This week’s Jon Stewart gives us his view of the over-coverage of the Trump trial v Stormy Daniels, and takes a sideswipe look at the imbecilic complaints of the Republican party on kitchen appliances. “They started with gas stoves, but I did not speak up for I was not a gas stove.”
And, all things considered, he shoots a few barbs at Biden holding back a few bombs from Israel.
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Scotland’s free stuff: prescriptions, hospitalisation, education, bus passes…
We are told the partial rise in tax for the higher brackets of salaries, (raised in Sturgeon’s era) is too much to bear, the rich are moving out of Ssotland. Over one period last year our unionist watchdogs claim just over a thousand packed their Louis Vuitton luggage and returned to their motherland. What we are are not told is in the same period over 4,000 incomers decided Scotland is a good place to live.
We can be sure settlers were not the homeless. They will be middle-to-upper class types, a house sold down south, the value approximating the price of a castle in Scotland. Trying to scare us with stories of nameless people taking their wealth out of Scotland is an old con trick.
So, what draws them here? The free stuff. That and the low cost of houses. They get a bigger bang for their bucks compared to the cost of living in the south of England. And no one is trying to buy their land or property to ram a railroad through the middle of it.
BBC’s finance expert Paul Lewis tells it better.
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There he is, John Swinney, the new-old First Minister of Scotland, a colonial nationalist, the phrase as contradictory as ‘compassionate conservative’, standing before our senior judges of Scots Law, swearing allegiance to a king of England, bowing his head three times to prove feality.
The man in charge of Scotland’s hopes oblivious his party ignores mandates, shifts its own goalposts, and promises to govern as before. The Lord President then addressed the court on the independence of the judiciary. Irony is wasted on them.
Kate Forbes is the new deputy leader: little influence, mostly ceremonial stuff, such as holding a well stuffed handbag and waving, but bigger salary. Wearing an all-green dress is likely an expression of giving the finger to the now exiled Green Party.
Here’s is the full list of the new cabinet, erm… same as the old:
Mairi McAllan will remain as Energy Secretary but the “Wellbeing Economy” brief has been stripped of its first word and handed to Forbes.
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The crisis is causing profound damage to lives and livelihoods. Design: Halil Kahraman
This is No 34 in our Climate Crisis series. We have polluted our oceans with plastics, killing sea mammals and fish, and are destroying our land and forests by fire from the use of fossil fuels. Consequently, hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet.
Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating above preindustrial levels,, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit will be met.
A “semi-dystopian” future
Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck. Numerous experts said they had been left feeling hopeless, infuriated and scared by the failure of governments to act despite the clear scientific evidence provided.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” said Gretta Pecl, at the University of Tasmania. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do.”
Redently the Guardian approached every contactable lead author or review editor of IPCC reports since 2018. Almost half replied, 380 of 843. The IPCC’s reports are the gold standard assessments of climate change, approved by all governments and produced by experts in physical and social sciences. The results show that many of the most knowledgeable people on the planet expect climate havoc to unfold in the coming decades.
The climate crisis is already causing profound damage to lives and livelihoods across the world, with only 1.2C (2.16F) of global heating on average over the past four years. Jesse Keenan, at Tulane University in the US, said: “This is just the beginning: buckle up.”
On the up is disastrously bad
Nathalie Hilmi, at the Monaco Scientific Centre, who expects a rise of 3C, agreed: “We cannot stay below 1.5C.” The experts said massive preparations to protect people from the worst of the coming climate disasters were now critical. Leticia Cotrim da Cunha, at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, said: “I am extremely worried about the costs in human lives.”
The 1.5C target was chosen to prevent the worst of the climate crisis and has been seen as an important guiding star for international negotiations. Current climate policies mean the world is on track for about 2.7C, and the Guardian survey shows few IPCC experts expect the world to deliver the huge action required to reduce that.
A huge fire in a forest near Inverness
Younger scientists were more pessimistic, with 52% of respondents under 50 expecting a rise of at least 3C, compared with 38% of those over 50. Female scientists were also more downbeat than male scientists, with 49% thinking global temperature would rise at least 3C, compared with 38%. There was little difference between scientists from different continents.
Dipak Dasgupta, at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, said: “If the world, unbelievably wealthy as it is, stands by and does little to address the plight of the poor, we will all lose eventually.”
A lack of political will
The experts were clear on why the world is failing to tackle the climate crisis. A lack of political will was cited by almost three-quarters of the respondents, while 60% also blamed vested corporate interests, such as the fossil fuel industry.
Many also mentioned inequality and a failure of the rich world to help the poor, who suffer most from climate impacts. “I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south,” said a South African scientist, who chose not to be named. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible – we live in an age of fools.” About a quarter of the IPCC experts who responded thought global temperature rise would be kept to 2C or below but even they tempered their hopes.
“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” said Henry Neufeldt, at the UN’s Copenhagen Climate Centre. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”
Lisa Schipper, at University of Bonn in Germany, said: “My only source of hope is the fact that, as an educator, I can see the next generation being so smart and understanding the politics.”
NOTES
Thanks to Damian Carrington Environment editor of the Guardian.
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Scotland’s future, a one-way road to liberation. Photo: Christina Madden
Polls saying the nationalist cause is no longer a priority among voters are misleading., so much humbug, propaganda to instill doubt in the minds of Indigenous Natives. The aspiration once again to be a sovereign European state has only been strengthened by devolution. The SNP may be laid low for now or longer but the call of independence rings loud and clear and stronger than ever. Nationalist parties are needed to dirtect aims and goals, but the people are the one’s driving the engine of liberty Live by the maxim, acknowledge the political reality but reject defeatism. The answer is not as far away as we think, it’s within us, no colonial entity can steal it from us.
THE VIEW FROM NEAL ASCHERSON
Like an arthritic old tree in autumn, the Scottish National party is shedding its voters. It does this almost seasonally, a shrivel followed years later by another spring. And yet the SNP’s soul and cause, independence, isn’t shedding its supporters. Backing for that stays roughly where it’s been for a decade, at just under half (occasionally just over half) the poll samples. How does that make sense?
Scotland can seem an imperturbable land. Every year, the hills change colour from russet to green, as the geese end their loud argument, rise and head north. And yet vast things have happened suddenly here. Ten thousand years ago, the climate abruptly shot up by 9C in little over a century. Glaciers melted, trees appeared; deer, human beings, wolves and bears ventured back to a cold but habitable Caledonia. Two thousand years later, the coast of Norway collapsed into the sea (the “Storegga slide”), sending a mountainous tsunami roaring across to scour eastern Scotland and its terrified hunter-gatherers. Scottish politics in our time can seem dreary, pettily fractious. But when they do change, it’s precipitate. The old landscape is scoured clean of its previous ecology.
Last 100 years
Over the past century, Liberal, Tory and then Labour power monopolies have vanished under Storeggan mind-changes by Scottish voters. Now the deluge is racing towards the SNP – but not towards believers that Scotland should be a sovereign European nation again. Pollsters always report that independence is “a low priority”, well down the list behind NHS reform, the cost of living, bad roads and dud ferries. But this is a misunderstanding. The idea of independence lives in a different place to what the BBC (in its most English accent) calls “bread and butter issues”.
An unassessable number of Scots who would never vote SNP have moments when they find themselves thinking: “Wouldn’t it be fine if we were just a normal wee nation again, alongside all the others?” Only to dismiss the thought as absurd, “divisive” or “crazy in times like these”. It’s like a tiny blue-white pellet lodged in the back of the brain. Normally inert – but when it lights up, Scotland’s history changes.
The law-abiding SNP
The SNP, a neurotically law-respecting and “civic” nationalist party, has also cuddled some nicely dressed illusions. For example, that by governing devolved Scotland well, they would persuade the electorate to take the next step into independence. But even if the SNP had passed that test (which the Scottish public doesn’t concede), where is there an example of a “provincial” administration whose success convinced its people to risk a further step into secession? Come to that, what nation ever chose independence because a careful weighing of its possible impact on pensions, interest rates and the price of imported duck soup came out positive? Things just don’t happen in that logical way. Instead, independence usually falls out of the sky. It’s dropped by some external crisis: war, revolution or imperial exhaustion.
Poland’s fight for liberty
The Poles fought for 123 years to regain free nationhood – but they won it in 1918 only because three partitioning empires had folded almost simultaneously. The same was true for other post-Versailles states. Some, such as Czechoslovakia, were almost spooked to find that the Habsburg empire had abandoned them. Ireland became free through miserable bloodshed and then civil war, while civil war and revolution devastated the new-born sovereignties of Finland and Hungary.
The dissolution of the British empire is now craftily presented as Westminster’s far-sighted mission, a plan to lead all those underdeveloped natives to civilised parliamentary democracy. The truth is that it was furious protest in most of those “possessions”, sometimes leading to years of brutal repression, that persuaded an unwilling, cash-strapped and increasingly weakened Britain to back out of empire. The decencies were preserved, of course. There would be an independence day with happy crowds, fireworks, a plumed governor or perhaps a royal, and the union jack wobbling slowly down the mast at midnight …
Hunger for self-determination doesn’t lie in counting numbers on a march
Now’s the hour…
I am holding in my hand a postcard, almost 30 years old. It shows the Scotsman’s front page on “Independence Day”. An outburst of fireworks over Edinburgh; an expectant floodlight trained on the flagpole on the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. The card proclaims: “Now’s the hour: As 300 years of the Union ends, ‘a nation again takes its place in the world’”. But it’s just a publicity item, designed for STV to go with a 1996 “independence” documentary by George Rosie and Les Wilson, which was followed by a televised debate.
Since then, devolution, the return of a Scottish parliament and the 2014 independence referendum have laid out a new constitutional landscape. The “No” side narrowly won the 2014 referendum. But the “Yes” campaign, though it lost, turned out to have blown a transforming wind through Scotland’s grassroots; excited thousands gathered to hope, argue and demand (“Scotland Yes! But what sort of Scotland?”).
One outcome was to lift independence from dream status to a practical, serious option for Scotland’s future. Another, following the “Yes” defeat, was an unexpected stampede to join the SNP. By 2019, the party had 125,000 members. Today, the leaves are falling; that total is about 70,000. Some have just given up on “politicians” and the SNP’s “failure to deliver”. Many others are shifting to Scottish Labour – but often carrying their faith in independence with them. They form a growing, unreliable crowd of nationalist squatters inside a leaky unionist building.
Holyrood and a minority administration
It’s very possible that the next Holyrood election (due in 2026, if not earlier) will end the SNP’s 17-year hegemony. The Scottish parliament could have a narrow unionist majority. Even if Humza Yousaf’s successor survived in government, his or her prospects would be bleak. The SNP leaders still believe that the Scottish public wants them to play by the rules. So they will keep on demanding London’s permission for another referendum, while any foreseeable British government will keep on refusing that permission. So stalemate … unless a far more impatient and radical nationalist formation emerges, pushing the SNP aside as Sinn Féin pushed the old Irish Home Rulers aside in 1918.
There’s no sign of that yet. Nevertheless, if a hard-line SNP leadership with a strong majority did emerge in the future, there are several ways in which it might provoke a head-on collision with London, a showdown that could rally public sympathy. Let’s call these strategies “As if” and (in parliamo Glesca) “Gonny no dae that!”.
“As if” means acting as if Scotland were already independent. It means marching ahead with legislation officially reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Acts and daring the UK government to intervene. The second strategy – Glaswegian defiance – would mean simply refusing to execute UK laws or orders that Holyrood thought morally or practically wrong for Scotland. Examples: refusing police protection for Home Office snatch vans driving from England to seize asylum seekers for deportation (see previous crowd actions in Glasgow and Edinburgh to block the vans and free their prisoners).
An SNP too scared to cough
Another: to refuse to apply anti-trade union measures from the UK government, such as the strike-breaking Minimum Service Levels Act. Both these are already popular causes. Flat-out and sustained confrontation with the UK government over such laws could end in sanctions against Holyrood or even the suspension of the Scottish parliament; a provoked crisis, but one that could shift Scottish opinion irrevocably towards ending the union. However, there’s not the slightest sign in the SNP of the fearlessness such “illegal’’ behaviour would require. So the wish for independence will survive, even though the vehicle to carry it sits on the hard shoulder with flat tyres.
Why wish for it, anyway? There’s an enduring pull and an enduring push. The pull is that only with full powers to make law, negotiate and borrow can Scotland do the heavy lifting needed to tackle the legacies of intractable ill-health and a century of staggering underinvestment in all kinds of infrastructure. Independence within the EU could nerve a Scottish state to block the haemorrhage of economic control to London or to US hedge funds. That government might even dare to dismantle the toppling stacks of flabby, often pointless quangos and “authorities” which now suffocate effective decision-making in Scotland.
And the push?
It’s the steady veering away of the UK – Tory or Labour – from standards valued in Scotland. Above all, it’s the integrity of the public sector, whether that is health, care, water or transport, which matters to this “statist” nation. It’s the gathering damage of Brexit, punishing a country that voted against it and which desperately needs European immigration to help its labour shortage and ageing demography. There’s a democratic problem, too. Ironically, by introducing democracy into the antique 1707 union, devolution showed why it no longer works. “Partnership” in a democratised union where 85% of the citizens belong to one member, England, can only be a fiction.
Then there’s the matter of England. London media imagine Scotnats hugging their hatred of the English. The truth is more wounding. The preoccupied Scots seldom think about the English at all. But they should. Whatever happens when independence floats back to the agenda, Scotland’s leaders must accept one basic fact: the relationship with England has and always will have a special and supreme intimacy. It will overshadow Scottish choices even if Scotland becomes a free republic inside the EU with a seat at the UN.
It’s true that England has its own identity crisis, now a spreading infection of authoritarian nativism and performative xenophobia. But English politics could be steadied by the shock and example of Scotland’s withdrawal from the union. It’s a narrow path. But a more genuine partnership waits at the end of it.
NOTES
Charles Neal Ascherson is a Scottish journalist and writer born in Edinburgh. He has been described by Radio Prague as “one of Britain’s leading experts on central and eastern Europe”. Ascherson is the author of several books on the history of Poland and Ukraine. His work has appeared in The Guardian and The New York Review of Books.
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Your weekly dose of satirist Jon Stewart’s view of today’s ills. This week Christian versus Jew who gets the best holiday gifts? (3.30 minutes)
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Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, great to look at, but no star-crossed lovers
This film is conceived as vanilla entertainment, the kind of film that hasn’t enough meat on the bone to give a critic more than half-a-dozen paragraphs of a review. The plot is so shallow that finding gravitas and meaning is like trying to hold water in your hand.
I thought it would be an homage to stuntmen, a respectful look at all the hard, dangerous work they do for next to no indentification outside the industry they work in. You get to see how some stunts are created, the measuring tape planning and science that goes into a single stunt shot on multi-cameras. But the film turns out to be a simple love story, just as it’s advertised. The disappointing aspect is the two chief characters never ignite the screen with any shared passion or chemistry, and yet they are Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, two fine actors whom you would think sizzle soon as they touch hands. There is the pantomime moment when their gaze meet and the world around freezes as they stare at each other’s souls. Beyond that there’s a kiss, and a few hugs, and that’s it.
Stunt work is supposed to be invisible. The Fall Guy turns that process inside out. The whole film is based on seeing how stunts are put together, long action sequences where we see the camera crew do their stuff following the stunt driver in the stunt car about to take a few roll-overs tumbles in the beach sand, the entire affair followed by the actual Fall Guy production crew filming them doing all that stuff on the move. In between are the quiet talkative moments. This is where the comedy lies, and in some cases it works. I laughed out loud. Oh, there is a rather unnecessary and clunky murder plot woven through the off-on love story. I won’t spoil it for the reader. It is probably that which makes the film twenty minutes too long. It has two endings, both action sequences.
The stuntman gets to be the hero, (of an madly complicated story) but the star actor he doubles for is a pain in the ass prima donna who claims to do all his own stunts – a reference to Tom Cruise, in fact there are a few tongue-in-cheek references to Cruise, including his wonky running style.
Gosling plays stunt specialist Colt Seavers. We know Gosling just stepped in to give the thumbs-up when each stunt is done, in a classy way. Gosling comes off looking gracious, and at the end of the day, he’s still the one who gets the girl. The girl, in this case, is Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt), the director of a multimillion-dollar sci-fi blockbuster called “Metalstorm” — a camerawoman getting to call the shots for the first time.
Worth noting: Back in 1981, Hollywood stunt legend Hal Needham directed The Cannonball Run, which means the transition from stunt double to director is nothing new. Former stunt David Leitch has been directing features for a decade, starting with John Wick. With this project, the helmer has an unparalleled opportunity to honor his original profession. In recent years, bluescreens, digital effects and the fast-evolving field of AI have made the stuntman’s profession almost redundant. A few push their work to the fartherest point to impress, with wirework, “oners” and techniques showcased in the film.
The A-list attention hog is a fictional movie actor named Tom Ryder, (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who looks and sounds like Matthew McConaughey with his cowboy drawl, and acts like an egotistical jerk, like Matthew McConaughey. Colt’s been doubling for Ryder for years, until take two of an ultra-dangerous stunt — a plunge of more than 100 feet — leaves Colt with a broken back. His career appears to be at an end, but this is where the story begins. From the tragedy we cut ahead to a film being shot in Australia’s Bondi Beach close to the Opera House. Director David Leitch knows how to film action scenes which he does supremely well, but dialogue scenes he flunks time after time.
Ryan Gosling leaps from truck to car… well, his stuntman double does
The movie never really explores what makes Colt tick: healed broken back or not, he keeps doing the dangerous stuff. Does he have a death wish? An unusually high pain tolerance? And then comes the plot twist. Tom the star actor disappears before the final stunt is in the editing room. Chaos ensues, leaving a madly overacting female producer to go screaming off her head. The explanation for Tom’s disappearance is preposterous, but we go along with it. It makes a change from the stunt-chat-stunt-chat screaming jet-limp-along pace of the story. As I said at the start, this is pure entertainment, candy floss, a chocolate ice lolly, so don’t expect a cerebal study of lives flung together. The Fall Guy is funny, kinda sexy, and it features Gosling playing another action man just like Ken in Barbie. His character doesn’t have much depth and can hardly string a sentence together, but some women like silent guys.
I’ve only shot one film that needed a stuntman, but the budget could not afford it. So we shot the character falling backwards out a window, (onto the studio floor three feet below and a mattress) and then cut to his bloddied, mashed up body lying on the pavement supposedly fifty feet below. The scene in my political thriller Brond used a similar technique when a child is pushed over a bridge. Sometimes what’s left to the imagination is better than seeing it all happen.
Ah, I see I shall have to eat my words. I managed ten paragraphs out of reviewing the film. Okay, how many stars? Three. The film is pure American propaganda culture.
For many years I have held the view that political parties should be barred from taking large donations from businessmen and corporate entities, but so long as our election system allows it, Scotland must remain free to follow suit. It’s called being pragmatic while holding onto scruples until one can secure a blanket ban over every party.
With minor exceptions, Scotland has few businesses ready to donate large money to an independence party. Nevertheless, parity and honesty ought to be the norm. Parties should be sustained by membership fees and a guaranteed subsidy from government, no conditions attached to the latter except spent on the party. Every party in Scotland is tainted with accepting money from corporate business. A recent squirmish in the youthful ALBA party, for example, surrounded a modest business donor being elected to the party, an indication of how hard it is to keep the democratic process afloat without big money, and a membership expected to take on full-time roles without expenses or salary.
There is no perfect system, but a fair and equitable system can be established, with fines imposed withdrawing backsheesh donated that is clearly offered for favours in return. They current system corrupts the electotal balance, wealthy individuals hold sway over the rest of us. They will strive to work around regulations. But no one, apart from plutocrats, is satisfied with the current arrangements. The Tories will do nothing about it with their remaining time in office. Labour has an interesting programme for political reform, but party finance is notably absent from it. Guardian columnist George Monbiot has similar strong views. (Background info in blue)
BAN BIG TIME DONORS – UK AND FOREIGN
by George Monbiot
Viewed as likely to form the next government, Labour is attracting its own big donors, any one of whom might some day be the cause of embarrassment. Mr Hester’s case has its own particular tone of nastiness, but the underlying dynamic of the scandal is hard-wired into a system of party finance that means analogous controversy is certain to recur. The government is caught in that trap now. The opposition would be well advised to consider today how reform might spare it a similar crisis in future.
There’s a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isn’t run at the behest of its people. But the rule is riddled with loopholes. Those who have done the most to keep them open are those who most loudly assert their patriotism. Noisy “patriots” are always the first to sell us out to offshore capital.
Here are some of the tricks they use. One is the “unincorporated association”. This refers to groups that don’t have to open business bank accounts, file financial statements, register with any official body or even give themselves a name. They’re as transparent as the Berlin Wall on a cloudy day. Astonishingly, these associations are a legal channel for campaign finance in the United Kingdom.
The Good Law Project
The Good Law Project has calculated that these groups have shovelled £5.3m into the major political parties since 2022. We have no means of knowing where most of this money came from before it passed through these associations. Here’s how it works.
In principle, an unincorporated association must register with the Electoral Commission if it passes more than £37,270 to political parties in the course of a year. But donations don’t count towards this total unless they each exceed £500. So a donor could schedule a payment of £499 to an unincorporated association every minute of every day, amounting to millions of pounds, and the association would neither have to register with the commission nor report such gifts – or even keep a record of them. It’s an open invitation to “impermissible donors”.
The Tories are the worst offenders, taking £3m of the £5.3m. Money passed through these channels has long been directed towards marginal Conservative seats. This means that surprising or narrow Tory victories have been facilitated by funds whose origins no one can see. Ten years ago, Labour railed against the use of these channels. Since 2022, it has used them to amass £1.2m.
The next loophole is the use of corporate subsidiaries. As long as the subsidiary making a donation is UK-registered and operating in some capacity in the country, it doesn’t matter where the parent company is based. An example is the UK subsidiary of a company operated from Dubai, registered in the British Virgin Islands and owned by an Indian food tycoon that gave more than £220,000 to the UK Conservative party. It may be legal. But in what sense is it not a foreign donation?
What’s inside money and what’s outside
Of course, the dividing line between foreign and British money is never entirely clear. Even if a company operates only in this country, this doesn’t prevent its foreign owners exercising influence by using it as a funding vehicle. Allowing corporations to donate seems as wrong as allowing unincorporated associations to do so.
After all, the UK, as the Tory MP David Davis has observed, is “the global capital of dirty money”. Why would those who control this money not wish to flex their political muscle? What’s to stop organised crime and foreign kleptocrats buying influence? To give one example, it is hard to explain why a large portion of the lucrative waste disposal industry has been ceded to organised crime in the UK while successive governments look the other way. Might they have been, in effect, legally bribed? Thanks to our opaque funding rules, it’s impossible to say.
The workaround
If, despite the loopholes, there’s still a problem with a donor’s status, there is always a workaround. As the Guardian’s investigative journalist Tom Burgis has shown, when the multimillionaire Mohamed Amersi first offered to donate to the Tories, there was a hitch – he was not yet listed on the UK’s electoral register. No problem. A Conservative official requested: “The donation must please come from Nadia’s account.” So the legally recognised donor of £200,000 was Amersi’s companion,
Nadia Rodicheva, who was registered to vote here. However, the thank you letter the Conservatives sent was addressed to Amersi, as was the bank receipt for the payment. Later, when Amersi, by then a registered UK voter, totted up the funds he had given to the party, he included the money that was declared as a donation from Rodicheva.
Last year, MPs sought an amendment to close the loopholes enabling foreign donations. Conservative MPs were whipped, forcing them to vote it down. Whenever there’s a choice between country and party, the Conservatives, those patriotic stalwarts, choose party.
The role of the citizen
The next issue is more complicated. It’s entirely right that citizens of the United Kingdom should play a full and active role in our political life, regardless of how long they have lived here. The problem is that some people born overseas have a far better chance of becoming citizens than others. If you are very rich, a red carpet awaits. If you are very poor, it’s razor wire and border guards. The way citizenship is allocated therefore favours a certain politics: the politics that serves the very rich.
The £5m the Conservatives have received from Mohamed Mansour, a naturalised UK citizen who was previously a government minister in Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship in Egypt, is entirely legal. But it feels profoundly wrong that a former minister of a foreign government should fund a UK political party.
Mansour calls the UK a “second home”. One might question the extent to which he has embraced us. Last year the Sunday Times reported that he had agreed to a multimillion-pound settlement with HMRC after his company, Unatrac, was investigated in a “diverted profit tax case”. Consider that one of his family companies continued operating in Russia for more than a year after the invasion of Ukraine, despite the UK government’s call for divestment. Nevertheless, in December 2022 he was appointed the Conservative party’s senior treasurer, and in March this year he was given a knighthood on Rishi Sunak’s recommendation. A Downing Street source stated that Mansour was being honoured for his charitable works. [Still chuckling. Ed]
In any case, there’s nothing fair about a system in which a few people, whether born here or not, can buy political influence. In my view, the only equitable system is one in which everyone can pay the same small fixed fee for membership of a political party, and no further private funding can be taken. Otherwise, democracy gives way to plutocracy.
But this and other essential reforms are nowhere on the political agenda. Far from it. Those who claim to defend our interests against “foreign interference” and “assaults on our sovereignty” are the very people who ensure we remain prey to them.
NOTES
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist, environmentalist and author.
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Kenny MacAskill, ALBA MP
The House of Sturgeon continued burning down and the flames have now consumed her successor. Sturgeon loyalists even fanning the fires around Humza Yousaf, deciding he was toast and manoeuvring to replace him even when he was still considering his options. Now to try and salvage something from the embers New SNP turns to John Swinney out of desperation. All dictated by a desperation to maintain the identity politics pursued by Sturgeon, but which have proven so calamitous for her Party.
Now a political fall is always going to hurt, and Humza Yousaf’s was spectacular and self-inflicted. I feel sorry for him in many ways as he’s a personable guy. But as was said at the time of his accession to office, continuity just wasn’t going to cut it. Sincerity and passion on Gaza were just never going to be enough.
Promoted more by circumstance than on merit. He was nearly pipped by Kate Forbes despite her maladroit campaign launch. Persevering with Sturgeon policies and committed to covering for her failures, he’s seen it all begin to tumble around his ears. That said his rush to end the Bute House Agreement whilst long overdue was cack-handed and blame rests squarely with him and his advisors.
Hell, hath no fury like Patrick Harvie or Lorna Slater scorned and they were having none of it. It needn’t have ended this way, even if the end before an election was always likely to happen. He could have faced down the Continuity SNP acolytes refusing to countenance a deal with Alba. Many rank and file SNP members and even elected members would have seen merit in even discussions, if not agreements on independence, protecting the rights of women and girls and focusing once again on economic priorities and competent government.
But instead, he folded to them. Not though until they’d stitched him up to preserve their own positions and policies. Why else was he contacting my colleague Ash Regan early on Monday morning to discuss matters but all whilst some around him had been briefing that he was going. Pushed as well as jumping.
So, where now for New SNP. Such is the dearth of talent within the Sturgeon loyalists that they’re forced to look to John Swinney for their salvation. He apparently is the only candidate that can defeat Kate Forbes and keep the Sturgeon legacy. That’s predicated on him being acceptable to the Greens, as Forbes is an anathema to them. [Now Forbes has traded a contest with Swinney for a ministerial place in his cabinet – the outcome of a handshake private chat leaving Swinney the only candidate.]
What an absurdity for any party that your leader’s picked by your opponents. The Greens ramping up for the UK election and risking SNP seats, as well as having been willing to vote with the Tories. Any pretense that they’re an independence supporting party long since cast aside and positioning to work with Labour, as once it was a dance done by the Lib Dems.
The SNP’s not my party but I’d have thought the members would prefer to pick their own leader not have one foisted on them by fair weather friends. Moreover, identity politics are not the bread and butter economic and public service issues that matter to folk.
All Sturgeon had left was her handling of Covid and that’s now shredded. The burning house she left will consume the next occupant unless they douse the flames of Sturgeonism.
Kenny MacAskill is the ALBA (formerly SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) for East Lothian. He was an MSP from 1999 to 2016 and Scottish Justice Secretary from 2007 to 2014. Prior to that he was a senior partner in a law firm. He had written columns for newspapers and magazines on current and historical affairs. He is also the author of The Lockerbie Bombing (2016), Jimmy Reid (2017) and Glasgow 1919 (2019). He lives in Edinburgh.
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‘Let the little children come to me…” Matthew 19: 14, Jesus. I guess it’s fair to argue that every war is a war against children. A child is a child, no matter where they are from, and every child must be protected. Children are always the most vulnerable in every conflict. We know from experience that children will never emerge unscathed from war.
The Gaza conflict has seen thousands of children lose one or both parents, their families wiped out, the children maimed for life, traumatised or killed. Unless killed by an assassin’s bullet, those who instruct those reprisals will live a full fat life. Unfortunately, politically driven murderers tends to assassinate the good leaders, not the bad leaders. The bad are usually well protected by a big nation with a more powerful leader.
In Rafah there are graveyards filled with children. It is unimaginable how much worse will be inflicted upon them by more bombing, another Israeli invasion, or starvation. The European hospital is crammed with wounded and dying children – another military offensive will be catastrophic. Rafah is a city of children – some 600,000 of them.
What we witness from the few reporters taking the lives in their own hands, is a gangrene puss-filled puss stain on humanity. James Elder can tell it better; he is Unicef’s global spokesman.
The war against Gaza’s children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed’s eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine, was nine. Mohamed is now dead.
Over three visits to the European hospital’s ICU in Rafah, Gaza, I saw multiple children occupy the same bed. Each one arriving after a bomb had ripped through their home. Each one dying despite doctors’ immense efforts.
Only a few weeks ago the world was decrying the senseless killing of seven aid workers in a convoy for the World Central Kitchen. It was another grim milestone for Gaza. A week later, a Unicef vehicle was hit, again when trying to reach those in the most desperate need. This week further airstrikes in Rafah have killed more civilian adults and children. But this is Gaza, where outrage over attacks fades amid new emerging tragedies.
From looming famine to soaring death tolls, the latest fear is the much-threatened offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza. Can it get any worse? It always seems to. It has been six months and this war is breaking some of humanity’s darkest records: reports state more than 14,000 children have been killed. But there is no slowing in the fighting’s pace or ferocity. If anything, things are getting worse: with clear promises – threats – that this terrifying trajectory will continue.
Rafah will implode if it is targeted militarily because there are more than 1.4 million civilians already there, suffering dire conditions. Most have had their homes damaged or destroyed. All have had their coping capacity smashed. There is simply nowhere left to go in Gaza.
Water is in desperately short supply, not just for drinking but sanitation. In Rafah there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people. The situation is four times worse for showers. That is, around one shower for every 3,500 people. Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower.
Rafah is home to what is now Gaza’s largest remaining hospital – the “European hospital”– named as such to honour the European Union that paid for its construction. When I visited in April, a paediatric surgeon, Dr Ghaben, was hunched over another little boy, Mahmmoud. He had massive head trauma from a bomb that had hit his family home. “What did this little boy do?” the doctor asked, a tear forming in his eye. Dr Ghaben was 30 hours into his 36-hour shift. He feared Mahmmoud would be dead by the time he returned for his next shift. He was right.
This is one of many stories from the European hospital, where tens of thousands of civilians desperately seek refuge. New ICUs have been built in a vain attempt to manage the wounded. Why is the European hospital today more important than ever before? Because the health system in Gaza has been systematically destroyed. Today 10 out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning; and each of those is only partially functioning. And so, at a time when Gaza’s children need medical care like never before, there has never been less available.
On 31 October, Unicef called Gaza a graveyard for children. Last month I saw new graveyards in Rafah being constructed. And filled. Every day the war brings more violent death and destruction. In my 20 years with the United Nations, I have never seen devastation like that I saw in the Gaza Strip cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City. And now we are told to expect the same via an incursion in Rafah.
Upon hearing of the UN security council’s decision to pass a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire (more than a month ago now), hope filled the faces of those in Rafah. One mother told me: “This may be the first night in months that I can promise my daughter she won’t be killed in the night.” But it took only hours for that hope to be obliterated by bombs.
Gaza needs an immediate and long-lasting humanitarian ceasefire. How many times have we said – pleaded for – that? And we must see the release of all hostages, safe and unrestricted access for humanitarian relief, and more crossings for that relief.
People in Gaza are stunned that the horrors continue. In the north of the territory, close to where a Unicef vehicle came under fire last month, a woman clutched my hand and pleaded, over and over, that the world send food, water and medicine. I will never forget how, as I felt her grasp, I tried to explain we were trying, and she continued to plead. Why? Because she assumed the world did not know what was happening in Gaza. Because if the world knew, how could they possibly let this happen?
How, indeed. The world has certainly been warned about Rafah. It remains to be seen how many eyes stay, or are forced, shut. Meanwhile the children in Gaza live a life of terror.
NOTES
James Elder is Chief of Media & External Relations for UNICEF. He has an MA degree in Media and Communications. He has been active in media, publishing and information for more than 15 years, first as a journalist in his native Australia, then as an editor. Before joining UNICEF (in 2002) he wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, a string of publications abroad, and freelanced for the country’s biggest-selling lifestyle magazines. During his time freelancing, he rode bulls, formula one cars, boxed a round with the world lightweight champion (he still has all his original teeth), and interviewed people from David Beckham to Richard Branson and the Dalai Lama. He then spent six months in India with his TV producer wife, filming and presenting documentaries for Cable TV. He started his career with UNICEF in Angola, arriving six months after a three-decade war ended. There he presided over a strategy to project post-war Angola into the public and donor domain and was a co-author of the country’s ‘Multiple Cluster Survey’ and a fundraising book of human stories from Angola. He has done emergency stints in Darfur, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Mozambique. He is married with three children.
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