Scotland’s soul – as perceived in 2009 –before the Faustian bargain with ‘Britishness’ and NATO began to rot it.

Scotland's soul - before devo-max ideas, before consultants got a hold of it, before 'Britishness', before the NATO U-turn, before the removal of Trident WMDs from our waters became an ever more fuzzy concept in timing and execution, before those who had some idea of what that soul really was became described as fundamentalists and were advised to close ranks and stop rocking the boat.

The boat being rocked is, of course, a Trident, NATO-controlled, effectively American-controlled nuclear submarine carrying a destructive power beyond the understanding of some who should know better.

The SNP and NATO – an internal party matter or a question for Scotland?

Here is a little problem for a class of undergraduates studying politics and international affairs, majoring in defence matters -

ON A PLANET NEAR YOU – A SCENARIO

A political party within a democratic nation state has a long-standing policy relating to a defence alliance, of fundamental relevance to the relationship that state has with other states. The political party is in a highly unusual situation - probably unique in world affairs - for the following reasons -

1. It is currently the party in a devolved government for one of the four component countries of that nation state.

2. It only exists as a party in that country and its raison d'être is to secure its independence from that nation state.

3. The long-standing defence alliance policy is not within its devolved powers, and is reserved to the nation state, which is a member of that defence alliance.

4. The political party forming the government of the component country of the nation state has scheduled a referendum in two years time to seek a mandate from that country’s electorate to negotiate with the nation state for its independence. The nation state is totally opposed to the independence of the component devolved country, but accepts that the referendum will determine the will of its people.

5. A general election for the government of the nation state will take place in May of the year following the referendum, a period of around six months. A devolved Parliamentary election for the country seeking independence will take place one year after that, a period of around 18 months from the referendum.

6. If the result of the referendum is a YES vote for the independence of the devolved country, complex negotiations will follow and are likely to last at least two years, and will therefore cover a period embracing two critical elections, either of which could result in a change of government.

7. The crucial issue, and potentially the most complex issue in these negotiations will be the defence issue. Central to that is the issue of nuclear weapons, and a policy to possess and use these weapons.

8. The nation state is a member of a defence alliance that includes in total 28 member countries, the dominant country in that alliance being one of the most powerful countries in the world, arguably the most powerful, although that dominance is being challenged.

9. The party that forms the government of the devolved country seeking independence from the nation state has a non-nuclear policy that it will implement if it secures its independence. The devolved country hosts the entire nuclear capacity of the nation state of which it is a component part and it is virtually certain that if it refuses to host that nuclear capacity - if and after it secures its independence - the nation state will lose its nuclear status, since it has no suitable place to host the nuclear weapons systems. It will therefore lose its place among the top three countries in the defence alliance who effectively control that alliance, and it is likely also to lose its place on the Security Council of the global body that has a major impact on world affairs, especially military affairs.

10. The party that forms the government of the devolved country – with an unchallengeable Parliamentary majority – has now proposed to its membership, through its strategic leadership with the de facto endorsement of its party leader, who is also First Minister of the government, a defence policy that reiterates its non-nuclear stance but intends to reverse its long-standing policy of opposition to membership of the nuclear alliance committed to the possession and use of nuclear weapons.

It now wishes to remain in – or join – that nuclear alliance, with the pre-condition that the nuclear weapons crucial to the nation state and significant to the defence alliance be removed from its country. It proposes to debate that policy change, together with its total defence policy, at its annual conference with delegates to that conference, and if the policy is endorsed, it will then constitute the entry position to the negotiations that will follow a YES vote in the referendum two years later.

The defence policy (already extant as a party conference paper) will be presented to the country’s electorate about a year later, together with comprehensive statements about every aspect of the position of the devolved government, as part of the campaign for a YES vote to independence a year after that.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS

Discuss the following in group session, then reach your conclusions and recommendations -

Consider the above scenario and the following facts -

the party of government of the devolved country will not face the electorate until after the referendum on independence

such a policy change is therefore unchallengeable by the electorate until after the referendum

it will therefore form the entry position on defence matters in the negotiation that follow a YES vote

the negotiations will have been underway for some 18 months – and may well be close to completion - before the devolved government faces the electorate

a general election will take place some six months after the referendum result and the start of the negotiations that could result in a change of government of the nation state and therefore the composition of the other side of the negotiating table

QUESTIONS

i) Is the defence alliance question a routine party policy matter, one only for delegates of that party to decide on?

ii) Is the defence policy a major or a minor matter in terms of significance to the electorate of the devolved country, or does it also have significance to the nation state, the members of the defence alliance and to world affairs?

iii) Is it it reasonable or democratic that such a crucial policy change be debated by a small number of delegates from one political party only, or should there be a wider consultation among the total electorate of the devolved country and in its devolved Parliament?

Nicola Sturgeon on Trident on Question Time, 7th May 2009

Nicola in May 2009 in Dunfermline - only two years into the SNP's first term of minority government, filled with passion and deep anti-nuclear commitment. I wonder what she would have said then about NATO membership proposals?

If only the SNP could summon some of that clarity and vision before October, and the debate on the deeply misguided proposal to join NATO - in fact, we need more vintage Nicola, and need to hear more of her clear voice and passion for Scotland in the critical two years ahead of us.

Laughing at FM’s idea of trading nukes for “something more useful” …

From Jul 19, 2012

Science, politics and religion – the growth of irrationality in national life

". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right."
Thomas Jefferson

What brought this quote to mind again? Partly a continuing concern about the role of the media in the independence debate, and a recollection of the quote heading a feature in New Scientist, October 2011 edition. This 8-page special report by Shawn Lawrence Otto and Peter Aldhous examines the decline and fall of reason in American politics and public life. Its two introductory paragraphs set the scene -

“The US was founded on enlightenment values and is the most powerful scientific nation on earth. And yet the status of science in public life has never appeared to be so low.

…. US politics, especially on the right, appears to have entered a parallel universe where ignorance, denial and unreason trump facts, evidence and rationality.” New Scientist, Decline and Fall, Oct. 2011

Shawn Lawrence Otto’s article is full of little gems, among them quotes from the Republican candidates as they then were for the 2012 Presidential election. After a litany of their irrational, non-scientific and often religious dogma-based views on various matters, including evolution, creationism, vaccination, climate change, homosexuality – which would be risible if they were not so terrifying – he makes the chilling point that “Republicans diverge from anti-science politics at their peril” and cites Mitt Romney hastily recanting on his view that humans contributed to global warming when faced with an attack from right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh.

On Congress, he has this to say -

“Less than 2 per cent of its 535 members have professional backgrounds in science. In contrast, there are 222 lawyers, whom one suspects largely avoided science classes in college. Lawyers are trained to win arguments, and as any trial lawyer will tell you, that means using facts selectively for the purposes of winning, not to establish the truth. No wonder ideology and rhetoric have come to dominate policy discussion, often bearing little relationship to factual reality.” Shawn Otto Lawrence Oct. 2011

But to me, his most telling observation is this one -

Science is politics

“But to view science as apolitical is a fundamental error. Science is always political because the new knowledge it created requires refining our morals and ethics, and challenges vested interests. Withdrawing from the conversation cedes these discussions to opponents, which is exactly what happened.” Shawn Otto Lawrence Oct. 2011

He goes on to describe the retreat of American science from the political arena, leaving the field clear for fundamentalist religion to address the fears of the people over “the increasing moral complexities of science" in a voice that “grew evangelical, angry, anti-science and intensely political.”

We don’t have to look to America to recognise these profoundly anti-democratic tendencies at work – they are dangerously alive right here in Scotland and the UK, on climate change, on gay marriage, on renewable energy sources, on the role of churches and religions in a secular democracy, on nuclear energy, on defence, on the nuclear deterrent, on foreign interventionism, on the nature of nationalism, on religious education in schools, in the history curriculum, in faith schools, on House of Lords reform, the monarchy, the established church – the list goes on.

With a few notable exceptions, scientists and engineers are not drawn to either politics or religion as a career or, to be more high-minded, as a vocation.

Politics once was a choice for those of independent means – the landed aristocracy - but now those with a military background, business people, teachers, lawyers and, for around a century now, trades unionists predominate. These groups usually only entered the political process proper after establishing themselves for some years in their original professions.

With the growth of the significance of media in politics, media professionals can be added to this list, and we now have another group, the professional career politicians – direct entrants to politics with relevant degrees, usually a PPE degree (philosophy, politics and economics) who enter as special advisers, often on a basis a patronage or sponsorship, and move effortlessly into representative roles as MPs, MSPs, etc. (For some of the latter, it has become almost a hereditary calling, if not a family business venture.)

There are also doubtless a fair number of economists and accountants in Parliament among those I have lumped together as business people, not to mention stockbrokers and city people. Since most of these occupations require no more than the basic numeracy of a bookie’s clerk (in fact most bookie’s clerks could run rings round them!) the number of MPs and MSPs who have to capacity to evaluate the mathematical and statistical validity and significance of vital scientific evidence, social statistics, and dare I mention it, opinion polls results is probably miniscule.

(For the record, I count myself among those with strictly limited numeracy, although numbers have formed a central part of my business career. But I have at least a very basic grasp of probability, of statistics, of sampling, and of the vital logical processes required for any voter to distinguish shit from Shinola when it comes to the political arguments and the confident assertions of politicians and journalists.)

One only has to scan the front benches of the UK Parliament to see the results of this. Of course, the argument is that the democratic institutions of a nation have to represent the diversity of that nation, and as Churchill once observed drily, this must perforce include some idiots.

Specialised expertise can supposedly be drawn when required from the permanent civil service and from special advisers and experts. Yet embarrassing examples of the polarisation of expert opinion when it comes to supposedly immutable facts relating to the independence of Scotland have abounded.

Let’s look at the polarisation in our world, now reflected in the great debate started by the questions surrounding Scotland’s independence, a debate that has ramifications far beyond Scotland – for the UK, for England, for Wales, for Northern Ireland, for the Republic of Ireland, for Catalonia, for Canada and Quebec, for Europe, for Scandinavia, for NATO and, through the defence alliance, for the US. These are not the fantasies of a Scottish nationalist , they are a stark political reality, as the recent furore over Michael Ignatieff and Canada and Quebec has so recently demonstrated.

Doubtless inadvertently omitting all sort of vital questions, here’s what I see as some of the big global issues -

Global warming/climate change

World poverty and gross inequalities across the range of vital resources – food, water, medical care, etc..

World’s water supply

Nuclear weapons

Nuclear power

Islam and Christianity – crisis of competing values

Religious fundamentalism in any creed

Tensions between religious and secular values

The Arab Spring and its consequences for both successful and unsuccessful liberation movements

Israel and the Palestinians

The US and its relationship with Israel

China’s exponential growth in the world economy

The Afghanistan war

Iraq’s instability

Iran and nuclear power/weapons

North Korea – nuclear weapons and instability

Pakistan and India – political instability and tensions: nuclear issues

Russia – instability and nuclear issues

The US – political polarisation and instability

International finance and banking – scale of operation, instability, amorality

The operations, values, ethics of multi-national and transnational companies

All of the above affect Europe and the UK.

(I have avoided comment on events and problems in many other countries – e.g. Latin America, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand, Indonesia -  because I don’t know enough to determine their significance. )

Among the European issues are  -

The Future of the EU and the euro

Economic instability of some European nations

Immigration

The resurgence of neo-fascism and the far right.

NATO and defence issues

The UK - political instability, loss of trust in key institutions, gross inequalities between regions:

also - the Irish question – North and South: The UK’s concept of its role in the world: the Falklands: the economic problems: the monarchy: the loss of electoral dominance by the three major parties: the nature of devolution as a process: the House of Lords: the dominance of Oxbridge people and values in business and political life – the list is pretty well endless …

It is obvious that Scotland is affected, directly or indirectly by all of these issues.

What is becoming increasingly obvious by the month is that Scotland’s independence referendum, and the implications of that potential independence, impinge on many of them, out of all proportion to Scotland’s size as a country, however measured.

It is no exaggeration to say the Scotland's independence is the butterfly’s wing flap - Butterfly effect - that will trigger significant world reactions with unforeseeable consequences – a great wind that bloweth where it listeth.

As the referendum lead-time shortens, every one of the above issues will be brought into play by both the pro and anti-independence camps, and the arguments will be supported by conflicting numbers, expert evidence and conflicting perspectives of key events.

The voter, bemused, will either abandon the struggle, opting out or respond to superficial political slogans and old loyalties, or alternatively, will call in vain  for non-partisan, unimpeachable professionals to help them through the fog,  since there are few or none in a question of this scale and import.

But many will claim to be such sources - the think tanks, funded by big-moneyed individuals with dubious agendas and vested interest groups, religious groups substituting dogma for reason, the tabloid press, and the big-mouthed columnists who substitute rants for reason.

Since the crucial skills of comparing, validating and evaluating information sources, the relative merits of conflicting arguments and the validity of statistical claims are rarely taught in our schools in a political or religious context, many voters will fail to make the distinction between opinion and informed opinion, between information and propaganda and spin.

The skills of the advocate and the lawyer will shade insidiously into the skills of the PR people and the hidden persuaders, and will obscure the objective methodology of the scientist, the engineer, the mathematician.

Some scientists and engineers will be complicit in this process, serving the false God of their political and social prejudices at the expense of objectivity and truth, not to mention the nutty professors and bought-and-paid-for academics who will pop up, justifying their lucrative US lecture tours and research grants bankrolled by big oil interests opposed to renewables, and right-wing military/industrial complex money, enamoured of war and nuclear weaponry, fuelling paranoia.

What to do?

Well, that must be reserved for a subsequent blog, once I get the ideas rattling round in my head that the local elections started off sorted out into some sort of coherent proposals …

Douglas Alexander’s speech to conference - takes refuge in the fiction of Labour internationalism

Douglas Alexander’s theme is simple – an independent Scotland would be narrowly nationalistic. The UK -  i.e. Labour in government or Labour influencing government in Westminster - is internationalist, not nationalistic.

The central theme is untrue, and therefore everything that flows from it is untrue. From the flawed premise, the flawed conclusions flow, in a gooey mix of sentimentality and nostalgia, an anecdotal, selective mix, posing as history.

The UK is a nation, behaves as a nation, but on occasion acts internationally from altruistic, internationalist motives. Scotland will be an independent nation, will behave as an independent nation, but on occasion, will act from altruistic, internationalist motives.

The other argument, that the UK can be more effectively internationalist because of its greater size than Scotland is an argument that can be honestly advanced, even though the facts of history do not support it.

Let’s take Alexander’s early examples -

Does he think that the Scots who were part of the International Brigade to fight fascism would not have done so had Scotland been an independent country in the 1930s?

Does he think that Scotland, never mind just the City of Glasgow would not have embraced Nelson Mandela in the 1980s? You have a short and selective memory, Douglas – I do not. The Glasgow decision was widely derided by the very nation he holds up for our admiration – the UK, still in the grip of its late Empire delusions and deeply confused about South Africa and Mandela. Of course an independent, internationalist, social democratic Scotland would have embraced Mandela.

Does he think that the morality of Gordon Brown in working to write off the debt of the world’s poorest countries – an admirable morality that regrettably was not matched by his or his government’s economic competence in their own country – would not be the same morality that will drive an independent Scotland, an inclusive Scotland that will embrace the very same Labour people that once had such values, and who will recover and reassert them in the new Scotland.

Does he think that an independent Scotland would not make the same demand that a Labour government made at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005? Of course it would, but more effectively than that Summit, when one considers what followed it – utter failure and near-global meltdown from 2008 onwards.

Alexander asserts, with justification, that he and his parent’s horizons – “like millions of their fellow Scots” – were never limited to one community or one country. Nor will they be after independence, Douglas, especially when freed from the suffocating jingoism and Little Englandism that is the UK.

And an independent Scotland will not express its wide international horizons by launching an illegal invasion and an illegal war that brought death and destruction to millions in Iraq, destabilised the Middle East and brought endemic terrorism and paranoia to the United Kingdom. Tony Blair’s immoral and destructive internationalism are carefully airbrushed out of Douglas Alexander’s high-minded and selective agenda.

“From the Eurozone Crisis to the Environment, from Export Markets to Mass Migration, interdependence – not independence - is the hallmark of our age.”

So says Douglas – and he’s right. He has missed out the part that includes countries across the globe throwing off suffocating and corrupt regimes that stifle their instincts for a national independence allied to a recognition of true interdependence.

Alexander is part of a nation that is the rump of an empire that denied all of these freedoms, and imposed its exploitative will for centuries on large tracts of our world – a rump that currently has a Coalition Government that is deeply divided over Europe and that very interdependence that he extols. And his own party is not free from such insularity and euro paranoia either.

But Douglas Alexander does eventually drop the Labour –as-internationalist-party stuff, and gets to the nub of his real argument – bigger is better.

DA: “If we want to advance international cooperation: Britain has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. A separate Scotland would not.”

Scotland at the moment has no influence at the moment as a result of that UN seat. It has had no influence under successive governments, and indeed it was the Labour Government of Blair and Brown that chose to ignore the UN and its mandate when they launched the Iraq War on a lie in conjunction with a right-wing American regime.

DA: “If we want to strengthen our collective security: Britain has a permanent seat on the Council of NATO.”

The same arguments as above apply, Labour and Lord George Robertson notwithstanding. What has been delivered to Scotland by NATO? Defending it from a non-existent threat? Parking outmoded and strategically irrelevant WMDs in Scottish waters, making us a prime target for a nuclear exchange, and polluting our environment? Imposing a crippling financial burden on the UK as a whole and on  Scotland to support these weapons systems?

I have already said a fair amount about the internationalist fiction that drives – and has driven Labour – for most of its history. The nonsensical contradictions of Labour’s internationalist posturing were evident in the post-war period and during the Cold War. They reached their nadir in Iraq and Afghanistan.

See my blog of 10th January 2012 -

Labour's last redoubt - internationalism

Who are we? - or - Who were we in 2007/08? Mitchell/Bennie/Johns report

Scotland on Sunday yesterday …

Well, Scotland on Sunday - and The Scotsman - are yesterday – they have little to do with political realities in Scotland today. The Herald, to their credit (I hope it reflects in their circulation soon) is awakening to Scotland as it really is, as Glasgow starts to emerge from its long, dark Labour night.

In an edition that reeked of superficial negativism and hostility to the SNP, the party of government, chosen so overwhelmingly by the Scottish electorate last May, SoS homed in on The Mitchell/Bennie/Johns report - who are the SNP members?

This report deserves much more serious examination than Scotland on Sunday’s and Kenny Farquarson’s tabloid analysis gave to it.

The Mitchell report is a four-year old snapshot of a party - the Scottish National Party - in a nation, Scotland, that is changing very rapidly indeed, a party that is the major change agent in that revolutionary historical process, a process which in its turn is a part of great social and economic upheaval in the United Kingdom, in Europe and across the globe. We are living in interesting times, times that the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday either fail to, or choose not to understand.

THE REPORT BACKGROUND

A report like this is valuable in the way looking at the stars is valuable  - the delayed light we see tells us a lot about what happened in the past, but not about the present. When the survey was taken, there were 13,203 stars in the SNP sky – now there are over 20,000.

The SNP was into the second half of its first year in minority government, and the unelected Gordon Brown was just beginning to exacerbate the disaster of the Blair years and the process of bankrupting Britain. Megrahi was two years away from release, Wendy Alexander had been leading Labour in Holyrood for three months, George W. Bush was President of the United States, the Iraq War was only just over half way through it murderous progress, and a lot of men, women and children were still alive whose whose subsequent brutal deaths are now a shameful testament to the British Government and NATO’s supine deference to the Blair/Bush axis.

So whatever the SNP was, thought and said in the late 2007/early 2008 period, they have moved with these radically changing times. But it is still relevant to look back – and learn …

The report writers set themselves three objectives –

To offer a socio-demographic view of SNP members, to explore attitudes and identities, and to look at how these attitudes translated themselves into activity. They expected activists to be more radical, and to be more inflexible in their position on independence.

I, knowing sweet ****-*** about May’s Law of Curvilinear disparity (1972), interpret that as meaning that those who work hard in a party committed to the independence of their nation will want to radically change things, and not be easily shifted away from that. It’s how ye tell ‘em …

For the detail, read the full report – The Mitchell/Bennie/Johns report - who are the SNP members? It is well worth the effort for anyone who wants to understand how the SNP were four years ago. How that 13,000 members has changed in four years, and what the demographics and views of the new 7,000 are will have to wait for a new report.

But here are my perceptions of the Mitchell Report, as a kind of mouthwash to clear the bad taste left by Scotland on Sunday.

As the  report acknowledges, devolution changed the SNP’s status as a party with little presence in the Westminster Government and negligible influence on government, with an organisation largely of unpaid volunteers into Scotland’s second party, and the party organisation was transformed almost overnight into one of elected members supported by salaried professionals. The skill sets and experience changed, but there was a time lag of almost five years – till 2004 – before the constitution changed. There has now been a power shift from activists to MSPs, the leaderships, salaried party officials and, perhaps most significantly to the wider membership.

I would also observe that in the period since the report surveys were taken, there has been an explosion in the use of alternative media, and the lessons of their use in the Obama campaign  for the presidency of the US were not lost on SNP strategists, although to some degree the bloggers, twitterati, YouTubers and facebookers drove the agenda and the party followed.

I would argue that the experience of minority government and the skill sets forged in that challenging four year period – which was only 6-9 months old during the survey – not only changed the parliamentary party and its full-time professionals, but also the membership, old and new.

(If that experience could drive an old man like me, already in his seventies, looking forward to a quiet life of playing music and writing a bit of fiction, a lifetime Labour supporter, into the arms of the SNP and into a kind of unpaid activism and commitment, sustained through two heart attacks, a quad bypass and a cardiac arrest, then I take leave to think that it must have changed the mindset, the values and the priorities of those who had given their lives to the party in ways that the Mitchell Report could not of necessity reflect.)

All of these factors led to the most radical sea change ever experienced in Scottish politics since the 1945 Labour landslide, and the most significant event in UK politics for a generation – the May 2011 SNP landslide victory.

How have the demographics changed since 2007/2008?

What are the demographics of the 50% increase in the membership?

How have the attitudes of the 13,000 members changed and what are the attitudes of the 7000+ new members?

These are the exciting questions, and the party that has become the most professional political machine in Britain since the Mitchell survey, the envy of many European parties, possessed of opinion poll and confidence ratings that most UK and European leaders would die for, is addressing them daily in pursuit of its goal – the independence of the nation of Scotland.

The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday could have been a dynamic part of these great events, could have addressed these questions, in the great traditions of journalism and a free press. Instead, they are locked in a dying past, and Scotland is moving past them with pitying glances.

Saor Alba!

The butterfly emerges, flaps its wings and triggers – what?

Autumn 2014 starts on the 23rd of September, so  the earliest date for the referendum is 23rd September 2014, and the latest date before the winter solstice is 20th December 2014. Seasons calculator (Don’t ask me about the shortfall of two days 2012-2014 – ask an astronomer.) So we have between  32 months and 35 months to go until the most important decision facing Scots since 1707 arrives.

It will also be the most important event facing the United Kingdom, a highly significant event for the Republic of Ireland, an event of vital interest for the European Union, and an event major interest for the rest of the world. It may spell the end of Britain as a nuclear power, and therefore the end of the US/Britain links on the so-called ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent, it will have a fundamental and incalculable effect on NATO, and on the perception of the rest of the world of ‘Britain’, in the sense that it still exists, as a world power.

Is this responsibility one that is too great to bear for a little nation at the north end of Europe with a population of just over 5 million?

Chaos theory often uses the metaphor of the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, Lorenz having postulated that this tiny event could lead to a hurricane.

Already there are those in the UK - and on the right-wing of American politics - who are asking if this emergent butterfly should even be allowed out of the chrysalis, much less flap its wings.

A coalition of the British right-wing - that is the Labour Party allied to the Tory/LibDem Government - has formed to frustrate the efforts of Scotland to achieve self-determination as a nation.

But because of a highly inconvenient commitment to at least the semblance of democratic politics, in nations that have long since neutered the voice of the people in a conspiracy of wealth, privilege and power, this is proving hard to do.

And the global financial crisis, allied to the manifest failure and incompetence of the UK government, and the increasing tendency of the US government to retreat from international entanglements and put its own shaky house in order, not to mention the great upheaval of the Arab Spring haven’t helped. Confusion reigns in the corridors of power.

And so there is to be a great public debate. But behind the scenes, the profoundly undemocratic forces of patronage, threat and bribe, the military industrial complex and structurally undemocratic organisations and ad hoc groupings formed for this purpose alone, will exert an insidious influence on that debate.

What will counterbalance this? The crisis of capitalism has now arrived with a vengeance, and the brutal impact of the attempts of the rich to solve it by attacking the poor and vulnerable are just beginning to be felt, with the full horror yet to unfold. The UK Party that should have been poised to be the defenders of the ordinary people, the Labour Party, has for half a century or more instead been a fundamental part of the power structure, and is impotent because it has fundamentally and fatally compromised its core values.

England is left bereft of a political voice, and has only the trades unions, themselves compromised by their links to Labour, as their last best hope. There are some welcome signs that the trades unions recognise this, and are beginning the painful process of extricating themselves from the Labour Party’s dead grasp.

Scotland, in contrast, has a political voice, has a political party, and a vibrant new spirit is emerging, a new awareness, and a new resolve to embrace the spirit of the age - the zeitgeist -and make a new nation.

This butterfly will flap its wings, will fly freely, and its flight will not trigger a destructive hurricane, but a great, cleansing wind of positive change.

Saor Alba

Stream of consciousness … and the BBC

I like to have a specific topic to address, but today I haven’t. But since I didn’t blog yesterday, and since some regular readers rapidly reach the reasonable conclusion that I’m dead if I don’t blog for a couple of days, I feel obliged to give proof of life …

So I sit at the keyboard with no plan, in the hope that something will come from the Id at least as far as the Ego and perhaps even reach the Superego. I’m not entirely certain that I have an Ego or Superego anymore, but I’m in regular touch with my Id, something closely resembling its manifestation in Forbidden Planet.

Today’s Radio Times confidently states on page 56

BBC1

12.00 The Politics Show  Analysis and debate. Includes News at 12.00 and at 12.30 Scottish stories.

Good old reliable BBC - my trusted public service broadcaster, telling the truth to the four nations of Britain, calling the rich and powerful to account, champion of the ordinary people of these isles, in this great united kingdom - Dunkirk, Churchill, muffins for tea, cricket on the lawn, stiff-upper lips, guardian of the free people of the world, men in fancy dress in great cathedrals, monarchs, Royal weddings, knights, Lords, Ladies, colourful ritual and spectacle, stronger together than apart, etcetera, etcetera. You know the rest …

No need to consult the online guide on my television - after all, it’s not a public holiday, although something called Pentecost has knocked The Big Questions out of its 10.00 slot. The Andrew Marr Show was the predictable load of old Westminster village pap it has become since not-so-super injunctions have killed the mojo of its eponymous host.

I switch on just before midday and wait expectantly, laughing in sardonic delight because the tennis has been rained off. May it piss down on that tedious game for evermore, a game that is healthful exercise and a legitimate pursuit for those who actually get off their arses and play the game, but an exercise in mindless voyeurism for those non-players who watch it …

I should have been warned by the fate of The Big Questions. Midday passes, and the mindless chatter of those under the umbrellas continues, with the kind a vacuous gossip and idle speculation that characterises acres of sporting commentary. Panic-stricken, I switch to BBC2, only to find more crap, so I belatedly consult the online guide. Nae politics today, mate. If we can’t have tennis, you’ll have to be content with Country File, or some such rural idyll.

So at the end of a week in which we have seen the care of the old and vulnerable across the UK threatened by the rabid greed of speculative capitalists, the continued revelations of criminal behaviour by our UK newspapers, a week in which the implications of the behaviour of the UK Supreme Court for the Scottish Justice system becomes even more worrying, a week in which more young men and women are dying in misconceived foreign wars, a week in which we contemplate yet another involvement in Syria, and a week in which the Brian Rix Whitehall farce that is called the UK Government - the ConLib Coalition - move seamlessly from one disaster to another, a week in which Miliband Minor’s relevance to his party and to the nation is placed under question, the main political vehicle for examining events and placing the powerful under scrutiny - and where Scottish affairs get a real discussion platform - is sacrificed to a tennis match that didn’t take place and some countryside rambles.

I’m your long-term friend and defender, BBC - but when you behave like this, I shout aloud for independence, for  a free Scotland, with its own public service broadcaster, employing the fine journalists, presenters, creative artists and technicians that make up the present BBC Scotland, but freed from the dead hand of London.

And by God, we’ll have it, sooner rather than later …

Here to the Scottish Broadcasting Corporation - the SBC!

POSTSCRIPT
Roseanna Cunningham tweeted me to say it (?) was broadcast at 11.30 am. If so, I kick myself for missing it - but the criticism stands.

Stop press: I've now checked - it was broadcast at 11.00 am - now watching on the iPlayer. Will I apologise to the BBC? Will I ****! You ruined my morning - am I suppose to plan my day on not believing the Radio Times and cross check the transmission time of every programme if there's bloody sport on?