The Sunday Ishmael: 10/03/2024

 And, as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,  came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came

Too much uffish thought, Chancellor Chunt. Two percent off National Insurance? Why, only people under the age of 66 pay it, and, as we know from the demographic crisis that disproportionately affects the Conservative Party constituency, this will Not Help You. On one phone-in show, a public-spirited (but dim) citizen enquired - if I'm paying less National Insurance, does this mean that I'll get less pension? Don't give them ideas. National Insurance was never an insurance scheme and never was ring-fenced to pay pensions - just an extra tax to contribute towards government revenue. 

Anyway, to pay for this 2% cut,  Chancellor CHunt extended the windfall tax (35% surcharge on profits) on North Sea oil and gas companies by a year, raising an expected £1.5bn. It was introduced in May 2022 and was due to end in March 2028, but will now conclude in 2029. You might think this was a Good Thing, as the Office for National Statistics has reported that 41% of British adults are  finding it very or somewhat difficult to afford energy bills, possibly because British Gas profits increased 943% from 2022 to 2023. However, this has upset the Scottish Conservatives, who had been hoping for electoral success in the North East by opposing heavy taxation on the oil and gas industry, which is a significant employer in the region. Wee Douglas Ross, dubbed man-child by Angus Robertson, SNP, 

Ooh you are awful

let it be known that he had lobbied Hunt to drop the proposal, to no avail, even scheduling his own debate at Holyrood on the motion that warned of the economic harms of extending the windfall tax. This, of course, opened a mockery window for First Minister Humza Useless: He said:

"We have a UK Government that is taking £500m out of our budget in real terms over the last two years. Douglas Ross really needs to take whatever influence he has - and we know he doesn't have much influence - to make sure the Conservatives fund public services, not slash them to the bone."

Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said the extension risked investment, jobs and growth. 

OEUK chief executive David Whitehouse said: "The industry is being taxed on windfall profits which no longer exist and facing a fourth round of fiscal change and turmoil in less than two years, making it impossible to plan investment for the energy transition and the path to net zero." 

Chancellor Cunt told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme that he accepted the extension "was a difficult decision" for his Scottish colleagues, but he didn't care because there's more votes in extending the windfall tax and he's happy to throw the Scottish oil and gas industry under a bus because the Tories are never going to get into power in Scotland, and he needed the money to be fiscally responsible on account of not daring to make an unfunded National Insurance tax cut, so there. Or words to that effect.

What with rows at First Minister's and Prime Minister's Questions and general feeding-time-at-the-zoo noises during the budget speech, it's all getting a bit Parliament in the Maldives.

Happy Mother Day, as my local Indian takeaway announced, saying if I didn't fancy chicken tikka, I could have chicken nuggets and chips. Makes a change from chocolates, flowers and pink prosecco. But here's a Mother's Day story about one who once thought she was Mother of the Nation. Margaret Thatcher, born 13/10/25, Conservative Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, died of a stroke on  8/4/2013 whilst living at the Ritz hotel in London, where she had set up home 4 months previously, to convalesce after bladder surgery. Her death certificate listed dementia as a secondary cause of death. Her daughter, Carol, revealed in her 2008 memoir that her mother had shown the first signs of dementia in 2000. Cool* Kenny Clarke's  theory has the dementia dating from her final year in office - which would put onset at age 65. mr ishmael's theory was that she was always bat shit crazy. 

The Telegraph has recently run with new details about the involvement of  Margaret Thatcher's disreputable son, Mark, in a failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, in 2004.   A team of British mercenaries led by former SAS officer, Simon Mann, were arrested at Harare airport, Zimbabwe for plotting the coup, which was part-financed by Mark Thatcher. He was sentenced to four years imprisonment, suspended, after pleading guilty to being an investor in the plot, but in a minor way.

Simon Mann has now revealed, twenty years on, that not only had Mark negotiated a profit-sharing arrangement, but planned to live in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, after deposing the president, Teodoro Obiang, and, moreover, that he had discussed the coup with his dear old demented mum. 

Simon Mann served 4 years in prison in Zimbabwe, and a further year in Equatorial Guinea, and he now seems intent on getting his own back on his fellow conspirators. In December 2003, Mark promised to invest $300,000 in the planned coup, but told Mann that his personal wealth was tied up in a trust fund administered by his mum - so, allegedly, he took Mann to meet her, to explain the proposed venture and gain her co-operation. “Jolly good,” said Lady Thatcher. “I am sure it’s going to work”. She then asked how “our money” would be handled. Mann reassured her that the $300,000 would be channelled through a fake air ambulance joint venture – separately from the other investors. Mrs Thatcher then reminisced about the Docklands redevelopment in London in the 1980s. “Everything had to be razed to the ground first”, she said. “It’s the same in Equatorial Guinea. What is needed is a fresh start”.

As Mann was leaving, Lady Thatcher asked: “Have you met Sancho yet?” Sancho was the London link man for a group of wealthy Venezuelan businessmen opposed to the corrupt president, Hugo Chavez. Mann had agreed to help them once the coup in Africa had been taken care of. “Good, well I hope that goes well too”, said Lady Thatcher. “We must always look after our friends, Simon, as I’m sure you know."

At Christmas in Cape Town, Mark allegedly invited Mann to a breakfast meeting, with Mrs Thatcher, who told him:  “I know what is going on and you SAS chaps need to get a move on, don’t you.”

On the 2nd January 2004, Steyl emailed Mark to say: “We are standing by the profit-sharing agreement,” and on Jan 12  Mark emailed Steyl back, saying: “I will be doing the revenue-sharing agreement as soon as I have a minute.”

By February, Mann had the mercenaries, weapons and air transport in place for the coup. He told Mark: “If it goes wrong, I want you to rescue those of us still uncaptured”,  and provided the coordinates, pre-agreed radio frequencies, locations, times and dates. “You are a pilot, a sailor and have the political connections”, he added. “I expect you to rescue us”. Mark noted down the data and the codes and, according to Mann, said: “I will be there for you, no matter what, Simon.” They shook hands.

 Mann alleges that Spain, the UK, South Africa and other countries were aware of the plot and were happy for it to play out, but  Robert Mugabe, then-president of Zimbabwe, was not. Mann was arrested at Harare airport while waiting for his private soldiers to arrive, Zimbabwe intelligence officers inspected the crates and the weapons were discovered. The aircraft was impounded and the men arrested and  jailed. On March 21 2004, Mann wrote to his wife: “Our situation is not good....his lawyers get no reply from‘Scratcher’ (Thatcher) who asked them to ring back after the Grand Prix was over. What we need is maximum effort – whatever it takes. It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga. Of course, the investors did not think this would happen. Do they think they could be part of something like this with only upside potential – no hardship or risk of this going wrong?”

When the contents of the letter became public, the fiasco was dubbed the “wonga coup” by the media.

Mark Thatcher was arrested  on August 25 2004 for funding an illegal coup in breach of the Foreign Military Assistance Act. 
He accepted a plea bargain, admitting lesser charges and paying a fine. He pleaded guilty to “wrongfully and unlawfully attempting to finance mercenary activity” and was fined 3 million rand (then worth £265,000). Which dropped Mann in it.
Mark Thatcher is now 70. In response to Mann's allegations, he said: 
 “Simon can say what he wants. I’m really not going to comment on any of that.”

Of course, mr ishmael has covered all this: 

Mummy's Boy Gangster demands Money: 15 November 2011

SIR MARK THATCHER OUTSIDE COURT IN SOUTH AFRICA.

GIMME MONEY, THAT'S WHAT I WANT.

  The distinguished entrepreneur - or infamous racketeer, shithead and failed coupster - Sir Mark Mumsy, has expressed his disappointment that a film has been made about his criminal family without him having been paid any money.  I have friends who can be very persuasive, said Sir Mumsy, referring to former Field Marshal Sir Simon Mann Golightly-Jockstrap, thicko mercenary, author  and  ex-con, who was Mumsy's co-accused in their abortive attempt to take over an African banana republic and  who did the time in a jungle jailhouse whilst Boy Wonder Mark, pimping, as ever, on his mother's name, got off with a bollocking.

The disgraced hereditary viscount, also famous for milking his mother's contacts with the headchopping elite of Oman, has his arse in his hands over the current portrayal of his mother by ageing Hollywood strumpet, Mrs Meryl Teeth, below.

Meryl Teeth stars in Thatcher vs Thatcher,

a study in greed and dementia.

My mother not only served the country with distinction but was also on the board of many other  distinguished  criminal families, such as that of Lord Conrad Black-Embezzler, the famous newspaper-owning-and-robbing convict and that of General Sir Jorge Pinochet, the acclaimed human rights activist and exterminator sans pareil.  My mother unfailingly signed-off Lord Black's accounts, whether they were accurate or not, which they never once were,  that's how great a lady she was. And she did all of this for a mere few hundred thousand pounds of shareholders' money.

If Ms Teeth doesn't do the decent thing  and pay me my cut I can arrange for Mr Mann to go around to her gaff and bore the arse off her with tales of his jungular derring-do. Or maybe my sister, wotsername.

A spokesperson for Meryl Teeth said, Meryl has wrung herself out, gone right to the very edge, in this performance which she feels captures the true essence of Baroness Williams.  It takes a great deal of courage to go where great actresses go (up producers' arses? ed.) and she is now recharging her batteries and considering other scripts suitable for a young actress of her age.

Lord Bell-End.
Sir Tim Bell-End, Thatcherite PR guru said that to trade on the Thatcher legend was despicable. 

These people are just making money  for the sake of it. (honest, not invent.)

Lord Norman Tebbit, of the Filth-O-Graph and late of Al-Fayed Enterprises, although he didn't know about the freebies until he was found out and then he stopped  taking them, like a good Tory.

Well, far be it from me to mention to the prime minister that I won three general elections whilst he hasn't won any.  Far be it from me, a former pilot and working journalist (rabble-rousing fuckpig? ed.) to tell this effete public schoolboy what to do.  I mean whaddooIknow, I only won three elections.  Margaret Thatcher. Yes, a great lady, she helped me win three elections. And now here I am, writing tosh for expatriot redneck wankers.  Well said, Lord Norman, they say, couldn't have put it better myself.  And they're right,   they couldn't.

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

* And what is Cool Kenny up to, saying the Iron Lady was bonkers in the nut (technical term) back in 1990? Before her involvement with her disreputable son in financing a plot to assassinate an African Head of State? He must be retrospectively laundering her reputation. If she was demented, she didn't really mean that she wanted to raze Equatorial Wherever to the ground and murder a Head of State, in order to make wonga. 

While we're at it, here's mr ishmael on Cool Kenny:

You have to wonder what he's up to, Cool Kenny, jazzman and bildberger.   Surely, he doesn't need the grand of our money which the BBC gives him for performing like an elderly seal on Any Questions, a bloated, smokey, piss-sodden old fart like him, in his worn-out, shiny  suits and his Hush fucking Puppies, traipsing around from community shithole to community shithole,  one week a cathedral, the next a university, the next some phantasmagoricaly well-run school,  the audience packed with smug teachers and smugger parents and intolerably smug sixth-form shitheads, spouting their go-ahead parents' dire scripts, drummed, all their lives,  into their ghastly, malformed, ambitious little minds; surely, Kenny  has better things to do than this shit.  What's he doing,  as he does today in the Barclay Zombie Twins' Filth-O-Graph, characterising, those  U-kippers as nasty, fucked-up, neo-fascist , white supremacist headbangers ? Everybody knows that. Doesn't need a Minister Without Portfolio banging on about it. The U-kippers are a political party - thieves, liars, ponces, backmailers, money launderers, extortionists, bullies and slags; enough said, job done, up against the wall, motherfuckers. Worthless fucking bastards every last one of them, doesn't matter  a fuck what they say about Europe or wogs , black wogs, brown wogs or white wogs, as far as the kippers are concerned, everybody who doesn't agree with them is some kind of wog.  No point old Ken Clarke accusing them of wog-bashing; it's like saying that the richer the Torybastard is; the more he hates  the poor, everybody knows that.

A new political party, finding its trotters, I mean feet.

 The kippers, they're just like all the rest of them; just like Kenny himself, the rotten old hypocrite -

HM Seckatry of State for Health,

Kenny Cool.

The four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected and curated by editor mr verge, is available on Lulu and Amazon.

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.