The Sunday Ishmael: 28/04/2024

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

Have you been following the Scottish news this week? It is quite chaotic, unbelievable, unprecedented - what larks, as mr mongoose would say. Here are the dramatis personae: 

Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Green Party.

Lorna Slater,  co-leader of the Scottish Green Party.
Yes, that's right, one of each - but that was before the Greens fully embraced the diversity agenda in their constitution. These days, there would be several co-leaders, including a smattering of trans.

Handsome, debonair Martin Geissler, presenter of BBC's Sunday Show, fearless interviewer of Scottish politicians.

Alex Salmond, Leader of the Alba Party and former Leader of the SNP until Nicola Sturgeon, disgraced former leader of the SNP stuck her pickling fork into him. Not currently the subject of a police investigation into fraudulent use of SNP funds, unlike Sturgeon, whose hubby is under arrest as part of same investigation.

Humza Yousaf, the Fool, elected to replace the disgraced Sturgeon and carry the can for her, was unable to form a government, having secured only 63 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament. So he did a deal with the Scottish Greens, thus letting the lunatics run the institution.

The deal was called the Bute House agreement, by which, in order to secure the 7 Green votes, Yousaf basically sold the family silver by agreeing a raft of anti-climate change policies with the potential to trash the economy.  Fortunately, the fishing industry was saved from the Ultra Marine Protection zones, Westminster stepped in to defeat the nonsense about gender declarations and the premature glass recycling debacle, and on Thursday, 18th April, the  

Net Zero Secretary, Mairi McAllan informed MSPs that the key climate change target of reducing emissions by 75% by 2030 was being abandoned by the SNP Government. It was always a preposterous and unattainable idea, one which couldn't happen as alternative fuel resources are too expensive, too scarce or too unpopular.  The Greens kicked off about the “worst environmental decision in the history” of devolution. And on Sunday, the 21st April, Martin Geissler, handsome, debonair etc, had fun rubbing salt into squirming little Patrick Harvie's wounds, indulging himself in quite a bit of Green baiting about the failed Green policies before moving onto the Cass Report, which, being what they like to call "progressive", the Greens had no qualms about dismissing out of hand. The Cass Report highlighted a lack of evidence for the efficacy of interventionist and hormonal treatments of children to delay puberty and imitate a change of gender and led to the closure of the Tavistock Gender Identity Dysphoria Clinic, although Scotland lagged behind relating to the Sandyford GID clinic in Glasgow. Questioned by Geissler, Harvie dove in there, saying the report had been politicised and weaponised against trans people. Ash Regan, formerly SNP, who defected to Alba after her bid for leadership of the SNP failed, subsequently lodged a motion of no confidence against Harvie, saying:

 "The motion of no confidence speaks for itself. The Scottish Greens wish to side with ideology over clinical evidence."

Then, on Thursday 25th, Yousaf ripped up the Bute House Agreement, ending power sharing with the Greens. 

This didn't go down well, especially with Lorna Slater, a nasty piece of work, who immediately started slagging off Yousaf and the SNP, called for the First Minister's resignation and launched a vote of no confidence in Yousaf.  Yousaf refused to resign and said he will fight the vote of no confidence - its a bit of a worry for him, though, as there are more of his opponents than his supporters.

Denouncing Yousaf’s actions as “a spectacular breach of trust”, Slater told Martin Geissler today: “We will vote in support of a vote of no confidence against Humza Yousaf and I cannot imagine anything at this point that would change that position.” What, Geissler quipped, even if he goes down on his knees? (bit near the knuckle, that, Martin.)

Ian Blackford, former SNP leader in the Commons, on the Kuenssberg political show, also this morning, apologised to the Greens for the way it had been handled, and said: “I want to appeal to our friends and colleagues in the Green Party to recognise where we are. We are colleagues together in arguing for independence. We pushed through legislation for which there has been mutual support," Kuenssberg should have replied that it was crap legislation that has either been overturned by Westminster or abandoned by Yousaf.

Great stuff, eh what? The cream of the jest occurred when Alex Salmond, interviewed under an umbrella in his Aberdeenshire garden, told Geissler that it was all his fault for goading Harvie last Sunday, and that he, Alex, now holds all the cards, because Yousaf's only chance of winning the vote of no confidence is if he does a deal with Ash Regan, Alba's only MSP, who will hold the deciding vote in the stand off between Independencers and Unionists.

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What's on at the Theatre

Nye, National Theatre, South Bank, London. Tickets £20 - £99

Great trailer - you can see why I wanted to see it. What with me being a former Labour Party member, and all. And Nye being a bit of a hero. I didn't pop down to London, though - saw it as a streaming at the local cinema. Only cost me £13.00 and an evening of my life that I won't get back.

The pre- and interval comments by the National Theatre were all about how it was the 100^th N.T. streaming, how 1000 NHS nurses were watching it in the theatre and many more in cinemas up and down the land, and how the whole focus of the production was on the creation of the NHS and Bevan’s death in an NHS hospital. The end was very emotionally manipulative. They were expecting tears. There were some good lines, Bevan’s poverty, deprivation, socialism and Welshness were well observed and rendered, Churchill’s mythic status was thoroughly debunked and the production emphasised the strength of the doctors’ union and how they damn nearly scuppered the NHS before their mouths were stuffed with gold and concessions in order to bring them on board. So the consultants could keep their god-like status and incomes. Bevan promised them he would make doctoring the most highly-paid profession – (and he did and that is what is bankrupting the NHS).
But the self-conscious theatricality of the production was dreadful. There was no stillness, no calm, no thoughtfulness, no subtlety. The politics were cartoonlike, people shouted their lines at each other and every one talked/shouted at once. There was a song and dance number in the first half, and a sort of circus scene, in which Bevan was lifted shoulder high by his fellow actors and carried around the stage. They didn’t ask us to bang saucepans and cheer for the NHS, which was a surprising omission, given the manipulation we were being subjected to. The set was an NHS ward, the props were curtains and beds, which gave extra service as the Commons’ green benches and the schoolroom of the sadistic Welsh schoolteacher who tortured Bevan because of his stammer. The casting was colour- and gender-blind, as usual, so Bevan’s sister, Arianwen, was played by Kezreena James.

This mightily puzzled a couple of my theatre companions, who thought this must be a first wife, because how could he have a black sister? They don’t understand modern wokery, or, as one husband kindly explained to his wife, political correctness. Not a term one hears too much these days. Winston Churchill was played by Tony Jayawardena, a big Asian bloke in a fat suit and a cigar.

Clem Attlee was played by Stephanie Jacob, 

a woman in a bald wig and three-piece suit, seated at a motorised desk that swooped about the stage.

Yes, as I write this, I realise that I really hated the production. You have to write stuff down to work out what you think. Sheen was very good, given the dreadful directorial decisions. The play was by Tim Price, who is a gingerish Welsh writer of frightfully right-on plays and TV shite. It was impossible to understand a lot of the dialogue because it was delivered at pace, at volume and with everyone shouting at once, so I couldn’t begin to evaluate the merit of the material. If it had been directed in a less shouty, spitty, running about, instantaneous-scene-changing way, it might have been interesting – but things have to be fast and noisy nowadays to keep the attention of the audience. 

I’m beginning to think that theatre is an infinitely lesser art form than film and that it really shouldn’t be subsidised.
There you go – I’ve watched it, so you don’t have to – and now you can speak knowledgeably about it at dinner parties – if you don’t mind being contrarian, because most people there seemed to think it was absolutely wonderful. I don’t think they actually thought that, and they were really watching the clock from 8.00 pm onwards, thinking dear god, how long will this go on for, but they believed it was the correct and acceptable response to a major theatrical event. My chum asked me if I liked Shakespeare and I said, yes. So she said Macbeth is coming soon. So I said, which Macbeth? And she said by Shakespeare, and I said, yes, I’d guessed that, but which theatre company, which director, which actors? And she said, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, so I said, oh dear. Why so oh dear? she enquired. Because they do not respect the plays, the words, the plots, such as they are. They engage in colour blind casting, disabled casting, chronological mayhem and re-gender roles. They will probably have Lady Macbeth re-gendered and present the bloody and ambitious Macbeths as a same sex, probably black, or maybe Glasgae Asian, couple. But it's got Ralph Fiennes in it, she said. 

Hmm, I replied, playing Lady Macbeth, is he?
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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.

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

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With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

Here's Humza, making his First Ministerial way down the corridors of Holyrood. How much did the Holyrood building, the home of the Scottish Parliament, cost to build? £414 million. What was the original estimate? Between £10 and £40 million. Just saying.