The GRA nonsense.

Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: A consultation

In a statement to the Scottish Parliament in June, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People, announced that the Scottish Government would consult on a draft Bill to reform the process by which trans people gain legal recognition of their lived gender through a Gender Recognition Certificate – a right they have had for 15 years. 

To comply with international human rights law, Scotland must have a system for obtaining legal gender recognition.  The current system is viewed by many applicants, or would-be applicants, as demeaning, lengthy, and stressful.

So there we have it; fine intentions. Who can argue against such a thing? It may of course be valid to take a step back and ask why any man or woman would want to say that they are anything other than the sex that they were born into.

What possible reason would a man decide that he 'ought' to be said to be a woman? Mental illness? Certainly, that's one possibility? Some sexist fetish to wear female clothes? Yep, tick box again. Is there any other good reason? I've yet to hear of one.

And then to take a step further and declare that a trans-woman (i.e. a bloke) is a woman, is so nutty that one would wonder if these are indeed the end of days. But not nutty. Actually hideously offensive. Every person on this planet was born to a woman. If a trans-gender activist could look back at their own birth - their mother carrying them for nine months, the labours of birth and then declare that trans-women are women, I do think their mother would drown them on the spot.

Post-election thoughts

They were immediate but of course I never got round to putting them down on paper. I mean, on a blog.

Acres of newsprint has been expended analysing the results - the fall of the 'red wall' and the part played by Corbyn in his own defeat - or was it our unsatisfactory Brexit position, largely the creation of Starmer (and the mass membership, it must be said).

What I was interested in was the split in the Labour vote - we all knew that there was a difficulty in holding a party together (from Hartlepool to Haringey or some such thing) which contained the 'authentic' old working class (residues thereof) with their social conservatism and the metropolitan youngsters with their liberal outlook. These strains currently bedevil all social democratic parties, but not it would seem, the SNP. They march on, as strongly as ever (still with a minority of the vote).

Now clearly they've managed to hold together their own unwieldy coalition of eco-friendly refugee-friendly trans-friendly metropolitans with a horde of outright flag-waving Westminster/Tory/English haters.

If one was to be mischievous and one was intent on causing difficulties, clearly there is a fault line which could just be worked upon.

Just sayin'

The Grievance Factory

One of the more tiresome aspects of the current Scottish political scene is where a daily outrage has to be tossed to the crowds to keep them in a state of revolutionary eagerness to storm the winter palace. 

There was Boris Johnson turning down any request for a second referendum (and especially not granting the powers to Holyrood to hold referenda whenever they want) by referencing the "once in a generation" comment made by Sturgeon and Salmond. It was "we never said once in a generation" (apart from it being in the White Paper). Foam foam foam!!!

Then Lisa Nandy who, prompted to discuss how to combat the SNP in Scotland said that we should look to places like Quebec and Catalonia where nationalism had been defeated by social justice.
Clearly that meant she favoured locking up Catalonians, after giving them a sound beating. Gerry Hassan went as far as calling it, " fundamental nationalism: a call to brutal uncompromising Labour state repression."
Oh, the foaming at the mooth which followed that.

And so it rolls on... the EU flag is being lowered. An outrage. Let's forget that the SNP campaigned against joining in 1975. Keir Starmer said what? Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons !

round and round...

The Street

After a break, it's time to have a bit of a download for posterity if nothing else. OK, nothing else. A General Election has been called. Probably the most important for decades. Or probably not. 

And the recent marches by 'All Under One Banner' is probably a good place to start. 

They attract the usual rabble rousers as speakers - Sheridan, Shepherd, Cherry ... but never Ms Sturgeon. 

This new age of direct democracy has a number of parallels to other places where representative democracy never took hold. Most notably, the middle eastern countries where the leader lives or dies by 'the street'. Jostling likely successors, whilst of course being utterly loyal, can play to the street's emotions. 

Sturgeon fired the starting gun for Indyref immediately after the EU referendum and her supporters rushed to mobilise. She of course knew that it just wasn't a runner - the underlying financial state of Scotland (the oil price!) has deteriorated (that Growth Commission seems to have been buried as unwelcome news) and there's no majority for leaving as she knows. But the street doesn't bother about that: #dissolvetheUnion #UDInow they proclaim, as if the world really was as simple as themselves. So she has to keep stringing them along: new speeches will be timetabled to reveal the.. timetable... some time soon.

The Street begins to get restive. The party loyalists appear on platforms denouncing the wicked Tories, the wicked Unionists to rapturous applause. La Sturgeon must sit in palace watching... and waiting... and worrying...

Andrew O'Hagan

Good lord, a real shot in the arm for the Nationalist Project - the esteemed Andrew O'Hagan, novelist, announced at the Edinburgh Book Festival that he's noo all for separation.

But from his speech, how do you square this -

"I have never believed writers should have anything to do with governments, and should never hitch their intellectual freedom to the shifting agendas of political parties, or the careers of those looking for votes.
I believed Alexander Solzenitzyn, many years ago, when he said that governments should be nervous of writers because each writer is a government in himself. The egotism of writers and that of politicians could scarcely be more different. What politicians want is power and what writers want — if they’re any good — is the truth beyond the facts, and to increase our capacity for wonder."

 and this - 

"If Mr Salmond had thought more about the currency question and less about how to unfurl a saltire flag over the Centre Court at Wimbledon, we might be standing now in the independent republic of Scotland"

with what follows in his own speech?
It's a quite remarkable imaginative tract, but that's all it is. Looked at rationally, it's all too easy to condemn it as a mass of woolly thinking, with huge dollops of romanticism. I don't expect O'Hagan to think about the currency question, but if he sets himself up as a seer and a leader we might expect that he at least gives it a bit of thought.
Enough of that, let's have some nuggets!

In my view, in the Internet of Things, Scotland is due to become one of the world’s strongest digital republics, a place whose institutions are daily enhanced and purified not only by the life of the country but by the life of all countries. We could one day be part of a neural network whose strongest boundaries are decency and goodness. The laws of Scotland will one day be both discreet and universal; right for the people of Leith, augmented by brilliance, and right for the people of Calcutta, restored and revised every minute in according to what we know and decide. 

That'll be a hard one to get through the Holyrood sub-committees - decency and goodness! Bless!

Scotland, your Scotland, is in the earliest days of a digital renaissance, when its greatest thinkers — David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson — are redeployed to address the questions of rights and responsibilities in the coming age of artificial intelligence, and where new thinkers, as yet unborn, will address what it means to be a Scottish person with Scottish instincts in a world of code and algorithms and digital money, in an endlessly open society of nations, Scotland teaching the world perhaps how to author a new Gettysburg Address for Peace; showing the globe — with historical examples — how to author a Vindication of the Rights of Robots.

 Look, I'm going to stop there - the above is just lovely but as close to meaningless as it's possible to get. "Scotland" can author a new Gettysburg? If it's possible for a nation to author speeches (I'm not clear about that) then what exactly is stopping us now? You want to bring back a border across an island to errr become endlessly open? As for Scottish people, with Scottish instincts ... so very inclusive, dontcha think?    
 

The missing half million

Well what a turn up for the books - Corbyn storms across the finishing line! Not as winner but that gap fairly came down. As for the hapless May, if she had few allies before, well, she’s got fewer noo.  What a fabulous fuck up. From hubris to humiliation, as the Guardian said.

 Up here of course, the main result was the SNP down from their historic high last time to 37% - and a remarkable upsurge in the Tory vote. I guess that’s a bit different from down south - Sturgeon remarkably continued overplaying her hand pushing another referendum and suffered the backlash. Why that is, when surely her own focus groups told her that it was a vote-loser, is something of a mystery.
Her diehard supporters might have liked her boasting in Leith the day before the election that the SNP was the party of Corbyn, but that really isn’t a message that goes down well in the Mearns, shall we say. And of course, the said same diehards were quick out the traps to lay the blame. After their vote collapsed by nearly half a million votes. Where? Kezia Dugdale of course! She told Labour voters to vote Tory! And so another nationalist narrative is sent off running, garnering momentum. Absolute nonsense, of course.  She'd previously said this -

KEZIA Dugdale wants Tory and LibDem supporters to help Labour oust SNP MPs, but not the other way round.
As she launched the party’s Scottish Manifesto, Ms Dugdale said in seats where Labour is the best placed to defeat the SNP voters should “think before they vote”.
However where where the Tories or LibDems are in a better position than Labour she told her party’s supporters to still vote Labour.

Clear enough?
Later in the campaign, when asked specifically how voters should best vote to defeat the SNP, she answered Sky News - 

“The reality is the vast majority of seats across Scotland, it’s only the Labour party that can beat the SNP. There are a few differences in the Borders and the Highlands where the Tories might be better placed but right across Scotland’s centre belt, where the vast majority of Scotland’s population lives, the only party that can beat the SNP is the Labour party.”

And that becomes Kezia telling Labour voters to vote Tory!

 

Those Local Elections May 2017

I recall them well - not as bad a result as we feared and indeed, clear signs of something more, as I posted on the Herald at the time (I know, I'm a bore) -

To be serious and reflective, don't the results show that NS's strategy of building independence by converting the SNP to a social democratic Party has reached its limit? In other words, she's done a good job at getting labour voters on board, but a sizeable number of labour people will stay with the UK Party for all sorts of reasons.
Meanwhile that strategy has to demonise the right wing faction in Scotland who only have a home in the Tories. How does she propose to win these fiscally and socially conservative elements to independence? She has no strategy for this at all, and her supporters, by vilifying their fellow Scots, are being hugely counterproductive.
She's shown her limitations - brought up in Glasgow, she thinks that all she needs is to garner labour votes. She's gone right up a dead end there.

Of course, I was wrong, she's from Ayrshire.

The God Parallel

Not that this post is about him, but it's such a toe-curler it had to be included -

What is the real problem with the Nationalist upsurge in Scotland? There are some who genuinely believe that it has kicked politics into life in Scotland, brought involvement and engagement. It's certainly brought involvement and engagement, but in politics? What we really need to talk about? I would say exactly the opposite - that it's smothered and obscured the real issues.

Everywhere across the developed world there is a growing problem - simply it's the impact of globalisation; on our productive capacity, which impacts our revenues, which impacts our ability to properly fund our welfare system. Hence the crisis in social democracy and the rise of extremism of left and right.

Now, this challenge is the number one issue everywhere except in one place. In our sad homeland, we don't need to worry about it! Because it's all Westminster's fault. We need look no further. We just need to agitate against Westminster.

Hence the God parallel - intelligent people may wish to attempt to answer the question as to how the universe began. With scientific endeavour, we can look at sub atomic particles, at the very fabric of space and time.  But if we posit a God, we need look no further. Just worship God.

And the question as to where God came from - *blank looks* It's rather like saying once we have independence how do we address the impact of globalisation? Sorry, we don't do that sort of thing - this is Scotland. Indyref2 is what we discuss.

#globalthinker

Well, congratulations indeed to MS Sturgeon for getting on a list of the leading global thinkers of 2016 in "respected" global affairs magazine Foreign Policy.  Apparently this was in recognition for 'weathering Brexit.' I'm weathering it myself, though I modestly won't expect a gong.

However, I strongly disagree. This woman is not in any way a global thinker. She's someone who joined a nationalist party at 16 to bang on and on about her nationalist cause and there she's sat. She hated Westminster when it was run by Tories, when it was run by Labour, and when it was run by an alliance of Lib Dems and Tories. Her 'global thinking' goes no further than Carlisle. #parochialthinker

That Norwegian Oil Fund

To Noroway! to Noroway!
to Noroway oer the faem!

this blog is a visual stunner

OK, that's enough of that.

I'm talking about the Norwegian State Oil Fund - a marvellous marvellous thing apparently, whereas us feckless Brits have just spent the lot. On booze and fags, probably.
Well, let's just have the tiniest bit of democratic scrutiny. We start getting oil rich in the 70s. We'd already had a balance of payment crisis in the 60s. Our infrastructure needs investment. Our public service demands are growing and growing - we want to build new universities; there are demands to dual the A74.
So as an elected politician you have a choice - do these things or else set up a wealth fund. That's right, put your money into foreign equities, like Nestle and Micrsosoft - as Norway has done. You money effectively invested abroad, instead of in your own country. Sure, in good years you'll get a dividend.
Of course poor old Norway had no choice - it had to invest abroad - it only has 5m people and too much money. It's like Qatar - reduced to buying up prime real estate in London.
  

Labour's Terminal Crisis

Well, that's the title of a piece by Kerevan in the National on 26th September. And I think it's deserving of a bit of scrutiny as Kerevan is no fool. One could quibble with the title of course as Labour are now the largest political party in Europe, but few could argue that the additional text - "crisis is shared by social democratic parties across Europe" was inaccurate.

Kerevan nails it (no marks for orginality but it's bang on) -

The central cause of this international eclipse of traditional reformist parliamentary movements lies in global economic change – and the failure of mainstream social democracy to adjust. In the last quarter century, manufacturing jobs shifted to Asia while the dizzying rise of financial capitalism in Europe and America created a need for hordes of well-educated service workers. As a result, the industrial working class base of the traditional mass social democratic parties was destroyed.

What is astonishing about the rest of the article is how quickly it runs into sand. It goes absolutely nowhere. Rather, he just want to delight in the 'demise' of Labour (a bitterness somewhere in that psyche?).

He states that a new progressive voting alliance could have been sought by the traditional social democratic left ....   and bingo....  just such a movement was created very successfully in Scotland, by the SNP.

Well no one is going to argue that the SNP aren't a successful voting alliance. An alliance of people who want to do something but they're not sure what. Once George has marched at the head of the flag waving gang to the top of the hill, what's going to happen?

Here's a clue - Blair and Brown’s Faustian pact with the bankers and neoliberalism has led to electoral doom – a fate shared by most Western mainstream social democrats. Now the global neoliberal model is on life-support, held together only temporarily by quantitative easing.

OK, no more Faustian pact! The SNP are a Socialist Party. Real Socialism. State control. Funny that they keep that quiet. I think I'd like to hear more of this programme. Should I submit a FOI request?
   

Brexit and IndyRef

Yep, the ruminations keep coming. I'm driven to put them down here. Just for me. I'm worth it, after all. There's another 6bn+ people out there. I reckon that most will never read my blog. Sob.

Areas in favour of Independence from the UK and Independence from the EU? Any similarities worth calling out?

On Brexit, the Guardian says  -

Comparing the results to key demographic characteristics of the local authority areas, some patterns emerge more clearly than others. The best predictor of a vote for remain is the proportion of residents who have a degree. In many cases where there are outliers to a trend, the exceptions are in Scotland.

Better viewed large

 How about on Indyref?

According to Ipsos MORI (from whose last two polls the relevant information is uniquely available), no less than 65% of those living in one of the 20% most deprived neighbourhoods in Scotland voted Yes, compared with just 36% of those in the one-fifth most affluent. 

So, no surprise really, the most prosperous and best educated (yes indeed, they tend to go together) areas voted for the status quo in both referendums (OK, referenda). The most obvious case is Edinburgh (my home town) - prosperous, educated and strongly pro-UK and pro-EU.

However,  the Guardian calls out that Scotland didn't vote along those lines in the EU Ref. Even poor areas voted for remain. Either Scots are indeed more pro-EU or they followed the Nationalist party line.

And at that point, I'll need to leave it hanging. I just remember that when football troubles kicked off big style in the 80s in England (and we hadn't exactly been angels up here) that our stirring national consciousness drove us to become the best fans in the world. Just saying, as they say.  

GERS 2016!

What it says

Time to tap out a few thoughts.

"Official Scottish government statistics showed the country spent £14.8bn more than it raised in taxes in 2015/16, including a share of North Sea revenue.
That figure represented a 9.5% share of GDP, the report said - more than double the 4% figure for the UK as a whole."

OK, this clearly isn't good news in anyone's book. Our economy simply isn't generating anything like enough money to pay for its essential outgoings. Why Scotland is worse than the overall UK isn't hard to work out - it's a small country with a disproportionately huge area of multiple deprivation (the old industrial areas in west central Scotland) whereas overall in the UK those areas (I'll include Tyneside, Merseyside and South Wales) are of far lesser significance.

So that's a challenge to the independence project, surely? We won't be able to pay our old folks pensions? Fund our NHS? After all, we're on our own 18 months after the referendum.
But no ... not a bit of it! 

Rather than address this seriously, it seems that to many independence supporters, the only way forward is to rubbish GERS. (Obviously if they were flawed the Scottish Govt's Chief Statistician would fairly be getting hauled over the coals by Swinney et al. But he's not. And they're not.)

So we have nonsense about whisky export duty, exports though English ports, HS2 and crossrail, and then of course you can throw in Trident (that's right 7% of 7% of the overall budget), there are oilfields apparently somewhere that nobody knows.. blah blah..

But of course all these are indeed nonsense (the finest rebuttals found here) and as we've previously noted, I doubt Swinney would be quiet if there was obvious claptrap therein. So the true zoomer has to have a backstop. Step forward... Ian Lang MP (remember him? I do!). He set this government spending statistical stuff up when he was the Scottish Secretary. He was a Tory!  He only set it up to make us look bad, the bastard. OK, it may be true, but that's neither here nor there....

Wings fingers Lang

That Apology in Full

From the Nationalist Scots Bigot - he apologises 'IF' his comment caused offense (sic). Who could possibly be offended by being called stupid? The one million plus Scots who voted leave may be offended by being called English AND stupid, maybe?

He's just a daft jock.

Despicable

This must surely be one of the most gut turning shots I've ever seen. Look at this wretch, Angus Roberston SNP MP posing with these poor women for his own self aggrandisement.

Smile please, but not too much - remember you're standing in solidarity no doubt, with the widows of Srebrenica. But.. don't we remember Salmond lambasting the NATO action on Kosovo to protect the civilian population from the same Serb Nationalists? Unpardonable folly, wasn't it?

It's like all the so-great Irish Nationalists condemning the British and their flag, 'the butchers apron'. Well just remember fellahs, when the British went in to liberate Dachau, you were back home doing precisely fuck all. And that's exactly what an independent Scotland could do to protect civilians from harm anywhere. Fuck all.

Apologies, I've got a bit cross.

Whither Labour?

Poor old Jezza; not much loved by the PLP. But poor old Labour too, to have got itself into this situation where it is held hostage by hundreds of thousands of bampots at large who have just signed up for three quid to rant their angry politics.
In a way, there's a lot to be angry about, but I fear that this particular strain of anger is ill-focussed, ill-defined and infused with conspiracy and paranoia. It wasn't like that back in my day - then we had real discussions about the march to socialism. Actually that's nonsense: there was always a strong whiff of 'sell out' to be hurled at any compromise.
But we learned; we learned to create a centre left majority. We brought in devolved government, the national minimum wage, working families tax credits.. I really could go on. But I'll stop there as the point is we're not a socialist debating society. If you join Labour, you join Labour to make a difference to people's lives. And that means winning power for, yes, the centre left. Corbyn is ineffectual and will never do that.
The British people aren't going to elect as leader someone who hasn't as much as run a bath, who consorts with the IRA and Hammas, and has as much charisma as a damp cloth. He's a hopeless old deluded clown. And yes, that's a bit personal.

Scotland the Brave

The tedious outpourings of the Nats continues though the world moves on.

And their cheer leaders elsewhere pick up the message and transmit it on. In all its delightful simplicity.

Another pat on the back for us. We're not English! English are Tories. Xenophobes. We're the opposite. We love the EU. And immigrants are welcome here (yes indeed, everyone is welcome here, we've a long history of being open and welcoming....*).
Ho hum, indeed.

Before we get too carried away with the love for ourselves, on this, the very inclusive *12th of July, a bit of a reality check may be in order.

• Almost 50% of people in Moray voted leave. Not an English area. In fact, these days, very much in the SNP heartlands.
• The area with the largest Remain vote was Edinburgh, the same place that was strongly No in the Independence referendum 
• And yeah yeah, it wasn't just London/Scotland/Northern Ireland. Liverpool had a 58% vote in favour of remaining. Or are Liverpool and other cities too insignificant?
• Here's the walloper: the politically engaged "independence city" of Glasgow: 44% of the electorate (that's probably half the adult population) didn't bother to turn out; couldn't bloody care one way of the other. I know, that'll be Labour's fault too.

The EU is calling

And there is much serious thinking to be done in the wake of the regrettable vote to leave the EU. For the moment I'm going to park this long comment that was made to a piece by Alex Massie. Alex's piece,  "Is Brexit the beginning of the End of Britain?" was reflecting on where the vote leaves Scottish Unionists now and acknowledges the likelihood that independence has moved a step closer. 

His view - "Sturgeon will wait. There is too much uncertainty abroad right now for her to do anything else. Moreover, any future independence prospectus will have to look and sound and feel very different to that offered the Scottish people in 2014. That was a case of whisky and oil, based on economic projections so heroically optimistic they were delusional. Next time will be different.
Next time the offer will have to be realistic. That means acknowledging, owning, some hard truths. Fantastical twenty year forecasts of permanent economic growth, annual increases in productivity, and high levels of immigration will not do. Independence, if it happens, will be hard. Very hard. But so is reality, as we have discovered in recent days."


And here was the response, which is well enough argued. We know enough from referendums to know that crude sentiment trumps everything, but those of us of a more serious frame of mind (indeed, a rational enlightened Scottish frame of mind) owe it to themselves to consider these points.

If the Scots believe their future is best served outside the UK then that's regrettable (I'm a unionist), but it is not the job of the English or Welsh to vote based on what they think will least upset Scottish voters and it is unreasonable and self-centred to expect them to. I won't even begin to talk about the democratic deficit in the UK brought about by Scottish MPs voting on matters that only affect England. The English have shown remarkable patience and flexibility to keep Scotland in the UK but it seems it is never enough.
A few facts to remind you of Alex. Cameron committed to an in or out referendum on our membership of the European Union in 2013. The polls consistently showed that there was a realistic chance the UK would vote to leave the EU. In 2014, after the commitment to an EU referendum was made, Scotland held its independence referendum, with the SNP promising to both Scots and the rest of the UK that this was a 'once in a generation, possibly once in a lifetime' event. Scotland voted comfortably to stay in the UK despite knowing an EU referendum was a realistic possibility. You seem remarkably relaxed about the astonishing level of deception it would represent to even hold a 2nd independence referendum anytime soon but hey ho.
I'm not sure you quite appreciate the complications and hurdles that face Scotland before it could leave the UK and re-join the EU. Obviously, Scotland would actually have to become an independent country. That's the easy bit. There seems to be a fantasy idea doing the rounds that Scotland could somehow glide seamlessly from the UK into the welcoming arms of the EU. This is nonsense. An independent Scotland would need to go through a long and painstaking accession process. While it may be tempting to believe that a bitter and jilted EU would allow Scotland to waltz straight in so as to punish the rest of the UK, the reality is rather different.
Firstly, the EU has rather a lot on its hands right now, not least trying to ensure its very survival and manage the members it already has.
Secondly, all 27 member states would have to approve Scotland's entry into the EU. The likes of Croatia, which had to go through a ten-year process, would not be likely to approve of Scotland's immediate accession.
Thirdly, the UK still has allies in Europe. There are many countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, that rely on a strong United Kingdom in NATO. They know the breakup of the United Kingdom would greatly diminish our NATO commitments and will therefore not be keen to make an independent Scotland seem an attractive proposition and will likely stand in the way of any EU membership.
Fourthly, Spain isn't particularly keen on accepting new members that have seceded from other members given its own problems in trying to keep itself intact.
Fifth, although Scotland could be a successful independent country in the long term, in the short term it would be an economic basket case. The economic case didn't add up last time, the currency question was never resolved and the fact that the bloated Scottish state would need to drastically downsize, with all the pain that will entail still remains. Add into the mix the collapse in the oil price and the decimated oil industry and it doesn't look pretty. It's highly doubtful, therefore, that Scotland would meet the economic criteria required to join the EU in the short to medium term. The EU has enough economic basket cases to fund without adding another.
If Scotland ever did join the EU, you would also be joining the Eurozone, and the common market and Schengen, necessitating a border with the rest of the UK. You would voluntarily cut yourself off from by far your biggest trading partner in order to entertain the slim possibility that in many years hence you could join an enormously flawed, democratically unaccountable, failing superstate? It would be an irrational move that would cause the rest of the UK and the world considerable harm, and Scotland enormous harm. And for what? To prove a point? To show the English how upset you are with them for not voting the way you wanted them to? Perhaps your friends are not so different from the average SNP member. Happy to throw the Union to the fire and commit an enormous act of self-harm simply to prove a point. With 'Unionists' like that, who needs Nats?
A final point. Nicola Sturgeon is, I am sure, aware she has no chance of getting into the EU anytime soon once the UK leaves. What we have witnessed from her since the referendum result is posturing and bluster with little substance. She knows she is ultimately powerless to prevent this. She has so far managed to secure a meeting with Guy Verhofstadt, a bizarre Belgian joke with a longstanding hatred of Britain and no real power. Quite what Ms. Sturgeon is hoping to negotiate from him is anyone's guess. A Belgian waffle? It will be interesting to see what her end game is here, given she will have nothing to offer the Scottish people at the end of this. She should tread carefully.

Juxtaposition

From the Observer - a report by former policy chief Jon Cruddas which says the party is alienating socially conservative voters on issues such as immigration and welfare.

Labour’s major challenge, the report argues, is to find a way to rebuild a coalition of support. It needs to “stop patronising socially conservative Ukip voters and recognise the ways in which Ukip appeals to former Labour voters”, the report says, adding: “Labour is becoming a toxic brand. It is perceived by voters as a party that supports an ‘open door’ approach to immigration, lacks credibility on the economy, and is a ‘soft touch’ on welfare spending.”

Sound common sense but will it get through? Step forward, in the same edition - Gideon Ben-Tovim,  Senior fellow in sociology, University of Liverpool who argues Labour shouldn't respect but challenge 'white working-class xenophobia'. "Culturally and socially we are enriched, not threatened, by their (immigrants) presence – as with previous waves of immigration."
There you go, your superior is telling you.

Of course not everyone is like Gideon, we have traditional leftism as well...Ian Hughes,
Bridgend, writes...  Labour has lost its traditional working-class voters because of a loss of trust ....and forgetting practical ideas to satisfy working-class aspirations, such as the repeal of anti trade union legislation...
Another bloody doorstep winner there. 


 

State control of the Media

In view of the debate happening around the future of the BBC I thought I'd post this little gem. It's been posted by Christine McIntyre on the blipfoto page of one Mike Russell MSP.

Now look, I know this is only one stupid SNPer, albeit one who is the mother-in-law of a new SNP MSP and one who preaches indy wherever she goes in her capacity of teaching and examining Gaelic singing.
However, "Please get control of state broadcasting" (interesting to note that the STV were no better - get control them them too, presumably, the bastards) is a pretty good example of the nationalist mindset. How lovely - public broadcasting under the executive's control. There's a great vision of a future Scotland, is it not?
And if not... your own political channel... surely that would be a good idea. Like 'The National' newspaper.

Perhaps Christine should consider for a moment the words of Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on Friday 13th May....

the rise of ..... in the US, cable TV channels and radio stations defined by political hue, means voters can easily get the entirety of their information from sources tailored to reflect their own views back to them.

 That, in turn, makes them ever more unwilling to accept contradictory facts. The editor of the Washington Post Marty Baron, addressed this in a speech last week noting how easy it has become to wave aside discomforting facts as the work of the hated “mainstream” media, pushing its secret agenda. “What has taken hold is an alternate reality, a virtual reality, where lies are accepted as truth and where conspiracy theories take root in the fertile soil of falsehoods.”
......In the US, that’s become a pressing question. In Britain, we have not yet fallen as far. That’s partly because we still have one forum which cannot so easily be dismissed as peddling a partisan agenda, though its critics, right and left, never cease trying. I’m speaking of the BBC. For all its flaws, it has retained the status once enjoyed by the US networks, broadly trusted to play umpire between competing claims on the truth – or at least to try.