There are two kinds of people in the United Kingdom. There are those who divide people into two kinds of people, and there are those who don’t. If you’re one of the former you can also divide people in the United Kingdom into two kinds, those who are allowed to level accusations of Nazi behaviour at members of the Labour party, and those who are not. It’s a bit like terrorism really. You’re only a terrorist if you have a brown skin or are of a left wing or independentist persuasion. If you’re white and have far right wing views – you know, an actual Nazi – then you’re not a terrorist, you’re just an extremist like the not-terrorist who shot up the family planning clinic in Colorado. It’s all part and parcel of the Great British Double Standards.
Great British double standards mean that if you’re a supporter of Scottish independence, you are most definitely not allowed to claim that Labour politicians are quislings, fascists, or gauleiters, because that makes you an evil cybernat and the papers will print articles for weeks demanding that Nicola Sturgeon comes round to your house to berate you personally on the doorstep while criticising your dress sense and your taste in curtains and insisting that you never vote in favour of independence ever again. This is because in the absence of a positive case for the Union, it’s only by casting Yes voters out into the utter darkness hiding behind closed poor taste curtains can the Unionist media ensure that there will be a majority for the Union the next time we have a referendum.
Remember when Unionist politicians were forever promising that the positive case for the Union would be along any minute? Ah the nostalgia. Now what passes for a positive case is Ian Murray finding new things to abstain on, Labour ganging up with the Tories to find new ways to screw over the Scottish Government, and the public presentation of Trident’s weapons of mass destruction as a job creation scheme. But I digress.
The only people who are allowed to call Labour politicians Nazis are other Unionist politicians. Then it’s perfectly OK and not bullying at all. This is because in the United Kingdom it only counts as bullying when the insult issues from the mouth of someone who doesn’t actually hold any position of power or influence, like when a granny with an internet connection in Fife tweets that a Labour politician is a quisling. Then it’s terrible bullying and abuse, and the Daily Mail will demand that Nicola Sturgeon pay a visit to Glenrothes to make a negative assessment of the state of the granny’s net curtains. The affrontment.
However if you hold an elected post, or put more accurately, an elected post or a position of responsibility for a Unionist party, people actually have to kill themselves before anyone is going to call you out for bullying or insulting behaviour. And even then it’s by no means guaranteed. The persons allegedly responsible for bullying the young Tory activist who killed himself had a boss in Grant Shapps who turned a blind eye to the multiple accusations made against them over the course of a lengthy period.
It took over two years for Grant Shapps to resign despite a mounting catalogue of shifty behaviour and multiple identities. He used the name Michael Green to flog a get rich quick scheme online, but the only person who was granted any benefit was Grant. He also went by the name Sebastian Fox, which sounds like the writer of cheap pulp novels, which is appropriate as Grant is a master of fiction. Then he invented a totally ficticious middle initial for himself, and went by the name Grant V Shapps. It’s not clear whether the V stood for vain, vacuous, vapid, vegetable, venal or vulgar. Personally my money is on venereal, which is descriptive of a sick wee knobend.
That said, it’s unfair to claim that the UK’s political establishment operates double standards as two sets of standards aren’t enough for them. Grant Shapps has at least three, one to go with each of the identities he created for himself. What we can be sure of however, is that if any one of Grant’s personalities had called Jeremy Corbyn a Nazi, he wouldn’t be called on to resign for it. This is precisely what a Labour MP did this week, and the person deemed to be in the wrong wasn’t the Labour MP, it was the guy who got called a Nazi.
John Spellar MP, formerly a minister of state under Tony Blair, claimed this week that Jeremy Corbyn was acting like a fuhrer for opposing British military action in Syria. It’s possibly the first time in the history of invective that someone has been called a fascist for not wanting to invade Poland. In the UK nowadays the dangerous people aren’t the ones who are ready to rush into carpeting far away countries with bombings and tracer bullets and drone strikes, they’re the ones who demand that all peaceful measures are exhausted before we go to war. John Spellar supported Tony Blair in his rush to bomb and blast, and that didn’t exactly end well, but it’s not John’s judgement which is questioned, it’s Jeremy’s. Great British bombs are better bombs it seems.
We’re asked to put our faith in the judgement of people who rush to make accusations of bullying and abuse, and then indulge in precisely the same behaviour themselves. We’re ask to trust the judgement of politicians who see warfare as a first option and not a last resort, and who campaign for war without any clear idea of how to create peace.
Spellar and another Blairite MP are calling on Jeremy to resign, because they don’t like the policies of the party that they belong to. You’d think that in a normal universe they should leave that party and go and find one which is more congenial to their politics, like for example the Tories. It’s not the politicians who are wrong, it’s the ordinary party members. It’s not the powerful who bully and abuse, it’s the powerless. It’s the peacemakers who are dangerous, not the warmongers. But we don’t live in a normal universe, we live with Great British double standards.
BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE Barking Up the Right Tree has now been published and is an anthology of my articles for The National newspaper and is being published by Vagabond Voices press, who also publish Jim Sillars. The dug is in exhalted company. None of the articles collected in this book have appeared on this blog.
You can submit an advance order for the book on the Vagabond Voices website at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993
Price is just £7.95 for 156 pages of doggy goodness. Order today!
A limited number of signed copies of the two volumes of the Collected Yaps is also still available. See below for order details.
Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.
Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for only £21.90 for both volumes. A limited number of signed copies is still available, so get your order in now! P&P will be extra, approximately £3 per single volume or £4 for both sent together. If you only want to order one volume, please specify which. Single volumes are available for £10.95 per copy.
To order please send an email with WEE GINGER BOOK ORDER in the subject field to weegingerbook@yahoo.com giving your name, postal address, and email address and which volumes (1, 2 or both) you wish to order. I will contact you with details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. Get your order in today – an ideal Christmas present!
Wee Ginger Dug 
[…] Great British double standards […]
Great British Double Standards. I remember in my dim and distant youth, 1994 to be precise, seeing, in all places, a political cartoon in that Great British Comic, the Sun. It was, I think October 1994, when Westminster was about to vote to lower the then age of Gay Consent from 21 to 16, (It failed but was lowered to 18). Anyhow, the cartoon showed a Fat Tory MP: in bed with, what was assumed two 16 year old boys, (on one side of the bed was hung a Boy Scout Uniform, on the other, what I presume was an Eton Boys School Uniform. And the MP said to his young lovers, “That was wonder boys, but I have to go and vote AGAINST the lowering of the gay sex age to 16. Don’t want to legalise the forbidden fruit and all that, what!”.
As I said at the time, hypocrites all.
Stephen.
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
[…] Source: Great British double standards […]
It’s almost unbelievable what (Not) Labour have become when they think it’s okay to condemn their own leader for exhibiting pacifist tendancies and suggesting that carpet bombing another Middle East country might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
And when you hear their former spin doctor on radio and TV every other day sounding unhinged you cannot help but wonder how their ouroboros nightmare will end.
But, hey, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
I should know not to read your blog while drinking any beverage – venereal ,descriptive of a sick wee knobend ,tea gone for a burton ( another expression whose origins escape me)
And when you get responses containing ” ouroboros” I am well impressed and scuttling for the dictionary.
‘Gone for a Burton’ I suspect might refer to the great explorer Richard Burton, who famously would disguise himself and disappear, for years.
Apparently the phrase dates to WW2. The origin is disputed. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gone-for-a-burton.html
Ouroboros is an ancient Greek symbol of a serpent which is eating its own tail.
Tony Benn’s son? I find his behaviour the most shocking. ( I don’t suppose he would have dared when his father was alive.) It seems the PLP members have forgotten who put them there in the first place. What a crew! It’s hard to accept that the Labour Party has sunk to such a depth – actually ignoring their party members’ clear wishes! Sad…… but all the more reason for Scotland’s people to walk away from that so-called “great” country and create a society which cares for all rather than the few who have been given power.
Yet again, good to read your wise words, Paul.
Who will rid us of these turbulent priests?
How about a lot of lamp-posts and a lot of rope?
Frankly that concept holds a great deal of merit; think of the spin-off benefits to our steel tube and rope-making industries… 😉
The plight of the Labour Party is mildly fascinating: it’s in an impossible position. How can any organisation survive when 60% of its members vote for something which its paid representatives then work night and day to undermine?. Then I realise that’s also the situation of the British state, equally unsustainable.
Scotland’s in a more survivable position – except we’re not there yet.
We keep hearing how Corbyn has a “massive mandate” in the party at large. Well, he has to act like a leader and face down those blairite rebels in his shadow cabinet (and the PLP). If most of them resign on the Syrian bombing vote issue, then so be it – the few that remain may have to take on additional shadow portfolios for a while. Corbyn needs to whip those red tory bullies into line before they destroy him and destroy his beloved Labour party. If he fails on this one, he will lose the respect of friend and foe alike. History will judge him harshly. He has already made a real hash of it by saying he will “consult”, giving his foes a space to manouver. As leader he now has to risk all and stamp his authority – otherwise he will have no authority at all, for the remainder of his tenure.
No, they don’t know how to create peace. Its why they’re flushing their beloved union down the crapper.
They had a referendum won and all they had to do was win the peace between campaigns. They’ve chosen to put their arrogant, condescending heels on the electorate’s neck. They continue their strategy of fear and demonisation day in, day out against Scotland and their ideology of austerity against the peoples of the UK in general.
They don’t know how to share and play nice. They’re spoilt, wilful, insane children and they’re running a state.They decide our futures on a whim with short termist policies and sign our names up to those policies with no idea what future fallout may occur for those they govern.
All to suit their own selfish ideology.
Did I mention they were insane?
Insane right enough macart. Dunno if you have read this.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/27/elliott-johnson-young-tory-destroyed-by-party-he-loved-mark-clarke
They never change gerry.
Survival of the most viscious is their credo.
Reply I posted earlier has gone into the ether gerry, but basically they don’t change.
Their ideology is survival of the most viscious.
What a depressing read, Gerry, but well worth the effort simply to get a glimpse into the horrors created by these WM Tories. Fortunately that poor boy’s brave parents are determined to uncover the whole murky scene and “out” the many characters involved.
Can I just highlight this?
It’s possibly the first time in the history of invective that someone has been called a fascist for not wanting to invade Poland.
Pure genius, so it is.
In politics it would appear that when you have claimed the moral high ground you look closely to see that your vantage point is atop a turd in a sea of sewage.
Bullying is rife in politics. No party is exempt, including the SNP. They operate the same tactics as the rest: Ignore for as long as possible, Deny when ignorance can’t be kept up, play down the effects and only when it gains traction in the media actually do something.
Quote “You’re only a terrorist if you have a brown skin or are of a left wing or independentist persuasion.” Unquote.
Not completely accurate. You are also seen as a potential terrorist when you walk on to a ScotRail station with a Digital SLR…
As was my experience at Falkirk Grahamston station on Saturday…
Never trust a man who wants to photograph Turbostars… 😉
Bother, I’ve now found that I do not have any reason to trust anybody in power these days to do what anybody asks them to do! Corbyns alright actually but the people in power who suddenly feel as if they have got something more useful in their lives to do then sustain the welfare of the economy of the U.K., which they do a very, very good job of already, mark my words (that was sarcasm for those of you who didn’t notice) ; don’t like him and wish to oust him, so he’s probably not sticking around. Oh what a funny world we live in! Anyway, I’m off to read Sophie’s World! 🙂 (another weak attempt at comedy) 😎👍