Sunday, 9 August 2020

The Sunday Ishmael 9th August 2020

Camping in France

This week has seen record numbers of asylum seekers arriving on the Kent coast, in more than 300  overcrowded small boats, with the total for the year now at nearly 4,000. There was a new record of at least 235 arrivals on 6 August. 
Four refugees were pictured paddling across the 23-mile stretch of water with shovels. 
.Home Secretary Priti Patel has threatened to use the Navy to send migrants back,
but experts question the legality of her plans.

Here's how mr ishmael considered the refugee crisis:
Good evening, this is me, Jon Sox, 
Channel Four's, and indeed the nation's,  humanitarian-at-large, with more on the immigration crisis, or, as I prefer to call it, the callous failure of those not, like myself, in showbusiness, to welcome  at least one but preferably several immigrant families to live in their homes and worship their God in the conservatory, if it faces to the East. And to build them another one if it doesn't. It is their human right, to worship as they see fit, turn your Venetian blinds into prayer mats.



 Let's face it, there is only one God, and Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon his name, is his prophet.

The crisis of callousness deepens by the day, by the hour, with up to three hundred thousand fit young men desperate not to come to Britain. 
You can see them, long lines of fit, healthy young men who don't want to return to Britain.
 Over now to our Chief Humanitarian, Alex Thompson, on a northern French beach.


Big butch newsman, 
gazing wistfully out to sea, compassionately, with a hint of stern reproof, for the camera.

Thanks, Jon, and that's right.  And do you know what, Jon, you and I have been in the compassion business for a long time but we've never seen anything like this. People are literally  queueing for transport to literally get them out of this Hell on Earth and away from Britain.

 

 I am joined here by three hundred thousand fit, healthy, young men who say they will simply not go to Britain.  The French are being beastly to them. And quite frankly so are the Germans.

 
 
 
Ve must shoot se English Tommy in ze vater, und blitzkieg his arsche from ze air. Heil Hitler.
  These men will literally stop at nothing to get aboard transport taking them literally from France.

 

To tell us why, here are two of those very refugees.

 


Tell us why you don't want  to go to Britain.

Nah, mate, it's fucking  terrible, shortages of food and water, people  sleepin'  in the bleedin' Underground, cor blimey, Britain?  I should co-co. I want a better life for meself, dunnI? I mean, it's in a state of bleedin' war, in Britain, with bombs falling all the time. And there int  no welfare state in Britain,  like, for when you're unemployed or  get sick. Nah,  can't go back to Britain. In fact I simply won't  go back to Britain. Must go in Syria. I want to and you can't stop me. It's me yooman right, innit. Fuck all that fightin' fer yer country.  Some other cunt can do that. It's Damascus fer me, mate. Fight, wot, me?  Hitler and Churchill, let them sort it out.

But what about those who say you should return to Britain and fight for your country? You're fit and healthy, young and strong, why are you running away from tyranny? 
Good job everybody doesn't do that, eh? 


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 Japan remembers the 75th Anniversary of  the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Which ended the war with Japan, and allowed the prisoner of war camps to be liberated

 

An interview, following the Japanese Earthquake of 2011:

Yes, thank you, but the Japanese, they live with the constant threat of earthquake and tidal waves, or Tu-Sunamis, as we are now calling them on the BBC, as though we were all language scholars, what can you tell us about any special preparations they may have made, buildings-wise, to cope with this....this....ah...this Tectonic Plates shit happening?
Well, as you know, Oprah, they have great experience in this sort of thing, what with the terror bombing campaigns of the 1945, culminating in them all getting their faces melted off by the Freedom Atom bombs so they kind of take it all in their hobbling little strides, bowing and scraping and hissing at one another, grovelling about, doing their company exercises, singing their company hymns, saying their company prayers. And let's not forget that since the war the little blighters have been gangraped and brainwashed into believing that Consumerism is the new Bushido. Gone from feudalism to corporate slavery in a couple of generations, they have, from shovelling shit in the rice paddies to making digital cameras. Clearly, they're all Buddhists, of course, which helps.

How's that, Brian? 

Well, clearly they believe in some reincarnation shit or other, ancestor worship, that sort of thing; so, clearly, it doesn't really matter if they get washed away and ground up into tiny bits, they're all going straight up to Samurai Heaven; it's why they were so keen to chop the heads off British POWs in the last war. 

What, because of the earthquakes? 

No, because they're horrible little yellow bastards.


That was Professor Brian Gob, talking to us there. But what about the nuclear problem, I mean they're going off like fucking Catherine Wheels, aren't they, those reactors? Well, I'm joined here in the studio by Professor Trevor Gob, of the University of Shepton Mallet who lectures on Nuclear Meltdown Tectonic Plates Studies. Professor Gob, what can you tell us; are these things safe? Well, yes and no, Kirsty, it's very much a case of suck it and see, in a very real sense, at the end of the day. At the end of the day, the Devil, as ever is in the detail. You see, if you have a level playing field and someone moves the goalposts then the bottom line is gonna be that it's time to wake up and smell the coffee, at the end of the day. It's all down to the procedures. They have 'em in place, the Japanese, like no ofher nation in Earth, which isn't surprising, really, considering.

Considering what, Trevor?

Well, Kirsty, considering all them mutants they got, walking around with two heads and no fucking arms, and arses where their ears oughta be, you know, eyeballs in their armpits, albinos and cleft palates and cloven fucking hooves where their feet should be, all those descendants of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, as to whether they are safe, that's really two questions. I mean, they might be safe. And on the other hand, they might be dangerous as fuck. No point asking me, I used to teach woodwork, when we were still a polytechnic. Before that fucker Blair went and fucked everything up. I mean, half the country with degrees, what's that shit about, every other fuckwit in the land, smirking, banging-on about how his girl,  Chardonnay or his lad, Ethan, is off to Uni, to read hairdressing studies. A city and guilds in dovetail jointing, or welding, that was something to be proud of, but they give degrees out to people who can't spell their own fucking names. No use, Kirsty, the BBC trying to educate them about nuclear fission in Japan, not when they couldn't change a fucking three-pin plug, not to save their fucking lives. And as for Stephanie fucking Landers rabbiting on, the silly fucking cow, about how all this fire and fucking brimstone shit in Japan is going to affect the footsie one hundred and maybe cause a double-dip recession, about how the fucking Nikkei stock  exchange is faring; well,  she may as well be farting out of the window for all the difference it makes. Now, there's a thought for the viewers, eh, our Steph, in some mad porno re-write of the Wife of Bath's Tale, her arse hanging out of Broadcasting House, breaking wind in time to the Shipping Forecast. She come s from a showbiz family, doesn't she? Couldn't be any worse than all this shit you keep serving up about Japan. And fucking Lebanon. And Egypt.

Well, you know, professor, we have to be relevant and up to the minute, if we were reflective and thoughtful and intelligent we might be accused of straying into the realms of journalism and clearly we don't do that; news, that's our business, news, and filth.

That was Professor Trevor Gob there for us, on the very real potential for something newsy and urgent happening in the town of Fuckyoufissionama.

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From mr ishmael's thought for the day: 

From the bombing of Dresden to the Bogside,
From Harfleur to Hiroshima,
Our sorriest martial triumph is in 
The massacre of the innocent.
That we unleash Slaughter most Noble and Worthy upon others  forbids our complaint when he is turned upon us.

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And, in non-war news, we can report the ending of the civil liberty of Freedom of Speech: hat-tip to  mr verge for the story:
 

Fiona Lamdin reported a racially-aggravated attack in Bristol, broadcast by Points West and the BBC News Channel last week. The victim's family were anxious the incident should be seen and understood by the wider public. The BBC said: "It's for this reason they asked us specifically to show the photos of this man's injuries and were also determined that we should report the racist language, in full, alleged to have been spoken by the occupants of the car." The BBC said it had received 18,656 complaints by Sunday 2 August about the use of the word that is now bowdlerised as "the n- word." Some celebrity with a silly name has taken advantage of the stramash to generate some publicity by resigning from his post as a BBC radio DJ, saying the news report sounded like "a slap in the face to our community", earning himself the accolade of "you're a King" from his chums.

 
Lucy Worsley, in a television programme covering racial tension in the United States, described an 1865 speech by President Abraham Lincoln, who said that black people should be given the right to vote. Confederacy supporter John Wilkes Booth, who went on to assassinate Lincoln, said  'That means nigger citizenship. By God, that's the last speech he will ever make" . Before quoting that remark, Worsley said: "his words carry a health warning".
Social media users reacted with fury, causing Lucy Worsley to apologise, saying: 'it wasn't acceptable and I apologise.'
And we report the demise of the acting profession, as it now seems to be offensive to depict any character not sharing the same characteristics as the actor:

Actress Zoe Saldana has apologised for playing Nina Simone in a prosthetic nose and skin-darkening make-up in a perfectly dreadful 2016 biopic. (2% rating on review website Rotten Tomatoes) 

Saldana said: "I should have never played Nina.I should have done everything in my power with the leverage that I had 10 years ago, which was a different leverage, but it was leverage nonetheless....I should have done everything in my power to cast a black woman to play an exceptionally perfect black woman....I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know better today and I'm never going to do that again." Just not black enough, Zoe.

 So when may we expect an apology from David Suchet (75% Ashkenazi Jewish, 25% English) for daring to portray the Belgian detective, Poirot?

and a retrospective apology from the estate of the late Eli Wallach (Polish/Jewish/American) for representing the Mexican, Tuco? 


So, despite Lenny Bruce's efforts to drain  the offence from certain words, there is now one word that no-one can say, even to condemn its use, without sacrificing career, good name and dinner party invitations. Just to remind you: 


Are there any Niggers Here Tonite? 
Lenny Bruce
"There are no Dirty Words, just Dirty Minds".


mr ishmael's essays:
Jon Sox, Humanitarian at Large      drafted 8/3/16 
A Thought for the Day                      posted 3/12/15
A Whole Lotta Quakin' Goin' on      posted 15/3/11

Sunday, 2 August 2020

The Sunday Ishmael 2nd August 2020


"The Queen has been graciously pleased to signify Her intention of conferring the following Peerages of the United Kingdom for Life."

This week, the gravy train called in Ruritania, with the announcement of 36 nominations for the 2020 peerages. Included are: Little Arthur Askey,  for 'political service' to his wife, Theresa

  Boris Johnson's brother, Jo-Jo the Ho-Ho,
former England cricketer and Brexit supporter, Sir Ian Botham,
and Edward Lister, a long-term chum of the Prime Minister who supported him as London mayor.
  Mr. Tiny Speaker, who famously threw his toys out of the pram, did not receive any signal mark of Her Majesty's Royal Favour,  upon his retirement as Speaker and has not been included on the list once again.

 
Commenting on the nominations, Pete Wishart, SNP  said: "It's telling that in the middle of a global health pandemic and economic crisis that is costing thousands of people their jobs, Boris Johnson is handing out jobs for life in the unelected House of Lords to friends and those who have done him favours..... gifting his cronies and family members with jobs as legislators for life - with no democratic mandate or accountability to people across the UK....It's the worst kind of cronyism that only highlights the rotten Westminster system."
Lord Fowler, the Lord Speaker, said: "The result will be that the House will soon be nearly 830 strong - almost 200 greater than the House of Commons. That is a massive policy u-turn....This followed a report by a special Lord Speaker's committee chaired by Lord Burns proposing that numbers should be reduced to 600....The big opportunity was for the present Government to take forward this movement for reform. I emphasise that this is not a matter of personalities. It is a question of numbers and the abandonment of an established policy to reduce the size of the House. It is also a vast pity that the list has been announced within the first few days of the summer recess when neither House is sitting, and the Government cannot be challenged in Parliament."
Peers are not salaried, but they receive a tax-free income of £323 per day for attendance in the chamber - up from £313 at the start of April. Members of the House of Lords can expect tax-free income of £48,000 per year, as their base-line income for signing in.
Move along please, nothing to see here. The nomination list would not have surprised  Mr ishmael, writing in 2015: 

Peer on the Take shock

Once upon a time,  Peter Sissons used to  finish off his news bulletin  with a look at how the pound was doing, a basketful of currencies; I never understood even that, how you could  use one sort of money to buy another sort of cheaper money and make a profit on it, strikes me as delusional madness, which is what it is, of course, currency trading but, like the Flat Earthers, as long as enough people believe in it, that's all that matters.

Now, of course, every mad money-crazed bastard sitting in his Barrett Home broom cupboard study area, looking at the Dow or the FTSE, is a budding George Soros and all of us are, every fifteen minutes, kept acquainted, not only with Wall Street micro-ebbs and flows, with the pronouncements of copraphiliac Frankfurtians  and BundesBankians but through the wee small hours, by some resting porn star, with the doings of Chinky gangsters and totalitarians, beyond Singapore.

Finance, what used to be small section in the newspaper is now a global obsession, almost as big as sport.

Hard  to understand,  the presumption of purity among athletes or any other kind of professional sportspersons. Just because someone is fit, doesn't make them fit and proper. Alongside the simpering self-deprecation of the likes of Beckham and recently of Olympic champions has always run the naked greed of people who claim just to wanna win, like, for me country, and then  make a fortune sandwichboarding for Santanderre or Adidas or even, bizarrely, Quorn. 

It seems axiomatic that where there be sponsorship there be graft. And no wonder, that the spear-carriers connive to riches, just look at Sport's owners, the rancid  dwarf, Ecclestone, a walking cancer, buying himself out of jails, as well as marriages; look at Rupert Murdoch, decrepit Lothario, scandal monger and burglar of people's private lives, may God take him soon but not swiftly; look at the  carnival of corrupt grotesques managing British football teams; at Blatter's THEFA; at Russia's state-sponsored, sprinting junkies and at cyclings pedalling dope fiends. The sports fixers and owners, their corporate countries and their sponsors, their needs and not those of some mythical Olympian ideal, they run the game, they deliver us the mutant retards, Wayne Rooney, Jose Mourhino, Alex Ferguson and Petulant Torment Personified, Andy Murray.  No wonder that some flakey totty, some loveless, fucked-up diarrhoeaic automaton puts the fix into her own endocrine system;  No medals, no sponsorship deals

The rottenness of it all is rarely reviewed by MediaMinster, for  sport is big business, colonised now by the likes of Murdoch, and to be seen as anti-business in any way whatsoever is political suicide, blessed are the wealth  creators for they shall pay no tax, just bribes and bungs. And sport, too, narcotises the viewer; whose  year is mostly covered by snooker, football, tennis, motor racing, cricket. When there's not a good war on.
More than that, in the case of his lordship, Mr Coe, there is the pox-ed hand of Hague the Child-Mutant, William of Miscarriages, an undisguised, shameless,  baldpate vulgarian, a protector of beasts, a keeper of pretty young men and an ennobler of wanton ambition. Hague, it was, who granted Conrad Black's demands to take ermine, whilst simultaneously robbing his shareholders of their investments, bombasting-off his less noble critics. Even the clueless prat, Johnny Underpants Major, resisted Bullyboy Black's  demands for a peerage for he and his revolting doxy, Babs Amiel, a slapper more sadly brassy than is her namesake, Windsor, showbiz 's ooh-er, tits-out confection. William Hague, however, stooped at the chance of obliging a criminal millionaire, and created Lord Black of Crossharbour & Prison.

Shortly afterwards, as Tory leader,  Hague gave a peerage to his chief of staff, personal physical trainer, marriage guidance counsellor 

 and sweat buddy, the self-appointed national treasure, 
 Pretty Sebastian Coe. 

Pretty Seb and Hague


Pretty Chris and Hague

a man bearing a passing resemblance to Hague's Pretty Chris, of  shared double-bed infamy. I have never loved pretty men, myself, but maybe, as happens in the non-BGLT communi'y, gentlemen like Hague  favour a certain physical type of paid best friend, to follow in Power's slipstream, hoping, like the crooked Coe, for privilege and advancement, for graft.

Since his ennoblement Pretty Seb has, in response to absolutely no public demand, become the UK's Mr HonestSport.


 British peer gives Mr Blatter a hug of great integrity.
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Coronavirus News:

The seven-day rate is the seven days to July 20 compared with the seven days to July 27.
Blackburn with Darwen:  risen from 83.3 cases per 100,000  to 89.3. 133 new cases have been recorded.
Leicester: fallen from 67.8 to 60.2, with 214 new cases.
Oldham risen from 23.3 to 54.3, with 128 new case
Pendle risen from 27.4 to 42.7, with 39 new cases
Trafford risen from 15.2 to 41.0, with 97 new cases
Calderdale risen from 20.9 to 33.8, with 71 new cases
Swindon risen from 9.0 to 28.8, with 64 new cases.
None of this is a surprise.
The Government was criticised for announcing the local lockdowns only three hours before they came into force. Lucy Powell, Shadow Business Minister described the way in which the Government had announced the new coronavirus restrictions on parts of northern England as a "disaster". Nicola Sturgeon has told Scots not to travel to North West England, and urged any Scots already there to hurry home and enter a self-imposed quarantine.
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As discussed in the comments stream from last week's Sunday Ishmael, mr ishmael was no stranger to chronic illness and was all too familiar with the NHS, its structures, hierarchies and class system. As you'd expect, neither mr ishmael nor stanislav suffered fools gladly, not even when they were employed by the NHS, and therefore, as we are now taught, to be entirely venerated.

Diabetes – drafted 8/06/2013



What I used to hate the most about diabetes wasn't, as you'd expect, the doctors, although, thirty-five years ago they were much worse than they are now and  one geezer - pinstripe, patent shoes, bowtie, buttonhole, the works -  sticks out in my mind like it was yesterday.




 He was one of the consultants in Selly Oak Hospital and they were fewer then than now and he insisted on being called Mr Page, not Dr Page,  he was adamant that we, passing strangers, be initiated  into and familiarised with in his arcane professional nomenclature,  he was a fucking doctor as far as I was concerned and  I, therefore, insisted on calling him Mr Dr Mr Page, as unctuously as possible.  He was of the YouPeople school, we, the YouPeople, his patients, were the enemy of the NHS, we needed all kinds of expensive treatment and kit, and we had to be kept in line.  These needles, he ranted, holding up a packet of disposable syringes, cost a fortune, you must use them over and over again until the print has worn out and they are entirely blunt.  And these testing strips - less than a quarter of an inch wide - you can get three or four out of each one by cutting them carefully down their length with a sharp pair of scissors. Mr Dr Mr Page was the biggest, stupidest health professional arsehole I have ever met and, as well as my hospital dealings with these fuckers, I used to do business with them, furnishing and restoring their chintzy Victorian homes;  wifebeaters, drunks,  drug addicts and degenerates,  not all of them, but enough to make you want to keep well, healthy, out of their clutches.  To be fair, I did get to know the odd one or two who were tirelessly commited to healing people but most of them, away from their trade, were greedy and vulgar. When I tell young diabeticians of Mr Dr Mr Page's strictures I only do so when Mrs Ishmael is present, otherwise they'd section me.




I learned decades ago that consultants are all on the make for every fucking penny they can chisel out of anyone they encunter, you can be on Death's trolley and some cunt'll find something he's doing, writing some letter, or signing some form that he really has to be paid for,  they are shameless, money-sucking leeches. All this shit, about privatising the health service, it's already privatised, your whoreson GP and his partners are running private businesses already. Trouble is you can't complain about them and you can't go taking your business elsewhere.




But back when I was first diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic there had been a technological advance in insulin delivery,  it was called the Novopen and was basically a fountain pen, with a cartridge of insulin, a needle where the nib would be and a calibrateable plunger. It was no big deal but it made life a bit easier and it looked like the dog's bollocks, brushed steel, like something Q'd give James Bond.  But they're not cheap, growled Mr Dr Mr Page,  the greedy fucking bastard, charging me a hundred pounds, for something which I could've got from the dealer/manufacturer for fifty.  I have hated that bastard all my life.  Well, perhaps not hated, you'd never stop, if you started hating doctors;   I just hope he dies from some incurable and painful  disease, as I will. 


It is a terrible lottery, chronic illness; much later, a decade or more after Mr Dr Mr Page I got to see a really eminent diabetologist,  Professor Tony Barnett, at Heartlands in Brmingham and  his patients were not his enemies,  he was a man of much learning, patience and fathomless grace,  one of the exceptions and if I had ran into him initially, my life, today,  would be entirely different. Page must have caused the premature deaths of many of his unfortunate patients.




The nurses are pretty awful, too, something about diabetes nurses.  They are all bullies - well, all nurses are bullies - and uniquely among all the NHS trades, diabetes nurses are filthy bastards.  Like doctors, they perform their duties in street clothes or, by my observation, in the clothes they wore in the pub last night, OT people can't do this, nor can X-Ray people, nor fracture clinicians, nor can podiatrists, only diabetes nurses can do this and generally speaking,  in outpatient clinics, it is diabetes nurses who will most routinely extract blood from their patients, opening Infection's pathways.   I would sack any health professional who did not, before starting work enter  a dedicated dressing area, change into sterile clothing, laundry-washed at high temperature.   Seems obvious.  They don't wash their hands,either.




About ten years ago I finally reached a plateau of independence, I got to the stage that I wouldn't go near the nasty, dirty bastards.  I just told the doc.  I said, doc, these people are dirty bastards,  they don't or won't understand infection control,  they're trying to kill their patients.  Three times I've been there in the past couple of years,  three times I got an infection and was on antibiotics for months each time.  Okay, mr ishmael, OK, but don't say I said so.




My first diabetes nurse  was Mr Dr Mr Page's familiar, or he hers. Mrs Ishmael and I just looked at her and whispered to each other:  Rosa Klebb, honest.  She was a real dead ringer for the Russian lesbian spychief crone from From Russia With Love.  And I noticed we were both looking at her shoes, to see if she had a dagger blade popping out, dipped in deadly poison.




I am going to give you some training, she said, in injecting yourselves.  I will give you each an orange and a syringe and you just fill the syringe up with water, like so, and inject it into the orange, like so. And then you will know how to inject yourselves.  How's that, then?  Am I sort of all orangey, inside? Bit citrusy? 




That, then,  was the extent of the training-for-life-with-diabetes, an hour with the wretched Page and half-an-hour with Rosa Klebb but these two nightmares weren't the worst of it.




Once I'd injected myself, that was it, I never gave it a second's thought;  it doesn't hurt, well, only sometimes and then it's only in the mind, now and again, in the wee small hours, I think to myself Christ,  this is the HowManyThousandth time I've done this, slid a one-inch sliver of steel into my flesh?   But the alternative is to die so it is no big deal, it really isn't.  These days, furthermore, Mr Dr Mr Page's successors-in-trade insist that you only use a needle once and as long as you use a fresh one each time - about five times a day in my case, you should feel none but spiritual pain. There's a bloodletting, too, I should do it thrice daily but I never do.
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FRIDAY, 27 MARCH 2009

THE BOOK PAGE

LIKE RICHARD AND JUDY’S BOOK CLUB, ONLY YOU HAVE TO READ IT.
EVER WONDERED WHAT YOUR PLUMBER IS READING?

Most plumbers, it seems, are terrified of heart surgeons, or any kind of doctor.
Fuck serial killer and drunken driver and mad burglar. Fucking useless doctor bastard is most likely to kill you in whole of fucking world, says this week’s book-reading tradesman, young Mr stanislav.
Honest, not invent, give you wrong shit, too much wrong shit, not enough right shit, not see illness in front of fucking face, invent fucking illness that patient never even fucking have, send in hospital death camp for fuck all, chop off wrong fucking leg and say Oh, fuck me, but is professional chap of fucking integrity, best get fellow butcher-extortionist to make full thorough professional cover up and blame fucking patient. That’ll be ten grand please.
Mr stanislav’s chosen book, written by a doctor, is called How To Protect Your Heart From Your Doctor. Is fucking right, continues stanislav, fucking bastard chop you fucking open like a chicken and stop fucking heart and so patient is fucking toast right at the kick off and is only good luck if poor bastard get fucking jump-start back into life. And doctormonster meantime is got Bruce fucking Springsteen blasting in fucking theatre and chop fucking veins out from fucking leg and spot weld to heart, and stanislav can do better job on fucking boiler. Most bastard not need no fucking operation in first fucking place, just right medicine and live sensible and last just as long as fucking nutcase patient – Oh, fuck me, I made an informed decision, on balance, to have the operation, that’s the sort of person I am – who lets surgeon do life and fucking death disembowel job. Fuck that shit.
Seems that young mr stanislav’s choice is a bit of a good read, but always remember, readers, Doctor Knows Best.
Mr stanislav has asked us to make clear that he doesn’t obsess to fuck with doctor books; he also reads Viz magazine.


mr ishmael's writing:
Peer on the Take shock            drafted 12/12/2015
Diabetes                                  drafted 8/06/2013
The Book Page                        Friday, 27th March 2009