What makes some people so bigoted?

THEIR MOTHERS MUST BE SO PROUD....

Yes, that's a Twitter conversation between two ukip fanatics, the sort who would block you rather than try to engage in any intelligent conversation because they know how quickly their lies would be exposed. There is no point in challenging their nonsense because no truth or logic is allowed into their bubble.

What makes some people so devoid of empathy, or unable to recognise the consequences of their own actions?  Are they wholly unable to realise that the horrendous bigotry they display is directly responsible for upholding the social attitudes that result in tragedies like this one, and this one?  That they are, effectively, complicit in unwarranted deaths?

It's frequently the case that the worst homophobes are those who have always battled with their own sexuality.  Perhaps that's the case here and these creatures deserve some modicum of pity.  But it's hard to feel any sympathy for someone who is happy to cause suffering in others.

So I wonder what their mothers make of them?  Can they really take any pride in having reared such extreme, damaged and damaging individuals?  Could even a mother love them?

How do you solve a problem like Carmichael?

THE MOUND OF TRU FIC(tion)

Or maybe a pile of doo-doo?  There was certainly something very shitty about the #Frenchgate memo was leaked in April, alleging that our First Minister had told the  French Ambassador that she would prefer to see David Cameron win the forthcoming general election and did not consider Ed Milliband to be Prime Ministerial material.  Which the gullible Torygraph duly printed as the truth, and was then picked up by several politicians wishing to use it against the SNP.

Swift and total denials from both Ms Sturgeon and the French officials who she'd met with soon followed, and an enquiry was launched into the affair.  It quickly became clear that the memo had come out of the Scotland Office where the responsible ministers were Alistair Carmichael and David Mundell.  The former denied he'd had any knowledge of the memo and said that 'these things happen' in an election campaign.  Quite.

Several weeks, £1.4million and an election later the enquiry got to at least some of the truth, and Carmichael now admits to having known about the fraudulent communication and authorised its release.  By which time he had managed to hold on to his seat as an MP, the only Lib Dem in Scotland to do so and that with a greatly reduced majority of under a thousand.  Oh, and one Mr Mundell clung on too, leaving the new Tory government with only one choice to replace Carmichael as Secretary of State for Scotland.

Carmichael lied to his electorate, costing the taxpayer a small fortune, yet refuses to resign his seat.  And the Liberal Democrat party, that bastion of integrity, does not think Alistair has done anything so wrong that it merits any action on their part.  So the fingernails are digging in, clinging to the figment of credibility that remains, whilst petitions are demanding he resign and his constituents are starting to raise their voices.  What's it going to take to get him to sing So Long, Farewell and go off to be a Lonely Goatherd.

Compare and contrast, compare and contrast.  Carmichael lies, profits from the lie, all at the cost of ourselves, yet thinks he continue in his privileged position.  Meanwhile William McNeilly, the Trident whistleblower, tells the truth (at least, as he sees it) in the public interest, with no benefit to himself, and is now detained on a military camp awaiting a decision on his future.  Which one deserves our thanks and which our approbation?  I think the answer to that is as simple as do-re-mi.

Oh, and will we ever know what a certain David Mundell knew about the infamous memo?  Anyone posting that question on his Facebook page finds their query is swiftly deleted....

A just war?

GIVING THE CONCHIES THEIR DUE

Being away from home for a couple of days meant we missed out on having a grandstand view of the ceremony which took place in the cemetery below us yesterday.  It was commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the UK's biggest ever rail disaster which happened at Quintinshill, near Gretna, and where more than two hundred people died.  The majority of these were soldiers from a battalion recruited from this area of what is now north Edinburgh, in Leith, Portobello, and Musselburgh.  They were on their way to Liverpool where they would have been shipped off to fight in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Their train, carrying almost five hundred of these men, crashed into a stationary local train.  Within minutes an express from Glasgow had ploughed straight into the carnage, compressing the troop train into a space little more than a third of its original length.  Wooden carriages and gas lighting ensured there was an instant conflagration and many suffered horribly slow deaths in the fire.  When the surviving troops were finally assembled barely more than sixty were still alive and without any serious injuries.

Set in the context of the slaughter that was taking place on the European mainland the actual numbers dying must have appeared trivial, which may explain why the incident is so little known today.  But at the time it had a massive impact on the Leith community, with few families untouched in some way.  The subsequent enquiry was rapid, cursory, and resulted in two signalmen being convicted.  They didn't serve their full sentences and were later re-employed by the railway company.  There remain strong suspicions that The Establishment, under the cloak of wartime expediency, closed ranks and ensured that the real problems underlying the accident were never investigated.  There was much that smelled rotten about the affair.

So although the memorial service was marking an event of tragic significance, it did so without critical examination.  And that fits in neatly with the prevailing culture that what happens in war is 'glorious' and not to be questioned too closely.  A culture which seems to be frequently picked up, uncritically, by the those who claim to be 'patriots', and will often be against anything which involves the UK in European institutions.  How often have I seen some Neanderthal on Twitter claiming that the two world wars were fought to keep Britain out of Europe?  As if having a common German enemy in each made them identical.

Yet the two wars could hardly have been more different in moral quality.  Whilst the 1939-45 conflict had some clear elements of good versus evil (or at least better versus worse), I'd find it impossible to say that about 1914-18.  The Nazi regime was truly appalling and could not be allowed to survive.  And so it's simple, and simplistic, to put that good v evil label on Allies against Axis.  Yet the country which did most to win the war, and whose people suffered the most in it, was Stalin's Russia, a tyranny that was litle better, morally, than Hitler's.  And a government who had, when the war began, been an ally of the German state.  Simple answers rarely tell us much.  And that applies even more for the First World War.

You might remember the TV advert that was running last Xmas which showed British and German troops playing football in no-mans land on 25 December 1914 (was it a supermarket ad?).  That annoyed me (OK, many ads do....) because it placed an important event outside the historical context which made it so meaningful.  The real world football had to take place in 1914 because the following Xmas the army commands on both sides took steps to prevent a repeat, including officers threatening to shoot any men who attempted to establish friendly contact with 'the enemy'.  So who was the real enemy here?

It's arguable that ordinary private soldiers, British, French, German and all, had much more in common with each other than they did with their own officers or governments.  The Europe of the period was far more divided along class lines than national boundaries.  The Establishment fear of that football match came from the dread that their own troops might see the truth and turn against them.  This was a war of imperialism, the established empires seeking to maintain their monopoly in the exploitation of Africa and Asia, one (Austro-Hungary) hoping to hold back it's steady demise, and the new kid on the block, Germany, looking to break through and join the big boys.  In qualitative morality there was little to choose between them.  Never was the phrase "Workers of the world, Unite" more necessary.

Most people would have had no access to this line of thought, bombarded as they were with jingoistic propaganda and force fed the line the regime wanted them to hear.  So it's all the more credit to those few who saw through the fiction and took the brave decision to become conscientious objectors, not just on religious grounds, but because they recognised the essential falsity underlying the war and the usage to which ordinary people were being subjected.  There have been recent moves to belatedly make some attempt to remember these men properly in the UK.  Maybe the time will come when society realises that they were the true heroes of 1914-18.

We're off to see the wizards....

ALL LAU-ED UP AND READY TO ROLL

In less than three hours from now we'll be on a train to that there London and on our way to our first Lau gig of the year (there's another booked for November).  I've written before of my passion for this band and that hasn't changed.

The new album, The Bell That Never Rang, arrived a few weeks ago and was even more exciting, challenging, strange, enthralling than Race The Loser had been.  There were tracks of great immediacy, which swept you up on first listen, simple melodies that 'caught' straight away, but often with lyrics that wanted to be heard again for understanding to seep through.

And there were pieces that felt almost alien to the ears on first hearing, but repayed over many replays, giving up their complexity and structure and depth.  The seventeen minute title track in particular.

And now to see how those studio sounds will translate on to the live stage, how the trio will create these complicated soundscapes.  A process sure to involve a considerable amount of electronic layering.  And, maybe, the presence of the Elysian Quartet.

Whatever the means, I'm excited to see how it's done, hear the result, be swept along with the force of nature that is Lau.  It helps that the gig is in one of our all time favourite venues, the amazing Union Chapel in Islington.  Roll on 8pm....

Little Nigel has a laugh

Little Nigel was trying to get himself elected to the school council.  Again.

But this time he knew he would do it.  He knew it, he knew, he knew it, because Nanny had said he would.  So he made up lots of promises, and wrote them down on a big purple card, and told the Little Nigel Fan Club to tell everyone in the school about it.  And the Fan Club did as they were told, for hadn't Nigel given them all toffees?  OK, so the Fan Club were actually Class 1D, but they were his.  They were, they were, they were, because Nanny said they were.

And Little Nigel said to the Fan Club that if he didn't win this time then he'd leave the school and never be seen again.  But he knew he wouldn't have to.  Because Nanny said so.

So the elections to the school council were held and the results were all added up and got shouted around the school hall and... And, and, and..... This couldn't be.  Little Nigel had lost.  For the seventh time in a row.  And Nigel realised that Nanny's promises were just like his own.  All made up.

So he wrote to the crestfallen Fan Club and told them he was going to leave the school, because that's what the big boys who'd lost were doing (apart from Smudger Murphy, but nobody could stop laughing at him), and he so, so, so wanted to be one of them.  And 1D became even sadder.  But then one of them noticed something.  At the end of the note Little Nigel had scribbled something.  It read "Because I'm a man of my word".  So this boy, who was just a tad brighter than the others (he could even tie his own shoelaces) told the others what was written, and when it slowly, ever so slowly, dawned on them what Little Nigel was telling them, well, they all smiled, and then they laughed.  They laughed, they laughed, they laughed.

So the 'clever' boy (who could run because his shoelaces were tied up tight) was sent to bring Nigel before the Fan Club and they told him, because they knew it was what he wanted to hear, that they would never let him leave the school and he had to stay and none of them could do what he did or ever be one of the big boys and if he left who'd stand up for all the school dunces?  Eh?  Tell us that Nigel.

And Little Nigel drew himself up to his full height of four feet eight and half and he said "No, I must not stay, for I am going to be a man of my word like the big boys".

And the Fan Club looked at Nigel.  And Nigel looked at the Fan Club.  And then they all laughed.  They laughed and laughed and laughed.

Don't go blaming us

ED DOESN'T GET IT, DOES HE?

In the aftermath of the election results, the euphoria of events in Scotland and despair at events UK wide, there are a lot of people indulging in the blame game. Especially Labour politicians and supporters.  And one common thread seems to be to lay some of the blame for their poor performance on the people of Scotland, where Labour dropped from forty one seats to just one.

I think this is usually referred to as 'denial'.  Some simple arithmetic shows that, even if Labour had won every single seat north of the border, they would still be well short of the Tory total.  And Scotland elected a huge tranche of MPs who would have been happy to support a left leaning Westminster government.  We did our bit.  Even Ed Miliband doesn't appear to want to acknowledge this, when it's clear that if there is fault it lies with him, the Labour party, and the susceptibility of the English electorate to give in to the messages of fear that the right wing media pumps out.

Ed thinks 'nationalism' was responsible for his losses up here.  How delusional can you be?  A simple look at voter turnout figures and the size of the majorities achieved shows that many thousands of Indyref No voters must have put an X against their SNP candidate.  And they haven't all suddenly become converts to Scottish independence.  That was never what this was about.

What people here do want is a change in the way politics is being conducted; an end to the ideological bullshit of austerity and the immense damage it is doing to individual lives; greater devolution of powers to Holyrood, as promised during Indyref; a hope for greater social justice and a reduction in the vast inequalities that distort our society.  Progressive politics.  That's what we voted for here, whilst in England there was .... only the wonderful Caroline Lucas (would Brighton consider becoming a Scottish enclave?).  Leading economists have stated that Nicola Sturgeon's plans for increased spending and growth are far more likely to succeed in the long term than the austerity agenda, and will be better for the majority of people in the immediate period.  We voted for hope and common sense.

Meanwhile England has voted for more of the same - greed, ideological attacks on the welfare state and an increase in inequality.  Fear has been allowed to triumph over hope.  Why else would anyone possibly vote for a party that included such vile incompetents as Osborne, Hunt, Pickles, Gove and Shiny Dave himself?

If you have any doubts that there is now a vast cultural and political difference between  the two countries then consider this.  If the votes cast on Thursday had been allocated seats on a proportional basis then ukip would comfortably be the third largest party in parliament, with the SNP back in fifth.  A party that, as far as I'm aware, couldn't muster enough votes to retain a single deposit in this country.  The far right have no place in Scotland.

There was a 'threat', made up by the Tories, that 'Scotland' could somehow be dominating England (it was never explained exactly how that would work....) the right wing media acted horrified.  But England dominating Scotland, despite having no mandate to do so, is just seen as business as usual.  Funny that.

It's 5 in the morning....

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

Dawn has arrived through the windows, and light is being shed on the outcome of this General Election.   I've seen some of my hopes being realised, but also some of the fears.  I'll be going to be in two minds over what I've been seeing, and knowing there is still no certainty over what the next government will look like.

Watching the Scottish results has been an incredibly exhilarating experience, a decisive moment in history.  The SNP aren't just set to return a record number of MPs, but will have done so by taking more than 50% of the popular vote.  With only three seats still to declare they have taken all but three of the 56 results, leaving one Labour, one Lib Dem and one Tory.

I think I need to write one phrase of that sentence again.  One Labour.  There were forty one Scottish Labour MPs going into the election.  They have been unseated not by a series of narrow victories, but by some of the most incredible swings ever seen in British politics.  Swings of around 25% have been commonplace, with the record breaker being a near unbelievable 39%.  In a large number of seats the SNP candidate has taken over 50% of the votes cast.  While the three unionist winners have done so by quite small numbers.

Scotland has changed, dramatically.  England, it appears, hasn't.  It's almost as if we were two different countries....

It's hard to comprehend from up here, but the Tories look to be increasing their share of the vote, and number of seats.  Possibly so much so that they will gain a overall majority, so there may not be the anticipated horse trading to come.  If it does the shape it will take is uncertain.  Nick Clegg clung on to his own seat, but his party has fared badly, losing many of their big names like Simon Hughes and Vince Cable.  As I write the Lib Dems have six seats, and have lost thirty.  Will whatever numbers they and the Tories finally achieve be sufficient to keep the coalition going?  Would the Liberals even want to do so, given the harm it's done them?

In the bad news section is the return of Boris the buffoon to parliament.  But we can take some encouragement from the failure of ukip to make any progress.  They have narrowly held on in Clacton with Tory turncoat Carswell.  But that may be their only success of the night.  And one of the most joyous moments is promising to be the news that Farage has failed, yet again, to become an MP.  If he's actually being honest for once then he should be quitting as the Dear Leader and heading for the obscurity he so deserves.  That may signal the beginning of the end for ukip.  So something good may come out of this election.

Is the UK heading for an inevitable federalism?  Or even break-up?  Interesting times ahead.


While I've been typing the SNP have taken yet another two seats off the Lib Dems.  Including that off Beaker, Osborne's front man.  There's a bit of a pattern here....


PS 6am and time for a bit of sleep (maybe).  At least I can go to bed on one bit of good news - the vile Esther McVey has been thrown out.  Good riddance.

One day to go....

HOPES AND FEARS

Only one day left until voting time, and the outcome remains wholly in doubt, despite the seeming consistency of the polls in recent weeks.  The shape of UK voting intentions has shifted dramatically in the last five years and the pollsters are to some extent in unknown territory. There is near universal agreement, despite the bluster coming from Cameron and Milliband, that both the big parties will fall well short of an overall majority.  This should be seen as a plus, forcing them towards a more consensual type of politics (which, admittedly, the current coalition has shown no signs of), closer to the European norm, and shifting further away from the dinosaur slug-out that we see in the USA.

This situation is an exciting one for anyone interested in the mechanics of politics, worrying for those who are desperate to see their own views reflected in the new government.  I'm no exception and will be staying up for as long as I can stay awake on election night.  My inner geek fascinated by the pattern being revealed, and it's implications.  My desire for a more progressive form of leadership nervously doing the arithmetic.  Guided by the Returning Officers' timetables and certain key results I'll be looking to.

So where might the polls have got it wrong?  Could either Labour or Tories come up with anything today that gives one or the other a decisive advantage?  Will the Lib Dems' collapse really be as great as predicted?  Is the SNP surge going to look as big as it's being hyped up to be?  And have ukip really got any foundation for claiming that they too have a surge on, albeit hidden because voters aren't revealing their intentions?  (Which sounds entirely possible - who wouldn't be embarrassed to admit they're voting for the far right?  A bit like all those people who never voted for Thatcher in the eighties, honestly they didn't.....)  And can the best MP in the House of Commons hang on to that one Green foothold?

All I can do is put down my hopes and fears, knowing there's no crystal ball available, just based on what we know is possible.  Hope one is that Labour do end up as the largest party, albeit well short of the three hundred seat mark.  It won't stop the right wing media moaning about 'legitimacy', but it would reduce their scope for carping a fraction.  For all his faults, Milliband is clearly the 'least worst' option of the two choices open to us.

Hope two is to see that forecasted Liberal Democrat carnage take place, a necessary punishment for the way in which they have betrayed so many of their voters.  Clegg losing his own seat would be a bonus, but the one I really would like to see go is this man.

If the trends show it to be a possibility, it would worth staying up until 5ish just to see if Osborne's front man gets chopped by his electorate.  A Lib Dem rump reduced to around twenty seats would open the field up for the more progressive parties to have influence on a forthcoming legislative programme.

Led by, hope number three, a strong SNP representation.  We've seen polls suggest they could take all fifty nine Scottish seats.  I don't think anyone believes that for a second, and there is going to be a lot of tactical voting taking place in the hope of preventing it.  Currently with just six MPs, having never had more than eleven in the past, if the SNP break the thirty mark it would be an incredible achievement.  If they could manage forty it would not be possible for Milliband to ignore them if he wants to be PM, in spite of his rash assertions last week.  My hope?  Forty five seats would have a nicely symbolic ring to it....

Backed up by Ms Lucas and MPs from Plaid Cymru and the SDLP there would be a good chance of working with what remains of the left in Labour ranks to guide a Labour administration away from the worst excesses of Austerity.

Fears?  The return of the existing coalition would be a disaster, a continuation of the ideological attack that's been waging war on the most defenceless sections of society.  But it could be worse.  It's looking highly unlikely that Cameron/Clegg combo will be able to command a majority and Shiny Dave might look even further to the right.  A government influenced by the homophobic DUP and xenophobic ukip would be a far greater evil than anything we've seen in the past five years.  The only silver lining from such a scenario is the rate at which it would speed up the road to Scottish independence....

So, as with Inverness and Danny Alexander, I hope that South Thanet have the decency to return Farage to the status of obscure historical footnote he so clearly deserves.  And that ukip's supposed surge is the wild fantasy that it appears to be.

My wishes won't all come true, but what's politics without hope?  Many will disagree with me totally, but that's what democracy is all about.  And I'd admit that the views expressed above are based on what seems realistic, not on what I'd genuinely like to happen.  But that requires a cultural shift to move the agenda into the real world, not just the subjects that neoliberalism has deemed fit to be discussed.  There's so much they'd rather we didn't mention.....

How would it feel to be a Scot in England right now?

IS JOCKOPHOBIA A THING NOW?

I am over-privileged.  In our skewed, patriarchal society I have, through accident of birth, been gifted most of the attributes that are somehow seen as worthy of respect.  I'm white, male, straight, reasonably well educated and of above average intelligence, ad if I'm not exactly George Clooney I'm no Quasimodo either.  Oh, and I'm tall.  And naturally thin.  About the only thing stopping me from hitting the superficial stakes jackpot is the lack of a posh English accent.

I only moved back to Scotland last summer, after thirty five years spent living in England - pretty well all of my adult life.  My wife is English, most of my friends are English, I worked for a government department that covered only England and Wales.  I have never experienced anything even remotely resembling prejudice.  A few jokes of the national stereotype variety perhaps, but that's about it.  But in all those years I never felt anything other than foreign.  Not in any negative sense, it's simply the way it was.

In Scotland the indy referendum created a degree of societal division.  That has persisted into the current election, fanatical nationalists on the one hand, rabid unionists on the other, and most in the middle trying to make some sense of it all.  Although it's not really relevant to the current debates, statements about nationality and what it means keep cropping up.  Usually missing out the obvious fact that there's more than one way to define national identity.  I've never had a problem with knowing that I'm technically British, because that's what it says on my passport, but emotionally Scottish, because England always seemed like a foreign country when I was growing up.  And, in a practical sense, I've been English too, having lived there for so long, been involved in life there.

All of which is by way of preamble to what's happening now.  With the polls suggesting the SNP will become the third party at Westminster, and likely to have some role in determining who the next Prime Minister will be, the UK media have focussed on Scotland like never before.  The SNP are perceived as a major threat to the usual cosy consensus of the more established parties and this has provoked a reaction.  A Labour government with SNP support would be the biggest constitutional crisis since the abdication, while Nicola Sturgeon is now the most dangerous woman in Britain (note the casually implied misogyny....).  At least in English editions of the papers.  Try looking at what's being said about Scotland in the northern and southern editions of the Sun, Fail et al, and you get two very different stories.

And that mistrust of a party which only stands in Scotland appears to be extending into a demonisation of 'The Scots' more generally.  Not just those who might vote for the SNP, but all of us who live here.  Exacerbated by simplistic lies from the likes of Farage promising (sic) he'd stop money 'flooding' over Hadrian's Wall (sic).  Which is giving rise to this curious word 'Jockophobia'.  But to what extent is that merely a creation of the frothing right wing media?

So how would I feel about being there now?  Perhaps a bit uncomfortable?  A bit defensive?  What do others think?

Post election poker games?

FOUR DAYS TO GO

Next Thursday the UK gets to vote in a General Election.  And, as in 2010, it appears to be heading for an uncertain and confusing outcome, but with far more in the way of complications, variables and permutations that was the case five years ago.  Then it was a fairly simple choice.  Would the Lib Dems hook up with the Tories, marginally the largest party in terms of seats, or with Labour, the incumbent government?  We know how that one went and what followed.

Now the arithmetic looks a lot more complicated.  If the polls are to be trusted, and there do appear to be a lot of undecideds out there who could confound predictions, then the two major parties will remain close in number of seats, but both well short of having a majority on their own.  Meanwhile the Lib Dems look set to be punished for their perfidy and lose at least half their seats.  Replacing them as the numerical third party (and already hitting that target in terms of party membership) will probably be the SNP.  Predictions for the number of seats they will win vary widely, right up to one poll suggesting they would take all fifty nine in Scotland.  I doubt that's going to happen, but around forty does seem entirely likely.  (There are stories that Labour has effectively given up on holding about thirty of their current forty one, the Lib Dems might only hang on to two or three out of eleven.  If the SNP also hold on to their existing seats that becomes an easy forty to forty five, more than two thirds of the seats in the country.)

And that may be the scenario the parties are going to have to deal with.  In spite of Ed Milliband's seeming refusal to want to face reality.  Cameron will get first go at forming a government, either as incumbent or, quite possibly, the largest party.  Where will he get the additional support he needs for a majority?  He can maybe count on the rump of the Lib Dems.  But if they have fallen below the thirty mark they will not be able to give him what he needs.  So then he has to look further to the right.  Primarily that means the homophobic DUP, who will probably have about eight MPs.  And, scraping the barrel still further, however many ukip candidates get returned.  But the polls only show that to be a figure between one and six, so they'd have little impact.

Cameron cannot look to the Progressive Alliance, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, for none will have anything to do with the Tories (there are some in England who think Sturgeon would do anything if a referendum was offered, which only shows how limited their understanding of Scottish politics is).  And his only other option - one that's hard to conceive happening, but has to be considered - is a Grand Coalition with Labour.  How desperate do both sides have to be for that to happen?

Milliband's options look more realistic.  It's just his own words that aren't.  He could run a minority government with outside support garnered on a vote by vote basis.  That would come from the progressive parties, and perhaps even the Lib Dems (who'd be desperate to cling on to power one suspects).  A formal Lab/Lib government with the others providing the votes.

Except why should they just supinely vote for whatever Labour says they should - precisely what Scotland may have chosen to reject?  There are going to have to be trade offs, and I think the coming weekswill see one giant game of chicken taking place.  Labour think that the SNP wouldn't dare to vote down their Queen's Speech, else it would open the way for a Tory government.  Really?  The arithmetic will still remain against that happening, and losing the QS doesn't mean that Milliband has to resign.  It would take a vote of confidence for that to happen and the SNP might well decide to support him in that, and tell him to go away and think about a new budget.  And why shouldn't they?  That's how democracy works.  If Milliband wants SNP support he has to provide them with reasons to do so.  How could it, should, be otherwise?

Let the bluffing commence....