Hambaws

The Scottish media has been in SNPbaaaad overdrive because Michelle Thomson MP has had the party whip removed while there’s an investigation into the role of her lawyer in her property dealings and because Fiona Hyslop gave government money to the organisers of T in the Park. It’s the worst political scandal since the last time someone in the SNP was accused of anything, which was yesterday, and there weren’t even any pigs involved. Labour was calling for Michelle Thomson to be thrown out the party and hung out to dry within five minutes of the news coming out, although strangely it took them somewhat longer to take action on Eric Joyce.

We’re positively drenched in the SNPerniciousness, it’s like the rain in a Scottish summer, so all pervading that you scarcely notice it any more. It has long since passed the point where anyone cares. Even if someone in the SNP were to shag a pig live on Scotland 2015 while offering to do a secret deal with Vladimir Putin, half of Scotland wouldn’t care. Och Davie Cameron’s already done that, bloody Unionists, they’d say. And they’d be right. You’d think this would be a signal warning to the media about the dangers of crying wolf, but they can’t help themselves.

The reason for the SNPocalypse is to distract us from far more interesting scandals, like the self-immolation of the Labour party, the descent of the Tories into porcine putrescence, the continuing irrelevance of the Lib Dems, and the final decline of the British state into the laughing livestock of the planet. It is of course a well known fact, at least in Scottish media circles, that the individual failings of a single SNP politician means that Scottish independence is a non-starter, whereas the systematic, repeated, and institutionalised misbehaviour of generations of Westminster politicians is merely a series of personal lapses and no reflection whatsoever on the moribund and mouldy British state.

Westminster’s personal lapses grow ever more spectacular. This week Davie Cameron wanted to participate in the Parliamentary football match but was told he wouldn’t be allowed as he’s got previous for ham baws. Glad that’s been cleared up then. He got an oinkment for it.

Another personal lapse which is no reflection whatsoever on the collective behaviour of Westminster MPs, and certain not Fluffy Mundell who just happened to share an office with him, is the on-going court case against Alistair Carmichael. The judges have refused to throw the case out as the Karmakoala’s lawyers had argued, and have said that they need to hear the evidence before they can make a ruling. The prospect that Alistair may be oot on his ear looms ever larger.

The exploration of the evidence is going to be pretty tricky for Al, since the evidence largely consists of him explaining why he told a porkie almost as embarrassing as the one that is suing Davie Cameron for alimony in the courtroom next door. Meanwhile a team of archaeologists has descended on Orkney, hoping to unearth a shred of Alistair’s dignity, however all they found was the remains of a pig in a compromising position with the skeleton of the last voter who thought the Lib Dems were a worthwhile proposition.

We’re now faced with the prospect of seeing Alistair have to explain why it was OK for him to lie through his teeth to the electorate and tell the judges why telling a bacon whopper wasn’t a reflection on his character, but simply a necessary part of his job. Vote for me so I can tell you lies isn’t a winning slogan in any political campaign. The sight of Carmichael giving evidence is likely to be as delicious as a bacon sandwich that brought unending embarrassment to a Tory Prime Minister.

This week we’ve got party conferences. The Lib Dems had theirs over the weekend, but no one could be bothered to watch, except the poor saps from the BBC who insisted on broadcasting it. It was held in the basement of a scout hut in Kettering, but there were still plenty of spare chairs. Tim Fallon, the new leader that no one has heard of of a party that no one cares about said that he was going to do something or other that no one is going to notice. Although he added that the SNP is very very bad. It was all highly relevant and terribly crucial to bugger all.

Labour has its conference this week too. It started off badly with Jezza making stuff up about the SNP, and then descended further into farce from there. This is the great hope of progressive politics in the UK. He still wants to scrap Trident, although his party won’t let him debate getting rid of it. Your chances of getting rid of Trident by voting Labour remain approximately the same as the chances of Davie Cameron ever escaping public pig based ridicule. There’s only one way to get rid of Trident from Scotland, and it doesn’t involve voting for a party which is determined to keep Scotland a part of the British state.

Jezza wants people in Scotland to take another look at the Labour party, however his problem is that when we take another look at it we still see Iain Gray, Jackie Baillie, and Kezia Dugdale with their problems with numeracy and their complete inability to tell us what they’d do that was better. We still see a party that hasn’t changed and is incapable of changing. Labour has told us since 2007 that it was listening and learning but all it’s ever learned is that it needs to keep yelling that the SNP is really really bad. Jeremy Corbyn shows no sign that he understands Scotland, he acts as though we’re an embarrassment that he wishes would just go away, and when you look at the Labour party in Scotland you can understand why he feels that way.

It’s not so much that Labour in Scotland is controlled by political has-beens, it’s that they never quite got there in the first place, yet they keep banging on and on and on with the enthusiasm of Davie Cameron banging a dead pig, and with much the same effect. Labour in Scotland does need to change, but it won’t change because of a change in leadership in London. Change will have to be forced upon it by the Scottish people. We can change it into a party that’s extinct.

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.

Altered State

While I’m busy dealing with book orders – here’s a great new documentary on the media and the indyref by PhantomPower, featuring Derek Bateman, and yours truly.

A wee blog break

Just a wee note to let you know there won’t be any updates to the blog for a few days because I need to process all the orders for the book. I’ve been inundated with orders, far more than I had anticipated. The books were delivered this morning and are currently sitting in a huge pile which occupies almost all of my spare room.

Now I need to sign all the books, stamp them with the paw print, package them, address them, and get them sent out to everyone who has ordered them. It’s going to take me longer than I had thought, so if you’ve submitted an order, please be patient.

If you’ve not ordered your books yet, there’s still time. Send your order request to weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll email you with details on how to make payment. You can pay by Paypal, bank transfer, cheque or cash. Signed copies of both volumes are available for a special price of £20 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Alternatively, you can come to the book launch at the YesBar Comedy Club at 14 Drury Street Glasgow at 7pm on Monday 28 September. Admission is £22 and as well as signed copies of both volumes, also includes a donation to a refugee charity.

Normal blogging service will be resumed as soon as I recover from the writer’s cramp I’m getting signing all these books.

The answer in the mouth of a pig

Truth they say, comes of out the mouth of a baby, or as we discovered today, in the mouth of Babe. Ed Miliband was subjected to endless abuse by the media because he couldn’t gobble bacon without making a weird face, and then we discovered that David Cameron got gobbled by a pig. History does not record whether the pig was making a weird face at the time. Jeremy Corbyn has been subject to dog’s abuse for not doing his tie up properly and not singing God Save the Queen – although in the presence of all those upper class refugees from public schools he was probably very wise to keep his mouth firmly shut. Nothing that the media ever drags up ever again as a stick with which to beat Jeremy Corbyn or Nicola Sturgeon will ever compare to the retort we can now make to the Conservative establishment. “Aye, but your man shagged a dead pig.”

The media has spent most of the day shuffling around awkwardly, and not wanting to be the first to mention the story. This is unusual, as they’re generally pretty quick to pounce on the reactionary crap spouted by the Daily Mail. But then it’s not every day that the British Prime Minister is accused of shagging a dead pig. This is a shocking scandal of an entirely different order to the scandals which usually shock the British media. When your idea of a scandal is that Jeremy Corbyn wears socks and sandals, being confronted with the allegation that David Cameron stuck his knob in a dead pig, and it is claimed that there is photographic evidence, is going to leave you gibbering open mouthed like the media idiots the public already thinks you are. Although as we’ve learned, it’s not a good idea to remain open mouthed in the company of David Cameron.

To all you No voters out there, if you had voted Yes with the rest of us last year, we wouldn’t currently be living in a country governed by a man who allegedly had sex with a dead pig. Reflect on that over your bacon sandwich as you realise that the entire world is laughing at the United Kingdom. The creatures outside looked from pig to Cam, and from Cam to pig, and from pig to Cam again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. The allegations being made against our Prime Minister also include claims that he indulged in copious drug taking and knew all about the non-dom status of Tory donor Lord Ashcroft even though he’d denied the knowledge. But no one really cares about any of that. We’re stuck on the pig, just like Davie was.

But we all did stupid things when we were young, cry assorted Tories trotting out excuses in an attempt spin things, although the only way this can be spun is on a spit over a fire. Mind you, no amount of basting in honey is going to make it any more appetising. While many of us will admit to youthful indiscretions with herbal smoking materials, this is a very different proposition from shagging a dead pig. It’s not like we’re going to swallow the story if they try to tell us that Davie was just playing with his food. Whether or not the pig swallowed, history does not record.

It’s said that the former US president Lyndon Johnson once instructed his aides to secretly leak a story to the press that one of his political rivals had sex with a pig. The aides protested that they couldn’t do that because the story wasn’t true, and no one would possibly believe it. Johnson replied – “I know it’s not true. I just want to see the son of a bitch have to deny it.” For the rest of that politician’s career, he’d be the guy who had to deny that he had sex with a pig. That’s the position that Hameron is in now. Irrespective of the truth of the story, he’s now the Prime Minister who has to deny that he shagged a dead pig. That’s the image that is going to be forever associated with him. No wonder they call him Hamface.

The reason that rich amoral arseholes join these secret debauchery clubs is simple. It’s so they make connections which they can use later on in life to screw the rest of us over. It’s a way that they can exert power over us, so they get to know the dirty secrets of other powerful men – and it’s always men. Knowledge is power, and if you have knowledge of the immoral and illicit activities of powerful men you have power yourself. Access to these powerful networks must be carefully controlled.

The reason that the secret clubs have humiliating entrance rituals is equally simple. It’s the exact same reason that Latin American drug gangs insist that aspiring members go and murder someone and then present evidence implicating themselves in the murder to other gang members. It’s so that other members have dirt on them. It’s so that the other members can control them. This means that no one who has joined the gang is going to grass when their fellows engage in corrupt, underhand and immoral activities as they pursue their careers.

This applies equally to members of exclusive Oxbridge dining clubs devoted to feeling superior to the plebs and insulting the poor. Rich boys together giving one another a helping hand in the furtherance of their careers. They might not murder people, but they still need to ensure that they have dirt on one another so no one squeals, so they insist that new members humiliate themselves and provide other members with evidence of their humiliation. So we get the stories of Cameron with a pig head and Osborne in a gimp suit. It’s the omertà of High Torydom. Knowledge is power and power is to be used against those without knowledge. They’re all boys together in the pig sty, wallowing in filth, throwing dirt at the little people while the pig stickers get their noses stuck into the trough.

If anyone is still wondering why so many of us in Scotland still want independence, the answer is in the mouth of a pig.

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 a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

Alternatively you can come along to the official book launch at the YesBar Comedy Club, 14 Drury Street Glasgow, at 7pm on Monday 28 September. Admission is £22 and includes signed copies of both books and a donation to Scotland Supporting Refugees.

Wee Ginger Book Launch

The official launch of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug will be held in the Yes Bar Comedy Club at the Yes Bar in Drury Street Glasgow, starting at 7.00 pm on Monday 28th September.

Tickets are £22 and as well as admission, gets you signed copies of the two volumes and a chance to have your photograph taken with the real star – Ginger the Dug. There will be stand up from comedian Dennis McKay, and drinks can be ordered at the bar.

If you can’t make the book launch, if you order before 28 Sept you can get signed copies of both volumes for the special price of £20 plus P&P. Send your order to weegingerbook@yahoo.com – do not send any money just now, you will be contacted with payment details when the books are ready to send out.

£2 from the admission will go to the new charity Scotland Supporting Refugees which will be hosting a fundraising immediately after the book launch, starting at 9.00 pm. Scotland Supporting Refugees are a community of volunteers founded by Suzanne McLaughlin of Yesbar, Julie Hepburn, Sarah-Jane Walls, Alison Thewliss MP & friends.

They have a number of aims. First of all, they want to raise awareness of this humanitarian disaster and of opportunities to help. They also want to campaign for a more coordinated approach from NGOs and others. But crucially, they want to provide help – fast! The main focus will be raising funds, both to support our own efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to refugees, but also the valuable work of other organisations – large or small.

More info can be found here. https://www.facebook.com/Scotland-Supporting-Refugees-748319128610187/timeline/

Suzanne McLaughlin of the Yes Bar has pulled together some of Scotland’s finest comedians, including Gary Little, Bruce Fummey, JoJo Sutherland, Patrick Rolink, Viv Gee and more, they are all donating their time and a fundraising auction will be hosted by Hardeep Singh Kohli and VIP special guest. The evening will be attended by MPs and MSPs. The event will kick off at 8.30pm immediately following the Wee Ginger Book Launch.

Prizes at the auction include meals out at top restaurants, Clothing generously donated by Alexander McQueen, beauty gifts and bottles of Fizz.

Yesbar Comedy Club, 14 Drury Street, Glasgow
7pm for the book launch
8.30pm for the Scotland Supporting Refugees fundraiser

Tickets for the Scotland Supporting Refugees event are available from Monday 21st September at http://www.yesbar.scot tickets for the Wee Ginger Book Launch will be available at the door.

Tickets for the Scotland Supporting Refugees even are £20 suggested price or whatever you can manage for the unwaged. Please note this is separate from the £22 for the book launch, a price which also includes signed copies of both volumes of the Collected Yaps.

Burning down the Labour party

Despite having a poseur streak a mile and a half wide, and a large collection of vintage suits, I don’t care what Jezza wears. I don’t care if he wears a tie, I don’t care if he does up his top shirt button. It’s the content that matters, not the packaging. Scotland was expecting the delivery of a socialist package from Jezza, we didn’t mind what the wrapping was like.

We thought Jeremy Corbyn with his white beard was the socialist Santa, he was going to deliver all sorts of goodies for the good boys and girls who, despite the frequent disappointments, really believed in the pot-holed Great British Parliamentary Road to Socialism.

And after all the excitement, after all the hype, and us waiting up all night like weans expecting a prezzie, we tear off the recycled wrapping to discover that Jezza has given Scotland Ian Murray – the MP for the people’s republic of Morningside, a man who makes a plastic action figure appear animated. But there’s other prezzies lurking in the package, there’s Tommy McAvoy, who’s not even evolved enough to count as a dinosaur, an arsonist, and a random Welsh guy who no one has ever heard of. Not even in Wales.

I’ve not been so disappointed since I was a wean and my granny gave me a big box containing my birthday present and I ripped it open to discover a pair of purple crimplene trousers, some nylon socks three sizes too wee, and a t-shirt bearing a golliwog logo. Mind you, my granny was an avowedly racist bigot, she was the one you were allowed to shove aff the bus. On top of that she was possibly the only person in the history of the universe with a poorer sense of style than Jeremy Corbyn.

Jezza doesn’t care how things look. Which is fine. But not caring how it looks that you’ve appointed Tommy McAvoy as your Scotland spokesperson in the Lords isn’t fine at all. Tommy McAvoy represents all that is wrong with the Labour party in Scotland, the cronyism, the entitlement, the expenses claims, the sheer unpleasantness. And I’ve not even mentioned the implacable opposition to any equal rights for Lesbian and Gay people. So thanks for that Jez.

No one knows why Wayne David has been appointed to the Scotland team, not even Wayne, although he may once have visited Rothesay on holiday. Wayne has a lower profile in Scotland than a limbo dancer who’s suffered a tragic accident with a road roller, and his profile in Wales isn’t any higher. His qualification for the Scotland brief would appear to consist of being a Celtic type, and viewed from Islington North there’s not much difference anyway. He’ll do, said the Labour leadership, he talks funny just like a Jock.

The new team who are going to bring Scotland back to the Labour party look very much like the old team, the Shadow Scottish secretary who looks like one of those rubber stress toys that you squeeze and their eyes pop out, the theropod notable only for evolving the concept of nest-feathering, and a random leek. The face of the new politics looks suspiciously like the old one. The Corbyn bandwagon has only just started and it’s already being shaken apart on the potholed road, heavily rutted by generations of time servers.

But that’s not all, as a bonus prize we’ve got Charlie Falconer, who has never held an elected position in his life and who owes his high office to once having shared a flat with Tony Blair. After over 10 years in office and an illegal war, the rest of the public are now equally familiar with Tony’s brown stained underpants, so it’s unclear what advantages Charlie possesses.

This wasn’t the worst though. Appointing Burn Mike Look At The Pretty Fire 85+/Watson of Invergowrie as your education spokesperson is a far worse faux pas than not doing up your shirt properly at the Cenotaph. It looks really bad because it is really bad. He’s a convicted arsonist who was sentenced to 20 months in prison and served eight for attempting to burn down a hotel full of people. The judge at the time said that he was a danger to the public. Yet despite this glowing record, Mike remains a member of the Labour party, and now he’s a member of the Labour party who has high office. He’s a beacon of socialism, apparently. And if you want to argue that he’s served his time and ought to be forgiven, then just ask yourself how outraged you’d be if Cameron had appointed an arsonist to his cabinet, to sit alongside the sociopaths and psychopaths who are already there.

I now find myself in the very uncomfortable position of agreeing with Fraser Nelson, the editor of the right wing Spectator and escapee from the Bide a Wee Home for North British Elocution where he sadly contracted a terminal case of irritable vowel syndrome. Agreeing with Fraser has hitherto been as implausible as Ruth Davidson saying that she doesn’t really like tanks, Iain Duncan Smith actually practising some of the Christian charity that he self-righteously preaches about, or Fluffy Mundell making a public statement that doesn’t make you want to slap him.

Fraser published a piece in his right wing scream sheet claiming that the Corbynet looked less like the fresh face of a new look at British politics, and a lot more like the results of scraping the bottom of a barrel of bad apples for foul smelling gunge. The truth is, large sections of the Labour party refuse to serve under Jezza, because they don’t want to be tainted when the entire project comes crashing down in a shower of socialist recriminations. Those politicans are the disease of Labour, if they don’t want to serve under a leader voted in by a large majority of party members and supporters, it’s them who are in the wrong party. Labour can’t help us if it won’t help itself. It’s not that there are bad apples in the Labour party, it’s that the entire orchard is rotten. It needs to be burned down so something fresh and new can grow. Perhaps that will be the real service provided by Mike Watson.

Meanwhile here in Scotland we already have our own democratic resistance movement, one which has already withstood the flames. This time last year the independence movement was under attack, literally. Unionist thugs attacked independence supporters on the streets of Glasgow, and the media dismissed it. If it had been independence supporters physically assaulting Unionists, they’d have been calling for the imposition of martial law. We survived all that, and we’re still here, still laughing, still singing, still marching. Today is the anniversary of the day that we started to fight back.

Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

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.

Independence of mind

It’s a year on from the big vote, and everything has changed and nothing has changed. Scotland has changed forever, Westminster hasn’t changed at all. Scotland buzzed with energy, with hope, and found a new self-confidence and inner strength. It wasn’t enough to win the vote, but it was enough to win independence of spirit and mind. Scotland is already independent in its imagination and in its dreams. This is not the same country that it was a few short years ago. Once the box of hope was opened, things could never go back to the way they were before.

The knowledge that that profound change is irreversible is why the Unionists remain angry and bitter, afraid and uncertain as they inch gingerly along, never knowing when the Union will plunge to its doom. They know that their old certainties are gone, they’re afraid of what might replace them, so they scream that everything is uncertain. But the only uncertainty is within them.

The Union won the vote at the cost of surrendering its foundations and setting sail on a tide of negativity and fear. Now it’s beached itself on public disgust and it’s only a matter of time before the shifted sands swallow it. Yet Westminster sails on, blythely disregarding the referendum vote, believing it was fought on Westminster’s winner takes it all rules. It wasn’t. This was a Scottish vote, fought on Scottish terms. The rules have changed forever now, and the Union sits on quicksand, trying to pretend it’s solid and unyielding. But it’s a charade, and the charade was exposed last year. The hollowness and weakness of the Union was on public display last year. We saw the emperor naked.

The result ought to have been a massive shock to a complacent parliament, a warning that it needed to change in order to prevent Scotland slipping out of its grasp once and for all. All over Scotland Yes voters made their own personal vows, that they would work unceasingly until the corrupt and unscrupulous Union was brought down. A state only retains its authority when its citizens believe in its power. Last year a half of Scotland stopped believing. Westminster ignored that message, and went back to pauchle as usual immediately afterwards. The Smith Commission became a game of deceit as the Unionist parties competed with one another to see how little they could get away with. Scotland looked on, sullenly.

We took revenge in May when we destroyed the Unionist parties in Scotland, leaving them with one MP each like the stuffed heads of an endangered species to decorate the wall. And still Westminster didn’t listen to the sound of the motor for change. That motor was driven by disgust at the corrupt antics of Westminster MPs, their unaccountability, the way in which they serve themselves first and foremost, and even when we vote them out of office they still gain rewards. Yet the very day before the anniversary of the biggest kick in the nads that the Westminster Parlaiment has received in a generation, Westminster demonstrated yet again how out of touch it was, and how it didn’t give a damn.

Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw have been cleared of any wrong doing by their pals in Parliament. The nation was devastated that two beloved politicians who’ve never been involved in any illegal war mongering at all, oh no, might have been involved in feathering their own nests on the back of the contacts they’ve made as Parliamentarians. But now they’ve been investigated and we discover it was all the fault of Channel 4 for trapping them in an ungentlemanly sting. It wasn’t that the rules were corrupt in the first place. The corrupt rules are just fine and it wasn’t within the remit of the Standards Committee to examine the standards of its rules.

After a proper investigation by men who wear ties, don’t have beards, and who sing all the words to the national anthem, we learn that being a grubby politician on the make isn’t against the rules after all. The integrity of grubby politicians on the make is restored as is our faith in British democracy. Huzza! That would be our faith that it is corrupt, venal, self-serving, and irredeemable.

Westminster has been skating on the thin ice of public opinion for quite some time. There’s the illegal wars, the child sex abuse cover ups, the cash for access, the utter failure to control the excesses of the banks, the rush to permausterity, the demonisation of the poor, the refusal to take responsibility for refugees, the peerages doled out to party donors and failed politicians, the expenses scandals, the dismissal of every single amendment to Scottish legislation put forward by Scottish MPs. And that litany of depression doesn’t even begin to detail the betrayals and disappointment. Yet Westminster doesn’t just fall through the thin ice, it smashes it with the explosives it’s selling to even more corrupt and anti-democratic regimes and it plunges in head first. And then it looks at us with a smug self-satisfied look and announces primly that it’s all within the rules.

The Union promised change, faster change, safer change, yet it’s not delivering. They won the referendum last year on the back of a big lie. The Westminster parliament won’t change. It can’t change. It doesn’t want to change. The Union enjoys the support of the dwindling numbers who are quite happy with things as they are, as more and more those who want change come to realise that change will only come about when Scotland takes power into its own hands and forces change. We know now that we don’t need the Westminster Parliament, we still have some work to do to convince a substantial majority that we don’t want it either. But we will do that work.

That’s the lesson that Scotland learned during the referendum campaign last year – if we want something done we need to do it ourselves. That’s what it means to be independent in the mind, and we’ve crossed that bridge already. The day that we do it ourselves is coming.

Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

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.

How now Brown’s Vow – 12 months on

This week the Daily Record, a newspaper with all the self-awareness of a Labour MP in Scotland just before the last election staring at the oncoming headlights of the SNP freight train and thinking the bright lights are going to make them a star, claims that the infamous Vow has been fulfilled. It has been fulfilled in exactly the same way as my vow this time last year to climb Mount Everest. Since I am currently writing this article up two flights in a close in Barlanark, that’s a vow fulfilled. There’s even a furrow that’s been worn in my carpet.

Barlanark is at least up a hill, and so enjoys a position of prominence, which is a damn sight more than can be said for Gordie Broon and the Daily Record’s vow that if Scotland voted No we’d get “safer and faster change” giving us Home Rule and the nearest thing possible to full fat federalism.

What we’ve witnessed instead is Gordie Broon and his precious vow vanishing with even less of a trace than a wee puddle of pug pee in the afternoon sun. Which is also a fair assessment of the lasting consequences of the hagiographic commentary in the Mailesque fanboydom that passes for much of the mainstream media in the UK.

On the day after the lowest paid workers have lost £4.4 billion in tax credits, there’s a refugee crisis provoked by decades of Western manipulation and arms dealing in the Middle East, and while global warming continues unabated and the Pacific ocean is seeing the worst El Niño for 65 years, the UK media is obsessed by the fact that the new leader of the Labour party didn’t sing a song asking a god he doesn’t believe in to save a monarchy he doesn’t believe in which isn’t in any danger anyway. If it were possible to harness disapproving tuts from the media, the UK would have a limitless supply of renewable energy.

The truth is that if he had sung the bloody anthem, the same papers would be full of headlines denouncing the republican atheist Corbyn for his God Save the Queen hypocrisy. It doesn’t matter what he does, the papers are going to disapprove. If they’d devoted one hundreth of the vigour which they devote to denouncing Corbyn to a critical examination of Gordie Broon’s vow, the outcome of the independence referendum might have been very different. And that’s precisely why they didn’t, and a perfect illustration of how our media is a force for manipulation by the establishment and the powerful, and not a mirror to society. It is unfit for purpose.

However pointing out that the UK media is unfit for purpose counts as an attack on press freedom, at least according to the same people who think that they have the right to spout any auld pish in the papers but don’t think that the punters have the right to point out that it’s pish.

The UK media is repeating the same mistake with Jeremy Corbyn as they made with the SNP. The media demonised a perfectly middle of the road social democratic party, and actually claimed that it was just like the North Koreans, that it’s an irrational religious cult, that it brainwashes and abuses. Every action by the SNP, no matter how mild mannered or reasonable, provoked a howl of outlandish and outrageous outrage from the Daily Mailesque pug-pissers. And in so doing, the media destroyed any credibility that it once possessed, because if all you hear are hyperbolic denunciations of perfectly reasonable propositions, then you’re not going to listen to reasonable criticism of unreasonable actions. The media did this with the SNP, and now half of Scotland no longer listens to a word the media says. The Daily Telegraph could publish an expose of goat sacrificing by the SNP leadership to propitiate Satan, and half of Scotland would shrug its shoulders and go meh.

We’re now witenessing the exact same process with Jeremy Corbyn, only on steroids. He’s constantly referred to as “a left winger” even by the BBC, but they don’t describe Davie Cameron as a right winger, even though he undoubtedly is. If this keeps up, by this time next year, most of the UK will have ceased to believe a word that the mainstream media publishes – and ensuring that most people disregard them is probably the best public service our newspapers and broadcaster could provide, because that’s how irredeemably piss-poor they are. But saying that makes me an enemy of free speech, because free speech doesn’t apply to ordinary people on the Internet, that’s abuse.

But back to Gordie, who has been easy to miss. Gordie has been invisible for the past year, despite swearing blind on national telly, or more correctly on the news where we are, to a fawning interviewer, that he personally would guarantee the delivery to Scotland of puppies, cute kittens, tax powers, control over knitting patterns, and the TV remote control. He then vanished only to pop up pacing the carpet in doomed attempts to save the Labour party in Scotland and prevent Jeremy Corbyn’s victory during which he refused to answer any questions about the promises he’d made a few months before.

According to a recent opinion poll only a tiny proportion of Scotland’s voters believe that the Vow has been fulfilled. That’s the same proportion that includes Daily Record leader writers, BBC Scotland management, and the last remaining dregs of the Unionist parties in Scotland. It’s also the same proportion which believes that Elvis is alive and well and serving fish suppers in a chip shop in Methil, that the BBC’s Scotland 2015 is a programme worth watching instead of a documentary about the struggles of Norwegian wallpaper hangers, and that we really are Better Together with the Labour party.

The Vow was never meant to be fulfilled. It was always an exercise in cynicism, a vague set of unspecified promises that could be spun as a substantial grant of real powers but which was hollow and meaningless. That’s what it was always meant to be, and in that sense, and only in that sense, it has delivered. It has delivered the bankruptcy of the Scottish media and the Scottish unionist parties. It’s also delivered the agenda into the hands of the Yes campaign, and it’s why one year on from the referendum which the No campaign won, we’re still here and we’re still on the road to independence.

Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

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.

Solidarity is not submission

Jeremy Corbyn’s feet are hardly under the table and the UK media has already started a full scale onslaught on the Labour party. Democratic socialism cannot be allowed in the UK. It’s an insanity, cry those who believed in WMDs that didn’t exist and took the country to war on lies and tall tales. Madness, tut those who claim that austerity creates growth despite all the evidence to the contrary. Ridiculous, decry the voices which only believe in printing money to pay for bankers’ bonuses. Now the proper monstering has begun. The monstering before the leadership vote was announced was just the warm up act, the pet lizard to the full scale dragon. The English left is now discovering what it feels like to be a supporter of Scottish independence. The UK media asylum is roaring.

Corbyn supporters call on supporters of Scottish independence to show solidarity with them and their project. There’s no denying it’s a worthwhile project. There’s no denying it’s worthwhile and that it deserves our solidarity and sympathy. It makes sense for us to work together to counter the Tories and their assault on civil liberties, their destruction of social security and the shredding of the safety net that protects us all. It is good tactics to work together to resist the renewal of the obscenity of Trident. These are goals worth achieving, aims worth working together to achieve.

But what I’m not going to do is to give up on the goal of Scottish independence because some English leftists have suddenly had an epiphany on the road to Islington North. The underlying issues with the British state remain exactly as they were before. Turning the head of the behemoth to the left won’t necessarily change its course however much we hope it might. The momentum of the British state remains just as it has always been, headed straight off an austerity cliff.

The harsh but true reality is that more capable politicians than Jeremy Corbyn, with a more united party and under a more favourable set of political circumstances, have in the past tried to drag the United Kingdom kicking and screaming towards social justice and a more left wing consensus. And they failed. Let’s be honest here, the signs are not good.

Yet if you listen to some on the UK orientated left, all these issues must be ignored and we’ve all got to get behind Jezza. They come to us and demand solidarity with threats and insults. It will be our fault if their project fails, it’s the fault of Scotland that the English left is unable to succeed. So Scotland must abandon its hopes and aspirations and follow meekly behind the politicians in London who are so much bigger than we are, who see further than we poor benighted provincials are able to, whose British nationalism isn’t nationalist at all – and make no mistake it’s a national project because they’re not calling for a world government and the end of borders.

Sorry, but no. We’ve been here before.

Solidarity is not submission. Solidarity is not subordination. Solidarity is not surrender. True solidarity means that we all work together on our own terms in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding. True solidarity would not demand that we drop all the projects and plans that the Scottish left has been working on for decades because all of a sudden someone in the Labour party thinks they’ve found a shortcut on the British Parliamentary Road to Socialism. We’ve all been down that road before and it always ends in tears, so forgive us if we refuse to suspend our disbelief just yet.

Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters might have forgotten, or more likely never noticed, that when push came to shove the Labour party in Scotland stood shoulder to shoulder with the Tories against the working class communities that gave birth to the party, but we haven’t forgotten. So don’t dare preach to us about solidarity. We remember the image of Johann Lamont outside a supermarket grinning at the news that its directors had claimed food prices would rise after independence – because Davie Cameron had leaned on them to say so. During that campaign the Labour party lost all right to stand with working class people and to articulate their demands and desires. It’s the Labour party which has to prove itself, not the Scottish independence movement. So we’ll give the Corbyn supporters solidarity – but it will be on mutually agreeable terms, not because it’s demanded of us as the entitlement of the Labour party.

In Scotland we have built a self-sustaining movement. Its steel has been tempered in the forge of political campaigns, it’s able to withstand the rocks and barbs of the UK media. We are building our own media networks, our groups, our communications. We have years of expertise in organisation and planning from the ground up. And we do all this in the teeth of mainstream media opposition, we do all this and we grow and we thrive.

And that brings us to the bottom line – we don’t need the Corbyn movement. We can continue on the road to achieving our goals without it. We can continue to strive for social democracy in an independent Scotland. And we will win. We don’t need Corbynism, it needs us. We don’t need Jezza’s support, he needs ours. Ours is not the movement which is reeling in an attempt to recover from an unexpected defeat. Ours is not the movement that fears it may never achieve its goals. That would be the Labour party. It’s the Labour party who are the supplicants here, not the Scottish independence movement.

And with that in mind it’s the Corbyn project and its supporters who must approach the Scottish independence campaign with a damn sight more humility than some of them have shown so far. They can learn from us, because we have much to teach them. We can teach them how to organise, how to maintain momentum, how to thrive when the media hate machine is blasting against you.

But the Corbyn project has no right to demand that we surrender anything at all because if it wants us to give up on our goals and aims, to walk away from all that we have achieved over these past few years, then it’s up to them to prove that they are better than the alternatives that we’re creating for ourselves. They won’t do that by insulting us. They won’t do that with an arrogant and lazy assumption of superiority. They won’t do it by refusing to listen to the demands of the Scottish people.

They can start by getting serious about home rule.

Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

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.

The Jezzajism and the earthquake that shakes Scotland loose

Jeremy Corbyn has been overwhelmingly elected as leader of the Labour party. Scotland was already skiting along on the ice road to independence, through the cold Tory winter, but Corbyn’s victory puts it on a jet ski. Independence here we come. You might think, if you were a semi-literate Labour MSP, that the Jezzajism of British politics would restore the fortunes of the Labour party in Scotland, and his victory would be the best thing to happen to that sorry branch office since John McTernan said he was flitting to Australia. Sadly, you’d be as mistaken as a McTernan, and that’s pretty mistaken indeed.

Jeremy Corbyn has given hope to thousands of people on the left in England, and in Scotland we must welcome anything that drags Labour out of its hellish cohabitation with neo-conservatism, privatisation, and the creeping criminalisation of protest. Over the past few decades, Labour has sought power by adopting the rhetoric and politics of the right, so when it has gained power all it has done is disappoint and betray because there was little or nothing to distinguish it from the bogeymen it claimed to be protecting us from. As the party’s rightward drift continued, it turned into those bogeymen that Labour was founded to fight against.

The other week Gordie Broon was citing Keir Hardie, the founder of Labour, as his greatest hero. Keir would not return the sentiment, if he came back from the dead his first act would be to denounce the Labour leadership as fellow travellers with the Tories who have traduced the aims of the party he founded, and then he would expel those who’ve accepted seats in the House of Lords – starting with the chancer who styles himself the Baron of Cumnock.

For the Labour leadership, the party’s socialist past is precisely that, the past. It is useful as a rallying cry, especially during periods in opposition. The leadership has treated it as an incontinent old relative who has been safely consigned to a care home. Jeremy victory brings it back dribbling all over the expensive rugs that have been paid for on expenses. The magnitude of the Blairite defeat isn’t merely a slap in the face for Tony, who invested so much time and effort in pleading for Anyone But Corbyn without even demanding a speaker’s fee, it’s an almighty punch in the gob that sends him reeling ever closer to The Hague. The result the weapon of mass destruction of the vanities of Blair. At least in the Labour party. Blairism remains alive and kicking in the Tory cabinet.

But as Corbyn’s supporters have pointed out, winning the leadership was the easy bit. The really difficult task has only begun. And it’s starting on a party whose foundations have more cracks than a china shop after a visitation by bulls celebrating a Greek wedding. The Parliamentary Party has received the news of Corbyn’s victory with as much welcome as a papal blessing in an Orange lodge. Already significant numbers of the shadow cabinet and Labour’s front bench have refused to serve in the shadow corbynet. They’re the sort of politicians who believe that it’s not them who are wrong, it’s the voters and if they had their way they’d elect a new electorate. But they are a powerful force ranged against any possibility of serious change within Labour. Whether the party can survive is very much in doubt.

The divisions within Labour contrast with a media which is uniformly hostile. The UK press has even less intention of giving Corbyn a fair hearing than they had of the case for Scottish independence. He’s going to be monstered and misrepresented by mealy mouthed mendacious mediocrities, who’ll claim that their hmms are balanced reporting. Because of course the media is fair and only an anti-democratic wannabe dictator would think of criticising the spawn of Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay twins. Jeremy’s voice will be drowned out while his critics are given free rein.

Faced with all this, there is little realistic chance that Labour will remain united and will make substantial inroads into a voting population which will find itself subject to a fear campaign which will make Project Fear seem like run down ghost train at the end of a pier. It’s going to be relentless and unforgiving. The mildest of proposals will be hysterically blown out of proportion and stripped of context. And it won’t stop. The stakes are too high.

The British establishment could survive the loss of Scotland. Losing Scotland would be a massive blow to their prestige, to their entitlement, to their pockets, but the establishment would still reign over all except the rebellious Scots who refused to be crushed. But the British establishment can’t survive the success of the Corbyn project, he threatens the end to their privilege and preference. That’s precisely why they will conspire to ensure that he fails. Renationalising key industries threatens the bank balances of the rich, scrapping Trident threatens the power hungry dreams of the establishment.

Already the Tories are talking in the language of threats to national security. Because in their world national security is the same as the security of the very rich and the very powerful. The security of the poor and the marginalised is of no account. When the government refers to the main opposition party in such terms, when it describes the opposition in apocalypic terms as an enemy of the state, then democracy is no longer safe.

Scotland watches and waits. If it becomes clear that the British state will not allow the Corbyn project to succeed, if he can’t restore his battered party’s fortunes, then we can only conclude that there is nothing in this state for us. And that’s before we look at what he offers Scotland – a man who has already said that there shouldn’t be another independence referendum and that there should be no further devolution of tax powers. The British state is drifting further away from Scotland with every day and every soundbite from hysterical Tory MPs.

When it becomes apparent that the UK is looking at Tory governments for the foreseeable future, Scotland will not walk to independence, it will run. The Jezzajism is the political earthquake that will shake Scotland loose.

Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for a special pre-publication price of £20 for both volumes. Get your order in before September 28th and you will receive copies signed personally by me, and stamped with a special Wee Ginger Dug paw print. 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 the cover price of £10.95 per copy.

There’s no need to send any money just now, 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 when the books are ready to be sent out and give details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. If you wish to pay by cheque or bank transfer, please specify this in your email and I will send details when the books are ready.

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.