The Sunday Ishmael: 12/10/2025

 

I hope that Monday goes well and that the remaining 48 hostages are released in the deal brokered by President Trump. It is thought that 20 are still alive - I hope more have survived their ordeal. Israel has announced the names of the 250 Hamas/Palestinian prisoners, most of them convicted murderers, that it will release in exchange. 

The friends and comforters of Palestine are strangely not delighted by this ceasefire and the release of hostages, the taking of which was, after all, the casus belli of this latest round in the never-ending Middle East war.

The protests on Saturday were, it seems, worse than usual, with tens of thousands of pro-Palestinians converging on London for an extra-special intimidation event, chanting their racist slogans, calling for the murder of Jews in Israel and wherever they may be found, in obedience to the hadith of Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “The Hour will not begin until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until a Jew hides behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will say: O Muslim, O slave of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Except the gharqad (a thorny tree), for it is one of the trees of the Jews.” 

Jeremy Corbyn was there. I really do have poor political judgement. (At last! We know - ed.) When Corbyn got the top job in the Labour Party, I genuinely thought it marked a return to politics, that Labour could return to being a socialist party, that those who denounced his anti-semitism were just spiteful. That's one thing we can be grateful to Starmer for - despite his spreading creamed sweetcorn everywhere he goes, he did cleanse the old stables of anti-semitism. Anyway, after his partisan espousal of the "Palestinian" cause, that's me and Corbyn done. And his new racist party. Which is not doing very well.

There was lots of tut-tutting on the politics shows this morning, politicians  distancing themselves from the anti-Jewish sentiment that stalked Saturday's streets. Anodyne Phillipson, wearing an unflattering red, white and blue outfit for her appearances, was absolutely clear -

no, really let me be absolutely clear, that the University protests  which she is, kind of, responsible for, being Education Secretary, are not on and they should just stop it. But the really important thing is that she is the continuity candidate for Angela Raynor's old job as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, on account of being Northern and a woman - a Northern Woman with an accent, even Northerner than Raynor - Gateshead, no less. And she deplores child poverty and wants to spend more of my money on big families.
Nadine Dories is even better value since she shook off the Conservatives to be embraced by Farage's Reform. She had fun slagging off both Conservatives and Labour for their failure over the last two years to do a single thing to release hostages and achieve a ceasefire, and she's now a Trumpian. The only thing that has made a difference to the Middle East, she declared, has been the election of Trump and his willingness to stop the war. She was also caustic about Starmer and his European chums rushing around setting up meetings and conferences, pretending that they had anything to do with the Trump Solution. You could say, actually, that Starmer, Macron and Co. had made things worse with their diplomatic recognition of the "State of Palestine". Just set up people's backs. Od's bodikins, I hope that Trump doesn't get bored and wander away from the Gaza Question, now that he's been denied his Nobel Peace Prize out of spite. Keep your eye on the prize, Mr. President, just think of all that ocean-front property and Trump Towers on Sea.

In Scottish Conference news, the Swine Swinney has been working his SNP faithful into a lather with his promise that if the SNP doesn't get 65 seats in the next Scottish elections (May next year), he's going to bugger off. Yeay! Result! Swinney the Spin reckons that the election will be all about Independence and that his 65 seats will give him a mandate to ask Westminster for another referendum. Westminster will, of course, say no. The next Scottish election should be about the abysmal Scottish health system, education failures, cost of living crisis, the highest level of drug deaths in Europe, the north/south divide, the disgraceful and possibly criminal management of SNP funds - but no, Swinney reckons Scotland needs its Independence, so it can surrender its Independence immediately and beg admission to Europe. Really. When Martin Geissler pointed out in his interview with the Swine that Europe wouldna' want Scotland, what with its multiple lacks of economic independence, its own Bank and currency and the fact that the country is a basket case and would be a net loss to Europe, John Swine shook his tortoise head sadly and said "that's gloomy, Martin, that's gloomy."

What else? Oh, yes,  further evidence that Starmer hates the British working class. Starmer has been to India on a trade mission, alongside Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander and Business Secretary Peter Kyle.  The spin would like us to believe that this was a massively successful jaunt, which will deliver 6,800 jobs to the UK along with £1.2 billion in investments from India, including £16 million worth of investments for electrical engineering firm Allenwest from Indian metal and mining companies. Oh, that's nice. Even better, Linkfields, an AI tech company, is investing £10 million to create 100 jobs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Trinity Infra and Projects, a construction and property development company, will also create 25 jobs in Glasgow.

Wee Dougie said: “These investments, which will create more than 100 new jobs across Glasgow and Edinburgh, are an unmistakeable example of how the UK Government is driving home the benefits of our historic trade deal with India for Scotland.....our new trade deal galvanises our economic partnership, brings our two countries even closer together and ultimately delivers economic growth right across Scotland.”

So, what's the catch?

Those 6,800 jobs - they are for Indian workers, not British workers. They will come to Britain on 3 year visas, and will not be required to pay National Insurance in Britain. Told you Starmer hates the British working class. He is letting in, quite legally, a small flood of Indian workers who will be able to undercut the British worker by not having to pay National Insurance.

They never disappear, these politicians - they are endlessly recycled. Here's mr ishmael writing about the Dwarf Alexander 15 years ago, when he was fucking things up in a previous Labour Government. 

Small Mercy

Wee Dougie, brother of Wendy Fishface Alexander, the cheap lying wretch who briefly led JockLabour until she became an embarrassment even to that shower, Wee Dougie is in a class of his own.

Wee Dougie, like lots of them, went off to the States to learn politics, returned to Britain, took a meaningless law qualification, a safe  Labour seat  and joined Gordon Snot's cabal of  yesmen fellators. An irritating, gobby little prick, Alexander is never short of the phrase which conveys how very much we misunderstand, underestimate our masters, if only we were as clever as he then we would never have got into this awful financial  mess, a regular on those shitty  Dimbleby programmes which masquerade cuntishly as Democracy on the Airwaves, Dougie probably sits up at night, rehearsing his dwarf statesmanship in front of the mirror.

Along with the greedy, hypocritical toerag, the windbagging Welsh arsehole,  the grinning smug ginger fuckpig,  the spectacularly incompetent election-losing embarrassment, Kinnock, Alexander, then Scottish Secatry tried to fix the last Holyrood election so that Labour won,  he made a complete bollocks of it, postal votes were not sent out in time,  the papers themselves were nothing like as he had trailed them to be and electors were confused by a whole raft of matters being ambiguous or just plain wrong.  The result, of course, was that Fat Alec Salmond snatched a victory -- decent people would have sought a new election, but there are no decent people in Holyrood and a full and far reaching cover up found that, Yes, it was all shit, but no-one was to blame, not really.

After this triumph, Dougie the Fixer masterminded the catastrophic Yes-He-Will, No-He-Fucking-Won't, snap election  strategy of his master, Snotty, when that revolting man  finally bullied his way into Number Ten, (allowing Blair to get off, virtually Scot-free, blameless for the current chaos).  Gordon was going to call an election, having personally foiled the flaming ayrabs at Glasgow Airport and sorted the foot and mouth outbreak and all the other stuff he took credit for. And then he wasn't, he was gonna stick it out, the rotten cowardly bastard, and have Dougie mastermind  the UK general election.  The one they just lost in historic fashion. The one for which Snotty shoulders full responsibility - ie no blame, no censure, no loss of pension rights.

But even so, Dougie's history did not deter the fantastically prescient, adroit, capable, gracious and intelligent fuckwit David Banana;  David had Dougie run his Labour leadership election campaign,  the one he lost to his gormless brother, the Ed-thing.  Doubtless they had ruled nothing in and ruled nothing out but we can be sure that Wee Dougie would have been anticipating sitting up there with the Big People, maybe as shadow Foreign Seckatry, had he not fucked Bananaman six ways to Christmas, left Mrs  Bananaman in floods, simply floods of tears, silly cow and upset the gentry of the party, the thieving, lying, warmongering, degenerate, arsehole-munching parliamentary Labour Party, New, Old or completely, as they now are, fucked. And serve them right.

If they had any sense it would have been Burnham or at a push Balls, at least he can dish it out. Squabbling like an  ancient witches' coven over these two vapid fucks, cheer-led by the likes of the unbelievably  talentless Alexander - not even Machiavellian, just transparently thick as horsehit -  the stringpullers and kingmakers, vile old tossers, reprobates like Barry Sheerman, nincompoops like Kinnock and necromancers like Straw,  the  detritus of NewLabour,  the turds on the tideline, with the incomparable expertise of Douglas Alexander have just given CallHimDave a most welcome, early Christmas present;  that they have simultaneously fucked the rest of us, just once more for old times' sake, seems, if it means the disappearance of Dougie the Dwarf, a price almost worth paying.

Ed Net Zero Milliband and Dougie the Dwarf, back when they were young and beautiful

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.

Rowan and Apple Jelly

450g rowan berries

225g cooking apples

Water

Juice of 1 lemon

Sugar - don't stint on the sugar - rowan berries are bitter as hell.

•  Rinse and dry the rowan berries, then chop the apples - there is no need to peel them or core them.
• Put the berries and apples into a pan with 150ml to 200ml. of water.
• Bring the fruit to the boil then simmer it gently for 20 to 30 minutes.
• Ladle the fruit into a jelly bag suspended over a bowl or large measuring jug, and allow to drip overnight.
•  For every 600ml  add 450g of sugar to the juice and lemon juice.
•  Boil for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the setting point has been reached.
•  Ladle into hot, clean and sterilised jam jars, and seal whilst still hot to create a vacuum.