This is one aspect of England’s House of Gothic Horrors
“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”
― Ernest Hemingway
My heroes
My heroes are those who accomplish good things for others and wish nothing for themselves; those who know people’s affections can be fickle, that they may never be thanked for their small or big sacrifice, those who dream of making the world a better place, even by their modest efforts, they are my heroes.
No one is going to give us the education we need to overthrow the adversaries of Scotland’s democracy. Nobody is going to teach us our true history, teach us about our true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set us free.
Alex Salmon our own Aunt Sally
Alex Salmond is a hero for seeing off all but one of his political foes Castro-like in the aftermath of defeat and for getting re-elected to Westminster.
How could he know he had set in motion a powerful grassroots movement rushing at English obduracy and snobbery? He warned us that a plebiscite is a “once in a political generation” so we had better not let inertia get the better of us.
The press, keen to alter truth, dropped the prefix ‘political’ – his rational only a sea-change in politics will allow another Referendum without much resistance. Little did he or they know he had caused a mega-shift in British politics, one increasing his party’s membership dramatically, and putting 56 SNP MPs in Westminster.
The sea-change must have Salmond view it with mixed emotions; Tories assume some of Labour’s policies, Labour stating they will not rescind Welfare cuts if they ever gain power.
And then there was 56
I bet our 56 MPs are as surprised of their election against insuperable odds as the rest of us are at how fast Scotland picked itself up and resumed the journey. They are all heroes. The fairweather friends of Scotland who implored us to vote No and stay within a corrupt and useless United Kingdom, to lead, not leave, now deride our MPs at Westminster as wasted faced by almost 600 political adversaries. Detractors contribute nothing to the world except their stupidity.
Andy Murray, a hero of sorts
Now that it is plain he voted for Scotland’s sovereignty he is vilified by sociopaths abusing Internet access in ways the fragrant JK Rowling-Init has never been insulted. We know Murray is a great tennis player, but rather like Scotland’s attempts at democracy the strength of his skill is inconsistent, whilst his main opponents, Federer and Djokovic, are consistent when it matters.
But he’s a hero nevertheless in the way he does win contests, throws a massive amount of time into physically punishing practice and world travel, and ploughs on regardless of disappointments. And he invests his winnings in Scotland.
The gallant forty-five
The forty-five per cent who knew Scotland had to shake off its 19th century links to English colonialism and the dead-hand of Westminster, they are also heroes. They are heroes for not falling into despair when so many of their countrymen voted to be second-class citizens, believing all the fear mongering that froze their judgement rigid.
John MacLean, Dundee filmmaker
John MacLean, modest son of Scottish artists, is a hero for gaining an Academy Award for a short film, and for making a western now in our cinemas shot in Scotland and New Zealand, Slow West, yet remaining fairly unknown in his homeland where those who try to make films here complain they are undervalued and underfunded. MacLean wrote and directed his movie, a film full of visual surprises, financed with the help of its Irish star with the German heritage, Michael Fassbender, also an executive producer. The young protagonist of his story is Scottish.
Anyone Greek, living and working here, and looking at their country’s fortune in the face of brutal right-wing ideology is a hero if they remain stoic and not fall to the ground beating it with their fists in anguish.
The poor unemployed
The poor and the unemployed, and single mothers counting their pennies and weeping demand our respect faced with state cuts to their welfare support. The chancellor, a man who has never held down a job outside politics, who probably does not know the price of a loaf of bread, despises the poor and social support. Of the benefits left reserved by the Smith Commission to Westminster authority, the major items are child benefit, the state pension, child tax credits, working tax credits, income support, the jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit, and the employment and support allowance. Of the estimated £17.8 billion benefits needed to support the poor in Scotland just £2.53 billion are under Holyrood’s control, a pittance.
One of the world’s richest countries, the United Kingdom shows how to make the poor suffer twice over by giving their savings to crooked banks, and impoverishing further those foolish enough not to be wealthy and avoid tax by keeping a bank account abroad. Osborne is the English class system in action.
Those who seek real power for Scotland to choose its own political solutions are heroic.
Grouse Beater 
Well said Grouse.
Hear, hear!
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
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Hear, hear, indeed: Massive need to re-address the ‘history’ currently taught in our schools to encompass a wheen of forgotten heroes domestic with international ramifications and connections, and not just the usual suspect remnants of the Anglo-British take on humanity and its role in subverting it – the 1820 Martyrs would do as starters, and the list goes on and on.
The Media promotes ‘hero’s ‘ created by the Elite to steer the public dialogue in their favor .
Good men stand by the their women and children . The elite encourage men therefore to indulge in masturbatory illusions of masculinity such as heavy drinking ,sports fan , tribal strutting and demeaning each other. It works. Single mothers are the result .
Tennis Players , with all due respect GB ,are not going to get your country back . Nor is an indie film . They can inspire but that is all .
The Elite have always known that if you want to control people you do the following. Destroy their culture and connection to the land , using religion .Then brutalize them to instill fear and keep them down by maintaining ignorance and promoting addictions to drugs, alcohol,sex and all the other distractions like Hollywood cut out hero’s.
True Hero’s don’t even consider themselves as such. They just say and do what they Know is right in their heart and conscience .
The land under the united Kingdoms heel is not evil. Its feels the same indignities as Scotland ,Wales and Ireland. When all the flag waving stops , the TV is turned off and the white noise of church and state is ignored , what we all want is to be at peace in our homeland.
Free from excessive taxation by foreign powers , free from fear and want .
The Crown IS a foreign Power. The united kingdom is a citadel , not the land itself.
Claim the land that gave you birth from the barons who stole it. They are foreign entities/trusts.
Simple.
If a motion was put forward by the SNP tomorrow to buy back, using taxpayers money ,the land that was stolen do you think the people would go for it ? Of course they would . One years tax receipts would buy back all that was stolen. This proposition is so obvious that all it would take is a vote just like they did in Greece. The will of the people cannot be ignored.
So when will the SNP grow a pair and actually do what is required and expected of them ?
Posturing in front of a camera is easy and always contrived. Real Action requires a very simple resolve to actually do what you promised your electorate. HOLD THE REPRESENTATIVES OF YOUR NATION TO ACCOUNT.
Then we will see if the SNP MP’s are hero’s.
The state only gives benefits to mothers in expectation of something in return. We all know that kids who have not been raised in a united family grow up bitter and easily swayed. They seek surrogate fathers and the Military is famous for exploiting this need. The state is abandoning the mothers to destabilize the community further.
Heroism is a choice born of the hearts sincere desire to give and receive love. Anything else is BS posturing .
The state wants us all as dependent wards , with no land rights , in perpetual debt and thus servitude . Debt is their main weapon. If the people had their land back , the land itself would provide the needs of all in a decent honest community.
There is nothing heroic about abandoning a woman and her child to the state .
We must call our own to account too . If we are not united against tyranny and show it in our actions we are of no consequence.
I have traveled and lived all around the world . In the end ,what makes a man a man, truly ?
Its not muscle ,how many drinks he can hold or the size of his Dick . Its not his nationality . A good man is usually the result of a balanced upbringing ,close to nature . Kind loving parents who set healthy boundaries and a community that respects freedom and does not put up with liars.
You will wait a long time for a Hero from Hollywood to free your people . Arnie wont be coming back anytime soon. Nor will William Wallace.Mel Gibson got a very quick slap down when he started to get to close to telling the truth.
My Father and Grandfather died trying to dismantle the financial tyranny with no expectation of public recognition. “two wrongs don’t make a right” was my fathers favorite proverb.
We are all children of one mother . Mother earth. Your blood, bones and flesh are knit from her body . We abandoned her to the state and the banks too and look what the bastards did to her .
Love your mother as yourself , for she alone secures the breath in your lungs and the food in your belly. She does not wave a flag of any nationality .She does not give a damn about the color of your skin . Yet where is the respect for her sacrifice ?
There are heroes and there are heroes. The one’s chosen are committed to full democracy for Scotland, or have brought kudos to Scotland without asking for anything in return. And they have all made sacrifices in their private life to achieve an ideal.
A great post GB, I tend to try and not hero worship, they seem somehow to develop feet of clay. One thing though I agree with, those who fought the establishment in this country and very, so very nearly won, I salute each and every one.
Do you know I hate the term single mother, and do you know why? It calls up the Daily Mail and those other newspapers, television companies who have so reviled them. All it seems are single mothers because they sold their virtue (how Vctorian) and had babies outside of wedlock, all for the glorious chance of a damp council house.
Many women are rearing children alone, as well as a good few men. These children were conceived either in wedlock or in serious relationships. These relationships failed, should the children be penalised? I do not agree with Child benefits, I never have. People should have to face the facts that if they bring children into this world they better be able to afford it, but in saying that their presence should be acknowledged by the State which encouraged their parents into breeding them in the first place.
Much of our welfare benefits have gone to allowing companies to pay low wages and landlords into accumulating property and being recompensed by the state.
Removing Child benefit should be done with care, I see no care in Osborne,s tactics. Someone will come along and mention how a smaller pool of Labour will affect them in years to come.
I tend to be, as I am sure it was Ian Brotherhood who said that we serfs need to stop breeding for a good long time and give them something to chew on.
I look at many of the kids and wonder just what employment prospects many of them have.
I take your point about the term ‘single mother.’ But when I was born my mother was called all sorts of things, and I a ‘bastard’.
The hero’s you have pointed out are receiving salaries or rich reward for their public profile . With the exception perhaps of Stewart Campbell . MP’s receive a very comfortable salary and generous allowances ,not to mention life pensions and under the table perks. Successful tennis players enjoy all manner of sponsorship money on top of their appearance pay on the circuit . Its a bums on seats thing . I am very leery of calling public personalities Hero’s GB , its unhealthy and demeaning to the rest of us who are surviving rather than bathing in limelight and the leverage that comes from public status .Public Hero’s all to often are manufactured to engender false hope rather than supply it in fact. So many sporting events are rigged to cajole and console. Football ,tennis ,cricket ,horse racing , the whole damn circus.
Big business and the media are hero makers and breakers . Its a label that gives artificial weight to issues but you only have to look at the abuses of rock stars like Bono and sir Bob to figure out that their status is bogus . Both caught using charity collecting to give generous salaries to friends and family . Yes , they were bringing it home right enough. The Film biz is a hard core cocaine fueled gravy train and propaganda circus more often than not. Muppet fodder to pacify the restless ,fantasy fulfillment for the lonely and lost.
Trading on hope and beauty to maintain futility.
How many settle for the ‘success’ of others to relieve the shame and pain of their own
existence ? Public ‘hero’s’ are created to appease us cheaply . Vicarious hero worship thrills don’t pay my bills . If your not in the fame game and you don’t have a trade able name, you are a number . A taxable, expendable drone to be milked, bilked and palmed off with Page three tit’s and BBC blather.
Mel Gibson gave us reason to believe until he made a sell out propaganda flick called The Patriot. No mention of the trail of tears or the land theft that gave the white colonials their ‘freedom’ eh ? No mention of the fact that defying royal edict to stay east of the Appalachians and respect existing treaties with the Native Americans, they went on a killing rampage and stole a country not their own for a flag . A nation founded by religious fanatics that now tyrannizes the entire globe.
How many more hero’s have to let us down before we ask ourselves why we continue to indulge their fantasy’s with our sweat ,pain and humiliation ?
Show me a single mother who makes ends meet without going on the game, drugs or booze. THAT’S heroic . Show me a man who refuses to sell out to the local chapter of the Scottish rite Freemason’s to get ahead . There’s true courage. Lets put the hero label to work where it belongs please . There are no medals or academy awards for fending off your child from drug pushers and pedo’s. No gong shows for those who quietly do whats right without giving a damn about public recognition.
Courage is walking away from fame, not whoring yourself and others to achieve it.
My father witnessed it everyday . I grew up around the fame game. I know how it works . I know what lingers behind those coked up smiles . I saw the anguish and pain in the changing rooms backstage . Prostitution takes many forms but I would judge a single mother far far less for feeding her child with her earnings than a public figure who takes home the big bucks selling out his country and people . Public figures should show the gravest humility, not bathe in notoriety .
Victory should be enough for tennis players. Fat pay checks for A listers . The Academy Rewards (deliberate typo) are a self congratulatory orgy ,rigged to enable and maintain the myth . I don’t give a highland toss how many black babies Angelina Jolie hugs. When she rips the world bank/IMF a new ***hole for causing the mess in Africa I may throw her a minty. In practice she covers for them.
If the SNP wants to show Real courage and call a referendum tomorrow , maybe then I will reconsider their status . Until then they are well payed public servants on probation and not a penny more. Im sorry GB , but on this point I feel compelled by My conscience to say Enough Hero talk. For your trade ,publicity is money. I understand why you see the need to recognize native talent . But when you put it on a pedestal you demean your fellow countrymen in the process . Dignity is not a function of fame. Its being free to live without being a slave to the money masters. Fame is the moment you sell your dignity for filthy lucre . It killed Hemingway , it eats the heart out of anyone who embraces it.
Varoufakis earned hero status for openly stating on public record that he proudly defied the usurious enslavement of his people.
He may yet pay for that courage with his life, as Kennedy did. As my father did. I too have had attempts on my life but F*** ’em .
I will die on my feet before I blow for show.
At no point did I say we should worship heroes, but there are some who are heroes by example. We are all a bit of others we admire as we go through life.
They teach us how to be better than we are, and are very rarely thanked for it.
Wonderful input HB . I have a very good friend who is a single mum. Love her dearly and she so deserves a good man in her life . Fantastic mother to her daughters . She works so hard to give them a life . Not her fault her husbands both proved dead beats .
Lets face it , there’s a lot of lousy dead beat men out there who do not honor or respect women . The state knows that people with low self esteem and lack of love will settle for less.They prey for profit on single mothers and their kids .
Here , single motherhood has become a profession . Four kids , four different fathers raised by a mother who was herself abused through a loveless childhood of sexual and drug abuse . Its a vicious downward spiral fueled by greed at the top.
Steal a persons self respect and you take the only thing left that empowers a man or woman. They are prey to landlords ,drug lords , pimps and sleazy local govt/ business owners looking for rough trade that wont squeal on them.
I see this stuff every time i go to town and its heart breaking to see kids growing up with no future . Single mothers will proposition you in the hope of getting pregnant again for the extra welfare . Now with the economy continuing to tank ,the safety net will start to be pulled away . Then what will they do ? what will happen to their kids ? I will tell you. They sell them to pedo’s.
I have seen mothers pimping their preteen daughters outside McDonalds .
The same thing happens at the top of the social ladder too. That is why I refuse to buy in to the flim flam glam scam. Its a myth hiding a world of shame . The techniques may be more sophisticated but the results are no different.
My apologies GB . I am being hard on you or rather I am struggling with the demons that My own experience has dealt . What hurts is the co opting of everything we value and find worthy of praise . I know from my own experience that people who are economically in extremely challenged circumstances feel very real anger towards people like you and me . Not that I am wealthy ,famous or any such thing . Its my work though that gives me strength . But for them it mirrors back their own self hate and despair. What they need most is the dignity of being cared for and loved and a future that gives them something worth working towards . The cult of celebrity works for those with jobs and a measure of financial security , but when life is reduced to nothing ,hate is the only emotion left .
I always had a strong instinct that kept me going forward and never gave up on my belief in Love . Love for my wife and daughter , love for nature , honesty and the simple things that make life fulfilling . I never wanted fame or success . I saw what it did to celebs growing up. I saw how indifferent my father was to its seductions and I admired him hugely for it . Never was a more kind and generous heart so cruelly deprived of life .
I know not everyone in show biz is bad . I know that for many its just what they love to do and I can completely respect that . Let the work be reward enough though . The vast majority know that fame is a narrow market . We should not elevate public persons , rather I think the opposite .
Worship ,as you rightly point out is not what you are encouraging but for many that distinction is lost because they see the media hyping worship all the time . That brings honest artists in to disrepute and its a damn shame.
My craft is considered an art form. This alienates many who assume I am up myself . I think that’s what they call cultural cringe in Australia. But the reality is that if I did not grow our own food and cut firewood etc , we could not survive. I rarely drink and I certainly cant afford to do drugs or gamble. Not complaining , I enjoy the challenge of living on my own terms . But without our little block of land , we would be destitute . That’s the truth . That’s why I push hard for land rights .
The banks have made land ownership almost impossible for the next generation now.
We bought a run down shack on a run down block so we got it cheap. We were lucky .
While others threw away money on drugs,beer and poker machines , we put our hard earned in to renovating and clearing . I see a way forward where people who can learn to rebuild community, can with the help of new technologies become happy self reliant people again. Solar powered eco homes could bring a whole new way of life back to Scotland . people wont need celebrity cult worship to feel validated. They will have a their own homes and happy children running through villages reclaimed .
Thatcher and her Ilk started the fame game. Made greed cool. Its not cool . Its ugly and cruel.
Those bastards dont do anything in half measures and if we are going to get our dignity back neither should we.
Excellent article. I think you may also have stumbled on one of the many reasons for Scottish Labour’s demise:
No more heroes.
Thanks, Luigi. Good to see you here. 🙂
Elevate the ‘hero’ and you demean yourself . You empower someone you hardly know and before you know it the power that comes with adulation corrupts that same individual you put your hope in. Ego inflation for short . The best man or woman for public office is the one who wants it least .
Courage is heroism but rarely if ever does a genuine hero liked to be called such . They resent being made a circus freak and PR pawn . They end up surrounded by flattering opportunists . Cult hero’s are the most dangerous . Hitler , Bonaparte , Stalin , etc. All brought to power by the blind faith and hope of the people. Save us ! the people beg in their desperation and they get what they want. Someone ,who makes all their decisions for them. Ie a Dictator.
Therefore , be careful what you wish for. You may well get it.
What point is there having the right to referendum when the chance of getting one depends on the elected not the electors ? Cant you see how your votes are used against you ? You handed over your power instead of reserving it your selves . Hero worship .
Superb post GB.
I was brought up in a single parent family but so were so many then as in now. It’s not a new thing.
I get angry with the strereo typical stigma. Young men may join our forces looking for a father figure but i never met one. Not one.
Most of my mates had the regular 2.2 families and they were no better or worse than single parent families. Many joined to get away from the misery of the late 70’s and 80’s were work was the pit or the dole. I chose Army. No regrets either.
Many of the single parents being talked about come from abusive marriages or affairs. The women can hardly be faulted and very little is said about the “missing fathers”. They are the problem. Jumping from one relationship to the other with kids given no assistance with their upbringing.
This is one of the few counties in the world where men can leave their families behind and allow the state to pay for their children. Other countries jail men for refusing or not paying maintenance. Thats a disgrace and encourages men to neglect the duties of a parent.
Blaming women who are left holding the family together is a pathetic attempt to divert from the fact that many men don’t pay. My mother brough up 6 of us and 2 “fostered”. As a women in the 60s and 70s with little education or experience she could only get domestic work. Yet even though the pay was a piittence we never ever needed food or heat like nowadys.
My mother was my hero GB. A wondeful wee soul who would give her last to help others. She died in 2000 with her family by her side. Each one made her proud. And she went to her death without fear for us. She prepared us well. Treat others as you would your own. And the family is THE strongest bond that must be nurtured. She certainly done that.
So yes lets have hero’s. Andy Murray – yes for reminding the whole world he is a Scot. Alex Salmond – YES YES YES. For tearing the blinkers from all of us and giving us hope. HOPE. I grew up with little of that but I always knew it was there.
Great article GB. you are a breath of fresh air these days.
Commenters too . Keep up the good work folks.
Good post, good read, and thanks for the thanks. 🙂