Westminster: Where it’s a bigger sin to call out a liar for lying than it is to lie

At long last the Gray report into the parties held at Downing Street has been published, or at least parts of it. There are three blank pages in the 12 page pdf which was released on Monday afternoon, and the report itself is really only five and a half pages long, the rest of the document is made up of factual and non-contentious annexes. Sue Gray also notes that her report does not provide a “meaningful” account of the goings on at Downing Street because of the omissions requested by the Met Police.

Nevertheless what has been published is a damning indictment of the culture of entitlement which pervades Johnson’s Downing Street, and if we were dealing with a functioning democracy and politicians who accepted responsibility for their failings, this report would immediately be followed by resignations. But of course we are really dealing with the shameless liar that is Boris Johnson and an equally corrupt and mendacious Conservative party.

The report does not criticise Johnson personally, but finds failures of leadership in No 10 and the Cabinet Office. Gray writes : “There were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times.” And that is Johnson’s get out clause right there. He will blame the civil servants in the Cabinet Office and sack a few of them so that Conservative MPs can pretend to themselves that action has been taken and the problem has been dealt with. We saw some toady Tory MPs congratulating Johnson for promising to make changes to the work culture that he himself created. Others insisted that Parliament had spent too much time debating this and demanded that the government get back to “more important” issues, as though the fact that the Prime Minister of the UK is a corrupt liar was not important.

One of the events mentioned in the report was a party held in the Downing Street flat on 13 November 2020 to celebrate Dominic Cummings leaving. On a personal level, that one hits hard. On 13 November 2020 I was in hospital, still unable to walk after the stroke I had had a few weeks previously, and had been unable to have any visitors at all, yet while I was lying alone and frightened in a hospital bed, deprived of an embrace or a supportive hug from my nearest and dearest, and with my sole contact with my husband reduced to waving to him from a first floor window as he crossed the car park below, Johnson and his cronies were having a piss up in Downing Street.

As he spoke to the Commons about the report, Johnson said that he understands the anger people feel. No. He doesn’t. If he had even the vaguest inkling of the anger people feel he’d resign immediately. Instead he sat on his bench in the Commons with a smug grin on his face, believing that he’d got away with it.

Theresa May, who herself was no slouch when it came to mendacity during her time as Prime Minister told Johnson: “Either he had not read the rules, or understood the rules, or thought they didn’t apply to him… which was it?”

Ian Blackford accused Johnson of lying and misleading the house, we all know that Johnson did lie and mislead the House, yet it was Ian Blackford who was reprimanded by the Speaker and forced to leave the Chamber. That right there tells you all you need to know about what is wrong with Westminster. In Westminster it’s a greater sin to call a liar out for lying than it is for the liar to tell lies. Westminster is a ridiculous excuse for a parliament which is incapable of holding power to account. In the farce that is Westminster, Ian Blackford is told to leave for telling the truth, while Johnson gets to stay for lying. The fact that MPs can’t call a lie a lie in Parliament makes a mockery of the whole principle of accountability.

Johnson is now insisting that we must all wait for the police to complete their investigation and then he will decide what should be published. He repeatedly refused to answer a simple question about whether he was present at the party on 13 November, merely repeating that the police need to complete their investigation. You don’t need a police investigation to tell you whether or not you were at a party, unless you were so rat-arsed you can’t remember what happened that day, and that by itself is enough to tell you that you were at a party. We can infer from Johnson’s refusal to answer that he was indeed present and that there was indeed a party, which would prove that he had in fact lied to Parliament when he denied that any party took place.

The Tories are desperate to move on from this and judging by today’s performance it is clear both that Johnson will not go quietly and that it’s unlikely that back bench Tories will find enough of a collective spine to unseat him. On Sunday, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Creeping Jesuses said that Johnson has already apologised for any breach of the rules and that we all need to find some “Christian forgiveness” as though we are the ones at fault for wanting Johnson to be held to account and not Johnson for lying, cheating, and repeatedly breaking the rules. I’m no Christian but I always thought that Christian forgiveness depends upon genuine contrition, remorse, a willingness to make amends and a determination to change and not repeat the same offence. We have seen no evidence of any of that from Boris Johnson.

What will happen next is that we will have to wait weeks or months for the Met to conclude its investigation, the police will conclude that some civil servants breached the rules and should receive spot fines, and Johnson will announce that the police investigation has cleared him so there is no need to publish the Gray report in full. Meanwhile the spineless Conservatives will not remove him from office. The greased pig that is Johnson will get away to smile smugly another day on the front bench in the Commons and another bit of what is left of public trust in the institutions of the British state will wither and die.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

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The Tories’ loose cannon has turned on them

A week after we were supposed to see the Sue Gray report in full, a report which was going to tell us what we already know, namely that Boris Johnson is a lying entitled rule-breaking hypocrite, we are still waiting, and the lying entitled hypocrite is still firmly ensconced in Downing Street. Thanks to a jaw-dropping intervention from that same Metropolitan police which has refused to investigate well-grounded allegations that the Conservatives have been illegally soliciting donations in return for peerages, it now seems that we will only be seeing a heavily redacted report, which means that we will get a report into allegations of lock down busting parties in Downing Street which is stripped of any references to lock down busting parties in Downing Street.

No wonder Johnson and his allies are starting to believe that the mendacious abandoned mattress will survive this mess, thanks to a Metropolitan police force which has succeeded only in giving the impression that it is as institutionally corrupt as the Conservative party. The inexplicable decision of the Met to decide at the very last minute, just as the Gray report was about to be published means that it could now be weeks or even months before the full report is published, by which time much of the political and media heat will have gone out of the affair, which is very much to the advantage of Johnson and his cronies.

I’m so old I can remember when your average Tories were just basically reasonable people with some really crap ideas about economics and the role of trade unions, and not an out and out festering mass of chaotic and corrupt anti-democratic xenophobic flag shagging authoritarian hypocrites who wouldn’t accept the truth if it slapped them in the face with a birthday cake. It is now clear that the corruption, chaos, and rank incompetence which characterises the Johnson government has also infected every other institution of the British state, rot does indeed set in from the head down.

The Tories chose Johnson in part because he’s a loose cannon, unlike the buttoned up and boring carefully managed and curated charisma free voids which most politicians have become these days – Rishi Sunak springs to mind, a man who gives off the vibe of someone who thinks he’s living it large and dangerously if he puts milk in his hot chocolate that’s twelve hours past its best by date. In their arrogance, they just forgot that the point about a loose cannon is that eventually it will go off in your direction and take you out too. Johnson has not yet taken the Tories out of power, but what he certainly has done is to destroy what is left of public confidence in the institutions of the British state.

Back in 2014, in what seems like a different era, the supposed world class quality of British institutions and the robustness of British democracy were major arguments of the Better Together campaign in their attempts to fend off rising support for Scottish independence. We were told that Scotland depended upon the Westminster Parliament in order to guarantee democracy itself. Without Westminster, apologists for British nationalism – which they insisted was not nationalist at all- warned that Scotland would soon descend into an authoritarian dystopia of nationalist intolerance.

Yet as we see yet more flag shagging and royal events being planned by a corrupt Conservative Government which breaks the law with impunity and which introduces yet more measures to demonise migrants, to restrict the right of protest, and to neuter any body capable of holding it to account, it’s clear that the authoritarian dystopia of nationalist intolerance is already here, and it’s demanding union flags on car licence plates and God Save the Queen every night on the TV.

Johnson’s survival will also destroy the Conservative party in Scotland, whose leader lightweight Douglas Ross is in the impossible position of being the leader of the Scottish arm of an aggressively Anglo-British nationalist party who has declared the British Prime Minister and UK leader of the Conservatives to be unfit for office. To make matters worse for Ross, he backed Johnson in the Conservative leadership contest and owes his own job as Scottish Tory leader to an undemocratic coup orchestrated by Downing Street and Ruth Davidson.

During the Conservative leadership contest in July 2019 Ross announce that he was supporting Johnson because, “It’s Boris Johnson who can deliver most for the four nations of the United Kingdom,” and added that one reason he was supporting Johnson was because, “Across the United Kingdom people want to see politicians keep their promises.” Well that’s aged well hasn’t it Douglas?

No wonder the Scottish Tories are doing their utmost to keep a low profile just now. Not even the intellectual vacuum that is their contingent of MSPs are willing to put their heads above the parapet, some of them may be the kind of person who is so clueless they probably think that gonorrhoea is the name of a diarrhoea medication, and all their thoughts are in comic sans, but even they know that they cannot defend the indefensible offence against decency that is Boris Johnson.

Against this backdrop it is welcome news that the Scottish Government has restarted planning for the independence referendum that it intends to hold towards the end of next year in line with the commitment made during the Holyrood election of May 2021, a campaign which was dominated by the issue of a second referendum and which returned the largest pro independence majority in the history of the modern Scottish Parliament despite a concerted anti-independence tactical voting campaign funded by Conservative dark money.

Johnson has also managed to destroy the argument that the Conservatives have been deploying constantly against another referendum – even though the people gave their answer in May 2021 – and the anti- referendum Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems lost the argument.

The Conservatives can hardly claim that the Scottish Government ought to be concentrating on dealing with the pandemic and planning the recovery from it when they themselves have been concentrating on having parties, on deciding whose turn it is to take the Downing Street suitcase to the off-licence, and then on spinning lies about their selfish self-indulgence in the hope of not being caught.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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A very British non-event

The long awaited Sue Gray report investigating the multiple allegations that Boris Johnson attended numerous parties in Downing Street during lock down looks like it’s going to be even longer awaited. Although earlier this week it was reported that the report was imminent, as of Thursday there is still no sign of it and there are signals from government sources that its findings may not be made public until next week. There are also signs that the government may not publish the full report, but only a summary of its findings, giving Johnson and his supporters the opportunity to cherry pick the findings that suit their agenda and to assist Johnson in wriggling off the hook. The longer this process goes on, the more opportunities Johnson’s party machine has in order to browbeat, intimidate, blackmail, and bribe Conservative MPs into supporting him and as public attention starts to move elsewhere, the steam will begin to come out of the Conservative revolt and the better Johnson’s chances become of surviving a vote of confidence.

It is notable that despite the gum bumping of some of his Conservative critics, and claims that they already have “almost” the 54 signatures needed in order to trigger a vote of no- confidence, no overt move has been made against Johnson yet. That can only mean that Johnson’s opponents realise that not only do they not have enough signatures yet in order to start a formal vote against Johnson, there is still no one in the talentless and charisma free void that is the modern Conservative party who comes close to having sufficient support both amongst MPs and amongst the party membership to be able to replace him. For the most part the Tories are doing a Mundell and keeping a low profile until they see what way the land lies. Although if Scottish Tory MPs had any lower of a profile they’d be a pit at the entrance gate to Hades, which not coincidentally is where Andrew Bowie has his constituency office.

It looks like we are headed for that very typically British non-event, similar to the long running investigation into Tony Blair’s blatantly illegal war-mongering, fabrication of false evidence, and lies to Parliament which led to UK involvement in the invasion of Iraq and the disastrous and lethal consequences which ensued. Despite considerable hype and expectation, the report arrived with a “meh”, and Blair was able to escape any meaningful consequences. From the point of view of the British establishment the Iraq report achieved exactly what it was supposed to achieve – to create the impression that those in power in the UK can be held to account, without actually holding them to account.

The Sue Gray investigation smells very strongly of being the same kind of trick. Supporters of Johnson are loudly insisting that it is an independent investigation. In fact it is no such thing. It is an internal Downing Street investigation in which Sue Gray is looking into allegations levied against her boss’s boss. She has not been tasked with coming to any conclusions or recommending any actions to be taken, that is left to Johnson, who is to be his own judge and jury.

Boris Johnson is a thoroughly despicable individual, even by the standards of the modern Conservative party, and that in itself is a remarkable achievement. He is dishonest, corrupt, entitled and narcissistic. You know that he is lying because his mouth is moving. Attending parties during lock down counts amongst the least of his failures. His incompetence and chaotic callousness directly led to the unnecessary deaths of many thousands of people during the early part of the pandemic, but far from learning from his mistakes he doubled down on them and repeated them, even yelling that the bodies could pile high in their thousands before he’d agree to another lock down.

In any properly functioning democracy, a lying chancer like Johnson would never have got close to the highest office in the land. He would not merely have long ago been removed from office, he would be facing a court on charges of criminal negligence. But this is not a properly functioning democracy, this is the UK, which bears the same relationship to a proper democracy as Ye Olde Britishe Pubbe in Disneyland does to an authentic night out in a real village pub. It’s a carefully contrived facsimile of the real thing, without any of its substance.

Much as Johnson is to be despised, and for all the havoc he will continue to wreak in office, part of me hopes that he will after all survive a leadership challenge, because his survival will only assist in the longer term destruction of the Conservative party. Whoever does replace him will be equally cruel, equally jingoistic in their opportunistic Anglo-British nationalism, and equally hell bent on the destruction of public services and any remaining checks and balances which allow the Prime Minister to be held to account. It will provide the false reassurance that the UK is a properly functioning democracy while reinforcing the Conservatives’ grip on power. Nothing of substance would change. It would be left to the Conservatives to choose a new Prime Minister. The British Prime Minister already has presidential powers with few effective constitutional checks and balances. For the Tories to select a new Prime Minister for nothing more than their own selfish party political interests would be a travesty of democracy.

Johnson’s survival will place Douglas Ross and the Scottish Conservatives in the impossible situation of being an anti-independence party which has condemned the British Prime Minister and their own party leader as being unfit for office while at the same time denying Scotland the ability to do anything about it. Ross will either have to resign, or he will simply give credence to Rees Mogg’s jibe that he is a lightweight. The Scottish Tories will then be forced to defend the indefensible as they go into the local elections in May, and you’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.

As we await what is most likely to prove to be the very British non-event of the Gray report, it is worth remembering that whether Johnson survives or falls this unedifying episode only serves as a valuable lesson that the Westminster system is rotten to the very core and is incapable of being reformed. As supporters of Scottish independence that only strengthens even further one of the strongest arguments or independence. It is only with independence that the people of Scotland can get the government that they elect and which is accountable to them and them alone.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Johnson is a symptom of a chronically sick Westminster

The Metropolitan Police have announced that they will after all investigate the numerous parties alleged to have taken place in Downing Street while the rest of us were in Lock down, bereaved families who had lost loved ones were unable to give them a proper farewell and people in hospital for months on end with life threatening or life changing conditions were not allowed the comforting presence of a visit from a partner or a spouse.

On a personal level, I fall into that latter category. During the height of Lock down, I suffered a massive stroke which has left me with lasting and most likely life long disabilities, I had to learn how to walk again, how to dress myself again, and had to come to terms with the fact that I almost died and that my life had changed forever. And I had to face all that entirely alone, without the reassuring presence of my husband or my closest family and friends. It was the hardest and most frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life, worse even than the death of my partner of 25 years in 2014. At least when Andy died I had the comfort and reassurance of people I loved being with me to hold my hand, give me a hug, and tell me it was going to be OK.

Because of covid restrictions, I had to face the aftermath of my stroke entirely alone. It was just as hard for my husband and mother, who were unable to see me start to make progress on the long hard road to recovery, and who were left alone with their nightmares and fears who were terrified that I might be left incontinent or unable to walk, dress, wash, or feed myself, and they too had to deal with the possibility that their lives had changed forever as well, but because they were not allowed to see me to a very large extent they were left in the dark about what they were going to have to deal with when I was finally discharged from hospital.

That was the reality and hardship of lock down, for me and for many thousands of others. It was a time of fear, of grief, of extreme hardship and crushing isolation, it was far far more than merely a tedious imposition and restriction on your right to party. Yet we all, at least most of us, tolerated lock down restrictions because we understood that it was necessary in order to protect people. When I was in hospital, there was still no vaccine, and I could see for myself that the wards were full of vulnerable people who would not have stood a chance should a visitor to the hospital brought covid onto the ward.

We were constantly being told that we were all in this together, covid was a threat to rich and to poor, it was no respecter of social position or standing, and that made the deprivations of lock down a little easier to bear. We were all suffering isolation for the greater good, in order to protect ourselves and our vulnerable friends and relatives.

It came as a shocking slap in the teeth and the worst kind of betrayal to discover that throughout that time the man in charge of the UK, the man who had ultimate responsibility for depriving millions of people in England of the most fundamental liberties in order to protect the vulnerable, the chronically sick and the elderly, the man whose government set the pace that the likes of Douglas Ross was always demanding Scotland should follow, was himself ignoring the rules that the rest of us had to follow, often at immense personal cost.

It is now clear that throughout lock down, Johnson refused to accept that the restrictions which his government imposed on the public should in any shape or form hamper his ability to down a bottle of wine in the company of his sycophantic lackeys. His behaviour is a gross insult to those who endured lock down despite far greater hardships and deprivations than Bring Your Own Bottle Johnson ever had to face. When his supporters remarked on how tired and wiped out he looked during lock down as supposed evidence of how he was sharing our struggles, we now know that it was most likely that he was still hung over from last night’s party.

It is welcome news that there is now to be a police investigation into the parties in Downing Street but judging from the long and inglorious tradition of the British state failing to hold the rich and powerful to account it is highly unlikely that anything will ever come of it, just as nothing ever came of Dominic Cummings’s lock down busting trip to Barnard Castle in order to give himself a vehicular eye test and not as a birthday outing for his wife, not at all, oh no. We have already seen, just in the past couple of years a number of instances of senior Conservatives being found by the courts to have acted unlawfully, Michael Gove, Priti Patel, and Matt Hancock have all been ruled to have acted unlawfully, and Johnson himself was ruled to have unlawfully prorogued Parliament in 2019 in order to evade parliamentary scrutiny of his Brexit deal. What all of them have in common is that every single one of them was able to break the law with impunity, not one of them suffered any negative consequences as a result of their law breaking, and the odds are very much in favour of Johnson doing exactly the same this time.

Johnson may or may not face a leadership challenge, in the absence of a clear successor and with his willingness to use blackmail and intimidation in order to bully supine Tory back benchers into line, it is by no means certain that he will be forced out of office. If he does survive a leadership challenge, the Tory party rules say that he cannot be challenged for another year. If that happens, the position of lightweight Ross will be untenable, he will either have to resign, or prove that he is indeed a lightweight by doing nothing while continuing to avoid the press.

But even if the lying cheating buffoon in Downing Street is forced out, he will merely be replaced by another Conservative who displays the same rank entitlement and contempt.

Johnson is merely a symptom of a diseased and corrupt Westminster system. It’s a system which cannot be reformed. Scotland can only protect itself with independence. The poor quality of Westminster governance will be a central issue in the independence referendum which lies ahead.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

The unionist fiscal fantasists who fetishise the GERS figures

It’s time to kill off the GERS figures. They are nothing more than a political tool designed to be used by opponents of independence to rubbish Scotland’s economic prospects and to scare the public off the idea of Scottish independence by painting a false picture of a supposedly financial basket case of a country which is hopelessly dependent on a transfer of funds from a benevolent Westminster. The heat and noise deliberately generated by GERS hampers any realistic discussion of the finances and economic potential of an independent Scotland. That’s not just my opinion. It is also the opinion of Professor David Simpson, formerly a professor of economics at Strathclyde University and a founding director of the Fraser of Allander Institute, that same economics think tank which is always cited by the BBC in order to give credence to the claims of some Tory that in an independent Scotland we’d all be left living in mud huts with nothing to heat us but a hatred of the English.

Professor Simpson explains why the GERS figures need to be scrapped in an article for The National on Sunday. Link here : https://www.thenational.scot/politics/19868114.gers-continuing-myth-fiscal-deficit-scotland/

The GERS figures have served opponents of independence well, providing them with annual headlines which scream the supposed poverty and inadequacy of Scotland and opportunities for friends of Neil Oliver to draw multi-coloured graphs which purport to prove that Scotland has by far the greatest fiscal deficit in Europe. The apologists for British nationalism are aware of just how useful the GERS figures are to them, and are fiercely protective of them. This is why the likes of those who tout prettily coloured graphs of Scotland’s supposed fiscal deficit attempt to discredit any attempt to question the GERS figures or to examine their methodology critically as nothing more than “GERS denial” as though the politically motivated GERS figures were some sort of objective scientific consensus like climate change or the efficacy of vaccines in order to portray those who disagree with their contention that Scotland is a financial basket case as cranks and conspiracy theorists who can be dismissed out of hand.

The value of Professor Simpson’s intervention is that it’s much harder for them to do that when the attack on GERS comes from a respected economist who was a founder of an economics think tank that they themselves are fond of citing.

The essential problem with the GERS figures which Professor Simpson identifies is that it allows opponents of independence to dominate discussions of the Scottish economy with their claims of Scotland’s supposed “fiscal deficit”. The problem, as Professor Simpson points out, is that the “fiscal deficit” as measured by GERS does not correspond to how “fiscal deficits” are measured in any other country, yet opponents of independence frequently cite Scotland’s GERS defined “fiscal deficit” and compare it unfavourably with the fiscal deficits of other countries as though they were measurements of the exact same thing, when in fact they are not.

As the professor points out, in every other country in the world a fiscal deficit is defined as the shortfall in the expenditure of a government when its expenditure exceeds its revenues. Professor Simpson writes : “If Scotland’s ­fiscal balance was compiled according to recognised standards of ­national ­accounting, then the ­expenditure side of the balance would show ­expenditure by the ­Scottish ­Government. Since the ­Scottish ­Government is obliged by the ­devolution settlement always to balance its budget, Scotland’s fiscal deficit in the proper sense of that term is zero every year.”

However the GERS figures do not just allocate spending by the Scottish Government to the expenditure side of Scotland’s balance sheet, they also include spending by the British Government which is deemed by that same British Government as being spending on Scotland’s behalf. Professor Simpson notes : “So far as I’m aware, no ­other ­country in the world publishes ­statistics that attempt to ­measure expenditures ­according to their ­supposed ­”benefit”, for the ­simple reason that such ­measures are ­necessarily arbitrary and ­subjective.”

This spending includes Scotland’s allocated share of spending outwith Scotland, for example Scotland’s notional share of UK defence expenditure which is disproportionately spent in the South of England where it generates jobs and economic activity which is then apportioned as revenues from the south of England, so Scotland is lumbered with the expenditure but doesn’t get the credit for or benefit from the economic activity and consequent tax revenues which that expenditure generates.

Scotland is also allocated a share of UK expenditure which an independent Scotland would neither want nor need, such as bearing a part of the cost for the UK’s eye-wateringly expensive nuclear weapons system. Yet if you were to believe the likes of Labour’s Jackie Baillie, the entire purpose of Trident is to generate sufficient economic activity on the Clyde in order to keep open a medium sized Tesco Express in the Greater Helensburgh area. Yet even if that was indeed its purpose, and not to act as viagra for the imperial fantasies of an impotent and much diminished former global power that is incapable of reconciling itself to its true standing in the modern world, it would be a shockingly inefficient and wasteful means of doing so.

Even the fiscal fantasists who fetishise the GERS figures are forced to admit that they tell us little that’s useful about the economy and finances of an independent Scotland. After all the entire point of independence is to give Scotland the ability to make different tax and spending decisions and different decisions about international trade deals and relationships from the decisions made by successive governments in Westminster, decisions which have consistently, and over many generations favoured London and the South East of England over Scotland, Wales, and the English regions. Yet apologists for Anglo-British nationalism continue to cite the GERS figures as supposed “proof” that independence is unaffordable.

They do this because generating fear and doubt about the fiscal position of Scotland are grounds on which they think they can gain traction in the independence debate, because they have no real answer to arguments for independence based upon democracy, governmental accountability and giving the people of Scotland the ability to determine the path this country takes, and no interest in more realistic assessments of Scotland’s economic potential.

The fiscal fantasists who fetishise the GERS figure continue to sow their scare stories and threats, without concerning themselves with the immense damage they are causing to Scottish national self-confidence. They are hell bent on perpetuating the psychic wounds of the infamous Cringe, because it’s all they have got left.

It’s long past time that the GERS figures are seen for what they really are, fairy stories told to Scotland in an attempt to scare us and make us doubt ourselves.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Johnson’s government of gangsters

A couple of weeks ago, as the allegations of numerous parties in Downing Street during lock down started to gain traction, I remarked that if Johnson survived this self-inflicted crisis it would be the final proof that the Westminster system is irredeemably broken and utterly incapable of holding the powerful to account, even when they break the rules in the most brazen and egregious manner.

After a rocky week, and with the senior civil servant Sue Gray yet to deliver her report, it looks as though the Conservative rebellion against Johnson is losing steam, it may flare up again once the Gray report is published, even though that report will doubtless provide Johnson with sufficient wriggle room to allow Johnson to get off the hook and once more escape the consequences of his actions, as he has done throughout his miserable entitled life. There are some Conservative MPs who claim that Johnson has been chastened by the experience and has learned his lesson. It’s hard to say whether they are stupid, lying, delusional, or simply trying to move the public narrative on, or possibly some combination of all of those, because surviving his recent difficulties with his job intact will only teach Johnson one thing, that he yet again has got away with it and that he will continue to get away with it in the future.

Johnson has certainly signalled to his critics that he’s not going to go easily, If they were hoping that the Gray report would make him hand in his resignation for the good of the party, they are in for a big disappointment. What’s for the good of the UK as a whole, what’s for the good of standards in public office or for British democracy does not register in the calculations of Conservative MPs. Johnson is a creature in their image, the only interests that any of them attach any importance to are their own. They want Johnson to go for their own self-interests, he’s equally determined to stay for his.

It was reported today that Gray has seen the email from a senior official to Johnson’s principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, warning him the 20 May party should not go ahead. This will make it harder for Johnson to maintain his obvious lie that he didn’t realise it was a party. But of course Johnson will say he never saw that email. Or that Reynolds never told him about it. And the report will merely repeat Johnon’s words since it’s not Gray’s job to draw conclusions.

Number 10 has mounted a ferocious campaign to keep Johnson in office. If the reports appearing in the press today are to be believed, and as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has observed, the allegations are shocking but not surprising, this Conservative government is using the tactics of gangsters in order to keep Johnson in power. Tory whips are reportedly threatening and intimidating back bench Conservative MPs that if they do not get in line and support Johnson, then embarrassing and damaging stories about them will find their way to the press, which can only mean that there are plenty of damaging stories about the Conservatives which have not yet seen the light of day, and that this venal and corrupt party is even more venal and corrupt than we realise so far.

One senior Tory, and critic of Johnson, has even gone so far as to call on his colleagues to report instances of what he described as attempted blackmail to the Speaker’s office and to the police. William Wragg, the Conservative MP for Hazel Grove in Greater Manchester and the chair of the influential Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee, claimed that Government whips were in breach of the ministerial code by threatening potential rebels by telling them that unless they get behind Johnson their constituencies would face the loss of hundreds of thousands of pound of so-called levelling up funds.

If true this would be a criminal offence and rank and blatant corruption and signal the descent of the UK into the status of a kleptocratic gangster state. Levelling up funds are public money , they are supposed to be used for the public good, not to further the party political goals of powerful factions within the Conservative party. There have already been numerous reports that the Levelling up funds are being disproportionately spent in constituencies represented by influential Conservatives, this is the final proof that the Conservatives believe that the resources of the state and public monies are their private property, to be used to further their party political aims and to further entrench their rule.

These are the same funds which the Conservatives are using to sideline and undermine the powers of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd.

In his desire to save his own skin, Johnson is behaving like a mafia boss, threatening and intimidating his opponents, and misusing public funds in order to bribe back bench Tories to support him.

Yet in the broken and failed Westminster system, it is the same government against which the allegations are being made which is in charge of investigating the allegations and deciding whether the ministerial code has indeed been broken, and if so, what if any consequences there ought to be. Johnson has claimed that he has seen no evidence to support the allegations made by Wragg, allegations which were also made by Christian Wakeford, the former Tory MP for Bury South who yesterday defected to Labour, surprise surprise. And likewise it will be no surprise that if ever there is an investigation into these allegations of gangster criminality at the very heart of the British Government, it will find that no laws had been broken and that no one except possibly some lowly and inconsequential figure will be held to account, which in any case will amount to nothing more than a rap across the knuckles for what will be described as a minor infringement of the rules.

This government is not only corrupt, the UK is being governed by shameless gangsters and there is absolutely nothing in what passes for a British Constitution that allows anyone to hold them to account. The strongest argument for independence is that it is the only way that Scotland can ensure it gets governments which it can vote out of office and whose powers are constrained by a proper written constitution. Democracy itself depends upon it.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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Johnson’s tears are only for himself

There is mounting speculation that Boris Johnson is to face a vote of confidence from Conservative MPs. This is not because they have suddenly discovered some moral outrage about a corrupt serial liar and man who didn’t know he was at a party even though he was warned not to go to the party. Those same Conservative MPs, we’re looking at you Douglas Ross, were quite happy to continue to support the corrupt liar even when his inaction and self-interest led to the UK suffering both the highest per capita death toll in Europe during the pandemic and the greatest economic damage.

They supported Johnson and the rest of his sociopathic cronies even after they reneged on their pre-referendum promises that a vote to leave the EU did not mean a vote to leave the Single Market and Customs Union yet after the vote was in they pursued the hardest Brexit possible purely in the party political interests of the Conservative party, no matter what havoc it wrought on Britain’s trade with the EU, and as we have seen, in some sectors, notably the shellfish industry which is so important in Scotland, trade with Europe has fallen off a cliff.

They continued to support Johnson and his cronies even after a mountain of evidence came to light to prove that they unlawfully provided a so-called “VIP lane” giving preferential access to lucrative government contracts to the friends, family, and associates of senior figures in the government. In any other country, this would be called out for what it is – rank and rotten corruption.

They supported Johnson even after he and his government risked the fragile peace settlement in Northern Ireland, in the process trashing the reputation of the UK abroad and relegating the British Government to the ranks of untrustworthy bad faith bad actors who cannot be trusted to adhere to the terms of international treaty obligations which it had signed up to.

The UK is now a laughing stock abroad, a diminished and reduced joke, pathetically trading on nostalgia and fading memories of former power and influence while at home the government adopts increasingly authoritarian measures, cracking down on the right to protest and neutering any independent body such as the Electoral Commission, which might hold it to account. It is shamelessly seeking to by pass and undermine those alternative sources of democratic authority which exist in the UK, the devolved parliaments, despite not even possessing the pretence of any democratic mandate from the people of Scotland or Wales which legitimises it to do so.

All this has been just fine with Conservative MPs. They haven’t suddenly discovered a moral backbone, expecting the Conservatives to act morally is like expecting Sweeney Todd to offer a vegan pie. The only reason that the Tory back benches are now rumbling their disapproval and making anonymous briefings to the press that they might start to move against Johnson is because they are afraid for their own jobs, positions, and power. As always the only interest that motivates the Conservatives is self-interest.

Today one of the Brexit supporting new Conservative MPs from the so-called “red wall” seats in the north of England has left the Conservatives, citing the disgust of his constituents about the misdeeds of Johnson. Christian Wakeford the MP for Bury South has announced that he is joining the Labour party. This is a man who supports Brexit, who voted to cut Universal Credit, for the Nationality and Borders Bill which demonises migrants and asylum seekers and the Police and Crime Bill which places huge restrictions on the rights to peaceful protest in England and Wales. He is a man who signals with his Union flag face mask that he has fully signed up to the uber Anglo-British nationalism that remains the dominant force in British politics. Keir Starmer’s Labour party has welcomed him with open arms.

Those on the left have protested that such an individual is clearly no friend of the working class, the poor, and the marginalised. Others in Labour say that people like Wakeford are precisely what Labour needs if it is to have any chance of winning a majority at Westminster. And that right there is the nub of the problem with the Westminster system and why Scotland must seek independence. Scotland can never look to the Labour party to protect it from the Conservatives because the only way in which Labour can win a majority at Westminster is by transforming itself into a slightly more apologetic version of the Tories.

One Tory MP reportedly told the press that Johnson broke down in tears yesterday and certainly in some of his public appearances during the past day or so Johnson has looked red eyed and close to tears. But when you watch Johnson seemingly close to tears just remember that this is the man who thought it was OK to “let the bodies pile high” in order to save his career. A narcissistic sociopath like Johnson can only cry for himself. He’s not crying because of any genuine contrition or remorse, that would entail caring about the impact that his selfishness has had on other people. He is crying because he has been found out, because he realises that he cannot any longer escape the consequences of his actions.

Johnson is likely to go sooner or later. He may hang on until after the May local elections as there is currently no obvious successor to him within the Tories and he or she will not want to carry the can for the drubbing that the Conservatives are likely to receive because of the widespread public anger about Johnson.

But whoever does succeed him is going to be just as bad. Deposing Johnson will certainly not mean that the Conservative party has changed. It will merely mean that it seeks a more efficient means of imposing its hardline Brexit agenda, its destruction of any checks and balances on its power. Even with a new leader the Conservatives will still be in thrall to the Brexit hardliners and covid deniers on the back benches. There will still be platitudes but no meaningful action on climate change. There will still be the same aggressive Anglo-British nationalism, fetishising the royals and the armed forces and picking fights with Europe. There will still be the same attacks on any body or organisation that might hold the Conservatives to account.

Getting rid of Johnson won’t mean that the Conservatives have learned the error of their ways. As the economist Richard Murphy pointed out on Twitter, “He is being disposed of simply because he no longer meets the need of a party desperate for power in pursuit of the wanton destruction of all that is good.”

 

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Trapped between a rock and a party place

We are now at the point where it would be easier for Boris Johnson, the leader of the Let’s have a party party, to list the days when there wasn’t a booze up in Downing Street, rather than grudgingly admitting when there was. It’s now clear that Johnson presides over a booze fueled Downing Street which takes its cue from his personal sense of entitlement and his deep seated belief that the rules do not apply to him. This is a government which is corrupt to its very core, which repeatedly trashes the rules, conventions, and customs which pass for a British constitution, and which seeks to neuter and by pass any of the weak and inadequate means which the Westminster system provides for holding the powerful to account.

It’s safe to say that it’s been a dismal week for the British establishment, the Andrew formerly known as Prince is to face a civil trial in the USA following allegations, which he continues to deny, that he sexually abused Virginia Giuffre, who as a teenager was forced to provide sex to the rich and powerful by his friends, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and her boyfriend the paedophile and serial sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

In an effort to protect the reputation of the Windsor clan, Andrew Windsor has been stripped of his royal and military patronages and the HRH title that no one with even a five year old’s grasp of morality and ethics would ever use for this sleazy and disreputable individual anyway. Andrew, who continues to enjoy a lavish lifestyle despite having no obvious means of supporting it, can count on the protection offered by his mother’s wealth, money which ultimately comes from you and me, the taxpayers of the UK. That wealth will undoubtedly be used to allow him to buy his way out of the consequences that arise from his sleazebaggery while the British media force feeds us a nausea-fest of sycophancy as we are commanded to celebrate 70 years on the throne of the monarch that many in Scotland choose to refer to as Elizabeth the Last.

Protected as it is by the instinctive deference and obsequious toadying of the British media and establishment, the monarchy will no doubt survive this latest scandal, just as it is likely to survive the other scandals about the entitlement, bad behaviour and hypocrisy of other senior members of the family which are bubbling away beneath the surface but which the royals, aided and abetted by a supine press, are desperately trying to suppress.

However it’s the Conservatives, and particularly the Scottish Conservatives, who face a far greater threat to their survival. Faced with overwhelming evidence of Johnson’s repeated and habitual contempt for lock down rules, Scottish Conservative branch office manager Douglas Ross called on Johnson to resign, only to be slapped down by Johnson’s fellow old Etonian Jacob Rees Mogg, who dismissed Ross as a disloyal lightweight. In doing so, Rees Mogg gave Douglas Ross and the Scottish Tory MSPs who backed him a big helping of the same arrogant patrician contempt that the Westminster Conservatives regularly pour on Scotland, the other Scottish parties, the Scottish Government and Parliament, and the devolution settlement itself, to applause and cheering from those same Scottish Tories who now find themselves on the receiving end of it.

They deserve no sympathy, helpless obedience to Westminster is what they signed up for. They were happy to “back Boris” when he was winning them elections in England, they never cared that he and his British nationalist Brexit remain anathema to a substantial majority in Scotland. His entitlement and obvious unsuitability for high office was something they were happy to go along with, no matter what damage it did to Scotland and the rest of the UK. They only developed a “conscience” when Johnson’s repeated misbehaviour started to damage the electoral prospects of the Conservative party and even the useless Labour party of Keir Starmer started to develop a lead over the Tories in UK wide political polling. Their sudden discovery of morality is entirely self-interested.

The Scottish Tories are now in uncharted political waters. They have disavowed the Prime Minister whom they insist should rule over Scotland, and have very publicly declared that they believe the leader of their own party to be unfit for office. The Scottish Tories have made it known that the Prime Minister of the UK is not welcome at the conference in March of the most vehemently British nationalist political party in Scotland, which leaves them in the deeply uncomfortable position of having to argue that Scotland is best served by remaining under the control of a Westminster which allows such an evidently corrupt individual into the highest office, and which then has no effective means of holding him to account.

Ross and the Scottish Tories will be praying that the Sue Gray report will bring about Johnson’s resignation. Never before in British political history has a Prime Minister been forced to resign because of a report from a civil servant who is answerable to the Prime Minister who is judge and jury in any civil service investigation into the behaviour of the Prime Minister. It’s unlikely to happen this time either. Johnson has spent his entire life refusing to acknowledge the consequences of his behaviour, he’s not about to start now. His allies have already been briefing the press that the Gray report will not find that any laws have been broken, and he will do his utmost to cling on to power, He will try to brazen it out, aided by a Conservative party in England desperate to put this episode behind them.

This will put the Scottish Conservatives in an impossible position, not that Johnson and his cronies care. They will be the party of British nationalism in Scotland which wants the British Prime Minister to be sacked. They will have to try and defend the indefensible position that they want Scotland to remain under the governance of a man that they believe to be unfit for office and to have to explain why they want Scotland to remain powerless in a position which they themselves believe to be intolerable. Johnson might wriggle out of his current political problems but the Scottish Tories can’t wriggle out of theirs, they are trapped between a rock and a party place.

Update:  Many thanks for all the kind messages of support. My mother in law – who is fully vaccinated – has only experienced mild symptoms of covid, so it looks as though she will be OK.  It just shows how important it is to get vaccinated.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

No need for a Tory whitewash ‘investigation’: Johnson has to go

I had intended to take a few days off from blogging because we got some terrible news on Sunday evening, just as we were sitting down to dinner one of my husband’s relatives phoned from the USA to tell him that his sister had died suddenly of covid the night before.

Edie was my husband’s only sibling, she was only 50 years of age. She had been admitted to hospital in Connecticut on the preceding Friday but hospitals there are overwhelmed just now and she had been left lying on a trolley in a corridor for several hours. There are far more people in the USA who have refused the vaccine than here, even in states like Connecticut. In America the Republicans have shamelessly and cynically politicised measures to mitigate the pandemic and as a direct result the omicron variant is running rampant amongst the unvaccinated. In some states, especially in Trump supporting districts, less than half the population is vaccinated. Hospitals in some areas are close to breaking point, with exhausted and emotionally and physically drained staff struggling to cope with a flood of covid patients.

Feeling ill, tired, and frustrated, but unable to sleep or rest because of all the noise and clamour of an overly busy hospital rushing past her bed, Edie discharged herself so she could go home and get to her own bed where she hoped to get the sleep she was craving. She still felt very poorly on the Saturday when my husband and I spoke to her on the phone, but she assured us that she was feeling a bit better and we thought that she was on the mend.

Tragically she went to bed on Saturday evening and never woke up again. My mother in law found her dead in bed on Sunday morning. She must have passed away in her sleep sometime during the night. It’s not much of a comfort, but at least she passed away peacefully and didn’t suffer. News of her death came as a terrible and unexpected shock.

We found out later that Edie had only had one vaccination. We don’t know why. She wasn’t anti- vaccine or one of those folk who believed in covid conspiracy theories. She was just too busy living her life to get around to it. She had some other health issues and was a heavy smoker, but had it not been for this cruel virus I have no doubt that this funny, vibrant and caring woman would still be with us.

For all the talk that the omicron variant is less serious, my sister in law’s tragic death is a lesson that it is imperative that you should get both your vaccines and your booster. Wear a face covering, practice social distancing, wash your hands. Make getting your vaccines your priority. It makes no difference what else you might think is important, you won’t be able to do anything about it if you’re dead.

Please, this virus isn’t messing about, it doesn’t care about your “freedom ” to wander about Morrisons without a mask on, it doesn’t care about your beliefs in “positive energies” or “natural healing”. You have every right to your beliefs, but you don’t have the right to risk the lives of immuno-compromised people or people with underlying health conditions because you feel your “right” to wander about the supermarket unencumbered by a piece of cloth across your face is more important than other people’s right to life. That doesn’t make you an edgy champion of freedom, it just makes you a selfish git.

Don’t be so arrogant as to imagine that you know more than doctors, virologists and public health experts because you have “done your own research” which consists of reading posts on a Facebook page. Just get your vaccines,and wear a mask in indoor public spaces. The thing about “doing your own research” is that you need to have a fundamental grounding in the basics of a topic in order to be able to distinguish between the plausible and the batshit crazy. Experts are experts for a reason, because they have studied, because they have the knowledge. Listen to the real experts, the doctors, the immunologists, the virologists, the professors of public health, they are the ones who know what they are talking about, not the Neil Olivers and the conspiracy theorists of social media.

There isn’t going to be a funeral just now, because of covid running rampant and the risks of infection my husband’s family have decided to wait a few months, there will be a private cremation and sometime in late summer they will have a memorial service which I hope to be well enough to attend. We learned today that my mother in law has now tested positive for covid.  She is double vaccinated and is currently only experiencing mild symptoms, but to say that we are worried is an understatement.

Then today we see on the news yet more allegations that Boris Johnson has casually ignored the covid restrictions which his government has imposed on the rest of us by attending a garden party for 100 Downing Street staff at a time when the rest of us were barred from meeting with more than one other person.

Despite repeatedly telling Parliament that he broke no restrictions it seems clear that that is exactly what he did. There is to be an investigation, which just seems like another attempt by this pathetic mattress fire of the vanities to evade accountability, no doubt hoping he can buy time and will in due course be “cleared” by whichever sycophantic pal of his it is that is doing the “investigating” this time. Yet there is really nothing to investigate. Was he at this party or not? You don’t need a lengthy investigation to establish that simple fact. If he was there he was in breach of his own lockdown rules and he lied to Parliament. He doesn’t just need to go, If there is any justice he needs to face a court of law. Johnson has made a mockery of the sacrifices the rest of us have had to endure, and pissed all over the grief of those of us who have lost loved ones to this terrible disease.

Johnson is not responsible for the terrible loss of my sister in law, a loss we are still struggling to comprehend, but the callous indifference and chaotic incompetence of him and his government is responsible for the fact that 150,000 families across the UK are grieving like we are grieving just now. My contempt for this entitled bag of selfish hypocrisy knows no bounds.

But there is no justice in this Tory Britain where there is one law for the rich and powerful and another for the rest of us.

Sleep peacefully Edie, you will never be forgotten.

I have a physiotherapy appointment tomorrow so won’t be blogging. I will be taking the next few days to give my husband the love and support he needs at this dreadful time. I will be back on Monday.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

You can help to support this blog with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address weegingerbook@yahoo.com. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button.

Saving Scotland from the Tory bad chaps

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson attracts scandal and sleaze like dog mess on the pavement on a hot summer day attracts flies. It is simply part and parcel of the nature of the beast. You could no more expect Johnson to act with probity and to maintain the standards traditionally expected of the head of a democratic government than you could expect the ugly and nasty dog mess to emit the fragrant scent of lavender and to arrange itself into an attractive picture of a landscape. The difference is that the dog mess will be washed away by the next heavy rain, whereas we are stuck with the stench of Johnson’s corruption.

However what is even more alarming than the eagerness of Johnson and his incompetent cronies to use high public office as a means to create lucrative business opportunities for themselves and their associates, is the way in which they are determined to neuter and render impotent the already inadequate means offered by the institutions of the British state for holding the powerful to account.

The unwritten constitution of the UK was always a recipe for the powerful and the British establishment to be able to do as it pleased, unfettered by the explicit constraints of a written constitution, that’s why they like it so much. Under such a system the only thing preventing a descent into overt anti-democratic authoritarianism is the self-restraint and sense of decency and propriety of those in charge. Traditionally, apologists for the British state liked to pat themselves on the back about how the UK was a shining example of the highest standards of democratic government, a lesson to the world about how a democratic government and society should conduct itself. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum campaign, some opponents of independence went so far as to claim that it was only the good offices of the Westminster Parliament which stood between Scotland and a dystopian totalitarian barbarism.

However in the absence of a written constitution spelling out the limits of their powers, with no explicit delineation of the respective powers and responsibilities of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and with ample opportunities for the exercise of undemocratic and unaccountable patronage in the form of appointments to the Lords and the corrupt honours system, the only thing distinguishing a British Prime Minister from a dictator is his or her own sense of decency and and their appreciation of limits and moderation in the exercise of the immense power granted to them by the unwritten British constitution. Scholars of the British constitution referred to this as the “good chap” theory of government.

What the Johnson regime has revealed is just how fragile democracy in the UK really is. When the highest office in the land is occupied by an individual who is patently not a “good chap”, and who has no respect for the customary practices and restraints which have constrained the exercise of the theoretically limitless powers of a British Prime Minister, there is absolutely nothing in the British constitution to prevent a descent into anti-democratic authoritarianism.

By no stretch of the imagination could Johnson and the rest of his government of chancers and charlatans be described as “good chaps”. We have seen how they routinely behave as though the rules and regulations which they enforce upon the rest of us do not apply to them. When evidence of their rule breaking and hypocrisy comes to light they shamelessly insist that no rules were broken, even when, as is the case with Johnson’s lockdown busting Downing Street parties, there is video evidence and we can all see them breaking the rules with our own eyes. Instead they gaslight us, lie to us, and insult our intelligence by not even bothering to come up with a remotely plausible excuse.

Their sleaze and corruption has become brazen, as the Conservatives are emboldened by the knowledge that they will not be held to account by an English media more interested in trivial gossip about members of the royal family and the affairs of so-called celebrities whose talentless fame rests upon an appearance in the mental chewing gum of a reality TV show. Meanwhile they get a free pass from an overwhelmingly anti-independence Scottish media which is so terrified of reporting anything that might boost support for independence that it prefers to concentrate on ferry timetables rather than defending democracy in the UK and standing up for Scotland and the devolution settlement within this so-called Union that they insist is in our best interests.

These are the same Conservatives who are restricting the voting franchise, openly targeting groups such as the poor, ethnic minorities, and younger voters who are less likely to vote Conservative. They are introducing draconian restrictions on the right of protest in England and Wales, and increasing the stop and search powers of the police in England, a measure which is disproportionately used to target members of ethnic minorities. After the Colston statue case, where a jury refused to convict a group of people accused of toppling the Bristol statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, Conservative MPs howled in outrage, leading the government to take the unprecendented step of referring the case to the appeal courts, in the process undermining the right to trial by jury and the rule of law. The Tories have shown that they care far more about the “rights” of statues of slavers, colonialist thieves, imperialist looters and those who murdered and abused in the name of Empire than they do about those who lost their lives in the appalling and entirely avoidable Grenfell tragedy, and the rights of the many thousands who continue to live in unsafe housing.

Meanwhile, despite the promises that Brexit was to unleash a bonanza of opportunities and cheaper prices, exports to the EU have fallen off a cliff and we are faced with soaring food and energy bills, just as the effects of the loss of the £20 per week uplift in Universal credit and the rise in National Insurance start to be felt and businesses are reeling under the onslaught of the rise in covid infections caused by the omicron variant.

But the response of the Tories is to seek refuge in jingoism, to demand that we must have more union flags, more God Save the Queen, and more royal events, while they continue to fetishise and politicise WW2 while picking unnecessary fights with EU states. It’s a pathetic and inadequate substitute for the UK’s loss of influence and relevance, but it’s all they’ve got.

Scottish independence has now become a necessity, an imperative. It’s the only way to save us from the flag waving jingoistic authoritarian and deeply corrupt failed democracy that the UK has become at the hands of the “bad chaps” of the Conservative party.

My Gaelic maps of Scotland are still available, a perfect gift for any Gaelic learner or just for anyone who likes maps. The maps cost £15 each plus £7 P&P within the UK. You can order by sending a PayPal payment of £22 to weegingerbook@yahoo.com (Please remember to include the postal address where you want the map sent to).

I am now writing the daily newsletter for The National, published every day from Monday to Friday in the late afternoon.  So if you’d like a daily dose of dug you can subscribe to The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper, here: Subscriptions from The National

This is your reminder that the purpose of this blog is to promote Scottish independence. If the comment you want to make will not assist with that goal then don’t post it. If you want to mouth off about how much you dislike the SNP leadership there are other forums where you can do that. You’re not welcome to do it here.

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