British Mortification

Nov29 by weegingerdug

At long last we finally know what the hitherto meaningless phrase Brexit means Brexit means. Thanks to some Tory aide who wandered out into Downing Street clutching some briefing notes which were accidentally, or possibly accidentally on purpose, on show, the world has discovered that what we all thought all along is actually true. Brexit means Brexit means that the British government wants to have its cake and eat it, and that the refusal of Theresa May to reveal her strategy is indeed because she doesn’t want to weaken her position during negotiations. But that’s only because her negotiating position would be seriously weakened if it became known that she doesn’t actually have a strategy at all.

It’s embarrassingly obvious now that not only does the Conservative government not have a strategy for Brexit, but some of its leading figures don’t even have a clear idea of how the European Union works. David Davis thought that the UK would be able to negotiate a trade deal with Germany before the UK leaves the EU, only for it to be pointed out that this would be illegal. Fluffy Mundell struggled to answer when asked whether he knew the difference between the European Single Market and the European Customs Union. He refused to answer the question, because he didn’t know the answer.

Essentially the customs union means that the members agree to have no customs duties on trade between member countries, and a common system of tarrifs and duties on non-members. The single market means harmonising rules and regulations so not only goods but services, people and investment are free to move within the area. The harmonisation of standards allows for the free movement of goods and services such as electrical installations or plumbing. There ye go, you now know more about the working of the EU than the Secretary of State for Scotland. Although that’s not saying much as a stuffed teddy in a shop window knows more about it than he does. Stuffed teddies are subject to single market rules on toy safety. We’re governed by idiots and fools. Those broad shoulders of the UK bear the head of a small and none too bright child with an entitlement complex. Yet we’re supposed to put our faith in balloons who don’t understand how the EU works to negotiate the best deal from the EU for us.

There are four year olds in nursery education plotting how to take over the doll’s house and mount a coup de teddy who have a firmer grasp on strategy than the British government. Historically Britain has never been very good at strategy, relying instead on bullying. This worked out just fine when Britain was an empire and one of the most powerful countries in the world, but now the UK has turned into a nasty and antisocial old bastert who hates all the neighbours and is despised by them in turn yet relies on them to go to the supermarket and maintain the house. Britain might think in its delusion that it can boss everyone else about and get exactly what it wants, but the truth is that the neighbours are planning to pack Britain off to the Bide-A-Wee-Brexit-Home where it’s going to sit in the glorious isolation of its own rank mess and no one will ever come to visit.

And this brings us in turn to one of the most pressing and important reasons for independence. The United Kingdom is, to put it bluntly, an utter embarrassment. In Scotland we talk a lot about the cringe, and how historically we’ve been taught to be ashamed of Scottish language and culture, to diminish and disparage them. Scotland still has a long way to go before it gets over its national cringe, but we’re making progress. Britain on the other hand, is going backwards into an idealised vision of a 1950s that never existed.

The realisation that we have nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about with Scottish culture is increasingly being replaced by the realisation that the United Kingdom is an affront to decency, common sense and good taste. The Scottish Cringe is being replaced by the British Mortification. Scotland builds a grass roots political movement that informs, engages and motivates a people who have learned that unless the people participate then democracy dies. Britain is descending into reactionary senility where poppy parades and royal correspondents substitute for popular engagement in the democratic process, where newspapers print lies because the truth doesn’t suit. Britain is where hatred of foreigners is stirred up by demagogues who call it patriotism. Britain is where Theresa May gets to decide all by herself what the decision to leave the EU means and where those who campaigned for the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament froth in anger when some insist that that parliament must have a say.

How can any sane person with a functioning set of neurones not look on Boris Johnson and Liam Fox and curl up and die inside? These clowns represent us to the world. We might try and distance ourselves from them in Scotland, and disavow that they have anything to do with us, but as long as we remain a part of the UK they are the face that Scotland presents to the planet. The shellshocked moronity of the Boorish one and his backstabbing pal Gove as they stood open mouthed and empty headed the day after the Brexit vote is the perfect illustration of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the British state. Silly little boys playing party political games with our futures.

Meanwhile the Scottish Government is due to reveal Scotland’s options for Brexit. The only administration in the entire UK with a plan for Brexit is the Scottish one. The only government in the UK which has a plan is the one in Edinburgh. The only country in the UK that Europe is taking seriously is Scotland. The only leader from anywhere in the UK who can go and address the Parliament of another EU state and receive a standing ovation is the Scottish First Minister. The days of the Scottish Cringe are over. The days when we needed to be ashamed by Scotland are done. It’s Britain that is embarrassing. Britain is cringe making. Britain is the class clown of Europe. Britain is a state that desperately tries to cling on to the dignity of the past because its got a future as the drunken jaikie in the European street, shouting racist abuse and god save the Queen. Britain is a state that Scotland needs to escape if its to retain any self-respect.

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Westminster occupation therapy

Nov27 by weegingerdug

The Unionist parties have been having a rough week. Admittedly that’s a bit like saying that Nicholas Witchell has a brown stain on his nose, or that Donald Trump has contradicted himself again, so it’s not exactly news. This week it’s become clearer than ever that there’s no positive case for the Union, all there is is the threat that after Scotland has had its legs chopped off by a serially incompetent and malicious Westminster, it’s too poor to stand on its own two feet. This is not, despite the fond imaginings of certain bellignorant proponents of waving the red white and blue fleg who aren’t nationalists at all, oh no, a good argument for remaining a part of the UK.

A few days ago Common Weal published an analysis of the infamous GERS figures and showed that while the UK has left Scotland in a challenging financial situation, Scotland’s not quite the economic basket case that certain people who are pleased to describe themselves as patriots would have us believe. You could hear the howls of wounded outrage from the top of a Trump tower. The supposed economic basketcasery of Scotland is the only argument remaining to the Unionists, and they’re not at all happy when someone demonstrates that the basket is pretty shoddy and poorly made. The point of weaving baskets in occupational therapy is to prove to the patient that they have skills and to increase their self-esteem, the point of weaving baskets for the advocates of Westminster occupation therapy is to tell Scotland that it has no skills and to destroy its self-esteem. Sadly their arguments hold as little water as the baskets they try to weave.

We don’t hear much these days of the other props of the Unionist case. It’s a bit difficult trying to argue that Scotland is a loved and respected equal partner in a family of nations when we’re being ripped out of the EU against our will and Theresa May is threatening to ride roughshod over the Scottish Parliament. It’s even harder trying to maintain that there’s a positive and progressive Britain which an independent Scotland would be turning its back on when Britain’s politics are dominated by right wing politicians who boast about compiling lists of foreigners and who vie with one another to hoover up Ukip votes. And trying to argue that Scotland needs the stability and security of the pound sterling is now as much as a joke as Boris Johnson’s diplomacy. We’d be a whole lot better off using Yapese stone money as a currency. Money which consists of huge big circular chunks of stone with a hole through the middle is at least solid, which is a whole lot more than can be said for the pound sterling.

Since they’re not able to defend any of the above, the Tories in Scotland have instead decided to concentrate their ire on trying to get Scottish transport minister Humza Yousaf sacked for the failings of Scotland’s rail network. Those are failings that are in large part due to problems caused by Network Rail, which under the hauf-airsed system of privatisation introduced by the Tories and kept by Labour remains entirely under the responsibility and control of the UK Department of Transport. The Tories and Labour could if they had wanted devolved control of Network Rail in Scotland to Holyrood, and allowed Scotland to develop its own rail strategy, but they chose not to do so. So instead we’ve got Tories demanding the resignation of a Scottish minister for problems caused by an organisation in the charge of a Conservative minister at Westminster. That would be Chris Grayling, the man who was responsible for introducing English Votes for English Laws to the Commons.

I’ve yet to see Tory MSP Adam Tomkins tweeting an amusing picture of a natural disaster that took the lives of dozens of people and blaming it on the Tory administration that created the problem in the first place. Instead they prefer to blame Holyrood for a cock up caused by Westminster. It’s yet another example of the Unionist modus operandi in Scotland. After all, their entire economic basket case schtick relies on blaming Scotland for the financial incompetence of Westminster, so it’s only reasonable to expect them to go down the same track with trains.

Meanwhile Kezia has a very bold strategy on the constitution. That’s a very bold strategy in the same sense that it’s a very bold strategy to run naked down Sauchiehall Street with a tin foil hat on your head screaming that reptilian aliens have subjected you to an anal probe. Others in Labour want the party leadership in Scotland to distance itself from Kezia’s blind Unionism and support home rule instead. You know, the thing that they said that they were in favour of during the independence referendum only when push came to shove in the aftermath of the independence referendum we discovered that it consisted of powers over road signs, but only as long as they’re not in Gaelic.

While it’s all very welcome that sections of the Labour party want to distance themselves from knee-jerk Unionism, they’ve so far not been able to define exactly what it is that they’re in favour of and how it would work in practice. Even more importantly, they’re unable to tell us how exactly we’re going to get to the mystical magic kingdom of federalism. So we’re being asked to put our faith in an ill-defined slogan with no clear idea of how any of it can come about when there’s a resurgent and triumphalist Tory party that looks set to demolish what’s left of Labour in the rest of the UK should there be a snap General Election. The calls for Labour to distance itself from Kezia’s Unionism all sound suspiciously like Gordie Broon’s vow.

Blame Scotland for problems created by Westminster, and make us vague promises of a better future without committing to a realistic path in order to get there. That’s how you undermine a country’s confidence, that’s how you keep us in thrall to a British establishment that’s only interested in our resources, creaming off our skilled labour, and using us as somewhere convenient to park their nukes. That’s Westminster occupation therapy. But it’s not working any more. Scotland’s rediscovering its self-esteem.

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Malvados cibernaces and a blow for Ruth Davidson

Nov25 by weegingerdug

The problem for the Unionist media when they try to big up some comments from a right wing Spanish politician as a major blow for Nicola Sturgeon is that it only encourages the malvados cibernaces. That’s evil cybernats who speak Spanish, in case you were wondering. Because rather than take the word of publications like the Daily Telegraph or the Express, those of us who speak Spanish, y somos muchos (and there’s a lot of us), are instead highly motivated to go and search out what those self-same Spanish nawbags have been saying to a domestic audience. Invariably what we find is far less cosy for the British Unionist establishment and far less of a blow to Nicola Sturgeon than what its tame press has been telling us.

I blogged earlier today about a report in the Telegraph about some comments made by the Spanish Partido Popular MEP Estebán González Pons and how they were really not very much of a blow for Nicola Sturgeon after all. They were in fact a blow for the hopes of the Wullie Rennies and Kezia Dugdales of this world who are still clinging to the faint hope that Scotland might get a special deal and be able to preserve some of its access to the EU and the single market while simultaneously remaining a part of the increasingly dis-United Kingdom.

Following that blog post a reader sent me a link to an article in the Spanish online news site Dignidad Digital, which is based in Asturias in the north of Spain and is an outlet for the more religiously minded tendencies of the Spanish right wing which campaigns against a woman’s right to control her fertility, gay marriage, and everything else which they think is going to bring about the destruction of civilisation. Which the Spanish right wing defines as their right to keep receiving bribes in brown envelopes without anyone complaining about it. Dignidad Digital has published a rather more detailed report on the views of Estebán González Pons, in which he shows himself to be considerably less friendly to Westminster than the “We’ll always be besties with Britain” views reported by the Telegraph.

Here’s a link to the original Spanish language article. http://www.dignidaddigital.com/noticia/gonzalez-pons-han-decidido-que-se-van-adios-amigos-buena-suerte-y-cuanto-antesbr-51000.html

Speaking in Valencia González Pons said of Britain and Brexit, “They’ve decided that they’re going, bye friends, good luck, and as soon as possible because lengthening this process can only damage all of us.” He went on to assert that the EU won’t support Scotland or Northern Ireland if they want to have a referendum in order to remain a part of the EU, but that comes under the category of “well he would say that wouldn’t he”. The Partido Popular opposed the last independence referendum too, and they opposed it far more energetically and vigorously than they will in future. But the important point to remember is that González Pons doesn’t speak for the EU any more than the SNP MEP Alyn Smith does. González Pons speaks for the Partido Popular in the EU Parliament, and saying that the Partido Popular won’t support a Scottish or Northern Irish referendum is news in the same way that it’s news to say that Ruth Davidson is against independence but is very much in favour of having her photie taken while she’s posing in shellfish processing plant with an invertebrate. But that’s not a nice thing to say about Adam Tomkins.

It was what González Pons went on to say that was a whole lot more interesting. He said, “If Great Britain has problems because England and Scotland think differently, from this moment on those are the problems of a third country.” The reason that this is interesting, and is a blow for Ruth Davidson although you won’t be reading that in the pages of the Scotsman, is because as I pointed out in the previous blog post González Pons was instrumental in organising a pan-European right wing opposition to Scottish independence during the first independence referendum campaign. He met with Ruthie and other Scottish Tories in order to plot how to undermine the case for Scottish independence at a European level. The rotten fruits of this campaign were borne out all throughout the campaign as we witnessed a series of European politicians associated with the Partido Popular’s grouping in the European Parliament making statements against Scottish independence which were plastered all over a grateful British media as independent and objective contributions to the debate, when in fact they were worm filled poisoned apples that had been arranged in advance.

What González Pons just said in Valencia is that this isn’t going to happen the next time. There will be no pan-European alliance of anti-independence parties to campaign for the Union and against independence in Scotland’s indyref2. There will be no assistance to the Tories from the Spanish right. The British Government is now on its own as far as its difficulties with Scotland are concerned.

González Pons went on to say that the British decision had been traumatic and had caused a lot of damage to the EU, but that it had left Britain “broken in two” politically and economically. He said that he wanted the process of Article 50 to proceed as quickly as possible in order to minimise the damage to the EU, and laid the blame for the entire debacle very firmly at the door of English nationalists, saying, “Basically, what we are facing is not a decision of Great Britain to leave the EU, but rather we’re facing a decision taken by English nationalists to drag the United Kingdom out of the EU.” The EU is facing one of the worst crises it’s ever had to deal with, and in the view of the Spanish ruling party it’s entirely the fault of English nationalists, not the Scottish independence movement which had previously been in their sights.

Spain is not about to do the British Government any favours at all, and the next time there’s a Scottish independence referendum, which looks more and more likely with every passing day, Spain will not intervene to prop up the United Kingdom. There will be no assistance from EU politicians organised by the Partido Popular to help out their Tory pals. Ruth and the Tories will be on their own. There was a blow for someone’s referendum hopes coming from Spain this week, it’s just that it was a blow for the Tories.

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When a blow is not a blow

Nov25 by weegingerdug

Here we go again. According to assorted reports in the Unionist media, especially its frothier end (which these days is getting more frothy than a capuccino made with fairy liquid) Scotland’s got no chance of remaining in the European Single Market because Spain says no. This is, apparently, yet another major blow for Nicola Sturgeon and hopes of Scottish independence because absolutely everything that happens anywhere is a blow for Nicola Sturgeon and hopes of Scottish independence. After all, this week because Network Rail’s works on a number of Scottish railway lines overran, it was a blow for the SNP even though Network Rail is entirely owned and controlled by a UK government which refused to devolve responsibility for it. We had assorted Scottish Tory MSPs tweeting hilarious pics of lethal disasters and asking if Humza Yousaf was responsible when it was in fact the Tory transport minister in London whose resignation they should have been demanding.

But don’t believe the hype. What we’re really seeing is yet another jamón fisted intervention from a Spanish right wing administration which makes Ian Paisley seem like a man who was ready to say Yes to anything and a desperate Unionist media that is losing the argument against independence and is clutching at whatever straws it can find. The latest Hispanic intervention is really a blow for the UK and for the chances that the United Kingdom can remain united. Spain’s intervention makes the chances of a second independence referendum more likely. It’s an example of the same pig-headed and unthinking intransigence which is driving the cause for Catalan independence.

If Madrid’s goal is to discourage the Scottish independence movement, they’re doing a spectacularly poor job of it. But then, if you’re familiar with the Partido Popular you’ll realise that shooting themselves in the foot and doing a spectacularly poor job is their Unique Selling Point. The only jobs that the Partido Popular do well are those which involve collecting cash in brown envelopes. And even then the only part that they do efficiently is the picking up the envelope bit. The Partido Popular thinks that it can discourage independence by saying no to everything, without realising that what’s it’s saying no to would actually make a second independence referendum less likely.

Earlier this week a Spanish MEP, Esteban Gonzalez Pons, was reported as saying that the Scottish Government’s attempts to secure a special deal for Scotland are impossible. Esteban has previous when it comes to ramming a stick into the spokes of the wheel of Scottish aspirations. He was the member of the Partido Popular who met with Ruth Davidson and other members of the Conservative party back before the first independence referendum in an attempt to build a pan-European anti-independence alliance amongst the right wing parties represented in the European Parliament. After meeting with Ruthie and some other Tory figures at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham in 2012, he announced he’d be visiting Edinburgh in the December of that year to plot further with the Scottish Tories, and also claimed that he’d be meeting with representatives from the Labour party.

Anything that the Spanish government says about Scotland in Europe is seized on by an increasingly desperate Unionist media. Except of course when what the Spanish government says isn’t helpful to the Unionist cause. That’s what happened a couple of months ago when a far more important and influential Spanish politician, the Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo, said that he thought that within four to five years the UK would return to England’s sixteenth century borders because he thinks it’s highly likely that Scotland will hold a second independence referendum in order to preserve its EU membership. He’s a far more important figure than Esteban Gonzalez Pons, he’s got far more power and influence, yet the Unionist media was silent about his remarks, just as they were silent about his threat a couple of days previously to veto Brexit if the UK intends to include Gibraltar in it.

The most recent comments are directed squarely at any attempt by the Scottish Government to negotiate a deal that allows Scotland to retain access to the Single Market while the rest of the UK leaves. Gonzalez Pons was talking specifically about a Scotland which remains a part of the UK. He also said that although he was speaking in a personal capacity and not as a representative of the Spanish government, his views were those of his party. However his party is a minority administration in Spain, it requires the support of other parties in order to pass any laws. Meanwhile in this latest supposed blow for independence the Spanish MEP said nothing at all about the status of an independent Scotland. It just suited the Telegraph and other Unionist outlets to gloss over that point in order to present the statement as a reverse for Nicola Sturgeon. Gonzalez Pons said absolutely nothing about the EU membership of an independent Scotland, and most categorically did not threaten to veto membership of the EU for a Scotland which had just voted for independence.

The Unionist parties can avoid a second independence referendum. All they have to do is to recognise that Scotland voted to remain a part of the European Union and grant the outcome of that Scottish vote the same respect that they’re always demanding for the outcome of the referendum in 2014 – a referendum which they won in part by promising that a No vote was the only way to ensure the safety and continuation of Scotland’s membership of the EU. Yet the Tories and their right wing allies in Europe are cutting off all the avenues that allow them to escape another independence referendum. They’re the ones ruling it out. They’re the ones insisting that Scotland’s vote only needs to be respected when it suits them. They’re the ones demanding that Scotland only has a part time democracy. They’re the ones who have created the conditions for a second independence referendum, and everything they’ve done since only makes that referendum more likely.

When that referendum does come about, the Scottish Government will be able to say in all honesty that it’s the duplicity, intransigence, and obstinacy of the Unionist parties which have brought Scotland to this point. And they’ll be aided and abetted by a right wing Spanish Government which fondly imagines that it can discourage Scottish independence by ruling out the only way in which the UK Government can have both its Brexit and its Union.

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The embarrassadors

Nov23 by weegingerdug

A couple of days ago Nigel Farage got to meet the Amphibian Prince, the man that America kissed but it turned out he was a poisonous toad. The world got to witness two venomous creepy creatures in a gold plated elevator, which is the kind of thing you don’t otherwise see outside a James Bond movie. It was, by all accounts, by which we mean Nigel’s self-aggrandising account, a very cosy affair as the two schlimebags schmoozed in the ooze.

After the meeting the Toad King called on the UK government to appoint his rubber faced pal as the new British embarrassador to the USA. The Donald thinks that Nigel would be a fantastic diplomat, in exactly the same way that Jeremy Kyle is a world class social worker. That’s because the Toad Across the Pond has as much understanding of how diplomatic appointments work as he does of how to resolve conflicts of interest between his business and his new role as head of state of the USA. Donald thinks that everything’s just fine and dandy and perfectly legal because he’s the president, so he can do what he likes.

He also thinks that he can tell foreign governments who they should appoint as their representatives to his gilded lily pond. He thinks that a foreign ambassador to the USA should be someone who stands up for Donald’s interests and not for the interests of the state they supposedly represent. This does not augur well for the future of his presidency. Or for the future of America. Or for the future of the rest of us. But hey, he’s an anti-elitist billionaire and he gets on great with Nigel because Nigel is an anti-elitist public school Thatcherite stockbroker. It’s just that they interpret anti-elitism as “having extremely poor taste in interior decor.” They’re going to stand up against the elites by pissing on the poor and on migrants.

He’s still a few months away from the official hand over of power, which comes in January meaning that we’ll be able to get the holidays out of the way before having to dig out our nuclear fall out shelters. Even so he’s already managed to backtrack on most of the key promises he made to the rabid foaming mouthed alt right types who elected him, making them an even more foaming mouthed and rabid alt right than they were to begin with. Well I say alt right, what I really mean is nasty adolescent racists who can’t get laid. He’s not going to prosecute Hillary after all, and that wall he’s going to build that he insisted was going to be a wall and not a fence will apparently be a wall with certain fence-like characteristics. Like being a fence. And Donald really doesn’t understand why the extreme right has been energised by his victory, that’s something he’s promised that he’s going to look into. Although if he really wanted to understand why the extreme right has been energised by his victory then he really only needs to look in a mirror. And while Donald admires himself in his gilded mirror, hate crimes soar and fascists exhult in the new dispensation that gives them legitimacy.

Anyway, back to the meeting with the embarrassador in waiting. According to sources, that would be Nigel again, during the meeting the Toad Prince mentioned windfarms a number of times, and asked Nige, when he’s not busy with embarrassadorial duties, to go to Scotland to campaign against them. Donald really doesn’t like wind farms, because they distract people from the amount of flailing about in circles that he does himself and make him look bad because they actually produce something useful.

Donald doesn’t want Scotland to have windfarms, because they spoil the view for the windbag. Scotland is supposed to look like a Victorian painting on a shortbread tin lid. Rustic and genteel and with peasants in pleasant poverty, not the sort of poverty that would bother the Donald, if he had a conscience. Windfarms are a painful reminder that Scotland is a 21st century nation with aspirations to become a better place, and that just won’t do for a man whose world view is stuck in the 1950s. That’s why he gets on so well with Nigel, they’re stuck in a similar timewarp and they both love themselves.

The Toad Prince banging on about windfarms in a meeting with the man he says he wants to be the British ambassador to the USA is another sign that the Donald is incapable of distinguishing between his own business interests and his role as US president. It means that during the second independence referendum we’re likely to see a more active and louder involvement from the US administration on the side of the naw saying windbags. And that makes independence far more likely, because if there’s a single person who is less liked and less respected in Scotland than Nigel Farage it’s Donald Trump. Donald loves Scotland, in the same way that Josef Fritzl loved his family. He wants to keep us locked away, powerless, and in the dark. Then he can sell us to rich golfers as picturesque poverty porn. All his interventions will do will be to annoy, irritate, and enrage. But we can be certain that he’s going to intervene, and he’s going to intervene far more loudly and vehemently than previous US administrations, because for Trump it’s about his own business interests and not about the USA.

Come to Scotland as the Toad Prince’s embarrassador Nigel, come and tell us why we’re better off without windfarms but with you in our public life, come and tell us that we should do what Donald Trump wants. Come to Scotland and tell us how we’re far better off not making our own decisions but instead we should ride on the coat tails of the Tories as they beg for crumbs from the gilded table of Donald Trump. You’ll be the best recruiting tool for the independence cause since Margaret Thatcher.

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Tell me why. I don’t like fundilymundillies.

Nov22 by weegingerdug

And you thought that after the deaths of a whole lot of celebrities who were actually talented but Ed Balls doesn’t get voted off Strictly, Scotland getting ripped out of the EU despite the fact we voted to remain, and the election as US president of a serial groper and narcissist who’s appointing outright fascists to key positions in his administration that 2016 couldn’t get any worse. Well you were wrong, because 2016 has been a great cosmic joke in proving how all reasonable expectations are as well founded as John McTernan’s reputation as a political sage. It can get worse. It’s going to get worse. It has gotten worse.

Tony Blair, the Great Boor of Babylon, is returning to politics, and he’s bringing Jim Murphy BA Politics (Failed) with him. Because in their estimation, if no one else’s with the exception of John McTernan, they’re exactly what Britain requires in its hour of desperate need as the Tories flounder in a planless and plotless Brexit which is so chaotic and inchoate that Liam Fox is actually an influential and powerful member of the cabinet and Boris Johnson counts as one of the more organised and reasonable government figures.

Yes, what Britain really needs right now is a narcissistic war criminal and a man who presided over the utter annihilation of the Labour party in Scotland and then refused to resign. But Jim is a brave and fearless figure who once stood up to an egg and then selflessly and in a spirit of sacrifice deliberately walked into a placard being waved by Sean Clerkin. That’s exactly the kind of gritty and realistic politics we need in order to challenge the howling loons of Brexit. Because when your politics are infantile and childish what you need is a man who bases his strategy in the politics of the primary school yard.

The press reports this week that Tone is looking for an office in central London from which to mount his campaign against populist politics. You might think that in order to campaign effectively against populism that you’d need a figure who was capable of making an appeal to the populace, but Tony and Jim and John think that they’re the ideal people to do it because the best way to challenge populism is with political figures who are deeply unpopular. It’s a bit like thinking that the best way to challenge the chronic diarrhoea of British politics is by infecting it with dysentery.

Tony Blair and his way of doing politics is what brought about the massive loss of public trust in our political system in the first place. He shows not the slightest degree of awareness of his responsibility for traducing the hopes and aspirations of the millions of people who voted for him way back in 1997. He shows no sign that he understands why people distrust him, hate him, and hold him in contempt. And yet he has the unmitigated gall to believe that he’s the best person to rescue Britain from the sink of despair into which he consigned it. Tony doesn’t believe that his reputation has been destroyed, because he’s surrounded himself with people who have trashed their reputations as comprehensively as he has.

In order to get his great new project off the ground, Blair hasn’t just enlisted the worst politician in Scotland, oh no. He’s going to enlist the worst politicians in Britain who haven’t wrapped themselves in the fleg and started to sing the praises of Brexit. Tony is also in talks with Nick Clegg and George Osborne so that you can get angry now to save yourself time later. Still, you can understand the logic, by enlisting Nick and George and Jim, Tony gets eight faces for the price of four. It also means that they can produce lots of policy papers and even though no one will ever want a copy they can still say they’ve sold out. The logo of Tony’s new organisation is going to be a condom, because you can inflate it with hot air, it prevents anything productive, and it protects the pricks within.

The man who destroyed public trust in politics is not the man who is going to be able to restore it, and certainly not while he continues to enrich himself and refuses to accept responsibility for taking the country into an illegal and destructive war which set off a chain of events leading to the murderous chaos that blights the Middle East today. The world is a scarier and more dangerous place thanks to Tony and his tombstone teeth. He’s the parasite of hope and the ghoul of dreams, hovering over the body politic like a vampire, sucking out all that is good and progressive in order to make money for himself. He’s the reason that Britain voted for Brexit, because people were kicking back at a political class that’s out of touch, unaccountable, and self-aggrandising. He’s not the solution to Brexit, Blair and politicians like him are the problem that caused it.

Brexit and Trump happened because people are sick of lying politicians who can’t be held to account, so they lashed out and their anger was coopted by reactionary forces which will be even worse in the longer term. Tony is patient zero in the disease that infects our body politic. All Blair promises is more of the same managerialism, more of the same cant, more of the same disease. Blair has failed before he’s even begun. Tell me why, I don’t like fundilymundillies.

But the struggle against the illness can also be fought in ways which do promise the hope of something better, which do aim to deliver fairness, justice, equality, and which don’t blame the victims of the political establishment for the crimes of that establishment. The Scottish independence movement, Bernie Sanders in the USA, and the Momentum movement in the rest of the UK are all examples of a positive and progressive challenge to the sclerotic self-interest of an entrenched political class. If we want an answer to Brexit, an answer that’s in the interests of the people of Scotland, an answer that promotes social justice and challenges inequality, an answer that allows us to hold our masters to account, Scotland is going to have to provide one for itself. And we’re well on our way to doing just that. We don’t need Tony.

Audio version of this blog article, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-22nd-nov-2016

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

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Britain’s well and truly plucked

Nov21 by weegingerdug

BBC Reporting How Bad The SNP Is had a wee segment on Monday’s programme about how Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t really want independence, she’s aiming for membership of EFTA instead. That’s sort of EU-lite. You still have to agree to free movement of people, pay a shitload of money, and implement all EU directives, it’s just that you don’t get any say in determining EU policy. Anyway, BBC Reporting How Dreadful It Is concluded that, and I paraphrase, that the rest of Europe probably doesn’t want us on account of the fact that we need to ask Theresa May for permission and that permission isn’t likely to be forthcoming.

The last word was given to the ever so sensible Tories. That’s the party that did an enormous jobby in our living room and is now demanding that we give them a plan for making the best of it, possibly by pretending that it’s not really a turd but is actually a centre piece for the coffee table that’s more innovative than jam. We could stick a wee Union fleg in it and that would turn it into a patriotic ornament. And we could blame the smell on the Labour party keeching themselves at the prospect of the local elections in May next year. The Tories want us to embrace the toley. Although if you’ve ever had the misfortune to see Ruth Davidson’s expression during any session of Furst Meenister’s Questions you’d realise that she already has.

That’s what’s so great about the SNP. They’re so amazingly magnificent at being bad that they’re perfectly capable of being bad in two contradictory ways simultaneously. This is a feat previously only achieved by Quantum physicists with the aid of a ruinously expensive particle accelerator. The SNP can achieve the same effect with nothing more than a ruinously expensive privatised train from Waverley to Queen Street that’s broken down near Edinburgh Park. It is of course entirely the fault of Transport Meenister Humza Yousaf that he’s not out with a spanner fixing the train himself. He would be, it’s just that the spanner is fully occupied on social media making misogynistic tweets about the Health Meenister.

Anyway, according to the North British apologists, the SNP both wants an independence referendum and simultaneously doesn’t want one. It’s both planning for a second referendum and planning to avoid one. It’s both doing everying and doing nothing, at the same time and in the same place. Quantum particles have nothing on the SNP, but they’ve both got a great deal more certainty than the UK government’s Brexit policy. According to Quantum theory you can either know where a particle is or you can know its momentum but you can’t know both. With the Tory plan for Brexit we don’t know where it is and we don’t know where it’s going either. According to North Britons, this is A Good Thing, with the capital letters and everything, because it means the plucky Brits will be able to wrongfoot Johnny foreigner with his logic and facts. Sadly for the plucky Brits, all the economic cards are in the hands of Brussels, and the response from the EU to British demands during Brexit negotiations will be “pluck you”.

Labour has now come up with a post-Brexit strategy of its own, and it’s worth quoting in full. This was released by Jeremy Corbyn’s press office this week, which was seemingly labouring under the misapprehension that it made sense. “We now face the task of creating a New Britain from the fourth industrial revolution – powered by the Internet of things and big data to develop cyber physical systems and smart factories.”

It has words in it, and those words are arranged in a sentence that’s grammatical. It’s just that no one can say what the sentence actually means. The Labour press office would have been as well releasing a press statement saying “Whang ptang buzz ksssh dboing dboing. We’re going to build a New Britain with lego bricks and stacked up copies of the New Statesman, powered by a Martin Kettle that you can switch on with your mobile phone.” They could have just saved themselves and us a whole lot of bother by putting out a press release saying “we’re not the Tories.”

At least the Tories’ innovative jam, risible as it is, is a concept that’s understandable. You know where you are with a jar of artesanal hand made quince jelly. Labour has committed spin error 404, a path to electoral victory has not been found. Donald Trump might talk garbage, but at least he talks garbage in sentences that only contradict his previous utterances. The sentences themselves make sense. Labour can’t even manage that much. I always thought a cyber physical system was masturbating while looking at porn pics online. Labour’s given up on the porn pics and gone straight to the wanking. The Labour party has been abstaining on votes against Tory policies, now they’re abstaining on the English language too.

The Tories have no idea what to do about Brexit. Labour has no idea what to do about anything, and even if they did they wouldn’t be able to express it in words that anyone could understand. Where this leaves Britain is well and truly plucked.

Although they’re the ones who get called bad by everyone, it’s perfectly obvious what the strategy of the Scottish government is. Bute House is exploring every option short of a second independence referendum in order to have them ruled out by the intransigence and pig-headedness of the UK government. Every single olive branch that’s proferred to them is doused in the paraquat of pissantery. They’re letting the Tories hang themselves with their own arrogance, and allowing Labour to drown in meaningless word salads and abstentions. By the time a second referendum comes around it will be clear to just about everyone that all other options to rescue Scotland for common sense will have been ruled out by the Unionist parties. And that will leave independence as the only meaningful option left.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-21st-nov-2016

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Three little words

Nov17 by weegingerdug

If you wanted to sum up everything that’s wrong with the United Kingdom but had to do it in a three word phrase, you’d be spoiled for choice. There’s “Scottish democratic deficit”, “Nicholas Witchell reporting”, “Foreign Minister Johnson”, “Ant and Dec”, or “Simon Cowell’s X-Factor” just for starters. But there’s one phrase that perfectly sums up the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Britain like no other, a phrase that encapsulates how Scotland and the rest of the UK aren’t merely different countries post-Brexit, but are increasingly on different planets separated by the vast airless gulf of the mainstream media, and that phrase is “Lord Nigel Farage”. It’s a phrase which on first being heard is immediately followed by another three word phrase, and that other phrase is, “What the fuck?” Said repeatedly while you bang your head futilely off the press that prints the Daily Mail.

The British government has refused to rule out the possibility that Nige might be granted a peerage for his services to British public life. That would be destroying our relationship with the European Union, hastening the end of the United Kingdom (OK, we’ll give him that one), causing – albeit indirectly – the Conservative party to morph into Ukip, and helping to spark off an outbreak of racist and homophobic attacks because the nutjobs of the extreme right now feel vindicated and empowered. Nigel has taken a state that was already characterised by a drift into right wing nastiness, and pushed it over the cliff of intolerance. We’re taking back control as Torukip spins and twists on our descent.

Nigel’s the grinning face of the new British populism, the millionaire public school stockbroker with the pint and the fag who says he’s standing up for the little guy. He represents the England that’s even smaller than the Little one. He’s standing up against the establishment by strengthening the powerful and empowering the strong. He’s protecting the weak by taking an axe to their support networks and shredding their safety nets. He’s blaming the problems of Britain on those who suffer most from them. He’s the village pond darling of the Alt Right, the frog prince of the neofascists.

The Ukip leader is a new way of voicing old prejudice, just like the Alt Right. Alt Right is the expression of ancient hatred in a digital format. Because it’s high tech it can express low sentiment and claim that it’s edgy and subversive while it seeks to bolster the old establishments. The worst possible crime is political correctness, because it’s offensive to offenders that they’re no longer allowed to offend.

Nige is the hero of the most oppressed people of all, those middle class right wing white men who’re upset that their privileges are no longer to remain unquestioned. Because to an oppressor equality feels like oppression. Nigel needs a reward for his services, because Nigel speaks for oppressed right wing middle class white men. Nigel needs a platform so he can speak with authority on BBC Question Time and influence our laws without having to trouble himself with getting rejected at the ballot box. Nigel needs a title other than the one he’s already got, the title of Buffoon in Chief for Little England and Shit Stirrer Extraordinaire. The Ukip ascendency, just like its Trumpist equivalent over the other side of the Atlantic, won’t challenge the establishment, won’t tear down the elite. It’s a creature of that very elite.

The continuing existence of the House of Lords is bad enough. It’s an insult to democracy, an excuse for legitimised patronage in a political system that likes to claim it’s above the sort of favouritism that marks the politics of lesser breeds. In Britain there’s no need for the secretive and undercover patronage that blights other countries, in Britain it’s institutionalised and dressed up in fancy costumes. There’s no hard evidence to suggest that Farage might be in line for a peerage, other than Theresa May’s refusal to answer a direct question on the topic, but the point is that we live in a state where a peerage for the likes of Farage is a distincy possibility. The anti-elitist warrior will be happy to pose in ermine and lord it over us, and even happier to draw expenses on the public account.

Britain was already a dysfunctional state with a dysfunctional political system. Nigel and Ukip made it worse. They took the good aspects of British society, its willingness to tolerate difference, its acceptance of diversity, and they said that the only things that saved Britain were sinking it. If Farage gets a peerage he’ll be Baron Farage of Dailymailshire, the Lord of the Whinge.

There are still those who argue for a better British state. The mirage of federalism floats in the democratic desert, as out of reach and unreal as it ever was. But it’s just a distraction. Any proposal that relies upon the Westminster Parliament to willingly surrender its power, any idea whose success depends upon limiting the absolute privilege of a British Prime Minister, is doomed to failure. They’re distractions from the real goal, last ditch attempts from a discredited system to save itself by offering pretty baubles that it will never allow us to have. There’s only one way to change things.

It’s clearer now that it ever was that Scotland is on a different path from the rest of the UK. We’re not better people than those in other parts of the UK, but we’ve poured our political energies into the dream of an inclusive and open minded Scotland, a tolerant Scotland, a diverse Scotland that engages with the world. And we’ve done that because we’ve sought to differentiate Scotland from a Britain that’s growing increasingly intolerant and insular. Britain can have Nicholas Witchell oozing sycophancy all over the telly whenever some minor royal waves at a pleb. Britain can have its Brexit. It can have its Lord Farage. It can have the Ukipisation of its politics. It can have its growing metropolitisation of the economy. But it can’t have the Union too. We’ve got three little words of our own “Scottish independence now”.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

There won’t be any new blog posts for a few days as I’m off to Skye tomorrow to do a talk for Yes Skye. If you’re in the area come along and meet the dug and me at the Sligachan Hotel in Sligachan, Skye on Saturday 19 November between 11am and 1pm.

Audio version of this blog, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-17th-nov-2016

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Oops they did it again

Nov16 by weegingerdug

Woo hoo! Labour and the Lib Dems have been defending Scotland’s interests again. Does it not make you so proud that we live in a country where political parties are mature and grown up and don’t play childish games with the lives and opportunities of the people they represent in Parliament. Yesterday there was a vote in Holyrood in which all the parties of Scotland were called on to stand up for what the people of Scotland voted for in a referendum just a few months ago, and to protect Scotland’s membership of the single market. After all, we know how important it is that the results of referendums are respected, don’t we? That’s what the Unionist parties keep reminding us.

However it appears that it’s only the results of the 2014 independence referendum that needs to be respected. Any subsequent referendums only need to be respected insofar as they too respect the results of the 2014 referendum, because the 2014 referendum was the ground zero of electoral respect. Who knew? What we now know is that according to our Unionist parties every subsequent vote in Scotland for the rest of history, irrespective of that vote’s outcome, must be interpreted according to how it “respects” the result in September 2014.

So Scotland’s decision in June this year that we want to remain a part of the European Union, a decision made by a considerably larger margin than Scotland’s decision to remain a part of the UK, only deserves conditional respect. And that respect is conditional on the absolute respect demanded by the Unionists for the referendum in 2014. I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall that the question on the ballot in 2014 was “Should Scotland become an independent country and if not will this decision be thrown back in our faces every time we vote differently from the rest of the UK that we’re being told that we’re an equal partner in? Because you’re not really an equal partner, we’re only telling you that just now in order to get you to vote no.”

Yesterday the Scottish parliament voted on a motion asking the UK government for clarity on Brexit, and demanding that Scotland’s membership of the European single market is protected. In other words pretty much what all the parties with representation in Holyrood, with the exception of the Tories, have been arguing for ever since the day after the EU referendum when Boris Johnson stood before the massed ranks of the press like a guilty schoolboy who had nipped behind the bike sheds for a fag and then accidentally burned down the school.

But of course it was an SNP motion. And because it was an SNP motion none of the Unionist parties could bring themselves to support it. Yes that’s right, the party that proudly describes itself as the most pro-European party in Britain, the party which claims to be passionate about its defence of British membership of the EU, voted with the Tories against ensuring that Scotland’s membership of the EU single market is protected. That’s a betrayal way up there with their spectacular U-turn on student fees, and it completes the Lib Dems’ transformation into the Tory party which is distinguished from the rest of the Tory party by the fact that they don’t like Iain Duncan Smith, only not enough so that they’re going to do anything about it.

The Lib Dems, who spent their recent party conference telling anyone who would listen that they were winning, voted with the Tories. No one who has being paying the slightest attention to Scottish politics over the past few years could possibly imagine that the Lib Dems are winning anything. But then no one who was paying the slightest attention to Scottish politics over the past few years paid the slightest attention to the Scottish Lib Dem’s recent conference. It’s a very strange definition of winning, but what Wullie Rennie actually meant by the word winning was that he managed to get a constituency seat in Fife on the back of Tory tactical voting and didn’t have to go back to driving the number 17 bus to Kelty.

In order to keep on winning, in the Wullie Rennie definition of the term where winning means sooking up to Tories in order to gain their tactical votes and save Wullie’s skin, the Lib Dems voted along with the Tories against defending Scotland’s place in the EU single market. Wullie knows that he’s winning because the Lib Dems are subject to the howls of cybernats on social media. Who knew that being the object of derisive laughter was a recipe for success. The Lib Dems are going to be hearing a whole lot more of it. Wullie will be happy that he’s winning.

Labour didn’t oppose the motion, instead they adopted their usual tactic of standing up for Scotland’s rights, for the defence of the poor and vulnerable, and for social democratic politics, by bravely running away and abstaining. Fearlessly and unflinchingly, in the face of a vote against something that threatens to strip working people of rights and opportunities you can count on the Labour party to heroically sit on its hands and look the other way. It’s very important for the Labour party to protect its hands, because it needs them so that they can wring them uselessly a few months later when they complain about how terrible it is what the Tories are doing. There are open toed wellingtons which have more sense and purpose than the Labour party.

Ian Murray, the honourable member for Red Morningside, illustrated Labour’s uselessness yesterday when he complained about the ill effects of the Tory benefit policies which are throwing thousands of families into penury. Those would be those same policies that Labour didn’t vote against in the House of Commons, they sat on their hands and abstained.

When she became leader of the Scottish branch office, Kezia Dugdale stated that one of the problems that Labour faced is that people in Scotland no longer know what the party stands for, and are no longer listening to it. Nothing much has changed there. We still don’t know what the party stands for because they say one thing and then won’t vote for it when it comes to the crunch. And we’re not listening to them because if when it comes to a vote on protecting the interests of Scotland, or the interests of those dependent on social security, or the interests of the low paid, all Labour does is to abstain, then it’s clear that the party has no opinions worth listening to. They had a chance to change that yesterday, but instead, oops they did it again.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-16th-nov-2016

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Theresa May’s Brexit strategy revealed – the Easter Island approach

Nov15 by weegingerdug

We’re now over four months into the post-Brexit trauma, and Theresa May’s Brexit plans are slowly becoming clear. There’s going to be more opportunities to win than in a box load of scratch cards that you got given for free. Everyone is going to win the lottery of life because being Great is what being British means. We’ve got the baking programmes to prove it, and that’s why there’s going to be cake and Britain’s going to eat it. Britain’s going to divorce the EU but will be keeping the house, the car, and all the assets, but the EU gets to keep the kids, at least those ones that haven’t had their teeth examined by Amber Rudd. And everyone is going to be happy and patriotic, except for gay Olympic fencing judges.

It’s going to be grand, because Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage both say so, and just like the Donald Trump whom they’re competing to sook up to they’d never lie. Let’s get on with cutting all our ties to Europe, they both urge. They’re a bit like the chieftains on Easter Island who called on their tribespeople to cut down the last trees on the island in order to move a big and pointless stone statue, provoking a total collapse of the island’s civilisation and a descent into human sacrifice and a cannibalistic civil war. The difference of course is that the Easter Islanders at least ended up with some big statues to show for their sacrifices, whereas the only beings who will express any interest in a statue of Nigel Farage will be the doos which crap on it. And anyway no one is proposing to throw Nigel into a volcano as a sacrifice to propitiate Donald Trump, which is a bit disappointing really.

I must confess I did get my hopes up slightly when I saw that photie of Nige and the Donald grinning in front of a pair of golden doors which looked like something from an Indiana Jones movie, and was sort of hoping that they’d open the doors and immediately be devoured by giant spiders, and or fall into a tank of ravenous piranhas. But it was not to be. Doors like that are more usually associated with Egyptian pyramids and contain mummies whose brains and hearts have been removed and are stored in jars. Which isn’t a bad description of Nigel and Donald, come to think of it.

Anyway, this week we’ve finally achieved a modicum of clarity on the UK’s Brexit plans, not due to anything that the government has deigned to tell us, but because of a leaked memo. The leaked cabinet memo has highlighted just how well prepared and organised the UK government is for Brexit, if that is by well prepared and organised you mean running around screaming in a panic with your underwear on your head while blaming everyone else for the disaster that’s about to befall us. The reason that Theresa May doesn’t want to reveal her hand is because there’s no plan. There’s no strategy. There’s no definition of priorities.

Over four months on, there’s still no strategy or common plan from the various parts of the British government. They’re still far more concerned with fighting one another than they are with developing a strategy that they can all agree on. Quite possibly because no one wants to be the first to admit that they can agree with Liam Fox on anything. According to the memo, the government may need 30,000 extra civil servants in order to deal with planning and preparation for Brexit. Instead the government has decided to embark upon the tried and tested British method of muddling through then insisting that the resultant cock up was in fact a bold and innovative new jam-like strategy which they had been aiming for all along. And anyway, the mess is all the fault of migrants / Brussels bureaucrats / Jeremy Corbyn /openly gay Olympic fencing judges, delete as appropriate.

The memo has revealed that Theresa May is as much of a control freak as Gordie Broon was, and just like Gordie now that she’s managed to get to the top of the greasy pole of politics she doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what she wants to do next. She’s presiding over a cabinet full of squabbling egos, whose ability is in inverse proportion to their sense of importance. Boris hates David Davis, David Davis hates Liam Fox, and everyone hates Philip Hammond.

Liam has adopted the gunboat approach to diplomacy in his contacts with our EU neighbours, forgetting that we don’t actually have any gunboats. A few days ago he pissed off other EU member states by loftily informing them that they’d have no choice but to allow a post-Brexit UK full access to the single market irrespective of whether Britain rejects free movement or deports Polish people. This is because, said the bold Liam, the EU has negotiated trade treaties with non-EU states who signed up to them on the basis that they’d have access to all the existing member states, and if Britain was outside the single market they’d no longer have access to the UK’s market, so they could sue the EU. It was a cunning wheeze of the sort that has seen self-righteous British colonialists bundled up by the irked natives and thrown into the nearest volacano. Then it was gently pointed out to Liam that since it’s the UK which is voluntarily leaving the EU, it’s the UK which is choosing to withdraw from the single market, and if South Korea is going to sue anyone it’s going to be suing the UK. So that was Liam burned.

Meanwhile in Scotland there are still voices calling plaintively for some sort of deal that will allow Scotland to retain most of the benefits of EU membership even though the rest of the UK has cut down the last tree and set off a cannibal holocaust even without throwing any Tory cabinet ministers into a volcano. Unfortunately for these people, that would be Wullie Rennie and much of the Labour party in Scotland, the only certainty from the UK government about anything related to Brexit is that Scotland isn’t going to get any special treatment. The City of London can get special treatment, Japanese car manufacturers can get special treatment. Parts of the UK which voted heavily to leave will be treated with kid gloves to protect them from the consequences of their Brexit vote, but Scotland will get what it’s given and will be expected to shut up. We’ll experience the full force of the UK’s stupidly selfish incompetence. There’s only one way Scotland can avoid being the sacrificial victims who get thrown into the volcano of Brexit.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-15th-nov-2016

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com for details of alternative methods of donation.

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	Dr Jim on The foreign parliament
	ArtyHetty on The foreign parliament
	Stephen McKenzie on The foreign parliament
	Eilidh on The foreign parliament
	Michael on The foreign parliament

Wee Ginger Dug

Biting the hand of Project Fear

Monthly Archives: November 2016

British Mortification

Westminster occupation therapy

Malvados cibernaces and a blow for Ruth Davidson

When a blow is not a blow

The embarrassadors

Tell me why. I don’t like fundilymundillies.

Britain’s well and truly plucked

Three little words

Oops they did it again

Theresa May’s Brexit strategy revealed – the Easter Island approach