Category Archives: Scotland

Fluffy leaving the Wrinkle Room

The Scotland Job

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The Scotland Office is a ministerial department of the UK government. It’s stated mission is to “represent Scottish interests within the UK government and we represent the UK government in Scotland.” Although I suspect that there is somewhat more of the UK government representation going on than Scottish interests being represented.

Due to the outstanding performance of the election campaign the Tories have managed to retain their single MP in Scotland, David Mundell. Which made him a cast of one when the Secretary of State for Scotland job was being handed out. He was duly anointed and Fluffy, as he is known, rides around in a ministerial car. So what do we know of our new Imperial Master? Well he’s a warmongering tory (who never stood in the firing line) who supports Trident and all austerity measures. In fact you could say that he is in perfect tune with the population of Scotland.

The main role of the Scottish Secretary is to promote and protect the devolution settlement. So Fluffy’s job is to preserve the status quo.

Then the UK government had to cast around for someone else to be in the Scotland Office. Lacking any other elected persons the PM decided to ennoble one of his chums from the Better Together campaign and shoehorn him in. So arise Lord Andrew Dunlop, our new unelected representative in the heart of government.

This is his new job: “The Parliamentary Under Secretary engages with Scottish stakeholders on a wide range of matters relating to the UK Parliament. They represent Scottish interests on a total of 22 Cabinet committees and subcommittees including the National Economic Council, Domestic Affairs, Life Chances, Constitution and Legislation.”

Here’s a thing though. Fluffy, being a true blue tory, will always defer to a peer of the realm. So who do you suppose is actually in charge of this department? I suspect that Fluffy is Lordy’s fluffer.

So with this once proud department being reduced to little more than a wrinkle room, isn’t it time to send it down the old dirt road?

Ugly EVEL

The good, the bad & the ugly

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Phew, what a night folks! It was one of those nights, the reverberations of which will be felt for centuries to come. Our children, our children’s children, and those still to come will look back upon this day and rejoice. Well they may rejoice, that all depends upon what we do with the gains that we have made. But first we have to understand what it is that we have achieved.

The Good

We have achieved the unthinkable, we have all but wiped out the unionist parties in Scotland. All of those familiar faces will now be Better Together seeking new opportunities, hopefully they will find some gainful employment, we wouldn’t want them to become a burden on the state again now would we. As the saying goes: we have more nuclear armed submarines in Scotland than MPs willing to vote for them.

We, as a nation, have elected 56 SNP MPs to the Palace of Westminster. That is incredible, I can’t quite get my head around it but it has happened. We have been battered and bruised by all that the establishment machine could throw at us, but we have endured. Now we can stand tall and say to the government in Westminster, “We, the people of Scotland, have spoken. These MPs are our gift to you.” The government in Westminster ignores our gift at their peril.

When they get to Westminster, we hope, our new MPs will represent our interests. Not trot through each division blindly following the whip, but faithfully represent the will of the Scottish people regardless of party loyalty. That’s what we expect from our new MPs. Nothing less will be acceptable. If our new MPs want some inspiration, look at the fate of Jim Murphy. See what happens when you neglect the electorate and are blinded by your own arrogance.

There’ll be no fiddling of expenses, no fiddling with children either. There’ll be no lying to the people of Scotland, no weasel words. We want our representatives to show the rest of them how a proper MP behaves, to act as a lead for the rest of the UK to follow. We want our MPs to oppose all austerity and to work with like-minded others to achieve that end. We want them to state the case, faithfully, for a new type of government. One that listens to the people and does as they ask. If they do all that, then our progeny may have the opportunity to rejoice. Let’s not squander this chance, we have waited 308 years for it.

The bad

Unfortunately, while the SNP were sweeping the board in Scotland, the tories were winning a slender majority across the UK by winning big in England. Make no mistake, this government is an English government. It is made up of 319 English MPs,11 Welsh MPs and a single Scottish MP. It has a majority in England only. It does not speak for the people of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. It is a UK government in name only.

On past performance we can expect the tories to continue to pursue the most vulnerable in our society. They will cut the safety net, which our forbears bequeathed to us, and sell off the choice pieces to their rich friends. They are a party of the rich for the rich. They have no interest in you or I. Profit is king and if you’re not making money then you are of no use. There’s is a poisonous, selfish ideology and the people of England will come to rue the day that they gave them a mandate to dismantle the welfare state.

During the election campaign they vilified the people of Scotland. They portrayed them as thieves. They told the English that it would be completely unacceptable for the Scottish people to have any say whatsoever in the running of the UK parliament. They made us out to be foreign insurgents, not of their country. So now is the time for them to reap their bitter harvest. They have made the gallant 56 persona non grata in the UK parliament.

They told us that they wanted us to have a strong voice in the UK parliament. But the problem is that the UK parliament does not exist in the eyes of the English tories. The parliament in Westminster is an English parliament in their eyes. It’s their own personal fiefdom. The rest of the UK can participate in name only, like Victorian children, being seen but  not heard.

If the tories have their way the Westminster parliament will become the de facto English parliament and all non-English MPs will become second class, at least more second class than they are already.

The ugly

This is the part where the dirty stuff is. We have to keep our eye on the goal which is the independence of our country. The SNP has NO mandate for a second independence referendum at the moment, it is not on the cards. Neither is a Universal Declaration of Independence, there is no way that such a declaration would have international legitimacy. If we are to have independence then this must be won through the ballot box. This can be achieved in a number of ways, some quicker than others. Let’s take a look at each scenario.

  1. The tories pursue the path of EVEL, making all non-English MPs second class in the UK parliament. This would be contrary to the Act of Union 1707 and could legally be challenged as such. It would have to be taken to an EU court since no court with a crown on the back wall would back our case. But it could be done. More importantly the second class nature of the non-English MPs could be exploited for propaganda purposes, demonstrating to the rest of the UK how unfair the current parliamentary system is. Much could be made of this, however there is no immediate need for the tories to pursue this course of action since they have a working majority and EVEL was designed to neuter the Labour party (who have managed to achieve that themselves).
  2. The legitimacy of the English government could be mercilessly exploited, thus highlighting to the rest of UK how the English run the whole country to suit themselves. This would have the effect of encouraging nationalism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This would be easy and our new crop of MPs should be doing this already (are they?). It is a big crack in the union, it can be opened to a fissure with relative ease. From a tory perspective this threat could be neutered by offering FFA or Devo Max. The SNP should take this path with extreme caution as I believe that the tories will place many traps along this route. It could be a stepping stone to independence, however I fear that we would end up stuck in that rut once we got there.
  3. The EU referendum, which the tories are committed to hold in 2017, could be exploited to a couple of ends. The first is to divide the tories, we know that the party is divided on the issue of Europe and this fact could play to our advantage. Votes with an European angle could be exploited to work upon the divisions within the tory party. Any European dimension will do, work at them from this angle. They are weak here. The second end is to encourage England to vote to leave the EU but the rest of UK to stay. The easiest way to achieve this is to promote UKIP in England but vilify them everywhere else. Crazy as this seems the tories feel vulnerable on their right. UKIP are THE reason why there will be a referendum in 2017. I could even see myself donating money to UKIP so that they can threaten the tories, now there’s a mad idea. For if the UK (England) votes to leave the EU but the rest of the UK votes to stay, then we have cause for another independence referendum. To this end, membership of the EU needs to be promoted as a beneficient thing for Scotland, Wales and NI. Perhaps EU funds could be unlocked for our farmers? EU funds could be made available for important infrastructure projects. We would need to have friends within the EU to achieve this, do such friends exist?

Enough for now, these are just some of my thoughts about how we could proceed and make the most of what we have. Hopefully I will have inspired others to have thoughts of their own. Lets get them out there.

Limerick

Words from Limerick

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Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I’m doing some work down in Limerick in co Clare, Ireland at the moment. So it seems fitting to embrace the poetic form and apply it to #GE15. Here’s the first effort:

There was a Lib Dem called Justine

Who angered easily in hustings

She gave us a laugh

With gaff after gaff

And policies sadly lacking

Here’s another:

There was a candidate for Gordon

Who despised Alex Salmond

She lied to the voters

About tax cuts and pollsters

But soon she will be forgotten

And a wee one for Braden

Young Braden was Dame Begg’s tea maker

She promoted him to Ortsgruppenleiter

Nobody knew who he was

All he could say was soz

There’s no way he should give up the day job

 

Effie Britannia

Oh dear Effie

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We interrupt this party political broadcast on behalf of the people of Gordon for an important news item. Effie Deans has published a post on her blog titled, “We must attack the SNP at its roots.” That’s right, get in among them like a dose of roundup.

You may have come across Effie before, she is an advocate of tactical voting. Especially in the constituency of Gordon where she hopes this will prevent the SNP candidate from being elected. Effie spent some time in the USSR, of which she has fond memories. She sees parallels between the break up of the USSR and the current state of the UK, of which she is particularly fond. She is also an ardent opponent of nationalism. Effie sees nationalism as a great evil, one which must be stopped at all costs.

But I’ll give her credit, she has got right to the root of Scottish nationalism and it boils down to this: do you think of Scotland as a country? It really is as simple as that. For Effie, Scotland is not a country, it is a region of a larger entity called United Kingdom. It’s just a part of something greater. For me, Scotland is a country and it should have the ability to manage its resources for the benefit of the people who live here. Effie laments that all of the economic arguments against independence are ignored by the nationalists. Most of the arguments against independence are economic and inherently selfish.

Effie believes that the final solution to Scottish nationalism is to disallow the assumption “Scotland is a country.” She even has a four point plan:

  1. Accept that UK is one nation.
  2. Ban all referendums.
  3. No deal with the elected representatives of the Scottish people should they be SNP.
  4. Bring about more unity into the UK and promote a feeling of common identity.

Effie is getting desperate, she is issuing a clarion call to the rest of the UK to give urgent assistance. It would appear that the SNP are winning. Her final recourse is to a grand coalition of unionist parties, a quicker route to the break up of the UK you couldn’t find.

Effie and I are mutually blocked on Twitter, and the reason is that I called her a British nationalist. Effie insisted that she wasn’t, then blocked me. But what about this quote from the post, “…remember, this is Britain. We always win.”