The Sunday Ishmael: 02/02/2025

 Yvette Wood, former Ice Pixie, now Home Secretary,

has caught the Starmerism. It seems to be horribly contagious. People who could previously speak English with a fair degree of inflection, animation and likeability, now speak from their noses with deadened affect, monotony edged with repetition, and, of course contempt. I noticed last week that Rachel Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, had succumbed. This week the Home Secretary revealed her estuary english for the benefit of Laura Kuenssberg on the Sunday politics show. Must be proximity to the Great Sir Keir Wood as they all scramble tonsils to Get the London Look. There are some people, abroad people, foreigners, like, who think that London is synonymous with Britain. And that at Christmas, it snows there. 

This is almost entirely an invention of Hollywood and snow machines.

You know, impossibly beautifully people, inappropriately dressed for the weather, licking fake snow from each other's bits. Or killing each other with extreme violence. 

Did you see Black Doves? Yes, I did, too. Maybe you can explain to me why it was that the assassin who had broken into Keira Knightley's house to do bad things, tamely walked into her garden shed to be shot because Keira didn't want to disturb her husband and children. If I was the assassin I would say go on then, shoot me in your kitchen, and by the way I'm going to scream very loudly unless you let me go now this minute and then you can explain to your husband, the Defence Secretary, that you are a secret undercover mercenary spy being run by Sarah Lancashire - her off Happy Valley - and  that you kick ass, run about in high heels and stay out all night covered in blood.

Sorry, got distracted. Back to the former Ice Pixie. My word, but she loves being called Home Secretary. She sort of purred when Laura addressed her as such. Maybe its because its been a long time in the coveting. Whew, got there in the end.  Back in 2013, mr ishmael told us this about her and her hubby Ed Balls:

Yvette Cooper
Job: Chief secretary to the Treasury
Salary: £141,866
Total second home claims
2004-05: £19,428
2005-06: £14,234
2006-07: £15,995
2007-08: £12,219
Ed Balls
Job: Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
Salary: £141,866
Total second home claims
2004-05: Not elected
2005-06: £13,618
2006-07: £15,979
2007-08: £12,219
At the time of the MPs expenses whitewash, these two cunts were also claiming £400 per month for food; Mrs Ice Pixie, the thieving fucking bastard, wants to be home secretary, whilst the fatman wants a full run - denied him by Alastair Darling - at being the banksters' friend. How dare they show their faces?

and on 4/01/2016:

 Leader of the Official MonsterRavingToryLabour party,  and commons' veteran, Mrs Ice-Pixie Balls, 

Shall I claim for lunch, doll, or shall you? 
I know, let's both claim.

said: in all my years of fiddling parliamentary expenses, flipping homes and betraying the core values of this great party, for which I have sacrificed so absolutely nothing,  I have never heard of Tories actually being in  my party, although they didn't actually need to be. Not with  us being more Tory than them.

Well, Balls didn't achieve his political ambitions - maybe his criminal record got in the way: he admitted using his mobile phone while driving during the 2010 general election campaign. In June 2013, he was fined for going through a red light. He admitted speeding in April 2013 and on 5 August 2014, he was fined £900 and given five penalty points for failing to stop after a car accident. He said he knew that the cars had touched, but did not stop to check. He now appears regularly on the telly as a genial, jovial presenter chappie on Good Morning Britain.

The expenses scandal didn't hold his lady wife back from achieving high office - well, it doesn't seem  to have done any of the troughing MPs any harm in the long run. mr ishmael wasn't exaggerating - if anything, he held back. Here's what they did, the honourable Balls-Cooper couple: In September 2007 it was revealed that they used MPs' allowances to help pay for a £655,000 home in north London. They bought a four-bedroom house in Stoke Newington, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire) to qualify for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance, of which they claimed £24,400. Both worked in London full-time and their children attended local London schools. Balls-Cooper claimed that "The whole family travel between their Yorkshire home and London each week when Parliament is sitting. As they are all in London during the week, their children have always attended the nearest school to their London house." Balls and Cooper "flipped" the designation of their second home three times within the space of two years. In June 2008, they were referred to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over allegations that they were claiming expenses for what was effectively their main home in London. 

Get the London Look.

D'you know, sometimes I cannot believe that the Prime Minister of Great Britain is Sir Keir Wood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is Rachel Wood and that the Home Secretary is Yvette Wood. Have we all slipped through some portal into a wholly improbable universe?

Right. 

Doing her best to impersonate a serious politician, Mrs. Yvette Balls, proud Londoner (she was born in Scotland, you know), tried to answer Laura Kuenssberg's questions about what she was doing as Home Secretary. I did nod off a bit, but the gist went like this: 

Laura: How are you going to keep our children safe from online child abuse?

Mrs Yvette: Its a moral question you know. There's an online safety bill.

Laura: But what will you do?

Miss Yvette: We will ask the platforms to take down inappropriate content. It is a moral question.

Laura: And what will you do if they don't?

Ms Yvette: How the fuck should I know? I'm only the pretend Home Secretary. Ask me something about flipping houses.

Laura: The Southport killer had the Al Quaeda training manual on his computer.

Mz Yvette: Well, that's bad. We're going to ask the bad people to stop doing bad things.

Panel: Boo, Hiss. We want a Special Department to catch bad people. Bad People don't care about moral questions. They care about profit. Take their money away. Have a Review. Stop the illegal migrants. Have another Review. 

The Panel were great. Fraser Nelson (he's from Scotland, you know), formerly editor of the Spectator, before he was given the heave-ho to allow

 Michael Gove (he's from Scotland, too) a job, was on it. There were also a White millionaire and a Black woman of colour. Neither of them was from Scotland, but Laura Kuenssberg certainly is.

Following Laura, Martin Geissler on his Sunday Politics show, told us that Scotland's NHS was given £618 million for health and social care. They didn't advertise this, but the Institute of Fiscal Studies discovered it. The SNP refused to appear on the show to admit they had this money and say what they would do with it, so Dr Sandesh Gulhane, a Conservative MSP and Doctor, appeared instead to tell us that the SNP would fritter it away, waiting lists wouldn't reduce, and there are too many managers and too many vacancies and that as fast as Scotland trains new doctors and nurses, they bugger off to England. Not just doctors and nurses, Sandesh - so far in today's post, we've noted that Yvette Cooper, Laura Kuenssberg, Fraser Nelson and Michael Gove are from Scotland. In the week we admired Tony Blair and Gordon Brown Memorialising Baron Punch Prescott. They are from Scotland too. In fact, there's very few people left in Scotland, as they've all gone to London to avoid the snow.

Does nobody care that the Russians have been cutting the undersea cables again? The Silver Dania, with a wholly Russian crew, was detained in Tromso and boarded by Norwegian police on Thursday. This is the second ship named by investigators as involved in cable cutting  - Finland separately seized a Russian-linked oil tanker after a cable connecting Finland and Estonia was cut. There has been a series of power and telecom cables damaged, but suspiciously little reporting of it in the British press. It is almost as if there has been a news embargo - no, surely not? 

NATO has deployed a small flotilla off the coast of Estonia to guard  undersea cables. The operation is called Baltic Sentry and the flotilla consists of  a Dutch frigate, a naval research ship, and a German minesweeper.  Commander Erik Kockx, the Belgian head of a mine countermeasures task force that is joining the Baltic Sentry, said the flotilla will only grow in the future. Could we ask nice President Trump to help? 

Well, there's your news round-up, ishmaelites. I don't have to mention the Oaf Andrew, because we're out of space.

Don't forget your copy of one of the four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. Or buy the set as a luxurious indulgence for yourself or as a gift for a broad-minded friend. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.  

You can buy the Quartet 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.