About this word 'remote.' I've seen two mentions of the word this week in the press. Both applied to Scotland.
One London-based tabloid newspaper said Bute is remote. Yes, Bute, the place my Glasgow school used to take us on days out in the summer and where Syrian refugees have recently been re-homed. 30 minutes from Wemyss Bay on the boat followed by 35 minutes from Glasgow on the train.
Another newspaper said Skye is remote. It seems there's a Brazilian chef bringing exotic food to 'remote' parts of Scotland. We're talking about Skye here, the island that you don't even need a boat or a plane to get to. Maybe 5 hours of driving from Glasgow followed by a drive over a bridge.
I'm pretty sure nowhere in Scotland these days is that 'remote', unless you're a London journalist, in which case everywhere beyond Barking is remote to you.
Our bus/train/plane connections are pretty good in Scotland. Much improved over the past 30 years or so. I'd like to see us expand some services. For example, it would be good if we could fly to Skye and Mull from Edinburgh and Glasgow. It would be great if ferry services in western Scotland took a few lessons from the Nordic countries, which have a huge system of fast boats plying back and forth across a water-based landscape much like ours. We mainlanders could also learn a bit in this regard from Orkney and Shetland. And I do find it odd that train services go tootling on much as they have done since Beeching axed so many lines. The success of the Edinburgh-Borders line may give us some ideas for future improvement. And we need better roads. We know how bad the A9 is but the road from Glasgow to the Irish ferries is still an absolute disgrace, quite unfit for purpose. In Glasgow, I'd like to see the underground expanded to connect people from the suburbs directly to the city centre - and I'd love to see a proper connection between the city centre and the Glasgow airports. A link between Queen Street and Central would be brilliant.
To keep the population stable - even growing - outside the Central Belt, we need good transport systems and good communications. Transport allows people to get to meetings, courses and family visits. Communications allow people to work efficiently in their home area.
The Scottish mobile phone network is an absolute disgrace. Week after week, I get messages from friends in the Highlands and Islands reporting that Vodafone or O2 - or some other chancer of a phone company - has let its mast go offline. And not just for a day or two. This can go on for weeks.
BT's Openreach is equally bad. High speed broadband is still a dream in most of the parts of Scotland that really need it in order to run a business. Ironically, I'd just decided to post an order to a fish company in Argyll yesterday because their website is so slow and unreliable - and then saw a letter defending Openreach in my newspaper - a letter written by BT, of course. I doubt if anyone else would bother trying to defend them. Will Westminster do anything about it? We'll see.
Sunday 31 July 2016
Friday 29 July 2016
This way - yes, this way!
I got a call from someone who needed to know how to get to my house from Ayrshire. I dutifully provided the info needed: come off the M77 at Newton Mearns, follow the road down to Mearns Cross, keep going down past the next wee roundabout. At Eastwood Toll, take the Glasgow direction and turn immediately left. Up over the hill and then down the other side and you'll see the sign for my bit on your right. Fine.
Two minutes later, I heard a phone ring. Not mine. The phone of the person staying with me, who doesn't live in Glasgow and hasn't done for 40 years - and even then she lived in Cumbernauld! She gave a set of instructions on how to get here to the person I'd just spoken to. Wrong instructions. And while I was really tempted to say: well, hell whack it intae ye - follow those directions and see what happens, I knew what the result would be if I kept quiet.
Same as what happened the last time I was in this situation with people going from my house to the Jubilee. They decided to ignore my directions and went via the Kingston Bridge, arriving at the hospital with only 30 minutes left of visiting time, having wandered around most of Dumbarton and Clydebank.
When I was working, I spent many years driving around Argyll, clocking up miles that would amaze a city dweller. I once went to a meeting in Lochgilphead, only able to get there off a late ferry from Islay because Donald McCormick's draff lorry was going my way and he would give me a lift; ploughed through snow on the back road from Inverary so many times only to find that the meeting in Oban was cancelled because there was a millimetre of the white stuff and the wimps wouldn't go there.
In Ayrshire, I didn't do as many miles but I had similar adventures: sitting behind a herd of very bonny but very slow coos at Stair, looking at the clock and knowing I had 8 minutes till my meeting started in Mauchline; ploughing through pristine snow between Sorn and Galston and wondering just why I'd thought this was a short-cut; cursing the many accidents on the A77 that meant I had to go home via Stewarton over terrible roads, in the dark.
Even in suburban East Ren, I know rat runs you wouldn't believe that cut out traffic lights and avoid speed cameras. I am the master (or mistress) of the back road. So trust me. If I give you directions, follow them!
Two minutes later, I heard a phone ring. Not mine. The phone of the person staying with me, who doesn't live in Glasgow and hasn't done for 40 years - and even then she lived in Cumbernauld! She gave a set of instructions on how to get here to the person I'd just spoken to. Wrong instructions. And while I was really tempted to say: well, hell whack it intae ye - follow those directions and see what happens, I knew what the result would be if I kept quiet.
Same as what happened the last time I was in this situation with people going from my house to the Jubilee. They decided to ignore my directions and went via the Kingston Bridge, arriving at the hospital with only 30 minutes left of visiting time, having wandered around most of Dumbarton and Clydebank.
When I was working, I spent many years driving around Argyll, clocking up miles that would amaze a city dweller. I once went to a meeting in Lochgilphead, only able to get there off a late ferry from Islay because Donald McCormick's draff lorry was going my way and he would give me a lift; ploughed through snow on the back road from Inverary so many times only to find that the meeting in Oban was cancelled because there was a millimetre of the white stuff and the wimps wouldn't go there.
In Ayrshire, I didn't do as many miles but I had similar adventures: sitting behind a herd of very bonny but very slow coos at Stair, looking at the clock and knowing I had 8 minutes till my meeting started in Mauchline; ploughing through pristine snow between Sorn and Galston and wondering just why I'd thought this was a short-cut; cursing the many accidents on the A77 that meant I had to go home via Stewarton over terrible roads, in the dark.
Even in suburban East Ren, I know rat runs you wouldn't believe that cut out traffic lights and avoid speed cameras. I am the master (or mistress) of the back road. So trust me. If I give you directions, follow them!
Monday 25 July 2016
Is this the end of politics?
I saw a delegate to the US Democratic Convention interviewed on TV tonight and she was raging: both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton got it from her for being corrupt, lying, in cahoots with big business, unrepresentative of the people they are meant to serve, wrapped up in a little world of their own where they drive around in nice cars and make decisions for the rest of the population and end up with big bucks.
Listening to her, I thought: this disgust with politicians is now universal in democratic - and capitalist - countries.
It started in France, I think, when furious voters started to go in for protest voting and quite quickly the racist, right-wing Front National became a force in the land. There was even a presidential election where it took an appeal by figureheads of the French Socialist Party to persuade people if they didn't go out and vote, they would find themselves with a Front National president. They avoided it that time, but may not be able to avoid it in 2017.
Austria has now been obliged to re-run the presidential election because, basically, the result was too close to call. Austria too looks like facing the risk of having a far right president.
The British press made a big deal out of the far-right politician Geert Wilders's claim that the Netherlands wants to leave the EU, but this is so obviously untrue it has come to nothing. But he remains a threat to democracy because he demands and gets so much attention in the media.
The other night, one of Sky News's bagmen said smugly that, while the Labour Party is tearing itself to shreds, the Tories have clung together quite well. He had to be reminded that UKIP is the protest vote we got against the Tories. Labour voters in Scotland could turn to the SNP and the Greens - and they have but at the last general election, Labour voters in Wales voted UKIP, as did many in the north-east of England because they had no protest party to vote for. And as we know, that polarisation resulted in the UK being forced out of the EU.
The US, of course, had its alternative candidate in Bernie Sanders but not enough Democrat delegates
wanted him and he - perhaps unwisely - fell in behind Hillary Clinton, effectively neutralising him.
What will it take to persuade politicians that a lot of voters don't like what they're doing? That they are not doing the job voters think they were elected to do? That capitalist societies are not going the way the voters want them to go? That voters feel impoverished while the very rich get even richer?
I don't believe every politician is in the pocket of big business. But they do seem as a group to be unable to think of a way to rein in the banks, hedge funds and huge corporations that devote their time to making large amounts of money for their CEOs and shareholders. For these entities to go on making vast amounts of cash, politicians have to pauperise the rest of us, so they get tax avoidance schemes and we get lower wages, lower social security provision, poorer health services, pensions and education - even though we the workers command the 'means of production.'
That, of course, is a phrase from Communism and Socialism, and these days it is almost a capital crime to express any support for those philosophies. I've been told often in recent years that my support for social medicine, state education, the green philosophy and the living wage is the 'enemy' of progress. I think it's interesting that the poorest people in the UK made most progress after 1945, when they asserted themselves, voted against the grand old man who had saved the world during World War 2 (actually the people of Europe, the USA, UK and various colonies of the British Empire saved the world) and demanded change.
The current upheaval in politics in quite a few countries is not due to perverse voters - a bit dim, stupid even*, conned by snake-oil salesmen, etc - but due to the failure of politics to meet the needs of the population. Who will be the first politician to admit it and do something about it?
* Could somebody tell Alan Cumming to shut up, please?
Listening to her, I thought: this disgust with politicians is now universal in democratic - and capitalist - countries.
It started in France, I think, when furious voters started to go in for protest voting and quite quickly the racist, right-wing Front National became a force in the land. There was even a presidential election where it took an appeal by figureheads of the French Socialist Party to persuade people if they didn't go out and vote, they would find themselves with a Front National president. They avoided it that time, but may not be able to avoid it in 2017.
Austria has now been obliged to re-run the presidential election because, basically, the result was too close to call. Austria too looks like facing the risk of having a far right president.
The British press made a big deal out of the far-right politician Geert Wilders's claim that the Netherlands wants to leave the EU, but this is so obviously untrue it has come to nothing. But he remains a threat to democracy because he demands and gets so much attention in the media.
The other night, one of Sky News's bagmen said smugly that, while the Labour Party is tearing itself to shreds, the Tories have clung together quite well. He had to be reminded that UKIP is the protest vote we got against the Tories. Labour voters in Scotland could turn to the SNP and the Greens - and they have but at the last general election, Labour voters in Wales voted UKIP, as did many in the north-east of England because they had no protest party to vote for. And as we know, that polarisation resulted in the UK being forced out of the EU.
The US, of course, had its alternative candidate in Bernie Sanders but not enough Democrat delegates
wanted him and he - perhaps unwisely - fell in behind Hillary Clinton, effectively neutralising him.
What will it take to persuade politicians that a lot of voters don't like what they're doing? That they are not doing the job voters think they were elected to do? That capitalist societies are not going the way the voters want them to go? That voters feel impoverished while the very rich get even richer?
I don't believe every politician is in the pocket of big business. But they do seem as a group to be unable to think of a way to rein in the banks, hedge funds and huge corporations that devote their time to making large amounts of money for their CEOs and shareholders. For these entities to go on making vast amounts of cash, politicians have to pauperise the rest of us, so they get tax avoidance schemes and we get lower wages, lower social security provision, poorer health services, pensions and education - even though we the workers command the 'means of production.'
That, of course, is a phrase from Communism and Socialism, and these days it is almost a capital crime to express any support for those philosophies. I've been told often in recent years that my support for social medicine, state education, the green philosophy and the living wage is the 'enemy' of progress. I think it's interesting that the poorest people in the UK made most progress after 1945, when they asserted themselves, voted against the grand old man who had saved the world during World War 2 (actually the people of Europe, the USA, UK and various colonies of the British Empire saved the world) and demanded change.
The current upheaval in politics in quite a few countries is not due to perverse voters - a bit dim, stupid even*, conned by snake-oil salesmen, etc - but due to the failure of politics to meet the needs of the population. Who will be the first politician to admit it and do something about it?
* Could somebody tell Alan Cumming to shut up, please?
Thursday 21 July 2016
Give us a laff - please!
I had a look at the TV schedules today and wasn't surprised to discover that all the comedy programmes, UK or US, now being shown are old: Will & Grace, Open All Hours, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Outnumbered.
I'm not mad about British comedy. I find British humour whimsical and sometimes kind of embarrassing. I really like sharp comic observation, with lots of one-liners, based on the interaction of the characters, the kind that used to come out of California in large amounts. You know the programmes I mean:
Cheers
Frasier
Golden Girls
30 Rock
Roseanne
The Wonder Years
3rd Rock from the Sun
Just Shoot me
Spin City
Mad About You
News Radio
Becker
Jerry Shandling's Show
I could go on, but you get the idea.
So what happened? Whatever it was, it only happened in the last few years. Did US writers run out of ideas? Did US companies run out of cash to make comedy shows? Did the US continue to produce the shows but the UK couldn't afford to buy them?
And what the hell happened in the UK? I may not have been a fan of Only Fools but plenty of people were and I don't think Miranda was much of a replacement. I loved The Thick Of It and the Royle Family and I sometimes like Have I Got News For You and W1A. Jo Brand's Getting On was good but she seems to have given up on it. Nowadays the only comedy programme I really bother about is on Radio 4: The News Quiz.
The world is so grim right now that I feel we really need comedy. We need to poke fun at ourselves and each other and at our governments - not to mention our religions. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe things are so bad, we can't take the mickey out of anyone without getting into deep trouble.
I hope I've got that wrong. Because we need a laff.
I'm not mad about British comedy. I find British humour whimsical and sometimes kind of embarrassing. I really like sharp comic observation, with lots of one-liners, based on the interaction of the characters, the kind that used to come out of California in large amounts. You know the programmes I mean:
Cheers
Frasier
Golden Girls
30 Rock
Roseanne
The Wonder Years
3rd Rock from the Sun
Just Shoot me
Spin City
Mad About You
News Radio
Becker
Jerry Shandling's Show
I could go on, but you get the idea.
So what happened? Whatever it was, it only happened in the last few years. Did US writers run out of ideas? Did US companies run out of cash to make comedy shows? Did the US continue to produce the shows but the UK couldn't afford to buy them?
And what the hell happened in the UK? I may not have been a fan of Only Fools but plenty of people were and I don't think Miranda was much of a replacement. I loved The Thick Of It and the Royle Family and I sometimes like Have I Got News For You and W1A. Jo Brand's Getting On was good but she seems to have given up on it. Nowadays the only comedy programme I really bother about is on Radio 4: The News Quiz.
The world is so grim right now that I feel we really need comedy. We need to poke fun at ourselves and each other and at our governments - not to mention our religions. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe things are so bad, we can't take the mickey out of anyone without getting into deep trouble.
I hope I've got that wrong. Because we need a laff.
Sunday 17 July 2016
What did you say?
I got this post off a Facebook page called UK Cop Humour. I like their page because it shows me a bit what life as a police officer is like these days: endless paperwork, abuse from members of the public and politicians who should know better, etc. A bit like being a teacher. What police officers make of having Theresa May as their prime minister I can only imagine, but I notice the Home Office used the Brexit fiasco to cover up the fact that this year police officers will be getting a 1% pay rise. I'm sure they're grateful.
Our community in 1950s Govan had very little contact with the police. We weren't brought up to regard the police as our friends. There was a feeling that we policed our own community. I was too young to know what that meant, but I'm prepared to bet there was a fair amount of what you could call 'rough justice' handed out to thieves, wife beaters and the like.
I am a totally law-abiding citizen. I have not knowingly broken a law in my life. My only contacts with the police have been (1) when my flat was broken into; (2) when I went to warn the police my neighbours and I were having a garden party (we had a neighbour who was likely to phone and complain about the noise); (3) when I was stopped (several times) when I was driving; and (4) when I had to go out with the police to rescue two French hitch-hikers who had been delivered by a kindly lorry driver to Bridgend - sadly, the wrong Bridgend, the one in Islay, not the one in Wales where there was a job waiting for them.
Being a police officer - in fact, a member of any of the emergency services - is utterly thankless, so I keep on liking the posts of UK Cop Humour. I admire the solidarity people show on the page.
Until the post at the top of this page appeared. I was astonished to discover that this post attracted the most outrageous comments. I would have said it was just a wee bit of fun and faintly amusing but it was described as 'chav.' It was dismissed as 'nonsense' and written in a 'sub-dialect.' (I don't think the good folk of Fife would be happy about that). Several people asked for translations. This went on for a couple of days, until I felt I had to comment. And my comment was along these lines:
I am expected to understand Estuary English, Cockney, Geordie, Scouse and all the other varieties of UK English I come across on radio and TV and in my dealings with people in call centres run by the AA, British Gas, etc. I can expect people to comment on my 'funny' accent but heaven forbid that I should say: You think my accent is funny? But I thought you had the accent!
Really if people have difficulty reading this post by the Levenmouth police, it says a lot about them - their lack of understanding of the richness and variety of the languages spoken in these islands - and if they feel threatened (that's the impression I get) by the existence of other languages, then the UK is truly in a bad way.
About 20 years ago, I was at Glasgow airport waiting to get the plane to Lewis. I'd bought a Guardian and was reading the letters page, where a man was raging about Welsh: the sooner this ridiculous language is wiped off the face of the earth the better, he wrote. He lived in Cornwall. What on earth could have happened to arouse this level of anger in a man who lived nowhere near Wales and could hardly, if at all, have been affected by the Welsh language?
That was when I first realised the power of language. I've never forgotten the anger he felt. And never understood it.
Tuesday 12 July 2016
Class
Class came up on someone else's Facebook page the other day, with an impassioned plea by the writer who sees himself as working class and objects to the way working class people are seen in this country.
This is the link - I'm not sure if it's still active: http://stv.tv/news/politics/1360057-class-is-the-scottish-problem-independence-will-not-solve/
I'm not sure about matters of class. I haven't been sure for a long time. On the one hand, I've got relatives living in nice (bought) houses and doing highly skilled, non-manual jobs, in which they earn quite a lot of money, telling me they are working class. And I've met graduate engineers, university lecturers and teachers from Syria and Afghanistan at the foodbank who till a couple of years back were part of a comfortable middle class at home but now find themselves in the UK unable to work and living on a fiver a day while they wait to hear if they can have permission to stay. They don't call themselves middle or working class. They say they are poor.
A couple of generations ago it was easy: you were born into a poor environment (the surroundings were poor, although your family maybe wasn't) so you were working class. On that basis, I was born into a working class background. We lived in a room and kitchen, all five of us. We could have afforded something better housing. It's just that nothing better was available. But that's not the full story. The view of my father's family was that he had married beneath himself, while my mother's family thought his family were 'middle class on their way down,' mainly due to some of the family drinking and gambling the family money away.
Either way, it doesn't matter too much: both versions of the story above just give us an idea of how precarious life has always been for people who have to work and have no savings, property or investments to fall back on.
Arguing over who is working class and who isn't is an irrelevance in an age that seems to be dead set on doing away with jobs (check the increasing number of self-serve checkouts in the supermarkets) and reducing the lives of those who still have jobs to a desperate attempt to cling to some sort of decent life on a minimum wage backed up by tax credits paid for by the 'government' - that is, the tax payers - you and me.
What is happening now reminds me of the scenario around a long-standing marriage that has started to break down: I've given you the best years of my life, I've worked my ass off and now you want a younger/better model and I am to be chucked to one side. This isn't how capitalism is meant to be: we're meant to work and employers are meant to pay us enough so we can live.
Those of us who work have kept our side of the deal but the others?
This is the link - I'm not sure if it's still active: http://stv.tv/news/politics/1360057-class-is-the-scottish-problem-independence-will-not-solve/
I'm not sure about matters of class. I haven't been sure for a long time. On the one hand, I've got relatives living in nice (bought) houses and doing highly skilled, non-manual jobs, in which they earn quite a lot of money, telling me they are working class. And I've met graduate engineers, university lecturers and teachers from Syria and Afghanistan at the foodbank who till a couple of years back were part of a comfortable middle class at home but now find themselves in the UK unable to work and living on a fiver a day while they wait to hear if they can have permission to stay. They don't call themselves middle or working class. They say they are poor.
A couple of generations ago it was easy: you were born into a poor environment (the surroundings were poor, although your family maybe wasn't) so you were working class. On that basis, I was born into a working class background. We lived in a room and kitchen, all five of us. We could have afforded something better housing. It's just that nothing better was available. But that's not the full story. The view of my father's family was that he had married beneath himself, while my mother's family thought his family were 'middle class on their way down,' mainly due to some of the family drinking and gambling the family money away.
Either way, it doesn't matter too much: both versions of the story above just give us an idea of how precarious life has always been for people who have to work and have no savings, property or investments to fall back on.
Arguing over who is working class and who isn't is an irrelevance in an age that seems to be dead set on doing away with jobs (check the increasing number of self-serve checkouts in the supermarkets) and reducing the lives of those who still have jobs to a desperate attempt to cling to some sort of decent life on a minimum wage backed up by tax credits paid for by the 'government' - that is, the tax payers - you and me.
What is happening now reminds me of the scenario around a long-standing marriage that has started to break down: I've given you the best years of my life, I've worked my ass off and now you want a younger/better model and I am to be chucked to one side. This isn't how capitalism is meant to be: we're meant to work and employers are meant to pay us enough so we can live.
Those of us who work have kept our side of the deal but the others?
Friday 8 July 2016
Dear Michael...
...I just want to say ba-bye as your parliamentary career enters the twilight zone.
We didn't get to know you very well and what we did find out wasn't very edifying. You were the worst education secretary for a long time - and, dear gawd, some of your predecessors, like Thatcher - were pretty grim. The plan to turn all English schools into academies - what was that about? With a bit of luck, England will never hear about it again.
Despite being brought up by Labour-leaning parents in Aberdeen, you have managed to turn yourself into a Tory. Your parents were not, as Sky news tried to tell us, 'fishmongers.' There's a wee difference between running a fish shop and being a fish wholesaler in Aberdeen. I wonder if your parents are still talking to you after you telling a porkies about their finances.
You had some great universities available to you here but decided to go for - where? - Oxford or Cambridge? I don't remember which. Most Tories go to one or other of these establishments. There your ambition no doubt helped you to mix with the right kind of people. It didn't take you long to get rid of the Scottish accent anyway. And then you worked as a journalist in London for a while before going into politics. By then, you had acquired a wife. Looking at your record, I'm wondering if you have the fiendishly clever intellect but she has the people skills and the common sense.
But at least I can thank you for shafting Boris Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne. It's a pleasure to see their little game of politics (because that's what it was) reduced to nothing by an outsider. The people who replace them in some cases may have nicer shoes but they will exactly the same vicious, manipulative, overweening Tory hacks that we've become used to.
You yourself have a problem, Michael. You're not PLU. I've been around the west of Scotland long enough to have met some of the Tory People Like Us. I managed to avoid meeting Thatcher but I went with a colleague and friend when she reported Norman Tebbit to the police for shooting at hares across a public road. (He got off with a caution). I watched several times as the 'Jura people' (Lord Astor et al) were loaded on to the plane ahead of the rest of us 'just to get them out the way.' I was on Colonsay when Lord Forsyth drove his landrover into the ditch and nobody stopped to help him. If you know anything about island communities, you'll realise that is not a good sign. I think it might have been the fact that he got the Royal Navy to come and take him to Oban to meet the queen that upset people. In Ayrshire, I helped a headteacher deal with the lady of the manor whose 8 year old daughter had learning problems that she thought the local school could sort out in a few weeks, where the posh private school she was attending in Oxford had failed.
You're not in their league, Michael. And they don't appreciate people who take liberties. I hope you have good contacts. Is Rupert Murdoch a pal?
But at least you still have a job and a good salary coming in as an MP for the next few years - until your constituency decide they can do better.
So good luck to you - and don't let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.
We didn't get to know you very well and what we did find out wasn't very edifying. You were the worst education secretary for a long time - and, dear gawd, some of your predecessors, like Thatcher - were pretty grim. The plan to turn all English schools into academies - what was that about? With a bit of luck, England will never hear about it again.
Despite being brought up by Labour-leaning parents in Aberdeen, you have managed to turn yourself into a Tory. Your parents were not, as Sky news tried to tell us, 'fishmongers.' There's a wee difference between running a fish shop and being a fish wholesaler in Aberdeen. I wonder if your parents are still talking to you after you telling a porkies about their finances.
You had some great universities available to you here but decided to go for - where? - Oxford or Cambridge? I don't remember which. Most Tories go to one or other of these establishments. There your ambition no doubt helped you to mix with the right kind of people. It didn't take you long to get rid of the Scottish accent anyway. And then you worked as a journalist in London for a while before going into politics. By then, you had acquired a wife. Looking at your record, I'm wondering if you have the fiendishly clever intellect but she has the people skills and the common sense.
But at least I can thank you for shafting Boris Johnson, David Cameron and George Osborne. It's a pleasure to see their little game of politics (because that's what it was) reduced to nothing by an outsider. The people who replace them in some cases may have nicer shoes but they will exactly the same vicious, manipulative, overweening Tory hacks that we've become used to.
You yourself have a problem, Michael. You're not PLU. I've been around the west of Scotland long enough to have met some of the Tory People Like Us. I managed to avoid meeting Thatcher but I went with a colleague and friend when she reported Norman Tebbit to the police for shooting at hares across a public road. (He got off with a caution). I watched several times as the 'Jura people' (Lord Astor et al) were loaded on to the plane ahead of the rest of us 'just to get them out the way.' I was on Colonsay when Lord Forsyth drove his landrover into the ditch and nobody stopped to help him. If you know anything about island communities, you'll realise that is not a good sign. I think it might have been the fact that he got the Royal Navy to come and take him to Oban to meet the queen that upset people. In Ayrshire, I helped a headteacher deal with the lady of the manor whose 8 year old daughter had learning problems that she thought the local school could sort out in a few weeks, where the posh private school she was attending in Oxford had failed.
You're not in their league, Michael. And they don't appreciate people who take liberties. I hope you have good contacts. Is Rupert Murdoch a pal?
But at least you still have a job and a good salary coming in as an MP for the next few years - until your constituency decide they can do better.
So good luck to you - and don't let the door hit you on the arse on your way out.
Wednesday 6 July 2016
The EU
I'm just about to give up on my latest Futurelearn module. It's about the EU and I've quite enjoyed the couple of weeks of study I've put in. So why am I giving up? The module is online and open to anyone. For some reason, it's haunted by Leave people in the UK who went off-topic about day 2 and have been posting the usual lies about the EU, refusing to listen to reasonable questions from people outside Europe, and have now reached the point when I always know we're dealing with fanatics: that is, they're asking those who don't agree with them what they do for a living. This, I'm guessing, is so they can dismiss anyone who doesn't work in the private sector as a government plant. I'm tempted to put up 'I am a special agent with MI6,' but I'm not sure these folk have a sense of humour.
The guy who brought my shopping today on behalf of a huge multi-national grocery company told me he was looking for a new job. His complaint is with management: they take in drivers, don't train them properly and let them loose on the roads with vans full of food and drink. I agreed that's pretty poor. But then he morphed into the company employing 'illegals' as drivers, not to mention young guys who have very little experience on the road. I pointed out there are no illegals employed in the UK. If you're an asylum-seeker, you get a fiver a day to live on and you're not allowed to work until your application for asylum is successful or you get deported. If you're an illegal immigrant and show up on the radar, you're deported at once. He looked at me as if I was mad.
About 20 years ago, when I worked in Strathclyde Region (then the biggest local authority in Europe), I was asked to accompany a group of 100 young musicians to France to take part in the festival of St Cecilia. There were a few challenges. I was one of just two adults in the group who spoke French. We had a few problems with that and I spent a lot of time fire-fighting: taking kids to the local police station because they had lost their cameras or glasses; helping them to exchange their travellers' checks (why had anyone told them to bring them?); looking after a talented Hong Kong violinist who had picked up a virus on her way to Scotland; explaining to host families that the 15 year olds in the orchestra wanted to be out on the streets for the festival late at night. Apart from the teachers who had been to Glasgow University, no one had any idea what the festival was about and no plans had been made to make sure the young people could enjoy the street festival safely as well as playing in several small towns beforehand. Oh, and we had a lassie with us with ME and no one had been told. And there were politicians with us - what a joy they turned out to be. And to add to my alarm, the main organiser wandered around carrying a handbag with - she told me - 10,000 Euros 'for emergencies.'
But best of all were the drivers, who had never driven outside the UK but made their way successfully from Glasgow to Toulouse carrying all the big instruments the musicians would need. I'd asked that someone tell them to contact me when they arrived so I could make sure they got settled okay. In the end, the concierge of our hotel called me and said there was a problem in the hotel restaurant.
The guys were an absolute joy. Real Glaswegians, luckily with a sense of humour - and adventure - and delighted to see someone who spoke their language. They explained they were 'Hank Marvin' but the waiter wouldn't bring them what they wanted. Have you guessed it already? They had asked for steak tartare, the only thing on the menu they recognised, and the waiter had tried to assure them that definitely wasn't what they wanted. But they spoke no French and he spoke no English. I told the waiter they wanted a steak 'très, très bien cuit. Sans sang.' Avec des frites. Et des bières. We had a wee discussion, the waiter and I. At one point he corrected my pronunciation. I asked if he wanted me to speak to the chef myself or if he thought he would manage to convey what these customers - who would be eating there for the next 7 days - actually wanted. I explained the problem to the drivers. I ordered a carafe of rouge. For me. And I sat there enjoying my wine till the drivers got what they wanted.
Being part of the rest of the world is testing. The Brits are not very good at it. Some people in the UK seem to have a sense of entitlement: we've had the 'biggest empire in the world' so we're special. Today I've seen Scotland dismissed as being 'only' 5 million people and Belgium dismissed as 'only' having 11 million. Is that what the world is about? Not democracy, equality, freedom, but raw numbers?
It would help if people had the correct information but I'm not sure how we make sure that happens.
The guy who brought my shopping today on behalf of a huge multi-national grocery company told me he was looking for a new job. His complaint is with management: they take in drivers, don't train them properly and let them loose on the roads with vans full of food and drink. I agreed that's pretty poor. But then he morphed into the company employing 'illegals' as drivers, not to mention young guys who have very little experience on the road. I pointed out there are no illegals employed in the UK. If you're an asylum-seeker, you get a fiver a day to live on and you're not allowed to work until your application for asylum is successful or you get deported. If you're an illegal immigrant and show up on the radar, you're deported at once. He looked at me as if I was mad.
About 20 years ago, when I worked in Strathclyde Region (then the biggest local authority in Europe), I was asked to accompany a group of 100 young musicians to France to take part in the festival of St Cecilia. There were a few challenges. I was one of just two adults in the group who spoke French. We had a few problems with that and I spent a lot of time fire-fighting: taking kids to the local police station because they had lost their cameras or glasses; helping them to exchange their travellers' checks (why had anyone told them to bring them?); looking after a talented Hong Kong violinist who had picked up a virus on her way to Scotland; explaining to host families that the 15 year olds in the orchestra wanted to be out on the streets for the festival late at night. Apart from the teachers who had been to Glasgow University, no one had any idea what the festival was about and no plans had been made to make sure the young people could enjoy the street festival safely as well as playing in several small towns beforehand. Oh, and we had a lassie with us with ME and no one had been told. And there were politicians with us - what a joy they turned out to be. And to add to my alarm, the main organiser wandered around carrying a handbag with - she told me - 10,000 Euros 'for emergencies.'
But best of all were the drivers, who had never driven outside the UK but made their way successfully from Glasgow to Toulouse carrying all the big instruments the musicians would need. I'd asked that someone tell them to contact me when they arrived so I could make sure they got settled okay. In the end, the concierge of our hotel called me and said there was a problem in the hotel restaurant.
The guys were an absolute joy. Real Glaswegians, luckily with a sense of humour - and adventure - and delighted to see someone who spoke their language. They explained they were 'Hank Marvin' but the waiter wouldn't bring them what they wanted. Have you guessed it already? They had asked for steak tartare, the only thing on the menu they recognised, and the waiter had tried to assure them that definitely wasn't what they wanted. But they spoke no French and he spoke no English. I told the waiter they wanted a steak 'très, très bien cuit. Sans sang.' Avec des frites. Et des bières. We had a wee discussion, the waiter and I. At one point he corrected my pronunciation. I asked if he wanted me to speak to the chef myself or if he thought he would manage to convey what these customers - who would be eating there for the next 7 days - actually wanted. I explained the problem to the drivers. I ordered a carafe of rouge. For me. And I sat there enjoying my wine till the drivers got what they wanted.
Being part of the rest of the world is testing. The Brits are not very good at it. Some people in the UK seem to have a sense of entitlement: we've had the 'biggest empire in the world' so we're special. Today I've seen Scotland dismissed as being 'only' 5 million people and Belgium dismissed as 'only' having 11 million. Is that what the world is about? Not democracy, equality, freedom, but raw numbers?
It would help if people had the correct information but I'm not sure how we make sure that happens.
Tuesday 5 July 2016
Hillary and co
I was reading a bit about Hillary Clinton. She's not my preferred candidate for president of the USA. She has lots of corporate sponsors and is obviously the establishment's preferred choice. It would have been great to see Bernie Sanders in the race but he ain't. Since I don't get a vote in that election, I'm sure I can rely on my American friends to weigh it up carefully. Whose finger do they want on the red button after November? The Donald or Hillary?
Then my eye fell on another article about someone called Marc Mezvinsky. What has Mr Mezvinsky to do with Hillary? He's married to her daughter and that seems to be enough reason for one slightly dim journalist to pour scorn on him:
Then my eye fell on another article about someone called Marc Mezvinsky. What has Mr Mezvinsky to do with Hillary? He's married to her daughter and that seems to be enough reason for one slightly dim journalist to pour scorn on him:
“Chelsea Clinton's husband and baby-daddy looks like he smells, greasy,” he says. “Ferret-like. The hedge fund manager rakes in the cash, but can’t seem to be bothered with grooming . . . Hair product and a fresh shave ever [sic] so often would be a start.”
This genius has put the man at the top of his 'worst-dressed' list. How cutting is that!
Dear me. Greasy? Ferret-like? Smells? This is radical political commentary right enough. I've had a look at Mr Mezvinsky's CV: degrees from Stanford and Oxford. Runs his own business. Worth about $15million. Father of two daughters. Somehow, I think he'll cope with this journalist's catty remarks.
There are plenty of attempts to blacken Mr Mezvinsky's name in the Republican press and you can bet there will be more before the election. Few of them making allegations. Just hinting things. Suggesting.
I find myself wondering if US journalists invented this style of reporting or did they pick it up from London journalists? You know the ones: they have never stopped twisting the words of Jeremy Corbyn. And they seem to have a hotline to the friends of Scottish MPs and MSPs. But strangely, they don't seem keen to ask about Conservative shenanigans during the general election - and those may involve 28 of their MPs.
This genius has put the man at the top of his 'worst-dressed' list. How cutting is that!
Dear me. Greasy? Ferret-like? Smells? This is radical political commentary right enough. I've had a look at Mr Mezvinsky's CV: degrees from Stanford and Oxford. Runs his own business. Worth about $15million. Father of two daughters. Somehow, I think he'll cope with this journalist's catty remarks.
There are plenty of attempts to blacken Mr Mezvinsky's name in the Republican press and you can bet there will be more before the election. Few of them making allegations. Just hinting things. Suggesting.
I find myself wondering if US journalists invented this style of reporting or did they pick it up from London journalists? You know the ones: they have never stopped twisting the words of Jeremy Corbyn. And they seem to have a hotline to the friends of Scottish MPs and MSPs. But strangely, they don't seem keen to ask about Conservative shenanigans during the general election - and those may involve 28 of their MPs.
Monday 4 July 2016
Daesh
I refuse to call these murderers ISIS or Islamic State.
Do they really think they are acting on behalf of Islam?
A picture is emerging of Daesh based on what we know about them. We know they will bomb anywhere that will get them publicity and we know they hate Muslims just as much as they hate everyone else. How else to explain the carnage in Istanbul last week, Baghdad the day before yesterday and then today in Medina, one of Islam's holiest sites? And all this done during the holy month of Ramadan.
We know their terrorists come from many communities around the world. Right now we have families in Bangladesh trying to work out how their well brought up, well educated sons for whom they sacrificed a lot and who wanted for nothing ended up killing 20 people in a cafe in Dhaka. We have had families all over the world asking the same thing in recent years. How did two doctors come to the decision to blow up Glasgow airport? How did decent family men come to set off bombs on the London underground? Why did Charlie Hebdo attract the attention of home-grown terrorists? Why would an American doctor turn his gun on fellow Americans?
Maybe it's time we looked at the Daesh problem in a different way. Daesh are not out to 'get' the west. Nor do they want to convert people to Islam. Daesh are the ultimate anarchists. They are out to de-stabilise every community they can get access to. They have struck in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, the UK, the US and Nigeria - over and over and over. They particularly like to attack communities that are already pretty unstable, especially in Africa. Where they get the chance, they enslave people. Remember the girls of Chibok in Nigeria, held as sexual slaves for over two years now?
That's not to say the west is innocent. I wonder how history will judge the US (the world's self-appointed policeman) and its followers, like the UK (in thrall to the 'Special Relationship'). And what will history have to say about the protection the west has afforded to Israel in the horrific way it treats Palestinian communities?
And no, since you ask, I don't have a solution to the Daesh problem, other than to urge everyone to be tolerant, to love each other, to think of future generations who must surely learn to live together, to resist in our small way any attempt to set one group against the other.
I kinda feel this is not a popular sentiment in the UK right now, where there are groups that seem to be determined to isolate and victimise any minority group, classing everyone who is not 'us' as immigrants, foreigners, asylum seekers and therefore fair game.
If we go along with this hatred of the 'other,' we're playing into the hands of Daesh.
Do they really think they are acting on behalf of Islam?
A picture is emerging of Daesh based on what we know about them. We know they will bomb anywhere that will get them publicity and we know they hate Muslims just as much as they hate everyone else. How else to explain the carnage in Istanbul last week, Baghdad the day before yesterday and then today in Medina, one of Islam's holiest sites? And all this done during the holy month of Ramadan.
We know their terrorists come from many communities around the world. Right now we have families in Bangladesh trying to work out how their well brought up, well educated sons for whom they sacrificed a lot and who wanted for nothing ended up killing 20 people in a cafe in Dhaka. We have had families all over the world asking the same thing in recent years. How did two doctors come to the decision to blow up Glasgow airport? How did decent family men come to set off bombs on the London underground? Why did Charlie Hebdo attract the attention of home-grown terrorists? Why would an American doctor turn his gun on fellow Americans?
Maybe it's time we looked at the Daesh problem in a different way. Daesh are not out to 'get' the west. Nor do they want to convert people to Islam. Daesh are the ultimate anarchists. They are out to de-stabilise every community they can get access to. They have struck in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, the UK, the US and Nigeria - over and over and over. They particularly like to attack communities that are already pretty unstable, especially in Africa. Where they get the chance, they enslave people. Remember the girls of Chibok in Nigeria, held as sexual slaves for over two years now?
That's not to say the west is innocent. I wonder how history will judge the US (the world's self-appointed policeman) and its followers, like the UK (in thrall to the 'Special Relationship'). And what will history have to say about the protection the west has afforded to Israel in the horrific way it treats Palestinian communities?
And no, since you ask, I don't have a solution to the Daesh problem, other than to urge everyone to be tolerant, to love each other, to think of future generations who must surely learn to live together, to resist in our small way any attempt to set one group against the other.
I kinda feel this is not a popular sentiment in the UK right now, where there are groups that seem to be determined to isolate and victimise any minority group, classing everyone who is not 'us' as immigrants, foreigners, asylum seekers and therefore fair game.
If we go along with this hatred of the 'other,' we're playing into the hands of Daesh.
Saturday 2 July 2016
Dear Conservative Party Members...
Just so we know where I'm coming from: I live in Scotland, I'm a member of the Scottish Green Party and I live in hope of Scottish independence.
But until Scotland has a 'conscious uncoupling' from the UK, I have an interest in what is happening in your party.
It would be an understatement to say I'm shocked at what has gone on in the past few days. We have discovered a Conservative Party we never really admitted to ourselves could exist: a party of naked ambition, in which public schoolboys play games of one-upmanship among themselves, ignoring the interests of the UK, apparently not too bothered when the pound sterling goes into a nose-dive, the FTSE100 loses billions, racist attacks rise by 50% and even the President of the USA calls for calm. A party without a plan for the future.
You might like to remind yourselves, as you choose your new leader, that certain of the candidates for leadership got us into this mess in the first place. Do you really want them to take the UK forward?
I also want to remind you, as you choose your new leader, that the rest of us, who didn't vote for the Conservatives, are stuck with your party in Westminster until 2020; that we live in austerity-land and have done since 2008, watching public services being cut to bits; and that we might like to have someone in charge who has a fresh view of where we go from here. But you should also know that we will be able to dump your party in 2020.
If you have time, you might spare a thought for the countries and regions of the UK which have depended a lot on the EU to shore up their infrastructure, their farming sector and their declining industrial areas, so shamefully neglected by successive Westminster governments since the time of Margaret Thatcher.
Most of all, you might want to remind yourselves that, whatever the problems of the Labour Party, the voters are clearly on the move, opposing the madness that was acted out on June 23. It takes a lot to get the voters of the UK to take to the streets, but the EU referendum has done that.
Proceed with caution.
But until Scotland has a 'conscious uncoupling' from the UK, I have an interest in what is happening in your party.
It would be an understatement to say I'm shocked at what has gone on in the past few days. We have discovered a Conservative Party we never really admitted to ourselves could exist: a party of naked ambition, in which public schoolboys play games of one-upmanship among themselves, ignoring the interests of the UK, apparently not too bothered when the pound sterling goes into a nose-dive, the FTSE100 loses billions, racist attacks rise by 50% and even the President of the USA calls for calm. A party without a plan for the future.
You might like to remind yourselves, as you choose your new leader, that certain of the candidates for leadership got us into this mess in the first place. Do you really want them to take the UK forward?
I also want to remind you, as you choose your new leader, that the rest of us, who didn't vote for the Conservatives, are stuck with your party in Westminster until 2020; that we live in austerity-land and have done since 2008, watching public services being cut to bits; and that we might like to have someone in charge who has a fresh view of where we go from here. But you should also know that we will be able to dump your party in 2020.
If you have time, you might spare a thought for the countries and regions of the UK which have depended a lot on the EU to shore up their infrastructure, their farming sector and their declining industrial areas, so shamefully neglected by successive Westminster governments since the time of Margaret Thatcher.
Most of all, you might want to remind yourselves that, whatever the problems of the Labour Party, the voters are clearly on the move, opposing the madness that was acted out on June 23. It takes a lot to get the voters of the UK to take to the streets, but the EU referendum has done that.
Proceed with caution.
Caroline Aherne
I admired Caroline Aherne a lot. I never really got into the Mrs Merton stuff but I loved the Royle Family.
Every character was drawn from life, some of them from my own life.
The put-upon mother with the secret stash of chocolate biscuits that everybody knew how to find. Ours were in the cupboard behind the kitchen door, up high where my 5' 9" mammy thought us kids wouldn't find them, forgetting that we had sussed them out years before and had a wee brother who was 6' and could reach them from the age of about 13.
Jim glued to his seat and in command of the remote control for the telly. I'll bet a few folk recognise that.
The wee brother who was always the one sent to get stuff. We lived in Pollok, so we didn't send him to the shops but to the ice-cream van for ginger, cigs and sweeties. He was also the one who had to take the bin out (we lived on the third floor of a block of flats) because he was the youngest and he, like Anthony, complained about it all the time.
Daft Denise, taking it on herself to make the Christmas dinner 'with a twist,' forgetting to defrost the turkey and getting the family - and herself - steadily more pissed as they wait for her to start the cooking.
Her almost silent boyfriend who drifts into marriage and fatherhood.
Baby David - so nearly called Keanu (or, as Jim said, Keanu, my *rse).
Jim stripping wallpaper while singing A Little Bit of Monica...
Nana bedded down in the dining room.
All written by Caroline Aherne. And told with affection. No satire - or only the most gentle kind. Who knows what else she could have done if she hadn't been struck by so many terrible illnesses, not just the one that finally claimed her life.
She'll be missed.
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