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Showing posts with label Better Together. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Better Together. Show all posts

Friday 1 February 2013

A wee collection of ‘insult’ videos – and P.G.Wodehouse …

Among the writers of English prose I most admire is P.G. Wodehouse, and one of his most-quoted – and misquoted - lines is this one -

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine

It has been used to support almost every conceivable position on Scots and Scotland, usually pejoratively and often highly selectively. It is a favourite among Englishmen who like to patronise Scots, and among unionist Scots who like to patronise nationalist Scots (the ones who believe their country should be independent, like most other democratic countries across the globe). It is used to justify reaction to near-racist abuse – vitriol passed off as humour.

For the delightful ‘Plum’ (P.G. Wodehouse) – the least racist of men, despite his unfortunate wartime experience with the Nazis, caused by his naivety – it was just another keen observation of human character and character types.

I have long realised and commented on what I call the politics of insult, and its power to create a reaction and galvanise opinion. I can track it from reactions to my YouTube videos, tweets and blogs. In fact, one of the factors that converted me to nationalism in the first place was the systematic patronising and insulting of nationalist Scots, and indeed Scots in general by Westminster.

Of course, there are many who feel it is an over-reaction and demonstrates a lack of humour to react. My feeling is they don’t know their history in respect of racial and political ‘humour’, especially of colonial Britain, of Ireland, and of that fermenting decade, the 1930s, especially in continental Europe.

Last night's ‘joke’ by a member of the Lancaster Question Time audience, and the audience’s reaction to it is a recent example – a clip post less than 24 hours ago is currently running at over 3100 hits, and has provoked a torrent of comments. Here it is, plus just a few from my collection – there are many more …

Friday 27 July 2012

Olympic tweets–flags, propaganda, commercialisation–and sport?


Tweets

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

The London Olympics are beginning to resemble a North Korean rally. I'm sad for dedicated competitors coerced into UK political propaganda.

 

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

Olympic message from BetterTogether to No.10 - Try and create as many Scottish knights as you can if we get any golds. Maybe even Lords?

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

Olympic message from BetterTogether: Just shut up about attempts to politicise it, wave a Union Jack, cheer the competitors and think Brit!

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

Do I admire the sportsmen and women in the Olympics? Yes, I do. Do I admire its sordid commercialisation and politicisation? No, I don't ..

8h Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

The other countries competing in the Olympics are truly countries. TeamGB is not: it is a state conglomerate - 3 countries (2 reluctant) +NI

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

Ludicrous UK Olympics argument - big countries compete more effectively. Oh, aye? Why not TeamEU, then, or TeamWesternWorld vs WickedEast?

Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

Can the Olympics find any more Scots athletes to festoon with Union Jacks? Has the Olympics become part of the BetterTogether campaign?

 Peter Curran Peter Curran@moridura

The sporting element in the Olympics has been hijacked for commercial interests and 'Britishness' propaganda. The Times is full of it today.

Saturday 7 July 2012

Better Together in the rotten UK? Naw …

Is Scotland really Better Together in the UK?

In a country where the criminal powerful are rarely called to account? "Once you've broken through a certain membrane of power, whether in politics or in business, you are untouchable ..."

Where politicians condone and facilitate corporate irresponsibility?

Where 'double messages' are given out by senior politicians? "Every government, whichever colour the government is, tries to play a double game" by fund raising from rich bankers while giving out  critical moral messages?

Where there is a 'crisis of legitimacy' in institutions?

Where 'an extraordinarily rich class' avoids its responsibilities?

Where a million children don't have enough to eat, and are malnourished?

The UK is a state in 'a big malaise'. In fact it's rotten to the core of its failing institutions, a conspiracy of wealth and power moving ever further away from the people.

Better Together? With this? Scotland must say YES to its independence in 2014

Is Scotland really Better Together in the UK for defence?

The critical issue is defence - the nuclear 'deterrent', Trident, and the UK's outdated concept of itself as a world power.

Devomax, devoplus, devo-whatever - nothing short of full independence will deliver Scotland from the obscenity - and utter irrelevance - of nuclear weapons - of their fundamental immorality and inhumanity.

Say YES to Scotland's independence, and let our defence forces be truly for defence, not for brutal aggression against other nations.

Sunday 1 July 2012

A nautical metaphor for Scotland and the UK. Big ships and wee ships?

While the big ship goes down, the small ship may stay afloat in turbulent seas.

A small ship can avoid icebergs and navigate the most turbulent seas, survive the worst storms. If its captain and crew are competent, disciplined, have clarity of objectives, trust each other and above all, understand the sea - an elemental environment without malice and without pity – the vessel will successfully hold its course.

The small ship seems vulnerable because of its size, yet its size is its strength, as seafarers have known from coracle to sailing ship. And in flexible co-operation with other small ships, sometimes in convoy, it has even greater strength yet sacrifices no autonomy.

The big ship offers an illusion of security, of power and control, yet its turning circle is so long and so slow that it cannot easily change course, cannot easily avoid the icebergs.

The diversions and entertainments offered by the large vessel lull the passengers into a false sense of security, help them to forget they are on the high seas: they are easily convinced that the captain and officers know what they are doing. The crew - closer to reality – know better, but dare not question their direction and judgement.

The passengers, having paid for the voyage, have surrendered their control for the duration: the last real decision they made was to board the ship. The only real decision they may have left is when to abandon ship and take to the boats, and even that decision may be taken away from them.

A fire in the hold of a small ship may be easily doused: a fire in the hold of a large ship may reach the proportions of a conflagration before it is detected, and then it may be too late. When crisis strikes a small ship, the crew and captain are united against the threat. When crisis strikes a large ship, panic and disorder may reign supreme, and the powerful may act to save themselves, not the passengers.

The real owners of a small ship are usually on board. The real owners of a large ship are usually safely on land, often in a  different country to that of most of the passengers, subject to different laws, or no laws at all.

They are insured – they are immune - they can find more passengers and more ships to profit from. This ship and passengers are expendable, but if salvageable, can be exploited yet again.

Reflect on the metaphor – limited as all metaphors and analogies are – in relation to Scotland’s independence of the United Kingdom, its freedom to determine its own course in turbulent seas.

Saturday 30 June 2012

What brought me to the SNP in May 2007

Saturday, 30 June 2012

I thought I would repost my reasons for switching from being a lifetime Labour voter to the Scottish National party in the 2007 election. This piece appeared as a guest blog on the YouScotland site just before the May 3rd election, on May Day 2007.


Why I am voting SNP May Day 2007
In the Glasgow I grew up in, if you didn't support the Labour Party, you were either well-off or something more complex, aspirational. My widowed mother and I lived in a decaying tenement in Dennistoun; my father had died of tuberculosis, after the humiliation and degradation of unemployment in the 1930s. We typified the kind of people for whom the Labour Party had been brought into existence, and our support for Labour was instinctive and fundamental.

I have always been a Labour voter, but never a Party member. My support has been at the ballot box, with occasional canvassing and leafleting activity, and some modest financial support. Throughout the nightmare years of Thatcher, I railed against the infighting of the Party that kept it from effectively challenging the Tories, and I was ecstatic when Tony Blair strode into Downing Street on a great wave of popular acclaim, carrying with him the hopes of millions like me.

But then the progressive, insidious betrayals began - the gradual erosion of cabinet government, the cynical news management, the toadying to money and celebrity, the marginalisation of dissent, the attack on personal freedom under the law. It seemed only a matter of time until a great defining political issue would reveal the fault line in Blair's government, and it came - Iraq.

As we moved inexorably towards the war, I began to write to the newspapers, especially the Glasgow Herald, and in early March 0f 2003, closed a long letter by saying -

"Iraq has become the defining political issue of our time, and the questions that will be asked of politicians (and all of us) is - where were you when there was still time to stop it?"

In May of 2003, after the resignation of Claire Short, I again wrote to the Herald -

"There are two kinds of dictator - those who seize power by force and those who erode parliamentary and cabinet processes gradually while maintaining the appearance of democracy. To Labour MPs I have this to say - get him (Blair) out before it is too late for the party and the nation. Our own Scottish Parliament is now finely balanced enough to permit a debate and a vote on the threat to our egalitarian traditions posed by this man, who appears committed to the belief that the fundamental organising principle of the State is war."

Labour MPs and MSPs did neither. Gordon Brown, the man who boasts of his moral compass, fully complicit in bankrolling the war, did nothing, either from political cowardice or because he endorsed it.

I have carried in my head over all the decades the rationale for supporting the Labour Party, or indeed any political party, inculcated into me in my early youth in Glasgow.

Be loyal to a political party only to the degree that it shares your ideals. Policies reflect ideals - a party with ideals and no policies is a waking dream, but a party with policies and no ideals is an empty shell.

Scotland made the Labour Party, and Scotland can unmake it if it betrays its ideals.

Both of these maxims have now come to haunt me in the dog days of Blair's government. Blair, Brown, their supporters, and the toom tabard, Jack McConnell, have betrayed my ideals, and, I believe, the ideals of millions of Labour Party supporters and members. The majority of Labour MPs and MSPs are fully complicit in that betrayal. I reject them and all their works. The Labour Party I knew and loved is dead.


Only one politician of stature asks me to lift my head and look at a horizon that reveals a vibrant, nuclear-free Scotland, an equal partner in the European community of nations - only one politician and one party offers to restore my political idealism - Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party.

The SNP will have my vote on May the 3rd 2007. I have never been a nationalist by instinct, but I believe that it now represents our last, best hope.

May the Labour Party rest in peace among its honourable dead, while Blair, Brown and their cohorts contemplate the charnel house they have made of Iraq, and their destruction of a once great political party.

SUMMARY
My faith in the Scottish National Party and Alex Salmond has been fully vindicated in the five years since then, and any vestiges of respect and sympathy for the Labour Party have been utterly extinguished by their behaviour in Westminster and in Holyrood. I trust the Scottish National Party to bear in mind my old Glasgow political maxim -

Be loyal to a political party only to the degree that it shares your ideals. Policies reflect ideals - a party with ideals and no policies is a waking dream, but a party with policies and no ideals is an empty shell. (The SNP needs to remember that too ...)