The Sunday Ishmael: 09/08/2026

 Now that the MPs are on holiday, we have to manage with the crap political commentary shows on Sunday. No more "Eh up, Laura" as Madame Kuenssberg is not gracing Sunday mornings on the Beeb. Instread, over on GB news, the direst of channels, we have Michael - "I'm ready for my spanking now, headmaster", Portillo. 

Seriously, what was he wearing? And why? Surely not? 

No, no, mrs ishmael, you mistake a certain flamboyance of costume for arse-banditry, hide-the-sausage-in-the gravy games and such like- (ed).

Flamboyance of costume? The man wears red corduroy trousers! And lilac jackets!

  In an interview with The Times given in 1999, Portillo said that "I had some homosexual experiences as a young person."  Lord Tebbit harrumphed a bit at that, accusing Portillo of lying about the extent of his sexual deviance. Now that we are all liberal and understanding and signed up to all manner of hide the sausage life-style choices, such predilections matter not a jot. But back in the past, which we know is a foreign country where they insisted on doing things differently, the Great British Public found that a self-confessed sexual adventurer was not to their taste at all and Portillo faded away from political life, having lost his previously safe Conservative Enfield Southgate seat at the 1997 general election, in a "Portillo moment". He wriggled back into the Commons in the 1999 by-election in Kensington and Chelsea, but got a bloody nose when he stood for leadership of the Conservatives in 2001, achieving only third place behind Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke. He retired from the House of Commons and from active politics at the 2005 general election, and took up a career travelling in trains for the telly. And wearing strange clothes.

Portillo obtained one of those really useful  first-class degrees in history from the University of Cambridge, of course, before joining the Conservative Research Department (CRD). He was a junior minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, before being appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1992, then being promoted to Secretary of State for Employment in 1994. He was subsequently promoted to Secretary of State for Defence, where he pressed for a course of "clear blue water" to separate the policies of the Tories from those of the Labour Party.

Thinking about Portillo's infamy always leads one to Diane Abbott, his chum. Indeed, he had a project in mind to film Macbeth casting himself as Macduff and Diane as Lady Macduff. Didn't come to anything. For this relief, much thanks.

They spent a lot of time squashed up on a sofa together, on Andrew Neil's political show. Looking back, it was pretty obvious that the viewers were being invited to mock the intellectually-challenged  obese Labour Black Woman and the colourful Conservative- Not-Gayman, by being obliged to sit on a tiny little sofa together. Those were back in Diane's glory days. Before her mouth ran away with her and she gave way to the prevailing anti-semitism of the Labour Party.

Just to remind you of the offence that got her sacked by Starmer, anxious to shake off the whiff of anti-Semitism that has hung about the Labour Party since the Corbyn regime. Diane Lard's views, words, thoughts, indeed, very being, were "deeply offensive and wrong".  As clueless as David Lammy, another Official Black Person,  Diane Abbott wrote to the Observer, espousing unfashionable views about racism. Only Proper Black People, really Black People, can experience racism. Here's the letter: 

"Tomiwa Owolade claims that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from “racism” (“Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated”, Comment). They undoubtedly experience prejudice. This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.

It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus. In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships."

Diane Abbott

House of Commons, London SW1

That's you told, Redheads and Jews.  

Starmer was so enraged that he withdrew her Labour Party membership. Prime Minister Burnham has reinstated her. That's all you need to know about our Andeh. From Northern.

Commentators and journalists (and, therefore, politicians) have been much exercised by the release of the Gov't statistic that 1 in 4 people in Britain today, by their own declaration, are sick or mad. That's nothing. In Stromness Academy, it is over 50% needing extra help. A.S.N. kids. Additional Support Needs. In England they are S.E.N.D. kids. Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities. Scotland avoids the pejorative "Special" word.  You know what it's like in the playground. Used to be Spaz as a term of abuse. Now it's Special.

 And are they grateful? These  ASN kids? For all this additional support? There are more Assistance for Learning Assistants and teeth-cleaning ladies in Orkney classrooms than there are kids, whether of the ASN  or Normal variety. Not that there are many of the Normal ones. Anyway, the ASN ones with their minders, dropped off by taxis at the school gates, are they grateful?  I had a neighbour who was too busy to take her son to school of a morning, so the social worker had a taxi pick him up each morning. I used to see the taxi driver chasing the gleeful little bastard round the garden before catching him and stuffing him into the taxi for the 6 minute drive to his school. Grateful? Are they fuck. Extra time for exams? I know someone who is an exam assistance provider - has to hold the additionally-needed down to stop them escaping the exam room. And what meaning does a qualification have, when the certificate holder had the question read out to them and their answer transcribed for them? 

One of Burnham's Big Ideas is to introduce parity of esteem between the hard hat and the mortar board. It is a start, laying out clear blue water between himself and Blair's Big Idea to send 50% of the nation's teenagers to Yooni. Hopefully, not the 50% who are Special or A.S.N. . Having admiringly observed the Ishmaeling-in-law's inspired competence in matters plumbing, electrical, decorative, deconstructive, reconstructive and ceramic tile application as he laboured to bring cleanliness and order to the filth and neglect inflicted on my Yorkshire house by its previous owners, Mr. and Mrs. Grubbins, I am of the firm opinion that far from parity of esteem for the hard hat, it deserves top place. Glittering prizes. Respeck for the trades and technical and engineering subjects. As the Ishmaeling-in-law says of himself: "Up here for thinking, down there for dancing." 

I once had a conversation with an elderly chap who was first uncomprehending, then angry when I questioned the relevance of a Classics degree to himself,  to the state, to the betterment of the country or to his ability to earn a living off the back of it. "But it completes one's education, my dear young lady."

 In the Fifties and Sixties, when the state coughed up for tuition and board and lodging for the precious "top" 15% to complete their education funded by the taxes of the working population before demonstrating their superiority by teaching the next generation these same arcane subjects, the cost/benefit ratio favoured these endeavours, and it certainly enabled a very few, very bright working class kids to go to University to be looked down on by the privately educated. I think I may have told you of my soul-searing experience of a posh boy taking my hand in his and remarking to his friend in that very irritating drawl that they affected back then, before a Northern accent became compulsory: "Ah, yes, it is true - they do have hair growing on the backs of their fingers."

Now that they have to pay for their own costs and tuition, students are finding the cost/benefit analysis working out rather differently, especially as there never were enough well-paying jobs for graduates to step into.  I never did understand, back in the day, why students were despised by normal people. When a bloke responded with "University of Life, me", I took it for jealousy. Now I know that trade skills require more knowledge, problem solving and physical ability than the humanities. And the ivory tower. Now, when it has to be paid for by the individual, for the rest of their life, surely the kids will do a little sum in their heads and opt for vocational education. Surely? 

Unless they are black, pretty and really good at saying "critical race theory" a lot. 

Like former Professor Jason Atta Kwei Arday. He was a professor at the University of Cambridge between 2023 and 2026, and resigned following allegations of plagiarism, research falsification, and personal misrepresentation. Jason's amazing, inspiring fabulations, including his claims to autism, mutism, epilepsy, ADHD, marathon running on a broken leg, and the removal of a benign brain tumour eventually raised a little scepticism, but his academic and television career as another Professional Black Person just shows to go you that you can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time. Especially if they are on the Cambridge Appointments Board and have quotas to meet.

Another of Burnham's Big Ideas is to sort out Social Care. Best of luck with that one. Even the Scottish Government, and we know how profligate they are, has had to abandon its plans for a National Care Service, but not before spending  a fuck of a lot of money on consultations, stakeholder involvement, panels, project boards and publishing a lot of papers saying variations on "we will get the right people, at the right time, with the right qualifications in the right place and there will be jobs for the girls". 

People come in shades of  rich, poor and the middling type. Social Care provision is only a problem for the middling types. The wealthy can afford the best care available. Poor people have their care paid for by the State. The middling types are the ones with aspirations to found a dynasty and have the wealth pour down through the generations. Time was, if you could get through to the end without being in debt, paying your way, you could hold your head up on your death bed.  Not now. Now you expect other people to pay for your care so you can leave your assets to  your offspring. Like rich people do. What next? get the taxpayer to stump up for your gardener? The expectation of inherited wealth was another of  Thatcher's Big Ideas. A property owning democracy with wealth flowing down the generations. 

Ah well.

Courtesy of editor mr verge, the house filthster, four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael may be purchased for mere money. 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.

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.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

And did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?