If Burns were here now?

Its yon nicht again and the merry ploughboy's poetry resonates as much as ever. As usual, everyone wants a piece of the cake. Even Tories. Even Lib Dems. However, even the nation's schoolkids who are taking part in school Burns' Suppers up and down the land could tell you that he... saw Scotland's rightful place in the world as her own nation, detested bigotry and the idle rich and saw no need to be bound by a 'Christian' view of monogamy.

To mark the bard's day, Tocasaid teamed up with the same crack team of graphic design whizzkids who presented us with Labour's highly sophisticated Scottish election campaign last year.

A Parcel of Rogues or Address to a Haggis?

Lib Dems? Scottish Labour? Unionists? Burns' stomach would've turned at the thought of these charlatans and liars. And the list is a long one.... Danny boy Alexander, Michael Moore, Jim Murphy, Alastair Darling, Douglas Alexander, Tom Harris, Iain Gray and Scotland's only Tory MP, David Mundane. Are they 'anti-Scottish'? Well, they're certainly doing SFA for the poorest in Scotland. As for independence - they can't make up their minds whether or not the referendum is illegal or whether Salmond should call it a.s.a.p. What a shower.

Is There For an Honest Poverty?

It could be argued that Burns had an influence on later Scottish working class champions - Hardie, Connolly, Maxton, Maclean and Jimmy Reid of late. How many of them saw the Scottish labour movement's main priority as 'saving the Union'? Morever, we hear from current Labour stooges the same old mantra of 'Tartan Tories' and of Scottish nationalists being 'insular'. Who was it though that saw the children of asylum seekers snatched from their homes in dawn raids and thrown in Dungavel Prison? Labour? How progressive.

Lay the proud usurpers low! or The Creed of Poverty

As to the English riots and the Con Dems of London? Well perhaps a verse of Scots Wha Hae?

 Lay the proud usurpers low!
    Tyrants fall in every foe!
    Liberty's in every blow! -
    Let us do or die!

Or, the Creed of Poverty?

In politics if thou would'st mix,
      And mean thy fortunes be;
    Bear this in mind--be deaf and blind;
      Let great folks hear and see.

Lastly, it would stretch things too far to claim that Burns advocated gay rights. However, as a bard with liberty and equality oozing out of his work, I don't think the bedroom habits of others would've bothered him. Especially when his own oats were well sown in many a furrow. The unholy coalition of god-botherers and bigots who are losing sleep over the proposed law to give lesbians and gays the right to marry would surely have seen a verse or two composed in ridicule.

My Luve is like...?

An American view on the threat to marriage...

Of. Debate. End.

Tom Harris MP: "London's Chomsky"

 

As the Scottish Government stands firm on its elected mandate to hold a referendum against the backlash of an injured ConDem London, the war of words intensifies. And Tom Harris MP posts a video on You Tube.

Thus, the Labour and Unionist Party's expert on social-media has resigned even before Johann could appoint him to fix the wi-fi on Labour's SOS bus. Upon his resignation, tributes flooded in:

"He was like London's Paxman, only they have one already."

"What many don't know is that when not working tirelessly to save the Union on behalf of the Labour and Unionist Party, Tom moonlighted in the CERN Hadron Collider on the outskirts of Geneva desperately trying to find the 'god' particle"

"His sophisticated use of politically charged graphics in conjunction with social media was second only to certain blogs of a Scots nationalist persuasion and earned him the fond epithet 'the Banksy of Westminster'.

His entry in Wikipedia is considered to be entirely dissimilar to this one:

Avram Noam Chomsky ( /ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/ or  /ˈnoʊm ˈxɒmski/, born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher,^[4][5] cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years.^[6] Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics"^[7][8][9] and a major figure of analytic philosophy.^[4] His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.^[10][11]
Chomsky is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem.
Ideologically identifying with anarchism and libertarian socialism, Chomsky is known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy^[12] and contemporary capitalism,^[13] and he has been described as a prominent cultural figure.^[14] His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall.^{[15][16][17][18]} Chomsky is the author of over 100 books.^[19]

Tom's constituents know where his heart lies.

London: very cross and not amused

It was a mighty effort but us Porridge Wogs finally succeeded in knocking plastic breast implants off the top of the English news agenda.

How dare we? As Scotland makes moves to becoming the latest nation of the former British Empire - that model of enlightenment and ethnic cleansing which served as an example for a whole host of nutter tyrants from Hitler to Saddam - to break free from London governance, the three Eton millionaires of the London parties join forces to fume publically at Alex Salmond's disgraceful democratic mandate. The three sickening hypocrites at times seemed to gleefully rub shoulders as if taking part in a frat party circle-jerk at their exclusive alma mater.

Sorry Dave, the Empire has gone...

Ed Miliband was particularly nauseating. After an underwhelming period as London Labour leader that makes the hapless former Scottish Labour Brown Owl Iain Gray seem inspiring and dynamic, he asked David Cameron - in that strange Gary Numan voice of his - if he agreed that Salmond was a very very bad man indeed for wanting Scots to control their destiny. He did, and Nick Clegg nodded in orgasmic harmony. Miliband had thus gained his minute of acceptance and positive column inches in the London press and was free to scuttle off to his serpentarium. Whatever Miliband is - lizard, Numan voice-over or just weird posh boy - he's certainly no old-style Scottish socialist.

What else can one say? London has a pretty shameful record when it comes to democracy. It didn't like it when the nascent republic of the USA wanted free from London rule. Hey, but they didn't vote for it according to rules drawn up by London. But the Irish did. In 1918, a massive 75% voted for Sinn Fein and other nationalists. The bloody aftermath and smell of pipe bombs are still fresh in the nostrils. In 1979, London drew up the rules on Scotland's first home rule referendum. We needed a 40% majority to win. However, last year, the SNP won more votes than their 3 Unionist rivals combined. It means hee-haw to the three millionaires of Westminster though.

The bemused English media has spluttered indignation and incomprehension. Some though have observed that we may even be 'pro-Nordic' in a kind of healthy wealthy sort of way but...

• Who says that the oil is ours? (International law does) 
• What about our share of UK debt? (ditto - shared pro-rata) 
• What about currency? (Er...mind the Irish punt?) 
• What about Glorious Britain's huge pile of WMD's and assorted warmongering paraphernalia? (England can have it. Think of all that safety and deterrence!)
• What about Europe? (Well, before the Act of Union, we traded peacefully with our Euro neighbours. After it, we were at war with them because England was)
• Er....

In the old days, the days in the run up to an election saw the Scottish versions of the Daily Mail and Express warn about some vague 'threat' from 'Tartan Terrorists'. These days its left to the pathetic Scotsman to fire off a few 'SNP accused...' headlines every month while the political masters in London quickly jot some ideas on the back of a fag packet about 'constitutional and legal precedence'.

Its hard to see the UN not accepting a positive result in an independence referendum. Though, if London has the power to confer these powers to us, then why doesn't it do so? Why the wait? Why the strings attached? And lastly, where's your fkn mandate Cameron, Clegg and Miliband?

Neologism of the month: santorum

The race to become the US Republican presidential nominee has reminded me of a recent addition to the corpus of the English language. Hearing that Rick Santorum came close to Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus reminded of the noun santorum which entered our pure Anglo-Saxon tongue some years ago.

As Tocasaid is a family orientated blog, it would be irresponsible of me to highlight the exact meaning of santorum. Suffice to say, it was coined to describe the liquid by-product of anal congress between two consenting adult males. The story of how Catholic crusader Santorum's surname became common parlance for this can be found here.

More on Santorum and his homophobic statements can be found here on Wayne Besen's blog. Apparently, Santorum believes that 'abolishing' sodomy laws will lead to 'man on dog' sex. Interestingly enough, this is also the opinion of the Wee Frees in Scotland. However, Scotland's own Protestant Taliban maintain that anyone wishing to descend into a life of zoophilia needs only to journey on a Sunday ferry. I find it fascinating that two apparently opposing sects on the Christian spectrum can have the same idea. Could it be that both sects are equally insane?

Lastly, it reminds me of the late Christopher Hitchens' quote on the nature of fascist regimes in 1930s Europe. Here's part of his last interview with Richard Dawkins from the New Statesman:

Fascism and the Catholic Church

RD The people who did Hitler's dirty work were almost all religious.
CH I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.
RD Can you talk a bit about that - the relationship of Nazism with the Catholic Church?
CH The way I put it is this: if you're writing about the history of the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism, you can take out the word "fascist", if you want, for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Austria and replace it with "extreme-right Catholic party".
Almost all of those regimes were in place with the help of the Vatican and with understandings from the Holy See. It's not denied. These understandings quite often persisted after the Second World War was over and extended to comparable regimes in Argentina and elsewhere.

Warning! Clicking on the following disgusting links may lead to you sharing your bed with a pet.
Spreading Santorum blog
The neologism campaign
Rick Santorum's Anal Sex Problem