RANDOM THOUGHTS AND A NEW FRIEND

Earlier today, on the previous post, Anon suggested this blog post, and a response to it. I read the link and felt moved to offer a comment of my own. But as I started writing and the comment got longer and longer, I though it would make a reasonable post on Munguin's Republic. It drifted away from the topic a little perhaps, but, hey, that's how my mind works. For what it's worth, here it is. You might find it a little less disjointed if you read what inspired it first.

Gordon Brown apparently fails to see that if you have a finally balanced referendum result in the offing; and if you then conspire with a Tory prime minister, with only 1/59^th of the representation of the country, to deliver a 'vow', a package of measures previously specifically ruled out by that very Tory prime minister, if that ‘vow’ changes enough people's minds that they vote for the new "most devolved powers in the entire world" otherwise described as "as near federalism as you can get when one country in the state holds 85% of the population", and if, on the day after the referendum, people find out that they have been duped by that poorly represented Tory prime minister,  and the most trusted Scottish ex prime minister (EVEL, with which I totally agree, but the Labour party doesn't, indeed electorally CANNOT), and if in the following months a rfarce of a consultation takes place and delivers almost none of what was promised… and that even those powers which looked like coming,  are watered down to the point that they are all but  invisible, it is hardly surprising that there will be a distrust and dislike of the party which guaranteed all of the above.

I realise that the British public is a deal less volatile than some other, but at some point a desire for some sort of new politics, something promised over and again at each general election and never delivered, is bound to take a hold.

There comes a time when there is a desire for a cessation of rule by a never changing  elite, shown over and over to be corrupt to the core in almost all aspects of its daily doings from the relatively trivial attempts to line their pockets, and in doing so work against democracy (Straw, when touting for future employment, as one recent example, admitted influencing EU discussions on behalf of a client, when he was being paid by us to work for the UK) , to the infinitely more serious matters of murder of children.

In Scotland, the somewhat distant London-based parties and their "elder statesmen" should try to remember that it is not the SNP (nor the Greens, the Scottish Socialists or Radical Independence) who are behind this movement.

It is, in reality, the ordinary people of Scotland. It is, as Jim Murphy called them, "Glasgow Man".

A demographic which was previous attached at the hip to Labour, has seen, at long last, that Labour has no real interest in them, save for using them to ensure the ongoing income and rise to the top of people like Maggie Curran, Dougie Alexander, Jim Murphy, Iain Davidson and their likes.

Glasgow man has latterly come to the conclusion that for all he has voted Labour for all these years, because as one guy said to me "It's the party of the working man", he, Glasgow man, seems to have become comparatively poorer, and conditions in which he lives, still produce areas where life expectancy is well under 60 years, poorer than many parts of the developing world, or war zones like Gaza.

Labour deserted Glasgow man because he was expendable. (Where else was he to go? The Tartan Tories, a reputation they liked to foster, but based on something from the dim and distant past?) 

For power, as Mandelson said, you had to get the vote of the Home Counties and the South East, and you weren't going to get that spending their taxes on poor people in social housing in inner-city Glasgow or Dundee.

What actually has happened is that Labour has moved farther and farther to the right. Would Keir Hardie recognise Labour now?

Possibly the final insult (and one predicted  as a disaster by many on the left of Labour) was the election for some weird reason, of a right wing, Blairite, Henry Jacksonite, war enthusiast, Scottish branch leader. Loathed by the left, almost as much as Blair himself is, his election marked the real end of Labour in Scotland. We told you we wanted to move to the left, and you elected a right winger for the leader... What?

It happened more or less at the same time as the most left leaning, anti war, pro equality, leader of the SNP ever, came to power. In Scotland the Tories being nowhere; the Liberals now a part of history; UKIP having managed a brief success in the EU elections, only to have themselves represented by an ignorant racist who doesn't even live in Scotland, and has a particularly virulent strain of foot in mouth disease, the new real politic, as Curran would call it, is Labour on the right,  SNP on the left.

The grandees of the Labour party need to look to themselves for their failures, rather than blame the SNP for their success. Labour ceased to be the party of the working man a long time ago. If you don’t represent your constituency, there comes a time when they will go vote for people who will...people whose agenda is not dictated by the need to win Tory seats in the South East of England.

And frankly it doesn't help if your top people from both the main English parties having begged us to stay with them, are now saying pretty much the same things about Scotland not having the right to send SNP members to London. Exercise your right to vote for whom you want, under our FPTP system, and you will cause a crisis.

Seriously, if they haven’t worked out how damaging that is to their cause, no wonder they are in the tanks. 

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Yesterday Munguin and I made a new friend. We had a great afternoon talking politics with one of our family of readers. AH, Abu Haimi, came all the way from Malaysia to see Scotland and, obviously, Munguin. Thanks for coming to Dundee and spending the afternoon in what I know was a really hectic schedule. It was a great afternoon, and I hope we'll have more time together next time you're here. Safe journey home for you and your lovely family, AH.

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I'm not much of an historian, but I seem to recall reading that the Daily Mail was relatively supportive, at least for a time, of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. 

Neither am I much of a royalist, but I also seem to recall reading that one very spoilt and unpleasant prince they had in the 1930s, a man who appeared to be incapable of keeping his clothes on for any length of time if there were married women available to bed, when he found he couldn't have his own way about marrying his bit on the side, who had a history of "trading up" her partners for something better, a certain Mrs Simpson, decided to reject the crown of England and his destiny as king, in favour of aforesaid woman.

It seems that they too as were pleased to be received as a royal duke (and ex-King) and his not so royal wife, to meet with Adolf Hitler. 

It might well then, have suited the Daily Mail for Edward VIII, an apparent Nazi sympathiser, and his pushy wife, to stay on the throne. So for them the abdication was, indeed, a real crisis. They lost their man and got George VI and his formidable wife instead.

Whilst we are on the subject, don't you think some people should probably take more water with it:

Now Kezia, you really can't say you weren't warned, when the First Minister herself told you. So presumably, like a good manager, you have been monitoring his tweets. What do you think if this doozie?

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Finally, let's spare a thought, and maybe some money, for the terrible disaster of the Nepalese Earthquake.