Democracy? Aye right

‘In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person–Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates–ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.’

These were Tony Benn’s words, during his last speech to the House of Commons as an MP. Wise and indeed prophetic when you consider the answers to the five questions he puts if measured against the current shambolic government of the disunited Union. 

They can do what they like, they were given power by a first past the post system where paid up members of their party, little old ladies in the Home Counties and members of the southern English coast yacht clubs, get to pick the government which controls the levers of power for Scotland. In terms of who’s interest do they exercise it the answer is unequivocally themselves and any of their cronies that they can mutually benefit from, shielded by their media propaganda and the brass neck attitude of arrogant public school elitism they feel they are accountable to nobody, apart from perhaps their totemic figurehead, the lady in the golden hat (and that is debatable) and then there is the final question.

It seems there is no way to get rid of them. Years of corruption, taking personal advantage of the misery of the many during a pandemic, criminal negligence resulting in the deaths of well over a hundred thousand innocent people whilst other countries around the world have made decisions designed to protect their citizens resulting in only minor mortality rates from the virus, filling their cronies coffers with public money designated for life protecting PPE equipment, setting out rules for the rest of us, whilst laughing up their sleeves and carrying on with their own elite and exceptionalist lifestyles without a care for the many of the rest of us making sacrifices in their lives that nobody should have to, leaving loved ones to die alone, unable to comfort the distressed and gravely ill.

Over 150,000 innocents can die, many of them needlessly, and this mob of reprehensible cretins can still sit and guffaw and jeer behind the worst Prime Minister in living memory (and that is saying something) like a Tim Burton cartoon of a pack of hyenas. They are alright, they’ve survived, what’s the problem? They followed through with Brexit, are they not great? Let’s have a party!

Britain is not a genuine democracy. To think otherwise is naïve.

A return to independence for our country is the way out of this. We, the many who advocate for an independent Scotland, must move forward, united in our determination, and we must succeed.

Spoilt weans

I was much scunnert looking at the baying mob of self-serving exceptionalists, sitting behind Boris Johnson yesterday at PMQ’s, all worked up under their masks to a spittle-flaked frenzy, one bearded unmasked cratur amongst them (He’s not even worth looking up to find out who he) looked like he was going into some onanistic trance. His trance seemed to be brought on by his hyena pack leader’s guile and wit in putting down the weak and woeful Labour Party leader, and like a naughty five year old, making fatty insinuations to the overweight leader of the Westminster SNP MP’s. Ooftt, you can’t help but think there must be a better way to govern than this constant round of childish adversarial guff.

I know it doesn’t look that way at the moment, during a pandemic, when it would have been mature and honourable if opposition party leaders sitting in the Holyrood Parliament had simply made it clear that for the duration of the crisis they are at the service of their country, rather than the usual bickering sniping, but I am eternally optimistic that once Scotland escapes the shackles of all that is plainly rotten and archaic about the Westminster system (all of the baggage and control from another country and individuals political ambitions to become big players down south) the governance of our country can be carried out very effectively based on a framework of adult mature co-operation, negotiation, compromise and partnership. 

It will never be perfect, it will never be 100% ideal. There will be differences of opinion. That is healthy, that is democracy. There is nothing wrong with disagreement as long as the results of that difference of opinion end up in the best outcome for all.

I’m not naïve enough to ever think that some of the self-serving types who tend to congregate around the world of politics are going to go away, but in a governmental system for the 21^st century designed first and foremost to meet the needs, priorities and aspirations of the people of Scotland, cast firm within a written constitution, placing emphasis on real actual accountability, not the kind we see being abused every day at Westminster, then I think we can make our country so much better in all of the ways that matter for us, our children and those to come.

Independence must be better than what we saw on show yesterday. Surely it must be.

And with one bound…

And with one bound he was free’. Ye really couldnae paint a red neck on the man. He just sits there looking like a big half asleep coo, chewing the cud and standing in a muddy puddle whilst gazing blankly through the mist. 

In the midst of Tory foot soldiers defecting across the chamber to the slightly less Tory red Tories, the touchy-feely former near-the-top -of-the-piler Brexiteer back-bencher quoting phrases from the past “In the name of God, go”, the 1922 Committee’s mail box having a nervous breakdown as letters keep arriving and then leaving again, and Ian Blackford (and by extension the voters of Scotland) being completely ignored and reviled again for lambasting him with the truth, Boris Johnson remains as the Prime Minister of the UK.

Ye get the feeling that he could literally take a dump on the Downing Street carpet during a live media conference, then say somebody else did it and get away with it. The world has gone completely mad.

It really is appalling that whilst the leader of the party which represents the votes of the majority of Scotland’s voters in the General Election stands up and speaks about the deaths of over 150,000 citizens of the countries of the UK Johnson can sit and smirk, shake his head from side-to-side like a parcel shelf toy, and pretend to gaze at his watch in boredom. Way beyond crass.

https://fb.watch/aENNf91_wP/

C’mon First Minister, let’s get this show on the road. Get the process to return Scotland to its rightful state of independence at least started. Whilst we are shackled to the railings of this cesspit of self-obsessed greedy chancers, zealots and right-wing flag wavers we will never really flourish as a nation.  We will never achieve the huge potential in improving our public services, health, education, standard of living and access to employment opportunities that our people deserve.  Do it.

Selective contrition

The farce continues. Having hidden away for a number of days to avoid the heat of his incompetence, arrogance and disregard for other human beings being sharply floodlit the Prime Minister of the UK, who rightly should be named Boris Johnson Denies, has returned to the fore.

He’s sorry, he’s really sorry, he’s right sorry, he’s awful sorry. He’s sorry he got caught, He’s particularly sorry because he’s upset those that voted for him last time, (he seemed like a nice jolly chap, with his tousled hair and cheeky Latin one-liners) the Tory base who worship the cult of royalty. He’s been caught on the dancefloor in the middle of an imaginary rowing boat full of government interns grooving to the sounds of The Gap Band’s ‘Oops upside your head’, at a Downing Street party, the night before the old lady currently at the apex of that hereditarily privileged set up had to sit alone, isolated and masked up to mourn the passing of her husband of umpteen years. 

That’s the dealbreaker. He’s not in the slightest bit phased by the countless heartbreaking stories of distressed ordinary families unable to be with loved ones in their last hours, or scared and worried victims of the virus dying alone, or in the company of strangers, of fathers and mothers parted from children and the many other sacrifices that folk up and down the countries of the UK made. None of that means anything to him. No, but any suggestion that he has upset the establishment, or those that worship the elite like they are deities, sets him into immediate damage limitation mode.

Nobody told him he was breaking the rules, he says. He was never advised that his actions were against the policy he, as leader, was insisting had to apply to everyone else other than those who are part of his Downing Street crew. How chinless and lacking in moral courage is that? It’s somebody else’s fault, not his. He really is a slimeball. This despite the fact that another character with only just a passing understanding of the truth, Dominic Cummings, insists he warned the blonde numpty at the time that he was breaking the rules (and he is prepared to testify in this much fabled investigation that he did so) and as leader of the government enforcing the rules you would expect that he himself would have some sort of idea what the rules actually were.

Oh how I nearly laughed, although it’s clearly not funny, when I read the latest overnight BBC News online report of Johnson’s sooky apology to the Queen, where he was described as ‘appearing to be distressed’. Aye right.

You can be sure too that he’ll be going nowhere as a result of the findings of this inquiry they are all hanging their hats on. He’ll only be shifted off the pot if the nest of vipers around him decide in enough numbers that he’s for the off, as and when it suits them.

Meanwhile as the Scottish Tories, used and abused, lifted and laid by their mother country at will over the years, them being agents of that other country in ours, scuttle around in blind confusion trying to compute the fact that it currently suits those they strive to be, in London, to portray them as insignificant and irrelevant, the latest snake in the grass to see this chaos as an opportunity to try and take a career advantage, by swearing his undying loyalty to Johnson’s government, is the MP for Smug, West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, Andrew Bowie. In his eyes Boris Johnson can do no wrong. Watch out Ross McDouglas of Murray. He’s after your job.

It’s time we started the process to walk away from all of this nonsense. Let’s strive to create a modern progressive society in Scotland, unhindered by ritual, patronage and a divine elite, governed at all times by grownups, concentrating as a priority on the needs and aspirations of us all, not just themselves.

A cesspit

Like rats, scurrying around the deck of a particularly leaky and rusty HMS Brexit as hundreds of gallons of water come sweeping onboard in huge waves, that fine body of integrity-devoid skid marks that are the Tory Party are in chaos.  

Self-serving greed hardwired into their mindsets they are picking sides,again, as the bumbling posh oaf (sacked previously from jobs he’d acquired through the patronage of the old school tie and shared romantic encounters with farm animals in bizarre initiation ceremonies, for being a comfortably habitual liar) lurches towards the wrong side of the front door of 10 Downing Street. 

We’ve clearly reached the very far stretched end of any possible guise that what goes on in the chambers of Westminster is in any way honest. 

When this dunderheid is allowed to stand before his peers and the watching public, try to avoid any responsibility, seeking to hang on by the thinnest of thin skin of his teeth by convincing us that a party held in his garden, where guests were invited tae bring their ain drink, a party he himself attended, a party that was held during a time that harsh laws designed to counter a deadly virus had been put in place by the very people enjoying themselves at that party, a party which took place at the exact time where up and down the UK many thousands of ordinary citizens respecting these laws found themselves unable to be with dying loved ones during their last moments, was a work meeting.  

He’s unsure if it was or it wasn’t a party, it seems. Although I’m pretty sure that in his highly privileged life he’ll have been at enough such events to tell one from the other. 

Very probably there weren’t wallpaper pasting tables loaded with trays of oranges spiked with hundreds of cocktail sticks laden with miniature chunks of beetroot, chopped ham and pork and pickled onions in place, or some guy strumming poor versions of Ed Sheerin hits in the corner, but most definitely according to those that were there, those that weren’t Boris Johnson, it was a party. 

Thankfully I’m not one, but how would you feel if you were one of the poor folk that had to suffer the thought of leaving a loved one alone, frightened and worried, to die in the presence of strangers, to be mourned in solitude, whilst this creepy bunch of elitists laughed and joked at a party. 

Worst of all Johnson will likely survive this because he has no shame. 

I give Scottish Tory branch secretary wee Rugless Toss, Ross Douglas of Murray, a great deal of grief in this blog, usually, but today, following the snidey remarks from the member of parliament for the 19th century Jacob Rees-Mogg about him being a lightweight who doesn’t like Johnson for suggesting that  the Prime Minister should take responsibility for his actions, I would love to see Douglas Ross grow a backbone and reply thus ‘Yes, and you are a creepy ghoulish bawbag that’s so far up yourself that if you had a colonoscopy you’d ask the surgeon just to leave the camera up there’.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for Dougie to sort him out though.

We will inevitably have what the Tory party will become in our renewed independent Scotland. It would be nice if some of them started to think that way.  It’s time to leave the cesspit. 

Walking away from the 19th century

I don’t know which one makes me gag on the dry boak the most, Tony Blair being awarded a knighthood, when in a fair and honest world he really he should be taking his breakfasts in the company of the likes of Radovan Karadzic, or the continued farcical protection of members of  the outdated hereditary family of supreme beings (that ordinary people, even in 2022, are still supposed to  be ‘subjects’ of) from any form of justice for acting in abhorrent ways that would see the rest of us locked up and the key thrown away.

One is an affront to the memory of the many innocents who lost their lives in the Iraq conflict. Many of them died, and many were maimed for life, because of the contributory impacts of the slavish need by the leader of a declining post-imperial power to follow the lead of a world power. Blair did the bidding of that world power, a power  which his country needed to remain subserviently connected to, to ensure that Britain’s elite continued to feel that their massively inflated sense of self, in world terms, is somehow justified. A perpetuation of the myth that the old empire with its martial fixation is still is a major player internationally  ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!’ This despite massive unprecedented demonstrations, on the streets of towns and cities,  by the people of the countries of the United Kingdom at the time, telling their elected representatives that this armed slaughter should not take place.

The other is a demonstration of one of the fundamentally wrong precepts that ‘Great’ Britain as an entity is built upon (unquestioned by the many, smothered in sycophantic propaganda) the unwritten rule that a member of the established hereditary royal elite is above the law. The man (yes he is a man, not a deity) a royal prince, allegedly has acted in ways identified as highly questionable, yet does not have the courage or the moral strength to stand up and face these accusations in order to prove his innocence.

First he (and his advisors) were in full denial. Naw, naw. Jeffrey who? Naw I never really knew him. It was his girlfriend I was pally with. Oh, and did I mention I don’t sweat? Oh wait, she’s been lifted too. Emmm, aye I once met Ghislaine at a charity Do, but only the once, over a truffle canape. Did I mention my sweat glands? Oh, you’ve got phoaties of them both sitting in a nice wee posed snap on a royal estate? I think maybe they must have bought tickets for an open day perhaps? Anyway I was having as pizza that night. Loads of people in the pizza restaurant  will be able to corroborate that. Won’t they?  After all I’m quite famous. Yup, I’ve never been able to sweat since an Argentinian Pucara jet came within 200 miles of the cottage near the retaken Port Stanley I was actively serving in.

Now it’ somehow swung around. His friend that he allegedly didn’t have, Epstein, paid the poor woman a wedge years ago in a court settlement to keep her mouth shut about all things who, why, where, what and with whom, all that had gone on during those times of easy (sleazy) living. This with the condition that she could then no longer sue anyone considered a ‘potential defendant’. Ah a loophole! The bold royal honorary chairperson of the Dry Pore Society (a terrible affliction, please donate three pounds) is now trying to climb onto that bandwagon as someone potentially, and again allegedly, connected to Epstein, Captain Bob’s dochter, and the whole sordid business.

Now, either he had nothing to do with Epstein and Maxwell or he did have close connections to Epstein and Maxwell, but he can’t have had both. Trying to squirm out of a civil action calling, amongst other things, his honesty into question on a technicality is not a good look. However you can be sure that whatever happens dear auld Mummy will come to the rescue. Him and his alleged misdeeds are definitely no’ what the poor old sowel needs at her age. She deserves a leisurely read at the morning papers, a wee stroll along the Axminster wae the corgies and a wee snooze during the Archers at her time of life, not continually having to pull him out of hiding from behind her pinny..  

Then we have that wittering eejit with the unkempt hair and the blindly superior attitude talking to us all in that incomprehensible posh gibberish he spouts, like Paul Whitehouse’s character from the Fast Show. He talks about protecting ‘our precious NHS’ whilst doing his dangerously incompetent best to fan the flames of what is yet again a further surge of a new strain of the virus currently strangling much of the world in a pandemic, his decisions putting the already exhausted NHS potentially into a disaster situation……..

Better together you say? Devo-Max? No chance. Switch off the BBC, stop reading daft headlines in the Scotsman and the Herald. Open your eyes. Scotland can and will do much better once we return our country to a state of independence.