scotlandisdifferent

Yanis Varoufakis, in 'Talking to My Daughter About the Economy', asks why the Australians, when the British invaders came to pillage their resources, destroy their culture, and murder their people, did not retaliate by invading Britain. Why did they not build an ocean-going fleet, load it with soldiers, arms and ammunition, sail it up the Thames, and lay waste to Sussex, Suffolk and the rest of the Home Counties? The answer, of course, is that the Australians were many marbles short of the technology that would enable them to do this. So that means that it was all right for the Brits to do what they did, doesn't it? As a second example of something similar, I recently had a conversation with a Scottish opponent of independence who had run for the hills after the close shave of the 2014 referendum, emigrated to Maine in the USA, and set up her own business designing and marketing household utensils. Ninety-five percent (or some similar and improbably high figure) of Scottish...

A parrot walks into a bar and says to the bartender: Bird: Got any nuts? Bartender (curtly): No. Bird: Got any nuts? Bartender (louder): No! Bird: Got any nuts? Bartender (shouts): NO! And if you ask again I'll nail your beak to the bar! [Slight pause] Bird: Got any nails? Bartender: NO!! Bird: Got any nuts? Not quite sure how this fits in to anything, but it must apply somewhere to the bourach that is Brexit and the stramash that is independence.

Remembrance Sunday is a poignant time for my family - my wife's side of the family, that is - because her grandmother lost her only son - my wife's putative uncle - in the First World War, and never recovered from the shock. Owen Griffiths was killed early in the War, and is named on the memorial at Mons. He had three sisters - one of whom was of course my wife's mother - who went on to solid, middle-class careers in teaching and healthcare. But it was the loss of the boy that did for my wife's grandmother. Every year my wife's sister puts on display the family photograph of Owen Griffiths, in military uniform. This is how she described the effect of his loss on her grandmother and her mother: "When she [our grandmother] was dying she just said, according to our mother, I never should have let him go, he was much too young. And she never got over the fact that her only son had died, aged 21, in the First World War. And our mother, who was sixteen at the t...

As immediate fall-out from the Alex Salmond trial stitch-up, the commentator Craig Murray is being prosecuted for saying that the Alex Salmond trial was a stitch-up. The grounds for the prosecution are that, by saying that the Alex Salmond trial was a stitch-up, he committed contempt of court. Contempt-of-court cases are heard not by a jury, but only by judges, and carry a possible sentence of two years in prison. The first step is a procedural hearing, scheduled for Wednesday 10th June at 10:00 a.m. This hearing will be on line, and therefore open to anybody with an internet connection. But you need to apply for access. Please do so - it's important that as many people as possible know what was actually said in court, because the mainstream media and the judiciary will try to stamp on anything they see as threatening, and what Craig Murray has to say undoubtedly fits that bill. You can apply for access by emailing judicialcomms@scotcourts.gov.uk . And please circulate this to fri...

My last post has been met with incredulous hostility by some commentators, hostile incredulity by others (all in personal communications), so I need to flesh it out a bit. To provide continuity with the previous post, I thought of heading this one "Where it's really at, asshole", but since the skeptics were my friends I've forborne to do this. The first point in my previous post - that Nicola Sturgeon would either commit or not commit to an indyref this year - was not controversial (how could it be? - it covered all possibilities). In the event, NS's response contained many fine words and high aspirations, but you should always listen to the small print. What she actually said was, " it is still my hope [that we can get an indyref in 2020]". That doesn't sound like commitment to me. My second point - that SNP policy is based on the belief that indyref without a Section 30 order would create too much hatred and division to be sustainable - attracted ...

That title reminds me of a linguistic joke, so let's get that over with: New student at Harvard, seeing a clearly established student whom he can ask for information: "Say, is this where the library's at? Established student (snootily): "This is Harvard. We don't end sentences with a preposition." New student: "Oh, I'll rephrase my question. Is this where the library's at, asshole?" To the point, now. It's been a long time since the Scottish independence movement has been anything other than murky, unpredictable, unbelievably baffling or just plain hopeless. However, things are beginning to turn the corner, with some upcoming dramatic events:- This coming Wednesday, it is said, Nicola Sturgeon will set out her response to BJ's refusal of the request for a Section 30 order. This either will or will not contain a commitment to an indy referendum this year. It's difficult to see how it will plausibly do that. But if it doesn...

Craig Murray's petition to bring in OSCE observers for the next Scottish referendum (which I hope you've all signed - DO IT NOW!) has resurrected the doubts about postal votes in 2014. These doubts solidify, for some people, into the claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged by the UK Government packing the postal vote with "No" ballots, as evidenced by the extraordinarily high postal turnout. This is a consoling narrative for those indy supporters who were gutted by the massive "No" wrecking-ball that crawled out of the woodwork on September 18th to steal the referendum (which many Yessers feel in their bones was in truth a clear victory for Yes) and demolish their dreams. So we need to look at that claim again now. The claim The detailed account of this rigging (the "Dunoon Report") has gained some traction among the Indy community. It was authored by Andy Anderson, Education Officer of the Dunoon Unit of the Democratic Socialist foundation, and...

The memory-failing spouse and I attended a dementia-friendly performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute , by Scottish Opera, a few days ago. It was a matinee, sparsely attended, disappointing no doubt for the singers, but for the audience it meant that there was no audience-intrusion to distract us from the top-notch performance, and the unpretentious simplicity of the occasion was overwhelming. Readers will remember that there are three strands to this opera - the heroic couple Tamino and Pamina, who undergo ordeals, and summon up their courage by playing a magic flute; the nasty flim-flammerie of the Queen Night, whose aim is to plunge all other characters into such despair that they kill themselves; and the earthy clowns Papageno and Papagena, who just want to shack up together and have a million kids. It's all underpinned by a fourth strand in the person of the sorcerer Sarastro, who runs what can only be called a think-tank. This is an institution that promotes the same equal...

If you think this post is going to be a rant about unredeemable bigotry among those that fought under the butcher's apron, think again. We need to be more nuanced than that. My wife and I had an encounter with a non-indy person after the march, two Saturdays ago, as we were coming out of the Mitchell Library (ah, the arcane leisure pursuits of the Byres Road glitterati!). He'd been leaning on the balustrade by the kerb opposite the outside door, smoking, and walked across the pavement to speak to us, a bearded and tidily turned-out man in his twenties. "See this march," he said, making eye contact. No doubt he'd noticed the SNP badge throbbing yellow on my lapel. "Ah don't haud wi' a' that." We raised an eyebrow. "See me, Ah'm a soldier," he said. "Ah wiz sent by Blair and Bush to Iraq, and when I came back, there was no help of any kind for me. Naethin, not from the British Government nor from the Scottish Government. So t...

Last Sunday, on the day after the AUOB march in Glasgow, the Herald gathered and published comments by three SNP politicians about the conduct of the independence debate. This was a remarkably unprincipled piece of journalism. A four-page front spread, it did two things: it crowded out any mention in that day's Herald of the joyous and sensationally good-natured 100,000-strong march, and it manipulated the three politicans' comments into a narrative where Yes-supporters were portrayed as vigorous abusers of their own side. It's also thrown commentators on Wings Over Scotland (the seriously outspoken pro-independence blog, which Unionists hate and fear in equal measure) into a fury. Fantastic smack in the eye for indy! Herald's job done! However, under the fury with and the contempt for the various participants, there's a serious point which indy-supporters need to consider, namely that our goal is to win the coming referendum. It's true that our goal is indepe...

It's disappointing, for three reasons, to see that the EU has extended the Brexit deadline to October 31st. The three reasons are: It's a compromise between those EU leaders who called for an extension of a year, and those who called for no extension. What do you do when you have opposing extreme viewpoints? You agree at a half-way point. However, that doesn't deal with the underlying issues, which are that one side thinks the UK can get its act together if given time (Donald Tusk), and that the other side thinks that EU should cut its losses and terminate the Brexit process in short order (Emmanuel Macron). The 'half-way' compromise doesn't settle that point (it doesn't even come near to acknowledging it), and the underlying issue bubbles on, underlyingly. The second reason it's disappointing is that the EU, in my view, has misjudged the UK's ability to come to a consensus. The UK - and that means England - doesn't do consensus: it's the...

What is going to happen with the indy ref? And why did Theresa May call the 2017 general election? Theresa May didn't call the 2017 general election to strengthen her majority - she already had a working majority of 17 seats. And she didn't call it to weaken Labour - Labour was weak enough. In fact, that was the problem. Labour's job - from the Conservative perspective - was to contain the SNP in Scotland, and Labour wasn't doing that. But Scottish independence on the back of Brexit would be a disaster for the Conservatives, since the loss of Scottish resources could lead to the annihilation of the neo-liberal dream. So they needed to get into Scotland, win the seats that Labour wasn't defending, demolish the SNP, and squash the independence movement for ever. They threw at it money and data: data to identify target voters, and money to inundate them with leaflets. And they nearly succeeded: the SNP lost more than one-third of its seats (21 out of 56), its vote-shar...

Had an interesting conversation a couple of days ago with an undecided voter. He was behind the counter when I went in to get my monthly top-up of gut-rot spicy proteins, in the shop that his father, a Muslim from Pakistan, set up twenty or thirty years ago, with a strong unique selling proposition that has turned it into a Glasgow landmark. Spotting the SNP badge that's welded to my left shoulder, he said, "Can I ask you about independence?" "Absolutely! In fact, I can overwhelm you with opinionated bludgeoning before you've even got to your first pause!" I said. Or rather, thought. I didn't say that. But I gave a sort of indication. "Breaking up a country is a really serious thing to do," he said. "Heard that one before," I suggested, disappointed that he'd swallowed whole the toxic Yoon slogan of "breaking up the country". "We've been in the UK now for three hundred years," he went on, "and it's...

Liked this response of Nicola Sturgeon to an awkward moment. And her self-deprecatory comment about a lot of people wanting to do the same shows a level of self-awareness and public engagement that not many politicians have. Good on the girl. BBC video clip copied, tealeafed and duplicated from Munguin's New Republic . Well done, Munguin!

Overheard a bloke in the pub this evening telling his girl that lower Glasgow life expectancy - 15 years less than the UK average - was traceable from grandparents through parents to children. I don't know whether he was merely quoting this analysis, or actively wanting to promote it, and to my shame I bottled out of asking him, but if it's being used as an explanation of Scottish disadvantage then it's a pernicious interpretation. It means that lower life expectancy is genetic; it's simply part of being Scottish. Scots come from lousy stock, there's nothing they can do about it, and they obviously can't run a country with these short life-spans hanging over them. "Too poor, too wee, too stupid and too short-lived." The study he was referring to seems to be this one . Its key sentence is: Conclusions: Males and females in most of the larger ethnic minority groups in Scotland have longer life expectancies than the majority White Scottish population. Th...

This claim turned up in comments on The National yesterday, from John Stuart Wilson. Since it's based on data, it needs to be taken seriously: Our largest on-shore private sector employer is the finance industry. It accounts for, directly and indirectly, 1 in 12 jobs. It doesn't want to be located in a foreign country from 90% of its customers. (Ask yourself: how many local authorities and SMEs currently send their monthly pension scheme payments to Belgium to have them managed there?) And it will not accept the loss of a LOLR [lender of last resort] backstop. So independence will cause major job losses in Scotland, as these firms relocate to the rUK. However, there are a few points in the above claim which are not clear: - the Scottish finance industry employs 160,000 people, out of a labour force of 2.6m. This is 1 in 16. Where does the writer get his figure of 1 in 12 from? - the UK-wide finance industry employs about 2m people, out of a labour force of 32m. So the Scottish...

Wow, this needed to be said, and here it is! This is a statement on the Catalonian referendum issued on 25th October 2017 by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. I show the link above, but I quote the statement in full anyway at the foot of this post. The statement makes four main points, exposing the logical fudges used by those who support the Spanish government. These points are also highly pertinent to the Scottish situation, and we need to think of ways of addressing them. The four main points are: The right of self-determination belongs to the people, not the state, and the state cannot take it away. The right to self-determination overrides the principle of territorial integrity. Using force, making a referendum illegal, and annulling autonomy violate international covenants on civil and political rights. Dialogue and negotiation are the way forward. The constitutional settlement for Scotland violates the first of these four points: we can...

A while ago I reported on a mild-mannered, middle-aged dog-walker who accosted me insultingly while I was walking back from the dentist wearing an SNP badge. Today I went to the same dentist again, wearing the same SNP badge (it lives on the coat, stupid!), and lo and verily behold, same spot, same dog, same guy, same tactic, same spiel. He stopped as he was walking past me on the bridge over the Kelvin, made eye contact, said, "That's a shame!" and waited. One thing that will have occurred to readers already is that it's not a good idea to regularly accost strangers when you walk your dog, because they're likely to be the same people as you accosted when you last walked your dog. As they were in this case. Another thing that might occur to you is that if you're going to accost the same stranger again, you could do yourself a favour by recognising them, which he obviously hadn't. So I told him that he'd tried that trick on me before. He showed no reac...