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Ellon hustings 17 April 2015

An evening with Justine, Part 1

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It was with delight that  I received an invitation, “Justine requests the pleasure of your company at  The Hustings, Victoria Hall, Ellon. 19:30.” There was no RSVP, no return address. I’ve got to admit, it piqued my interest. So I went along, as did a fair few other folk. But Justine wasn’t on her own, she’d brought along a few friends: (from the right) Clark, Braden, some bloke, the lady herself and WeeEck was to her right. On her left, so to speak.

We had an aperitif, or “Opening Statements” as they were called. WeeEck was first up, he was chuffed that Brew Dog made beer in Ellon (so am I by the way). Then Justine spoke for the first time, her voice like a blackbird’s song with hooks and barbs. She got tore right into WeeEck then got sweet on the pensioners. She got fair fired up, got the crop oot and swung it about like she wanted to gie WeeEck the punishment she knows he deserves. It was up and doon and side tae side. She gied it laldy on the economy, bigging up the Lib Dems record. Next up Braden gives us a good old fashioned New Labour sermon. Clark tells us he’s from Auchterless and he thinks shrinking the welfare state is good.

Then some bloke feeds us with our starter: what do you think of reinstating the Formartine and Buchan railway? For those who don’t know, this railway line was closed by the Beeching cuts and is now a long distance footpath and cycle route.

WeeEck’s first up and thought it was a good idea. I’m like WTF? That’s my cycle route to work, that’s the route that allows me to keep my sanity during the morning commute, and he wants to turn it back into a railway! NESTRANS are on the case as we speak!

Then Justine gives the knife a twist, she’s all for it too! She gets the whip oot again: WeeEck’s gettin it wi the SNP BAD and thon Big Brig ower the Forth’s nae needed.

Braden’s all for it, it seems like a good idea to him, like good seems like an idea. But like whatever, why can’t the government own the railway?

Clark’s gives me hope, he wants to turn the A90 into a truck super highway. I’m not sure about that but at least I’ll keep my sanity.

There’s a wee bit o banter, WeeEck tells Justine she’s on a shoogly brig because her an her pals forced a the cash that was set aside for Grand Plans into the Edinburgh Trams. But Clark tells them both off, “Alex, you just want to go to Westminster to shake it to its’ foundations. Justine, you are really quite scary.” I find myself agreeing with a tory for probably the first time in my life.

The next course is expertly served by some guy: How do you plan to improve support services? But Justine has worn me out, so you’re going to have to wait to find out about the rest of the evening.

Gordon Constituency Electoral Calculus

A letter from Justine

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Well I got a nice wee surprise when I got in from work, a lovely letter from the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for the constituency of Gordon; Christine Jardine, or Justine to her boss.

I won’t bother talking about the first part of the letter, it was all SNP bashing anyway. What is it with these unionist parties? Why can’t they give us a positive vision of the UK? It all seems to be SNP BAD. Is that really the message that the Liberal Democrats want to send to the electorate?

Justine's Letter

Justine’s Letter

Anyway enough of the SNP doom porn, let’s take a look at the interesting bit at the bottom of the letter. Let’s deal with the PS first, pedants among you will probably say that there is a full stop missing after the “P” but I’m not going there. The message is that there are only 2 candidates running in Gordon. That is a LIE! There are 5 candidates standing so there is more choice than they are letting on. I know, I know. Picky, picky. But it’s important to get the finer points of your message right isn’t it? Otherwise how can people believe the rest of the message?

Then we get some more SNP BAD with the message that they “took their eye off the ball on local services”, but local services are devolved and this is a UK General Election. The local services that are being talked about are run by Aberdeenshire Council for the most part with a part of the constituency being located within Aberdeen City Council area. Just for the record Aberdeenshire Council is run by a coalition of Conservative and…Liberal Democrats! That’s right, Justine is highlighting the failings of her own colleagues. Aberdeen City Council is run by a coalition of Conservative and Labour, the makings of a grand coalition perhaps?

Then we get to the 2 horse race bit, here is what the people at Electoral Calculus think about Gordon Constituency.

Gordon Constituency Electoral Calculus

Gordon Constituency Electoral Calculus

Not exactly a 2 horse race is it? But we’ll let that one slide.

Then we get to the small print, handily resized for ease of reading (it’s for me really, as my auld mither says, “Auld age, it disnae come alone.”) Apologies for the scanner failure.

Justine Letter Small Print

Justine Letter Small Print

We can see that the letter is printed in London, a quick search of Google (other search engines are available) yields lots of local printers which could have been used to print the letter. Justine takes local money and spends it in London. That’s a familiar theme…

Then there is the “Gordon Liberal Democrats”, a quick search of the registered political parties at the Electoral Commission yields no results. They don’t exist. Then there is the biggest lie on the page:

"Scottish" Liberal Democrats Logo

“Scottish” Liberal Democrats Logo

Can you guess what it is yet? That’s right, there is NO SUCH PARTY! They are trying to fool the electorate into believing that the party is local. But it’s a London party, for London people.

It’s a party which enabled the worst ravages of the Tories over the last five years. A party which abandoned its solemn pledge on tuition fees just so that they could cruise around London in ministerial cars. Malcolm Bruce, the previous incumbent (for 31 years) voted with the tories for the increase in tuition fees, voted with the tories for the bedroom tax, voted with the tories for the benefits cap, voted with the tories for increasing VAT, voted with the tories against the top rate of income tax, voted with the tories against the banker’s bonus tax. He was, for all intents and purposes, a tory. Why would anyone vote for that?

Quisling scum

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Did you see it? You could hardly miss it. Some graffiti was sprayed onto the Conservative and Unionist Party office and Labour Party office in Aberdeen sometime on Friday night. The perpetrators sprayed a nazi symbol (the wrong way round) with the word “scum” above on a window and a large letter “Q”, allegedly representing the word “Quisling”, on the door of the tory office on West Mount Street. The Labour party office got a “Q” sprayed on its’ door. Here’s what local tory councillor Ross Thomson had to say about it on Twitter:

Graffitti on Tory Office

Graffiti on Tory Office (Picture courtesy of Cllr Ross Thomson)

This was immediately picked up by the unionist press, with the P&J being one of the first out of the blocks. They provided a space for the esteemed councillor to air his views unchallenged. He said, “It shows the ugly side of nationalism and it is really sad to see this happen in Aberdeen.” Now the councillor is entitled to his opinion, but to immediately blame “nationalists” is going too far. Does he have proof? If so the culprits would be caught by now, wouldn’t they?

Once they were caught we would expect to see them on the front page of every unionist media outlet in the land (that’s most of them). We would expect the book to be thrown at them very hard, wouldn’t we?

But I reckon the culprits will never be caught. Why? Cui bono: who benefits? The councillor certainly benefited from lots of unopposed air time. The Tories and Labour benefited by making the nationalists look bad. The press benefited by selling lots of copy and getting more page views. The whole unionist cause benefited. In fact the only people not to benefit are the nationalists. Fancy that?

I love me

The selfishness of unionism

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Ever since the first skirmishes of the independence referendum something has been irking me, nibbling away from the inside, anxious to be enunciated. I’ve been mulling it over, trying to express it in words. It was always just a feeling you see, but now that we are in the thick of the general election campaign the time has come.

Nick Robinson (hope he gets well soon) finally managed to shine a light into the gloom of my mind and illuminate the wee moose that had been bugging me for so long. His post-surgery blog (hope you’re better soon Nick (Enough already, Ed)) expresses his own views on how people decide who to vote for and the reasons that he gives are purely selfish. It’s all about me. Not you, not we, never us, just me.

Thinking back to all those Better Together arguments, they were all about money. It was all currency this and pensions that. Banks and businesses moving away and jobs lost. All of those arguments were focused on the individual, hitting the me and placing the question mark after the I. They were all inherently selfish arguments.

For me, the most tantalising argument for independence was the idea of a better society. One where the people were respected for who they were, not one where their future was mortgaged to bail out corrupt banks. There were no illusions in my mind that the transition to independence would be tough, Any divorce is tough, a divorce after a 308 marriage is bound to be especially so. But the short-term pain would be mitigated by the longer term gain. The arguments for independence were mostly focused on the us, the we not the me. The altruistic not the selfish.

The unionists are still thinking of themselves, as witnessed by the lies being peddled by all of the main unionist parties as part of their pitch for our votes in the general election. It’s arguments like “you’ll be worse off under” whoever and “our plans will save you” how much. These arguments are essentially selfish, focused on the individual. None of them give me any hope that any of these parties will bring about any meaningful change in the UK. A vote for any of the main unionist parties is a vote for the status quo, one with blue bells, the other with red whistles and the other with a little yellow ball. You would struggle to get a silver Rizla between any of them.

I’ll leave you with these questions:

  1. What kind of UK would you like to see?
  2. Which party is most likely to deliver that vision?