He simply doesn’t care

Watching the former mayor of London’s appearance on Marr it is clear that a bucket load of Dulux’s finest ‘Scarlet ribbons’ red and an industrial sized brush couldnae paint a red neck on the man.

Sent in with the words of his creepy skeletal handler Dominic McKenzie Cummings in his lugs “ Keep referring to the Benn Act as the Surrender Act, and try and get it into as many sentences as you can, we need to dog whistle the far right” he brushed off Marr like last night’s Wensleydale crumbs.

Everything to him is whimsy. Any subject he is ever questioned on which in normal circumstances to any other elected politician requires careful thought and gravitas is, for him, only just a smirk away.

Having done his master’s bidding, signalling to the extremist ranks of rabid rule Britannianites that they should man the barricades to repel any possible chance of a ‘surrender’ to those arrogant foreign Johnnys, he roundly refused to show any form of regret for his toxic behaviour in the Commons, following being found to have acted unlawfully by the Supreme Court, and to have misled his sovereign.

There is clearly yet more jiggery-pokery afoot, as he continues to peddle the idea that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal. Yet, he says, he will respect the law of the land in doing so (the law currently has him strung up by the tousled testes). There is a magic trick in there somewhere, and in performing it he will further reduce British politics to a laughing stock.

But, the worrying aspect to all of this is, he simply doesn’t care. The destruction and mayhem, the economic vandalism, the anger, the resentment, the polarisation of views, none of that matters to him. He is not phased, none of this will have any impact on his personal wealth, image of self, or situation.

He is creating a perfect political storm. There is a lifeboat available to Scotland. We just need to step on strap ourselves in and ride out the rising whitecaps.

The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

“Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on”

It’s time. It’s time for every political representative protecting the rights of the people of Scotland, in any chamber, archaic and outdated In London, or twenty years reconvened at Home, since 1707, to clearly express themselves in what should be the code for ‘we’re off, you’re a basket case’, This should be in the style of Kevin Bridges, “Did ye, aye?”

Any blustering exchange on the Commons floor, anything in Edinburgh’s Holyrood Chamber, where eventually once all of this comedy bollox is over, will be the place our country is being governed from, making strides going forward, must be rammed home, into the failed used car salesman (entrepreneur) who has replaced Tory Tank girl.

Any occasional and scarce interview an SNP representative gets invited tae on the telly, rare as it is, should really reflect that middle digit mood too. We’re off.

Winnie Ewing’s speech of twenty years ago, considered, deliberated and delivered, had an outcome in mind. We’re getting there.

Hey Boris. Did ye, aye?

Breengin on

There he was, like the public school college bully, home for the hols to the family’s ancestral pile on ten thousand acres. Swaggering as he wandered into the local village pub, the village being on Daddy’s land, with his braying cronies. It’s the day after he’d tanned the charity bottle on the pub bar counter (that was there tae help raise funds for a local infant to fly tae Switzerland for an experimental cure tae a horrendous disease) for a laugh.

Yes folks, Boris Johnson has made his return to the Houses of Parliament yesterday, after a hastily abandoned shortened trip to the USA.

Sheepish? Nutt. Remorseful? Nutt again. Repentant? Nope. Conciliatory? Naa. Honourably self-sacrificial? Not a feckin chance.

It’s all everybody else’s fault. Those beastly impudent first-years, plebs and that ragtail lot with the funny northern accents on college scholarships, especially that girly swot with the glasses. They’ve dobbed him in to the Head Master, an unthinkable betrayal, he’s been caught, and he disagrees that he’s done anything wrong.

What should he do? Brazen it out of course. Throw Beefy Geoffrey the know-all in through the snug bar door first to check out how the wind is blowing, to take the temperature. Big Geoff can bluff and bluster with the best of them. He’ll give them a blast of the Rumpole’s. That’ll soften the yokels up.

Once Beefy had done his work it was time to make his grand entrance, head up, smiling, full of confidence, taking every opportunity to make eye contact with the oiks. Five minutes on a seat at the bar and it was time for him to start humiliating and belittling the locals again using his time honoured self-proclaimed rapier wit.

His motives were all good intentioned. “The tanned pocket change from the charity bottle was acquired simply to be re-invested suitably in the City, to grow a nest egg, to help the poor unfortunate urchin over the longer term, honest it was. Trust me, hard to believe as it may sound, I am the Prime Minister!”

This man has no integrity. He has no conscience, his moral compass is so far off course that there are long sunken sea vessels in the Bermuda Channel resurfacing above the waves and bobbing about the ocean every time he opens his mouth to speak.

Above all else, he is incredibly dangerous. He’ll happily breenge on without fear or compunction, in defiance of the laws and parliament, towards his target of disastrously crashing out of the EU without any sort of deal, and then he’ll be very comfortable in blaming the EU for not blinking, and the opposition for being weak, as the causes of the woes that are about to befall the UK .

His rhetoric, his talk of “dying in ditches” and the like, if it hadn’t already done so, at some point is going to attract the extreme element of the knuckle dragging end of the Brexit putsch, limited between the ears as they are, and sadly, they will then do what it is that they see themselves do best.

If Johnson’s intransigence to accept facts and the rule of law, as students of the 1930’s might recognise, acts as a dog whistle to the far right, the product of that act is entirely unforgivable. Let’s hope no one suffers violence as a result.

Any honourable politician with his current track record as a leader would have resigned by now. This man has no honour.

It is time for the representatives of the people of Scotland to step up to the mark. This cannot continue.

Not so tricky

Democracy, according to Dicky Leonard, the branch blazer of the British New/Old/ cannae spell Keir Hardie/ Labour Party, is a strange creature.

According tae Tricky, all it would need, as he sees it, for his glorious political party of the people to succeed at the ballot box in Scotland is for a pensioner fae Achiltibuie, two students residing in a studio in the West End, and a collie dug called Simon, all tae decide tae vote British New/ Old/ cannae spell Keir Hardie/ Labour in a General Election, all at the one time.

This in turn would trigger a Leonard led surge, akin tae the storming of the St Petersburg Winter Palace. A tide of leftism so impressive that the ghost of the late great Jimmy Reid would rise and,in tears, recant his view that images of Gordy, the interventionist, Broon, regularly taking tea and smarming over the bitter iron demagogue of Tory selfishness proved that Labour had completely sold out.

There’ll be very little like it ever seen before. Red Clydeside will have been nothing but a minor disagreement between a shop steward and a foreman during a fag break compared tae the tidal wave of socialism (once they’ve looked up what it means) which will pour out all over the land, freeing the ranks of cap-doffing, rickets-inflicted, asthma chested, plucky bantam weighted bowdy-legged tenemental Scots, from those in power who snuggle at the trough on their expense accounts…..oh wait!

On the other hand, the tricky trick-pulling chap sees the prospects for the SNP achieving anything like a mandate to call another referendum on self-government as almost impossible, not totally impossible, but almost.

No, already having a cast iron mandate to do so via the electoral permission of Scotland’s electorate isn’t near enough, nor is asking voters, in a manifesto for the upcoming General Election, for the right to seek a second referendum, and then winning a clear majority of constituency votes across our country, again,sufficient to be a legitimate mandate, Apparently overwhelmingly winning a democratic vote doesn’t constitute successful demonstrable public support. Who knew?

No. To make it fair, Mr Leonard feels that in order to win a mandate to seek a second independence referendum, at some time in about two hundred years, the SNP needs to win every available seat at Holyrood, the entire 59 in the London chamber of the archaic pantaloons, voting lobbies and maces, oust the foosty-smelling cashed-up dotards of the world’s second largest unelected chamber from their sleepy benches, oot intae the car park, replacing them with Hebridean sheep, come up with a cure for lamplighters lung, land an astronaut successfully on the planet COROT-7b on a specific Leap Year 29th February, making sure the red, white and blue apron flag she is provided is stuck right straight out horizontally beside her for the selfie, and to top it all off the Scotland fitbaw team must also have qualified to play in a World Cup finals.

Away wae ye Dicky. I’d imagine there’s more than a few of your number cringing at the thought of that weekend interview with Gordon Brewer.

Instead of attending the conference of a political party which is dead in Scotland you’d be as well spending your time thinking about your next career move after politics.

After independence I’m sure that whatever the branch of the pretendy socialist party you currently are the mouthpiece for becomes they won’t be needing you.

Fly as a jyler

So there it is eh. They’re as fly as a Peterheid staff canteen full of jylers, the Establishment, aren’t they?

All in the cause of further self-enrichment, as if he needed it, selling a book, David ‘call me Dave, I ride a bike’ Cameron has let it be known that in a panicked fit of loose bowel rumblings and gurgling belly sounds in 2014 at the prospect of Scotland voting to disentangle themselves from being ‘the mark’ in the greatest financial con trick since India he engaged the assistance of Elizabeth the First of Scotland to help swing the deal back towards the retention of the ‘precious Union’.

When asked, via whispered conversations between private secretaries, to make sure she adopted the facial expression of an old lady with mild constipation if anybody mentioned Scottish independence to her, kind of like the face she surely adopts if someone says the word Epstein near her or asks her about her son Eddie’s military medal collection, Wee Betty Of Buckingham Palace duly obliged, helping to influence those of our number who are minded towards royalty.

Remember, at the time, her casual throwaway remark that Scots should “think very carefully about the future” before voting, ootside the Kirk at Crathie, a statement which made every tv news broadcast, newspaper and Murdochcast for days afterwards, whilst her flunkeys and hangers on maintained faithfully that she never gets involved in politics.

I’ve nothing against the wee wummin, she’s got a lot on her plate, like getting lied to by the current resident of 10 Downing St, although I do consider the whole concept of hereditary royalty bizarre, but as Gregor Fisher’s brilliantly portrayed Govan stereotype of the 1980’s and 90’s would say, “ I will tell you this”…..

We’ll ken the next time.

Five years, and counting

We’re five years on from the outcome of the greatest exercise in political engagement ever seen in Scotland. A lot has happened.

We had the initial stunned moments following David Cameron’s English Votes for English Laws announcement immediately after the result, the Vow, numerous broken promises, diluted Commissions, and countless examples of disrespect, and disregard, shown to your chosen representatives at Westminster, which is now a place on a slippery-sloped descent into dangerous right-wing nationalism fuelled by Farage and his immigrant baiting Brexit Party (the 21st century’s National Front),

We’ve seen the chaos and the potential economic, social and cultural disaster unfold during the preparation, or lack of preparation, for isolationist Brexit itself, the unbelievable occurrence of Boris Johnson being made Premier, (a Prime Minister who cannot even command a majority in a single vote in the Commons) and now Scotland’s distinctly different laws to England, laws dating back hundred of years before the Union of 1707, are very likely to be overruled yet again, as they have been several times in the last five years, following the shutting down of democratic debate in the House of Commons.

We’ve seen all of this and more.

In the end though it all still comes down to some clear choices for you, sometime again soon.

Are you still happy to continue with most of the important decisions which affect you and your family being made mainly by politicians that the vast majority of the people of Scotland never vote for, in a parliament, one chamber of which is unelected,and there simply on patronage, based in the south of England?

Are you still content to see all of the revenue produced and collected through your income tax, business taxes and the tax generated from Scotland’s abundant resources continuing to go south to benefit the UK Treasury and London, with a significant percentage of this money being spent on priorities elsewhere, which have no benefit for the people of Scotland?

Are you also content to continue to see only a fraction of this tax money, less than you contribute, coming back north of the border in the form of a grant (granted your own money) with limits and stipulations set from London on how it is spent on your services?

Or, have you now reached a tipping point, a point where you want a say in the future of Scotland, and a say in how the money generated by the resources of Scotland, and by you, is spent to best benefit your community, your country?

Do you want to choose all future governments of Scotland? Governments who will have the same aspirations for you and your children as you have, and know that they better have, as they are accountable to you if they fail you?

Do you want a say in the shaping of the values, aims, social and health agendas of all future governments of Scotland? Do you want the National Health Service to continue to be free at the point of care in Scotland and in future have enough investment available to it to make it a world class health service that you can be proud of?

Do you want your children to continue to have the opportunity of a free university education in Scotland?

Do you want to ensure that sufficient investment is available to allow your children to grow up having received the best education, access to skills and opportunities that they possibly can, to let them be able to make positive choices about their futures in Scotland, to have options?

When you look past all of the bluster, scaremongering, propaganda masquerading as news ,and political spin that has been spouted over the last seven years or so at you, and all of the desperately weak promises that you are made by a distant government whose priorities are at odds with yours, these choices for you are what this whole debate about sovereignty boils down to.

In brass tax terms are you satisfied that you, your family and your community are considered as being important to the aims of your current government in London?

We were told that the referendum in 2014 may end up being a one off, a once in a lifetime opportunity, before the door slammed shut again. One chance only, for you, as an individual, to be able to make a significant and measurable contribution to the improvement of the future welfare and prosperity of Scotland, for all Scots.

That is not the case. One way or the other your chance to have your say is coming again, perhaps sooner than you think.

The question of self-government for Scotland is not about party politics, it’s not about nationalism in Scotland, although,worryingly, since 2014 actual nationalism in England is on the rise.

No, what more and more Scots are committed to is clearly not nationalism. It is about a fair society, social justice and the opportunity for you and your children to have a better life, to have governments elected by you, and accountable to you.

On this the 5th anniversary of the first canvassing of your thoughts about how you wish to see your country governed in the future please bear these points in mind.

He’s bolted again

Roll up, roll up! The Brexit three ring circus, playing to an increasingly bored and disgruntled audience, stumbles on towards oblivion.

Old firey pants Johnson has once again demonstrated his predilection for leaving meetings with leaders of other states by the back door, this time in Luxembourg, a country with a population of roughly the same size as Glasgow.

All set for a joint media conference with Luxembourg’s PM Xavier Bettel to tell us all about the outstanding progress he made being able to pick out his own food selection from the working lunchtime menu with Messrs Barnier and Juncker successfully, the brass necked bumbler took fright at the sound outside of three men playing kazoos, a small barking fluffy dog, called Leonard, and a flatulently challenged great grandmother protesting his presence in the Grand Duchy, and bolted for the push bar exit, a habit he is most definitely forming.

What a walluper. The poor Luxembourgish leader had to stand behind the two press conference lecterns alone to make a rousing speech roasting the buffoon. Johnson didn’t even stick around long enough to be insulted.

According to him Brexit is happening under his direction (actually Dominic Cummings direction) come what may on 31 October, but he reckons he’s not going to break the law whilst doing so.

Work that one out, if you can, seeing as that quaint and archaic place where democracy is supposed to mean something, parliament, currently has him by the short blonde curly bits (that’s just put me right off my tea) by compelling the slippery sod to not leave the EU without a deal.

Meanwhile Jo(sephine) and her Amazing Technicolor political party, who seems to be having some kind of acid trip, thinks that she’s going to hoover up remainer votes, including in Scotland, when we get to the as yet unannounced General Election, (stop giggling).

What is that accent(s) thing all about? Is she the child of forces parents by any chance, who sometimes can have quite a mix of accents due to the various postings their parents have had? That may be the perfectly rational and normal reason for it, if that’s the case

Watching Ms Swinson on Marr, and then her various interviews from the Lib/DemTory/Labour Party conference, I’ve noticed that often she can sound like she’s from the borders, Inverness, Knightsbridge and somewhere along the Bristol Channel, all in the one sentence.

It says on Makeitupyerselipedia that she’s from somewhere around Milngavie, (she’s definitely no’ from Pollok).

I would suggest that she might like to pick one accent and stick with it, and probably not the posh one, because she’s shyte at it.

Anyway, she’s just what we need in the politics of the disunited kingdom right now, yet another ego mad control freak numpty, ready to sell her soul for power.

Oh, and she doesn’t get to tell us we can’t have another referendum of Scotland’s people to determine their thoughts on governing themselves. Not now, not ever.

Independence is an imperative for Scotland. The opportunity may come quicker than we think. If you haven’t started chapping doors yet I suggest now is the time.

Tied up in knots

The way things are going at the moment auld firey pants Johnson, an individual who couldnae be trusted tae advise the electorate that grass is green, is very likely to be the first Prime Minister of the disunited kingdom to end up being legally compelled to don a pointy hat with the letter D prominently displayed on the front, park his arse in a dark damp smelling cupboard, and with a further fully agreed indenture, be so ordered, whilst in there, to insert a fat digit up his right nostril and sing show tunes at the top of his voice from the musical Oklahoma.

Joanna Cherry QC MP SNP is at it again. Not content with launching a case in the Court of Session proving that Dominic Cummings pet muppet, with his cabal of breathing Spitting image puppets and characters from the Beano, is breaking the law by shutting down parliament to avoid scrutiny of his wicked plan to commit national suicide, and has very probably misled wee Lizzie, the old lady of London, in a way that would have earned previous holders of his job in history a one way ticket to the Tower of London, she’s now become involved in another action to make sure the letter that the fecker has been ordered to write by parliament actually gets written, and signed (if need be by the Scottish judiciary) and sent to Brussels.

This as the errant puppet frontman of the as yet un-launched English ‘Nationalist’ Party, a man clearly on an election footing, takes the well worn path from the Keep the North Britishers British playbook with yet another announcement of a contract for warships to be built in Scotland, which long experience tells anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to such things, starts with one number of ships to be built, and then fluctuates back and forward for a few years, depending on how close Scottish independence appears to be, and then sometimes mysteriously only partially happens, or doesn’t happen at all.

It’s kind of like the magic North Sea oil trick, a resource which seems to hide under the seabed for long periods of time, on the brink of running dry, before being discovered yet again at the most convenient time for the promotion of the retention of politics of Union in vast new fields set to flow for at least thirty years.

It seems too like suddenly every sector vital to retaining unionism and success in a General Election is getting money flung at it by Johnson’s regime (for a regime it currently is) After all of these years of austerity where is that coming from?

Oh that Scotland could have control of its own destiny, where it didn’t have to rely on another country having control of all of its revenue and giving only some of it back, when it feels like it. How much better would that be.

It’s time for independence. It’s time for self-reliance. It’s time to look forward positively, towards a people-centred progressive country, to a better future, not backwards at the baggage of a failed state buried under the hangups of a flawed, declined and irrelevant Empire.

Get it roon’ ye Boris

So there you have it. Wee Joanna Cherry, QC, MP, who should never need to buy her own gin and tonic at a bar in Scotland ever again, is moonwalking doon the Royal Mile, in between disembarked coachloads of curious Amuricin tourists setting out on a spiritual journey to track down the very spot where their great great great granddaddies first milked a coo, singing at the top of her voice an electro-pop rap mix version of ‘Scots Wha Hae’.

Lord Carloway and his two exceedingly learned brethren legal high wizards in the Court of Session have indeed caused an almighty stooshie with their decision on the now officially unlawful proroguing saga.

They’ve let the cat oot the bag, as if we didn’t already know it, that Boris Johnson’s bulldog-patterned silk underpants are so ferociously on fire that the dodgy riot and disorder control water cannon that he spent a fortune on when he was the mayor of London wouldn’t be able to put the flames out.

Get it right up and roon aboot him! Hell mend Johnson and his mendacious plotting, and his boss Cummings, who is working him from the back.

Next Tuesday will be a fun day as the high heid yin’s in wigs in London get a shot at applying their legal minds to the distinct, and separate to English law, jurisprudence of one of the equal partners in the ‘precious’ Union.

Meanwhile she of the thin lipped glower, the Sky talking heid (who is no relation to George Burley) a news presenter so unbiased in her commentary that she once described a supporter of Scottish self-government during the indy ref whilst she was broadcasting live from Aberdeen as “ a bit of a knob”, has had a brain fart on air again, asking a legal expert, with barely veiled indignity “what influence can Scottish judges have over a….British..er…English er…. parliament”.

There it is right there, how we are viewed. How dare Scotland stand up for itself. Even our laws are to be disrespected. We see clearly our place in the loving embrace of the broad-shouldered Union.

One day, not too far away, the next generation of Scots will look back and wonder what all that fuss was about, when the people of Scotland made the decision to return to governing themselves.

It can’t come quick enough.

Nationalist delirium, the real kind

So, after the last few days in the surreal Monty Pythonesque atmosphere of the pre-Brexit UK, we can say with some assured certainty that there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that there are two middle-aged English guys with posh accents, in business suits, carrying expensive attaché cases (with nothing in them bar yesterday’s BLT peece wrappers and a half eaten Milky Way) wandering around the EU complex in Brussels pretending to be carrying a ream of technically detailed trade documents to assist them in negotiating a fantastic deal for Grand Britannia to exit the trading bloc with a better trading arrangement than even remaining members will have.

Nope, no truth in it at all. There are no cunning plan trade negotiations going on with Brussels. None.

The Mad Hatter (what was he doing with those arms at the podium whilst the Irish Taoiseach was ripping the mince out of him yesterday?) stumbles gamely on from one disaster to another, mildly disconcerted in his vagueness at the faint sound of the Benny Hill theme tune, which surely accompanies his every move in any sane observer’s mind, ringing in his ears.

I literally cannae keep up with all of this. Writing a topical blog these days and getting it out there and read before it becomes totally redundant involves devoting the time and effort of a full time job, and I don’t have that time available to me. This, plus the fact that just about every time I publish a blog Facebook bans me for a minimum 24 hours is making it less than easy.

Parliament is shut. Bolted down. Wee guys in frock coats, some in pantaloons and jodhpurs, brandishing ornate maces and gleaming Cavalier swords lie in wait at various entrances to the lower house of the Palace Of Westminster, ready to apply the parliamentary Malky to anybody that tries to get in the building.

Democracy, laughable as it is in reality in the UK, is truly fecked, both sides of the European debate convinced they are being shafted by politicians of the other viewpoint.

Wee John Bercow, who once told the SNP off for clapping in parliament, is leaving his 10 year home in the crows nest after taking a bow to loud clapping from opposition benches, and stuck a middle digit up to the sedentary front bench of the minority English ‘Nationalist’ Party who have taken over the government of the UK.

A Section 30 Order? Another referendum on self government for Scotland? Not a chance will we get that. The political construct that is Great Britain is, like never before, in severe danger of dying on its arse, and they are not going to let us go easily. Sometime soon that is going to become very apparent, if you can’t already see it now.

The Tories ruled it out, just ignored the request, the new righter than right-wing regime, who scarily may very shortly get into bed with Farage and his fascist cohort, if Sajid Javid’s squirming evasion when asked by Andrew Marr if Johnson would indulge in a coital pact with extremism is anything to go by, will knock it back too.

We can also say for sure that New/ Old/ lost the plot Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell is as slippery as a banana skin steeped in crude oil, dreept in angry dug skitters and Fairy Liquid, then draped over a patch of black ice in mid-January.

Independence referendum for Scotland says McDonnell. A good idea? Me? Well yes, maybe I did say at the Edinburgh festival that we would not stand in the way of any democratic decisions made by the people of Scotland, you’ve got to realise I was in Scotland at the time, but No, no, definitely not in the first few years after Chairman Corbyn’s bold cultural revolution. Other priorities will take up our time, like climate change, poverty, the colour of letterboxes, new legislation on standard fingernail lengths, Spirograph, that kind of stuff.

As if the madness cannae get any wackier the leader of the current UK government, Dominic Cummings, is seriously considering manipulating his pet muppet into responding to the hurriedly passed anti-Brexit legislation by formally requesting an extension on leaving the EU from the bewildered folks at Brussels whilst sending them a second letter saying that him and his government don’t actually want one!

How’s all of that Better Together bollox working out for you?

Independence is normal. Independence for Scotland now. It is an imperative.