Monday, 22 December 2025

Photos from the 22nd December

 Does your computer thing do this to you? Present photographs you have saved on a particular day and present them to you as memories over the years? Most probably, on the 22nd of December, normal people have nice family photos, happy snaps of children roasting on an open fire, Santa pissing in the snow, tiny tots with their ears all ablaze. Not me. Here are today's illustrations of the Christmas spirit:


Japanese Art

Kwanzaa -another dam'fool invented religion



Erato, Muse of Poetry

2016

More Japanese Art

Gospel choir at the Coronation of King Brian


Here we go


"ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness".


TIME MAKES FOOLS OF US ALL




And Santa's on his way, he's loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh.

Sunday, 21 December 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 21/12/2025

 

That's the Christmas decorations up. Best get the sprouts on, now.

I've been away down south for a bit of a pre-Christmas debauch - you know, Christmas markets, illuminated forests, fake snow, mulled wine, hot chocolate, decorated stately homes, and the like. Two days of  hard driving got me back to Orkney for the solstice. 
What with all the jollity, I've not been keeping up, but I did fall about laughing at the rage of the Democrats when the released Epstein papers dished the dirt on Clinton, rather than Trump. 
Former president Clinton relaxing in a very dirty bath indeed.

Furious Democrats splutter that any Clintonian involvement with the Daemon Epstein is totally irrelevant, as it was long ago and far away, and under all that redaction lurks kompromat on Trump. 
The lack of any explanation of the origin of Epstein's wealth has prompted Speculation that Epstein was an agent of a Foreign Power, which filled his coffers with gold to enable him to compromise powerful and unprincipled men by pimping pubertal girls to them, and that he used strategic very large gifts of money to, for example, the artist formerly known as Prince Andrew and his red-haired doxy, to obtain access into certain circles.
A painting of Bill Clinton wearing a dress hung in the front entrance of Epstein's New York apartment.

Further speculation (known as The Clinton Body Count) asserts that President Bill and his wife, Hillary Trousers, secretly had their political opponents murdered, often made to look like suicides, totalling as many as 50 or more listed victims. The compiler of the original list, Linda Thompson, admitted she had "no direct evidence" of Clinton killing anyone. Indeed, she claimed the deaths were probably caused by "people trying to control the president" but refused to say who they were. The death of the Daemon Epstein, under very suspicious circumstances, in prison, is said to have been on the instructions of Spunky Bill himself, attempting damage limitation. All nonsense, of course. As is the following, from the imagination of mr ishmael.

CLINTON, THE MONEY SHOT.
 
It's the jism, stupid.

President Spunky Bill Clinton  has offered to fly over Cairo's Tahrin Square in a low-flying Black Hawk helicopter and ejaculate over as many  wogs as possible. You know, my fellow motherfuckers, he said, addressing both houses of the US legislature, life is like a porno movie - and we all done seen a few of them in this here legislature -

Cheers, thunderous applause,  "Way to go Billyboy"

- as I was saying,  life is like a porno movie and it's the cumshot that counts, ain't it...???

Damn right! Splatter them nigger  bitches!

Leastways, it done worked with that tramp Lewinsky. One minute she was an innocent young girl bein' abused by the most powerful man in the world and then she brings out that blue cumfrock and fuck me, Jesus, she ain't nothin' but a  goddamned filthy cocksuckin' slut tryin' to bring down this great nation of ours and everybody from the Washington Post to the Tombstone Epitaph and especially our good friend and employer and great American patriot, Mr Rupert Murdoch, of twenniethcenturyfoxmadeupnewsandfilth,  is madder'n Hell and wanting  to lynch the bitch, after, natchally, they all done give her a good old Arkansas gangbanging, humpin' her ass from here to Thanksgiving, just like she was a no-count redskin squaw and they was the Seventh Cavalry Sonsafuckinbitches Regiment. So, I reckon that'll do the trick, get them coons back in their tents where they belong and not putting the fear of Jehovah up them Jewboy next doors  asses; hanging outa that chopper, shooting my load and yelling Bismillah, niggers, I feel yo' tits, I mean pain, just a few good jerks and that airborne spunk-o-rama   gonna be flowing all over them niggers, jus'  like napalm, in the bitches' hair and in them beards they all wear over there, send 'em all home happy little cocksuckers, 'sthe only thing them ayrabs unnerstand. Women, too. Wassat? Who's gonna do the jerkin'? Well. y'all can bet yo poxed-up peckers it ain't gonna be the Seckatry of State, nosirree,  Hillary Trousers, her being  a devotee of the carpet-munching religion and thinking my meat and potatoes done come straight from Bee-elzebub, hisself,

just for the purpose of putting her off  her matrimonial appetites for life. In a time of crisis, is only one person America can turn to, he handjobbed and blowjobbed and rimjobbed for President Bush and he can do it for me, specially if there's  a few dollars in it, maybe a sawbuck up my asshole for him to tease out with his tongue. And a medal.

The prime minister of the UK, Tony the Limey rentboy,
receiving his Congressional Cocksuckers Medal from Spunky Bill.

His ole lady? Imelda?  Gennulmen, you are shittin' me. Jeez, she got a kisser you could park the USS Missouri inside of. No gennulmen, it's me and mah good Limey  friend, Tony Blair, bringing persidential see-men to the hea-then.

Jerkin' 4 Democracy, Spunky Bill boards the
Flying Ejaculator, for his historic mission.

Meanwhile, far away, in another part of town, outside the revolting celebrity-media-politics  circus, a little warm brown friend
expresses the public's view of William Jefferson Clinton.
...............................................................................

 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 last, 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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Golspie, Sutherland



Sunday, 14 December 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 14/12/2025


A teacher, who does not wish to be named, was suspended and sacked for an incident in which he allegedly admonished students for washing their feet in the sinks in the boys’ lavatories. Police were also called in to investigate an alleged hate crime. According to the child who made the complaint, the teacher told them the school was not a religious one but that there was an Islamic school a mile away if they wished to attend it instead. He also told them: “Britain is still a Christian state” and pointed out that the King was head of the Church of England.
After the feet-washing incident, the teacher tried to explain to the year six class the importance of British values of tolerance. It was claimed he reminded the children that Islam remained a minority religion in the UK.
In his legal claim against the local authority, lawyers for the teacher pointed out the school was a non-faith school and that prayers had been informally banned from the playground – and, by extension, that included washing feet in the sinks – and confined to a prayer room set aside for the purpose.
But the school suspended the teacher in March last year and subsequently sacked him. A month later, in April 2024, he was informed he was being referred to the safeguarding board as well as to the Metropolitan Police. The police inquiry was subsequently dropped. The safeguarding officer concluded he had made hurtful comments about Islam and that the child had been subject to emotional harm.
Lord Young, the director of the Free Speech Union, said on Monday: “This teacher lost his job and almost ended up being barred from the profession for life just because he pointed out to a class of Muslim schoolchildren that the national religion of England is Anglicanism. Things have reached a pretty pass in this country if a teacher can be branded a safeguarding risk because he says something that’s incontestably true. ”
Three children made written complaints against the teacher. Nine people examined them, including the local safeguarding officer, a detective sergeant from the child abuse investigation team, two social workers, an HR adviser and the school’s headteacher. The children claimed they were upset and scared by the teacher’s outburst and that he had shouted at them.
The teacher was sacked in February after almost three years working at the school. He argued that his summary dismissal for gross misconduct was unfair and that a teaching assistant had raised no concerns during the lecture delivered to the class about Britain being a Christian state.
The Free Speech union has compiled a dossier of more than a dozen cases in which it claims adults working with children were referred to child safeguarding boards for expressing Right-wing views.
 Jamie Michael, who served with the Royal Marines in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, had been banned as a football youth coach in the Rhondda Valley for an online post after the murders of three children in Southport in the summer of 2024. Mr Michael was charged with inciting racial hatred but cleared by a jury in 17 minutes. Following his acquittal, the local safeguarding board banned him from working with children. He is suing the board and the Football Association of Wales for £25,000 in damages.
How has Britain arrived at a place where disobedient children can have their teacher sacked for telling them the truth? That a "safeguarding board" - an extra-legal body, can deprive a teacher and a football coach of their livelihoods, and deprive their pupils of contact with anyone who does not mouth Muslim orthodoxy? I thought that safeguarding boards were designed to protect children from paedophiles. It seems they have been highjacked into upholding religious intolerance and ignorance. David Lammy's intention to remove jury trials in the majority of offence categories would remove this distressing tendency of juries to acquit defendants on the basis of common sense, defying the government's preferred policy of pandering to religious bigots.

I was curious about this foot-washing ritual - which seems to be ubiquitous amongst the Abrahamic religions - Jews, Muslims and Christians all go in for it, although Christians, sensibly, have more or less completely given it up. It stems from the fact that, if you run around barefoot or in flip-flops, you'll get dirty feet, and you can't present yourself to god with dirty feet. Muslims wash their feet  before prayer, in a process called wudu, not having adapted to the whole wearing socks and shoes thing.
Wudu involves washing specific parts of the body, including the hands, mouth, face, arms, head, and feet. Not the bits that might need it more - like oxters, bum-holes and dangly bits. Wudu is performed before each of the five daily prayers because the Prophet Muhammad told them to: "O you who believe! When you prepare for prayer, wash your faces and your hands (and arms) to the elbows; rub your heads and wash your feet to the ankles" (Quran 5:6). 

One of the many disturbing things about the story of the teacher and the dirty little bastards who put their feet into the wash hand basins at school, despite attending a secular state school that forbad the practice, is the utter indoctrination of said dirty little bastards. You'll remember that Aristotle and St Ignatius Loyola said ‘Give me a child till he’s seven, and I will show you the man’.  Adolf Hitler agreed with them,  stating, less punchily: "He alone who owns the youth, gains the future". The kids with their feet in the sinks were year six - which probably means they were ten or eleven, unless, of course, they were Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children in which dental records might reveal them to be any age up to 25. 
No question of these devout little bastards questioning the strictures of their 7th century desert religion. No question of peer-pressure in an English secular state school exerting compliance with a cheerful atheistic aesthetic. I was speaking fluent English with a Yorkshire accent by that age, my mother tongue having been tucked away in the dusty recesses of memory. I'd also stopped believing in Santa Claus. mr ishmael had two languages - street Brummy for school and Belfast for home. But these feet-washing, complaining child-Muslims seem to have avoided entirely the pressures to conform to the prevailing norm that turned mr ishmael and I, both the children of immigrants, into proper little English kids. Bugger-all chance of integration, then. 

Despite the wudu requirements of bodily cleanliness, there was no mention of washing the penis before forcing it into the mouth of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. Just after 9pm on the 10th May this year,  the girl was separated from her friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He took her into the dark park in order to sexually assault her, then phoned his friend, Israr Niazal, to request his assistance in raping her. 
 They forced the girl to perform oral sex on them and raped her. 
The girl recorded it on her mobile phone. ‘Let me go....you are going to rape me’, she said and screamed until Jahanzeb gagged her with  his hand. The video she recorded is so disturbing that Niazal’s barrister said ‘it is horrific footage, genuinely horrific footage’ and that ‘I have no doubt that if the general public were exposed to that, we would have disorder on our hands’. They were sentenced at Warwick Crown Court this week – ten years and eight months for Jahanzeb, nine years and ten months for Niazal. This will not separate them from the malign influences of their 7th century religion, because Britain's prison inmates, as of March 2014, are 18.2% Muslim, with London prison inmates topping 27%. With the UK Muslim population sitting around 5%, this means that either Muslims are more criminal than you'd expect, or that there is a lot of institutional anti-Muslimism. I don't believe that, by the way - nobody would dare. The third alternative is that there are forcible conversions to Islam happening in Britain's gaols.
It is easy to get carried away on an anti-Muslim rant, because young Jahanzeb and Niazal are not solitary examples - there are many more - Croydon Magistrates’ Court on 8th December sentenced Iraqi asylum seeker Hawre Mohamed to eight months in prison for sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman at Horley railway station on 22nd September; in November Warwick Crown Court, Ahmad Mulakhil, an Afghan, pleaded guilty to raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton; on 13th  November, Amin Abedi Mofrat, an Iranian asylum seeker, was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for the rape of a 15-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford; and on 1st November Eid Anwar Fathi Najjar, an illegal migrant from Egypt, pleaded guilty to raping  a woman in an alleyway after abducting her from a York nightclub.
Has it occurred to anyone else that the reason these truly dreadful men are seeking asylum in Britain is that their own countries are persecuting them for very good reason? And they should be made to take them back, using robust Trumpian methodology.

I'm with the Unnamed Teacher - Britain is a Christian country, Christianity is the Established Church of England, Islam is a minority religion. And if you don't like it, there's several Islamic countries down the road where you might feel more comfortable...France, for example.

Here's a balanced, thoughtful piece by mr ishmael on these ishoos:

Pluralism, the New Inquisition: 12th December 2015

On 8 July 2014, Dame Justice Butler-Sloss was appointed chair of an inquiry into historic child sex abuse. She lasted 6 days before her suitability was questioned because her brother was the Attorney General at the time of some of the abuses in question and her perceived unwillingness to include mention of former Anglican bishop Peter Ball.

Even Tracey May had to dump her from the Full and Far-reaching Cover-up into Westminster Beasting, too bent even for the Home Office, too close to her own corruption for it to trouble her nostrils.

 Now, the old buzzard has launched a disestablishing attack on Britain as a Christian state. It isn't, she says. Or it shouldn't be. Why not?  Well, basically because she says so, and because few people go to church; statistics about church attendance serving to neutralise almost two thousand years of  history. More people go to the mosque than to the parish church, therefore we are no longer a Christian country and the very idea that we are needs to be eradicated. By positive discrimination.

 Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Beard, too, has decided that we are no longer a Christian country.  
Rowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth (born 14 June 1950), is a Welsh Anglican bishop, theologian and poet, who served as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012.

  Beardy, the most showily thoughtful of recent Canterburys, has now resolved that C. of E. primary schools must be outlawed, that King Brian must crown-ed be by Hindi and Muslim and Jewish clergypersons.  
Beardy, wedded for life to the glaring preposterous contradiction that is ecumenism, serves none of the Abrahamic religions and betrays them all with his limp homogeneity, speed-blending Imam and Rabbi and Vicar in some pseudo-spiritual NutriBullet, producing a universal person of Faith, a GodlessHeathenBastard for all seasons.
 Despite, however, diluting to pointlessness the idea of Faith, he now wants imams and rabbis to sit in the House of Lords, presumably on the Vaguely Good benches, bringing fresh, mad superstitions to the already corrupt, unaccountable and anti-democratic place of organised crime, rotten beyond remedy, peopled with sneering degenerates.  Jesus'd fire a round of fucks into them, Beardy wants to make them a fully-representative, multi-faith LGBT knocking shop.

No matter what they say, though, the commentators,
almost everything about us is Christian in its impetus, the welfare state is a Christian Socialist idea, rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, the secular pluralists, therefore, face a paradox: the egalitarianism via which they seek to cripple tradition springs from that tradition, is its creature and the secular pluralist no more owns Freedom than do the clergy own Christianity. We all own them, Freedom and Christianity;  they are not in the gift of some bilious old lawyer, some wretched, snivelling archbishop.

How came we here, a place where we are taught to deride who we are and instead elevate some ragbag of meaningless, aspirational, inclusive, pluralist isms? How is it that somewhere along Ruin's dark highway it was decided, without debate, that the very thing which attracts foreigners to Britain - its Britishness -  must be decried, degraded  and abolished and that those who still suffer from Britishness must be cured of it, must become healthily, sneeringly secular, which means, as far as can be deduced, that anything goes:  same-sex marriage; religious cruelty to animals, the explicit or implicit suppression of women and children by religious patriarchs; the refusal of even senior health service professionals to learn English; the sprouting of alien places of contrary, hostile and violent worship; the farming of young British girls by alien men and the multiple bogus claiming of welfare benefits and the utterly fatuous proclamation that any number of people may come and live here, without even let or hindrance, just because it's kind-of right.

  The detestable, money-grubbing bandits of the race relations industry have long since diversified into a multiplicity of shouty, blaming enterprises, damning the rest of us for our every waking decision, inventing caricatures of dysthinking and dysfeeling, we are deniers of this or that, phobists of the other, they upend traditional, modest self-restraint and bawl abuse at those who see cock-waving as immodest and improper, who resist the idea of family as purchasable commodity and who refute the desirability or possibility of trans-genderisation - butchering and inverting a man's penis does not him a her make - creating a lunatic, hyper-ethical, witch-hunting climate wherein, so long as they say the right words, mouth the right clichés, the sharp operators, like Volkswagen, by pressing the right judgemental jargon buttons can delude us, extort from us and fuck the entire planet at the same time.  Merely by paying lip service to the blame-babble of poorly educated lobbyists for Grievance and Pluralism and Renewables the very ground - spiritual, educational and geo-fucking-logical - can be ripped from beneath us. Screeching, spiteful queens or rapacious energy carpetbaggers, they want to frack everybody, everybody's beliefs, everybody's values and they have devised the language by which to accomplish Ruin. Pluralism, this negligent, unsustainable, thoughtless and facetious doctrine is voiced not only cynically and opportunistically by the predator but also as though 'twere a wedding vow, by the empty-headed. 

 It is not the Christianity of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to which we must cling but that of Saint Patrick, of the Venerable Bede, of Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, of Celt and Saxon and Norman, of those piously practical men who accidentally brought us poetry, history, order, law and the idea of our improvability.  

For the greatest part of our history, our lives were measured by the hours and days of Christian worship, by Feast days and Holy days;  for that greatest part, the Church, Roman and Anglican, created and guarded our record of ourselves, teaching and nursing us, praising and judging us; only in the Renaissance did Knowledge escape the cloister, never to be recaptured; our New Worlds were conquered with the sword and the Bible, our marital beds o'erseen from vestry and confessional; our disputes were adjudicated by abbot and bishop; our sins were forgiven, our souls bought speedy Rest by masses sung in chantries; our universities were staffed by sky pilot scholars; for the longest time the church owned Time itself, ringing bells by sundial or by guesswork, eventually owning the very first clocks and ordering our days to the minute; it owned our souls, it owned the Word and it owned the measurement and apportionment of Time.

For some time, now, though, we have practised a refined Christianity, an informal credo, undiminished, really, by our reluctance to attend formal worship - our rights and wrongs are hall-marked by it; our tolerance of Otherness, our longing for fair treatment for all; our burgeoning wonder at the Creation; these precepts are not owned by  the cheeky bastards at Stonewall, by the Green parties, by laughably unethical corporations and rotten, thievingbastard political filthsters. Restraint, respect, neighbourliness and awe, this shit comes straight from the New Testament.

We are Christian as the night follows the day, a time may come when these islands are something else, its people most likely speaking Mandarin, when Christianity is as relevant as Druidism. That time is not now. 

 This is a Christian country, it is not the case that we grow more Muslim, on the contrary, more Muslims will adopt Christian ways  than will Christians start praying to Mecca, that is axiomatic, for this is a Christian country, in language, history, law, politics, art, philosophy, architecture, idiom and custom.  It is arguable that in architecture the influence of Christianity has lessened but in the others it remains embedded, irremovable.

 Unless we launch a cultural revolution, burning everything written  from the time of Bede's Ecclesiastical Histories
 and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles up until the present day then Christianity is in every word which we read, whether we go to church or not. 

Unless we repeal every law passed for a thousand years, we remain a Christian jurisdiction. Unless we erase every note of music, from Byrd's Mass for Four Voices up to, say, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, then ours remains a Christian music.  Unless we demolish the cathedrals and churches and chapels and abbeys and monasteries - and do it far more ruthlessly than did Henry Tudor the Eighth - and bulldoze the graveyards and the war memorials and the village and market crosses, and raze to the ground the courts and the palaces and the universities, unless, in short, we nuke the whole country, then it remains demonstrably Christian.
That's near enough for jazz.

How do we, then, resist those, the pluralists, like Butler Sloss, who would tell us, sniffily, that day is night, black is white, two'n'two make five?

Be not deceived, Rowan, my man; 
God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, 
that also shall he reap.

More Pineapple News - August 2014

The fucking Muslims are kicking off, offended, yet again, by Western insensitivity to their charming Abrahamic religion.  Malaysians are choking on their Halalgoatburgers because the Commonwealth Games' opening ceremony featured a forty-strong pack of Scots terriers.  Some, it seems, in Malaysia, land of the falling aircraft, so disapprove of dogs that they want, and I am not kidding, to declare a Jihad on blokes like my little warm brown friend, Harris, a fucking Jihad, on dogs.  Living in jungleland, as they do, I can understand Malaysians wanting a jihad on, say, scorpions or cobras but not on little dogblokes. I don't know how long we can go  on importing tinned pineapple rings and pieces and juice from people like that, fucking lunatics.

Dogs are unclean, shout Malaysian muslim politicos.  I daresay they are a bit but Harris, for instance, gets regular baths and brushings, as do, I am sure, the vast majority of canine companion animals of which, mr cheekybastard muslim should be aware, forty per cent of households  have at least one.  That's a lot of tins of pineapple to be boycotted.

If he wants to see unclean Mohamud should take a walk down the Stratford Road in Birmingham and glance at the filthy produce displayed on the pavement close to passing exhaust pipes and dirty footwear, or perhaps take a peek in the ghastly but Islamo-sensitive halal butchershops; those places are really unclean.

 From the Filth-o-Graph:
Mohamad Sabu, the deputy president of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party said: "Malaysia and all Islamic countries deserve an apology from the organiser. This is just so disrespectful to Malaysia and Muslims – especially as it happened during Ramadan. Muslims are not allowed to touch dogs, so the organiser should have been more aware and sensitive on this issue. It is hoped this incident can teach other Western countries to be more respectful in the future."

Dato Ibrahim Bin Ali, a far-Right politician, former MP and founder and president of Malay supremacist group Perkasa also called for an apology.
"I think it is unbecoming. The hosts have not been sensitive enough – especially in a so-called knowledgeable and civilised society like Britain," he said. "It is shameful and has offended not only Malaysia as a Muslim country, but Muslims around the world."

And in a display of the sensitivity for which this silly cunt screeches let me assure him and his brethren that if I ever hear anyone calling for a Jihad on dogs, or anything like it, I will punch their fucking teeth out.

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

 
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 last, 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.

Christmas is coming. Christmas. The clue is in the first syllable.


Sunday, 7 December 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 07/12/2025

 Scotland is very worried because it has the flu. Not quite the usual flu, but a mutated variant of the H3N2 virus, which is known for causing more severe illness, particularly among older adults. The situation has led to restrictions on visiting hospital wards, returning to wearing face masks, hand washing and urging the public to have the vaccination. Public Health Scotland reported that in the week of 24-30 November, lab-confirmed cases rose to 1,759 compared with 845 the previous week. Hospital admissions as a result of the illness also rose by 70%, from 426 to 724.
This is Neil Charles Gray (born 16 March 1986), Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he has been the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Airdrie & Shotts since 2021. Interviewed on the Scottish politics shows this morning, he was suitably lugubrious, given his "you will all die" message, but warmed up when the interviewer mentioned Scotland's summer of sport, becoming very excited indeed. "I'm very excited" he said. 
It seems that Scotland, contrary to past performance, has won some football matches. Now, you know that I don't do football, at all, especially Scottish football, where the boisterous booziness of the fans outclasses the tedium on the pitch, but Scotland's World Cup 2026 certainly excites Neil Gray: Scotland will play Haiti, Morocco, and Brazil in the World Cup group stage, in Boston and Miami, kicking off on June 13, 2026, and concluding on June 24, 2026. 
Then there's the Commonwealth Games, being held in Glasgow from July 23 to August 2, 2026, with 74 nations and territories competing in 10 sports and six Para sports including Para Powerlifting. 
Can't wait.

Not least is the inaugural Nations Championship, with  Scotland competing against Argentina, South Africa, and Fiji in July 2026, and culminating with matches against New Zealand, Australia, and Japan in November 2026. 
Yum.
Never mind the bloody flu, eh? 
The oaf, Gray, is an Orkney lad, born and brought up here and educated at Kirkwall Grammar School. Please don't run away with the idea that the name "Grammar School" is an indicator of excellence, it is simply the state secondary school attended by children living in one half of Orkney and the isles. Stromness Academy takes the rest of the kids. "Academy", equally, is meaningless. Following Kirkwall Grammar, the oaf Gray went on to gain a B.A. in Politics and Journalism from Stirling University. He was selected to stand as the SNP candidate in Airdrie and Schotts, amid the usual SNP nonsense - one chap, SNP Councillor Alan Beveridge, resigned from the party in February 2015 after Neil Gray was selected, claiming that there was a "climate of fear, intimidation and false allegations within the party". Sounds about right for the SNP. Just as a sidebar, a degree in Scotland takes four years to achieve, the vaunted Scottish Highers being in no way equivalent in length or academic calibre to A levels, so the first year of degree studies covers A level ground. It's ok, though, Scottish tuition is free, on account of Scotland being progressive and its broad-shouldered citizens bearing higher tax burdens than in England, thusly: 
the basic rate is 19% levied on incomes up to £27,850; 
20% on income between £27,851 and £43,662 and 
41% on income between £43,663 and £150,000.  
Should you be lucky and broad-shouldered enough to earn over  £150,000, you will be taxed at 46%. 
Honest, not invent. 
Back to keen athlete, the Oaf Gray, (he buggered his knee running in the 400 metres). In November 2024, he used his official ministerial car to be chauffeured to watch four Aberdeen F.C. football matches. Gray registered the events as official government visits, on account of being Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy at the time. In a statement to the Scottish Parliament, he also admitted using an official car to attend five Scotland matches, saying all the engagements were "official ministerial business" and that summaries were available for all of the meetings, but apologised for not attending "a wider range of games", and for creating the impression that he was acting "more as a fan and less as a minister". The Scottish Conservatives accused Gray of having a "jolly to watch the football" at the expense of the taxpayer and called for the costs to be refunded in full, while the Scottish Greens predictably criticised him not for misusing his ministerial perks, but for not using public transport. First Minister John Swinney (SNP) told journalists that he would not refer Gray for investigation under the ministerial code, and that he considered the matter closed. Not everyone was so satisfied, however, and in January 2025, a Freedom of Information request revealed that no note was produced of  Gray's meeting at the 2023 League Cup final at Hampden Park. Gray subsequently apologised to the Scottish Parliament for making a misleading statement. John Swinney re-iterated his support for Gray and insisted that the Health Secretary had made an "inadvertent error". In June 2025, it was revealed that in 2024 Gray had also used his official ministerial car to be chauffeured to a pub before an Aberdeen F.C. match. The journeys were logged in the official ministerial register as trips to and from a "personal address, Aberdeen". These entries were amended after an investigation by the Scottish Daily Mail showed that no evidence of such an address could be found. Officials acknowledged that Gray had no home address in Aberdeen; the Scottish Government insisted there had been an "administration error", and the First Minister John Swinney said, "The ministerial car was used in accordance with the rules that have been set out within the guidance on this occasion. And those rules that are clearly and publicly advertised have been followed on this occasion."
So that's alright, then. Nothing to see here, move along, business as usual for the SNP. What did happen to that £600,000, by the way?
It hasn't done Gray's career any harm at all, of course, what with all that support by John Swinney.
Now Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Gray is responsible for handling Scotland's response to the flu epidemic, god help us. His interviewer this morning on the  politics show had a little dig - "Minister, it is well known that you are a keen football fan" - like water off a duck's back, it was.
So why should our English readers care? Maybe because Scottish football fans attending matches in England in their uncounted hordes spread Covid, urged on by Gnasher.
When Scotland sneezes, England catches a cold.

It seems that The Punditry is never tired of repeatedly telling the nation that Covid Lockdown was a generation-defining catastrophe, that children are feral and teenagers unemployable because their schools closed, that mental illness seized the nation, that men and women forgot how to get it on and that the economy will never recover. I seem to have been in a different universe - my recollection is that lockdown really didn't last very long at all, and that being sent home from work with a laptop was a delightful interruption of the daily misery. The weather in May 2020 was fabulous and the sea sparkling blue as I took my state-sanctioned daily walk, and I spoke to neighbours I'd never even noticed before, (socially distanced, of course), as we passed while walking. 
This construction of a false narrative, that by repetition becomes the new history, has been perfected by the Labour Party, who told us, with appropriate gravitas, all about the Conservative Black Hole.
You may have already come across the following - if not, enjoy:

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster, at 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.
We'll tax that, too.


And that - nice country residence.


Sunday, 30 November 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 30/11/2025

 The rabble cheered, waved their order papers and congratulated themselves on forcing the Chancellor to bend to their will. The House was in uproar and had to be quelled on several occasions by tiny Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani, who had turned up as a railway ticket inspector, under the impression she was attending a fancy dress party.
Chancellor Smug sat down to the customary good patting administered on these occasions. 
Smugness and self-congratulation were rapidly beaten out of her by Kemi Badenoch, who delivered a swift rub-down with a housebrick with aplomb, perfect vowels and sisterly bitchiness, speaking woman to woman. The rinsing was so thorough I almost but not quite felt sorry for the Chancellor, with her stumbling, nasty north London diction.
In went Kemi, with her pit boots on: You're an Arse, aren't you, Chancellor?  An unmitigated horse's arse of an Arse? Yes? The House agrees that sitting opposite me is an Arse. An unprincipled, spiteful, cowardly, Arse, being wagged by Labour's backbenchers. An Arse with a deep loathing of the middle class. An Arse brownly blowing its own trumpet. An Arse with a Chip on its shoulder so deep it descends into its own arse crack. A sixth-form politics Arse waving its own poverty-stricken childhood in lieu of its over-exaggerated  Curriculum Vitae. You never were an economist at the Bank of England, were you, Arse-Woman, you never were an economist at HBOS - you ran a small administrative complaints department, sitting on your arse. You were unemployed for a year before getting elected. Aren't you a horse's lying arse of an Arse?"
Well, actually, she didn't say any of that, more's the pity.
She did rip her a new arsehole, though, saying: "People out there aren't complaining because she's female, they're complaining because she is utterly incompetent. This Budget could have saved £47billion including £23billion from welfare. She could have abolished stamp duty on homes to get the housing market moving, abolished business rates on shops to breathe life into our High Streets. She should be on the side of people who get up and go to work, people who take a risk to start a company, people working all hours to keep their business afloat, she should be on the side of the farmer trying to hand something over to the next generation, the investor deciding whether to spend their money in the UK or elsewhere."
Kemi. My hero.
It hurt. When, out of a spirit of pure mischief, the BBC invited both Rachel Reeves and Kemi Badenoch onto their Sunday morning politics show, 
Kemi looked at Rachel with amusement, while Rachel from Accounts looked anywhere but at her. She complained that she had been made 'uncomfortable' by the Opposition Leader's brutal attacks on the Budget in the Commons, and whined that she doesn't make personal attacks on people and she didn't like it. To which Kemi robustly said: 'my job is to hold the Government to account, not to provide emotional support for the Chancellor'.

I must admit I have skin in this particular game. I had hoped for a little something to stimulate the housing market, as I nourish a small ambition to downsize. Cancellation, or, at least, reduction,  in stamp duty, would, like a Prune and Laxido Smoothie, get things moving again, free up big houses so middling house owners can move up, sell their little houses to aspirant home owners, create work for estate agents, lawyers, removal firms, carpet manufacturers and layers, paint and wallpaper retailers and decorators, new kitchen and bathroom manufacturers and installers, curtain and blind makers and all the rest of them. Overseas readers will be astonished to learn that, in addition to having to find a deposit of 10% of the purchase price, a mortgage at 4.5% interest which will beggar you unto death and beyond, the British house buyer has to pay a tax on the purchase price of the house, currently sitting at £15,500 on a £510,000 house or £41,000 if you are buying it as a second home. That's going to make you sit and have a little think. No wonder Big Ange Rayner did that soft shoe shuffle to claim she was not buying her Brighton flat as a second home. Maybe that small debacle which lost the Ginger Growler her Cabinet position is the reason Rachel from Accounts felt unable to stir up that particular hornet's nest again.
Instead, of course, she bowed to the pressure of the anti-welfare cuts back benchers and delivered a true tax and spend traditional Labour budget. 
The most controversial aspect has been the removal of the two-child cap on benefits payments. For our overseas readers and those who prefer not to pay attention, in Britain, if you are unemployed, or are employed but on low wages, the state will step in and give you a welfare payment called Universal Credit. This benefit is intended to keep the wolf from the door by a calculation based on a standard allowance with additional elements for specific circumstances, and deductions based on income. These circumstances include an additional amount for each child you have, up to a limit of two children. The total Universal Credit amount is reduced based on your income. For every £1 you earn over your work allowance, your Universal Credit is reduced by 55p. 
If you had three, four or more children, you wouldn't get any more income. Universal Credit, and its predecessor benefits, was never intended to provide  a disincentive to seeking work by providing more than the minimal income. It is a massive indictment of Britain that wages are so low that the state has to step in, with my money, to top them up. Now that Rachel has removed the two-child cap, she has removed any lingering disincentive for poor parents to have large families.
You may think that this is a good thing, given that  the UK’s fertility rate is currently around 1.5–1.6 children per woman, well below the replacement level of 2.1. This means that, without immigration, the population would gradually shrink and age. So, paying people to breed seems a sensible move forward. Not so, in class-ridden Britain, where Universal Credit claimants are regarded as the wrong sort of people. We don't want any more of those sort of people. We'd rather import religious nutjobs from mediaeval desert cultures than encourage Britain's poor to bang out more kids. There'll be none of that "Have one for the nation, madam". France, Hungary, and Nordic countries all provide generous child allowances, subsidised childcare, and tax breaks to support families, but in Britain  direct financial incentives have been politically problematic. The two‑child cap was framed as preventing “welfare dependency,” while its removal is now being criticised by some as “rewarding breeding.”  There’s a persistent stigma around benefit claimants, with critics suggesting that state support encourages “undesirable” fertility. When someone talks about “perverse incentives” they really are wanting to restrict breeding to those seen as a “desirable” parent. Are you getting a faint whiff of eugenics, here? 
Rachel from Accounts is sticking to her script that she is lifting 500,000 children out of poverty, which is nonsense, of course. Poverty at the bottom line is certainly about enough food to eat, clothes to keep you warm and modest, a roof over your head. You know, like in Africa, where we've been sending charitable funding - "international aid" for all of my life, with no discernible positive outcome. The black babies still have flies in their eyes, distended abdomens and have to walk miles for a drink of dirty water - or so the charity bandits tell us, with heart-breaking pictures that I swear blind are recycled.
Poverty in Britain is defined thusly: Relative poverty refers to people living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year, while Absolute poverty refers to people living in households with income below 60% of median income in a base year, usually 2010/11. This measurement is adjusted for inflation. (source: House of Commons Library)
But, despite this dry definition, the word poverty is bandied about by Rachel Reeves as a signifier of being a good person, a civilised person, intended to conjure images in the listener of those babies with flies in their eyes etc. 
God knows, during my professional career, I have been in enough miserable homes, where the dogs' excrement is uncleared, the semi-clad toddlers crawl on sticky floors, the walls are damp and mouldy, the kitchen is filthy, the bin overflowing.....but this is not the result of cash poverty. It is a consequence of poverty of aspiration, exclusion, the breakdown of neighbourliness, ignorance, illiteracy, addiction, the absence of fathers from the home, the breakdown of the extended family, the death of religion, just not knowing how to do things better, how to live better than this. Giving parents more money is throwing a fig leaf over Britain's endemic problems that actually require a lot more money than Reeves is proposing, to the cheers of her party and the contempt of our Kemi.
As for taxing the property-rich; I'll refer you to the magnificent John Steinbeck in his book Travels with Charley
"The concept of real property is deeply implanted in us as the source and symbol of wealth. And now a vast number of people have found a way to bypass it...It is obvious that within a very short time a whole new method of taxation will have to be devised, else the burden on real estate will be so great that no-one will be able to afford it; far from being a source of profit, ownership will be a penalty, and this will be the apex of a pyramid of paradoxes. The pressure comes from our biologic success as a species. We have overcome all enemies but ourselves."
................................................................
Emergency First Aid Tip:
Onions can help with ear infections due to their antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. On being stricken with an ear infection, slice an onion in half, boil or microwave to soften it, allow it to cool until warm, wrap in a cloth and apply to the ear. Then try to get an appointment to see your doctor. 

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster, at 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.

Let's tax it!



Sunday, 23 November 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 23/11/2025

 I'll confess that I was a bit dim as a child. The neighbourhood kids who took me out were older than me and infinitely more sophisticated. Autumn and winter were prime begging season, despite the bitter Yorkshire cold and the agony of chapped bare legs inside Wellingtons: In November there was Penny For the Guy, then December had us stumbling through  Give Me Some Figgy Pudding and We Won't Go till We've Got Some. We didn't actually want Figgy Pudding. No-one wants Figgy Pudding. There's always left-overs of Figgy Pudding after the Christmas Feast. Jamie Oliver has this recipe which involves spreading old figgy pudding, left over mince pies, grated apples and chopped dark chocolate over filo pastry, rolling it up, brushing it with egg wash, baking it and serving it up with custard. Prior, no doubt, to heaving it into the bin.
Ma mère, not being native here nor to the manor born, was not keen, but, after I earnestly explained about Guy Fawkes, Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus, she let me go with the older kids. I believed all three were gods. A sort of Winter Trinity. When I was taken to Lewis's in Leeds to visit Santa Claus I was absolutely terrified, especially when invited to sit on the god's knee and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. (It was a train set. I had in mind a miniature railway with platforms and villages that I could set up in the garden. We had a big garden. After all, why wouldn't a god be able to give me such a thing of wonder? And he had asked. I got a model railway - but it was a little thing, with a circular track.)
Probably worth a fortune if I had it now.
 I digress. Back on track now (see what I did there?).
Of the Trinity of Guy Fawkes, Santa Claus and The Baby Jesus, it turned out that only one was real. The terrorist who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, complete with legislature. Remember, remember, the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot. We have not forgot. Still burn the poor man in effigy, he who had avoided the vicious sentence of execution of being hung, drawn and quartered by jumping off the scaffolding in order to break his neck before they got down to the disembowelling bit.
Anyway, the world not being confusing enough, we still tell lies to children, presumably in order to set them up with the requisite degree of gullibility for adult life.
One who has made a living by exploiting gullibility is Zack Polanski, the Leader of the Green Party in England and in Wales (in Scotland we have our own nutters).
Zack reclaimed his surname from his family's efforts to avoid anti-Semitism by changing their surname to Paulden after escaping to England in the early twentieth century from Europe. He didn't like his first name, either, despite sharing it with King David of biblical fame, deciding that Zack was just more Jewish. Polanski worked with the theatre company DifferencENGINE as an immersive theatre actor, including appearances in The Hollow Hotel and The People's Revolt (in the Tower of London). He taught at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts and the National Centre for Circus Arts. Polanski sang for the London International Gospel Choir. He also worked as a hypnotherapist. Pretty cool guy, you might say, taking in the almost-beard and the gap-toothed grin. Unfortunately, his fancy led him into politics. Initially attracted to the Lib Dems, he put his name forward in the Richmond Park by-election held in December 2016 but the selection list was restricted to local residents. According to Private Eye, Polanski was dismayed at the decision and requested the decision be reviewed, feeling that the party was not interested in what he could contribute as a "gay Jewish renter".  I think he meant home renter, not rent-boy renter. So off he hopped to the Greens, where he has done very well - on 2 September 2025, Polanski was elected as leader of the Green Party in a landslide, with 85% of the vote share. 
The problem is that Polanski is simply not a serious politician. Are any of them? Aren't they all just careerist chancers? Aye, right, but Polanski may well understand stage craft, know what sells with the general public, be a fluent communicator and hypnotist, but he doesn't understand economics. Again, do any of them? Isn't it all made up nonsense? Well, to an extent, but this man, setting out his economic stall on the Laura Kuenssberg politics show this morning, has all the hallmarks of a man who has set himself to believe six impossible Green mantra things before breakfast and is going to tell the world about them, however divorced from reality are his economic plans around borrowing, investment, bond markets, and challenging the economic status quo. Zack tells us that inequality is the biggest crisis Britain faces, it is causing a divided and unstable society and Britain needs an alternative economic paradigm. He wants a wealth tax not to reduce borrowing to fund the undertakings of the state, but to reduce inequality and stop billionaires from hoarding assets. He thinks borrowing more is a good idea - borrowing money into existence - (where have we heard that before) and is ok because we'd be borrowing from the Bank of England, which we own. Jeremy Hunt, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Andy Haldane, former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, looked on, aghast.
Our Zack makes Rachel from Accounts look like a safe pair of hands. I'm eagerly awaiting her budget on Wednesday.
The train shudders, a carriage of damp coats and muttered sighs,
Santa lumbers in with a sack of toys and mince pies,
Zack Polanski waves leaflets like semaphore for the just,
And Guy Fawkes sits glowering, smelling of sulphur, muttering “Powder or bust.”

The train rattles through drizzle, its tannoy announcing delays with the cheer of a funeral bell. Three unlikely passengers share a compartment:
Zack Polanski, Green Party deputy leader, clutching a reusable coffee cup.
Guy Fawkes, smelling faintly of gunpowder and damp cellars. 
Santa Claus, chubbily cheery.

Santa: “Ho ho ho! Free gifts for all, though the elves are striking over pension reform.”
Polanski: “Solidarity with the elves. But perhaps we should electrify the sleigh, cut emissions, and pay them fairly.”
Fawkes: “Bah. I say burn the sleigh, burn the triple lock, burn the timetable. Only fire wakes the nation.”
Santa: “But if you burn the timetable, how will children know when I arrive?”
Polanski: “We’ll publish a transparent schedule, with community oversight. And fewer plastic toys.”
Fawkes: “Plastic toys? I wanted barrels of powder.”
Santa: “Powdered sugar, surely. For the gingerbread.”

The train lurches. A commuter drops his newspaper, headline screaming about wealth taxes.

Polanski picks it up: “See, we need systemic change. Not just fireworks.”
Fawkes mutters: “Systemic change tastes better with sparks.”
Santa offers a mince pie: “Gentlemen, perhaps revolution can be sweetened. The economy’s simple — give gifts, spread cheer, and hope the elves don’t strike before Christmas.”
Polanski (earnest): “Santa, that’s charming, but we need systemic fairness. Elf pensions, sleigh electrification, and a green industrial strategy. The economy must serve people and planet, not just stockings.”
Fawkes (snarling): “Stockings? Pensions? You patch a corpse with slogans. I sought to blow the chamber sky-high, not balance its books. The economy is corruption in coin form — it deserves fire.”
Polanski looks hard at Santa - "You must be a billionaire. All those toys. A mansion at the North Pole."
Santa, smugly replies: " Ho, ho, ho. You'll not tax me, lad, I don't live in your jurisdiction. And if I did, I would move out of Britain sharpish."
Polanski: "If you don't want to pay your tax, good riddance to you. And to your polluting reindeer.  Tax the billionaires, invest in renewables, and stop pretending mince pies are fiscal policy."

Things are looking uncomfortable when the tannoy announces: “Passengers for Compromise Halt, please alight.”
Santa and Polanski shuffle off, still quarrelling about electrified sleighs, cutting reindeer poop emissions and elf pensions.

Fawkes remains seated, staring at the tunnel ahead, whispering:
“Redistribution? I redistribute ash. Your reforms are lullabies for the complacent. I would light the fuse again — the economy is a powder keg, and Parliament its vault.”

Now the carriage is dim, rattling through drizzle. Only Guy Fawkes remains, rigid, eyes like flint, muttering about powder and corruption.
The lamp flickers. A hush falls. And then — impossibly — the Baby Jesus appears, swaddled, radiant, seated opposite him.

Fawkes (startled, then grim): “A child? Yet not just a child. You too were crushed for defiance. You too were a martyr.”
Jesus (quiet, piercing): “I was born into poverty. You sought to blow up the Chamber; I sought to overturn the Tables. Both of us faced power, and both of us were silenced.”
Fawkes (leaning forward): “Then you understand. The economy is corruption in coin form. It deserves fire.”
Jesus (firm, but gentle):“Just remember, remember - martyrdom worked well for both of us."

The train rattles on, carrying only two passengers: one with powder, one with parables.
They sit in uneasy alliance.
Outside, the stations blur past. Inside, the whisper is shared:
“The fuse is eternal. The economy itself is the powder keg. And the politicians ..... devils in disguise.”
So, as Britain doesn't have a blasphemy law, I've been able, with impunity, to introduce the Baby Jesus into my Learn Economics 101 with Zack Polanski and Santa Claus. (A fail grade will result in detonation by Professor Fawkes.)
Again, as Britain doesn't have a blasphemy law, you'll not be surprised to learn that Hamit Coskun's  conviction for a religiously aggravated public order offense for burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London has been overturned on appeal. He was found guilty by Westminster Magistrates’ Court and fined £240, with a £96 surcharge. The CPS used that catch all public order offense in lieu of a blasphemy law. We have a similar catch-all offence category of Breach of the Peace here in Scotland. One chap was found guilty of Breach of the Peace by dancing naked in his own house, to the offence of the lieges. Honest, not invent.
At sentencing, the Bench stated that while burning a religious book is offensive, it is not necessarily disorderly, but the timing and location of the act made it so. Mr Coskun, who had experienced a tough time with the religion of peace in Turkey, had also shouted "Fuck Islam" which the Bench found prejudicial towards Muslims. In support of how offensive it was to ordinary, peaceable Muslim citizens, 
Moussa Kadri, 59, pictured above with knife prior to attacking Mr Coskun, saw him setting alight the text and shouted "hang on a sec", before going home to collect the knife. Launching himself into the fray to protect his religion, as he put it, Kadri yelled: "I'm going to kill you" before slashing at Coskun with a knife. So excitable, these foreigners.  Kadri was sentenced to 20 weeks in prison for protecting his religion, suspended for 18 months.
So, all well and good. The nasty CPS who brought the non-blasphemy-law prosecution in the first place, were firmly put back in their box by Mr Justice Bennathon, sitting with two Justices of the Peace. In 15 closely-argued pages of remarks, summarising the law and case law, he overturned the original conviction. He stated: 

 "There is no offence of blasphemy in our law. Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.  
We live in a liberal democracy. One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so. The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us. "
I said you would not be surprised that this ridiculous conviction was overturned. What should surprise you, though - and which downright shocked me, is that the CPS has launched an appeal in the High Court against the acquittal of Hamit Coskun, no doubt with reckless disregard to the taxpayer's (that is, mine) money. The CPS just won't give up - they are determined to introduce a blasphemy law (but only in respect of Islam) through case law. Root and branch reform needed.
..........................................................................
There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster, at 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.