Sorry I was missing last Sunday - I had a friend staying and she had to be shown some Yorkshire - we visited the Open Garden at Clifton Castle last Sunday. Do you know about the Open Garden scheme?
The National Garden Scheme gives visitors unique access to over 3,300 exceptional private gardens in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands, on specified days and raises impressive amounts of money for nursing and health charities through admissions, tea and cake. The 2026 season is just about finished but bear it in mind for next year, if you like noseying about in other people's gardens. And we did Rievaulx Abbey ruins, and Mount Grace Priory, a little light shopping and drank copious quantities of red wine. So I've been in recovery.
It still seems to be the silly season although Parliamentarians have gone back to work, having had their 6 weeks off. The story much occupying minds is the news that AI will kill off the human race in 10 years. Oh, no, it won't. Oh yes, it will. What, Pantomime season already? Why would AI do such a silly thing? AI does not have desires, goals, instincts, agency, self‑preservation or consciousness. But humans love a good Frankenstein story: the worry that something we build escapes control. Sometimes it does - take Covid as a case in point. Or industrial revolution steam engines and factories destroying society. Or nuclear technology - total annihilation being a bit of a worry. So, although AI won't go on a killing rampage, human actors could use it to blow stuff up, close stuff down, destroy crops, etc. It's humans you have to worry about. The gun doesn't have agency. But the human who uses it to shoot an animal or fellow human, does.
The other matter that is causing the Omni-Party a headache is the irresistible rise of Nigel Farage and the fact that billionaires will keep on giving him money. So upset are Labour that they are about to introduce legislation to take Nigel's donations away. Retrospectively. Big Ange turned out to be surprisingly erudite on the politics shows this morning, using the word "donator" to describe said kindly billionaires. Donator is seldom seen these days, appearing only occasionally in legal writing or older texts. The dominant and preferred term is donor. As in blood donor, organ donor, major donor. I think she just fell over her tongue again. No wonder Labour are frit. With the sort of money Reform now has in its election battle chest, it is a done deal. Especially with Ed Miliband, the evil fucking bastard, doing his damnedest to destroy Britain. Burnham had him out of his
Energy Secretary role, thank god, so there's a chance now for the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas sites to start generating some fossil fuels and save Britain. Trouble is, Milipede has taken his zealotry off into the Foreign Office - did Burnham ever really think that would end well? And now he has alienated Israel and America by imposing sanctions on the settlements in Judea and Samaria in order to placate left-wing Labour and bring back the Muslim vote for Labour. So now all the major world powers hate Britain. Way to go, nutjobs.
"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." William Morris.
Doesn't apply to Trafalgar Square, obviously.
The perpetrator of this "statue" that now occupies the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is Tschabalala Self. She says that she designed Lady in Blue as a monument to an “everywoman” — a young, metropolitan Londoner, not a hero, monarch, or military figure. Self said she wanted to give “a woman that many can relate to” a monumental presence in a space normally reserved for historic power. Oh no, it's not. For several years now the Fourth Plinth has been occupied by a succession of concepts mocking the West, capitalism and consumerism. Here you go:
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| Boy on a Rocking Horse - subverting the military equine statue |
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| The End (Heather Phillipson, 2020-2022) A giant whipped ice-cream swirl topped with a fly, a cherry and a drone |
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| Gift Horse (Hans Haacke, 2015–2016)A skeletal horse with a live stock‑ticker ribbon. |
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| Really Good (David Shrigley, 2016–2018) A giant elongated thumbs‑up. |
The economic, political and philosophical systems that these artists are mocking are the very systems that allow the artists to produce their work. Biting the hand that feeds them.
The problem lies not with the artists, who are just trying to make a living by hitching their artistry to currently fashionable concepts, but to the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group.
The panel is chaired by the Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries (currently Justine Simons OBE), and includes senior figures from major London art institutions.
Ralph Rugoff — Director, Hayward Gallery
Iwona Blazwick — former Director, Whitechapel Gallery
Hans Ulrich Obrist — Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries
Andrea Rose — former Director of Visual Arts, British Council
Ekow Eshun — writer and curator (Black British)
Louise Shannon — curator, Museum of London
Clare Lilley — Director of Programme, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Simon Groom — Director, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Nicholas Cullinan — Director, National Portrait Gallery.
And they all think the same way. It isn't a conspiracy, there doesn't seem to be any bribery and corruption, it isn't even, despite the appalling thunder-thighed and massively-buttocked black woman in her lapis lazuli dress, an over -reach of racial ideology. The committee share a very specific worldview that contemporary art should be international, not national, that public sculpture should disrupt, not celebrate, that identity politics is culturally relevant, that traditional British symbolism is outdated, that Trafalgar Square should be “reframed” and that conceptual art is more important than craft. This worldview comes from art‑school theory, curatorial fashion, and the globalised museum circuit — not from ethnic politics.
Shit, really. Ruin. Trafalgar Square taken over by a bunch of people who hate Britain, its history, its indigenous art and beauty.
Middle-class England hates it. They buy William Morris wallpapers. They spend their weekends in National Trust and English Heritage Arts and Crafts houses.
Amusingly, although she would never admit it, Self has pulled a blinder on the selection committee. Because her inspiration, we could safely assume, springs from plebeian, populist roots.
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| Beryl Cook |
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| R. Crumb |
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| Jeff Koons |
I'm away next Sunday, in Northumberland - beaches, castles, Craster kippers. So please excuse me, there'll be no Sunday Ishmael next week. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves - of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. Of why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.
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.
