In fact, I had a piece ready about Trump and his fight with the 'sonsabitches' who play American football. American football was once described to me by a Yorkshireman as 'roogby fer girls.' But it's the weekend and Trump is off twitter, thanks be, so we can all relax and I can do a quick audit of the things that have annoyed me this week online:
1 Is there nobody left on Facebook who knows the difference between the words 'woman' and 'women'? And is there a woman alive in Europe who still thinks it's up to a man to tell her what to do with her own body? Here's to the women of Eire, currently marching for their right to decide.
2 What would it take for Sky News online to make Catalunya its number one story? The arrival of troops in tanks and police from other parts of Spain and the arrest of Catalan mayors and EU observers - these stories have only managed to get the current referendum crisis to item 4 in their list of hot topics. There's a real shortage of 'in depth' analysis of what's happening. Neither Sky nor the BBC seems to have the slightest idea that Catalunya isn't just a place in Spain but exists over the border in France - and that people have been moving back and forth for centuries on the basis of their shared language and culture. The same is true of the Basque Country. Could it be that the Madrid government is in cahoots with the French government and they are both exerting pressure on the EU to keep schtoum? Just asking...
3 Does anyone think Neil Oliver is a good appointment as head honcho of the National Trust for Scotland? I was very tolerant of this man to start with but his TV series on the Northern Isles was such bollox I lost faith. His political opinions are not those of a historian (he's an archaeologist) but those of someone with an agenda who is, in my opinion, trying to bend the facts to suit his own beliefs.
4 How long can Theresa May last? And who the hell still thinks Boris Johnston is a suitable replacement for her as prime minister? As far as I can see, UK politics (Tory, Labour, LibDem - since these are the only parties we ever hear about) is dead in the water. Lack of talent is the main reason.
5 Is it over yet? Brexit, I mean. I am so sick of listening to Brexiters telling us we need to get used to the idea of leaving the EU. We have (with some regret) accepted that. Now can you lot get on with delivering something that looks like a settlement, preferably before what's left of British business has left the country?
6 Given what's happening in Catalunya, it's no surprise to me to find protesters in Manchester preparing to greet the Tory Party Conference with a banner reading 'Hang The Tories.' Not very subtle but in the UK, this definitely counts as Barcelona-style street protest.
7 Is anyone ever going to challenge - in court - the Tory decision to bribe the DUP with public money to prop up Theresa May's government?
8 Will anything make Michael O'Leary resign?
9 Nick Robinson came to the defence of Laura Kuenssberg a few days ago. Since they both work for the BBC and Nick is a known liar, how much credibility should we attach to the hagiography the BBC published this week?
10 Where the hell is our Indian summer?
Saturday 30 September 2017
Wednesday 27 September 2017
What killed radio?
It's just habit these days, but I still have a radio in every room - kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, livingroom. I also have 2 or 3 in reserve in the hall cupboard.
I got the radio habit when I was still at school. I remember enjoying a Saturday lunchtime show by David Frost before he went all political and pompous. I did my homework on a Sunday with BBC comedy shows running in the background. The Navy Lark (left hand down a bit), Hancock, Round the Horne, Beyond Our Ken. Al Reed was a genius. The only one I couldn't stand was the Clitheroe Kid - a grown man pretending to be a wee boy - too creepy for me.
As a student, during my year in France, I bought a radio and tuned it to BBC World Service. Not madly exciting but it did have world news - and remains one of the few accurate sources of news outside the UK.
When I moved out of Glasgow for work, radio reception was a bit unreliable. I remember on my way home from a parents' evening in Islay only being able to get Raidió Teilifís Éireann and listening to a programme featuring a display of Irish dancing from Cork County Hall. An interesting concept, audio tap dancing...
On a 5 week exile in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, I was forced to buy a radio because my digs had none. I still have that radio in my bathroom, permanently tuned to Radio 2, the only BBC 'national' station I can now stand to listen to.
I have problems with radio these days.
The first is the design of radios. It seems to be impossible to buy a radio that lets you tune in a dozen stations and keep them after a power cut. We don't have many power cuts where I live but it strikes me radio design hasn't really moved on much in the last generation. What I really want is to key in: LBC James O'Brien and get programmes by this journalist saved as they would be on a Sky or Virgin box. Likewise, I don't want to have to pore over every single BBC radio 4 programme on iPlayer to find programmes featuring Marcus Brigstocke or Mark Steel.
And then there's the problem of the BBC radio output. I've got used to BBC (and ITV and C4 and Sky) TV news being fixated on the Home Counties. (Was there ever a more snobbish expression than that?) But can BBC radio's national stations not have some input from the rest of the UK? I don't listen to Radio Scotland because its 'journalists' are so far removed from the rest of the population. The BBC have a vast network of 'local' stations all over the UK (which we pay for, remember) but on R1, R2, R4 and R5, it's as if that means the BBC can concentrate on the London/South East area and the rest of us don't exist, whereas I think these should be the national and international stations - meaning UK, EU and worldwide.
Now that I think about it, could it be that 'we' never took to being in the EU because on radio and TV news we never heard anything about the workings of the EU - except in relation to the UK? Unless we listen to Eorpa, of course. (Surely there's another series starting soon? The programme can't be missing out on Brexit, can it?)
My final beef about radio is the cost of buying a radio. There are so few companies manufacturing radios, they can name their own price. And what we get in return is pretty poor quality. Just remember, in every end of the world movie you've ever seen, it's not the telly or a computer that keeps the last remaining survivors in touch. It's radio.
I got the radio habit when I was still at school. I remember enjoying a Saturday lunchtime show by David Frost before he went all political and pompous. I did my homework on a Sunday with BBC comedy shows running in the background. The Navy Lark (left hand down a bit), Hancock, Round the Horne, Beyond Our Ken. Al Reed was a genius. The only one I couldn't stand was the Clitheroe Kid - a grown man pretending to be a wee boy - too creepy for me.
As a student, during my year in France, I bought a radio and tuned it to BBC World Service. Not madly exciting but it did have world news - and remains one of the few accurate sources of news outside the UK.
When I moved out of Glasgow for work, radio reception was a bit unreliable. I remember on my way home from a parents' evening in Islay only being able to get Raidió Teilifís Éireann and listening to a programme featuring a display of Irish dancing from Cork County Hall. An interesting concept, audio tap dancing...
On a 5 week exile in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, I was forced to buy a radio because my digs had none. I still have that radio in my bathroom, permanently tuned to Radio 2, the only BBC 'national' station I can now stand to listen to.
I have problems with radio these days.
The first is the design of radios. It seems to be impossible to buy a radio that lets you tune in a dozen stations and keep them after a power cut. We don't have many power cuts where I live but it strikes me radio design hasn't really moved on much in the last generation. What I really want is to key in: LBC James O'Brien and get programmes by this journalist saved as they would be on a Sky or Virgin box. Likewise, I don't want to have to pore over every single BBC radio 4 programme on iPlayer to find programmes featuring Marcus Brigstocke or Mark Steel.
And then there's the problem of the BBC radio output. I've got used to BBC (and ITV and C4 and Sky) TV news being fixated on the Home Counties. (Was there ever a more snobbish expression than that?) But can BBC radio's national stations not have some input from the rest of the UK? I don't listen to Radio Scotland because its 'journalists' are so far removed from the rest of the population. The BBC have a vast network of 'local' stations all over the UK (which we pay for, remember) but on R1, R2, R4 and R5, it's as if that means the BBC can concentrate on the London/South East area and the rest of us don't exist, whereas I think these should be the national and international stations - meaning UK, EU and worldwide.
Now that I think about it, could it be that 'we' never took to being in the EU because on radio and TV news we never heard anything about the workings of the EU - except in relation to the UK? Unless we listen to Eorpa, of course. (Surely there's another series starting soon? The programme can't be missing out on Brexit, can it?)
My final beef about radio is the cost of buying a radio. There are so few companies manufacturing radios, they can name their own price. And what we get in return is pretty poor quality. Just remember, in every end of the world movie you've ever seen, it's not the telly or a computer that keeps the last remaining survivors in touch. It's radio.
Monday 25 September 2017
Hail, Ruritania!
Is anyone else ranting at the TV the way I am right now?
I switched off on Sunday night when I heard someone say: politicians will have to remember that the voters will get tired of hearing about Brexit but not being offered any solution to UK economic problems. I switched back on on Monday night and they were again - or maybe it's still - talking about Brexit. With still no solution.
Theresa May went to Florence to announce that 'we' (whoever that may be) never really felt part of Europe. Apart from the fact that she's a liar because she was a Remainer till the referendum result was in, what gives her the right to speak on behalf of all UK voters, especially Scots who voted 62% to stay in the EU and have enjoyed close trading and educational links with places in mainland Europe like Leiden, Paris, Bologna, Rome, Flanders, etc, for centuries? And why did this prime minister think it was okay to address a room full of UK journalists and politicians in an EU city in such offensive terms - and apparently not even understand how offensive she was being?
O yes, I remember now. This PM promised a vast amount of tax-payers' money to a political party in Northern Ireland in order to save her job.
I also have to ask whaddya mean: voters will get tired of Brexit? Some of us passed that milestone last year. Some of us have already had to come to terms with our worst nightmare: the future of the UK economy, the NHS, the whole shebang - all in the hands of the Tories for the foreseeable future. The Tories are 'the natural party of government.' 'A safe pair of hands.'
As if to prove that, Labour have gone off to have their party conference at which they refuse to discuss Brexit at all, and where the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland thinks she's in Bristol when she's actually in Brighton.
Meanwhile, in Scotland the Labour Party is trying to pin responsibility for possibly unsuitable cladding on high rise buildings on the SNP, despite the fact these buildings were commissioned and built under Labour rule. They also want the SNP to use their limited budget to buy out the outrageous Private Finance Initiatives that Labour signed up to. That would mean showing these PFIs on the Scottish budget as a debt - and the Scottish government isn't allowed to have debt. Are they daft or do they think we are?
During the Cold War in the 1950s, there was a fashion for movies in which wee tiny countries challenged great big countries. I'm thinking of The Prisoner of Zenda and The Mouse That Roared. I really liked the scenes in The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hensau, where the national anthem started well with 'Hail Ruritania!' but was always interrupted at that point. And the scene in The Mouse That Roared where it was discovered that the atom bomb that held the balance of peace in the world was a dud but nobody let on. This is where I think I'm living right now: in a fantasy state where nobody dares to tell the truth: the UK is broken, its economy is a dud, and the Tories are leading us nowhere, unless - of course - you want to be another state of the USA.
I switched off on Sunday night when I heard someone say: politicians will have to remember that the voters will get tired of hearing about Brexit but not being offered any solution to UK economic problems. I switched back on on Monday night and they were again - or maybe it's still - talking about Brexit. With still no solution.
Theresa May went to Florence to announce that 'we' (whoever that may be) never really felt part of Europe. Apart from the fact that she's a liar because she was a Remainer till the referendum result was in, what gives her the right to speak on behalf of all UK voters, especially Scots who voted 62% to stay in the EU and have enjoyed close trading and educational links with places in mainland Europe like Leiden, Paris, Bologna, Rome, Flanders, etc, for centuries? And why did this prime minister think it was okay to address a room full of UK journalists and politicians in an EU city in such offensive terms - and apparently not even understand how offensive she was being?
O yes, I remember now. This PM promised a vast amount of tax-payers' money to a political party in Northern Ireland in order to save her job.
I also have to ask whaddya mean: voters will get tired of Brexit? Some of us passed that milestone last year. Some of us have already had to come to terms with our worst nightmare: the future of the UK economy, the NHS, the whole shebang - all in the hands of the Tories for the foreseeable future. The Tories are 'the natural party of government.' 'A safe pair of hands.'
As if to prove that, Labour have gone off to have their party conference at which they refuse to discuss Brexit at all, and where the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland thinks she's in Bristol when she's actually in Brighton.
Meanwhile, in Scotland the Labour Party is trying to pin responsibility for possibly unsuitable cladding on high rise buildings on the SNP, despite the fact these buildings were commissioned and built under Labour rule. They also want the SNP to use their limited budget to buy out the outrageous Private Finance Initiatives that Labour signed up to. That would mean showing these PFIs on the Scottish budget as a debt - and the Scottish government isn't allowed to have debt. Are they daft or do they think we are?
During the Cold War in the 1950s, there was a fashion for movies in which wee tiny countries challenged great big countries. I'm thinking of The Prisoner of Zenda and The Mouse That Roared. I really liked the scenes in The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hensau, where the national anthem started well with 'Hail Ruritania!' but was always interrupted at that point. And the scene in The Mouse That Roared where it was discovered that the atom bomb that held the balance of peace in the world was a dud but nobody let on. This is where I think I'm living right now: in a fantasy state where nobody dares to tell the truth: the UK is broken, its economy is a dud, and the Tories are leading us nowhere, unless - of course - you want to be another state of the USA.
Thursday 21 September 2017
Speaking our language
A big rant. This is close to my heart.
Suddenly the language you speak is important.
I'd be impressed if it wasn't for the fact that what I'm seeing on MSM (mainstream media) and on internet sites like Facebook and twitter is absolute nonsense.
As far as I can see, the language you speak is only important if it's English.
A woman on twitter was told off this week for speaking Welsh to her child in a supermarket - in Wales. And a guy using a cash-line in Cardiff was told off for using Welsh.
And another woman in a store in the USA was told it was time she learned English, the language of 'our' country, when she was actually Native American and speaking to her child in Cherokee.
And to top it all, someone posted a message on Facebook that when there is one person in a group who doesn't speak your language, you should revert to English.
I don't know what's happened here. Has someone given the bigots, idiots and ignoramuses of the western world permission to browbeat the rest of us? Have we decided that the 50% of the population of the world who are bi- or tri-lingual don't matter? That the benefits of raising children to be bilingual no longer exist, in spite of all the research that proves the opposite.
I watched a bit of the UN show yesterday. Donald Trump read a speech someone else had written for him and looked uncomfortable delivering it. Not as uncomfortable as the people listening to it, I have to say. If Donald was a paid performer he would know that silence is not a good response to your speech. If he had a brain, he would react and maybe change the direction of his speech. Not a hope. Donald's mother was, I expect, a Gaelic speaker. Pity she didn't pass sensitivity to language (or anything else) on to her boy.
Languages have been suppressed for a long time: Catalan was excluded from the schools in Franco's time, as was Basque. So were Gaelic, Scots, Irish and Welsh in the age of the British Empire. The French still have difficulty recognising the importance of local languages like Breton, Alsacien and Occitan.
It's power, you see: if you can wipe out the language, you can get rid of the music, song, poetry - and history. Then everything can become a bland version of English and people can be persuaded their languages and cultures have never existed at all - or at least not for centuries.
I'm happy to admit I have an agenda: I grew up in a family that spoke Glaswegian Scots. We haunted Elder Park Library and listened to talks in English on the radio, but mostly the language I heard - and still speak to my sister and brother - was Scots.
When I was about 9, my school put me in for a Burns recitation competition (Tae a Moose) and I won. I was taken from the town hall to my school hall to recite in front of the rest of the school. I got a round of applause. As I made my way back to my classroom, a met a teacher who said:
- I hear you did well.
- Aye, said I.
- What do you mean 'aye'? she roared at me. Speak properly!
Saturday 16 September 2017
Dear Unionist
I imagine you don't like the title 'unionist' any more than I like being called a 'separatist,' but these seem to be the only words we have right now for the people on the two sides of the Scottish independence divide.
I'm not going to call you a 'Yoon' or write about 'Westmonster' or 'Wastemonster.' These are just silly terms. In return, maybe you could refer to the Scottish Government as the Scottish Government and not as the SNP. I would like it if you could accept that the movement for independence is not the Nicola Sturgeon show - or even more ridiculous, the Alex Salmond show - and the property of the SNP. I'm a Green and would like to be given my place as a supporter of independence, as I suppose my friends in the SSP would.
But I'm not here to talk about vocabulary. I really want to ask you two questions:
The first is: what do you see going on right now that makes you want to hold on to the UK?
Me, well, frankly, I'm horrified at just about everything I see. The calibre of the politicians now running the UK government is shockingly bad. Last week, the Foreign Secretary took a few days off to write a 4,000 word essay about leaving the EU, in which he repeated the lie that gazillions of money would be coming back after leaving the EU and would be invested in the NHS. This was on the day when another terrorist bomb was set off (luckily unsuccessfully) on the London underground. But it seems Boris Johnston saw his career as more important than UK security.
In the same week, a group of Labour MPs decided to follow their conscience instead of the wishes of their electors and voted to support the Tory government in passing the repeal act that gives central government total power over the laws that govern the UK - even laws that have already been delegated to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliaments and assemblies.
At the Scottish level, the Labour Party has offered two candidates for leadership: a policy wonk from a trade union and someone whose only claim to fame is that his dad was an MP - and so was he till he lost his seat.
All in all, the UK looks like a basket case to me. Why would anyone want to hang on to their coat tails?
Secondly: what would it take to persuade you to vote for independence for Scotland?
Like a lot of people, I'm watching what is happening in Catalunya. I first went to Catalunya when I was a student doing my year's residence in the Midi-Pyrenees. I was lucky enough to visit the Basque Country, Catalunya and Navarra - and saw at once that these regions existed on both sides of the border. It took no time at all to realise how different these areas were from Castilian Spain and how important it was to the people there that they could move about across borders, as they had for centuries. I'm pretty shocked to see 700-odd Catalan mayors being arrested, ballot boxes and election posters being seized and the Madrid government denying the Catalans the right to make their own decisions on their future.
Maybe my liking for diversity came from my time in that area. I do like diversity, mixing with people of different cultures. I like the idea of a Scotland with a wide range of people living and working together. To be honest, I never thought the UK should join the Common Market, as it was called 40-odd years ago. Not because I didn't want us to mix but because the Brits are not good at partnership. Never have been. The Brits need to be top dog, and so being part of the EU has just never been successful, although oddly NATO has...
Are there any assurances the pro-independence parties can give you that - for example - your pension will be okay under independence? The UK pension people assured us about that last time. Do you need assurances about 'soft borders' between Scotland and England? To be fair, that would have been a lot easier before the EU referendum but it can be negotiated. Do you need reassurance that Scotland can manage financially on its own? Whatever currency it uses? Well, that's kind of a stab in the dark, that one. Every set of figures produced by the UK predicts doom and gloom for Scotland. But the local view - as in the Fraser of Allander Institute - seems to suggest we could manage okay. And surely, if Malta can manage, Scotland can.
So I'd like to hear from you. I promise nothing a unionist can say is going to upset me. Not after my experiences with the independentistas over the past 5 years.
I'm not going to call you a 'Yoon' or write about 'Westmonster' or 'Wastemonster.' These are just silly terms. In return, maybe you could refer to the Scottish Government as the Scottish Government and not as the SNP. I would like it if you could accept that the movement for independence is not the Nicola Sturgeon show - or even more ridiculous, the Alex Salmond show - and the property of the SNP. I'm a Green and would like to be given my place as a supporter of independence, as I suppose my friends in the SSP would.
But I'm not here to talk about vocabulary. I really want to ask you two questions:
The first is: what do you see going on right now that makes you want to hold on to the UK?
Me, well, frankly, I'm horrified at just about everything I see. The calibre of the politicians now running the UK government is shockingly bad. Last week, the Foreign Secretary took a few days off to write a 4,000 word essay about leaving the EU, in which he repeated the lie that gazillions of money would be coming back after leaving the EU and would be invested in the NHS. This was on the day when another terrorist bomb was set off (luckily unsuccessfully) on the London underground. But it seems Boris Johnston saw his career as more important than UK security.
In the same week, a group of Labour MPs decided to follow their conscience instead of the wishes of their electors and voted to support the Tory government in passing the repeal act that gives central government total power over the laws that govern the UK - even laws that have already been delegated to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliaments and assemblies.
At the Scottish level, the Labour Party has offered two candidates for leadership: a policy wonk from a trade union and someone whose only claim to fame is that his dad was an MP - and so was he till he lost his seat.
All in all, the UK looks like a basket case to me. Why would anyone want to hang on to their coat tails?
Secondly: what would it take to persuade you to vote for independence for Scotland?
Like a lot of people, I'm watching what is happening in Catalunya. I first went to Catalunya when I was a student doing my year's residence in the Midi-Pyrenees. I was lucky enough to visit the Basque Country, Catalunya and Navarra - and saw at once that these regions existed on both sides of the border. It took no time at all to realise how different these areas were from Castilian Spain and how important it was to the people there that they could move about across borders, as they had for centuries. I'm pretty shocked to see 700-odd Catalan mayors being arrested, ballot boxes and election posters being seized and the Madrid government denying the Catalans the right to make their own decisions on their future.
Maybe my liking for diversity came from my time in that area. I do like diversity, mixing with people of different cultures. I like the idea of a Scotland with a wide range of people living and working together. To be honest, I never thought the UK should join the Common Market, as it was called 40-odd years ago. Not because I didn't want us to mix but because the Brits are not good at partnership. Never have been. The Brits need to be top dog, and so being part of the EU has just never been successful, although oddly NATO has...
Are there any assurances the pro-independence parties can give you that - for example - your pension will be okay under independence? The UK pension people assured us about that last time. Do you need assurances about 'soft borders' between Scotland and England? To be fair, that would have been a lot easier before the EU referendum but it can be negotiated. Do you need reassurance that Scotland can manage financially on its own? Whatever currency it uses? Well, that's kind of a stab in the dark, that one. Every set of figures produced by the UK predicts doom and gloom for Scotland. But the local view - as in the Fraser of Allander Institute - seems to suggest we could manage okay. And surely, if Malta can manage, Scotland can.
So I'd like to hear from you. I promise nothing a unionist can say is going to upset me. Not after my experiences with the independentistas over the past 5 years.
Thursday 14 September 2017
Public Pay Cap
I bow to no one in my admiration of the Tory Party machine.
Notice I'm talking about the party machine, not Tories per se. I can honestly say I've never yet met a Tory politician or voter who didn't strike me as a smug chancer convinced s/he got where they are today by their own efforts, and owed nothing to anyone. In fact, most of them seem to think the rest of us should be grateful to them.
This is my MP. Paul Masterton. He's a Tory. He's 31. That's all I know about him. I'm not sure if he's ever had a proper job where he had to get up early, travel to work in the dark for an organisation that didn't give a rat's arse about its employees, earned less than he deserved and looked forward to working till he was 70 before heading off for a poverty-stricken retirement. But he's a party man is Paul. So far, he hasn't put a foot wrong in the Commons, obeyed the Whips, voted the right way. There's a rumour going round he didn't realise during the general election that the town of Barrhead was part of 'his' constituency, but I'm sure that can't be true.
It doesn't matter anyway. Paul's not in charge. Everything the Tory Party does is carefully planned by people working behind the scenes: they come up with the policies, their PR department works out how to get the public to accept their policies, and people like Paul are just their public face, voting fodder who do what they are tellt.
The Tory machine is truly amazing. I've watched them in action for almost 50 years. I can see how they and their cronies in the press and on TV and radio manipulate the news. What I still haven't figured out is how the hell does the machine persuade the voters to instantly forget everything that has happened in recent UK history?
You don't believe me? Let's take the banking crash of 2008. The bankers got permission from the Tories way back in the 1980s to do whatever the hell they wanted just as long as they made money. Industry in the UK was finished and Britain was to become a service economy, making money out of - well - money. It was so successful that, when the Labour Party came to power, they just went along with it. Then banking crashed. The UK government bailed out the biggest bank. The rest went to the wall. I'm sure you remember seeing well-groomed 30-somethings leaving their nice shiny London offices with boxes containing their few worldly goods. I used to wonder how these Masters of the Universe managed to run the whole world out of a small cardboard box. But that's another story for another day...
The UK was left with a huge debt. There was nothing for it but to get the working population to pay for the greed of the banking world. For years, the Tory Party had been complaining that public sector workers were overpaid. Here was an opportunity to sort that out. Public sector workers weren't, in fact, overpaid. They just hadn't at that point been affected by the prevailing climate in the private sector, where money had - against all the laws of economics, not to mention gravity - started to flow upwards. The big bosses in the private sector got whacking great payrises, expenses and bonuses, usually on the backs of their employees.
Soon, public sector workers found out what this meant: government couldn't control what people earned in the private sector, but they sure as hell could in the public sector. Austerity was in. There were to be no more payrises, except for bribes - sorry, performance related pay, bonuses and expenses - for the bosses who were now being paid silly money, just like their counterparts in the private sector. And the word was spread by the Tory machine that public sector pensions (which employees paid for) were too generous, so they had to change too. People like me, who had been badly paid in the public sector over a long period of years, had always regarded our pensions as a way of making up for a lifetime of crap wages. Not any more. This despite the fact that the public pension fund I paid into all those years has made money in every one of the last 15 years bar one - 2008 - and had enough reserves to cover that glitch.
Then attention switched to people who were unemployed or disabled or sick. They were living a life of luxury, the Tory machine told us. They stopped getting social security (which a lot of them had paid into for years when they were working) and became 'welfare dependents.' Hard to imagine how much luxury £65 a week job-seeker's allowance can buy you. People like me who had paid national insurance and income tax from the age of 15 to 60, and had been net contributors to the economy all our days, we too were on 'welfare', because that's what our pensions are now called.
When it became clear that, even after 'sanctioning' the poor and disabled, the economy of the UK still wasn't in great shape, the Tory machine looked for other people to blame. That would be EU 'migrants.' Suddenly, they were coming over here, taking our jobs (not true), claiming welfare (not true) and sending our money (also not true - it was their money - which they had earned) back to places like Poland. But again, the British public fell for it. We were told we had to leave the EU, which was bleeding us dry. Even regions of the UK that had done well out of EU subsidies were won over by the Tory Party machine. In fact, the machine was so good, large numbers of Brits looked around and saw the devastation government neglect had caused in their towns and cities for the last 40 years, came to believe it was all the fault of the EU, and voted to leave.
And through all this, public sector workers worked on. Well, some of them did: local councils were so short of cash they made a lot of people redundant. So we have fewer police officers, fewer nurses, fewer paramedics, fewer teachers. That's the people we're talking about here: they form the backbone of our communities. They support the old, the young, the sick, the disabled. And it's estimated about 20% of them are living below the poverty line. Not the people they support - their situation is worse. The workers.
And mark my words, if the current Tory machine decides to remove the cap on public sector wages and pay police officers, prison officers and nurses more, there won't be any extra cash. No, wage increases will be paid for by cutting staff: more riots in prisons, fewer cops on the beat, more nurses worked into the ground.
But now it seems the voters are not falling for that old 'blame the greedy workers' trick any more, so the Tory Party machine has turned to another target: it's all Theresa May's fault. She's a useless prime minister. Led the UK into a totally pointless general election which she then proceeded to lose. If the Tory Party's backers can just get the public to blame her, all will be well.
Frankly, if UK voters fall for that story, hell whack it intae them.
Meanwhile, anybody want to check the UK's national debt? Here it is:
http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/
Notice I'm talking about the party machine, not Tories per se. I can honestly say I've never yet met a Tory politician or voter who didn't strike me as a smug chancer convinced s/he got where they are today by their own efforts, and owed nothing to anyone. In fact, most of them seem to think the rest of us should be grateful to them.
This is my MP. Paul Masterton. He's a Tory. He's 31. That's all I know about him. I'm not sure if he's ever had a proper job where he had to get up early, travel to work in the dark for an organisation that didn't give a rat's arse about its employees, earned less than he deserved and looked forward to working till he was 70 before heading off for a poverty-stricken retirement. But he's a party man is Paul. So far, he hasn't put a foot wrong in the Commons, obeyed the Whips, voted the right way. There's a rumour going round he didn't realise during the general election that the town of Barrhead was part of 'his' constituency, but I'm sure that can't be true.
It doesn't matter anyway. Paul's not in charge. Everything the Tory Party does is carefully planned by people working behind the scenes: they come up with the policies, their PR department works out how to get the public to accept their policies, and people like Paul are just their public face, voting fodder who do what they are tellt.
The Tory machine is truly amazing. I've watched them in action for almost 50 years. I can see how they and their cronies in the press and on TV and radio manipulate the news. What I still haven't figured out is how the hell does the machine persuade the voters to instantly forget everything that has happened in recent UK history?
You don't believe me? Let's take the banking crash of 2008. The bankers got permission from the Tories way back in the 1980s to do whatever the hell they wanted just as long as they made money. Industry in the UK was finished and Britain was to become a service economy, making money out of - well - money. It was so successful that, when the Labour Party came to power, they just went along with it. Then banking crashed. The UK government bailed out the biggest bank. The rest went to the wall. I'm sure you remember seeing well-groomed 30-somethings leaving their nice shiny London offices with boxes containing their few worldly goods. I used to wonder how these Masters of the Universe managed to run the whole world out of a small cardboard box. But that's another story for another day...
The UK was left with a huge debt. There was nothing for it but to get the working population to pay for the greed of the banking world. For years, the Tory Party had been complaining that public sector workers were overpaid. Here was an opportunity to sort that out. Public sector workers weren't, in fact, overpaid. They just hadn't at that point been affected by the prevailing climate in the private sector, where money had - against all the laws of economics, not to mention gravity - started to flow upwards. The big bosses in the private sector got whacking great payrises, expenses and bonuses, usually on the backs of their employees.
Soon, public sector workers found out what this meant: government couldn't control what people earned in the private sector, but they sure as hell could in the public sector. Austerity was in. There were to be no more payrises, except for bribes - sorry, performance related pay, bonuses and expenses - for the bosses who were now being paid silly money, just like their counterparts in the private sector. And the word was spread by the Tory machine that public sector pensions (which employees paid for) were too generous, so they had to change too. People like me, who had been badly paid in the public sector over a long period of years, had always regarded our pensions as a way of making up for a lifetime of crap wages. Not any more. This despite the fact that the public pension fund I paid into all those years has made money in every one of the last 15 years bar one - 2008 - and had enough reserves to cover that glitch.
Then attention switched to people who were unemployed or disabled or sick. They were living a life of luxury, the Tory machine told us. They stopped getting social security (which a lot of them had paid into for years when they were working) and became 'welfare dependents.' Hard to imagine how much luxury £65 a week job-seeker's allowance can buy you. People like me who had paid national insurance and income tax from the age of 15 to 60, and had been net contributors to the economy all our days, we too were on 'welfare', because that's what our pensions are now called.
When it became clear that, even after 'sanctioning' the poor and disabled, the economy of the UK still wasn't in great shape, the Tory machine looked for other people to blame. That would be EU 'migrants.' Suddenly, they were coming over here, taking our jobs (not true), claiming welfare (not true) and sending our money (also not true - it was their money - which they had earned) back to places like Poland. But again, the British public fell for it. We were told we had to leave the EU, which was bleeding us dry. Even regions of the UK that had done well out of EU subsidies were won over by the Tory Party machine. In fact, the machine was so good, large numbers of Brits looked around and saw the devastation government neglect had caused in their towns and cities for the last 40 years, came to believe it was all the fault of the EU, and voted to leave.
And through all this, public sector workers worked on. Well, some of them did: local councils were so short of cash they made a lot of people redundant. So we have fewer police officers, fewer nurses, fewer paramedics, fewer teachers. That's the people we're talking about here: they form the backbone of our communities. They support the old, the young, the sick, the disabled. And it's estimated about 20% of them are living below the poverty line. Not the people they support - their situation is worse. The workers.
And mark my words, if the current Tory machine decides to remove the cap on public sector wages and pay police officers, prison officers and nurses more, there won't be any extra cash. No, wage increases will be paid for by cutting staff: more riots in prisons, fewer cops on the beat, more nurses worked into the ground.
But now it seems the voters are not falling for that old 'blame the greedy workers' trick any more, so the Tory Party machine has turned to another target: it's all Theresa May's fault. She's a useless prime minister. Led the UK into a totally pointless general election which she then proceeded to lose. If the Tory Party's backers can just get the public to blame her, all will be well.
Frankly, if UK voters fall for that story, hell whack it intae them.
Meanwhile, anybody want to check the UK's national debt? Here it is:
http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/
Tuesday 12 September 2017
The state of me
For the past two years, I've had what has now - finally - been diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME). I have no energy, my gut acts up all the time, I'm either sleeping 15 hours a day or not sleeping at all - and the list of symptoms goes on. Pretty boring.
For the last 5 weeks, I've also had a slipped disk. Is that how you spell 'disk' in this case? I wouldn't know, never having had this before. It ruined my holiday in Islay. I had to come home early, wheelchaired to the plane on Islay and wheelchaired from the plane to the pick-up point at Glasgow airport when I got back. I have no complaint about any of the people who took care of me. I can't complain about the medics in Islay, who provided painkillers when I was demented after 4 days of what seemed to be sciatica but turned out to be worse. My sister picked me up at the infamous Car Park 2, after spending an hour in traffic because that wee sh*t Eminem had picked that night to play at Bellahouston Park. The out of hours service at the New Victoria in Glasgow was good when I was at the end of my tether. So was my own GP. My brother was good when I pulled the curtain rail down after falling on my arse because I turned too fast...
So where am I going with this?
Quite a few people have contacted me over the past two years and go on contacting me with suggestions for 'cures' - or at least ways to improve my health. They variously suggest honeycomb, acupuncture, cognitive behaviour therapy, reflexology, yoga.
I appreciate everyone's concern. But please, understand that I have so far missed out on a mammogram, an audiology appointment, an eye test and a dental check-up. I can't even manage to get to the hospital for a much needed x-ray. And my hair is a mess. I can't drive. I tried it last week and got the fright of my life when I realised I couldn't stop the car at the end of the road because my right foot couldn't reach the brake - kinda basic road safety that...
By all means, come and visit. Afternoons are best. I may not be dressed, depending on the state of the slipped disk. The entry fee is an Americano and a croissant.
For the last 5 weeks, I've also had a slipped disk. Is that how you spell 'disk' in this case? I wouldn't know, never having had this before. It ruined my holiday in Islay. I had to come home early, wheelchaired to the plane on Islay and wheelchaired from the plane to the pick-up point at Glasgow airport when I got back. I have no complaint about any of the people who took care of me. I can't complain about the medics in Islay, who provided painkillers when I was demented after 4 days of what seemed to be sciatica but turned out to be worse. My sister picked me up at the infamous Car Park 2, after spending an hour in traffic because that wee sh*t Eminem had picked that night to play at Bellahouston Park. The out of hours service at the New Victoria in Glasgow was good when I was at the end of my tether. So was my own GP. My brother was good when I pulled the curtain rail down after falling on my arse because I turned too fast...
So where am I going with this?
Quite a few people have contacted me over the past two years and go on contacting me with suggestions for 'cures' - or at least ways to improve my health. They variously suggest honeycomb, acupuncture, cognitive behaviour therapy, reflexology, yoga.
I appreciate everyone's concern. But please, understand that I have so far missed out on a mammogram, an audiology appointment, an eye test and a dental check-up. I can't even manage to get to the hospital for a much needed x-ray. And my hair is a mess. I can't drive. I tried it last week and got the fright of my life when I realised I couldn't stop the car at the end of the road because my right foot couldn't reach the brake - kinda basic road safety that...
By all means, come and visit. Afternoons are best. I may not be dressed, depending on the state of the slipped disk. The entry fee is an Americano and a croissant.
Thursday 7 September 2017
Living outside the Central Belt
The slipped disk was growly all day yesterday. I did get up, wash and dress but then, about 8 in the evening, decided it was time to give in and lie down. Result: here I am 6 hours later wide awake. But what the hay - I have no plans for tomorrow morning and I have the internet to keep me busy.
I've had a look at the Trip Advisor site and the comments of contributors about hotels and restaurants in the west of Scotland, including the islands.
I have to say that hospitality in the area has come on a lot in the past generation. Once upon a time in the 90s, I booked 15 teachers into a hotel in Argyll, to be told when we arrived that the bar was closing at 9pm. Teachers cut off from drink when they'd been slogging away all day and had just eaten and settled in the bar for a dram? It wasn't a pretty sight. And there was no reason. Just a curmudgeon of an owner. You don't really get that any more. Now staff are properly trained, very professional, and - a hallmark of the West Highlands - very friendly.
But in every set of Trip Advisor reviews, there's always a mention of how expensive accommodation is and how pricey meals are outside the Central Belt. And I have to wonder if visitors to these areas understand what the people who live and work there are up against.
When I lived in Islay in the 80s and later worked around Argyll in the 90s, I was all too aware of the extra costs attached to living outside the Central Belt.
I reckoned then you could add 20% to the cost of everything: petrol, coal, foodstuffs (although the Coop did a great job of keeping the costs down), bus and ferry travel, etc. Most things had to be brought in and that meant the extra cost of carriage had to be worked out in advance.
There were other unseen costs: if the buses stopped at 4.30pm, you had to have a car in order to have any kind of social life - or even go to evening classes for that matter. If the boats stopped at 4pm on some small islands or only called there a few times a week, well you had no social life except what went on in your wee community. Many people managed fine. Some found ways to be out and about most nights in the week. But you needed petrol to get around and it was ridiculously dear.
If you're running a hotel or a B&B or a restaurant anywhere in the West Highlands, you have to calculate the extra costs when you plan your season, through your room rates and your food prices. A lot of places go for the upper end of the tourist market and do very well. It's still possible to be a 'poor' tourist but it takes a bit of work.
For people who work in the hospitality industry - tourism - there's also the added problem in Scotland of the short season. Once upon a time, the tourist season lasted from Easter to the end of September. Local initiatives have tried hard to extend the season by putting on festivals - books, whisky, beer, gin - but there's a limit to how long the tourist season can last - mainly imposed by the weather, which in recent years has been fairly mild but hellish stormy.
RET has helped in some communities by reducing ferry costs. I have to say my own family would not have been able to visit Islay twice in the past year if it hadn't been for lower ferry costs. But does RET help businesses that much?
What happens with the extra costs of transporting everything long distance and across water? Well, they get passed on to the customer. So we get repeated complaints from tourists on Trip Advisor and other sites that meals and accommodation are over-priced. They're not, in fact: they just reflect the real costs - and local people have to pay the same extra costs as tourists.
And of course, some areas of Scotland have to deal with the 'postcode penalty': many large companies (the ones that don't deal with Royal Mail) refuse to deliver to certain areas of Scotland at all. No islands. No areas north of Inverness. Just for fun, turn the map of the British Isles upside down and ask yourself: how would people react if we said the likes of Yodel didn't deliver north of Birmingham?
Last month I ordered wine for a friend on Islay. It was to be delivered by Yodel on behalf of Majestic Wine. I gave them 4 weeks' notice. They told me just before I left that the wine would arrive 3 days later, when the house would be shut up with no one to take in the wine. I wasn't happy. They grovelled. Luckily, the local carrier (from Ardrossan) was a lot sharper than Yodel, and had the wine there the next day.
Maybe that's the answer: go local. Let big companies decide: do we want cheapo delivery costs or reliable deliveries?
But most of all, what I want is just for everyone to be treated on the same basis as people in the Central Belt. I don't want to penalise companies but I do want to see it written into their contracts that any major company (Majestic, for example) must have a policy that doesn't disadvantage people living outside the Central Belt. Amazon does it voluntarily. Never thought I'd see anything to praise in Amazon but there you go.
Otherwise, what happens to the half of Scotland's population that lives outside the Central Belt? Do we move them? Let them rot where they are, denied any kind of equality with the rest of us?
It's up to us to make our views known to the politicians.
I've had a look at the Trip Advisor site and the comments of contributors about hotels and restaurants in the west of Scotland, including the islands.
I have to say that hospitality in the area has come on a lot in the past generation. Once upon a time in the 90s, I booked 15 teachers into a hotel in Argyll, to be told when we arrived that the bar was closing at 9pm. Teachers cut off from drink when they'd been slogging away all day and had just eaten and settled in the bar for a dram? It wasn't a pretty sight. And there was no reason. Just a curmudgeon of an owner. You don't really get that any more. Now staff are properly trained, very professional, and - a hallmark of the West Highlands - very friendly.
But in every set of Trip Advisor reviews, there's always a mention of how expensive accommodation is and how pricey meals are outside the Central Belt. And I have to wonder if visitors to these areas understand what the people who live and work there are up against.
When I lived in Islay in the 80s and later worked around Argyll in the 90s, I was all too aware of the extra costs attached to living outside the Central Belt.
I reckoned then you could add 20% to the cost of everything: petrol, coal, foodstuffs (although the Coop did a great job of keeping the costs down), bus and ferry travel, etc. Most things had to be brought in and that meant the extra cost of carriage had to be worked out in advance.
There were other unseen costs: if the buses stopped at 4.30pm, you had to have a car in order to have any kind of social life - or even go to evening classes for that matter. If the boats stopped at 4pm on some small islands or only called there a few times a week, well you had no social life except what went on in your wee community. Many people managed fine. Some found ways to be out and about most nights in the week. But you needed petrol to get around and it was ridiculously dear.
If you're running a hotel or a B&B or a restaurant anywhere in the West Highlands, you have to calculate the extra costs when you plan your season, through your room rates and your food prices. A lot of places go for the upper end of the tourist market and do very well. It's still possible to be a 'poor' tourist but it takes a bit of work.
For people who work in the hospitality industry - tourism - there's also the added problem in Scotland of the short season. Once upon a time, the tourist season lasted from Easter to the end of September. Local initiatives have tried hard to extend the season by putting on festivals - books, whisky, beer, gin - but there's a limit to how long the tourist season can last - mainly imposed by the weather, which in recent years has been fairly mild but hellish stormy.
RET has helped in some communities by reducing ferry costs. I have to say my own family would not have been able to visit Islay twice in the past year if it hadn't been for lower ferry costs. But does RET help businesses that much?
What happens with the extra costs of transporting everything long distance and across water? Well, they get passed on to the customer. So we get repeated complaints from tourists on Trip Advisor and other sites that meals and accommodation are over-priced. They're not, in fact: they just reflect the real costs - and local people have to pay the same extra costs as tourists.
And of course, some areas of Scotland have to deal with the 'postcode penalty': many large companies (the ones that don't deal with Royal Mail) refuse to deliver to certain areas of Scotland at all. No islands. No areas north of Inverness. Just for fun, turn the map of the British Isles upside down and ask yourself: how would people react if we said the likes of Yodel didn't deliver north of Birmingham?
Last month I ordered wine for a friend on Islay. It was to be delivered by Yodel on behalf of Majestic Wine. I gave them 4 weeks' notice. They told me just before I left that the wine would arrive 3 days later, when the house would be shut up with no one to take in the wine. I wasn't happy. They grovelled. Luckily, the local carrier (from Ardrossan) was a lot sharper than Yodel, and had the wine there the next day.
Maybe that's the answer: go local. Let big companies decide: do we want cheapo delivery costs or reliable deliveries?
But most of all, what I want is just for everyone to be treated on the same basis as people in the Central Belt. I don't want to penalise companies but I do want to see it written into their contracts that any major company (Majestic, for example) must have a policy that doesn't disadvantage people living outside the Central Belt. Amazon does it voluntarily. Never thought I'd see anything to praise in Amazon but there you go.
Otherwise, what happens to the half of Scotland's population that lives outside the Central Belt? Do we move them? Let them rot where they are, denied any kind of equality with the rest of us?
It's up to us to make our views known to the politicians.
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