning plan. 

Anagram (editor verge): Sir Keir Starmer = a terrier smirks - 

The astounding thought occurs that perhaps, just possibly, Sunak will get in again, as the Baron seems to be delivering to him, under America's close supervision,  his very own war. And we know how the Great British Public likes a war.

Boris had his Ukraine/Russian war, and now Sunak will have his Middle Eastern war, personally delivered by his man, Cameron, the unelected Foreign Secretary. No doubt the Great British Public will rally round.  

Here's a couple of little pieces by mr ishmael, demonstrating that Cameron continues to stick to his winning strategy.

March 2011 :

                                        NEW WARS FOR OLD

CAN I SPEAK POODLE? COURSE I CAN.

I WENT TO ETON. WOOF-WOOF…

As his Big Society delusion withers around him and his hybrid cabinet of malformed, smirking retards is seen to be nothing but a bunch of incompetent chancers, braying closet inbreds, greedy, pie-munching, vindictive fatbastards, slimy pinstripe spiv bullyboy cocksuckers and downright clodhopping nincompoops who have, in a very short space of time, fucked up the armed forces, sent the economy backwards and demoralised the entire nation, unelected prime minister, and not just here, under Gordon Snot’s ruinous misrule. He thought, the cheeky fucking bastard, that Prince Gormless, wandering about, shaking hands gormlessly and getting married to some gormless bimbo would do, would divert attention from his catastrophic depre-dations, but it won’t, not even with all the help that *kymade-upnewsandfilth can give him - in exchange, let’s not forget, for him placing Rupert’s spunkfaced phonetapper, Coulson, right at the heart of govament, his master’s eyes and ears. The inbred, shit-stupid, overprivileged ponce, playing at prime minister, thought a wedding would do it, but, more swiftly than we would ever have thought, he needs a war...

 TOWARDS AN ERUDITE ARTISANRY: May, 2010.

D.C. History Homework

"When I said we were the junior partner in 1940, of course, what I meant to say was that we were the only partner, or rather that America was the senior partner, not that we were simply the junior partner. Or something. I most sincerely had no intention of belittling those among our servicemen and women who helped President Obama win the Battle of Britain, none whatsoever. Look, I’m just an ordinary bloke, I even let people call me prime minister, I went to a very ordinary public school, my very ordinary wife gets paid three hundred grand a year for having her name on a letterhead and we have a very ordinary personal fortune of only a few tens, or maybe hundreds of millions of pounds. But all that’s very much, in a very real sense, just history, which we in the Coalition make up as we go along, and what we are concerned about, as the legally unelected govamint, is the future. Which is why we have to keep blaming the past Labour Govamint for everything. Y’know, punishing people for voting Labour may not be popular with them but that’s why I came into politics. And it’s all their own fault, if they hadn’t voted Labour I wouldn’t have to take their benefits and jobs and pensions from them and give them to some very needy merchant bankers. It’s simply no use blaming me. That’s what Mr Clegg, the Gimp, is for. But anyway we’re here to congratulate the Americans for defeating Churchill, or was it Mr Hitler? No use saying I’m a stupid, empty-headed, vindictive PR man who couldn’t beat a one-eyed man in an arse-kicking competition, or is it leg? One leg, or legged, whatever they call disabled people who are stealing from decent folks. No, no use at all. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because I went to Oxford. And the chap who taught me, Victor Bogbrush, says I’m absolutely brilliant, which, if you think about it, he would."

................................................................................

This, and much, much more can be found in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) 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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

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: 07/01/2024

I was away for Christmas, away from the Bracing Isles, staying with kind friends in Englandshire, who marvelled at my Pollyanna enthusiasm for what they perceived as miserable winter weather. How cold it is, they would say, But there's no wind, no rain, no snow, no hail, I would reply, the sky is blue in bits and that's the sun, I do declare.

Getting off the island was nail-biting stuff - would The Hrossey be cancelled, as so many sailings were being postponed? Would the crossing be one of those head-down-the-toilet  jobs, with a diabolical sea state? Many Anxious Consultations ensued of Northlink Ferries Operational News and the BBC weather forecasts. 

It was fine, actually - I had a perfect weather window for the midnight sailing to Aberdeen, had a good sleep and drove off the ferry at 7.15 a.m. into a snow storm, which was very pretty. Friends were not so lucky - they weren't going so far, just down to Edinburgh for Christmas, so they booked onto the  Christmas Eve sailing from Stromness to Scrabster, on the Hamnavoe, which was cancelled due to the storm, so they transferred to the last sailing out of Orkney on the previous day and were benighted in a miserable little Inn (£60 for the three of them, including breakfast), gloomily watching Die Hard 2 and checking their phones to see if the snow gates were open. Which they weren't.

It's one of those marvellous romantic phrases, like "the wolves are running, Master Kay", but "the snow gates are closed" means you have to turn around and go home - if you can, or try to find a remote Scottish hotel in which to remove your wet stockings. 

My onwards journey was fairly uneventful - the snow soon turned to water, the sat nav on my phone behaved impeccably - I've given up on the car satnav because it is so old it panicked last time I drove across the magnificent new Forth Bridge,

declaring OFF Road, Off Road, Turn around when safe to do so, clearly under the impression that I was driving into the river. The phone sat nav didn't even get upset when the road was closed by many police cars and ambulances following someone's ruined Christmas.

I felt quite the intrepid traveller when I arrived unscathed at my friends' home and ready for my turkey. I was not at all disappointed that the turkey was not prepared to Stanislavian instructions:

A FEAST OF JAMIE

 Jamie Bloke says go down local turkey farm and kill bastard with own hands.  Is right organic. First chase after turkey in mud and shit and grab bastard by legs.  Mrs get one end and stan  get other end and twist like fuck, pulling like tug of war,  knack is to twist and pull just right and snap turkey neck. 

 Often bastard break free and bite and fucking squawk and shit and run around  and is back to square peg one.  Stanislav make rugby tackle on fucking turkey and bastard still won’t stop still and get killed.  Go back in van and get biggest in set of Stilson wrench and chase turkey bastard all around,  land blow on bird now and again but often is just fall on arse in mud and turkey shit. 

Go back in van and start up engine.

Not much damage in the end, is just bumper and headlight and radiator all smash up 

but turkey is good and fucking dead, crush between van and wall;  not bite no other bastard.  Pay farmer hundred quid for turkey and hundred quid for wall and hundred quid for field all ploughed-up and hundred quid for not phone cops and hundred quid for  RSPCA.   Fuck me, thought plumbers was bad.  But five hundred quid for smelly old turkey about ten years old and made from leather and  most is all fucking claws and  feathers and shit. And have to pay cousin small fortune to fix up van with iffy parts  off eBay.   

Anyway,  get turkey up on table and splash liberally with white spirit off Sainsbury or petrol  from Sainsbury garage will do if not got any spirit and set on fire until feathers is all burn off. Is best open windows.  If no spirit and no gas is best  cover with grated firelighter and light from other room. No need for too fussy.  Is Christmas and feather,  like run out of money, is Xmas  custom. Rub both hand vigorously down jeans and slap dead turkey on breast and stroke,  going,  mmmm just look  at that,  mmmm, just look at that.  Only  lightly season  - put few handful  of black pepper and couple of kilo of rock salt up turkey jacksie and pound or two of  ripped up weeds from garden,  hedge clippings from summer will do,   and few tube of squeeze garlic paste off Sainsburys.  Not bother with pull insides out.  All adds to great organic flavour.

Now is best part.  Go in garden with wheelbarrow.  If poor and not  got garden,  never mind, go down park, is open at Christmas,  full of wino and incognito crack prostitute from Cabinet and children shoot and stab  each other but never mind, is Christmas,  eh,  in prosperous,  cautious,  prudent Britain.  Anyway,  make plenty shovel of dirt in barrow and mix in smooth paste with couple of gallon of water from pond  and season with several kilo of garlic smash with brick and few jar of strawberry jam from Sainsburys.  Is good friends, garlic and strawberry, reassures  Jamie.  Make delicious mix of flavour on top of  dead turkey.

Go back in house and prepare turkey for oven  by putting in big fuck off dish and pour over tasty and flavoursome mud crust.  Get brother-in-law, Waldemar,  away from Christmas with Clarkson Video - Oh, this car go so fast my hair catch fucking fire,  Oh, this car so slow get overtake by fucking glacier;  Oh,  Birmingham is shithole; Oh, you might think I am fat useless repetitive overpaid BBC cunt. But you’d be wrong.  Waldemar help shove turkeybastard in oven,  kick door with foot and weld-up tight with gear from van and roast at  five hundred Celsius, Gas Mark 20, for several days. Maybe a week. Maybe fortnight.  Remove when cooked.

 

Must admit Turkey en croute with dock leaf and Bisto sorbet not best ever family Christmas dinner.  

..........................................................

It seems that most people don't watch the News these days. Avoiding Learned Helplessness syndrome. Anyway, not having any News meant I had lots of time for my Christmas book: The Plot by Nadine Dorries. It weighs 520 g. Waterstones have it on sale - down to £19.99 from £25.00. Here's the blurb: 

The explosive behind-the-scenes account of the plot to bring down Boris Johnson. You think you live in a world where the elected are chosen by the people. Think again. When Boris Johnson came to power in 2019, he did so with the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher. Rewriting the political map, he united a party and shattered Labour's fabled red wall. And yet, just three years later, he was ousted by the same members who had once greeted his leadership so rapturously. What had gone so wrong? The Plot is the seismic, fly-on-the-wall account of how the saviour of the Conservative Party became a pariah. Told with unparalleled access, from multiple inside sources talking with astonishing candour, it reveals the shocking truth about powerful forces operating behind the scenes in the heart of Westminster and those who became the architects of a Prime Minister's downfall.  This is the story of a damning trail of treachery and deceit fuelled by an obsessive pursuit of power, which threatens to topple the very fabric of our democracy.

Needless to say, I loved it. Believed every word. And it has to be true, judging by the extremely negative reaction of Tories, pundits, commentators, think tankers and the BBC. The Plotters are identified as Michael Spit Gove, Dominic Cummings, Dougie Smith, Lee Cain and an eminence grise called, for the purposes of the book and to avoid being sued, Dr. No. It should be possible for Ishmaelians to uncover his identity, because he is a Conservative said to have attempted to set fire to a house where a family, including a child, were sleeping in their beds. When a young woman rejected his sexual advances, he cut her little brother's pet rabbit into 4 pieces and pinned them to the front door for him to see when he came home from school. Apparently he has been arrested for harassment and embezzling and has been imprisoned. (That being his one redeeming feature).

Dougie Smith is identified as the organiser of sex parties for politicians, and his Wikipaedia page offers us this in verification: "For at least five years from 1998, he ran Fever Parties, an organisation which hosted "five-star" swinger parties. A senior Conservative Party aide, he worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron and a Tory party headquarter's activist under Theresa May, before later working for Boris Johnson in an unknown role. In 2019, Nigel Farage, then the Leader of the Brexit Party, alleged that Smith was involved in intimidation and offering bribes in exchange for political candidates stepping down." On one occasion, a Conservative MP had sex on a snooker table with a prostitute, cheered on by 4 other Conservative MPs.

The purpose of all this plotting was the gaining and retention of power, and returning to the European fold. Apparently Sunak was chosen to be PM because he was wealthy, well connected and handsome. 

Really?

Anyway, he's just a place holder for the Plotter's preferred Prime Minister. Kemi Badenoch. What the actual fuck?

Sunak was interviewed by Laura Kuensberg this morning. He is very hard to listen to, on account of his peculiar accent, and rapid delivery. And avoiding saying anything. Here's an example - asked about the Rwandaforfuck'ssake plan, he swerved into his Albanian deal in which illegal Albanians are returned speedily to Albania. Laura dragged him back to Rwanda, whereupon he claimed it was the same thing. If you enter the country illegally, you will be returned to your country of origin or to Rwanda. So Laura battered on, asking him if he would ever ignore a Rule 39 order - that's an injunction by the European Court of Human Rights, deployed in June 2022 to block the removal of migrants to Rwanda (yes, its been going on that long, and not a single migrant has been deported there, despite it costing us, the British taxpayer, £140 million in 2022, a further £100 million in 2023 and an anticipated £50 million in 2024. James Cleverly confirmed to Parliament that we are going to give Rwanda a further £50 million in 2026).  

Sunak slid around the question, avoiding saying he would ignore a Rule 39 order, but coming up with an inspired weasel phrase instead; he would not "let a foreign court stop our ability to remove people, once we have been through our process of parliament and our court system."

They've obviously spent so much on this one that there's no turning back - or, as Macbeth has it: "I am in blood / Stepped in so far that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" 

mr ishmael can have the last word here: 

 "There comes a time, doesn't there, a time beyond crisis, when Ruin does its work. This is ours. It is the political caste which has thus delivered us, a pox on them all; cry Havoc! let slip the dogs of resistance".

This, and much, much more can be found in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) 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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

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.

I'm back in the Bracing Isles now.