RocketMan » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:08 am wrote:I'm not really certain whether Scotland would be better off independent but I intuit that is the case and am giddy at the prospect. It's also a tragi-comic spectacle of watching those establishment bastards contort themselves in knots trying to argue why self-determination in THIS case is a base evil when in other parts of the world it is the subject of aspirational, kitschy, sentimental blathering by the western elites.
YES!
Scottish independence is "a base evil", as you put it, because it threatens their entrenched power and privilege and wealth -- rather than promising to extend it, as for example in the case of Yugoslavia and Iraq, both of which they broke up for fun and profit.
There is no doubt that an independent Scotland would be far to the left of the current UK. It'll be subject to the same pressures (the same economic blackmail and dirty tricks) as any other nation-state in the age of neoliberalism, so there is little chance of it becoming truly socialist in the near future, as I and many others would wish. But there is absolutely no reason why it shouldn't quickly become a social democracy as prosperous, as egalitarian and as socially progressive as (say) Norway. There is a very strong left tradition in Scotland, especially in and around Glasgow, the biggest city.
RocketMan » Mon Sep 15, 2014 9:08 am wrote:Also, how does one pronounce McCruiskeen in a Scottish accent? I image it going something like MACKRRRRRROOOOEEISSSSCHKEEEN (in all caps of course). But then everyone pretends to know how to do a Scottish accent when they really don't.
"Mah - CROO - skeen", approximately. The name's entirely fictional, anyway. It's not even Scottish! I stole it from Flann O'Brien. It's the name of a character in
his greatest and weirdest book. It means "Son of the Little Jug" in Gaelic, for no particular reason I can see, except that Flann liked his bevvy.
While I'm at it: On the old RI board I was "Bismillah". (Elsewhere on the web: "warszawa".) That old name wouldn't "take" on the new board, so I chose this one quickly because I was in a hurry to post and I happened to be re-reading the book at the time. Sometimes I've regretted the name, because it might come across as a bit self-consciously "ethnic". Not my intention. For the record, I'm Scottish born and bred, but "ethnically" part of the Irish diaspora that's heavily represented in Glasgow, as in the other big British west-coast port, Liverpool (hence Lennon & McCartney, to name but two). I'm not a nationalist. To me the Scot Nats always represented everything that was hideous about Scotland, the malt-quaffers in the golf clubs, the sentimental reactionaries, the Tartan Tories, the Burns-abusers and anti-English bores. Sometimes when I'm asked my nationality I'll say "Glaswegian", only half-joking. I feel the usual mixture of strong attachment and exasperation towards my native city, a strong place in itself and a strange one. I live in Central Europe and my daughter has grandparents of four different nationalities. If Scotland gets its independence I will very likely return. It's the hideousness of the United Kingdom that is keeping me here still.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966
TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
Thanks, I'm gonna steal that.
