The definition of insanity

Ah, it’s the annual Groundhog GERS examination of Scottish finances day, a day where the definition of insanity is demonstrated and clearly proven each year as we in Scotland expect a different outcome, a financially positive one, from being shackled to a membership of a Union that we don’t benefit from.

With 40% of Scotland’s expenditure, 70% of its taxation and all the major levers that can impact its economy under the control of Westminster, with a bill of £3.4bn removed from Scotland’s accounts for UK military and a nuclear arsenal kept a stones throw from Glasgow, a sum of £4.5bn to service Westminster debt, £1.8bn for UK ‘service costs’ and £966m for ‘international services’, a total bill of around £11 billion, this day annually is spun by the media as somehow proof that Scotland could not exist as an independent country, when actually it proves that the opposite is the case, and it is an imperative that Scotland takes control of its own destiny as soon as possible.

Think about it.

Eligible to vote?

Breaking news……….It has come to light that the latest Secretary of State Against Scotland, the Viceroy of Joy, zany madcap personality Alister Jack and Dougie, less useful than VAR, Ross, the putative leader of the Tories in Scotland, have given in to pressure and prepared a document to be put forward as primary legislation in preparation for the upcoming referendum which will determine Scotland’s destiny.

Key to this legislation will be the criteria for eligibility to vote in that referendum.

We’ve managed to get a sneak peak at the proposals for such an eligibility criteria, proposals which are sure to meet with the approval of the Cummings government in London, and his branch agents north of the border.

“It is proposed, that the following criteria must be strictly adhered to unless clause 12 hereunder applies. In order to be able to vote:-

1. In the last five years you must have purchased, from one of those dodgy sites they advertise on Sky just after the funeral insurance, a commemorative solid silver coin depicting Winston Churchill making a V for Victory sign to a passing Spitfire.

2. You habitually refuse to eat Christmas dinner until at least 3.15pm every 25th December.

3. You are completely comfortable and at ease uttering the words “I’m a proud Scot but….”

4. You have never heard of Gavin McCrone, and if you have you believe his place in the history of your post oil discovery country to be ‘Fake News’.

5. Your a pooler and sharer, but you’re not too bothered whether that pooling and sharing results in Scotland becoming poorer and skinter as long as you still get the opportunity to pay your licence to fund the BBC so you can watch the Great British bake off on ice, in flippers, and absorb propaganda.

6. You believe that an independent Scotland would immediately be invaded by Indonesian commandos.

7. You are over 59 years of age.

8. You live anywhere else in the world but describe your nationality as ‘Scoddish’.

9. You are definitely not a person not born in Scotland, an EU citizen or otherwise, who has chosen to live in Scotland, pay taxes,work hard, provide us with the benefits of your skills and expertise in vital jobs, as well as enriching our culture. No, you are not one of them. No, no, no.

10. You firmly believe that politics in your country involves nothing other than a longstanding two horse race between two outdated political parties centred in England.

11. Hearing any words pronounced in Scots Gaelic or seeing them written on a road sign brings you out in hives and makes you want to kick yer dug.

12. Failure to meet the above criteria may not necessarily result in non-eligibility to vote. Individuals who this applies to may apply to the Chief Returning Officer, Queen Elizabeth House, Edinburgh, explaining in less than fifty words why they should be considered eligible to vote. Each application will be considered on its own merits, but please note any successful applications via this process will be eligible to vote by post only.

The Applecross incident

We really have wandered into an alternative universe now. Ye couldnae make it up.

With the polls consistently reflecting the growing calls for a return to a sovereign self-governing Scotland, (the latest of which, five years and eleven months after September 2014, returning a complete reversal of the result of 18th day of that month of that year) it is clear the power brokers of Union and their the agents, insignificant, or otherwise, are getting their red, white and blue knickers in a twist, eager to either present some sort of fictional affection for Scotland, and, or, besmirch the name of all things independence.

For example picture the Cabinet Office in Downing Street a week or so ago, as the leader of the pack, a thin sour-faced balding man, crumpled polling results in his bony mitts, leans over the bees-waxed table and says quietly to the oafish character facing him (the oaf presenting a facial expression not unlike the vagueness of a young Fr Dougall McGuire) “Boris, I have a job for you!”

Thus in a vain attempt to convince the Jockemites of the north that Scotland holds such a treasured place in the heart of the broad-shouldered, loving-armed beast, they sent the village idiot north, to a secluded spot to pretend that he, the burd and the wean, were enjoying a spiffing Scotch vacation, an Enid Blyton type ‘ Three go mad near Applecross’ holiday in a mysterious cottage, whilst consuming lashings of ginger beer, venison sandwiches and the contents of a hamper from Fortnum and Masons, with a luxury trailer, a billionaires yacht, and a chopper hop to a country estate just a code word away.

The fact that the surrounding trees were teeming with nightscope-sighted men in black body armour, the sea below the cliffface to the front of the cottage was awash with naval small craft carrying worried looking men with binoculars, and frogmen, and the skies above were adorned with helicopters and the odd drone, blotting out the stars, still didn’t manage to stop the eejit doing three of the four things his master had told him expressly not to do, break into a sheep field using a kitchen chair, build a tent out of an old Downing Street bedsheet and start a fire where it is forbidden to do so. Thankfully, he couldn’t do the fourth thing he was told not to do, drive south to Barnard Castle wearing a patch over his one good eye, with the wean in the back seat, to check his vision, as his security detail had hidden his car keys.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Prime Minister of the UK. What a joke.

Apparently though, now that the long-standing fascist supporting Daily Mail has revealed all of this earth shattering news to the great British public, the London spin doctors, eager not to end up with a complete write off, somehow managed to spin a very weak made up SNPBad story that it was the evil separatists who have exposed where he was enjoying his holidays, breaking a security blanket, resulting in the poor man having to flee for his life lest any of the local peasantry spotted him and introduced his erse cheeks to the sharp prongs of a pitchfork.

What complete bollox all of that is. Whomever puts about such divisive nonsense should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

The much disappointing Neil Oliver, who once described all of us advocates for a self-determining Scotland as a ‘cancer’ which is decidedly not a very nice way to describe your fellow human beings, and additionally insulting to the many of us who have some personal experience of cancer, is such an individual who should be ashamed.

This weekend he’s spouting on Twitter the following….

‘Scotland was the most welcoming country in the world. That a British PM – or indeed anyone at all – might feel unsafe here is more mortifying and heartbreaking than I can say.’

Mr Oliver is at it. Trolling for attention. He craves it. He kens fine the only danger Boris Johnson, or any of his Cabinet would be in in Scotland, would be via the sound of peaceful democratic protest and demonstration against the policies which he, and they represent. In Scotland Boris Johnson would only always be in danger of having his credibility reduced to zero by means of sharp-witted patter, and very little else. Oliver knows that is the case yet he is trying to make out that his country is a place of danger that it is not, specifically because of the rise in the numbers of those committed to the rightful normalcy of independence. Disgraceful.

Yet turning that proposition on its head, imagine the First Minister of Scotland, or Humza Yousaf, somehow ending up in a bar or on a city street where a crowd of the Neanderthal actual nationalists, of the British kind, those who came out of the shadows in George Square on September 19th 2014, were hanging about. That is a different story, with perhaps a different outcome.

Independence is normal. Union, where the government of another country makes all the major decisions on behalf of another country is not.

We will achieve independence for Scotland by peaceful non-violent means, because the 55% and rising, that is what we are.

‘A real political talent’ ooft!

Aye, there she sat, stern. Her finest ‘Should have put the boot in’ facial expression set, fixed, ready to tolerate no nonsense, or a question that may tie her tongue. Not that that was likely.

No’ comfy in the re-tailored, for cheesy Wotsit consumption (seams well and truly let oot) Black Watch tartan jaiket, the top half of a suit Theresa May used to wear as she strode about the place as if on stilts, between bizarre disco dancing and repetitive inane ‘Brexit is Brexit’ sound bites, (the former Prime Minister having looked for all intents and purposes like a Tim Burton animated version of a North-British-haunting Jenny Long Legs in a tv special BBC Pathetic Quay production of ‘A Nightmare Before Independence’) she settled herself stiffly for the interview.

Several stoats are soon to be parted from their fur in order that this latest recipient of the unelected House of Lords rewards points card can park her seat on a seat in that chamber, a quid pro quo arrangement played out so many times before as recompense for representing and propagandising for the country that still retains power over Scotland rather than standing up for, and having confidence in, Scotland itself.

Ruth Davidson, a politician who, as leader, has lost every election and debate she ever was in, an individual so pre-occupied with her career that she has forgotten what a constituency surgery is, was in front of the cameras.

Yes, she said confidently, speaking on the State broadcaster’s ‘The Nine’. According to the bullock sitting, Challenger tank fetishist, wee Doogie Ross, the Fitbaw Linesm…. Assistant Referee, a man whose dexterity and flexibility knows no bounds, particularly whilst running the line and attempting to get out of the way of a particularly truculent trundling Mitre baw heading his way, resulted in him ending up erse over flag in a heap, is a ‘real politician talent’. Saints preserve us!

He is, honest he is, I’m no’ kidding, pleaded Ruth, unconvincingly. He’s like a young Jack Kennedy, says the Ruthster, totting up in her mind the potential windfall that three hundred odd pound plus expenses a day in the hip pocket, a couple of corporate directorships and some media work will bring her, whilst peeling an orange in her pocket.

Oh, and by the way Jackson Carlaw wisnae pushed.

Naw naw, that five minute spell the other week between the First Minister of Scotland yet again handing him his own smouldering entrails on a plate during FM questions, and his dramatic unexpected announcement that a younger version of greedy selfish conservatism in Scotland was needed for the job of chief gobshyte mouthpiece for the London mothership than him, was sufficient enough time for him to make a well considered, methodically prepared and strategically sound self-sacrifice for the good of the party. Honest. What is that smell?

Yes old Carloan clearly had a sudden lightbulb moment where he thought, I’m up three times a night at the toilet and during the day ma face takes on the hue of a bowl of tomato soup everytime Nicola Sturgeon glances at me, and I cannae get away with slagging her hair forever. It definitely needs a younger sleekit numptie for the job than masel.

So Doogie it shall be, the man in charge, who has already started as almost all of his colleagues both in Edinburgh and London have gone on before him since 2014, with the turgid ‘once in a generation’ bollox. Although as an addendum to this nonsense, according tae Doogie, the First Minister has also apparently signed some sort of mystical document which ratified that fallacious statement.

In the week when a giant of the political past of these islands, John Hume, has passed away in the north of Ireland, roll on the days when second rate chancers like Davidson, Carlaw and Ross are dim past memories in Scotland’s renewed independent future.