READER COMMENT
Great Billy Goat Gruff left the following comment on my Hootsmon Headlines post and I think it is worthy of a post of its own, as not all readers have time to peruse comments on blogs.
I am beginning to come around to the conclusion that one of the most compelling reasons for getting out of the Union is the institutional corruption of Westminster and the attendant administration.
It has turned from being (was it never thus) a servant of the people to being a self-service ego and financial supermarket.
We have been dominated essentially by one of two polarimetrically opposed political parties which at least gave us, the great unwashed, a choice with the chance of a change of direction.
Today we have to shades of the same, promising us whatever they think we want, or maybe would want, if they actually delivered it to us. No, not philosophical, cultural enhancing or any "ology" that cannot be measured in focus groups and transcribed into tick box objectives. Initiatives, reports, reviews and headline is what they give us and call it substance.
In Westminster, power is everything and the pursuit of that is the ultimate high. Everything is secondary, including and especially the truth.
Here we have a brouhaha concerning hacking of "celebrity" mobile phone messages. I use the word "celebrity" to include John Prescott, Alex Ferguson, an unnamed footballer addicted to cocaine, etc etc..
The use by many newpapers of shadowy fixers to supply such tittle tattle has, I think, been well known for at least ten years but little was heard of it, or at least we the Great Unwashed did not.
The Labour Party is on the ropes over a series cock-ups, structural slease, economic mismanagement and mendacity of Olympian quality, patrician detachment from the body odours of their voters and outright theft from the national purse and what does the wounded animal do? Go away and think about how it got itself and us into this nightmare and how it can better serve us, the voters?
No it does not, it regroups and plots another destructive attack on the opposition and people around its leader hoping to destabilise him and them and keep the Great Unwashed focused on the whipped up failings of the others and not their lack of honesty, ability, morality and success.
We have echoes of this nonsense in Scotland where we had the chance to sweep away this corrupt confrontational politics with the creation of Holyrood. It worked for a while until Westminster string pulling re-imposed the Punch and Judy Westminster culture.
Get Kenny McCaskill, go for him as Salmond is beyond us. Raise a bill to do away with all hospital parking charges and shout loud enough so that the people think it was the SNP who imposed it in the first place. The list is endless. Do the "enemy" down and by do so, raise ourselves, relatively speaking. We can raise our game and serve the people but we can reduce the enemy's standing and who the hell cares because Great Unwashed will believe what our Press spin says.
It has turned from being (was it never thus) a servant of the people to being a self-service ego and financial supermarket.
We have been dominated essentially by one of two polarimetrically opposed political parties which at least gave us, the great unwashed, a choice with the chance of a change of direction.
Today we have to shades of the same, promising us whatever they think we want, or maybe would want, if they actually delivered it to us. No, not philosophical, cultural enhancing or any "ology" that cannot be measured in focus groups and transcribed into tick box objectives. Initiatives, reports, reviews and headline is what they give us and call it substance.
In Westminster, power is everything and the pursuit of that is the ultimate high. Everything is secondary, including and especially the truth.
Here we have a brouhaha concerning hacking of "celebrity" mobile phone messages. I use the word "celebrity" to include John Prescott, Alex Ferguson, an unnamed footballer addicted to cocaine, etc etc..
The use by many newpapers of shadowy fixers to supply such tittle tattle has, I think, been well known for at least ten years but little was heard of it, or at least we the Great Unwashed did not.
The Labour Party is on the ropes over a series cock-ups, structural slease, economic mismanagement and mendacity of Olympian quality, patrician detachment from the body odours of their voters and outright theft from the national purse and what does the wounded animal do? Go away and think about how it got itself and us into this nightmare and how it can better serve us, the voters?
No it does not, it regroups and plots another destructive attack on the opposition and people around its leader hoping to destabilise him and them and keep the Great Unwashed focused on the whipped up failings of the others and not their lack of honesty, ability, morality and success.
We have echoes of this nonsense in Scotland where we had the chance to sweep away this corrupt confrontational politics with the creation of Holyrood. It worked for a while until Westminster string pulling re-imposed the Punch and Judy Westminster culture.
Get Kenny McCaskill, go for him as Salmond is beyond us. Raise a bill to do away with all hospital parking charges and shout loud enough so that the people think it was the SNP who imposed it in the first place. The list is endless. Do the "enemy" down and by do so, raise ourselves, relatively speaking. We can raise our game and serve the people but we can reduce the enemy's standing and who the hell cares because Great Unwashed will believe what our Press spin says.
Posts
11 comments:
SR,
A fine effort and well worth reading, I agree with the need to deliver and I feel despite the rotten and corrupt behaviour of Labour the SNP are succeeding.
I was at a dinner party last night and some trumped up RAF Officer who I work with started gobbing off about "The Scots" - well me being better informed than him gave him both barrels and he stood there aghast at my mendacity to suggest that Scotland would fair better apart from this defunct, imblanced and grossly corrupt Union.
I was the only Nationalist in the room and the 2 other Scots were embarrassed by their own lack of the facts. Must have been relying the corporate liars known as the Media and EBC!
I say get Indpendent and get on with repairing our country, saving our culture and creating a stable and healthy population proud of their identity and not some pseudo English lacky that I consistently come across down here.
Saor Alba, Caledonia you're everything I've ever had.
Crazy Daisy
SubR
Missed out a bit at the end of my rant
"The internet has changed all that and they haven't yet worked that out.
We need to be shot of the foetid corpse of a "democracy" at Westminster and reinvent it here in Scotland.
We need to cut the connection of personal power and democracy, of neclear submarines and seats at the UN, of Global posturing and extra territorial military intervention.
They must realise they are our servants and we are not their's.
It would be good for Scotland and maybe England too."
Why does anybody believe Democracy is all clean and nice where everybody agrees on everything.
There are many within the snp and Nationalist community who have complete different visions of an Independent Scotland.
Mayhap one day they will have to make a choice and when they do it will not be a nice and quiet disagreement
Mr Mxyzkja;skjn;n;ee;kj
I never said that democracy was clean, but it should be.
Perhaps my rant never maid my point clear enough.
People who say that democracy is underhanded, deceitful and mendacious so let us get on with reality. This is their reality their 1984.
Black is white, war is peace, defeat is victory; if we tell you so.
It is time for a return to a people's democracy to a consensus form of politics based on the people and not on the politicians.
They are our servants and if they need to be suspended from lamposts down the Royal Mile, pour encourager les autres, so mote it be.
In some way, Mr MYXZetc my rant was nothing to do with snp. nationalist community, England and Scotland it was about a need to cut this parasitic canker of Westminster out of the body politic.
In Scotland we can have a better handle on our political superiors because, to quote a well known Glasgow phrase, "we know where you live."
They work for us, we do not work for them.
Left, right, SNP, Green LibDums, it does not matter it is the system they inhabit that is corrupt.
Change that and restore some harmony?
you remind me of diogenes carrying a lighted lamp, looking for an honest man...
I fear you will not find him in this world but perhaps in the next.
Crazydaisy will not be ascending the ranks
He even ordered a soldier to drop an officer he was carrying across a river.
Rifleman Harris reports: "The sight of such a piece of effeminacy was enough to raise the choler of the general and, in a very short time, he was plunging and splashing through the water after them both.
"Put him down sir! Put him down! I desire you to put that officer down instantly."
To the drenched officer he then said: "Return back, sir, and go through the water like the others. I will not allow my officers to ride upon men's backs through the rivers - all must take their share alike here."
"Black Bob", Craufurd
Obviously an English officer
These are aspirations that we all have - but we're people, not politicos. What makes you think a totally independent (except for the EU of course) SNP government will fare any better than Westminster?
Do you read British/English blogs? We're better off razing it to the ground and starting again.
GV
Effectively we had at Holyrood such a razed and rebuilt system until the viral arm of Westminster reached up and infected it, just because it suited them.
Easy, break the connection, keep the system of proportionate voting, not necessarily exactly as we have now and it will happen.
There is already a pretty good system of clarity on SMP's expenses, which Westminster could and should have just copied. Wonder why they didn't do it? No prizes for the answer.
There is access by the people to Holyrood and the possibility of bringing forward legislation proposals from the voters.
It is nit perfect and could be bettered but it is a good start.
Further developments will only happen by severing the Westminster link and removing the Punch & Judy politics of the, effectively, two party state.
There are a couple of typos in my original post as it was flow of consciousness and bile.
If there are any points of clarification or brazenly stupid syntax, let me know.
Having reread your post GV, sorry I had another flow of consciousness there I see you refer to the SNP and why should they do what I was jabbering on about.
Simple, it will not be the SNP who will do it alone but all the Scottish parties.
They cannot form a cerebral and effective constructive opposition as long as their chains are being yanked by Clegg, Brown and Cameron. The SNP just run rings around them daily.
If they can be cut adrift from Westmonster their game will rise and the other stuff about working together will happen.
Already this SNP Government is working away quietly and effectively on a case by case basis gaining consensus and bringing forward legislation that is going through.
Then of course the big boys in Westminster through the dummy out the plan and snooker their feudal servants in Holyrood.
It is an SNP dream.
As I said the 3 "British" parties in Scotland will continue to be bleed to death until they wrest themselves free of Westmonster and its poisoned chalice politics.
Then maybe the English can have a go at doing the same in the rump that will be Westminster.
I wish them luck
tyops galore
dummy out of the pram
and missing somewhere
"The SNP government is a minority one"
Red Biddy binging time here.
Every single Labour Administration at Westminster has depended upon Scots Labour MPs for their majority, had Scotland not been part of the Union Labour could not have repeadly got us into the mess like the current one.
Banned
Every single Labour Government has depended on English MPs for their majority?
What is sauce for the goose id sauce for the gander.
Scotland did not impose Labour on the UK, that takes a UK majority.
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