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Showing posts with label Alistair Carmichael. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alistair Carmichael. Show all posts

Thursday 6 February 2014

David Cameron panics, wraps the Union Jack around him – and Alistair’s naebodies Darling …

Scottish Labour's partner and pal in Better Together, David Cameron, terrified by the polls, by today's Spectator article, and by the prospect of debating with Alex Salmond, clutches at the straw of the 2012 Olympics, Team GB and Britishness, and plans to wrap himself in the Union Jack. It may prove to be his political shroud.

"Oh, Danny Boyle! Help me with another spectacular! Can we have Alistair Carmichael in a kilt parachuting on to Lord's Cricket Ground, singing Rule Brittannia? A couple of Royals? Maybe another baby? Are there muffins still for tea?"

The other Alistair is now nobodies Darling. Derided by his own side, a joke to YES campaigners, he seems set for the dustbin of history. Maybe Johann "wee things" Lamont can help, if she can escape the mud flying from the Unite/Falkirk debacle?

May you live in interesting Scottish times, Dave - Eton was never like this...

And a couple of golden oldie flag-wrapping disasters!

Monday 13 January 2014

Scottish Defenders of the Union – complex and varied in motivation and belief

Over the last month, I have been exposed directly to a fair sample of the infinite variety of the Scottish (defined as resident in and committed to Scotland, regardless of country of origin) defenders of the Union and advocates of a No vote, through a more or less random series of contacts.

As our intrepid YES doorstep campaigners and politicians know far better than I, direct contact yields insights and perceptions that can seem more profound than print and media exposure to more structured arguments. But they can be dangerously misleading on occasion – so I proceed here tentatively, and with many reservations and qualifications. I make no general claims – what I have to say is subjective and reflects only one - and perhaps unduly narrow – perspective. Here are the variants I have encountered, in some cases dominant and seeming to almost define the position of the individual displaying them, in other case simply one aspect of a complex and often conflicting mix. The list of course is not, and never can be comprehensive.

SOME ANTI-INDEPENDENCE  VOTER TYPES

The Patroniser: Independence? It will never happen – it’s Salmond and the SNP’s obsession – has always been a minority sport, as shown again and again by the polls. Two-term SNP Government elected? Simply a local reaction to last days of UK Labour, incompetence of Scottish Labour, the Crash and the Coalition – slap on the wrist for UK – will return to normal UK voting at referendum and in 2015. Give it up, mate – it’s a lost cause …”

A brief discussion with Patronisers quickly reveals that they have little conception of the arguments for and against independence and are sadly deficient in facts and key dates. Overall mode – complacency and reluctance to be confused by argument or hard information.

The Cringer: “Do you think Scotland’s big enough to run its own affairs? We haven’t got the people – just look at Holyrood – they’re all mediocrities in a wee, pretendy Parliament.  It would be all kilts and heather, Braveheart and tartan dolls. And the oil’s running out, there’s no real industry. All the real talent has left long ago – anybody with any sense heads south or emigrates. We couldn’t even run the Bank of Scotland – it caused the UK crash and we had to be bailed out by England. “

As in all classic Orwellian-doublethink, the Cringers don’t see themselves as inferior - or ready to head south or emigrate - and any current examples of Scottish success in running things can be dismissed by either claiming it’s an aberration – or down to UK involvement and help. Pointing to Scottish success in the past is either put down to Braveheartism or to the benefits of the Union. Overall mode – embarrassment at Scotland and Scottishness, complacency that their personal repudiation of Scottish competence somehow explains them being exempted from the criticisms, and the belief that it ingratiates them with UK power and influence.

The I’m Alright Jocks:I’ve got no complaints about the UK – it’s done alright by me. I bet it’s done alright by you too! What have we got to complain about? Yes, there’s been a bad patch since 2008 crash, and difficult things have had to be done, but we’re on the way back up. The poor? Hungry children? Pressures on the sick and vulnerable, the NHS, unemployment? There are no poor people! Have you seen any?

Growth in food banks? All exaggerated, and what do you expect – some people will always turn out for a freebie! I don’t see any deprivation or poverty near me. Most of those in trouble are in that state because of their fecklessness – they can all afford phones and iPads and holidays abroad on benefit. Too many scroungers, too many immigrants abusing NHS and benefits. My parents didn’t have much, but they scrimped and scraped to educate me, and I’ve done all right.”

There’s an element of the I’m Alright Jock callousness and denial of reality in all unionist types, but the above summarises the core ‘arguments’ in their most basic version. Overall mode: Denial of deprivation or blaming of the poor, belief in urban myths, blame, and utter callousness about the less-fortunate.

The Fearful: “The risks of dismantling a 300-year-old union are too great. These are dangerous times – we need the security of belonging to a larger, more powerful grouping. On defence, security, international clout, trade with other nations, we need the backing of UK. Duplication of services, inevitable in a newly-independent nation add extra cost and the risks of settling-in problems.”

Often mainly rational, albeit with an element of irrational fear, the Fearful will listen to argument and can be persuaded, providing their logic-based posture isn’t simply a rationalisation for deep-rooted, emotional opposition. A simple test is whether or not they’ve at least looked at the White Paper and/or are amenable to examining its argument. If they’re totally dismissive and contemptuous of it, they are probably a lost cause in the immediate term. Overall mode: The status quo of UK may not be perfect, but it’s the devil we know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

The Emotional Scot/Brit: “We have over three centuries of co-operation, a shared cultural and commercial heritage, we have fought and died together in wars for freedom, and justice. The links of family – kith and kin – cross all national boundaries. I don’t want my children and grandchildren to be foreigners, to have to stop at border points. We will lose a fundamental part of our identity – not to mention our shared institutions, e.g. BBC - if we rip the union apart.”

This category exists with subtle but important variations, e.g. are they Scot/Brits or Brit/Scots – which identity is regarded as more significant? The Emotional Scot/Brit mindset can also be part of other dominant modes, indeed it can represent a residual, buried emotional mindset in some marginal independence supporters! Some are actually seeking reassurance on these points. Their fears can either be factually removed by the truth - e.g. on boundaries, border posts – or are logically inconsistent – e.g. pointing out that we fought and died together with other independent nations in wars for freedom and justice, and the majority of wars were imperialist, unjust, and in some cases, illegal. (The Emotional Scot/Brit is often present in Don’t knows.) Overall mode: There are important, unquantifiable family and emotional ties that bind us, and it is a huge risk for the stability of the British Isles to sever them.

The Internationalist Multilateralists:

“Nationalism is inherently divisive – bigger is better, economically, socially and for powerful defence. Ultimately, I favour world co-operation across boundaries, and I believe all men and women are brothers and sisters, and are equal, regardless of social class, economic or ethnic background, but meanwhile I support the UK, despite its appalling imperial record of exploiting other nations and ethnic groups for centuries, and its current record of Parliamentary, police and press corruption, its gross inequality and staggering gap between rich and poor, its inherent distrust of and opposition to trades unions, its House of Lord comprising over eight hundred unelected peers, ennobled variously because of birth, being bishops on one church, large donors to political parties or being failed, but loyal politicians.

I am morally opposed to nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and would never be the first to use them – however … (and here comes the buts and the caveats) … but in a still unstable world, with unpredictable rogue regimes, I believe it is vital to hold on to our nuclear weapons and to our nuclear alliance with those countries – our allies - who got them first, resisting any attempts by other countries to get them (that’s called nuclear proliferation, by the way!) because we can be trusted with them but they can’t.  Of course, I’m committed to nuclear disarmament for the whole world, but only if every other country goes first – that’s called multilateralism.

As I said, I would advocate only using them as a deterrent and would never use them first, if at all, but I see no contradiction on being part of a nuclear alliance, NATO, that has a first-strike policy, and is dominated by the only country in history to have used nuclear weapons twice against cities in a non-nuclear country, Japan, and in a then non-nuclear world.

The various close misses of nuclear Armageddon over the last sixty years or so I dismiss as unfortunate aberrations caused by periodic gross incompetence of military or civil authorities, greedy and amoral industrialist or lunatic politicians – including at least one President of the USA

I suppose in summation, I regard it as deeply unpatriotic of Scottish independence supporters to want to be rid of weapons of mass destruction located without their consent near to their largest centre of population, posing an ever-present threat of nuclear accident, pollution, and of Scotland being a first-strike target by the lunatic foreign dictators our whole case for WMD is predicated on.

Overall mode: Utter idiocy, moral bankruptcy, venal hopes of profit, career and preferment – almost certainly a Scottish Labour politician in UK power structure. With a tiny number, a faint hope that the corrosive effect of their amoral sophistry is beginning to weaken the rotten foundations of their strategically and morally untenable position.

Saturday 4 January 2014

Cybernats – Eat your heart out!

I feel that cybernats are having their undeserved reputation for bad behaviour seriously challenged of late. Here are some of my favourites from my pre-moderation inbox of YouTube comments. PvPGodz Uk is my current favourite.  I really feel his (her?) formidably elegant powers of articulation of the Project Fear core arguments deserve a wider audience, and I commend them to Alistair Darling and Alistair Carmichael.

(Sadly, YouTube has been classifying them as spam of late, and despite their tickable boxes, I have no way of either deleting them or showcasing them to a wider public – except this.)

PvPGodz Uk

Why shouldn't we vote for independance? We are that busy thinking about we're gonna be the greatest nation in the Universe, but we are really gonna be bankrupt, we get food imported from other countrys, and some include the EU countrys we're getting the food from! We're getting threatened that if we go independant we won't be in the EU anymore, and where we gonna get half our food, eventually we'll run out and we'll be full of poverty! And if we get the 'Stirling Pound' tooken from us what we going to use, and to make factorys to produce money in scotland, or make another currency, it'll cost money to do that! Alex Salmon has no idea what we are gonna get ourselfs into, I'd borde the first train to England if they take the money! The Queen's brining in lots of money to 'Britain', and it won't be shared amoung us if we go independant, and we rely on the money we get from the Queen brining in money from tourists, and England will have the money, the currency, you name it! And we'll have nothing! 
NO TO INDEPENDANCE!

Michael Cawood

Dear Salmond, first you need to learn to run a piss-up at a brewery

Debra smith

If Scotland go independent, that means they are not British anymore, ergo they can't have our bloody currency!!! Let em have the euro and see how that works for em.
Vote for independence Scotland please, then you might stop your bitching about England , and how mean we are to you.

karezza777

How to be Scottish: 1. Eat deep fried Mars Bars. 2. Wear a skirt 3. Hunt Haggis 4. Believe in the Loch Ness Monster 5. Blame everything on England 6. Speak unintelligibly 7. Enjoy bagpipe noise 8. Say "Och aye the noo" 9. Drink nothing but whisky 10. Enjoy dreek weather

amicusalba

This is a shit video that tries to propagate the Nationalist Separatist agenda by Kim Il Salmond. Posted by an idiot for an idiot. Only 30% of Scots support this tit.

Adi B

A big part of Scotland economy is Edinburgh which is big financial city and most of the large private sector employers are financial businesses but when Scotland get independence forget AAA rating they will be a new small economy so will be counted as high risk so their rating will not be good. This will badly effect Edinburgh as financial business rely a lot on good rating like AAA but after independent most likely lot of the financial businesses will move their headquarters out of Edinburgh.

Sunday 10 November 2013

Shipbuilding and its politicisation by Iain Davidson and Alistair Carmichael – a media view …

The Dateline London foreign correspondents get to the heart of the shipbuilding jobs decision, recognising that it was Scottish politicians who made it political - and we know which ones - Iain Davidson and Alistair Carmichael, the so-called 'Scottish Secretary ...

 NESRINE MALIK: "It did start out as a non-political decision, but has become politicised - by Scottish politicians. ---- It was the Scottish politicians who said 'If you do vote for independence, we will ensure that shipbuilding stays in the UK ..." (She means rUK!)

I can do no better than quote from Iain Macwhirter''s superb analysis in the Sunday Herald, part of eight pages of insightful coverage of the complexities to the decision-making processes that so cruelly affected Portsmouth, Govan and Scotstoun shipyards.

IAIN MACWHIRTER (Sunday Herald)

"The UK Government relied on the tribalism of Scottish politics and the willingness of anti-nationalist politicians to trash their own nests to create a climate of uncertainty around Scottish shipbuilding at the moment it won the security that eluded the Clyde for decades. There was an inability to recognise Scotland won for a change. Perhaps it is a kind of industrial defeatism Scotland has got so used to industrial closures we expect them.

"There is a parallel here with the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. The dispute there should never have been allowed to become a closure issue, and in allowing it to, the unions involved seemed to follow a 1980s script in which the workers always go down to heroic failure"

But back in March 2012, what were they saying?

Monday 14 October 2013

Alistair Carmichael fumbles and blusters on what happens after a NO vote in 2014

Alexander Morrison "Alistair" Carmichael, the new ‘Scottish’ Secretary opens by criticising the YES Campaign for "lack of detail" and the second half of the interview blustering feebly, unable to give any detail or any consensus among the parties of Better Together on perhaps the biggest question of all for the Scottish electorate - What happens if there is a No vote?

(Real answer: Devo Zero and likely clawback of existing powers under Scotland Act, not to mention utter UK contempt for Scots and Scotland for failing to seize their chance of independence.)

Alistair, his party and his Tory and Labour friends will tell us only AFTER we reject our only opportunity to gain full powers through a YES vote for independence. The three parties that will then engage in a bitter UK election battle in 2015, with the gruesome UKIP snapping at their heels, driving them even further to the right.

In contrast, the SNP's White Paper will set out, next month, highly specific commitments on the structure and shape of a new Scotland, in as much detail as can be achieved before the major negotiation with UK after a YES vote, and the subsequent election for an independent Scottish Parliament in May 2016, where the Scottish electorate for the first time for 306 years will truly elect their own Scottish Government.

Bluster on that, Alistair ...