The Sunday Ishmael: 24/03/2024

 

Liam McArthur, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Orkney. 

He was brought to live in Sanday, one of the islands in the archipelago, at the age of ten, by  his family, and was educated at Kirkwall Grammar School, which isn't really a Grammar School, but just the secondary state school with a catchment area of Kirkwall, the East Mainland and all the Orkney Isles. (as opposed to Stromness Academy, which isn't really an Academy, but is the state secondary school serving the West Mainland of Orkney). In order to attend school, Isles pupils have to stay at Papdale Halls of Residence during the week. Which has not been implicated in any of the child sexual abuse scandals that have so dogged boarding schools. He's a Scottish Liberal Democrat, but we'll not hold that against him - it is probably an accident of geography - who knows what his political convictions might have been had his parents never moved from Edinburgh to Orkney in 1977 to make better life? He's been an aide to Lord Jim Wallace and a SPAD to the Deputy First Minister in 2002. When Lord Jim gave up being Orkney's MP in 2007 in order to become Baron Wallace of Tankerness, it was our Liam's turn. He was elected in 2007, re-elected in 2011 and again in 2016. He is a kind, thoughtful, caring, constituency politician. Even mr ishmael liked him:

Orkney, Best Part of Scotland 6th May 2016

I straggled on down to the polling station at a quarter to ten, held my nose and crossed the Dogshooters' box. 

Three hours later the Council's chief executive announced a thumping victory for Liam McArthur and a kicking for the Tribesmen. Tribeswoman in this case.

The turnout was up, not by the twelve per cent which the PBC stated  - a sixty two per cent turnout is not a twelve per cent increase on a fifty per cent turnout, but no matter, if they can't find Jimmy Savile we can't expect them  to do percentages -  but by nearly twenty-five per cent.

I doubt that it was a victory for Liberal Democrats as such, although Liam McArthur increased his majority, but more of a vote against the Tribesmen.  Maggie-Maggie-Maggie Sturgeon, as national socialists do, has taken significant powers to the centre - herself - notably the cops; 
 
 the bungling Chief Constable - is there any other kind? - of what is now Police Scotland being her liege man. Should I need to contact the cops I have to speak to a call centre in Inverness.  There is talk, currently, of the abolition of county councils entirely, of everything being determined by a mutant, groomed by Alec Salmond, who has never had a job in her life and is self-avowedly motivated by hatred. People here don't like that shit.

Gnasher also rewards those who vote for her and punishes apostates.  The Western Isles vote SNP and enjoy significantly reduced ferry fares, Orkney and Shetland, which are much further away and suffer worse weather do not return SNP candidates and still pay the full whack.

Unlike the two local Dogshooter Wiseguys, Carmichael and Wallace, 

McArthur is a courteous and  effective local representative and he's also a local man. His party is disfigured by so many - by Cyril Smith, by Boy David Steel, by Straight Simon Hughes, by the slimy opportunist,  Clegg; by the revolting, blowhard narcissist,  Field Marshal Ashdown - that a claim, tonight, by Lord Ming Campbell of a mere ten years in the wilderness for LibDemmery seems remarkably optimistic and one would expect Susan Fallon to be its last leader, and serve him right, pompous little prick.  Be that as it may, against the backdrop of his local colleague, Big Al Carmichael, being dragged through the courts, of his national party's demolition  and of the upsurge of Tribalism in Scotland, McArthur pissed down the Tribal throat.

My vote didn't matter in the end  and it looks as though the SNP will remain comfortably in control of the wee parliament but at least they do not, for now, boss and bully a one-party state. 

The confounding of national socialism  doesn't justify opening a bottle of champagne but I will certainly go to bed on a large brandy and soda. 

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Why on earth, mrs ishmael, you enquire, do you expect me to be the slightest bit interested in any of this?

Because, I respond, wee Liam is doing his damndest to change the law in Scotland to allow terminally ill patients to die with dignity instead of screaming in pain, breathing only by having oxygen blown into their poor sore noses, unable to eat, catheterised and unable to control their bowels. To allow them the mercy we give our dear little dogs. You'll thank him for his efforts one day.

Liam has had two previous failed attempts at getting his Assisted Dying For Terminally Ill Adults Bill passed by Holyrood, and is advancing it again on Thursday. The major provisions are:

• two doctors, one with no prior relationship with the patient are required to both confirm that the person is terminally ill and has the capacity to request an assisted death.
• a waiting period of two weeks between the request and the medication – which they would have to be able to take themselves – being provided.
• the medical professional also must be satisfied that the patient is both determined to continue and capacity is still there at the point of giving the patient the lethal medication.
• the patient must have lived in Scotland and been registered with a doctor in Scotland for a year before requesting assistance - this would prevent a Dignitas death tourism situation.
• Medical professionals opposed to euthanasia on faith or other grounds would be able to exempt themselves.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing, which is campaigning against the Bill, stated that changing the law “would place the vulnerable under pressure, and possible coercion, to request death for fear of being a financial, emotional, time or care burden”.

Just you wait, Gordon, until you hear your spouse begging the doc for help to die, only to be told - "you know I'm not allowed to do that". You'd change your tune then.

So, if wee Liam carries the day, England will follow suit - both the Tories and Labour have pledged to consider Assisted Dying. As I said, you'll be grateful to Liam one day. 

In other Scottish matters, The SNP want their bus back - you know, the £100,000 motor home seized by the police from outside Nicola Sturgeon's mother-in- law's home last year in Operation Branchform. They want to go campaigning in it now that it is election year. The police have said shut up and go away, we're keeping it. It is evidence in the investigation we are conducting into fraud and embezzlement. Really? No, Really? Fraud and Embezzlement? In the SNP? The dodgy political party from which all the senior figures had to resign last year in disgrace, leaving Hunza Useless to do his best? You don't say. And they want to go campaigning for re-election? In a motor-home that the police seized as evidence? You couldn't make it up.

Following from the Comments trail on the previous thread, I'm persuaded that there is something in this Covid vaccine worry. I'm reading Vaxxers by Prof. Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green at the moment, who developed the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine. The blurb: "the story of how we - two scientists- were in the right place at the right time to fight back against a deadly and devastating disease... there were days when we swore or cried with frustration and exhaustion....we had to both save the world and get the central heating fixed." If I come across any insights, of course I'll share - although the populist blurb does not bode well. 

The controversial independent MP, Andrew Bridgen, (the Tories kicked him out, but he says he's a proper Conservative and the rest aren't) continues to expose what he sees as vaccine harms, in the teeth of the indifference of government and media. He tells us that many more people are dying since Covid: that is, more deaths than recorded for previous years. 542,000 is the highest number of people to die in a year in England and Wales between 2010 and 2019.  In 2020, there were 607,000 deaths, which you would expect in a pandemic, as the elderly and vulnerable died from Covid. You would then expect the number of deaths to fall, after Covid had done its worst, and there should have been a deficit in deaths until things settled down, as the people who would usually succumb to the diseases of old age year by year were no longer there. There was no such fall below average. In 2022 there were 577,000 deaths and in 2023 there were 581,000. These are not recorded as Covid deaths. Death certificates cite heart attacks, strokes and cancers. At the same time, the number of people claiming benefits because they are unfit to work goes up - there were 11% more people claiming Personal Independence Payments in the third quarter of 2023. Bridgen, who usually reads out his statistics to an empty House, attributes these deaths and increasing ill health to vaccine harm. We've rehearsed these concerns in these pages and commentariat threads, and mr mike's link to the discussion with the Australian immunologist, Prof Clancy, is both illuminating and distressing. I was struck by the assertion that damage to fertilised embryos prevents them embedding and so they are shed as early miscarriages. That's not going to help the falling birth rate.

I see that the ever-popular President Putin, re-elected last week with 87.97 percent of the vote, has come up hard against multi-culturalism as it asserted its right to murder people. Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), named after an old term for the region that included parts of Iran, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, emerged in eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and quickly established a reputation for extreme brutality. But why attack Russian concert-goers? Apparently ISIS-K "sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims."  Maybe President Putin will be more effective in dealing with ISIS than the West has been. We kind of don't have the heart for it. Hollowed out by liberalism. And apologetic about our past sins of Empire and oppression, and probably the Crusades as well. Unable to separate multi-racial from multi-cultural because we've given up having a unified national culture - it's so, like,  embarrassing. Will Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin be the new Don John of Austria? 

Risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war.   Lepanto - Chesterton

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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.

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