Suppressing democracy

When I was a teenager, which wasn’t yesterday, (one of the many discarded as a Thatcher hidden statistic under the guise of the Manpower Services Commission’s mission to dig holes in public areas in the morning and fill them in again in the afternoon) my best pal, who had escaped by joining the forces, used to come home to our small former paper mill focussed town every couple of weeks on a weekend and bring with him a group of various friends he’d made from around the UK, male and female. These were folk with different views, different outlooks and higher degrees of confidence and access to opportunities to most of us at that time in the post-industrial depressed central belt of Scotland. 

I could have done the Norman Tebbit ‘get on my bike’ thing  too but with my mother’s health becoming increasingly worse at the time I wasn’t for leaving (I eventually did leave home heading south to city life to find work three months after Mum passed away, and acquired a half decent job within three weeks).

Anyway, when my pal and his crowd, which very quickly also became my crowd, came for the weekend we would have great times, much merriment, and sharing of views and opinions, new ideas to hear, a complete breath of fresh air for me. They’d arrive sometime on a Friday afternoon, after a long drive in convoy from the midlands, and the last of them would leave on Sunday nights. I thoroughly enjoyed their company. Then they’d be off, to their busy, varied and meaningful lives.

On Monday morning’s, donning the steel toecap boots and a yellow plastic weather jacket to stand in a field all day like a jaundiced Highland coo I would be devastated, I felt suffocated, abandoned, denied, jealous, I was missing out simply because of circumstances and geography. I resented all of the Thatcherite capitalist wrecking ball vandalism that had been done to my country, the destruction and damage to the lives of people around me, and to this day the memory of that feeling of suffocation and abandonment is still one of the motivators in my overwhelming burning determination to do my bit, like many hundreds of thousands of others, to assist in helping my country return to its rightful state of independence. My grandchildren, just starting on their life journeys now, deserve much better than that.

Perhaps what I’ve just written, dear readers, may have you thinking that I’m being a wee bit too personal or overly emotional about my own experiences, and if so I apologise, but I write it to illustrate a feeling that I think we, the Yes Movement, no matter what part of the currently disparate parts, politically or otherwise, we may find ourselves in, may experience over the next couple of weeks as the world around us, from beyond the stifling faux-beneficent hug and barrier of sea-borne sewerage of little empire Britannicus, comes to town. They are coming to our place, to our country, they are coming to talk adult business, to have serious discourse, to debate, to share ideas, to negotiate, to put in place initiatives to stop us as a species destroying our world. They are doing this critical and fascinating work in Scotland.

Serious, bright people, representing the rest of the world, in Scotland, who will not be hosted by us, but by the government from another country which stifles us, smothers us, holds us back and uses us. Our own democratically selected leadership and government will be shunned for the most part, even as it tries to push itself into the crowd-scene, already our major city’s local government is being subject to humiliation and a campaign of pervasive untruths and snide negativity, too wee, too poor, too dirty Glasgow.

We,  the people of Scotland, we’ll see all that goes on at the Cop26 Conference over the next two weeks on the telly, we’ll hear about it on the radio, we’ll read about it online and in the rags, we will marvel at some of the initiatives and debate, we will resent other views, but we will be standing in the rain outside watching the parade go by. Ignored. Outsiders in our own country, stuck in the corner behind the red, white and blue flags. invisible.

Then? Then they will all leave. The conference lights will dim, flicker and go out. As we watch we will wonder, what makes our country any less valuable or less worthy than the countries who were represented at the conference, given their place, respected, their views listened to, their votes counted? Why are we different? Why are we digging holes and filling them back in whilst most of the rest of the world (with exceptions) gets on with the perfectly normal process of going back to their countries and continuously having their democratic will respected and duly acted upon? We will, and should be, angry, but we will grit our teeth and store away the emotion.

Perhaps in a wild dreamlike fantasy, like the closing sequence of the unlikely war/football film hit of a few decades ago “Escape to Victory” when the occupied French civilian crowd invaded the pitch and bundled up all of the allied prisoners into civilian clothes and shuffled them all of the freedom through the gates of the stadium past the occupying forces, as each of the delegates leave the conference area for their various corners of the globe they’ll bundle up a couple of thousand of us each with them, symbolically to set us free, to recognise our sovereignty.

Then again, we are not going anywhere. This is our country. We are taking our country back. Democracy will prevail. Scotland will once again be governed by its own people. It’s coming.

A **yte storm

It’s an ill divided world right enough. We clearly are reaching the age of George Orwell’s frightening imagination, where nonsense and lies is heavily promoted and passed for fact, and real facts, well they just get ignored or minimised into being considered unimportant.

With the eyes of the world about to be focussed on Glasgow for the upcoming COP26 climate change conference the cabal of British nationalist members of Westminster’s parliament who have pledged their loyalty to another country other than their own, are at it again. 

Them and the British state media, and their compliant colleagues in the gutter press, are trying their hardest to make you think that Scotland’s largest city is unfit to host such an event. 

In fact in their opinion Glasgow looks like a cross between Annacker’s Midden and a Dickensian rat infested slum, an embarrassment to foreign dignitaries, and anyone else who cares to look in on our insignificant wee region of their glorious Britannic state. 

Yes, in the spirit of the Scottish cringe, the great Jock and sausage roll swindle, yet again we are depicted as a mob of Rab C Nesbitt’s, McMicawbers, Barras-hinger-abooter artful dodgers, broo-cheats and peasants,living amongst our ain keich, and giant rat droppings. 

Meanwhile, south of the border, down at the flying circus, a Hoaky Coaky is taking place, as happens with just about every major decision on every subject they make decisions about, (including the unforgivable ones that have contributed to ending the lives of many thousands of innocents). 

This time it’s about how they manage, or at least pretend to light touch regulate, the privatised water companies they in government have personal financial interests in. 

Caught in the dazzling light of public exposure, which they as a government knew about,that these companies are pumping gallon after gallon of untreated shyte, pish and used condoms into the seas around their south coast has sent them into a PR spin, but hey thankfully the media are trying desperately to underplay the story, there’s nothing to see here. Yet another example of the state media trying to protect a system of government which is crumbling away, a union on its knees. 

Now, we all know that in the brave new/ old world of imperial Britannia they were, and now are again very suspicious and distrustful of our ‘Auld Alliance’ friends on mainland Europe, but sending them a giant turdberg is really just not cricket old boy.  When we are once again an independent nation we will be better neighbours to our european friends.

#ScottishIndependence11

We just want our country back

We just want our country back. The evidence is there that our forbears, by far the majority of them, didn’t want to join in a Union with England, as Defoe the spy, and propagandist testified, (fake news is not new) in his reports back to London,(before he wrote Robinson Crusoe, starred in the movie “Platoon“ and scored 47 goals for Tottenham). We know the Darien Scheme was a huge financial disaster, but not of such an extent to make us crawl to our neighbours door for a tap until pay-day and a request that they make all our future governance decisions for us ad-infinitum. We know that our nobles of the time sold out their country on the strength of bribes, debt clearances, promises of lands and titles, before being unceremoniously chased out of Edinburgh after signing their names to the documents which were to see us governed by a Union, by consent in name only, for the next 300 odd years.

We just want our country back, and we don’t anymore wish to look up, dredge up, or live in, the past. We don’t want to fight with anyone or fall out. We scratch our heads in bewilderment that our belief in the prospect of us successfully regaining control of the governance of our own country is spun around and deliberately misconstrued by those in England in power to be somehow all about them, not us, as they specifically accuse us, falsely, of hate towards them. How arrogant is that? We don’t hate anyone, we are not asking for something which Is not rightfully ours. All we want is what exists for other democratic countries, the governance arrangement considered normal, the power to make our own decisions for Scotland, in Scotland, and by the people who live there. In the name of goodness what could possibly be wrong with that?

We just want our country back. From the day and hour of our rightful return to self-governance we will have boundless energy, enthusiasm and determination to move our country progressively forward in a citizen-centred focussed manner, to be a beacon for others to follow. No longer shackled, no longer bound and derided by association, having to endure endless poor, misjudged or London-centrically prioritised governmental decisions made for us, not by us.

We just want our country back. We will shirk nothing. We will address poverty head on, we will treat the addicted, not stigmatise them, we will develop a world class system of public services which first and foremost treats our people, all of them, with dignity and respect. We will look to build on the great work of our European and Scandinavian partners in building from the bottom up a society where no child should go hungry, where the right to high quality housing, shelter and warmth, health care and education are codified into law, where our auld folk can pass their remaining years without the worry of penury or poor health care, where opportunities arise for our young.  We’ll make things again in Scotland. No longer will we be a country of retail parks and call centres. We will become, once again, major manufacturers, in green technology, wind, tide, developing energy grids to mainland Europe and our northern friends. Our world class food and drink exports will be just that, ours.

We just want our country back. We want to look forwards. We don’t want to live in permanent homage to a past filled with imperial conquest and a pre-occupation with war. The good old days of waving little red, white and blue flags, ration books, deferring to those who have acquired posh accents, and overt racial and religious persecution and discrimination weren’t really good, no matter how many Tory (British Nationalist) politicians swoon over their ‘royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this other Eden, this England’. No. we want to make friends, build partnerships, in harmony with others, not create barriers, generate suspicion or provoke belligerence. Keep your little empire mentality in your own country.

We just want our country back. We will be the best of friends to others in times of strife. Call upon us, and you can be sure of our help in partnership, we will demonstrate our commitment to assisting you, as friends do, but we will never again be subject to the will of another nation.Never.

#ScottishIndependence9

And then we win

Whilst the shambolic bogus Winston Churchill figure catches a bit of late in the year sun in his pal’s luxury villa in Marbella (in part exchange for a seat in the Lords) indulging himself in the completion of a portrait of a chestnut pony from his painting by numbers set, real politicians, states-people, are getting on with the business of governing, the business of moving pieces into position, manoeuvring ever closer to the end game.

It was never going to be easy to extract Scotland away from our ‘benevolent’ rulers to the south, who will try every possible trick in the book, without fear or conscience to hang on to us, like a thirsty drunk at a party who has seen off his own cairry-oot, or to be more accurate, given the relationship, like a perpetrator of domestic violence, promising faithfully through tears yet again, that they will never treat us badly again, as long as we stay with them. For to lose control of Scotland would dilute their already diminished status in the 21^stcentury world to third rate. They’ll do anything to stop us going. Their media will spew forth propaganda on an unprecedented level to cause confusion and instil doubts in our people about our ability to govern ourselves and manage our own assets, resources and economy. That is why we have to get this right. That is why we must be patient,

Nicola Sturgeon is currently taking advantage of the run up to the COP26 climate change summit due to take place in Glasgow to make, renew, and strengthen connections with the leaders of other nations, further legitimising and normalising the notion of Scotland as a separate entity to the disaster of what passes for governance down Westminster way. This in the days leading up to an event which Boris Johnson said last year he would only let her attend over his dead body ‘guffaw guffaw!’ Her predecessor in the job of First Minister did the same networking and relationship building.

The same strategy is demonstrably noticeable by looking at the steady increase in the numbers of Scottish Government trade offices opening up around Europe and further. These hubs are all about building a base, establishing relationships and maintaining credence as an independent nation. In the struggle that is to come all of this groundworking is going to become important.

At the time of the recent state opening of the our Parliament I read a few comments on social media from supposed independence supporters disgusted at Nicola Sturgeon’s speech in response to the official address made by Elizabeth 1^st of Scotland (2^nd of England) in the Holyrood chamber that day, accusing her of cow-towing to royalty and the establishment.

Have these complainers considered that  the position of First Minister of Scotland, the role of leader, hopefully soon of an independent progressive social democratic European nation, involves being the public servant of all of the people of Scotland, not just the ones who voted for her, and (myself I would do away with the system of hereditary royalty in a heartbeat if it was left to me) that currently Scotland’s history ties us to a royal family, a royal family, which it may still be tied to as an independent country, unless by democratic vote we (hopefully) decide otherwise?  These detractors may wish to note that Alex Salmond on many occasions whilst First Minister representing all of the people of Scotland acted in a similar gracious way, which, in that position, is the correct thing to do. Get off her back. She is doing the job she has been elected to do.

We can all be frustrated with the speed in which we are moving towards calling a referendum. My goodness after watching the recent Indy debate, hosted by Lesley Riddoch, which I think was organised by Edinburgh Yes, with a panel of Robin McAlpine, Colin Fox, Michelle Thomson, Mike Small et al, I was left for a moment thinking we’ve actually gone back the way since 2014 in terms of progressing to independence, but then I thought better of it. We’ve got to have hope. It’s what keeps us doing what we do. The British state over the last seven years is eating itself. It is losing control. The level of incompetence on display in the Cabinet Office in Downing Street is astonishing. But the timing must be right to ensure success.

There is a drama to be played out yet. One which will see Johnson’s government having to resort to law to stop Scotland’s democracy from having its way, which will be a massive near fatal blow for the Union of ‘consent’. In their arrogance they won’t see that this is an issue. Then?  Then it is up to us, the many thousands of advocates of an independent Scotland, to make sure that our not-yet-convinced loved ones, friends, and colleagues are fully aware of the facts, as set out so eloquently by Professor Tom Devine, the pre-eminent historian of our time, when he recently said:-

“We have now moved quite dramatically, and very swiftly, from a Union by consent to a Union of enforced law.

A Union of that type cannot stand!

Remember, 1707 was an agreement between two historic nations. It was not an imposition. What we have now is an imposition.”

In my view I think it’s then only a matter of time, and game over.

Running away from the circus

C’mon now, stop it. Everything is just fine. C’mon you people of Scotland, stop worrying about your country being governed by our neighbouring country to the south. It’s all ok, hunky dory in fact. They’ve got it all covered.

Heading into the winter months the UK now has the highest rate of coronavirus cases in Western Europe. Also the shops are running out of regular supplies of food and other essentials, and it’s apparently not because of Brexit (you’ve not to mention the B word because Westminister are still trying to convince the general population that Brexit wasn’t the single biggest act of self-harm a government anywhere has done to itself since the mid last century). Don’t mention the buses and the three hundred and ninety million quid a week for the NHS!

No, it’s about a shortage of truck drivers it seems. No, not truck drivers from the EU or Eastern Europe, who previously plied their trade on our roads, and kept the ‘just in time’ wholesale food and drink sector process from producer/supplier to consumer ticking over nicely. No, not them, we’re talking about a whole stack of Anglo Saxon Tommy Atkins types, armed with their “Yorkie’ bars and their Union flagged “You can’t come in, we’re full” bumper stickers, who seem to have disappeared, all of a sudden. It’s a mystery.

Where are they? They don’t have the right paperwork anymore to retire to the sunshine of the Costa full English breakfast’s, so where have they all gone?  The shortage has gotten so bad that Ministry of Transport officials have had to start thinking about knocking on the doors of retirees with the skills, begging them to come back to the lure of the cab. They’ve even considered chapping up a wee auld lady in her 90’s in SW1 who apparently had an HGV licence in the 1940’s, with the promise that she’d be able to manage easily two runs a week of frozen onion rings and crispy pancakes from Tunbridge Wells to Stoke because the steering’s no’ as heavy on trucks these days as it used tae be. They are indeed a despicable lot, and her in her twilight years too, as if the poor wee wummin hasn’t got enough on her plate right now.

With panic setting in they’ve done what they always do in such times, only this time without the Green Goddesses, they’ve sent for the army, a sign that things are going well. They UK Government, always keen to share, have also been trying to spin the yarn that the truckie crisis, the empty shelves, the heating crisis, and petrol queues are widespread across Europe, but strangely, despite much searching, nobody can find any evidence of such problems anywhere else but in Britain. 

Have you started stocking up on the candles yet?

So, during all of this, what exactly is the leadership of the glorious wonderful precious Union doing to turn all of this round, to steer the ship out of perilous waters, to point this Sceptred Isle in the direction of a golden future?

Michael Gove, still high on the euphoria of the Madchester Tory Conference scene, is taking part in a 7 day silent rave in an abandoned barn outside of Walsall in the West Midlands, he’s some dancer like, he’s got all the moves.  The Foreign Secretary, who previously thought trade deals involved mainly jam, and the Deputy Prime Minister, who, up until he had it pointed out to him by an EU delegation, never knew the UK was mainly an island, are fighting over who gets first dibs on a grace-and favour- mansion, Chevening House, donated by the 7^th Earl of Stanhope.

The Muppet on top, He’s on holiday again. Hiding out in Marbella (he won’t be the first to have done that) in the luxury villa of his Tory peer billionaire pal Zac Goldsmith, like Nero on his lyre, watching Rome incinerate, Johnson the liar, yet again feels in need of a touch of self-indulgence, whilst sipping large gins in front of Sky News special reports of crisis, shortage, homelessness and misery.

Always keen to exercise his imperial fetish the Beeetlejuice version of Winston Churchill is spending his daylight hours in front of an easel, paints and brushes in hand, capturing the local landscape, in a tribute to the many photographic examples of his hero, smocked up, cigar in situ, paint brush in hand, during his drink sodden weekends at Chartwell, between bouts of what he described as ‘Black Dog”. I wonder if Boris Johnson has any real concept of the level of ‘Black Dog’ he, and his party’s policies are generating amongst the vulnerable peoples of the nations of this very much disunited Kingdom. He hasn’t, and if he did, he doesn’t care.

Independence is normal, being governed by another country, especially when that country is run by a dangerously incompetent cabal of self-serving posh boys and chancers, like this lot, is not.

Time to start the preparations to go folks. Let’s get this started. 

Dae ye think so, aye?

Really? Are we still paying attention to these people? Are we still equating what comes out of their mouths with reality? Dear goodness, they are as monotonous as they are consistent, and as they are delusional.

No, says Alister Jack, the current incumbent of the title of Viceroy of Joy (although by the cut of him each time he gets interviewed a more joyless man would be hard to find) we can’t have a referendum. We’ll have to wait at least a generation, which when it comes to the subject of Scotland and the constitution, for the party of  British nationalism, actually means not until the second ice age arrives, or until Mars changes a Snickers back to being called a Marathon, or until Keith Richards applies for his bus pass.

No, according to the fella who only got the job of Secretary of State Against Scotland because his predecessor, the Fluffmeister Pursuivant, couldn’t offer his London colleagues the opportunity of good digs, plenty booze and the chance to blow the living daylights out of the wildlife of Scotland on weekends, we just can’t have it, so there. London is in charge, not us. (Poor old Davey Mundell had the wallpaper picked out too for his new office in the shiny Edinburgh Hub before he was rudely bounced into the gutter, wee shame).

Who gives a flying foxbat what a London appointed politician has to say about our country? Not me. In the last couple of days we’ll all have seen a couple of pieces of Holyrood legislation on Children’s Rights and Local Government in Scots getting the bums rush in the English-based Supreme Court, with the inference being that Holyrood has overstepped its devolved powers. Big Brother flexing his muscles, as we allow him to do.

Let them try that move once the Scottish government make the formal request for a section 30, which they know will be refused, a refusal which they will then hurdle over to arrange a referendum anyway. Let Johnson and his clown school try it. Denying democracy and then enforcing that denial through the courts in a relationship which is supposed to be a Union of mutual consent will not stand any longer than one of the parties legally imposing its will over the democratic rights of the other. 

There is no hiding place from that, there is no spin which can be applied to dilute in the eyes of the people of Scotland the impact of being told that despite a democratic majority, as demonstrated by voters selections to represent their views in both Holyrood and Westminster, expressing their will to have a referendum on the future of governance in Scotland, we will be denied by a decision made by another country forbidding us to do so. 

Let’s get onto that, right now, if not sooner.

The party of the working class? Aye right!

No’ that I think it will actually happen (he surely cannae be that stupid) mind you, having said that, arrogance has no bounds.  But if it does, pass the popcorn round and get comfortable, for there will be a show worth watching, as Nicola Sturgeon does the verbal equivalent of taking off her shoe and belting wee Ross McDougall roon the melt wae it until he’s seeing tiny union flags combusting into thin air around his head.

Following the wee pork sausage ludicrously telling a packed janitor’s cupboard at a fringe event (so fringe it was nearly in the carpark across the road) at the British Nationalist Conference in Manchester this week that his party was now the party of Scotland’s working people, and accusing the Scottish Government of being out of touch and abandoning those in society most in need, (which is straight out of the Tory HQ Orwellian Ministry of Truth playbook) he definitely raised more than a few eyebrows around the country, not to mention giggles. Particularly so when you consider that his lords and masters are about to take twenty quid a week out of the Universal Credit pockets of the most vulnerable members of our society.  It is clear to see, following in the footsteps of his now ermine-clad colleague with the tank fetish, what a brass-necked blether the man undoubtedly is.

Somewhat irked, well to be honest, annoyed like you get when flicking away a fly which gets in your face, the First Minister of Scotland took the bait, suggesting that the sometime linesman (VAR with the batteries removed) right-wing nationalist politician should come with her to meet working class communities, and then the people in those communities themselves can make a judgement about who is out of touch.

Reacting back, like a wean in the playground, the big brave soldier (anybody can be that on Twitter) Dougal Murray has made it known he’s up for it! Coming across like the school bully that eventually everybody outgrows and humiliates once the first person to stand up to him in the class rocks his arrogance, he reckons he’s on for the political equivalent of a square go. Him and the First Minister of Scotland toe -to -toe. His office has been in touch, Nicola Sturgeon’s to name the day, time  and place, because he’s proud of his working class background, which he’d never abandon in the way that she has to the drugs death crisis.

Please, please let this go ahead, in a town hall somewhere in Greenock, or Paisley, or Dundee, or maybe in a community hall in Easterhouse, or out in Cumbernauld, or Falkirk, in front of an audience of people from those communities only, no plants, none of the regular Question Time stringers, no Orange men or fake health professionals.  No, let’s have real people from these working class communities.

Make it a forum of two halves (a concept Luglass is familiar with). The first half structured around specific questions to both panel members, on Universal Credit, the drugs crisis in Scotland, (what factors caused it, how can it be fixed, and what are the reasons why deaths continue to rise) the need for Foodbanks, pensions, health care and the impact of Brexit on employment.

Then in the second half, once what’s left of wee Murray McMurray has been scraped up off the hall floor by the janny, and replaced by a dod of sawdust, let the audience ask any questions they like, on a first come first chosen show-of-hands basis. Let’s really hear what the important issues are for ordinary people, struggling to make ends meet, let’s hear what those in positions of power have to say in response, and what they propose to do to make the lives of their fellow Scots better. Let’s really get into it. Let’s get it Live on the telly.

She’ll wipe the floor with him on any given day, and twice on Sundays.

Governance imposed

They really are wallowing in their Westminster majority, the party of British nationalism, for that is what they are. I would argue that if they want to continue to deliberately, and errantly, refer to the SNP as the Scottish ‘Nationalist’ Party in every forum available to them then our representatives both at Holyrood and Westminster should desist in referring to them as Tories or Conservatives, and should refer to them simply as the British nationalists, firmly and consistently, even on pain of parliamentary sanction. Let all of our elected members of both parliaments be repeatedly chucked oot one at a time each time they mention it and let that just be the commencement of our nation’s legitimate democratic representation raising the bar in asserting itself.

Their exceptionalism and arrogance has no boundaries. Their leadership, in the last 24 hours, the outwardly bumbling duplicitous chancer who hides behind a mask of hail-fellow-well-met, and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, whatever that means in the Orwellian double-speak of post-imperial nationalism, are preening themselves amongst the troughing multitude of their peers at their annual conference, tongue’s loosened amongst their own.

After softening up his audience, by threatening to share bodily fluids with them, Boris Johnson addressed a room full of Scottish based British nationalists. This was an occasion, described as ‘raucous’ (can you imagine it, tartan trews, posh boys, old school ties, guffaws and inappropriate behaviour towards the catering staff) where the Prime Minister of the UK, from a political party Scotland hasn’t voted for in any numbers since around 1955,  to the sound of loud cheering, entirely exaggerated and over-inflated, as he does, the performance of his party’s Scottish agents at the Scottish Parliament Elections earlier this year.

This was in an election where the incumbent Scottish Government missed out on receiving a single party majority of seats  by only one seat (in a parliamentary system designed specifically to make such an achievement almost unachievable) but did ultimately, by agreement with the Greens, achieve a clear independence backing majority for the length of the current parliament. So therefore Ross Douglas and his cronies, described by Johnson as having undertaken a ‘heroic act” didn’t actually achieve anything of any substance at all.

Attacking the movement for a return to an independent Scotland, the posh Beetlejuice version of Winston Churchill suggested that the “gilt is coming off the gingerbread of Scottish nationalists” and the “lustre is coming off old twinkle toes.”  Given that you would think that as Prime Minister, this individual would be expected to demonstrate a certain degree of gravitas in his style of communication this language is somewhat bizarre (could you imagine Angela Merkel or Jacinda Ardern using such words, even during a forum of their own supporters?).

Apparently, when asked about his speech afterwards, Johnson confirmed that he was having a go at both the current leadership of the government of Scotland, and her predecessor, ‘twinkle toes’ Alex Salmond.

Oh, how we laughed, not. Boris Johnson and his cabinet room full of circus acts are laughing at us. The old empire style of divide and conquer is still relevant and still in play in the 21^st century, holding us back. Clearly we must counter this. We need to adapt. Common ground needs to be identified, and some clear values that all supporters of a renewed independent Scotland agree upon, and can rally around, no matter what alignments to parties or individual leaders, or otherwise we have as individuals striving to help bring about change.

Rather more significantly, but walking quickly along the path towards a constitutional crisis, Michael Gove, in his rubber-faced-ness, delighted the conference audience by letting them know that his government “will never allow the breakup” of the UK. Bold words from a Scots born politician who has clearly demonstrated in the past his ‘cringe’ and contempt for much of what Scotland is and represents.

On this subject bear in mind the words of pre-eminent historian Professor Tom Devine, which I quoted in an earlier post this week.

‘We have now moved quite dramatically, and very swiftly, from a Union by consent to a Union of enforced law. A Union of that type cannot stand.

Remember, 1707 was an agreement between two historic nations. It was not an imposition. What we have now is imposition.’

In my view the laws as they apply constitutionally to Scotland’s relationship with England are only practicable in circumstances of mutual consent. Where that does not exist all bets are off. I firmly believe this. Denial of the democratic will of the people of Scotland, enforced by law is unsustainable, and if applied will force the end of the Union. But anyway Michael, you keep talking, We have long memories. One day, hopefully soon, you will just be remembered as someone on the wrong side of history.

Red walls, yellow walls and padded walls

I thought today I might try and just tidy up (just in the interests of accuracy) a Hootsmon, or Not the Herald, or the state propaganda broadcaster, (or possibly all three) report I came across describing the triumphant ascendancy to the Mount Manchester Central Convention Centre fringe event, held in a draughty corridor next to the cludgies, behind the boiler room, during the current Tory Conference, of Ross Douglason, the current banger sitting in the big chair on the Tory front bench at Holyrood…….

The Headline corrected reads……

‘The leader of the Scottish Conservatives has vowed to “maintain centralised British nationalist control of Scotland’s governance from London for good” in a keynote speech to the Tory conference. (It was a fringe event).

Text of article, corrected……

Murray Douglas today accused Nicola Sturgeon of turning the Scottish Government into an incrementally transformative, responsible, progressive, (even with one hand tied behind it’s back due to its limited powers status) offshoot of the wider European community of democratic nations, and said that he agrees that his party is completely out of touch in making any sort of  appeal to working class Scots (although he see them as the party of working people)  apart from when some of his list -elected colleagues dog whistle up those in our communities who have other reasons than politics to vote to remain Unionist British. He went on to say his party now see themselves in Scotland as a direct challenge to the dried out husk called Scottish Labour, which to be honest, isnae too difficult.

Addressing a crowded two door fridge freezer, borrowed from his idol,  the liar’s liar, at the party’s conference in Manchester, Mr Murray of Ross said, somewhat superfluously for anyone who has not been in a coma in Scotland for the last twenty years, that in Scotland Labour had been destroyed, and the so-called red wall would never return.

He was joined at the fringe event by Jim Davidson, yon wee sullen nyaff with the hair that’s on the wind up that he’s a historian and doesn’t believe in pandemics, and in a tribute to his beloved leader’s recent statesman-like speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Kermit the Frog.

Mr Murray-Ross said: “Like us, Scottish Labour are a party of the past in Scotland. The red wall has gone for good. Labour took people for granted here, and their voters have moved on, Kind of like my party, who  still take people for granted in England,  but without the voters moving on yet.”  

The Scottish Conservatives leader said: “In May’s election, more working-class Scots voted Scottish Conservatives than Labour. I know that doesn’t say much, but 18 voters beats 15 every time, even when Lord Bucket Heid and George Galloway are on the ticket. 

“Those voters aren’t, as Angela Rayner would, say ‘vile’. They aren’t ‘nasty’. They aren’t ‘scum’, although I will admit some of them are pretty much not working class, but are instead bewildered Express and Mail reading second home owners who, in 2016, spectacularly voted themselves out of their apartments on the Costa Del Sol and the Algarve, and now need to fill out forests of paperwork just to temporarily get into countries where supermarket shelves are stocked with produce. 

He said he had been smoking some pretty good stuff recently,  which, he says,  has made him feel confident that his party would next go after the SNP’s voters, saying the subsequent wall to fall would not be red, but “SNP yellow”, a promise he feels is as probable of achievement as the cast iron pledge made by his overlords in London, made in 2016, much publicised on the sides of buses, to invest an extra three hundred and ninety million pounds a week into the NHS once Brexit was achieved. 

The dynamic Mr Rosco Douglas continued: “Nicola Sturgeon has become detached from working class communities scarred by the long term endemic impacts on Scotland’s society of my party’s decimation of their industrial and manufacturing landscape and the imposition of unmanageable taxation and withering punishments on the most vulnerable amongst us, the breaking up of communities, the poverty, homelessness and unemployment, the  drug deaths and misery, caused by current and previous leaderships of my party, for which we are rightly proud.  How dare she beg us to reconsider the cuts we are about to make to Universal Credit. after all what’s twenty pounds a week in the grand scheme of things? Buttons.

“She (Sturgeon) has become out of touch with the rest of our marvellous and benevolent Union. Why do the people of Scotland need to be different? Why free prescriptions, baby boxes, subsidised tertiary education and training and a host of other citizen -focussed initiatives which just make us, the party of British government, your government, look bad?

She talks down to everyone, particularly those in my party who don’t take the time or trouble to research or prepare themselves properly before asking her inane endlessly repetitive questions in Parliament. Questions  which collapse, like our arses, under even the most general of scrutiny, allowing her to wipe the floor with us on a regular basis. So much so that I’ve had to fully cultivate the same sour-faced huffy exterior as my predecessor had before she ascended to my eventual expected destination, the locomotive of gravy.”

Like his leader in London, known for being entirely comfortable with having a misanthropic relationship with the truth, Mr Ross-Murray made it clear that in his mind, his mind only, yes, most definitely only in his mind, his party are the party of working people.

….. and it you believe that statement I’ve a large box of cereal I’d like to sell you.

Something smells

Do we really want our Scotland to continue to be subjected to the age old entrenchment that is establishment cronyism? 

Are we content to continue to enable a controlling system which is overlaid across public life, and woven through society, designed to maintain control, managed, manipulated and driven by a neighbouring country as we move into the third decade of the 21st century? 

As news breaks today, just the latest in a long line of such examples of political patronage, of a wealthy banker known for weighing in Tory party funds to the tune of £150k, being rewarded with a seat in the Lords, and disgracefully, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State role (unelected)in the Scotland Office. 

Basically some guy with loads of money, who is pally with Bawheid Johnson or Gove the Disco Dancer, gets to make laws and influence government decisions about a country his political party hasn’t been democratically electable in since the mid 1950’s. That is just wrong. 

No need for qualifications for the job, recruitment based on merit, fairness and equity, or the need to selected by a community of peers democratically to represent their views in government. Na, none of that stuff. 

Just drop Tory Party HQ a bung, be a Russian billionaire, Ian Botham or Boris Johnson’s sibling and you’ll go far in little Britain.  

Labour are as bad. In fact they are possibly worse. At least the Tories don’t try tae hide the fact that they are greed driven, self-serving exceptionalists, who openly have only contempt for the very many in society who aren’t in a position to be of use in helping them to accumulate obscene wealth. Labour are a disgrace, a sellout. 

In an independent Scotland our system of government, based on the needs of our people, all of them, codified by a written constitution, will be so much better than this corrupt shambles.