The Sunday Ishmael: 29/09/2024: The Middle East Edition

 Here, at Ishmael House, the giggling couldn't be suppressed when  Radio 4 announced, with lugubrious solemnity, that the pagers belonging to the leaders of a terrorist organisation had exploded simultaneously. This was up there with Castro's poisoned beard or exploding cigar, definitely a product of the Department of Ungentlemanly Warfare. And how perfect a strategy - Israel couldn't be accused of targeting innocent civilian populations or infrastructure, as only declared enemy personnel had their heads or hands blown off by their pagers, or, better still, testicles, if the pagers were carried in pockets. Result! No more fathering of 40 sons apiece. Hezbollah had only resorted to the old fashioned pager method of communication as they feared mobile phones were susceptible to interception and were a location device. I mean, they doubtless muttered to each other, in a beardy sort of way, pagers! What could possibly go wrong? 

What a master stroke! The planning it took to put an exploding pager into the hands of enemy terrorist commanders! Synchronised pager explosions! And Hezbollah paid for them! But the cream of the jest was that when they switched to walkie talkies to communicate their war strategies, they exploded, too! What next? Ah, effendi, I will just write down the battle plan - then, whoops! Synchronised Exploding Fountain Pens. Actually, no, they haven't done that. Yet.

And as Hezbollah continued to rain down fairly ineffectual rockets  upon Israeli territory, they found that their own weapons caches they'd carefully hidden in schools and hospitals were also blown up in frighteningly accurate strikes. Of course they complained to the media and anyone else who would listen that Israel was targeting schools and hospitals to kill innocent civilians (are there any? Aren't they all complicit, just as the German population knew damn fine what the Holocaust was up to?), but the clue was in the series of secondary explosions after the bombs fell, as the cached weapons all went off. Saw it on the telly. 

And then, the coup de grâce - or should it be coup de guerre? On Friday, as Benjamin Netanyahu told it as it is to the United Nations,

spitting his defiance and confounding the appeasers, Israeli fighter jets struck the underground base of that dreadful old man, Hassan Nasrallah, who has been the leader of the terrorist organisation for more than 30 years. Nasrallah is now a supreme, sacred and dearest martyr, along with most of Hezbollah's senior commanders - all martyrs, the lot of them. Straight to Paradise.

Nasrallah referred to Israel as "the state of the grandsons of apes and pigs – the Zionist Jews" and condemned them as "the murderers of the prophets."  He called the attacks of Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, a heroic operation, and justified Hezbollah's missile and drone attacks against northern Israel, which began immediately after October 7, as being carried out in solidarity with the Palestinians.  You can't keep insulting people and attempting to bomb them off the face of the earth without expecting them to retaliate.

Netanyahu has a different view of this "heroic operation". As he told the United Nations on Friday: "October 7th. Thousands of Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists from Gaza burst into Israel in pickup trucks and on motorcycles, and they committed unimaginable atrocities. They savagely murdered 1,200 people. They raped and mutilated women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. They burned entire families alive—babies, children, parents, grandparents, in scenes reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust." Oh yes - that would be the Nazi Holocaust that Nasrallah says either didn't happen or was wildly exaggerated by Jews.

Seems fairly clear-cut to me - terrorist organisations backed by foreign states invade your country, murdering, raping, abducting etc, so you fight back, to prevent said terrorist organisations doing it again. If it is Ukraine invaded by Russia, the Western World goes boo, boo, have some weapons, we'll train your soldiers, sanction the invader, engage in secretive supportive ops. If it is Israel, subject to a long war since the end of the Second World War, a war designed to eradicate Israel, then the Western World is strangely ambivalent. Says its complicated.

Thank god for Kemi Badenoch. I'm a convert. If she gets the Tory Party's Leadership gig, then I might just think about voting Conservative. Might. After all,  Sir Keir and his crew of "lads", however nicely dressed they are, really are just beyond, beyond. Like Rosie Duffield said, as she flounced out of the Party, sleaze, corruption, freebies and being nasty to pensioners are the New Normal. 

Here's Rosie. The little guy in the corner is Pat Bosco McFadden - he's not aged well - only 59 and he looks like a judgemental old tortoise who has smelt something nasty. On the Laura Kuenssberg show today, he was forced to listen in trap-jawed disbelief while Rosie slagged off his boss. McFadden is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an archaic, anachronistic role - the Chancellor is the highest ranking minister in the Cabinet, next to Keir. Basically it is a sinecure, the appointee being a creation of the Prime Minister, creating an additional minister without portfolio. His unenviable job this morning was to respond to Rosie's accusations of the rot within the highest echelons of the Party and that Sir Keir has surrounded himself with a group of lads - sounds fairly menacing - do they have motorbikes and leather jackets?  Pat Bosco said, entirely convincingly, that he is too old to be one of the lads, and less convincingly, that Sir Keir shouldn't have to buy his own clothes during an election campaign as he has to look his best. Or some such bollocks. The David Lammy line. Representing Britain. Don't want him to turn up to international events looking like Jeremy Corbyn.

Back to my new hero, Kemi Badenoch. Asked on Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips what she would be saying to Israel if she were Tory leader, Ms Badenoch said: 'I would be congratulating Prime Minister Netanyahu. I think what they did was extraordinary. Israel is showing that it has moral clarity in dealing with its enemies and the enemies of the West as well. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation and I think that being able to remove the leader of Hezbollah as they did will create more peace in the Middle East.'

She was similarly forthright on the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg vehicle. But Laura was determined to drive her into admissions that Kemi was equally determined not to make. The BBC political line might have something to do with the new chair, Dr Samir Shah, who replaced the allegedly disgraced former chair, Richard Sharp, over some allegedly sharp practice relating to an £800,000 loan to the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Dr. Shah is a race relations expert, born in India, a former adherent of Jainism and a convert to Islam. Just saying.

Kemi was grilled about an article she wrote for the Sunday  Telegraph, in which she said that: " not all cultures in the UK are “equally valid”. When asked What Cultures, she responded those cultures that endorse child marriage, where when you knock on the door the wife says she can't talk to you, she'll have to get her husband. Kemi doesn't like migrant groups importing their disputes from their countries of origin and playing them out on the streets of Britain. She said: 
“One of the things that I found most upsetting after October 7 was watching people ripping down posters of missing kidnapped children from walls and lampposts in London. We’ve never seen that here before. I think that that is beyond the pale.”

She explained the difference between multi-ethnic and multi-cultural, a concept that Laura found tricky until Kemi explained that Britain is multi-ethnic - she's black, Laura is white, but that there should be one culture, that migrants should come to Britain because they want to live here and share the culture of Britain. We're really not good at that - in fact the liberal left actively opposed assimilation into a host culture, preferring to embrace and give validity to all cultures - even when they are rubbish, cruel, and violent cultures. They promoted multi-culturism because, I think, they are ashamed of our own culture and history. By contrast, the US, which has at least as much to be ashamed of in its own history, is really good at forging a national identity amongst its immigrants and children - from sea to shining sea.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Laura. You want me to say Muslims when it isn’t all Muslims, so I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to play this game. I should be able to say that I have made an observation without you trying to portray it as me attacking a particular group.”

Kuenssberg then hit back: “Kemi Badenoch, I am not trying to portray it in any way. I am asking you on what evidence do you base this claim. Who are you talking about?”

“I have answered the question multiple times, but I know what you are trying to get me to say, and I’m challenging you that we need to be able to have these conversations without being scared, without running away.”

So - my new hero. Kemi Badenoch for Conservative Party Leader. Straight talking. Willing to offend the Liberal Left and the Race Relations industry. Hell - Kemi Badenoch for god. That'll do.

In other news........

• Michael Spit Gove has been appointed Editor of the Spectator, a role he has coveted since a wee boy of 7 in an Aberdeen school.

• Private Eye broke the news of Mohammed Fayed treating Harrod's as his personal brothel back in issue 951, 29th May 1998. That's 26 years ago. This stuff has been known about for 26 years - but its only after the long reach of his wealth, power and position has been shortened by death that mainstream media are reporting it and it is being investigated. Maybe he can't be touched - well, he can't, but his employees who enabled him and pimped for him certainly can be. The Justice for Harrods Survivors group said they have reported Dr Ann Coxon, the doctor who conducted invasive sexual health checks on Fayed's young female employees, who still has a licence to practice and operates out of her Harley Street clinic, to the General Medical Council (GMC).

And what about all those security staff who procured for Fayed? Any still around? I was just carrying out orders?

Here's some of the Private Eye article from 26 years ago: 

"In October 1993 he (Fayed) took four of them (secretaries) to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's villa, gave them £100 each and demanded 'who is going to sleep with me tonight?'........Many other young women - all young and attractive, most of them blonde - have been 'received for interview' at Park Lane. The visitors usually remain closeted away with Fayed for about two hours, after which, if the pharaoh is in a generous mood, security staff are instructed to hand them bundles of money." 

• There's a thing called a liquid Brazilian Butt Lift. Honest, Not Invent. 
  Alice Webb was taken to Gloucestershire Royal hospital on Monday (23 September) after becoming unwell; she died the following morning. According to the Gloucestershire police, she had undergone a “suspected cosmetic procedure” before becoming ill. A quickly deleted fundraising campaign to raise money for Webb’s family stated that she had undergone a non-surgical BBL, which sees fat or dermal filler injected into the buttocks with the aim of adding volume and creating a lifted effect.

Anagram Corner, curtesy of editor mr. verge:-

Bi-dame? Heck, no! 

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.

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As a sign-off, you might like to try this from Generation Kill: 

TV chef quiet time

(On the tragic death of Keith Floyd, telly chef and bon vivant, mr ishmael said.....)

Mad bastard and shaven-headed freak, pretentious arsehole and lousy cook, Mr Heston von Blumenthal said:

I want to take him into my laboratory (his kitchen, the cunt) and preserve him in cognac laced with a julienne of wrens tongues, in a casket of bitterest Belgian chocolate garnished with gold leaf and crushed diamonds and stored in my specially constructed pantry, kept at a perfectly controlled optimum temperature by Tahitian virgins fanning the air across trays of Moondust imported from NASA and keep him until cryogenics have caught up with me and at some point in the future, when he has been revived, I want to decant the late Maestro. And eat him.

Mr von Blumenthal, Michelin Man

To make the gravy, look online for Nazi Scientist Re-enactment Associations and locate Heston Blumenthal

and kill him by alternately dipping him in icy water and roasting him with a blowtorch. Use a precision-made Krupps thermometer shoved up his arse from time to time to check the temperature, it should fluctuate rapidly between freezing cold and roasting hot, it is best to gag Blumenthal during this process as the bastard just can't fucking shut up; when he's dead, hang him upside-down and drain the blood out, set aside and reserve for making ice cream a la Heston. For this you will need a helicopter, a JCB, some ice flown in from the Arctic Circle, the band of the Argyll and Southern Highlanders, a half-kilo of uranium, a chainsaw and an industrial-sized, fully-staffed laboratory craned into your back garden. You will also need 400 litres of double cream, a gallon of Napoleon Brandy, two dozen plovers eggs, a side of smoked salmon, ten pounds of pork sausages and a large bottle of HP sauce. Check the website www.hestonisamadcunt.com for the full recipe. To make the gravy, simply chop Heston up and throw him in a low oven overnight, in the morning pour off all the fat and the madness juices, boil up the remaining bits, throw in some chillies and some garlic and some ginger and some paprika and some cayenne pepper, blitz it all up and dress with leaves from the garden or if you haven't got a garden, from the nearest roundabout or motorway verge.

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

If only Blumenthal had listened to mr ishmael, and checked out the website hestonisamadcunt, he could have saved himself years of ADHD, neurodiverse and bipolar misery, not to mention being sectioned. All over the telly and the papers, he is busy monetising his brush with the mental health services: “There was a knock on the door, there’s a policeman, then five firemen and then a doctor with an assistant and I was like ‘What the hell is going on here?’ And then I saw the doctor pulling out this big syringe and then I woke up in hospital’......My most artistic, innovative and exciting work is because I am neurodivergent, which I describe as my superpower,” the chef remarked.  (thanks to editor mr verge for finding this story)

For me, the clue was the bacon and liquid-nitrogen frozen ice-cream, made from reindeer milk - or maybe the chicken curry ice-cream - or even the fish eyeball cocktail. 

Seriously creative, artistic and innovative. You can't make this shit up. Once again, mr ishmael was right.

The Sunday Ishmael: 22/09/2024

 In the previous thread, mr mongoose posed the question: what is politics for? So I've been picking away at that in my head since he posted it. mr inmate's response was a combination of learned helplessness and weary cynicism. mr bungalow bill took us back to Auden's September 1st 1939, "clinging to their average day........children afraid of the night, who have never been happy or good."

I suppose, having inherited the hosting of a political blog, I should have a go at answering that huge question - what is politics for? Apologies to those who know all this stuff already. It might be of most interest to our overseas readership and those ishmaelites who don't pay much attention to this stuff (and who, indeed, can blame you?)

As Wiki defines it: Politics (from Ancient Greek πολιτικά (politiká) 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. (And yes, I do bung Wiki a fiver when they ask for it).

Politics reflects the complexity of the society in which you live and the method of its governance. Parliamentary democracy is particularly complex, as it is representational, not Athenian. Athenian democracy, developed from the fifth to the fourth century B.C., is often cited as the precursor of Western democracy - but it is pretty much wholly unlike our system: all adult male citizens - the dēmos - had equal political rights, the opportunity to participate directly in politics and were required to take an active part in government. Which meant that 70% of the population had no political rights, being women or slaves (much the same thing, really). Other popular forms of government outwith the nations known collectively as the West are oligarchies (a power structure where a minority rules) and autocracies (dictatorships or absolute monarchies). 

This is Britain getting on with its elected representatives making decisions in groups.

This is South Africa, where they favour a more muscular debate.

Prior to the Reform Acts of the nineteenth century, a few boroughs gave the vote to all male householders, but many parliamentary seats were under the control of a small group or sometimes a single rich aristocrat and British politics was very much a rich man's game. Through a very long process of struggle and reform, the franchise was extended to all British citizens, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18, unless you are an offender detained under the Mental Health Act or a convicted serving prisoner. This ban  was challenged by three convicted prisoners in 2001. British courts rejected the challenge and one of the prisoners, John Hirst, took his case to the European Court of Human Rights. In Hirst v United Kingdom (No 2), the ECtHR ruled that the UK was in contravention of Article 3 of Protocol No.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that signatory states should "hold free elections under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people." The central element of the ruling was that the blanket ban on prisoner voting was indiscriminate and disproportionate. No subsequent government of any political colour has rescinded the ban, but a sort of compromise was reached in 2018 that allowed prisoners released on temporary licences to vote. I don't suppose Putin's prisoners are allowed to vote, either. The ECtHR has stopped nagging about it, though. 

In Britain, General Elections are held every 5 years or less, at the whim of the Prime Minister - as in: Well Done, Sunak. Individuals can stand for election, but the majority of candidates will have been sponsored by a political party. The person who gets most votes gets to be the Member of Parliament for that constituency. This means that many, many people are not represented by someone whose views they espouse. 

Complicating the picture is Devolution. I have two M.P.s. My Westminster chap, Alistair Carmichael, and my Holyrood chap, Liam McArthur. The election cycles of Westminster and the devolved nations are not contiguous.  A further complication is local government - each local authority has its own little government, known as a Council, to order the administration of local matters - things like Planning, the maintenance of Roads, Lighting, removal of Waste, Schools, Social Services, and, in Orkney, the maintenance of a Quarry and a Harbour. They are not necessarily very good at these things - remember Aggregate-Gate, when Orkney Islands Council bought and shipped in tons and tons of quarry stone for spite because they weren't allowed to extend the quarry they owned? They never did sell it all, and last I heard, they were having it all pulverised as road dressing. Or Bingate, when thousands of bins were ordered which couldn't be used because they were the wrong size for the bin lorries? And as for Planning - they seem to exist to oppose the building of new houses and extensions to existing houses. But Angela Rayner pledged this morning to sort them out and remove these blocks to her programme of expansion of house building in Britain. Then you have Trade Union politics, which also holds elections to appoint people to represent members in their trade unions. It is very, very bureaucratic - worse than the Labour Party, with an abstruse debating structure to decide on their policies.

So, to answer the question of what are politics for - it seems to me that politics serves to support an intricate network of career opportunities for people who don't want to work for a living and are too ugly for show business. We're talking jobs, here. Lucrative jobs. With perks. Expenses. Free holidays. Corporate hospitality at the football. Free clothes and specs (until the other day when Sir Keir was finally shamed into saying we'll buy our own clothes). Free accommodation in Downing Street or an allowance towards maintaining a second home. Free or subsidised food and booze. SPADs (special advisor, a temporary civil servant supporting Government ministers),

Former Conservative Leader William Hague and SPAD

 totty (an offensive way to refer to people considered to be sexually attractive), free wifi to watch tractor porn in the House of Commons and lots of other sexual opportunities.

Talking of sex and politics, in the Yorkshire village of Shiptonthorpe, population 503, a woman standing for election as a ward councillor in 2022 (average salary £34,762 - more in London), received a nasty anonymous letter. She destroyed it, but remembers that "it said the only way I would ever get anywhere within politics would be if I was to perform unspeakable things to men."

I wish they wouldn't do that. If they don't say what these unspeakable things are, I'm left to imagine the worst. What could they be? Fisting? Coprophilia? With or without a glass topped coffee table? Golden Showers? Maybe there's worse things that I've been too sheltered to have even heard of.
This woman, anonymous because the BBC wants to protect her privacy, despite telling us that she was an election candidate for tiny little Shiptonthorpe, so I dare say the locals know fine well who she is; subsequently received three further nasty letters. Humberside Police confirmed it received a report of the letter. “Inquiries were carried out at the time, including reviewing CCTV.....However, the content of the alleged letter was unavailable and subsequently no further investigative opportunities were able to be obtained."

We know that the police don't detect anything. They wait for people to tell them who did it, so no surprise there - but CCTV? Were they looking for somebody writing in a furtive manner, m'lud?

Snide old BBC referenced the 2023 film Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Colman, the dramatisation of a spate of anonymous letters received by the inhabitants of the small town of Littlehampton in the spring of 1920. Turned out that  the recipient of the vilest, most sexually inventive letters was actually the author of the said letters.

The film lost verisimilitude for me - I couldn't suspend my disbelief - due to the colour-blind casting. More historical inaccuracy to fool the young people into thinking that England has always been so ethnically diverse that in 1920 in a small seaside town the police, the lover and the postwoman were all black. And the loose woman was Oirish, of course.

Whilst I'm mentioning the iniquities of the Beeb, it has been all over the Mohamed al-Fayed sex story like a rash. They've really gone to town on this one - documentary, podcast, constant mentions on all the news programmes on all their channels, live, i-player and radio. You can just hear the Corporation's collective sigh of relief - no, he never worked here.

Back to politics. I was trying hard, this morning, to pay attention to Martin Geissler interviewing beardy slab-faced Ian Murray, Secretary of State for Scotland, at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, when I became increasingly distracted by the busy background scene of delegates, members, press, accessibility stewards and other staff hobbling backwards and forwards and up and down the stairs. Big, like elephants, as mr ishmael would have said. And incredibly badly dressed and T-shirted. 

See what I mean? Never mind St. Keir and his fragrant wife, the whole damn Party needs dressing by kindly donors. And providing with dieticians, physiotherapists and personal trainers. Come on, fill your boots. At this rate you won't be in power for long.

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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.

The Ginger Growler- John Prescott in a skirt.

The Sunday Ishmael: 15/09/2024

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.

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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.

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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