Like Culling Seals

You could almost hear the jackboots hit the ground and the click-load of dozens of M240 machine guns crash into position. The M240 is the U.S. military designation for the FN MAG, a family of belt-fed, gas-operated medium machine guns tha takes a 7.62×51mm NATO cartridge. They targeted as many independence personnel as possible. It was a reasonably well co-ordinated attack, something out of a Hollywood action film starring our own Gerard Butler, the attackers whooping ‘Scotland Down!” They went for us as if culling seals.

THE PRESS

The phony independence support of the press threw off their Saltire badged beanie hats to reveal shaved heads with swastikas tattooed on their forehead, German Hakenkreuz. Neil Mackay, the Herald’s badass trash merchant was first out of the regiment truck, squealing frantically while running in different directions simultaneously before finding a soft spot to mount his gun. He began: “Time for the SNP to shut up about independence and govern properly,” a statement any old fart of a unionist could make and probably did. Aye, Neil Mackay has a way with words. His contribution to Scotland’s political progress is like the French revolution’s contribution to the design of the guillotine. One size fits all.

He demanded to know why the SNP was not concentrating on fixing our allegedly collapsing health service – a Tory-Labour fabrication – or filling the education ‘attainment gap’. No one knows what ‘attainment gap‘ means, it’s an empty, meaningless slogan; it’s not an educational term. Third-rate politicians use it so that we don’t have to do any thinking. We assume it means swathes of Scottish children are not making the grade to become Oxbridge dons. The colonial mentality gets into everything.

The content of poor ostracized Iain Macwhirter’s articles, now taking sanctuary in the Scottish Times, free from the naughty corner for using the term ‘coconut’ in a bad way, is hardly recognisable compared to the indy convert of the Herald, his previous employer. (Put together Scottish and Times is an oxymoron.) And the normally reliable Kevin McKenna decided answers to the SNP kamikaze nature could be found talking to voters in a pub in Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency, Fantastically convenient for a press man to go drinking to discover what real people think. But the voters were as bemused as the rest of us that the first minister ‘dedicated to the cause of independence’ (her words) a goal never a priority in all her years at the top, had held a press conference to say in effect, ‘fuck yous, Ah’m aff!’

No matter what our journalists claim as their guiding political principle, they will always revert to type. The first generally accepted devolution superstate proposed will be the answer to their divided loyalties. Some hacks are such poor writers their prose needs translated, and then translated again into English.

And on the subject of columnists of no particular distinction, Dani Garavelli, who let slip the identities of the ‘Alphabet’ accusers in the Salmond case, joined the Barf Central Choir to pay tribute to a politically stunted first minister. Garavelli meant what she wrote, penning a vomit inducing, saccharine gush of adoration. If the Scottish press see themselves not as the protector of truth and democracy, but ineffectual lying toadies, this was the day they proved it.

BOTS AND TROLLS

On the Internet a ton of bots were released to harry private citizens into thinking the days of independence are over, dead. Like a pack of hyenas scenting a kill, unionist trolls followed in their wake to pick at the dead bones. What they got for their jeering was their lights punched out by people taking no crap from knuckle draggers. The Yes movement had shifted from thinking they could convert anybody from No to Yes simply by explaining things in tolerant tones, to a better understanding that colonial watchdogs need removed from society permanently wherever they inhabit, from their roof top positions, inside car boots, or state school assassins.

A few phony Scots tried the soft soap routine suggesting the independence movement was fatally riven and should be left to die in peace. They too got slapped and told to toughen up. Who ever heard of revolutionaries wonder if it was too much to storm the Winter Palace when it might inconvenience the Tsar and his nice family?

THE MEDIA

The media had a field day. Every question and answer television or radio show, and every news and current affairs programme, asked the same question: “does the departure of Nicola Sturgeon mean the union is safe? (You won’t ever hear the BBC say, “Let’s look at all the benefits an independent country enjoys, that Scotland does not.”) On BBC Radio 4’s version of give the poor a chance to speak, four pig ignorant guests waffled on to an English audience that they hoped Scotland would see the benefits of not causing trouble anymore and being loyal pets. The members of the audience duly applauded as if they owned Scotland, and Scots were stealing it.

The editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop – father from Ayrshire – on his tired weekly political satire show Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) had a go at Scots again. He holds to the myth that Scotland was bankrupted by the Darien Ventures, a pure piece of fabrication from the British right-wing – he thinks it was one venture, there were three – and Scots rushed into the warm, welcoming arms of the English to save us from penury. HIGNFY dispensed with the usual chairman’s racist gags, such as ‘Scots hate vegetables and eat fried Mars Bars’, preferring to show the right-wing principles Hislop and his magazine betray every so often. There was a time a politician they were lampooning would be tarred with the phrase ‘he was off to attend to his Ugandan affairs – innuendo to suggest the married individual was having a sex tryst somewhere. They over-used the meme for years, sticking the remark on completely innocent politicians,

The magazine is unashamedly metropolitan-centred. That’s where it sells most copies. Hislop discovered Scotland late in the rag’s history, and like the BBC, throw in a token Scots item when they can get it. The BBC refuses to mount a more hard hitting political review, and won’t while its bosses are as Tory as you can get for £10,000 a meeting plus expenses.

THE LIARS

The union hacks reused as much ammunition as they could, the same scaremongering as in 2013 and 2014. Fossilised turds were posted by people with no economic credentials whatsoever, other than knowing there are twenty single pounds in a £20 note. They tried the hoary old line that Scotland is too poor to survive on its own, as if hilariously England keeps hold of Scotland to subsidise its survival and yet cannot pay its nurses or rail workers a fair pay rise. One particular idiot claimed GERS was what Scotland gets annually based on its output, rather than the truth that GERS is a complete fabrication invented by the English government to hide what Scotland really earns. GERS is not intended to show how an independent Scotland would perform, and does not. It is a lie. Only taxes made in Scotland are included in the UK Treasury’s open calculations.

No one can get into the locked vaults where our wealth is stored. Some get out, like Treasury official John Jappy. He told the truth for he had seen it, heard it and studied the account books. For the independence debate GERS is irrelevant. To base an argument for or against independence on data that was never designed to show the genuine financial position of Scotland if it was independent is seriously dumb. This tired, vain argument issues from colonials claiming London is the centre of all money making. Ignoring how Westminster plunders Scotland’s North Sea Oil, and now gas and wind energy, should be put down with a cattle prod.

Without Scotland, England is a very small, vulnerable country, and boy, did colonials show it this week in their frantic effort to quell Scots ardour for full civil and constitutional rights.

THE FEARLESS

In January last year, indulging in a brief moment of forecasting, I added a post script to an essay on the sins of Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon’s husband:

“Before long Nicola Sturgeon is liable to consider managing the coronavirus pandemic her top achievement, and finding an honorable exit the best solution, a dignified solution, to let another more able politician take the people of Scotland to the promised land.”

When predicting the end of influencial politicians they dislike, people tend to forget the physical and mental aspects of aging. I sensed, as others did, that Sturgeon was running out of glowering looks, and her usual well-briefed first minister’s Question Time was fading by its very familiarity. The wee Westminster palace coup led by Stephen Flynn MP had more significance than anybody discerned. But what a mess Sturgeon has left us, a vindictive farewell, as arrogant and callous as she ran the SNP. She has left half the nation scared and the other half laughing.

If we were “good organisers of England’s empire,” as we are told continually by our opponents, we will be damn good negotiators of a better relationship. Meanwhile, our oppressors, together with Sturgeon fans and Sturgeon critics can expect to witness how swiftly her overcooked influence and Greggs manageress style of communication dissipates in our lives. She was never up to the job and finally admitted it. Just a pity she blamed everyone but herself in her valedictory speech. What the SNP taught many is, one does not have to be a member of a political party to vote for independence. You need only pride of place and the informed conviction liberty releases freedoms to create a better life. Scotland will leave this false Union and in the leaving offer a better existence we, not London, can shape.

Whether ardent British politician, unionist party hack, right-wing businessman or press pundit, what our colonial oppressor will never understand is Scotland thinks like another country. That is what is insurmountable for the invader. They can never dislodge a thousand and more years of Scots history.

Onward!

NOTES

Peter Murrell essay here: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-pod

The most read Internet précis of Nicola Sturgeon here: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-pRV

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