Will there ever be another Labour government in the UK?

Since I'm a Scottish Green and in favour of independence, I find it hard to understand why anyone anywhere in the UK would vote either Tory or Labour. 

I've reached the point of wondering just what else the Tories can do to show themselves up as incompetent, self-seeking and, given that they all seem to be multi-millionaires, out of touch with the rest of the population - and how far can they go before people stop voting for them? In the past few weeks, we've been able to see for ourselves that Theresa May betrayed the Windrush generation, deported 7,000 students 'by accident' and, when caught out, put the blame on her buddy Amber Rudd. And still the good people of England go on voting Tory. More than that, according to one man who sent a text to Jeremy Vine on radio 2 today, some voters are very concerned at how liberal (I don't think he meant Liberal) the Tories have become. Presumably, these voters want the Tories to head to the right of UKIP. Where will that take them? Back to the 1930s? or even the 1800s? 

I have to admit the Tories have done a great hatchet job on Labour in recent months. In about 25 years of membership of the Labour party, I never came across racism of any kind at local or party level. Not a single suggestion of anti-semitism. In fact, quite a lot of Jewish people in the area where I live are Labour members - or were till recently...And to this day, I've never seen a single piece of written evidence of anti-semitism in the Labour party. Just allegations in the Tory press and from the Tory benches in Westminster. 

But I think Labour in the UK have two big problems, and neither of them is the Conservative party. Allow me to quote Hugh Kerr, an experienced politician on Facebook today: 

'Woke up to hear Chuka Um(u)nna one of the Blairites working against Corbyn saying the elections were terrible for Labour and they needed to change (ie their leader!). I then checked the results and it said Labour won 2063 seats to the Tories 1293! This on a low turnout which favours the Tories. Some defeat!'

Labour's first big problem is Labour. The party doesn't present a united front. Hasn't done since Gordon Brown and co lost the election of 2010. I look at Jeremy Corbyn and think: yep, good constituency MP and a man of principle but he hasn't got a leadership bone in his body. And I suspect that's what's needed right now: somebody to tell the Blairites' constituency parties to prove they have local support by holding re-selection meetings. That same person should also send the Blairites off to re-read the party manifesto (if they ever read it to begin with) and come up with some ideas of how to tackle the Tories in Westminster - preferably without either abstaining or voting with them. The Blairites' time has come and gone. Labour needs to move on - not back.

Labour's second big problem is the media. The press and TV are almost entirely against them. They seize on comments like Umunna's. Labour is routinely misrepresented by the BBC, ITV and Sky news. Only Channel 4 news can be relied on to tell the Labour side of things. All but 2 newspapers are anti-Labour - and one of them (the Guardian) is a bit suspect. The media have also gone after what they see as easy targets: John McDonnell (not helped by him chucking a Little Red Book across to his Tory opponent) and Diane Abbott (not helped by her being unprepared for interviews). And, heaven help us, the media are getting away with this misrepresentation - just as they were in Scotland before social media gave us an outlet and Holyrood got a bit more savvy at rebuffing the nonsense the Tories were coming up with. If you want a laugh, look at the responses on twitter and Facebook to the Tories' and the press's attempts to make out baby boxes are dangerous. 

So what happens next? As far as I can see, the UK goes on - and on and on - having Conservative governments. The 'gig' economy takes over, so the population gets poorer and poorer. The UK leaves the EU and becomes another state of the USA. Any last guarantees of security at work are taken from us. Wages keep on falling. We hand worse and worse living and working conditions on to our children. We lose the right to vote, since the Tories now want us to prove we're entitled to vote by producing photo ID - we saw a wee bit of that in the elections yesterday.

If you live in Scotland, you at least have an option: you can become what our unionist pals call a 'separatist.' I'm happy to declare myself a member of that group. 

I think I know what we're heading for in Scotland: once we have independence, we can have any parties we like. If you want a Labour party or a Conservative party, you can set one up. I think I'll still be a Green but there's a good chance the SNP will morph into some sort of centrist party. I'm not sure where the LibDems will fit in but then I never did. It will be up to every party to sell itself to the voters. And we won't vote through the medium of the press and TV. 

If you think I'm wrong, please get in touch. 

Amber Rudd

Now, Amber, be honest. Have you been telling porkies? I know you're a Tory but you can fess up if you try. I suspect you have and I think you should stop because you're not very good at it.

So far you've told us you didn't know the Windrush people were being deported illegally. Let's just understand something: when a new boss (say, a Home Secretary) is appointed to the job, s/he moves into a department that's pretty well staffed with civil servants chosen for their high educational standards. Part of their job is to write briefing papers for the new boss and discuss them with him/her. Are you saying your people didn't do that? If that's true, it's time your office had a good 'redd oot,' as we say in Scotland. Because if the rest of us out here have known for about 4 months now that the Windrush people were being screwed by your party, why didn't you?

Or maybe you just didn't pay attention to what your 'people' were telling you. A bit surprising that, since we've been led to understand that Cabinet ministers get appointed on merit, although looking at Boris, that's getting to be hard to believe.

Maybe it was the immigration policy you didn't grasp. You know the policy I mean. The obsession with getting immigration down to the tens of thousands (where is has never, ever been for good reasons that I'll come to shortly). Keep British jobs for British workers. Can we sell you a wee red anti-immigration mug? Here's a van warning you to go home if you're in the UK illegally. And if you're an EU citizen, you may have lived, worked and paid taxes here for 30 years but your right to remain is over. Us out here - you know, the ones that are going to have to pay to fix the shambles the Tories have made of Windrush and are making of Brexit - we knew that was the policy. We even knew the Tories and Labour were following the same policy. What bit of this did you not get, Amber?

And there's also the wee problem of a shortage of workers. We're now desperately short of nurses and doctors and we can't bring them in because Home Office immigration officials are routinely refusing to give them work visas, despite the fact that these people have been recruited by another branch of your government. So we're paying in the length of time we have to wait to see doctors too.

Then there are the people who pick our food in the fields and greenhouses who have decided the racist insults they now routinely encounter here are not acceptable and there are plenty of places they can work in the other 27 EU countries. Nobody's too sure what that's going to mean in terms of our food supply but we'll find out come summer.

And some of us may also get a shock when we discover that our kids' teachers and childcare workers have decided living here is not worth the aggro and have gone 'home' before the start of the new school year.

The other thing us out here have sussed, Amber, is that none of this had anything at all to do with what's best for 'the country.' What happened was that both your party and Labour went mad when it came to fending off the threat from UKIP at the last two elections. Not only did politicians of your two parties not try to counter the nonsense about immigration spouted by UKIP - and their pals in the press - but you tried to outdo them in your xenophobia. It's about politics, not the national interest.

So here's a question I would really like the answer to: how are you going to fix this mess?

And if you can't answer that question, you really need to resign. And take your boss with you.

And now that Amber Rudd has resigned, here's my comment:



Dear Amber,

How awful that your career has come to a juddering halt because you ‘inadvertently misled Parliament’ over Windrush.  At least, that was what you claim happened. It only turns out Windrush people, who always had rights of citizenship under English law, have been deported illegally. In addition, your civil servants, a well-educated bunch of people chosen for their high educational standards, have been miscalled for giving you false information, while us out here (voters to you) knew perfectly well what was going on.

It turned out you lied.

Worse than that – much worse – it seems you were stupid enough to put in writing to your boss that you had plans in place to step up the deportation of immigrants.

Meanwhile, the situation you leave behind is worse than it was when you took over the Home Office. There’s still the obsession with getting immigration down to the tens of thousands (where is has never, ever been for good reasons that I'll come to shortly). We still need to keep British jobs for British workers. The Labour Party has a wee surplus of red anti-immigration mug if you need one.  And somewhere there’s a van warning people to go home if they’re in the UK illegally.

And if you're an EU citizen, you may have lived, worked and paid taxes here for 30 years but your right to remain is over. Us out here - you know, the ones that are going to have to pay to fix the shambles the Tories have made of Windrush and are making of Brexit - we knew that was the policy. We even knew the Tories and Labour were following the same policy. What bit of this did you not get, Amber?

And there's also the wee problem of a shortage of workers. We're now desperately short of nurses and doctors and we can't bring them in because Home Office immigration officials are routinely refusing to give them work visas, despite the fact that these people have been recruited by another branch of the Tory government. So we're paying in the length of time we have to wait to see doctors too.

Then there are the people who pick our food in the fields and greenhouses who have decided the racist insults they now routinely encounter here are not acceptable and there are plenty of places they can work in the other 27 EU countries. Nobody's too sure what that's going to mean in terms of our food supply but we'll find out come summer.

And some of us may also get a shock when we discover that our kids' teachers and childcare workers have decided living here is not worth the aggro and have gone 'home' before the start of the new school year.

And Theresa May lives on. Amber, you are an utter fool.

The other thing us out here have sussed, Amber, is that none of this had anything at all to do with what's best for 'the country.' What happened was that both your party and Labour went mad when it came to fending off the threat from UKIP at the last two elections. Not only did politicians of your two parties not try to counter the nonsense about immigration spouted by UKIP - and their pals in the right-wing press - but you tried to outdo them in your xenophobia. This was about politics, not the national interest.

It's a shame those of us who live in parts of the UK that need people to come and work here and also don't share the Tory and Labour fear of foreigners are getting dragged into this nonsense. 

I won’t lie and claim I’m sad to see you go. I’m just sorry you didn’t take your boss with you to the back benches – where you will, of course, continue to pull in a decent wage – and no doubt get compensation for losing your Cabinet post. All us out here can look forward to is a Home Office run by Michael Gove.

I admit I’m just hoping there are enough sensible people in Scotland who will look at this kerfuffle and decide it’s time to say goodbye to the idiocy that calls itself the Union.

Being young

Fifty years ago, young people left school and went either to university (gey few at that time) or into work (a lot). Anyone over the age of 50 has no idea how tough life was for young people in the 80s and 90s when youth unemployment reached 40%. Nowadays, we don't talk about youth unemployment. We talk about the 'gig economy': the casual, underpaid method of working that capitalism seems to demand in the  modern UK. No holiday pay, no sick leave, and in some companies no toilet breaks during your shift. And, above all, no union membership to protect your rights. You have no rights as far as I can see.

Tonight I was in a local pizzeria. Privately owned, not part of a chain. Things were quiet, although by the time I left 25 minutes later the phones were busy. As if people had looked at the clock and thought: 'Struth! Is that the time? Better order something to eat'.

The biggest issue for the staff seemed to be that they had run out of prosciutto. That just left 3 sorts of sausage for the pizzas they were serving. There was some discussion over whether they should offer customers a pound off if they asked for the prosciutto they didn't have. I was more taken with the fact that they were selling rocket as a pizza filling. Rocket. It grows like a weed in most parts of Europe, but if you want it in a pizzeria in the UK, you have to pay extra.

Two young employees were discussing jobs with a customer of their own age as they worked. I was pretending not to listen in. All of them seemed to think nothing of travelling across the city for work. They knew which fast food outlets were hiring, and they knew which ones to avoid. One had moved out of a flat back to live with his parents in hopes of raising enough for a down payment on a mortgage but as he said: 'That's well spent now.'

I so wanted to ask if any of them had thought of doing a course at a further education college or looking for an apprenticeship. Or applying for funding from the Prince's Trust or the Lottery or Google Charity Grants to set up their own business?

I also wanted to ask: Where will you be in 20 years time? Still making and delivering pizzas? It's worth asking. Every fast food joint and every supermarket employs young people, who stick around for a few years and then move on. Where do they go? To better jobs? Or, as a taxi driver told me last week his daughter (the one with the Masters) now was, selling smart meters on the phone for British Gas? Or 'online bundles' for BT?

And where will they be in 40 years time? Still working - that's for sure. Will they have pensions? Will they ever earn enough to put money into a pension? Can they ever retire? Will they be able to spend their old age with their grandchildren? Can they afford to marry? Or have children, never mind grandchildren?

We've handed our young people and their futures over to capitalism. That's not their problem. It's ours. If Scotland ever gains independence, this is my number one priority: to create a decent future for our young people, with a job and a home of their own. A bit of security. Or is that against the aims of capitalism?

Spending Public Money?

I've lived in Glasgow on and off all my life, although I only worked there for a short time. I don't know what happens inside the council but I noticed on Sunday that the Sunday Herald apparently does. And it's not happy.

Their journalists did a Freedom of Information request about foreign visits by councillors and council officers from Glasgow City. The trouble with FOI requests is that the body providing the information has no control over how the newspaper that requests it deals with it in print. The usual way for Scottish newspapers to deal with FOI requests to councils is to shout from the roof-tops that public money is being wasted on trips abroad. And that was the Sunday Herald's message this time.

There was a time when Glasgow was widely seen as a slum city. If it was famous for anything, it was  the deep-fried Mars bar. And boy, are we not all fed up hearing about that? Not many people would have considered coming here on holiday. Now Glasgow has well over 2 million holiday visitors every year. It's recognised as a hub of great museums, good food, great music and fine shops.

How did the city get from there to here? Investment. The city invested in its museums and its public buildings. It encouraged the redevelopment of the Merchant City. It encouraged builders to invest in new hotels and entertainment venues on the Clyde. And it took part enthusiastically in the successful bid to host the Commonwealth Games. Part of the investment involved sending councillors and council officers abroad to make contacts in other cities. That doesn't mean using council-tax-payers' money. Here in Scotland, we've got very good at tapping into cash from agencies like the Scottish Government, the British Council, the Lottery and the EU.

When I worked in a local council promoting international links for schools, I was forever being asked in FOI requests how much council money I'd spent sending teachers and students abroad. My answer was always: none. I never had to use council cash. There was plenty of cash available from elsewhere.

The advantages of international links are huge. Sending people abroad meant that they went as our ambassadors. We picked our ambassadors carefully, of course, and most of all we tried to make sure young people got opportunities to take part in foreign visits: that involved exchanges to France, Germany, China, Sweden (on a sailing ship) and the USA. Teachers also made great ambassadors: they are keen travellers and appreciative of the opportunity. Ours went to China, Canada, the USA, France, Spain, Germany, Poland, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark. After these visits, we were more likely to have visitors come to our area, either to work or on holiday. We hosted groups from Spain, Germany, Poland, Singapore and France.

They paid to come.

It's time journalists moved on from FOI requests to local councils or, at the very least, tried to analyse what the answers mean when they make an FOI request. Maybe talk to people in the councils. Get beyond the idea that council employees are sitting around drinking coffee but are in fact trying to keep several balls in the air at once. And, above all, that they have the interests of the area they serve in mind when they're working.

A Chat with the Cat

Missy has now lived here for almost 6 months. If she could talk, I imagine this is the kind of conversation we would be having:

Me: Missy, I hope you're settling in well. 

Missy: Yes, so far it's not bad. The food is okay. I have a couple of high placesto sleep. Your  bed is very comfortable to sleep on. You need to change the cat litter in my tray more often though. 

Me: Okay, I'm not used to having an indoor cat so I'll bear that in mind. Anything else bothering you? 

Missy: The door buzzer. Can you tone it down a bit?

Me: Sorry, I know it's loud, but it's controlled from a place in Edinburgh and we can't change it. It's also meant for old people, so it has to be loud enough for them to hear. 

Missy: I suppose that's why the fire alarm is so loud as well? 

Me: Yep, I'm afraid so. Is everything else okay?

Missy: You keep leaving. I wasn't expecting that. My last human was at home all the 

time. 

Me: Yes, I'm told he was ill for a long time. I try to go out every day - most people do. Not for long - just to meet friends, do the shopping, get some air...

Missy: As long as you come back.

Me: I'm not planning on leaving you for very long. But while we're on the subject of going out, I wonder if you'll feel up to going to see the vetsoon. You really need a check-up. 

Missy: Vet? Does that mean going in the carrier? I notice you've left it beside the settee and put a wee blanket in it, with some toys and some catnip. I'm not fooled. The carrier is bad news. 

Me: Okay. I'm not going to insist. 

Missy: Insist all you like. I'm a cat. I can resist a lot harder than you can insist. 

Racist UK

I'm now wondering how far the UK can stoop when it comes to racism.

I include anti-semitism in the word racism. On today's news from the Westminster parliament, we had the pleasure of hearing Theresa May deny there was a racist agenda in the Home Office against the 'Windrush' generation of people from the West Indies, while at the same time chucking the insult at Jeremy Corbyn that his party is anti-semitic.

It seems to me that the whole of the UK is now being tarred with this brush: it looks as if we're all racist. Since Brexit, every loony in the UK thinks it's okay to demand that 'other' people - the ones they say are not 'British': black people, Jews, EU citizens, asylum seekers - should be deported. People I've lived and worked with from all over the world face being treated as 'foreign', even though they've lived here for decades, worked all their days, paid their taxes, brought up their kids here, invested in the country.

I see reports in the news of racist attacks on people quietly going about their own business by morons probably not intellectually fit to tie their shoe laces but possessed of white faces and a claim to be British. And let's not forget, some racists have black faces too, since racism can be found in every group. Racism is also alive and well in Scotland, so there's no reason for us to be smug north of the border.

I even see posts on Facebook from people who are demanding independence for Scotland in which they rattle on about the financial power of people like Theresa May's man but manage to include among the 'enemy' the Rothschild bankers on the grounds that they are Jews and thus 'alien' or at least 'other' and so a fair target.

Racism isn't unique to the UK, of course. It's happening all over the world: Trump tells people the Mexicans are taking over the USA, that they are all 'illegals' and criminals. He wants a wall to keep them out and wants the Mexicans to build it. Australia has taken to exiling would-be refugees on far islands. Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands and France have political parties devoted to 'othering' foreigners. Spain's right wing government is now 'othering' the Catalans and the Basques. It's a fashion - a trend - call it what you want: it's payback for the years when Socialism, Social Democracy and occasionally Communism ruled the waves in some parts of the world. The pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. This seems normal but what can we do against this tide of right wing agitation - assuming we want to do something?

Resist.

I've been blocked on Facebook and twitter by quite a few people I've called out for their racist views. I've also been trolled for calling out racists. Interestingly, they are always anonymous. Fine by me. I don't come on to Facebook to attack other people's views, but I will if I have to. I think we all have to, if we want to hand on a decent world to our kids and grandkids.

Ee-aw-ee-aw

This is Rod Liddle, who writes for a London-based newspaper, being disrespectful about someone else's language. 

Dismissing other people's languages is not unique to England, of course. There was a long period when citizens of the USA thought it was funny to laugh at how Polish people, Jews and Italians spoke English. And I'm sure we all remember Manuel in Faulty Towers, who was the constant butt of John Cleese's ire for the way he failed to speak English.

But Rod isn't having a go at a foreign language. He's talking about one of the UK's native languages, Welsh. He's mocking how it's spoken in backward valleys, how daft it looks when it's written down,  how only weirdos like the 'Plaid Cymru' woman on Question Time actually speak it and how the bridge in question is only important because it helps people to get out of Wales.

I've been seeing these comments about Welsh in English newspapers for a generation now: about 20 years ago, one poor soul in Cornwall, not realising Cornish came from the same linguistic roots as Welsh, got himself in a real fankle in the Guardian demanding that Welsh be allowed to die. I've always wondered what happened to this man to make him so - well - angry about somebody else's language.

I've seen similar whinges about Gaelic in Scotland. Let it die is the common theme.

The terrible thing is that these demands to let languages die reveal something very important about the 'big' languages of this world: English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Punjabi and the rest do actually have the power to kill off lesser-used languages. It's happening all the time. There are quite a few languages where the total number of speakers is down to less than 600. By that standard, Welsh and Gaelic are in quite a healthy position.

So why 'preserve' lesser-used languages? If they die, it's not the words we lose, you see. We can preserve a record of the words in books, on CDs and in TV programmes. It's the way of life that will go: for example, how Native Americans lived, what their religions were, how they sounded when they sang together, what nursery rhymes they taught their children, what their folklore was. All of this adds up to a picture of how they lived and is an invaluable part of our picture of human life.

Imagine if we had a record of some sort of how our ancestors lived in Southern Africa or Orkney or in the caves of Patagonia 40,000 years ago. We would know who they were, not just vague impressions of their lives. So when we saw a handprint on a cave wall in the Dordogne or in Northern Spain, we wouldn't be surprised: we would know why our ancient ancestor felt it necessary to leave his (or her) mark.

If nothing else, having a load of languages adds to the gaiety of nations - general cheerfulness or amusement. That's the phrase Samuel Johnson wrote about the death of the great actor David Garrick, remarking that his death eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. Dr Johnson was in many ways a pig of a man but he got that right. And what was Garrick's weapon in his work? Language.

Let's savour it all.