There was a fascinating development in gender politics this week. We discovered that it’s still mansplaining when a man contradicts a woman even when the woman in question happens to be factually incorrect. This will come as a huge relief to the descendants of Emily Wilding Davidson who now know that their famous suffragette ancestor did not throw herself under King Edward VII’s horse during the Epson Derby in vain. No, she succeeded in establishing the principle that Kay Burley is always right about everything, even when she’s wrong. And most especially, Kay Burley is always right when she’s metrosplaining to a recalcitrant Scottish person, and she’s especially always right when she’s wagging her finger at the time.
The incident in question occurred a couple of days ago when Sky News decided to take a wee break from the constant parade of swivel eyed Brexists, vox pops from Leave voting areas, and apologists for the Tory party in order to do a box ticking exercise and actually interview the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford for a change. However Ian had the temerity to contradict Kay when she insisted that an independent Scotland would be forced to join the Euro. Kay was simply repeating the greatest hits of 2014 and was surprised and offended that someone who has been immersed in the arguments about Scottish independence might actually know more than she did. So she immediately reached for the nearest rhetorical weapon to hand, which was to claim victimhood status.
That’s another of Better Together’s greatest hits from 2014 by the way. Help, help, the British state and its creatures are being bullied by a granny from Dunfermline with an internet connection and an ink jet printer she got from her daughter. As British rule loosens, we’re going to be hearing a lot more about how it’s the opponents of independence with all their newspapers, TV stations, 24 hour news channels, government departments, business funded think tanks, and suspiciously well appointed grassroots organisations that spring out of nowhere who are the real victims here. They’re being silenced. Like a foghorn is being silenced when it’s amplified.
Since it was a man who contradicted Kay, she took refuge in the sexist card in order to become the victim. If it had been a woman who contradicted her she’d just have found some other spurious reason to make out that she was being oppressed by the nasty SNP. That’s how British nationalism works.
I’m not going to go over, yet again, the argument that Scotland will not be forced into adopting the euro. This is one of those myths so beloved of opponents of independence that they are constitutionally incapable of giving it up no matter how often it has been bludgeoned over the head, had its blood drained off and made into black pudding, then the battered remains are buried in landfill which is then converted into a retirement park for pensioned off British imperialists. There are those who apparently believe that, uniquely amongst the nations of the world, Scotland is incapable of having any sort of currrency at all.
It suffices to point you in the direction of Wings Over Scotland’s most recent demolition of the anti-independence fairy story. https://wingsoverscotland.com/when-fact-checks-fail/ and to point out that joining the euro isn’t like conscription. It’s not like you wake up one morning and discover that you’re in the army now and a sadistic sergeant major is yelling at you to get your hair cut, go on a cross country run in the rain, and ensure that your government borrowing rates are within the guidelines of the Eurozone. Joining the euro is a process, not an event. It’s a process which all EU member states without a specific opt-out are obliged to sign up to, but that process consists of many discrete steps, each of which is up to the discretion of the member state to take as and when it suits them. Crucially, there is no mechanism within the EU for compelling member states to take these steps according to a timetable imposed upon them by the EU.
It’s a bit like saying that if you purchase a particular health product which comes with free gym membership then you’ll be forced to spend all your evenings on a treadmill feeling inadequate next to a preening muscle guy who’s overdone the steroids. Sure, you have signed up to gym membership, but that doesn’t mean you’re forced to use it. It’s the same with the euro.
What was really interesting about the interview however, was that just as the British state and its political institutions are imploding, Sky News thought that the most important question to put to an SNP representative wasn’t even a question, it was the incorrect statement that an independent Scotland would be forced to join the Euro and what are you going to do about that eh eh. Eh! Because all things European are bad these days. It’s a wee taster of the flavour of the campaign that lies ahead. Britain might be rubbish, but the great argument of British nationalism is that an independent Scotland would be rubbisher. And if you contradict them then you’re a nasty vile person who’s victimising them. If that’s the best that they’ve got, the UK is already over.
Meanwhile back in Westminster, the British state continues its decline into paralysis, confusion, and irrelevance. The EU has now taken control of the Brexit time table, since EU leaders have been as unimpressed by Theresa May’s lecturing and hectoring as everyone else. She was repeatedly asked by skeptical EU leaders what she planned to do if her deal didn’t get through. There was no answer. She has no answer. The EU knows as well as the rest of us that she has lost control of her party, lost control of her cabinet, and her petulant speech on Wednesday night blaming everyone else for the mess only served to alienate those MPs whose support she needs. It was a spectacular display of just how unsuited she is to leadership and how much out of her depth she is. Theresa May remains, nominally, the leader of the United Kingdom. Although this raises a question that philosophers in the future will wrestle over, can a bin fire can have a leader?
So next week we face yet more meaningful votes that will probably turn out not to be that meaningful after all. On Friday the DUP came out strongly against supporting Theresa May’s deal the next time she drags it before the Commons like a cat with a dead mouse that it’s exceptionally proud of. That means that the Rees Mogg fan boys and girls of the European Research Group will be most unlikely to support it either. Theresa May’s deal is dead, and so is the United Kingdom.
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Wee Ginger Dug 
Amen to that. Your last sentence
Kay Burley, of course, has form:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Burley
(Apologies to genuine indy supporters with the same forename, but what is it about the first name Kay and Scottish independence?)
I’ve just signed the Revoke A50 petition.
It now stands at 3,420,787.
100,000 forces a debate?
I’ll leave it to you,Paul. to ‘mansplain’ what this means to the fridge magnet lady.
Eventually managed to sign the Revoke A50 petition last night, Jack. It was several hours before their email appeared, due to the vast number attempting to sign. Looks like a popular move.
It seems to me that Brexit is causing a real hedeache in the UK and Europe, at the same time it was the British people who voted in favor, so the politicians sail that wave. You brought up good points on the culture of victimisation by certain gender and countries. I thought it was a well thought out piece.
Think the Kay woman is a disgrace to womanhood. Ian is a courteous, chivalrous man. It she who is out of her depth.
And this from the biased broadcasting on a slightly different theme, but not so different really.
I made the mistake of looking at the BBC ‘Scottish Nine’ last night for a very short time…so, the interviewing man directed questions to the Labour man, who answered reasonably alertly. Then it came to very same interviewing man, who became positively aggressive with the SNP woman, Joan, but not about the original Brexit farce, he turned it to suit his agenda on the ‘Revoke Article 50 Petition’ and tried to ram venom down her throat, that this would make the SNP’s stance on independence a joke…Joan answered competently, time and again, but still the aggressive man interviewer digressed with his accusatory aggression.
The woman interviewer, on the other hand, had to do a double take at the man interviewer with almost astonishment. Even the Labour man, had to draw breath in surprise at the vitriolic attack.
Anyone else have a look at it? I thought I would test the bias, just to see if there would be a flicker of neutrality…nope.
I complained to the biased Scottish channel. Needless to say, I have not heard one utterance of disgust from the powers to be with the tenor of exchange.
It is she…
Don’t hold your breath – obviously -, deelsdugs, but you could try writing to the BBC and/or Ofcom. Just an idea. We Welshies also know what it’s like to be deliberately ‘misunderstood’ by those whose perspectives don’t extend further than the Great Orbital which circulates the Great Wen …
Do not worry. Nobody watches the new BBC Shortbread channel. The word is that audience numbers have collapsed. You made it into double digits just by tuning in!
But what spin the Beeb will put on it when it finally comes clean about its audience numbers?
And here’s more from “That Woman”.
Couldn’t agree more.
Seems the metrosplainers and punditariat are warming up their very bestest sneer routines for all things Jocklandish. Y’know. That place north of the Watford gap where they wear skirts and eat deep fried confections.
They are as wearisome as they are entirely predictable. They’ll roll out every rinse and repeat stereotype and trope they can think of, mainly because that’s ALL they can think of. What they tend to overlook in their rush to seem oh so superior to everyone else, is the simple and inescapable fact that the UK is swirling a political, economic and societal lavvy with precisely zero help from the Scottish government.
It’s happened on their watch and under their preferred system of government. Spooky, but true.
They might want to think about that.
Well Kay is obviously correct because as one protester shouted at Ian Blackford recently “you’re a traitor to England”. So Ian’s a wrong one… (He should invoke the Wallace defence – how can I be a traitor to a country that is not mine).
Or alternatively England is full of fools whose sense of entitlement and superiority is so strong that they can talk mince with conviction and still believe they are right.
The ‘poor’ woman is a small-minded patsy. She certainly isn’t in control. Brexit was bought by the far-right with dark money from overseas, and is only part of a larger jigsaw.
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/04/2018/world-state-disintegration-interview-heikki-patomaki
‘poor’ woman – Prime-minister
As said many times, British nationalists can’t admit they are nationalists. Britnats in Scotland are determined to make sure Scotland is smothered by the disaster that is narrow-mined brutishness. Traitor to the so-called united kingdom?! How can you betray something you’ve never believed in?!
I would just like to point out that some of us quite like the idea of cross country runs in the rain. I LOVE running in the rain, even the Scottish variety. My all time fastest time for my 6.6mile course was done into the teeth of an Easterly (this was Dundee note) blasting freezing rain in my face all long the beachfront. It was glorious.
But then I grew up in Auckland, NZ which is hot and humid and the only thing which provided relief was the sudden and torrential rainstorms so I learned to love the rain.
As for Brexit, it is long past time for indyref2 to be called so we can get out and campaign properly. I note the National has in its latest attempt to manage our expectations on that point got it down to ‘days’ before we are told. My breath is far from bated.
I think that while May’s vacuous witterings are in a class of their own our FM has been telling us ‘weeks’ since at least October and probably for much longer.
I note you and Calum talked it over but of course it is all just speculation. I have almost lost the will to live. We have long since ceased to live in Interesting Times, now we are in the ‘Please when will it all end times’. The End Times would at least put it all in perspective.
Our own FM seems far too concerned with saving the union from an English Brixit than announcing plans for independence. I don’t seem to be the only one who is getting a bit pissed off at this either.