Scottish Independence and the UK State

[MacCruiskeen]

29 October 2013
Lonely Planet says Scotland is third best country to visit

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24712473

Only one place behind Antarctica, and five places ahead of Belgium.

Wha's like us? No many, and they're a' Brazilians (or penguins).

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Tune in anytime over the next eleven months, for more titillating tales of terror from the Westminster crypt...



Keep telling yourself... it's only a story, it's only a story, it's only a....

[MacCruiskeen]

Hey Ahab, I am seriously horrified to hear that vote[-eating] machines might well be used in the referendum. Putting a stop to that should be an absolute priority for the Yes campaigners:

Black Box Voting.org

Princeton Uni Website: Researchers reveal 'extremely serious' vulnerabilities in e-voting machines

more at wiki

If the loathsome Tories suspect even for a second that the Union might be in danger, they will not hesitate to disappear the Yes votes.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Ah, you must live in Lumphinnans

Don't go telling everybody my location bro!

It's true though, I am in Lumphinnans, living up on Brezhnev Brae nowadays if you're ever in the area. Most Saturdays you can find me reclining snugly in the Proletariat's Arms. I know a guy who can get us some good vodka off the Russian subs, but I'm not supposed to talk about it.

...George Square (dont interrupt me, I'm planning) will be renamed Russell Brand Plaza, its centrepiece a 30-foot tall equestrian statue featuring Russell in a kilt astride a Clydesdale, with traffic cones on both their heads, and George Bush & Margaret Thatcher kneeling before them in prayer (the whole ensemble in bronze, of course).

George Square is being refurbished right now, but sadly not to the specifications you desire. It's about time the place was moderned up, I suppose. If Yuri Gagarin had somehow returned to earth through a timeslip in the last few years and landed there, alive, he would feel right at home - it still has that faded Soviet look about it. Since the refurbishment work is being contracted out by the Glasgow Labour Party, the Kremlinesque degree of municipal corruption and epic-fail involved behind the scenes would probably be familiar to Gagarin too.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/ ... e.20923063

Hadn't heard of the play before, and it's actually about Lumphinnans! That's magic, thanks Mac, I'll need to get a hold of it somehow.

[MacCruiskeen]

"The alpha males are out in force. The gene pool's as shallow as ever."

- a line from Gregory Burke's Gagarin Way.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I agree completely about the voting machines, in my opinion we should've had outside (unbiased) election monitors keeping an eye on the activities of both campaigns right from the start, and everything possible should've been done to ensure that electronic vote-counting would be disallowed.

The problem is that these machines are already established as a standard part of our electoral system, one which most people don't see as a threat to democracy despite pretty clear evidence of their failure or misuse in the past (to my annoyance). The SNP have long known the pain of being stigmatised as a party of "conspiracy theorists", fringe interest folk, crackpots, loons, etc. Both the party and the Yes campaign are trying so hard now to come across as ordinary, competent, plodding, non-radical, non-threatening, non-interesting bodies (because they know they need the incurious, self-interested, middle-of-the-road vote to win) that they basically won't even talk about any of the issues I would like them to address, and would shy away from many of the things I've talked about on this thread with a great (perhaps slightly overdone) display of distaste.

It's hard for me to take (or to explain) ...except to say that calling out serious and difficult issues in the past (like frequent voting irregularities in Scotland, especially in by-elections, and the now-admitted role of the UK security services in acting against the cause of Scottish independence) never did the SNP any good electorally. They are mainstream now, and they feel that the Yes campaign has to be mainstream too, in order to appeal to the mainstream of society. It's not the way I would do it, and I am not confident of victory in 2014 with the current Yes campaign leading the charge, but there's not much I can do about it.

They won't even call in the media monitors that Craig Murray suggested (http://www.osce.org/odihr), despite the media as a whole now having reached screaming levels of pro-Union bias, so there's no chance they'll listen to me on the voting methods.*

*Actually, it turned out that the OSCE can only get involved if Westminster requests it, just like the EU can only give official advice on our continued membership if the UK Government asks them, not the Scottish government.

Have to remember that Salmond is only running a devolved administration ("...a power devolved is a power retained...") with all the limitations on autonomy that entails.

[MacCruiskeen]

Ahab, just skimmed this so far, but it looks good: an essay by the poet George Gunn:

Day of the Dead

By George Gunn on November 1, 2013

[...] The big N, small n nationalist; the pro and anti independence conundrum will be, to an extent, partly unravelled next September. In many ways it is a bit like a Zen koan: there is no solution on the outside and no problem on the inside. There must come a day, do you not think, when the dead ideas of political history, such as the union between Scotland and England, will finally just lie down and die?

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2013/11/01 ... -the-dead/

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I enjoyed that article Mac, but it's not going to win a referendum. It was good, but it wouldn't even win a literary prize that I was judging (and it wouldn't get any consolation prizes for good spelling or grammar either, because it failed on both counts).

This will be a hugely hypocritical statement, given the drunken tilt and layout of many of my own arguments, but the independence debate has caused far too many Scottish writers and "commentators" (all of them unionists yesterday) to whip out their pens, in the belief that their pens are now somehow mightier or more respectable than the sword above their necks was a day ago.

They are now squirting gallons of good ink all over the place to no one's benefit, bawling about Scotland, trying to pretend that there is only an emotional and cultural argument for independence rather than a solid financial and economic one.

For the record, Alasdair Gray is not one of those fellows. He wrote a book back in the nineties - Why Scots Should Rule Scotland - laying out the sound reasons and the urgent need for self-government. The rest are still catching up, and should do so quickly, and above all should try harder. I don't necessarily include George Gunn in this somewhat angry admonition, but it is traditional, or always has been, for a poet to make his work readable.

I can hardly complain about this, being the very epitome of a long-winded bawbag, but are the Scottish literati ever going to do their jobs? They think Alasdair Gray is unique and amazing, because he does the job that they should all be doing.

It's like how investigative journalists in Britain praise John Pilger. "Oh aye, he's great, he's amazing, a brilliant investigative journalist."

But they don't see their job as being the same as his.

[MacCruiskeen]

You're right, Ahab. Gunn's essay is pretty wishy-washy stuff, but it was late and I was tired.

Ahab, just skimmed this so far, but it looks good: an essay by the poet George Gunn:

^^See, I did take care to hedge my bets a bit. For I too, being human, have the instincts of a politician, i.e. a lizard brain.

As I said, way back, I was essentially in favour of Scottish independence even in my teens. The devolution "failure" was one of the things that sealed my decision to leave Britain very shortly after that. A long while later, Gray's great little essay (Why Scots Should Rule Scotland) convinced me all over again. But exile & work and family here & other commitments and interests again diluted my interest in the whole issue. Plus I couldn't ever see it happening. Then the vileness of New Labour, and 9/11 and all that followed, and the utter loathsomeness of Cameron's Tories made it clear that something better change, in Britain, in Scotland, and everywhere else. Now the upcoming referendum -- and in large part, this thread and your contributions to it -- has strengthened that original conviction again, tenfold. (Not least because I am considering returning, may the Laird help me.)

Those "voting"-machines will have to be kept out, though. Very seriously. If voting could change anything they would ban it, or at least they would let it be eaten by state-of-the-art corporate technology.

[MacCruiskeen]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 38636.html

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Ooooft! I was maybe just a tiny wee bit harsh on George Gunn there, eh?

Poor guy, he took the heat for the Scottish literati as a group, for being such a milquetoasty and wavering bunch, who only ever write about the most ephemeral and frankly stupid reasons for independence, while always adding the boring qualifier that they have never been nationalists. Nobody cares if they're nationalists. Nobody has ever cared. Do they believe in self-government, and if they do, why do they insist on writing about a time when they saw some men digging peat on Jura for their grannies' fire instead? Gah.

I've no idea if George Gunn has ever been a unionist either, and it's a bit silly when I'm trying to convert folk to a Yes vote to deride them as "unionists yesterday." Surely that's what I want them to be? But alas, I am a fanny. No idea what I meant by "swords above their necks" either. Pointless phrasemaking, the exact thing I was accusing them of.

I've a cheek to criticize anybody. Only been a Nat myself for about five years, and would you believe I nearly voted against devolution in '97? Wish I could say I'd been wiser longer, like you Mac, but i'faith it is not so.

Anyway, on the voting issue.... I think they heard you. A story came out a few days after you first mentioned electronic counting, I think it was from the head of the Electoral Commission, saying the count could take a few days because "we have to get the result absolutely right." Unlike a general election for the whole of the UK, I suppose, where they don't care if they get the result absolutely right or not, and announce it the next day with no problems. Seems the machines don't speed the counting up much then. Maybe they have some other purpose?

White Paper came out yesterday. I haven't read it all yet. Neither have the unionists, but they've decided it's a fantasy wishlist full of unfulfillable promises anyway. Not surprising.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

This new advert from the Better Together campaign is surprisingly honest!

[AhabsOtherLeg]

...trying to pretend that there is only an emotional and cultural argument for independence rather than a solid financial and economic one.

Um, and democratic. Oops. The mask slipped a bit there.

That report on the best and worst places to live in the UK is keich, they had Edinburgh near the top of the rankings only last year!

Speaking of rankings, the Legatum Prosperity Index 2013 makes for some interesting reading.

Norway is number 1 of course, as their oil fund now nudges the trillion dollar mark.

Ireland is at 12.

Iceland is at 13.

The UK is at 16, down three places in a single year.

The wise economic policies and fiscal prudence of the Conservative government may perhaps have something to do with this.

http://www.prosperity.com/#!/?aspxerror ... untry.aspx

And don't nobody tell me that Ireland's only doing well 'cos the UK bailed it out. Ireland was bailed out by the ECB and IMF. The UK contributed, of course, but Germany contributed more, and you don't hear them banging on about it as if the Irish now owed them undying loyalty and a lifetime of blowjobs.

Iceland were very wise, weren't they? Very wise.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I look a bit dafter tonight than I expected. The Spanish Government have announced they intend to veto Scotland's entry (or continued membership) of the EU if we become independent, thereby depriving themselves of access to the most extensive and productive fishing grounds in Europe, to the detriment of their own coastal communities (but the benefit of ours).

All to do with threatening Catalonia, so Searcher was right all along. Seems the UK and Spanish government;s are still best buds despite the tensions over Gibraltar.

Have to wait and see how this pans out. At the moment there is no legal framework whereby EU citizens, which we are, can be deprived of that citizenship, so it's far from cut and dried. Disappointing though.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Mac, you need to get back here soon. Did you hear about this pish?

They are totes oppressing us to the max, and trying to suppress our culture and that. Glasgow Labour I mean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-g ... t-24907190

Everybody knows that Wellington fucking loved to have that traffic cone on his head, and so did his horse. Throughout the Peninsular Wars he was never seen without a traffic cone on his head, and neither was his horse neither.

This headgear may have made them a prime target for Napoleon's sharpshooters at Waterloo, with the bright orange and fluorescent white bands which shone out across the countryside for leagues, but neither Wellington nor his horse would have willingly removed the cone from their own heads. Style.

Glasgow City Council, you have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart I say, and let us have done with you. Iniquity shall have an end. I will overturn, overturn, overturn it, and it shall be no more.