I was woken this morning at 6.00 a.m. or thereabouts by a deep, deep, regular thrumming - the sort of sound and vibration that gets in your head and bones, alarming with thoughts of exploding boilers or a drone strike - God knows what it's like to live in a war zone. When I got out of bed and went investigating, the cause of the sound, which abated when the damn thing dropped its anchor, was this:
It is the MSC Preziosa, on a 10 day round trip of Northern Europe. She was in Stornaway yesterday and will be in Invergordon tomorrow. She carries 3,502 passengers stacked up in those tiers you can see in the photo, and has a crew of 1,325. Costs £1789 per person for a week's cruise, which is really quite cheap for an all-inclusive holiday. Also in Kirkwall today is the Seven Seas Splendour, which is quite small, with only 750 passengers. She was up in Shetland yesterday and will also be in Invergordon tomorrow. The centre of Kirkwall has been closed to traffic today, the better to accommodate the potential influx of 4,252 people, plus crew, roaming the streets, looking for something to look at. So far this month, Kirkwall has been visited by The Oceania Mariana, the Seaborne Sojourne, the Ambience, the Viking Neptune, the AIDsol, the Viking Venus, and the ms Rotterdam. For the rest of September, we will be visited by Celebrity Apex, the Regal Princess, the Hanseatic Nature, a return visit from Seven Seas Splendour and Mein Schiff 7 to round the month off. When they prepare to leave after a busy day's sightseeing, the big liners sound their big, bone-reverberating steam hooters twice - whether to round up stray passengers or to say So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Orkney Islands Council owns the Harbour Authority. Its website says: "With cruise vessels that bring over 4,000 passengers down to the smallest liners that can accomodate 12, Orkney is able to safely berth and anchor vessels to allow passengers to be enchanted by Orkney’s Neolithic and Wartime history, the splendour of its 13th Century Cathedral and the wide range of jewellery and arts and crafts on offer. The World Heritage Site of Skara Brae, Ring of Brodgar and Maeshowe located in Orkneys west mainland is renowned globally." Which was clearly written by someone wholly unfamiliar with the arcane arts of correct grammar and spelling.
Harbour fees brought in £400,000 in 2022 and a 2023 survey estimated that the aggregate of harbour fees, passenger dues, spending at tourist sites and shops yielded £3.1 million, although each cruise passenger spent an average of only £46 while ashore.
The ordinary Orcadian doesn't get a sniff at that £3.1 million. Anymore than they get any of that "free" wind energy.
Instead, their lives are disrupted - they can't drive in Kirkwall, which is tough if you are disabled; even walking around and shopping is rendered hideous by the great crowds of aimless tourists. At the hospital, the A&E staff are kept busy by passengers and crew who can't afford to use the onboard medical facilities, where even a solitary paracetamol tablet will separate you from your holiday money. An acquaintance, sitting at her dining table, was startled to find cruise passengers pressed up against her window, staring in at her, another found a small group in her garden photographing her plants. I have had a group gesticulating and mouthing at me to slow down, whilst I was driving on the public highway, observing the speed limit and going about my ordinary business. You see, they don't believe that this is a real place, where people go to work, school, live in houses, buy sandwiches - they think it is a theme park, and we are there to provide local colour. The cruise liners have fleets of bicycles which they rent to passengers in large groups, so if you are unfortunate enough to be behind one of those groups enjoying Theme Park Orkney; tough. Add 30 minutes to your journey.
The cruise liner crews descend on the charity shops, wielding black plastic bin liners which they fill with second hand clothes to take home for re-sale. Sometimes they even pay for their hauls. The fish and chip shops, though, do tend to do quite well out of liner crew.
There has been a bit of a problem out at the Ring of Brodgar, a Neolithic stone circle, which has neither an information centre nor public toilet.
The local fishing club has complained that the loch is contaminated by the urine and faeces of the cruise liner passengers who are herded onto massive buses and driven around the sites of archaeological interest.So I understand why the Once and Future Trump confidently spread the rumour that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating people's pets. It gets to the point where you believe anything of these people.
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Every Cloud - mr ishmael 7/7/2016
Peepul ov Britun....
I remember flinching, when I saw those images of what they disgustingly called Shock and Awe,
they being Uncle Sam's GangsterForces, and thinking to myself, under that barrage there's people, people who have done us no harm, people just like us, and here's some fucked-up rancid prick of a RN wallah,
smirking on his submarine, telling us that we must understand - we little people - that these are smart weapons, targeting only bad people, people whom, quite illegally, Uncle Sam wants killed.
I remember thinking that this was a snuff movie, for the titillation of the Bush family, one in which Lt. Cmdr. Horatio Cocksucker, has a tiny part. I remember Tony Blair simpering that no prime minister had ever been so well served by his armed forces, as though he was the queen - in reality, and not just in public toilets. If this wasn't a war crime, then there aren't any war crimes.
It was, as mr richard said, a war of entirely unjustified aggression, the sort for which we hanged people at Nuremberg, an illegal war, spun, for some, into an unavoidable and virtuous police action on behalf of civilisation itself. The former British prime minister and his chums, especially Porno Ali Campbell, are mass murderers; that MediaMinster indulges them with endless opportunities to exonerate themselves, that it listens in respectful silence to the bleatings of the wretched Blair,
permits itself to be orchestrated by him, as though it was his propaganda ministry, is nauseating. Only once in that dismal press conference, yesterday, did someone come close to the point of it all; Nick Watts of Newsnight enquiring why it was that the Bandit Gulf States, the home of beheadings, whippings, amputations and stonings, as well as being the home of the purported 9/11 bombers are now Blair's employers, y'know, what with him and his doxy being so hot on human rights. No-one there pressed the question home, after Blair ignored it. He must've gone back into hiding with Imelda as he always does, sheltered by security men whom we pay for, pissing himself with laughter.
It is true, of course, the body language reveals that Tony Blair was coming in his pants, snuggled up to George Dubya Chimp
and mr mongoose's observation about the kid cosying-up to the playground bully to attack a weaker kid is right, a mutants' mateyness, there for all to see, George gazing at Blair from some drug-cocktailed, personality-disordered, poisoned consciousness, like a groomer, and young Tony, pouting, looking delighted to be with the biggest of the big boys. In these meetings, alongside George Chimp, Blair looks like an utter wanker and that is some achievement.
And Donald Trump, Prime Minister?
Well, I simply say that he is entirely mistaken, although as consigliere to much bigger criminals than him, I would be happy to serve his administration in any capacity, depending on the package, of course.
Wrong how?
Well, as I said in my Chicago Gospel, in 1999,
something now viewed, I should say, Jon,
as being as influential, even moreso, than the Sermon on the Mount, what I said in that epic, ground-breaking declaration of principle is that when it comes to Muslims, we simply have to kill them, and regime-change them into the one True Faith of Mammon,
and its founding principles, Slavery, Greed, Pornography, Usury, Tax Avoidance and Arms Sales. Y'know, Jon, it's what my entire Foundation's all about,
Killing Muslims and earning vast sums by doing it.
In passing, it is one more reason for we sad, old lefties to applaud Donald Trump, because he kicked the next Bush pretender,
Brother Jeb, back into the swamp whence he came.
.................................................................I've reposted this 2016 piece by mr ishmael because Casey Michel, American journalist and author of American Kleptocracy, has done a splendid hatchet job on Blair. He has just published a new book: Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World.
He says: "... in the UK there is one man who single-handedly launched the modern lobbying industry, laundering the reputation of tyrants, and showing others how much money can be made in the process: Tony Blair."
Casey Michel describes Blair's record since leaving office in 2007:
Blair supported the Azerbaijan dictatorship, despite reports of torture by the regime, earning £90,000 for a twenty minute speech in support of methanol plants in Azerbaijan, building close links with the regime and being hired as an advisor on an Azeri gas pipeline.
In Kazakhstan, notorious, under dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, for the massacre in 2011 of striking workers calling for basic labour laws, Blair participated in a regime propaganda video. He wrote to Nazarbayev, advising him that the massacre, "tragic though [the events] were, should not obscure the enormous progress" of his rule. He also was a speech writer for Nazarbayev, deflecting from the massacre.
Blair's wife, employment lawyer, Cherie Booth, who should know about basic labour rights and that massacring striking workers asking for those rights is not a good look, provided her own legal services to the regime, at a discounted rate of £1,000 per hour, making hundreds of thousands of pounds by reviewing 'bilateral investment treaties'.
Casey Michel alleges that Blair and his network opened doors in London to autocrats. "From Kuwait to China, the UAE to Vietnam, Blair apparently never found a despotic regime that he felt was too compromised to do business with." The funds yielded by all this busy-ness, claimed Blair, didn't go into his trousers, but funded, instead, his charities. But who knows? There is no requirement in Britain for registration and disclosure by lobbyists, so we just have to believe our Tone's claims. The Kuwait contract is believed to be worth $40 million, and the Kazakhstan contract $27 million, but Blair isn't saying.
There's no keeping up with him: the obscurity and secrecy surrounding his endeavours guarantees his privacy as a private citizen, but it is known that he has a special relationship with JPMorgan Chase, which reportedly pays Blair about $3 million a year. Blair appears at multiple corporate events for JPMorgan and acts as the head of the company’s International Council, which means that he is essentially on call for high-level advice about global affairs wherever JPMorgan does business. “He will drop anything for them,” one former Blair associate says.
He also does consulting work for Zurich Insurance Group, for which he receives an estimated $750,000 a year.
In addition, he is an adviser to Abu Dhabi’s investment fund, Mubadala Development Company, which reportedly pays him about $1.5 million a year. Blair is currently looking to open an office in Abu Dhabi.
It seems that all has not been entirely smooth in the marital arena:
It is rumoured that Tone had an affair with Wendi Murdoch, which caused the Murdoch's divorce and old Rupe to withdraw any media backing from Blair. Ah well - all's well that ends well, and, obviously, money can buy you love....................................................................................
There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
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.IIshmaelites 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.
Formerly writing gentleman's literature for Forum, under the pen-name Riviera Gigolo
