Humans for Hibernation

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new pressure group: Humans for Hibernation.  Like most pressure groups, ours is born from a frustration that none of the mainstream political parties are addressing our concerns.  I ask you to look at the present political landscape in Scotland, what our parties are offering, and to ask yourself: is there anything that even remotely touches on the concerns that are most pressing to us?

None of them have even considered the basic issue facing the Scottish electorate, which is that our country is basically unfit for human habitation and there is never a time when this fact is more obvious than in November.  Have any of your political representatives come up with a coherent plan to have our country towed nearer the Mediterranean?  They have not.  Instead it's all, "What kind of independent Scotland would you like to see?  Ooh, I'd like a no-nuclear, wind-powered one where everyone is equal and we all hold hands and celebrate the gorgeous mosaic of our diversity."  Oh fuck off!  Honestly, if you can't come up with some serious proposals to do something about this business of crawling to work in the dark tunnel that is the Scottish winter, you're just wasting everyone's time.  Instead, can we suggest the following?

1) Like the alcoholic, we should acknowledge we have a problem.  In our national case, alcohol consumption, contrary to popular belief, is not part of the problem but rather a symptom of pretending there's something normal about this business of crawling to work when it's dark, doing the same on the way home - either in the freezing cold or the horizontal rain.  Do our very bones not cry out in protest?

2) Our key manifesto pledge: November should be a national holiday.  Exception could be made for vital services, provided that it is understood that education is not counted among these.

3) We are a non-violent pressure group.  Should the Scottish Government fail to acknowledge our reasonable demands, we do not advocate self-immolation or even the tiresome business of protesting in a peaceful way.  Fuck that - it's raining.  Instead we call upon all right-thinking people to be the change in society they'd like to see and have a bed-in, only without the hair.  You know it makes sense.  We are a non-profit organisation and rely on donations so please feel free to click on the PayPal link below.

Scotland and the EU

Alex Salmond in response to the accusation that he is a 'bare-faced liar' on his pronouncements on the legality of an independent Scotland's membership of the EU has suggested submitting himself to an independent inquiry on the matter, one of his own making.

 It's a bizarre turn of events, which I'll try and summarise as briefly and simply as possible. Presently Scotland as part of the UK is a member of the EU. Salmond and the SNP have been and are very pro-Europe so have suggested that membership of the EU post-independence would be a legal foregone conclusions. Probing by the opposition the exact nature of the legal advice he and his administration sought, to the point of submitting a Freedom of Information request, evoked a prevaricating response. The suspicion arose that the advice Salmond received was adverse but what now seems to be emerging is that they didn't actually seek any at all.

 While I can't claim I don't enjoy Salmond & Co. being made to feel uncomfortable when confronted with credible accusations that they have been economical with the truth, I think here the critics are missing the wider picture. It could be that I'm saying this because I lack the necessary legal knowledge to comment but what I think is happening here is that the implications of the SNP's 'Independence in Europe' theme that they plugged heavily prior to the Euro-crisis are only now beginning to make themselves felt in a post-crash world.

 I didn't agree with the Nationalists and their slogan but it did at least represent a cogent alternative to the Union. Why bother interacting with the increasingly important EU via Westminster when a small country like Scotland could do this directly? A Europe of regions sharing a common currency didn't look at all ridiculous before 2008. Then all the prosperous exemplar countries Salmond liked to cite as models of what Scotland could be began to cave in - Ireland here being the most frequently used case. Ah well, there's always the non-EU Norway and let's forget about Iceland for the time being. (Nationalists pick on exemplar countries in the way Tories do when they're banging on about education.) The point here is to note the degree of confusion at the heart of the Nationalist campaign. It's now no longer clear whether membership of the EU is the foregone conclusion the SNP said it was but at the same time, it is also now no longer clear whether this membership is desirable.

 It's difficult to answer the question of membership of the EU when the very nature of this international arrangement is in a state of flux, which is why if they'd had any sense, Salmond and Cameron could have agreed to park this question for a while. I get to the point when I don't know the answer myself. Europe doesn't look at all like a good prospect just now and I've never favoured the single currency but would I defend the Union even if it got to the point where withdrawing from the EU was a serious prospect?  I'm not so sure about that.

Dear Michael

Thank you for your letter but I can assure you, no apology is necessary.  You write to express your regret that you asked "clever dick questions" and that you were "showing off"?  Michael, most people are aresholes and never more so than when they are going through adolescence.

Now, in any given year I have around three-hundred and fifty pupils on my timetable.  I think it's fair to say that usually the arsehole quota will reach triple digits most years.  While you obviously regret your particular brand of arseholeism, can I put your mind at rest and tell you that there was nothing exceptional about it?  It didn't bother me that much.  Coping with it is, after all, what I got paid for and when I wasn't working, I did and do things like drink, eat, sleep, read books, watch movies, hang out with friends, raise my children, fuck make love, play guitar - had a life, in other words. I see from your recent pronouncements that you disapprove of such things but most of us then were accustomed to thinking this sort of activity formed part of what we considered the Good Life.

Ego-centrism is part and parcel of the adolescent experience but I have to say that I'm more than a little disappointed that you don't seem to have got over this. I often meet former pupils and the more troubled but intelligent ones realise we were just falling into the roles society had assigned for us.  They give you a nod of recognition as if to say, "I was an asshole and I thought you were an asshole but we've both moved on from that."  And you nod back, saying, "Uh huh.  Peace - and all the best for the future."  So what's the deal with you, man?  You're talking about 'us'.  There is no 'us', dude - it was thirty years ago.  What makes you think I'm interested in your apology now? You weren't that important then.

 P.S. Don't call me 'Danny', you over-familiar little prick. It's 'Sir' or Mr McGlumpher.

Yours etc,

Mr McGlumpher

The problem with academics

I read Will Davies' post on 'the problem with clever people' with amusement - and it reminded me of a another group of clever people who have an impressive capacity for annoyance and that is academics.

It's partly the way some of them give the impression that their specialism has absorbed all the energy that they might otherwise use for practical things like operating electrical appliances - but this is often too funny to be truly annoying.

No, it's the way some of them talk.  Some of them?  Most of them in my experience.  I think there must be post-PhD classes they attend:  "Now remember boys and girls - you should never ever say, 'I think'.  That's just too ghastly and pedestrian.  From now on it's always, 'it seems to me'."

But that's not anywhere near as annoying as their tendency to say things like, "I'm mystified by, intrigued by, confused by, puzzled by..." something you've said - when what they mean is they think you are puzzled and confused.  Why don't they just say so?  Annoying, especially when it comes from people who aren't even real academics.  Do you do this? You should stop it immediately.  It's pompous, patronising and makes you sound like a complete tosser.

(As I've said before, my dad was an academic so feel free to find something Freudian in this if you wish.)

The long and boring road to referendum 2014

Tom Devine reckons the forthcoming referendum is the most significant event in Scotland's history since 1707.  As everyone who follows this debate knows, Mr Devine is Scotland's only historian so I suppose we should pay attention - but I'm fed up already and here's some reasons why in no particular order:

1)  I'm bored beyond belief with Nationalists who suggest - either implicitly or explicitly - that anyone who disagrees with them is suffering from some sort of pathology.  Sometimes it's posed as an inferiority complex they like to call the 'cultural cringe' but more often it's framed as a straightforward phobia.  "What are you afraid of?", is a common refrain - as if this was the only possible reason one could have for rejecting their rather protean arguments for something they still insist on calling 'independence'.  It doesn't seem to have occurred to any of them that there are not a few of us who think independence is perfectly feasible, it's just that we don't happen to find it desirable.

2)  What characterises the 'debate' so far is amazing short-termism.  Don't like the Coalition and their austerity?  Well obviously the thing to do is to rip up over three-hundred years of history come 2014 since waiting another year for a General Election is too demanding for the average Caledonian attention span.  Those who understandably have better things to be doing with their time than follow this could be forgiven for missing that this has been a perennial feature of Nationalist rhetoric.  Salmond used to argue for 'independence in Europe' based on something as ephemeral as the price of a currency in the markets.  He doesn't do this now for obvious reasons but it's ok because no-one was paying attention anyway.

3)  The 'vision thing'.  Here the Nats really have some brassneck.  They engage in senior-school level of political fantasy - "What kind of independent Scotland would you like to see?  Ooh, I'd like a republican, nuclear-free, wind-powered one with full employment, Scandinavian levels of public services but with Irish levels of corporation tax.  One where everyone is equal and we all hold hands and teach the world to sing, please" - and they have the gall to suggest we enter the debate on their infantile level?  No, they insist - and frame this as making a 'positive case for the Union'.  I decline to do so.  Is there no room in their world view for people of a sceptical disposition?  I'm not that optimistic about the future of any European country at the moment, although I hope we'll muddle through - and I happen to think my country will have a better chance of doing this as part of the UK.

4)  Alex Salmond.  Space prohibits the reasons one could give for having had enough of this embodiment of self-regard we call our First Minister but his latest in a long line of demotic suggestions- that he and Cameron should have a debate - is worth a mention.  His reasons for wanting this should be clear: in the Nationalist mind, the Union becomes the repository of everything the Nationalists claim to be opposed to and this is why he wants the Prime Minister to make the case - being as he is an Englishman, the sitting Prime Minister, one that happened to attend an elite public school and one who is an architect of the present fiscal austerity.  If Cameron is being properly advised, he will have nothing to do with this nonsense.  All the polling evidence suggests that a majority of Scots oppose independence and of these only a minority are Conservative voters.  Among the reasons we wouldn't care for the present Prime Minister to make the Unionist case is that he is unrepresentative.  

5)  The outcome is already decided.  This is my main reason for being fed up with the whole process.  This'll seem counter-intuitive to many but I reckon the option that we now know is not going to be included on the ballot is the most likely outcome, and this is 'devo-max'.  If the referendum is won, it'll only be because what it being offered as 'independence' will be a package that lacks the essential features of what one has become accustomed to thinking were the defining features of a sovereign state; if it is lost, the Holyrood Parliament will acquire further powers nevertheless.  Like Quebec or Catalonia, in other words - places where national disputes have lead to constitutional compromises, which in turn seem to institutionalise dissatisfaction.