Caught up amongst the noise

Being caught up in a white noise maelstrom of wildly conflicting, conflated and confusing sensationalist news items about poisonous gas attacks in Syria, nerve agents which apparently will now take months and millions of pounds to clean up in Salisbury, schemes to deport pensioners who have done nothing but give fifty years hard work and tax contributions to good old mother England, Scouse-accented rightwing politicians (is that even possible?) disgracefully and condescendingly telling rape victims that it’s good to talk, oafish telly car magazine presenters again suggesting that self-determination for Scotland in about getting rid of English people, which is a shame because we have such a beautiful country, and Ross Thomson, it is hard to focus.

However, somewhere in the middle of all that the fact that the UK government, that great promoter of love-in equal partnerships, that body whose erstwhile leader, now happily ensconced in comfy mult-millionaire-hood once pleaded with Scotland ‘ not to leave us, but instead lead us’ is trying like a particularly persistent bear to pull the devolution rug from right out underneath us, is getting kind of lost.

As expected after the seemingly never ending months of meetings, jammy dodger sales figures hitting a new annual high, between the people who democratically represent Scotland and the people who don’t, (those who, bizarrely to the rest of the world, we still allow to govern us) our southern masters have dashed off to the Supreme Court in the spirit of arrogant One- Britainship to seek a legal kibosh on Scotland retaining powers returning from Europe that rightfully are ours under the devolution settlement.

Wee Davie, the Secretary of State Against Scotland, nuzzling up to his mistress’s gunboots, and offering up a paw in exchange for a future filled with non-executive silent board memberships and £300 a day attendance expenses, tells us that it’s all a matter of clearing up a technicality, and getting some clarity around who gets to make policy decisions on such teensy wee trifling areas like fishing and agriculture. We’ve not to worry about it. Get back tae watching 24hour in-depth interviews with the owner of the launderette which is three doors along from the flower shop that was second on the list, only just missing out on providing the wedding buttonholes for young Hewitt’s best man’s chiropractor’s dug.

Wee Davie might be better employed as a foil for Jeremy Clarkson in a modern day version of James Boswell and Dr Johnson. They could ride around Scotland, or float aboot the coastline in a rowing boat, observing the natives, cataloging the fauna. Davie, notebook handy, quill in sweaty paw, hanging off every masterful utterance of profound wisdom that leaves the tall surly buffoon’s gub “Oh look Munders, there’s one of those Pictish fellows on the shoreline, ugly brute. What’s that he’s waving? A chib? Jot that word down old chap would you. He’s shouting something at us now. It’s a strange language. What exactly is a sleekit torn-faced wallaper? ”

I digress. Anyway, in the middle of all of this diverting hawkish self-appointed world policing nonsense, in support of the most dangerous man with a fake tan that was ever born (not Bob Monkhouse), coming out of Whitehall, watch the Tories wheedle their way into full Westminster parliament is sovereign mode when in comes to Scotland and Wales even daring to suggest that actual laws preserving powers devolved to those countries should be upheld. We’re about to be swatted yet again.

The parties of unionism,and their media, constantly say that we who only want the natural, just and perfectly straightforward outcome of Scotland taking control of its own destiny, are acting on grievance, an imagined cause for complaint.

I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not imagining it.