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| Guardian 18th November 2013 |
... or we might have had to cut services.
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| The Times, less than a week after Scotland voted No. |
Oh right...
In the run up to the referendum many of us online used the image of Danny Alexander gurning next to a representation of the Lib Dem's pledge about tuition fees to demonstrate the folly of believing any promises made by unionist politicians.
The notion that we'll be getting used to doing something similar with this...
... is a wee bit depressing.
I've decided Scotland is a strange place - for example - is there any other country that has dotted around its territory so many immovable reminders about the perfidy of its ruling establishment over the decades?
Yet, given the opportunity to come out from under that pernicious narcissistic control - we decide not to bother.
Newspapers and blogs are easier to miss than bridges spanning sometimes perilous watercourses or statues of bastards set upon plinths reaching one hundred feet into the Scottish sky. There are those who say last Thursday's vote was democratic - insofar as people put a cross on a ballot paper and stuffed it in a black box - those people might have a point. However - and I'm no expert - in order for democracy to function properly, it needs to have an effective - by which I mean - objective media to scrutinise claims and debunk lies.
Our media is part of the establishment and the establishment always trumps the political and/or constitutional will of the people.
Even in my short political memory... [Insert harp arpeggios here...] The Tories shafted Scotland in the 80's and 90's, then the mid 90's/early 00's saw New Labour coming in on the rebound - stultifying the UK with spin, participating in illegal wars and giving us political morons like Darling & Brown. The Lib Dems fielded Nick Clegg in a couple of TV debates who swooned and fell in to bed with Cameron's Tories. At which point, on account of the mainstream parties all being so enormously pish at running the country - UKIP got its feet under the table and are now driving Coalition policy.
Add in to that, the notion that two of recent history's worst politicians (already mentioned) came back to the fore and managed to terrify quite a lot of old folk into voting No thus saving this benighted union...
With the exception of The Herald On Sunday - every other newspaper published in Scotland supported a No vote while the BBC failed completely at pretending to be objective. That isn't democracy, its a stitch up.
Scotland's problem isn't the Tory party, its all the unionist parties. Scotland in my life time has been shafted by every single Westminster-based unionist-supporting party. Why? Because our votes don't count there, how many more times are people going to vote for a Westminster party thinking 'they'll listen this time'.
Since UKIP seems to be next in the lets-hump-Scotland queue (and they're probably going to go in dry) - it seems important to return in 2015 as few Unionist MP's as is humanly possibly. Labour are a Westminster party concerned only with power at Westminster - and to get power at Westminster - you need votes in the South of England. Since the South of England are so pissed off with their usual choice of party; they're turning to UKIP. Labour - via weasel words and vacuous soundbites - might say they abhor UKIP; be in no doubt though, scratch the surface and you'll see yellow & purple.
Since UKIP policy in Scotland is only slightly less popular than Norovirus, it seems to me we need to rid Scotland not just of Tories but of Westminster completely. The only way to do that is to return as many independence supporting MP's as possible to Westminster in 2015 - we can then have an entirely new and intrinsically different form of mandate for Scottish independence.
Some No voters already regret their choice. For others who aren't quite there yet; as more of the so-called vows that secured their vote evaporate, I sincerely hope they'll come over. We had a mandate for a referendum in Holyrood, but the result was corrupted by an unscrupulous British Establishment. Creating a fresh mandate - not just on the Union's doorstep - but within its walls at Westminster, would sweep away all false promises made to date. It will cause a constitutional earthquake that'll put sovereign power back in the hands of people living in Scotland - which is exactly where it should always be.
A tactical vote for the SNP at the Westminster GE in 2015 is a means to an end. Your Labour MP might be good for purely local issues but be in no doubt, when it comes to national or international policies that affect at a local level - they don't give a shit about you.
Perhaps with Salmond now gone, it'll be an easier decision to make. Although you can expect the press to start a special character assassination of who ever replaces him as soon as he or she accepts the job.
Remember though, eyes on the prize. The means might chafe but the ends are the people of Scotland getting the government they vote for every time - not just when the wishes of the good people of England happen to match ours.
I'm amused by the fact that the hapless, insipid, uninspiring nob end, Darling spent a couple of years (in between after dinner speeches for obscene money) trying to persuade the Scots that we should stick with him and his Tory funders.
ReplyDeleteIn the last few days when they realised that they had lost and poor mr Cameron got stomach ulcers, they had to send up his arch enemy Gordon PFI Brown to do his job for him.
Apparently he did it with one speech. Ok, like everything else Gordon Brown has ever said, it was full of lies and unkeepable promises, but nonetheless, it did the job, and for the UK, never a stickler for the truth, that was fine.
Gordon was the hero. Alistair the pathetic, useless no hoper.
But within minutes, the picture started to change as it became obvious that Cameron and Miliband (and that funny looking pair of feet that stick out of Cameron's arse) had lied, and Gordon the Gopher started to look a bit of a prat who had been well and truly used, as usual...
Gordon the Guarantor a back bench opposition part time MP and generally disliked psychopath, will have to throw more than a few Nokias about before he'll sort this mess out.
How many members does the SNP have now?
Yes I've definately got both my peepers on the prize, why I've just joined the SNP. Though, that's not to say I will always vote for them, I shall be even more selective in who does get my vote.
ReplyDeleteThanks
I'm sure I joined the SNP some time ago, although I might be confusing that with Yes Scotland... I still get mail from the SNP so I must still be a member.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, once we get a Yes vote, all bets are off - but then that is the entire point isn't it. :-)
Tris.
I'm just amazed that folk listened to him (Brown.) He was the architect of much that ails our economy today. He buggered pensions, lost all that gold and pissed so much else up the wall.
He's also so very obviously a total moron with all the flexibility and dynamism of a plank of wood. He's like the inanimate steel rod from that episode of The Simpsons.
Darling is a bumbling fool. Neither of them won the referendum for the No campaign, it was the press that did that. I suppose maybe indirectly, Brown might (ironically) come out with some cretinous statement about how pensions were under threat... But it was the press and media that did it.
Focus is now on the 2015 GE, get labour kicked out and return as many SNP candidates as possible. Hopefully by that time enough people who voted No will have been persuaded that Westminster does not and will never work for them.
Pa
ReplyDeleteI agree we were well and truly stitched up by the media, beholden to or friends of the three unionist tory parties. You are also correct that Scotland has been shafted in every election since I was a teen in the 80's. Thatcher destroyed our industry in a ruthless and digusting casting aside of whole generations in most parts of Scotland. Major continued to not care because, as you said, they just do need our votes. Labour got in promising the earth but were just the poor mans version of desperate tory lackies led by yet more posh privately educated no marks and a mental power hungry bully who only cares about himself.
But we also have to ask ourselves why we keep voting for the red tories, why do we continue to put up with this bollocks, sitting by and watching our country be financially raped by London or robbed by fake socialists. Have 300 years of being told we are too poor, too stupid and too small made Laments not gentically coded to make political decisions true.
There is no forgiving the media, certainly no forgiving Labour or the other Tories but we also have to look at ourselves and the fact that many in our country still did not vote, gave in to fear or just do not care because they are ok.
We really a bit of a f***** up country.
Bruce
Yes, we live in a Jekyll and Hyde country, full of 90 minute nationalists. Falling for the lies every 5 years or so, however I think the referendum woke something up in the Scottish psyche. Not in enough people, in time for a yes vote but, because of the no vote and the crumbling house of cards that was the "vow". Interesting times ahead, unionist parties destroyed in the GE? I bloody well hope so.
ReplyDeleteJimnArlene
Agree with all of that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting times. I wonder if this will be the first time voters who normally relied on Labour to temper the wilder machinations of the Tories finally realise that Labour are just as bad - and that the problem isn't left/middle/centre politics - but Westminster politics in their entirety.
Bottom line is: Westminster can do what it likes in Scotland because Scottish votes never count.
The way they might count is if (for example) parties that truly had Scottish interests at heart held the balance of power - as was the case on Thursday the 18th of Sept.
The Lab, Tory or Libdems are London Westminster parties - end of story.
Funny the SNP could have walked this referendum by a mile if they had used the info by Professor George Lees that Alex Salmond and the party were aware of as exposed here - who would have voted for any of the unionists parties after knowing this and makes you wonder why they did not use it - the word Freemasons probably explains everything:
ReplyDeletehttp://paisleyexpressions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/better-together-how-people-are-being.html