The Universality of Cheese.

Scotland in pole position...

2012-02-18T11:35:00.002Z

The list of some of the more, shall we say, minor powers, exclusively reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998 have long tickled my ulnar nerve... aka funny bone.

Amongst those ever so tangibly close powers, we have the following:

Control of film classification

Weights and measures

Regulation of the professions

Betting, gaming and lotteries

Health andsafety

Public lending right

Judicial salaries

Equal opportunities

Controlof weapons of mass destruction

The ordnance survey

Time

and finally the mostbemusing of all reserved powers - Outer Space...

It is odd this belief in Westminster that we cannot be trusted with Outer Space. Are we universally incapable of drawing up a risk assessment with regard to Alien invasion? Would we forbid Richard Branson from blasting off into the bright blue yonder? A look at the other reserved powers suggests there's a fear that we'd go mad and reduce judges salaries to Job seekers Allowance and expenses? Would we classify 'Debbie Does Dollar' as PG? Would we start charging for lending library books? Aargh, the sheer complexity of it all.

Given our particular uselessness I was hard pushed to stifle a snort of derision this week, upon discovering the news that the Westminster had forgotten to include control of the continent of Antarctica among the big list entitled 'Whatever-You-Do-Don't-Let-Jock-Touch-This'. Aka The Scotland Act 1998

It simply beggars belief that the British government which until a mere 90 years ago held sway over almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area, simply forgot about everything below 60 degrees South, you know, the 660,000 square miles of cold icy bit at the bottom of the planet, South Pole, intrepid chaps going for short walks in the snow etcetera.

Naturally, the parliament of whores, are up in arms about this outrageous oversight. Venerable Lords are shrieking like petulant children blaming incompetent ministers of the previous Labour administration, yeah, that never gets old. They're demanding that this piece of geopolitically important tundra be returned to the control of Blighty so that it may be plundered and pillaged of whatever natural resources lie beneath its increasingly slushy surfaces. I'd advise the Scottish Government to ca canny over this particular frozen dilemma. I mean, what an ace card to hold...'you want us to take how much of your debt into an Independent Scotland?'

Just this morning, that delightful internet repository for all things dribbling and Tory, Conservative Home addressed the issue. The author, JP Floru an interesting young chap from Belgium, a former Taxpayers Alliance bod and now Westminster Councillor and Head of Programmes at the Adam Smith Institute set out his views on the lost continent. This handsome young migrant who cites Reagan, Thatcher and err Boris Johnson as his inspirations, blithely ignores the dubious question of who owns what within the UK set up and sails an icebreaker through the Antarctic Treaty System. The Treaty (ATS) regulates all International relations with regard to Antarctica. Tintin junior sets forth a rallying call to defend the right of Blighty to kick Johnny Foreigners what happen to live closer to Antarctica, particularly Chile and the English bete noir, Argentina, out of the frozen tundra. Odd really given that the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat are housed in err Buenos Aires.

Monsieur Floru appears to have little in the way of qualms about easing back on the boring old scientific experiments of the biologists,geologists, oceanographers, physicists, astronomers, glaciologists, andmeteorologists who while their hours away playing tig with penguins and cracking seal jokes, but fair salivates at the prospect of getting at some of those "vast mineral deposits under its icy carpet and its continental shelf". In a passage that reeks of 19th century venture capitalism on viagara he roars:

"While I do not dispute that some parts should bekept for environmental reasons, keeping a continent which is 55 times the sizeof the UK is excessive. I can see no justification to restrict so vast aterritory to the sole enjoyment of a handful of privileged scientists and about50,000 tourists annually. Neither do I see how the whole of mankind is servedby closing the door to Antarctic exploitation."

Hmmm mmm, them's some mighty good minerals under that there icy carpet just a waiting for exploitation.

Fortunately Article 7 of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic treaty (1991) prohibits, "Any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research." Sadly Article 7 runs out in 2041, by which time rapacious mineral hungry whores will have probably spread enough largesse around to open up the legs of some of the more coy politicians around the world, and much like the virgin territories of Alaska, they'll soon be poking their diamond tipped hard-ons into the ground in search for more carbon based product.
The latest thinking from the scientists who have been running about with test tubes wearing fur lined lab coats in Antarctica is that the hole in the Ozone layer, directly above them is due to close over in 2065. How stupid would humanity be, to have supposedly solved a problem by cutting back on the wholesale spewing out of chlorofluorocarbons, only to expose ourselves to more risk by opening 'the door to Antarctic exploitation'?

All of which brings me neatly back to those silly billies at Westminster and their remiss lapse in concentration in devolving control of all UK Antarctica rights to Auld Scotia. A progressive, caring, greener, fairer, more sharing Scotland, whether Independent or not, could quite simply declare that the section that we supposedly own/control is to have no mineral extraction on it for a thousand years or whenever Scotland wins the world cup, whichever comes first. That might firm the resolve of those poor overstressed Unionist politicians hungrily gobbling at the teat of big carbon energy companies...

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw

2012-02-01T18:56:00.000Z

Despite Distorting Scotland ignoring/relegating the £100 million investment by Samsung Heavy Industries in Scotland, to the fluffy window filler somewhere between a really important story about a safety hat wearing Polar bear and views of a former banker having his ceremonial sword shoulder tapping withdrawn. I'm a thinking this is excellent news for the future of an Independent Scotland. Naturally our superiors at the beeb thought a story decrying Scotland's world leading climate targets was more important...

However, those clever coves at Kyushu University in Japan have come up with a design that is simplistic, genius and potentially up to three times more effective than conventional wind turbines. It's uniquely suited to Scotland and something I hope Samsung are exploring in their new European offshore wind project.

As the article below points out building the turbines in the hexagonal base style leaves them suitable for aqua culture. Imagine a few of these anchored off the west coast providing clean energy and tasty salmon...

Scotland at the heart of the world.

2012-02-01T10:13:00.001Z

Loving it, one of mine is in there...

Scotland the world over. 1507 entries, 715 photos, 32 countries, 2 months between St Andrews Night 2011 and Burns Night 2012

'Time to Get Rid of English Spongers!' Rab puts the boot in...

2012-01-28T10:26:00.000Z

I've been awfy busy lately and missed much of the cut and thrust of the Indy Referendum.

Of the few hours I've managed to get online and peruse the various thoughts of the pro-Independence versus anti-Independence viewpoints, the following from the illustrious Rab McNeill writing for the Belfast Telegraph as the antithetical Daily Mail/Telegraph/Express/Scotsman anti-Independence mouthpieces AKA the toadish and repellent Quentin Letts/Cochran/Maddox triumvirate.

Come on Rab with 2014 approaching like a Union Jack wrapped half brick lobbed with great gusto, it's time we your devoted readers had a chance to read you in a more permanent setting. Get yersel a blog man, it's easy peasy.

Rejoice!

Reflections on a folly.

2012-01-14T12:54:00.000Z

As a feller with too much times on his hands and a zealous desire to smite porkies and fibs promulgated by those delectable anti-Independence coves in the British media, I was somewhat struck in the awe, when I happened upon an article in the FT t'other day there. The happy journalist one, Kiran Stacey, appeared to be suggesting that not only should Scotland give up all our claims on North Sea oil revenue, but also that we should also assume the debts of all banks and agree to allow the Chancellor of the Exchequer Droit de seigneur with all Scottish women in possession of child bearing thighs, in addition any future offspring born in Auld Scotia from this coupling would be christened Gideon.

A look at the comments section beneath the article, was akin to wading through a fetid swamp of daily mail gibberish whilst wearing only in a tight fitting mini kilt and a frayed string vest. I was however, struck by some chap going by the appellation 'Bonzo' who seemed to infer that the very notion of Scottish Independence was sheer folly, and cited the National Monument of Scotland as evidence for our genetic propensity to suck, in the old arena of achievement. Now, to be perfectly honest, I'd never given the folly atop Calton Hill in Embra much thought, I'd see it the odd times whilst looking out of an office window in the parliament, or whilst trudging up the hill from Waverley station to the High Street. Being a typical denizen of weegieland it never impinged on my consciousness, other than the thought that Edinburgh isnae very good at finishing things, like err trams and parliament buildings...

So, despite being in possession of a history degree from one of our other ancient seats of learning, I realised this gap in my knowledge and embarked on a wee cyber road of discovery about our National Monument of Scotland.

Francis Watt writing in 1912 in his hugely extensive and pertinent record of 'Edinburgh and The Lothians' describes it thus:

'There are two pretentious and costly structures on the Calton about which it is hard, honestly, to make up one’s mind or purge the soul from prejudice. The first is the National Monument. When, after Waterloo, the minds of men were uplifted, it was determined to commemorate the victory by a great monument—nothing less than to reproduce the Parthenon. The pillars cost £1000 each, but only twelve were completed. Funds failed and the thing stuck. It has ever since been a laughing - stock. "Scotland’s pride and poverty" it was called, but it was not a mere question of money. The great war was too much connected in people’s minds with a system of government and dissolute and selfish rulers to excite real national enthusiasm. It were easy today for many a wealthy Scotsman to complete it; perhaps it will be, and re-dedicated to something else; but then is it not better as it is? Is not the look of ruin a distinct advantage? Ah, but the sham of it all! and that is what imagination boggles at.'

Hysterical Scotland record its genesis as follows:

'The idea of a National Monument to honour the dead of the Napoleonic Wars was first suggested by the Highland Society of Scotland in 1816. The decision to have a separate monument for Scotland was highly significant culturally and politically. Some argued that the function of commemoration would be more appropriately fulfilled by a single British monument in London. However, following Edinburgh's more overtly pro-Union stance in the later eighteenth century, it was felt by many that Edinburgh, and Scotland in general, although part of the Empire, should be able to express their individuality and national identity. The situation was likened to that of Athens under Roman rule, subsumed into a wider empire, but seen as stronger in terms of intellect and culture. Edinburgh was therefore beginning to be seen as Athens to London's Rome, a claim which was strengthened by Scots achievements during the Enlightenment, and the extensive adoption of the Greek Revival style of the architecture of Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century. '

It strikes me as somewhat incongruous that it was the Highland Society who first suggested this hubristic homage to the fallen soldiers, a Parthenon to the cannon fodder who laid down there life for King and Country. I say incongruous, as I'm reminded of the many accounts of near limbless or partially sighted Highland soldiers returning to their ancestral homes from the killing fields of Waterloo to discover the timbers of their house pulled down by the factors of aristocratic estate owners and their families sitting by the quayside waiting on the boat to Canada. Hindsight allows me to suggest that a public subscription to provide homes for Highlanders cleared from their ancestral land, may have been more popular than an attempt to glorify Empire and Union.

The laying of the foundation stone was rushed forward to coincide with Sir Walter Scott's Disneyesque PR exercise in parading the wee fat German Lairdie's great grandson, King George IV, around Edinburgh for a fortnight in August 1822. Jing's it'll be the 190th anniversary later this year! The visit of George IV was reported as a great success, with Scots allowed to wear a somewhat alien form of the tartan again and the tailoring industry coining it in by inventing tartans for lowland aristocracy, determined not to be left out of the Heraldic beano. Highland clan chieftains determined to show off the pomp and pageantry by having their troops parade through the city and quash rumours of the beastly rumours of a campaign of land clearances. Unfortunately, as the clan chiefs returned from their Southern estates, they were somewhat dismayed to discover that their personal troop numbers were somewhat depleted by the ... err, highland clearances.

This may sound a wee bit familiar, but in 1825-6 a banking crisis hit the financial institutions of both London and Edinburgh. Pleas for additional funding to be made to this vainglorious monument fell on deaf ears. It appears that in 'Regency England' we were indeed all in it together. By 1829 the decision was taken to abandon the project. And there it has sat ever since as a testament to the folly of aristocratic mortals aping the classics.

It has been described throughout the ages variously as 'Edinburgh's Shame', 'Scotland's Disgrace' and rather eloquently as 'The Pride and Poverty of Scotland'. I get what Mr Bonzo of the FT was saying, allusions of the organisation difficulties of combining piss ups and breweries spring to mind about Scotland's compelling ability to shoot ourselves in the collective feet. Naturally there have been many plans to resurrect and complete the Monument atop Calton hill over the last 190 years. They've ranged from the rather touching and humanistic Tibetan peace poles, to further Empire polishing as a tribute to Queen Victoria and even, yes, even, in 1907, further funding was called for to create a lasting monument to the then 200 year old 1707 Act of Union. Oddly enough even 105 years ago at the height of Empire and Union strength, the good burghers of Edinburgh and the citizens of Scotland thought that was stretching credulity too far, and so, there it sits the haunt of tourists, firedancers and the demi monde of Auld Reekie.

Naturally I doubt Mr Bonzo's slur on Scotland's inability to complete and carry through grand schemes. If anything history teaches us that true achievements come about not through artifice and throwing money at an idea, instead genuine achievement comes from the people, from a movement, who (if you'll excuse me purloining the word) 'unite' behind an idea whose time has come.

Perhaps if Walter Scott and his noble chums had chosen a different builder to complete the monument it may have been completed and Scotland would have no desire to end the Union and this inate desire for Independence would dwell among the swivel eyed and many tongued. The builder they chose? His company was called 'William Wallace and Sons.'

Genius animation of Salmond v Cameron.

2012-01-13T20:46:00.000Z

Cameron tries the softly softly approach.

2012-01-09T18:28:00.000Z

Poll this!

2011-12-28T11:26:00.001Z

I'm liking the breakdown from Reform Scotland's poll that's all over the news today.

According to question one.

"If there was a Scottish independence referendum tomorrow where you could only vote either yes or no to independence, how would you vote?"
97.5% of SNP supporters naturally voted yes. Oddly enough 28.0% of Labour supporters, 9.2% Tories and 25.0% Lib Dems all selected Independence as their preferred option. Now the numbers are small, and those identifying with the SNP were in the majority, but still 28% of Labour and 25% of Lib Dems support Independence. If anything it shows that there are people in those parties who are bound to party/family loyalty but hopefully have the strength of their convictions when it comes to doing something for the greater good.

The other question I found interesting was the timing of the proposed referendum. Only the Tories favoured an immediate referendum with a whopping 47.7% of their supporters wanting it right NOW! Perhaps they're afraid that any more years of this pathetic coalition will simply play into pro-Independence hands. Interestingly the majority of Labour supporters want it like the SNP supporters, in 2014, with 25.6% Labour supporters and 59.7% SNP supporters willing to wait until the latter part of this parliamentary period.
Perhaps, like Gordon Brown's lack of desire to go to the country in a general election, many of the Labour supporters want to delay the inevitable.

What is noticeable is the 8.5% Labour supporters and 16.3% Tories who never want to see the day Scotland has a referendum... That's your core Unionist support, the diehards who will resist change no matter the cost.

Devo Plus and Opinion Poll Bulletin

It's a long,long while from May to December.

2011-12-17T12:15:00.000Z

Impressed by the hagiographic column inches devoted to the finally departing Leader of the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament (LOTLPAISP) Iain Gray, I'm left pondering over whether this is the longest swansong in Labours Scottish political history.

When Henry McLeish replaced Donald Dewar as First Minister, the process took place within the 28 days as stipulated by the Scotland Act. The vote was taken by a "selectorate" of 80 Labour MSPs and members of the party's Scottish executive...yes count them 80!

Poor Henry survived the long knives of internal back biting for just a little over a year before resigning over 'Officegate'. A resignation that had more to do with one man's ambitious stoking of internal party strife than a powerful opposition.

Wee Jack replaced Henry, unopposed in a hasty 18 days. Yet when Jack fell on his sword after losing the May 2007 election to the SNP by one pesky seat, it took all of 30 days and a girls night out involving a Chinese takeaway for TheWendy to replace him. Even Iain Gray's installation as LOLITSP took all of two and a half months, despite an actual leadership battle, where the brave Iain saw off the formidable Cathy doll and former Murray Primary school boy Andy Kerr.

So fast forward three years, three months and two days and finally we come to the end of Iain Gray's reign as the Parliaments perennial Mr Angry.

Mr Gray announced his resignation on the 6th of May 2011, that'll be 7 months and 11 days ago, or 31 weeks if you prefer. During this time, he has gone about his business with a complete lack of grace, honesty and basic manners. His final conference speech was given over not to identifying the mistakes Labour had made and what plans he had to solve them, instead he launched a tirade about the rise of the Cybernat. It wasn't the cybernats who followed him into a sandwich shop or walked with him through the Killing fields of Renfield Street. It wasn't the cybernats who ran a campaign built on negativity, scaremongering and fear that has probably killed Labour for a generation. It was Iain Gray, his deputy and replacement Johann Lamont and control from London. Did Ed really get Scotland?

His final farewell today sees him using the very last of his headline grabbers to yet again attack the leader of the SNP. No fond remembrances for Iain Gray. Probably no ermine clad pension in the other place. Instead a pew at the back of the Holyrood benches where he can fulminate and nurse his wrath at the SNP backbenchers.

So farewell Iain Gray, you've given a lot of pro-Independence folk a lot of laughs. In a tenure bereft of dignity or humanity you've managed to traduce the once mighty Labour party to a minority voice in a changing Scotland, quite an achievement, especially considering the overwhelming backing of the UK and Scottish media that you've had.

Here's a final memento for you.

Skwerr Go...

2011-11-10T19:45:00.001Z

George Square in Glasgow has been in the news quite a lot recently, particularly with the news of the #Occupy movement taking up tented residence, the subsequent rape of a young woman and the campaign rather meekly assenting to Glasgow City Council's request that they move to Kelvingrove, so as not to interfere with the impending rampant consumerist madness, called Christmas that they're supposed to be opposed to in the first place...

I've always had a soft spot for the square. As kids we were dragged in to 'ooh' and 'aaah' at the Christmas lights after shopping in John Lewis's, whilst the parentals lubricated themselves for the drive home via the Horseshoe bar. My wife and I would meet there as teenagers, indulging in post cinema Kia-ora and chips, joined by street philosophers from the nearby soup kitchen, who were willing to share their life experiences for the price of a cup of tea or a bus fare to a forever lost home. Later on we'd play dead as part of campaigns against nuclear weapons, (nein danke) or as students against the move from grants to 'loans'. Other times found us sitting/sleeping on the benches cooling down after a night of musical frenzy up the hill at Strathclyde Uni. Hogmanay was always special, long before TV discovered that filming a few washed up bands and comedians saved them the cost of producing an October Hogmanay. A pre-midnight stroll into town from whichever southside or westend bedsit we were living in, would find a similarly disparate group of folk out for an impromptu ceilidh as the bells rang out. Magical times, Asian tourists, African students and Clydeside Eldorado soaked mendicants all belting out Auld Lang Syne, arms linked. There was always an air of safety and bonhomie about the square, long before the arrival of CCTV.

I only really began to notice the built environment of the square in the late eighties, when for a short time half price cocktails in the Copthorne Hotel became part of Friday evening life. Looking out to the City Chambers, I could mock a distant relative who had became mired in Labour's brown envelope politics. In return for a massive contract to sandblast the municipal buildings he offered to gold leaf the spire atop the city chamber dome. He came unstuck when a trainee surveyor miscalculated the height, and cost him tens of thousands in brown envelope liquidity. Sitting in the Copthorne Hotel half way through a Tequilla Sunrise, we had a great view of the life in the square, as its inhabitants, waited, checked watches, preened themselves for a night of raucousness or as happened too often, young men with bad perms and catalogue jackets looked around forlornly, sighed, shrugged shoulders and jumped on a bus home. It took me a while and a few drinks, but gradually I began to notice that the overall look of the square with its statue of Queen Victoria astride a horse, her German consort Albert on his gee gee and the cenotaph to the dead of world war one was really no more than a pantheon dedicated to commercial Glasgow and its willing expression of the ideas of war andconquest of imperial dynasty.

I was aware of the modern history of the square, accounts of the 1919 Battle of George Square, when Bolshevism was roaring through Europe, that Scottish troops were confined to barracks, whilst troops were brought up by train from the north of England to suppress the protests for fear that Glaswegian troops might join the dissent, the stories of tanks and Churchill were still relevant in the dying days of Thatcherism amid poll tax protests. My abiding memory of the square is of an impromptu party in George Square, with, amongst others, a future leader of SLAB, on the day Thatcher demitted office. I suspect there'll be a few folk in the square on the day she shuffles off her demementor cloak.

The genesis of the square is interesting, the city fathers inspired/envious of Edinburgh's new town, purchased the land which was part of a croft called Rameshorn. The Square was marked out in 1781. By 1801 it was described as a “hove” or “hollow, filled with green-water, and a favourite resort for drowning puppies and cats and dogs, while the banks of this suburban pool were the slaughtering place of horses.”

General Sir John Moore. Not so popular with the weans.

As the merchant classes grew wealthier through the trade in slavery, tobacco and cotton, so mansion houses began to spring up around the square and a veneer of opulent respectability was slathered on. Glasgow,firmly embracing the mantle of being the second city of Empire and the fourth most populous city in Europe after London, Paris and Berlin was struck with monarchist patriotic fever, hence the plethora of royally named streets George Street, Duke Street (after the Duke of York), Frederick Street, Hanover Street, and Regent Street culminating in George Square after the mad King George III.

A look at the 12 statues that adorn the square, shows that they are mostly devoid of artistic value, particularly the 88 foot high memorial to Walter Scott.

Then again they are subject to the fashions of their time. The Scott monument was erected in 1837 and prompted Edinburgh to try and outdo Glasgow by building a gothic spaceship in 1840 to honour the novelist and poet.

This has been quite a circuitous route I've taken to get to the point I really want to make. George Square is symbolic of an Imperial past that modern Scotland is finally moving away from, the easy bucks route from partnering up with a bigger bullying neighbour no longer work, they no longer appeal and are finally realised as damaging to those you wish to exploit, as they are to yourself. Yet George Square remains chock full of these symbols of Empire, there are 12 statues in the square. I can see that Burns and Scott have to be there as their work is immortal. James Watt, absolutely. Thomas Graham, how many of us know about him and his work that led to the dialysis machine? However, we have to ask of what relevance in contemporary Scotland are the equine statues of Queen Victoria and her husband looking down on the people of Glasgow? Do we still celebrate Field Marshall Lord Clyde for his sterling work in suppressing the Indian mutiny? Or General Sir John Moore and his brave work in the Peninsular wars? What about the Liberal and Conservative Prime Ministers Gladstone and Peel do we still praise them or their contemporaries Clegg and Cameron today? Or Glasgow MP James Oswald, who's been standing in the square for 135 years? Is poet Thomas Campbell more worthy of his place than an Edwin Morgan, Hugh McDiarmid Muriel Stark or Joanna Baillie?

Where are the statues to celebrate the Scottish men and women who lived, died and achieved in this century and the last one?

Not that statues and sculptural work are all about people and past glories...Look at the shoddy way sculptor George Wyllie's work has been treated. Revered by curators in Europe and America, George now living in a care home, is mostly ignored by Scotland's art establishment, too long a whimsical thorn in the side of their small 'c' conservatism. His exclusion from the Sculpture Show, a survey of the history of modern sculpture from 1900 is to be held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh next month, has no place for a Wyllie. As a fan and a friend of the man, I'm dismayed that the Scottish art establishment is too outward looking, and incapable of looking around it's own wee patch just once in a while...

There are council elections in May 2012. The SNP have set their sights on taking control of the City Chambers. Prior to May's Holyrood elections, you would have been accused of living on cloud cuckoo land if you had said the SNP could take the city. Yet, we hear tales of panic, of Labour culling the old guard in a desperate attempt to shore up the last bastion of Unionism in Scotland. Glasgow has become a city in state in paralysis, led by leaders wary of adopting positive change that has emanated from the Scottish Government, lest they show them in a good light. The Evening Times,'Ripped Off Glasgow' campaign, driven by Labour politicians came to naught. Everything is up for grabs. Perhaps one of the first things that a new SNP city council might look at is a slight rearrangement of their front door garden, George Square. Remove a few of the old Empire adoring statues and replace them with work that best represents Scotland's place in the contemporary world.

Taça Independência 1972

2011-11-08T21:17:00.002Z

July 5th 2012 sees the fortieth anniversary of only the second ever game of football between Scotland and Brazil. The result on this occasion was 1-0 victory for Brazil in front of 130,000 samba strutting supporters at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janerio and stopped Scotland from qualifying for the first semi final of an International tournament. Scotland were so well regarded at the time, they went straight into Group A, possibly the only time we've ever made it to the latter stages of a tournament without actually having to play first...

Truth be told I have no recollection of this tournament, as I was a mere stripling of a 10 year old lad and I doubt it was covered on any of the three council telly channels available to us at the time. The tournament took place in the summer, so the reality is that I was probably up in Ardnamurchan guddling brownies and shooting hoodie craws with my deadly Milbro catapult. The tournament was an invitation from the Brazilian football authorities to 18 countries and two continents, Africa and CONCACAF to help Brazil celebrate the 150th anniversary of its Independence from Portugal. Scotland drew 2-2 with Yugoslavia, Luigi Macari scoring both goals, then a 0-0 draw with Czechoslovakia left us needing a victory against Brazil, the then world champions.

The following video, has the only images I've seen of the game. What struck me was how relaxed the likes of Bremner, Buchan, Hartford, Graham, Law and Macari were on the ball. Contrast this with the displays of sheer terror we witness from the current Scotland team where the object seems to give the ball back to the opposition as soon as we win it.

I'm left wondering, that when Scotland finally regains her Independence if we'll have the confidence to host our own mini-copa and invite the world to celebrate with us, and whether we might finally get that elusive victory over the boys from Brazil...

The great difficulty with politics is, that there are no established principles

2011-11-01T09:14:00.002Z

There have been many exits in politics; many dignified, many reluctantly, some explosively, others indignantly, even petulantly. Few however, have been as undignified as the spectacle witnessed by members of the Labour party in Scotland at the weekend by Iain Gray, the man whom history will probably judge as being unique amongst Holyrood Labour leaders, for not having had one positive thing to say about his party, political philosophy or opponents during his three year tenure.

In his outpouring of bile at the weekend he devoted an exceptional paragraph shifting the blame of his and his parties failures to a few nameless individuals.

This afternoon we begin the process proper of electing a new Scottish leader for a new devolved Scottish Labour party.

I say to the candidates. Don’t kid yourself.

You will be attacked. You will be smeared. You will be lied about. You will be threatened.

The cybernats and the bedsit bloggers will call you traitor, quisling, lapdog and worse. They will question your appearance, your integrity and your sexuality. They will drag your family and your faith into the lies and the vitriol. If you are a woman it will be worse.

It is no consolation to know that any journalist or commentator who gives you a fair hearing will suffer the same.

This is the poison some have brought into our politics and it is vile.

It is time we started talking openly about it and it is time the SNP did something about it.

They know who some of these people are.

This is not how you build a better Scotland and Scotland deserves better.

But those who bring light suffer burning. You will stand up to it and you should be proud to do so.

As only one of a handful of bloggers to be pursued by the Scottish press and as far as I'm aware the only one to be hounded out of a job, I took fair exception to the utterly shambolic and pathetic attempt Iain Gray made to have one final kick at those he perceived to have brought about his downfall. Particularly his defence of 'any journalist or commentator who gives you a fair hearing.' Boo-fucking-hoohoo.

For the record, I have never written or said anything "deeply unpleasant" about any Labour politician...or any other sort. I have never called a Unionist a traitor, quisling or lapdog...although I can't see why a fluffy lapdog would be considered offensive. I've never threatened Ian Gray, questioned his sexuality or dragged his family into lies and vitriol, although I confess to putting an SNP rosette on his wife's jacket as she and Mr Gray strolled along a beach on a winters day for the cameras... As to his integrity and appearance, these are the standards which politicians put upon themselves for election. I've found, as have the Scottish electorate, that Iain Gray is lacking in both.

The main reason the Labour Party has lost control of it's personal fiefdom, is not entirely down to the Tartan Overlords large shiny, smiley face. Rather, it is down to thousands of people in Scotland taking exception to the one sided, biased, blatant propaganda that has passed and still passes for impartial news in our newspapers and the state broadcaster. These people fed up with the lies and one sided nature of the Scottish media have discovered the internet, which has opened up the opportunity to search, research and respond.

As our newspapers shrink in actual paper sales, they have looked to an internet presence as the means to keep their shareholders happy and have created on-line forums to drive advertising revenue. Unfortunately, they have discovered that you can't have open access without the punters actually availing themselves of it. So, the past ten years have seen a Labour press release, with the obligatory kick at the SNP end up in the Scotsman straight from London Labour HQ, verbatim. Within moments of it appearing on-line, those of us with opinions on how Scotland will run better as an Independent country are ready to opine, and use actual facts to combat the press release. This is frowned upon in unionist Scotland. So what we mostly see are stories in the Scotsman coming on-line at obscure times of the night, always with sickening comments from Union supporters, invariably hours before Joe McPublic has had an opportunity to comment. These first posters do not engage in debate, instead they have brought, to paraphrase Iain Gray, 'vile poison into our politics'. Naturally, comments arise that these are people deep within Johnson press fighting to preserve the union at all costs. Much like Kevin McKenna confessed in his Independence 'epiphany' piece in last weeks Observer, that he and the Guardian man are both Unionists, so one must surmise are the majority of those scrivening behind the scenes at Johnson Towers. So for Gray to cry foul that those with the most power are victims, fair sticks in the craw.

Gray will go down in Scottish political history as the man who lived up to his name, a cheap and obvious dig, but really what is our collective memory of him? Scuttling into a sandwich shop to escape natural Labour supporters concerned about the closure of a respite centre for the disabled, fag cupped in hand like a dodgy security guard gathering courage outside Holyrood on Thursday mornings before FMQ's or standing up in the chamber gesturing to Salmond to 'come ahead'.

He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat

Where Mr Gray's logic falls down, is in his belief that there is some secret cybernat army being marshalled by the upper echelons of the SNP, directing teams of Internet savvy operators to attack Labour at all costs. The cybernat is a Labour construct, there is no such thing. Instead there is a large, and growing number of people who are pissed off at the continual propaganda coming from the Unionist media which controls Scotland. That some professional members of the SNP buy into this construct is rather concerning. Perhaps it's easier for them to go down the knee jerk response road for fear of upsetting the horses and actually challenging those who control our daily news.

More pants on fire from BBC Scotland.

2011-10-04T11:03:00.000+01:00

The pro-independence world is in a tizzy this morning after yet another subtle piece of propaganda from BBC Scotland, in which they contrived to wilfully adapt an erroneous translation of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's deathbed statement into a full bloodied confession of mass murder. The ever excellent Newsnet have a concise skewering of the State Broadcasters murky ways here See earlier Cheesier rumblings of their corporate shenanigans here and here . The Hootsman continue with their truly vile headline 'Megrahi's death bed confession'. Naturally, the more contentious or deliberately misleading a Hootsman story, the more they ban any comments.

Each time the question of blatant BBC Scotland propaganda comes up, brave cyber-warriors come on-line and claim how they won't pay their TV license. Proudly thumping their their collective chests, looking solemnly in to the mid distance with perhaps a wee hint of lachrymosity in their steely eyes and bellowing that they'd prefer a day in court or even a jail sentence to prove their point. This will never work. The BBC will never report one or two individuals not paying their license, at best the local media might portray non-payers as license dodgers in their pages of shame and blame, alongside the shoplifting and booze imbibing miscreants.

Those peeved at the continual goal post shifting from our State Broadcaster should take a glance askance at the current going ons in the good ole USA, where folk of all stripes, ages and colours are coming together under the #occupywallstreet banner. This campaign, inspired by the Arab Spring to become an American Fall has spread from New York to just about every major US city, where the authorities have found themselves on the back foot, incapable of coping with a sustained peaceful campaign. The mainstream media, permanently on alert for terrorist or tea bagger activity have been forced to give the protesters campaign against the corrupt financial system some media coverage, when direct action inconvenienced the 'new normality', albeit more down to police stupidity than cunning activist machinations.

If, dear readers, those of us tired of the perpetual stream of blatantly skewed coverage within our own borders, that wishes to retain the Union and re-anoint Labour as our blessed saviours, want to make a difference, then perhaps we can look a wee bit closer to home for an example of a peaceful demonstration, that remained a painful and permanent thorn in the side of the Unionist establishment side for some five years.

The Democracy for Scotland vigil at Calton Hill was a 24 hours a day, seven days a week presence outside the Old High School from 1992 until 1997. A group of roughly 100 dedicated men and women gave of themselves, to act as a semi permanent reminder of the lack of democracy in Scotland. Their commitment to changing Scotland's future through night and day, dry and wet inspired many people to look at their place in Scotland a little bit closer.

If we want to make a change in the way that BBC Scotland portrays the nation of the people who pay this state tax, then we have to do more than the tantrum-like withholding of license fees. We have to build a sustained picketing of BBC Headquarters at Pacific Quay. Embarrass them in their shiny new building. paid for with our taxes, where they contrive every day to feed us a diet of bland crap and skewed views.

Some of the above images were cheekily purloined from the excellent Scottish Political Archive on Flickr, thank you for preserving these.

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

2011-09-07T13:02:00.003+01:00

Those lovely folk at BBC Scotland have gone and done it again. There I was sleepwalking towards Independence this morning when I noticed that the beeb were reporting the startling news that the coterie of tired former politicians who inhabit the House of Lords, were readying themselves to poke a big stick in the spokes of the Scotland Bill.

This got me thinking about the lack of coverage from our state broadcaster on the most important story about, you know, the TNS-BMRB Poll that shows supporters of Independence outnumbering those who would cling on to the last vestiges of Empire, under the detumescent 'We're All In It Together' banner. The Poll that might bring about the end of this Disunited Kingdom via that hoary old bitch Democracy.

A quick check on Facebook, no mention, a scroll through their BBC Scotland website, nada, a long and involved wander through the Loch of Indifference that is their @BBCScotlandNews twitter feed, nope, not to be seen among the detritus of stories about missing kittens, porridge, tartan, the CBI prophets of Doom or the latest Death by Garlic Bread headline. I checked, I scrolled back through 108 tweets of varying fluffiness until arriving at their last tweet on the 4th of September and their first on the 5th of September, which matched exactly the timescale of The Herald, whom in the shape of the estimable journo with cowboy boots and a neat wee beard Robbie Dinwoodie unveiled the results of the Poll here.

I pondered, mused and scratched my napper, for why would BBC Scotland news not report this surely important story, when on July the 4th a mere two months ago they deleriously tweeted and reported the story that Nearly half of English oppose Scottish Independence -poll? I dare say they have a policy that only allows reporting of polls that they commission and we pay for. It does fair point out an anomaly in their news reporting, that when the Scottish body politic is doing somersaults on an hourly basis, that the most recent up to date poll on the big question isn't deemed worthy or reporting.

In other news, this exclusive photograph of the combined beauty contests for the leadership of the Tory/Labour parties has revealed that it's all to play for, match the pins to the paper bag and you could win a front seat bench beside the opposition leaders...

All quiet on the Cheesey front.

2011-06-29T11:00:00.001+01:00

This chaps passion has woken me from my slumber. The Tories are against the June 30th strike, Labour are against it, and artists are painting fucking trees....

"A motorway to independence with no U turns and no exits” Tam Dalyell on Devolution

2011-05-30T17:40:00.001+01:00

I've been fairly quiet of late on the old blawg. Reason being I'm still sitting back and guffawing at the way that the 'No' vote are building their campaign for the Independence referendum. So far they've been entirely predictable, and to use a crude metaphor, have shot their load far too early. The weeks since the Tartan Overlord rewrote the face of Scottish electoral history, have seen commentators, mostly from the South, wake up to the reality that everything has changed and they are utterly impotent to do anything about it, other than pick up the baton of fear which they'll monger to the maximum for the next three years. Every inaccuracy they've mustered has been spat out, the pro-Independence movement have three years to inform and educate those who would believe the opponents of self determination.

This past weekend we've seen supposed differences of opinion on the fiscal probity of an Independent Scotland and today the frankly dribbling assertion from a nuclear consultant that Scotland faces a forty year period without any puff to drive our wind turbines. No doubt Kite manufacturers will have been leaping off cliffs at this bombshell. I fully expect another crank headline in the Hootsman telling us that our tides have turned and Scotland has now developed the ability to repel all forms of natural energy...

Anyhoo, I attended the 75th Saltire Society celebration up in Glasgow on Saturday (if you're not a member get clicking www.saltiresociety.org.uk) and found a body of mostly elderly (some of whom may have attended the inaugural meeting in 1936) amazing academics, enthusiasts, performers, poets, singers, musicians and digital day gurus, who promote and celebrate this wee bit of land we call home. I left with a further understanding that the struggle for Scotland's right to self determination has been going on for far longer than my own involvement. It's easy to dismiss what's gone before, but the old adage about standing on the shoulders of giants truly rings true. The SNP victory earlier this month was built on the hard work, goodwill and generosity of the likes of those Saltire Society members who see Scotland as something more than a surly peninsula of Northern England.

So by way of a circuitous digression let me take you back in time, to a photograph...in fact two photographs (thank you photoshop) that I took nearly twenty years ago, that encouraged me to become better educated about my countries history and people and reverse that Scottish school education which served up a succession of English Kings and Queens.

December 12th 1992 was a strange day in world history.

Whitney Houston was still keeping dogs awake with her third week at the top of the poptastic charts with 'I Will Always Love You'. One of those little known natural catastrophes, namely a tsunami, had occurred off the coast of Indonesia, wiping out 3000 lives and 18,000 homes on the Flores Islands in a matter of five minutes. Nobody seemed to understand -- or care.

The tabloids were up to their Monarchist best with some full scale deflection in their coverage of the Royal Wedding between Princess Anne and Commander Tim Lawrence, who chose to get married at Crathie Church near Balmoral. After a year that had seen theRoyal Princes' Charles and Andrew separate from their respective spouses. This latest Royal Wedding was seen as an attempt at stability and mass hypnosis.

Edinburgh was playing at being all grown up and important as the host to the the European Council and the President of the European Parliament. The delightful European top notch leaders condescended to visit Auld Reekie, to visit the castle, drink whisky, ogle our wummin and debate Denmark's rejection of the Maastricht Treaty and find a way of agreeing to their having certain exceptions before the Danes could have a second Referendum.

The genial host, was none other than the original Grey man. Prime Minister John Major, who said of his trip to North. "May I begin by expressing my thanks to the people of Edinburgh for the very warm welcome we have had and the excellent way in which we have been cared for throughout the last two days."

Admit it, as you read that quote, mentally you were doing it with that horribly strangulated voice that Spitting Image used to lampoon the man who ran away from the circus to become an accountant.

What John Major, failed to notice, a mere eight months after he'd unexpectedly defeated favourite Neil Kinnock's Labour Party at the 1992 General Election. Was that the natives in Scotland were revolting.

General Election map 1992

Labour in Scotland had garnered 1,142,911 votes, the Scottish Tories 751,950 the SNP came third with 629,564 and the Lib Dems a distant 4th with just 383,856 votes. Which oddly enough returned them 9 MPs. The Tories had 11, Labour 49 and the SNP a grand total of 3. So a total of 72 constituency seats in Scotland saw Labour win 49 of them. The feeble fifty were reduced by one MP when Frank Doran lost Aberdeeen South to youthful Tory Raymond Robertson. The SNP lost the admirable Dick Douglas, the former Labour MP for Dunfermline West, who had resigned the Labour whip and defected to the SNP in 1990. Dick had stood up to Labour over their simpering approach to combating the introduction of the Poll Tax. At the General Election he took the fight to Donald Dewars Garscadden constituency and took a sizeable 5500 chunk out of Dewars majority.

For many Scots, the final nail in the 'Fighting Fifty's' coffin was the whimpering demise of the Ravenscraig steel works, which at its peak had employed 13,500 workers. It was closed by the British Steel Corporation in 1992 and the remaining 1,200 employees were made redundant. Industrial Scotland was well and truly deid.

Yet 1992 should have been a year of optimism, earlier that Summer, we had witnessed one of the most successful Olympic Games of modern history, with the games taking part in Barcelona, capital of that most autonomous of Spanish 'regions' Catalunya. These games were littered with firsts. The first unified team from Germany since 1964. Post-apartheid South Africa were allowed to participate for the first time since being banished in 1960. The biggest group of new entries came from those previously little known satellite states that managed to break free from the oppression and might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the former Yugoslavia. Across Europe small, newly free nations were celebrating their new found freedom and expression. Scotland's hopes after the election faded like Liz McGolgan's hopes of Gold in the oppressive heat of the Women's 10,000 metres final.

So, whilst Major was saluting the civic leaders of Edinburgh for putting on a tasty spread, some Scottish punters were dusting down their saltires, downing a fly nip and taking to the streets of Edinburgh for a wee wander to the Meadows for the then newish body going by the all encompassing name of Scotland United.

The aim of this loose gathering of Scots, was simple. Once again Scotland had rejected the notion of Tory rule from Westminster. The Feeble Fifty hadn't managed to save one industry. Scotland had been raped and pillaged of her natural resources, and her workforce cast aside like a Saturday night, back close johnnybag! (no illustration necessary). Led by the late Bill Speirs and sundry cross part leading lights, including a rather foxy Fiona Hyslop, George Galloway (who according to others denounced the British Army in Scotland as an army of occupation), John McAllion, Margo McDonald, Denis Canavan, Jim Sillars and even a svelte young chap by name of Salmond who was sporting Marjorie Proops spare specs....

A motley crew of between 25,000 and 30,000 ironed their stonewashed 501's, plugged in their walkmans, spruced up their mullets and descended on the streets of Edinburgh to make a lot of noise, so that Mr Major might attune his ears to the local accent...

I remember the day well, because I was there, with my wife pushing our infant son in his buggy. Carrying a massive Saltire we wandered the streets of Edinburgh, chanting, singing, trying to express a unified front that Scotland had firmly rejected the fourth election on the trot of Tory rule from Westminster. Many of the disillusioned Labour supporters that walked alongside us knew they were breaking rank with their Party hierarchy, they knew that Scotland could not continue as a nation with limited representation.

Fast forward the best part of two decades, and Scotland again faces the same situation. Do we continue to blunder along tagged on as an afterthought to England, hoping that an incompetent Westminster will turn its attention to our own part of the world and change our lives for the better, or do we trust in the ability of those Scots and those who choose to come her that we can make things better, that we don't need to go down the path of the diaspora heroes who left for pastures new, to find a place to realise their ambitions and hopes?

They hate it when a plan comes apart...

2011-05-14T09:52:00.001+01:00

These hard, mother-sucking-clock-fluffers pictured below belong to the U-Team that Alan Cochrane wants to defend the little celebrated 304 year old Act of Union. Over the next few years they will go out of their way to denigrate Scotland and her ambitions to be normal.

Expect pejorative terms like separation, divorce, tearing apart the country and so on. It won't just be them, they'll have a Greek chorus in the shape of the so-called Scottish media, where we have BBC Reporting Labour still smarting over the greatest drubbing in their history. Atholl may have left, but the culture of union hacktivism is still alive and well, not only in the beeb newsroom but upstairs among the Gaelic mafia that govern BBC Scotland, a coterie of a few, who appear to suffer slavish devotion to London, barely capable of taking a decision that affirms positive life in Scotland without running it past LONDON.

Much like the Scottish people chose to dump the dependency parties of a discordant union at the Holyrood election, when given a clear choice with all the facts, they'll arrive at two roads diverging, and take the one less travelled and that will make all the difference.

Apologies to Robert Frost...

Adendum:

Now that Blogger is back up, apologies to BaronSarwar aka @weegietastic of Youtube and Twitter infamy. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that I'd seen a Usual Suspects photoshopped job before. Thankfully I was reminded by the fair minded chap himself when he sent me this twitpic.

With my cultured bunnet on for a second, my only defence is the George McKay Brown one, when accused of plagiarising a Sorley McLean poem (or was it vice versa) on the flight of seagulls, he said, he'd obviously subsumed the original poem and reinterpreted it as his own original thought. I sir, am no Sorley or McKay Brown!

The new political map of Scotland with added urgency...

2011-05-08T15:39:00.000+01:00

They don't like it up them.

Our man in London.

2011-05-08T11:26:00.000+01:00

What a heady few days we've been through. Personally, I'm still exhausted at observing the endeavours of others, well that and one too many drinks that's lead to the need to replenish my malt whisky collection...

There's simply been too much to take in since Friday. Trying to keep up with Twitter, Facebook and all the anguished fawning and hyperbole in the meanstream media has left me more confuddled than normal. However, one appearance on Newsnicht managed to pull it all together for me in a moment of blinding lucidity. It dawns on me that for all the Tartan Overlords charisma and ability, his positive message for Scotland has been reinforced by one man. One man who has done more for the SNP than any private donor, friendly columnist, movie star or the combined talents of the much lauded front bench. One man with access to the ears that-be in Westminster, one man with columns in the establishment media, one man who was sent North in 2007 to smack Jack McConnell around and remind him that he was only a regional councillor, with inflated ideas above his own station. That man, who has done so much for the path to Independence, whose actions and comments have led to a majority SNP government is none other than our finest ever double agent. Dear readers I present to you the man who set Scotland on the path to normality.

I suggest a column be erected in Holyrood park to this mans remarkable achievements. His crusade of negativity, of Fear over Hope has led Scotland from the darkness of London dominance to a bright new future. His last cunning ploy to suggest that the London Government could stop the people of Scotland from determining our own fate, was the cherry on the cake. I suggest when he returns home, we have a parade along Princes Street on an open top tram where the adoring masses can laud him with rose petals and confetti made from shredded copies of the Scottish press.

The ultimate reason for voting SNP today...

2011-05-05T15:56:00.000+01:00

In an election where Hope must triumph over Fear...

Cheese has voted.

2011-05-05T14:14:00.000+01:00

The next Scottish Government?

2011-05-03T22:38:00.001+01:00

So, four long hard years of relentless negativity have boiled down the last lap before the polling booths close on Thursday night at 10pm.

At first Labour spat the dummy and refused to acknowledge they'd lost the moral right to run Holywood. Blair headed off for a life of perma-tanned perma-wealth with nary a glance to the land of his birth. Brown, bottled his rage up and took it out on staff and elderly bigots. Jack McConnell suffered for daring to want to fight his own battle, unfortunately for him Blair, Brown and McTernan stomped on his throat to show him who was really the boss. Dougie Alexander slithered around in charge of the election, blithely manipulating the electoral process, all the while proclaiming a choir boy innocence.

We've had colonial overseers come and go as Secretaries for the State of Scotland. In four years Salmond has seen off Messrs Alexander, Browne, Murphy, Alexander and latterly has had the woefully innefectual and utterly anonymous Micheal Moore, as the man London keeps in Edinburgh to keep an eye on the rebellious Scots. Similarly he's seen off McConnell and Alexander as his official opposition in Holyrood. Iain Gray, working with a limited team of talent has shown nothing in the way of ambition for Scotland and if there is any moral justice in this world, won't be the man to lead Scotland for the next five years after Thursday.

Labour offered nothing in the way of constructive opposition. Their abstentions and votes against SNP policy all carried out for the sake of spite. I thought as the science appeared to back up their caffeine proposal, they might have taken advantage of the opportunity and compromised a little bit to work with the SNP to combat Scotland's drink problem. Alas no, like a petulant child they voted against all and sundry all the while ticking off the days on their calendars until they were back in the ministerial tower.

Jim Murphy, spoke of them having learned lessons and coming back into the election a little older and a little wiser. Sadly this hasn't been reflected in the campaign so far. It's been a repeat of 2007 but with added hilarity for the political anoraks, like myself. Funny for a while, but latterly, completely disheartening. Where is the vision, that prompted these people to go into politics?

Obama, before he killed people via games consoles, benefitted from artist Shepard Fairey adopting a photograph of him into the now famous 'HOPE' poster, which spread throughout America in the election year. Eventually posters that cost $45 were selling for tens of thousands of dollars.

I was reminded of the poster whilst reading Londoner John McTernan's cynically realistic mantra in the Scotsman that Fear trumps Hope. He contends that the electorate will respond more readily to fear than ambition. My first thought, without deliberately trying to invoke Godwins law, was that McTernan's philosophical stance wasn't too far removed from what went on in 1930's Germany, where fear was the catalyst that lead to global war and genocide.

All of which got me pondering, how best to sum up the people who would run Scotland for the next five years. What do they offer if not hope? The answer's obvious...

Desperate times call for desperate men.

2011-05-02T21:56:00.001+01:00

Just when you thought they'd sealed his lid down in the North Queensferry bunker, who should Scottish Labour turn to in their hour of need, none other than the man who saved the world.

The proud owner of the almighty clunking fist, the man who was the bridesmaid for ten long, long, long years who bottled an election at the height of his popularity and was then revealed to be an electoral liability, the man who never was.

FEAR OVER HOPE

2011-04-29T10:26:00.001+01:00

Following the relaunched relaunch of the new relaunch. Labour's John McTernan has advised Iain Gray to grow a pair and get nasty. Much has been written about how McTernan with his Fear over Hope agenda, has ripped open Labour's heart and finally revealed the visceral hatred within. I disagree. I think it's always been there. I believe that a profoundly honest social movement that mobilised to help the working man and woman has been subsumed from within by careerists desperate for power and willing to do almost anything to hold on to it.

With this in mind, and as a motivation to Iain Gray to see where this political philosophy leads to, I've decided to help him envisage how it might look.

Oh if he's going to add any other of those flexible manifestos, can I suggest the nationalisation of the countries take-a-ways and Barr's Irn Bru Bingo Buggies for all as a hard core Labour vote winner.

Perfect....

2011-04-28T09:12:00.000+01:00

Nice to see Iain Gray giving some promotion to his truly lovely supporter Eddi Reader in his own special way.

The talented and bonny Ms Reader, as we all remember recorded 'Perfect' with her former band of troubadours, 'Fairground Attraction' who subsequently blotted their copybook by selling the lovely ditty to ASDA, I think I'm right in thinking that Eddi doesn't get any of the largesse from the advert as she didn't write said tune... All the same I reckon it's Iain Gray's campaign tune.

I love the smell of fearmongering in the morning.

2011-04-26T22:06:00.002+01:00

Labour's electoral campaign has quite rightly been labelled a train wreck in waiting. We've been cursed with a triptych of Ed's, that is Messrs Miliband, Balls and Izzard who have all ventured North to tell us to think again, and be sharpish about it. The giddy Ms Bird on BBC Reporting Labour tonight gushed that Ed Balls had informed us that Scots are like really stupid if they elect a party that would propose a democratic referendum on the nations Independence to the voters. So that's us telt then.

As much as we appreciate being talked down to by our obvious betters, you have to say these London labourites are amateurs when compared to their minions in Scottish Labour. Today someone in John Park's election team managed to scrape the keech off the bottom of their poo encrusted hush puppies and add the following image to an election leaflet that's doing the rounds in the Southside of Glasgow. I've left the image large, so you dear reader, can observe for yourself the implication they've gone for.

It doesn't take a genius to see that this is a new low in what passes for positive election campaigning from ra people's party. They'd be as well saying the SNP stab babies and eat their puppies on toast. Lovely people. Scotland will be much better off when they're consigned to the dustbin of electoral history

The horror...the horror...the horror.

The party's over

2011-04-26T08:47:00.000+01:00

Alas and furthermore alack, with the Hootsman this morning coming perilously close to endorsing the Tartan Overlord to continue his merry way as First Minister, by dint of him not being the besuited car crash that is Iain Gray, it looks as if the end of the road has finally jumped up and hit the man who has brought whinging to the status of Olympic sport, full on square in the face. He may be London's man, but he's had his supporters in the establishment closer to home, three years of his own personal brand of relentless negativity have been cheered by our 'media', as if each 'ye cannae dae that' were slippery bon mots delivered by a tipsy Cyrano de Bergerac.

Since the bloodless coup of Wendy Alexander by the Gray munchkins, Iain Gray has set himself out on a road of relentless negativity. Whereas the Wendy confirmed her status as a woman who had expelled two babelets from her womb and spoke unerringly of Hungry Caterpillars, Gray's time as LOTLPITSP was marked by being completely against everything the SNP proposed, whatever it was, he was against it. Naturally this put me in mind of the beloved Rufus T Firefly, no not the Embra troll, this one.

Astute observers will have noted that even that most redoutable scourge of the Nats, David Maddox, appears to accept that indeed the party is over, with his sweepstake of who'll replace Gray as LOTLPITSP, Maddox shows that he is no stranger to a heady combination of satire and surrealism by positing those intellectual giants Jackie the Hutt, Andy Kerr, Richard Baker as likely replacements for the Gray man. Maddox's touch of satirical genius, which near had me coughing toast out my nose, was the lament from an unnamed Labour source that, "Margaret Curran is the one that got away."

I've no doubt there will be more dirty tricks to come in the remaining days till the polling stations close. BBC Scotland will continue to bang the drum and lead with Labour in every bulletin. Postal votes will be hugely in favour of Labour. The tabloids will be doing their utmost to rake bins and stir stoor on Salmond and SNP candidates. No doubt the cybernats will get another kicking for daring to point at the emperors bare bollocks. Nope, it's not well and truly over until Jackie the Hutt warbles an aria with Karen Whitfield and Johanna Lamont providing backing vocals.

Only then when the ballots are scrutinised, counted and locked away in a Fred Goodwin like vault alongside the Marked Registers, can the people of Scotland truly say that for you Labour, the party is over.

The party is well and truly over.

Labour drone assault continues.

2011-04-25T08:48:00.000+01:00

Forces loyal to beleaguered Labour Leader Iain Gray vowed to continue their attack against SNP Rebel held positions across Scotland last night.

With a record-low popularity and facing an electoral wipeout, sources close to Mr Gray, speaking from the parties alpine chalet atop Arthur's Seat, known as 'The Doos Nest', said, "Although Iain is unpopular with voters and our policies simply do not stand up to the mildest of examinations, we know that it is our God given right to rule Scotland. The glorious thousand year reich started by our saviour Tony the Blair in 1997 will not collapse over something as flimsy as democracy." He continued, "Our councillors, council placemen, Quangocrats, media commentators, journalists, state reporters, MP's, MEP's and MSP's are armed to teeth with an arsenal of lies and innuendo, we will not stop, until the smile is wiped off Alex Salmond's ample coupon."

As shelling continued over key marginals, the United Nations taking advice from officials at Westminster declined to enforce a 'No Fly Zone', citing that this was a local issue that would only be inflamed by outside interference. The smaller Independent nations throughout the European Union have called on the EU to send in International electoral observers, particularly to oversee the expected huge surge in postal voting that appears to favour the Labour Party by a mind boggling ration of 10:1. The devolved governments of Northern Ireland and Wales have demanded that the EU impose sanctions on the Labour Party and State Broadcaster BBC Scotland for their overt bias in a supposedly impartial election. A spokesperson for BBC Scotland said, 'Get it round ye."

The SNP led by long time freedom fighter and pie connoisseur, the Tartan Overlord, have vowed to fight on until the last issue of Saltire is delivered. Speaking from outside a Greggs Pie shop, the sleekit leader opined, "We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long days of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: we shall fight them at invisible bowling, fight them in the Subways and fight them at the ballot box. Iain Gray's personality may embody those very drones that are flying over our heads as we speak, we shall however, raise our faces skywards and give them an almighty Victory sign."

Despite the exposure of their sinister plans for Independence, by all sides of the Scottish media* the SNP have simply gone about their evil business and are out on the streets of every town in Scotland, smiling and handing out saltires to tousle headed, terrified weans and their gang pressed families. Their pathetic message of Hope has no chance of winning the electorates heart when matched with the universally popular Labour parties serious warnings of Fear and Doom

* BBC Scotland understand some delusional downmarket English tabloid have come out to back the SNP.

'Ye Labourites by Name'

2011-04-24T10:30:00.000+01:00

Loving this.

ElliotSteven adapted the lyrics of Burns anti-war, humanist 'Ye Jacobites by Name' to 'Ye Labourites by Name' stuck it up on the cheesey blog and the delightful Weegiewarbler sitting on a boat somewhere sunny, I presume the Dominican Republic, belted out her take on it...Brilliant!

Ye Labourites by name, lend an ear, lend an ear;

Ye Labourites by name, lend an ear;

Ye Labourites by name,

Your fautes I will proclaim,

Your doctrines I maun blame--

You shall hear, you shall hear.

Your doctrines I maun blame--You shall hear.

II.

What is right, and what is wrang, by the law, by the law?

What is right and what is wrang, by the law?

What is right and what is wrang?

A short sword, and a lang,

A 6 month prison term

For them a', for them a'

A 6 month prison term For them a'.

III.

What makes heroic strife, fam'd afar, fam'd afar?

What makes heroic strife, fam'd afar?

What makes heroic strife?

To run wi'oot a fight

And excuse a coward's flite

Wi' bluidie war, bludie war

And excuse a coward's flite wi' bluidie war.

IV.

Then let your schemes alone, in the state, in the state;

Then let your schemes alone in the state;

Then let your schemes alone,

Adore the rising sun,

And leave a man undone

To his fate, to his fate.

And leave a man undone to his fate.

A giant leap for Mankind... It's more like a stumble in the dark.

2011-04-24T08:41:00.002+01:00

When Space 1999 landed on one of our three TV channels in October 1975, the thirteen year old me was delighted. Here, at last was proof that nuclear power was unsafe. For those of with you with only memories for the kitch sets and Barry Morse's hair do. Let me enlighten you. Moonbase Alpha was Earth's Space Research Centre, where we had been storing our nuclear waste in gigantic bunkers on the far side of the Moon. Following a thermonuclear explosion, the moon is sent hurtling into space where the crew of Moonbase discover aliens, dystopian societies and all the mind-altering phenomena you're likely to encounter on a mystery bus tour with Iain Gray and Baron Ffoulkes of Cumnock fuelled on a heady cocktail of Cremola foam and lsd.

When the series was broadcast young teenagers in Scotland saw it as a portent to a bright new space age future. Iain Gray at this time was a spotty 18 year old wannabe Ned smoking behind the butlers quarters at the fee paying George Watson's College and dreaming of one day walking the killing fields of Cambodia before they happened. We'd already had some bloke from Langholm walking on the moon, Gerry Anderson had progressed from astronauts held up by string to dyed blonde Americans in UFO (ponounced you-foe) and Kubrick had made the seminal 2001, which the teen me fell asleep watching. So the reality of cars that could drive themselves, meals that went into a box in a sachet and came out a few seconds later as a turkey with trimmings and jetpacks to get us down to the shops for the messages could only be a few years away. Sure enough microwaves and GPS eventually popped into the mainstream. After the Los Angeles Olympic games in 1984 it became obvious that Jetpacks were to be the sole preserve of the lunatic fringe of the wealthy/suicidal/obese.

They were a glorious idea, which at this stage in our technological development remain just that. Their lack of appearance at the Haddington branch of Lidl doesn't mean they won't happen eventually. They were never promised. Gerry Anderson never stood up unassisted on Tomorrow's World and said, " One day I guarantee you, we'll all have the jetpacks that you see on Space 1999". Didn't happen. Besides when 1999 finally did come around Labour were still considering such hi-tech solutions to dealing with nuclear waste like dumping it in the Scottish hills.

Therefore, at a time when your party loses support on a weekly basis, now is not the time to base the relaunch of your faltering Holyrood campaign on the claim that Alex Salmond has verily failed to deliver jetpacks to each and every postcode in Scotland. Might I suggest a fresh new start, with ten days to go to polling day might include a pledge on minimum pricing, an Independence referendum, a wee bout of self flagellation and putting your colleagues, Baron Ffoulkes, Lamont, Kerr, Baillie, Mcneil and the boy Baker in the stocks?

It's evident that the Scottish Labour Party figure is a fantasy.

2011-04-20T10:12:00.003+01:00

Following last nights avian themed analysis of the Scottish election campaign on Newsnight which preceded the latest Iain Gray car crash on Newsnicht, I thought it apposite to warn the leader of the Labour party in Holyrood that the vultures have moved from circling overhead and are just about to commence feeding on his gaffe prone legacy.

The last few days have have seen Labour in Scotland become entrenched in trying to clearly explain their earnest endeavour to slow down and hopefully eradicate knife crime. It's a noble aspiration, but one which they appear utterly incapable of either succinctly explaining or delivering.

'Carry a knife go to jail.' It's no more than a slogan, intended as a hard line approach to warn the predominately young Scots who carry a knife. If you'll excuse the misappropriation of 'The Untouchables' line, 'it brings a cannon to a knife fight.' It suggests a hard man challenge to our young. It's confrontational and there to appeal to the inner Ned.

Yep good old BBC and their competent captioning...

Little prominence is given in their campaign to the fact that the reason many young people carry a knife is down to that one simple emotion - fear. They are afraid of being attacked.

Young Scots are statistically our most vulnerable people. Urban teenagers have little in the way of facilities. The youth clubs of generations past are either underfunded, non-existant or staffed by those who somehow managed to scrape through a Disclosure Scotland check intact. Our young people are increasingly faced with monotonous choices, a life at home plugged in online chatting with their pals on the 'safety' of the internet or alternatively heading outdoors to hang out with their pals, usually on street corners, often near well lit off-licenses. Why do they do so in numbers? Safety, quite simply because they are afraid, and there is safety in numbers.

In 2006, David Gillanders a Glasgow based, world class photographer did a series of documentary reportage photographs for Getty Images on the effect of knife violence in some of the poorest parts of Glasgow. It's a harrowing account that encompasses young lives through bragadaccio, barbarism, buckfast and solemnity.

(C) David Gillanders.

David's photographs are exceptional they show in close up the effects of knife crime on young people. The young man above, with lacerations to his ear, face and most worryingly his throat, where an attempt was made to decapitate him with a machete, is without doubt hampered for the rest of his life. In a world where everything is taken on face value, would you give him a job? Welcome him into your family? Let him get romantic with your daughter? His life is blighted.

(C) David Gillanders.

The last time Labour had an anti-knife campaign in 2006, they did it by way of an amnesty, which successfuly took nearly 13,000 knives, machetes, swords, bayonets, flick knives and old ‘cut throat' razors off the streets. When the five week long amnesty ended - half of these were from Strathclyde alone! I think it was a good campaign and one that should be repeated again, as there was reportedly an element of dumping the dull blades and buying new sharp ones online... If you remember the Scottish Parliament also voted to give the Lord Advocate new procedures with which to clamp down on those who persisted in carrying blades which increased penalties and powers of arrest for these offences.

Since then Kenny MacAskill has introduced the No knives, Better Lives campaign, which has encouraged the participation and involvement of young people in deciding the campaigns direction. Using mobile phone technology in Inverclyde to beam bluetooth anti-knife messages onto young kids mobile phones when they are near hotspots and locations previously associated with knife crimes, is having a positive effect with a reported 35% drop in knife carrying.

The fact remains that violence is a huge problem in Scotland, and for all of Labour's tough guy posturing about manadatory locking up, but only at the Sherriffs discretion, there's a long way to go!

So in conclusion, it's an ill thought out policy that they seem incapable of explaining. It seems to be solely rooted in playing up to the fears of victims and their families, it's adopting a confrontational approach which has been shown to be bloody useless. It's been graphically and patiently explained by Isabel Fraser on Newsnicht to dullard Richard Baker that his sums of claiming that knife crime costs £500 million, simply don't add up.

Naturally the key root to all this is the access to cheap booze, and we all know where Labour in Scotland, the friend of the supermarket stand on that.

I started this post with a suggestion that Iain Gray and his leaderships propensity for open goal gaffes is being laughed at both North and South of the border. Grass root councillors, MSP's and MP's are now briefing against him. Post May 5th, the opposition front bench will be shuffled one can only hope that Labours next leader in the Scottish Parliament doesn't behave like a monkey in a knife fight...

I'm not Spartacus, I'm Newsnet Scotland.

2011-04-19T08:32:00.001+01:00

Everyday in these new online lives we encounter technical glitches. Pages vanish, connections fail, bandwith stretches and servers fail. Occasionally something more dramatic happens and our complacency is kicked in the nads when we discover a favourite site has been attacked. Predominately these are carried out by hacktivists like the labyrinthine 'Anonymous' raising our awareness of the corporate soul sucking behemoths that we've signed up to and whose bland teat we greedily drink from.

'Anonymous' are legend, their attacks on the government websites in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Iranian election , Zimbabwe, the hate filled Westboro Baptist church, Scientology the wonderful 'Operation Titstorm' on the Australian governments attempt at filtering content and the ongoing Operations Payback, Avenge Assenge and Bradical (the illegal detention of the alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning) are all excellent examples of usually young intelligent people defending democracy.

What we saw yesterday in the attack on Newsnet was not a bunch of bored kids playing at high jinks and messing with an evil big megacorp. As Newsnet say, all indications are that this was a concerted Denial of Service (DOS) attack. The sort of thing we tend to find totalitarian regimes like China doing in an attempt to shut down dissenting voices. China, for example where artist Ai Weiwei is currently imprisoned for the great crime of tweeting on his Twitter account: "I didn’t care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared by jasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine is often, which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most. What a jasmine!"

What we need to ask now is who organised this attack, which vested interest, commercial or political would decide to attack a site which is dedicated to the abiding principles of Democracy? You can knock out the eponymous 'Anonymous', they attacked Fine Gaels site and left their logo and this message "Nothing is safe, you put your faith in this political party and they take no measures to protect you. They offer you free speech yet they censor your voice. WAKE UP!"

Newsnet have put their faith in the SNP, the only credible voice on the Scottish media landscape to do so. Obviously I discount the Supersoaraway's endorsement of the SNP today, that decision has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with business. Will they put a noose around Labour's neck on May 5th?

Newsnet back the SNP because they believe in Independence. Because they've witnessed a concerted negative attack from the moment in 2006 when the first polls suggested the SNP's positive message was winning over the electorate. They need and deserve our support.

The news of this attack, needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Whilst your talking to those who would vote Tory, remind them failing to vote SNP in their regional vote makes Iain Gray First Minister and above all else tell them about this attack on Scottish democracy, because sure as shit, their daily newspaper or state broadcaster wont.

Magnus Gardham, "Everything is just fine."

2011-04-18T11:57:00.000+01:00

Every time we switch on our TVs, our radios, open a paper or go online, there they are - the words of the dreaded 'Government spokesman' with his sanitised, freshly spun take on whatever story might have a deletrious effect on the continuing dominance of their ruling party employers.

Currently we've got Musa Ibrahim, the rapidly balding hipster with a soul patch and German missus, who's been bigging it up for Gaddafi and his posse, under the guise of Minister for Information.

Before that we had the legendary Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf or as we knew him 'Comical Ali with his splendid catch phrase "everything is just fine". In his favour he said they didn't have WMD's. Score one to Mr al-Sahhaf.

Only Italy under Berlusconi attempted to redress this woeful gender imbalance and introduced bonny lass and topless model Marfa Carfagna.

Here she is in her younger days as a spokeswoman for Tropicana sun tan oil or window blinds or jewelry, maybe.

In the UK, under Labour we had such odious bastards as Alistair Campbell

and John McTernan

Now what do these people all have in common? Yep, that's right they're all journalists, oh except for Miss Carfagna, she's got a law degree.

The thing is these guys are all rank amateurs, that is compared to the genius that is the mighty Magnus Gardham.

Campbell may have sexed up a document that led to the deaths of countless victims. McTernan has been accused of twisting the words of official minutes into a cock and bull story about the SNP willing to dump Megrahi to avoid paying crims compensation for swilling out jobby pails whilst residing in the pokey. Ibrahim probably has a gun at his families head to keep him spouting the increasingly ludicrous utterances from the glorious brother. Comical Ali we know faced a likely garroting from Saddam's henchmen. Miss Carfagna, well she''s gone on to become a Minister for Equal Opportunities, runs her own blog and after recent revelations is rapidly becoming known as Italy's version of errr 'Deep Throat', I refer of course to the name given to Watergate whistleblower William Mark Felt and not the early 70's porntastic skin flick... ahem, all of which pales into incalculable insignificance with Magnus Gardham's attempt to portray Iain Gray and the poor Labour Party in Scotland as having 'hardly any supportive voices in the media.'

Ok, he's not quite had a power shower in innocent victims blood, or gargled manjuice to make his way to the desk of Daily Record Political Editor, at least I don't think he has, but even Bill O'Reilly, the voice of Fair and Balanced Fox News, couldn't begin to spin this crock of shit as the truth without sprouting an apple on the end of his nose.

Magnus in his one man campaign to redress the imbalance back to a world of unchecked favourable reporting of Scottish Labour's glorious attributes, or fluffing as I believe they call it in Miss Carfagna's former industry, is to be credited for his derring do and strict adehrence to the world of Labour fantasy politics. With a bit of imagination one can almost visualise him swinging from building to building through the night skies in Jackie Baillie's spiderman suit, smiting nationalists with the mighty web sling of Labour truth!

Today's classic piece of spin is an amazing story constructed from the Scotland on Sunday poll that blithely ignores the results which put the SNP ahead of Labour in Scotland in both constituency and regional voting intentions and instead focuses on some classic scaremongering, where he quotes that Titan of Scottish legal affairs, Richard Baker in his assertion that Salmond and the SNP are soft on crime.

Today's article asks the reader to believe that Scotland's criminals are so pleased with the SNP manifesto and their plans to replace sentences of less than six months with community punishements as recommended by former LABOUR first minister Henry McLeish, that they've got out the bunting, booked a band and are about commence with a bout of synchronised cheering...open your window, you'll hear them all rattling their tin cups against their window bars or perhaps see them climbing onto their prison roofs with banners proclaiming Salmond to be the one true saviour for getting them out of the pokey a wee bit earlier and making them clear snow or pick up other peoples rubbish...

I'll confess, Magnus has become my dirty little secret. I can't wait for each new day to bring forth his amazing reinterpretation of the news and views. For skewering reality, he's at the top of the tree, all other pro-Unionist reporters could take lessons in turning the unpalatable reality of a confident, strong well supported SNP into the magical realism of Labour press release mentalism. Go spidey go.

Magnus Gardham the gift that keeps on giving

2011-04-16T10:24:00.001+01:00

Sometimes satire isn't enough to combat the utterly hatstand utterances from our Unionist press. Sometimes it's not worth the effort or bloodpressure risk to point out each shit encrusted utterance, sometimes you just have to print out their epistles word for word and allow others to savour each dazzling gem of absurdity.

Ladies and Gentlemen for your delectation I present.

Magnus Gardham and the Last Propaganda Crusade

More media support for Salmond

By Magnus Gardham

THE SNP election campaign looks set for a boost from Express Newspapers.

They have long flirted with Alex Salmond in their Scottish editions.

Initially that was the result of owner Richard Desmond's deep antipathy towards Gordon Brown; he thought supporting Salmond was a great wheeze in terms of winding up the former PM.

Now, though, it seems it's down to good old-fashioned wonga.

I'm told SNP donor Brian Souter has bought a huge number of papers to hand out free on his buses in the run-up to polling.

They'll include an SNP pull-out.

In the meantime, political hacks at the paper know what's expected of them...

Labour would never have received much sympathy from the normally Tory-supporting Express but the news is still a blow for Iain Gray, who has hardly any supportive voices in the media.

All this follows our revelations about News International coming under David Cameron's orders to campaign for an SNP victory.

The Sun's verdict today on the SNP's somewhat lacklustre manifesto is: "Eckstra special."

But more worrying for Labour will have been NI stablemate The Times' splash yesterday: "Double hit for Labour as policies are mocked."

It amounted to this: a disgruntled follow-up to the Record's exclusive on Iain Gray's call to end corroboration in rape cases combined with some rather manufactured hostile reaction to Labour's plans for more teachers.

But it shows which way the wind is blowing.

Here's the link to the article and the comments section. Which is priceless.

Magnus Gardham for being the English equivalent of Bill O'Reilly I salute you.

Ed's big adventure to Scotlandshire

2011-04-15T09:26:00.002+01:00

Double click on photo for full on Wallace-tastic joy

Hold steady now, the moment has arrived, Ed Miliband is venturing North and coming to very near the top of Scotland, where he'll meet his bestest Scottish chum Iain McGray.

Ed: Just look straight ahead before he goes off on one.

Iain frightens Ed, because he always seems angry. Iain has been on holiday to lots of dangerous places, Ed likes that, he wants to go to Cambodistan and Rwangola. He doesn't like Chilli it's too burny burny. Iain smells of cigarettes. Cigarettes are bad. But Ed's friends say that Iain is popular so they say that he has to meet Iain and go for a walk with him.

Where is Giggity's rosette?

There'll be opportunities to play in a helicopter and meet 'real people' you know sort of people with accents and fit like. His friends Danny and Jimmy played in a helicopter with him on a holiday to Afghanibob, where they played at being soldiers and the silly sausages put their rucksacks on back to front.

Come on chaps the Killing filelds are just over there.

When Ed last visited Scotland, Iain told him it would be fun if he tried on the divers outfit. it wasn't, the photographers laughed at Ed.

Ed diver: Thank Christ safe from his breath.

When Ed and Ian have stopped playing with helicopters they'll take the train to Dundee. Ed likes trains, but he doesn't like sitting beside smelly real people. But when people with cameras follow Ed all day, it's best to pretend that he likes the real people, that's why his friends run around and remove the 1st class headrest covers from his seat. Ed's friend, big Ed, didn't like it when they hid the 1st class covers under his seat. He threatened to twat little Ed next time they're alone. Ed had a bit of wee come on his pants.

Big Ed: Smile all you want, I'll fuckin' have you, you twat.

Girls like Ed. Iain says he can fix him up with a real girl in Dundee.

Oh good no teeth.

Real Scots Read the Record

2011-04-14T22:04:00.003+01:00

You still see them in Scottish towns on the back of cars that with a bit of luck might just make it through their next Mot, if the inspector isn't too handy poking about the undersills with his screwdriver. I'm referring of course to those emblematic window stickers that the Daily Record used to hand out to their readers, so that they might recognise each other, indulge in a quip about the football or what Angus Og had been up to that day. Their signifier was of course the legend, 'Real Scots Read The Record'. As marketing propaganda goes it's up there with the very best of them. You're not reading the Record ergo you're not a real Scot. No justification, no science to back this claim up, just that subtly racist suggestion, that you might live here, be born here, work, pay taxes and die here, but until you swallow the philosophy of the Daily Record, well you're really not quite one of us.

I loved the Record when I was a nipper, we didn't get it in our house, but my gran did. Weekend visits to leafy Cambuslang were always lit up, by me, up at the crack of dawn and hurtling across the road to Sandy's precariously balanced newspaper shed. The building hung out over the railway embankment, if memory serves me correctly it shoogled quite dangerously whenever the lightweight eight year old me breenged into it. I suppose it was the smell of the ink, or even in some cases the warmth of the fresh print bundles that I liked. Sandy used to let me cut the twine that bound the copies together with his old tartan clad penknife. Today Labour would probably have him branded a knife carrying nonce and banged up the moment he pocketed his knife and went out on his rounds. By the time I ambled back across the road, gran would have the coal fire on, with a full Scottish sizzling away in the pan. After breakfast, she'd peel the paper apart and give me the section I wanted to read and send me off to my den at the bottom of the garden, the Anderson shelter that my grandad built when he was home on leave.

I'd while away a couple of hours reading and trying to understand why Angus Og and Lachie Mor kept running away from big Mairileen. Other imponderables included the wrath displayed by the Reverend Peter McSonachan upon discovering Angus and Lachie had been on overnight adventures to the West Indies in the boat on the Sabbath, or Constable MacPhater and the Laird of Drambeg always being tricked out of a giant salmon or brace of grouse by Angus. It was a genuinely nice setting to some of my childhood. When we had holidays on Ard na Murchan, I'd spot the same characters, whilst stuck outside the Kilchoan Hotel in the car drinking bottles of lemonade and munching on packets of salt 'n 'shake - for hours on end.

Of course, as I got older it began to dawn on me that the Angus Og cartoonist Ewan Bain was just about the only Scottish thing in the paper other than the football results. It was only in my late teens, when I started reading the Scots Independent and discovered his cartoons were there too, that I realised he'd been a subversive nationalist deep within the bowels of the unionist Daily Record. All those fly digs at Westminster and the Labour ministers, whilst the front page had been cheerleading away in a blaze of Hope and Glory.

All of which, if you'll excuse the trip down memory lane brings me back to today. This afternoon, I happened on a tweet by one Tom Watson, at first I pondered on why an American golfer was tweeting the rather dersiory 'Alex Salmond's cosy relationship with Rupert Murdoch and the Tories' further investigation took me to the following link . Yep a website ran by and devoted to UK Labour. The Tom Watson in question is an MP and was supposedly up to his sweaty armpits in the Damien McBride sleaze-a-thon. Here's a photo of the bonny Brownite.

The article is basically a spinning operation on behalf of the Daily Record, Alastair Campbell and the Labour Party. It quotes Daily Record political editor Magnus Gardham (is it just me or does he not sound like Mavis from Coronation Street?) and his fantasy politics that the Sun are pointing out the truth about Labour's disasterous campaign and reporting those various celebrity blandishments for the SNP as all part of a blood and spunk pact between Salmond and Murdoch...

The irony for me is the Daily Record complaining about the supposed political direction of a 'downmarket English tabloid', remember 'Real Scots Read the Record', when they are in fact owned by Trinity Mirror an err English company, headed by the voluptuous Sly Baillie and these other people.

Now Sly and company must sit back sometimes and wonder what's gone wrong with a title that's gone from having the worlds second highest saturation level in its own market to having a smaller readership than its downmarket English tabloid arriviste rival The Sun in just over 20 years. In that period the Daily Record plummeted from sales of circa 750,000 newspapers per day to the current level hovering just above the 300,000 mark. The Scottish edition of the Sun sits somewhere in the region of 370,000 - ouch. In fact as recently as 2007 Trinity Mirror was valued at £1.5 billion, by the end of 2008 it had plummeted to a market value of £250 million - double ouch. Rather ironically in 2005 Ipsos Mori did a poll on the political affiliations of daily newspaper readers, you'll never guess which UK paper's readership had the strongest affiliation with the Labour Party, yep, some 61% of Daily Record readers support the Labour Party. Oddly enough the same poll indicated that 22% of their readers supported the SNP...Quite a base level that with nearly a quarter of your readership supporting a party, your editorial is vehemently opposed to. Now I reckon in the intervening years, particularly when we've had four years of a moderately successful SNP Scottish Government, that 22% figure may have shifted somewhat.

If I were a Trinity Mirror shareholder looking at the lovely and preposterously highly paid Sly, I'd be thinking some polling of the Daily Record and readers current political affiliations and some shifting of editorial stance might just be enough to up the dividends for that new holiday home on Barbados...One would hope that Sly would consider getting on the blower to new boy Eugene Duffy, the man in charge of the Nationals Division of Trinity Mirror including the Record and Sunday Mail... For blog followers, Eugene Duffy replaces Derek Stewart Brown, (my old Pcc Megrahi versus the lying Daily Record) nemesis who was previously managing editor of all the Scottish titles, but who has now been moved into the alluringly titled Head of Motors and Commercial Supplements - triple ouch.

Fade to Gray

2011-04-12T00:03:00.000+01:00

This could not be more pertinent, and it was written by Midge Ure!

One man on a lonely platform

One Mags standing by his side

Two eyes twitching cold and silent

Shows fear as he turns to hide

Fade To Gray lyrics

Songwriters: Ure, Midge; Currie, Billy; Payne;

One man on a lonely platform

One case sitting by his side

Two eyes staring cold and silent

Shows fear as he turns to hide