The morning after – strike reflections - and John Hutton

I wholly support the public service workers in their grievance against the UK Government, and I support their decision to strike in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I do not support their decision to strike in Scotland, for reasons already stated over the last few days.

But watching the strikers on television, my reaction was that maybe it had to happen, even if the rationale was deeply flawed. It was probably cathartic, and even a little bit enjoyable for hard-pressed public servants, and it did demonstrate to the  critics of their dispute just how important, indeed vital, their roles are, and what an extended dispute, or a series of such disputes would mean.

The complacent and doing-very-nicely-thank-you professional couples in the private sector, with joint incomes in excess of £70-100k who suddenly found that mummy or daddy had to stay home – or find a child minder pronto – were jolted into an uncomfortable realisation of what further strikes could mean. Those on more stratospheric incomes of course would be utterly untouched by it, and probably have an arms-length relationships with their children anyway, safely tucked away in a fee-paying boarding school, or with a resident nanny to handle things.

Regrettably, there were also working couples on very low incomes and one-parent families who had to sacrifice a day’s pay, which I know from my own economically deprived Glasgow childhood could be disastrous to precariously balance finances. They are the real inevitable casualties of such disputes, as were the patients in hospitals or people in care homes who also suffered. But third parties, innocent and some not so innocent, are hurt by strikes, and that is a harsh reality. What must be remembered is that it takes two to tango, and both parties to a dispute are jointly responsible for the collateral damage, not just the strikers.

But what I know for certain is that the strikers of yesterday will be asking themselves just what did they achieve, other than their moment on the media and exercising their lungs with a good chant and a good blow at their vuvuzelas? Post-orgasm comes sober reflection.

Perhaps as they lie back with a post-strike fag, they can also reflect on the fact that the author of their miseries, paraded and repeatedly quoted by David Cameron and every one of his millionaire pals, was that ultimate contradiction, a Labour Lord – John Hutton, Baron of Furness.

JOHN HUTTON

The Bloody Red Baron has an interesting background for a Labour man. Educated at Magdalen College Oxford, where he was a member of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Associations, he became a legal adviser to the CBI before entering politics. He held various governmental posts, and was one of Tony Blair’s strongest supporters. He told Nick Robinson of the BBC that Gordon Brown would be a “fucking disaster” as Prime Minister. (He got that one right.) Nonetheless he survived and served under the “fucking disaster” as Secretary of State for Defence, the luxury coach of the Westminster gravy train.

He decided to stand down less than a year later, and said he would stand down as an MP at the next general election. Shortly after the general election of 2010, he was made a Labour peer. In the same month (June 2010) he joined the board of US nuclear power company Hyperion. He was told he couldn’t lobby his former department, the M.O.D. for 12 months. Thereafter, it would be fine to do so.

A year after that, he accepted the Tory/LibDem Coalition’s offer to head up a commission into public centre pensions, and dismissed speculation about his motives for doing so.

The Labour Baron has told the unions that they have been offered a good deal on pensions. Aye, right …

THE UK GRAVY TRAIN – a train the strikers will never be on …

Reflect also on this, strikers of yesterday, and perhaps tomorrow – none of the main UK parties have any answers to what lies ahead, because they are embedded in a corrupt structure – the UK – and they can’t step off the rotten wagon careering towards the edge of the cliff.

The Lords can’t step off because it would be the end for them.

The Scottish Labour Lords can’t step off, because in addition to losing their titles, there would be nowhere for them to go.

The Tories can’t step off because they are inherently undemocratic and wedded to greed.

Labour MPs can’t step off because they have deserted their people and become Tories Mark Two.

Scottish Labour MPs can’t step off because it would be the end of the Westminster gravy train and of their careers.

Scottish Labour MSPs can’t step off because they want to be MPs and join the gravy train to Westminster one day.

The LibDem MPs can’t step off because it would be electoral oblivion for them if they submitted themselves for re-election.

Scottish LibDems have already experienced electoral oblivion, they face the same problem as Scottish Labour, and anyway, nobody would notice if they stepped off. 

Only one party stand outside and above this rotten structure – the Scottish National Party. And only one thing will allow Scotland and Scots to step outside of it.

INDEPENDENCE

Iain Gray, Scotland’s Invisible Man, is nailed to the floor over the Megrahi Release by Isabel Fraser

The Politics Show Scotland, with the superb Isabel Fraser in the chair.

Iain Gray, Scotland's invisible man, is again pinned to the floor on his Holyrood party's hypocrisy over the Megrahi release. He waffles about what he knew, what he says he didn't know, what he said and didn't say to Gordon Brown, and tries to maintain the utterly ludicrous position that Scottish Labour had a shred of independence from their London-based party and Westminster bosses.

A puppet trying to pretend that his strings weren't pulled ...

He attempts, yet again, to muddy the water over slopping out, trying to maintain the ConLib, Labour UK and unionist media desperate attempt to limit the damage - initially caused by the Wikileaks disclosure of their dirty double-dealing  - by smearing the SNP, but is nailed on the vital timescale discrepancy that is the gaping hole in the UK lie.

But the polls would indicate that Labour has been rumbled, and the Scottish people will trust their ain folk. The Middle East is convulsed by oppressed peoples trying to throw off corrupt dictators. Scotland is under the heel of a corrupt democracy, the United Kingdom, but only needs the ballot box to get the hell out from under it.

Vote for your ain folk on May 5th, Scots - vote SNP - the only party that acts solely in the interests of Scots and Scotland, while playing a full, moral part in the European and the international communities.

Andrew Neill, Jack Straw and Megrahi

It couldn't be clearer - the Labour Government was prepared to release him FOR COMMERCIAL and TRADE REASONS before he was ill.

At that time, the Scottish Government refused point blank to release him, and refused to accept that any deal made by Westminster or the application of the PTA to Scotland. No deal of any kind relating to Megrahi's release was offered or made by the Scottish Government Alex Salmond or Kenny McAskill.

This is a press smear which one source today suggested began with the right-wing Tory blogger, Guido Fawkes.

(David Cameron's dilemma in using the Wikileaks revelations to release the story - with the intent of damaging Labour's electoral prospects in England - was that it would also damage the puppet Labour Party in Scotland, and consequentially strengthen the SNP's position, thus threatening the Union. A convenient smear against the SNP was therefore a prudent insurance policy against such an outcome. May 5th will reveal how this sordid ploy has played out with the Scottish electorate.)

When Megrahi was diagnosed as having terminal cancer with 3 months to live by the Scottish Prison medical service, Kenny McAskill alone took the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds in accordance with Scottish Law.

The idea that an SNP government would have cooperated with a Westminster Labour Government in any way over the dirty, expedient, realpolitik deal initially stitched up by Tony Blair ('the deal in the desert') and subsequently carried forward in clandestine negotiations by the Brown Government and Straw is utterly inconceivable- ludicrous, in fact.

The only alternative explanations for the hypocritical behaviour of Iain Gray and Richard Baker in Holyrood at the time of the Megrahi release decision and subsequently is

that they were NOT told what their Party bosses were doing at Westminster and acted in folly and ignorance

or

THAT THEY KNEW, concealed the fact that they knew, yet continued to make expedient political capital out of the situation in the vain hope that the truth would never come out.

In either case, in so doing, they damaged their own reputations, the reputation of Labour, the reputation of the Scottish Parliament and the interests of Scottish Justice.