Police are only human. Unlike other humans though, they seem to have a supernatural ability to avoid the usual consequences for actions that are deemed 'unlawful'. Police routinely lie in court and yet few of them get sent down like Tommy Sheridan. Murders committed by police are 'unlawful killings'. True, some of them do get sacked when caught impersonating KKKweirdos killing Asians. But, that only happens when the deed is captured on film or on tape.
Today is not a slow news day though concerning this matter. The below piece caught my attention and in particular the words, "A force spokesman said the death was being treated as unexplained."
This comes on the same day as an inquest jury in London found that the paper-seller Ian Tomlinsonwas unlawfully killed after he was hit by a baton and pushed to the ground by PC Simon Harwood of the Great Satan's constabulary.
It also comes just days after cops broke up a 'Royal wedding' party in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park when thousands of youngsters had taken to heart David Cameron's plea to 'organise parties irrespective of local bureaucracy'. Trouble flared once the cops arrived.
Kelvingrove - here comes trouble
As a youngster in the shed at Tynecastle, I used to listen to the big boys sing 'Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers'. Many of the guys singing it were striking miners from Midlothian and were more than used to police brutality. It was the kind of education they didn't teach in schools then.
All murder is regrettable and pointless but even Harry Roberts' Wiki page has the word 'murderer' in brackets. 'Unlawful killing' aint for the plebes. Roberts is still in prison after killing three cops in 1966. I doubt if PC Harwood will even get a year. I guess some are more equal than others.
Our shops are decked in red, white and blue. The colours of the royal wedding and Old Firm mail bombers who profess loyalty to the Queen but refuse her law. As Scotland enters the final week of an election which looks like it could deliver a joint SNP-Green administration and with it, a referendum on independence, the plebes are given a day off. Grate Britain is bankrupt but on top of another military enterprise abroad where we bomb another oil-rich nation we can afford to splurge on the weddingof an Anglo-Hellenic-Germanic prince and his posh bit of fluff.
How soon before the royal couple grace the floor on the Royal Strictly Come or ITV screen I'm An Inbred, Get Me Out of Here! where chinless aristo types eat lichen and dungbeetles on the banks of Lochnagar? If not them, then their kids. That's for sure.
Turn off the telly on Friday and watch some other anthems....
Laibach - Anglia
So you still believe you're ruling the World,
Using all your tricks to keep the picture blurred.
Scatter your enemies, confound their politics,
So you still believe you're ruling the world...
God save your gracious Queen,
Long live your noble Queen.
God save your gracious Queen,
God save you all!
So you still believe you're superior,
And all other nations are inferior,
Any sedition hushed, rebellious Scots crushed,
So you still believe you're superior,
God save your gracious Queen,
Long live your noble Queen.
God save your gracious Queen,
God save you all!
So you still pretend you're ruling the World,
Using all your tricks to keep the picture blurred...
So you still pretend you're ruling the World,
Using all your tricks to keep the picture blurred...
Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
God save the queen cos tourists are money
and our figurehead is not what she seems
Oh god save history god save your mad parade
Oh lord god have mercy all crimes are paid
Finally, here's Kunt and the Gang once again. Share the love...
The forthcoming 'royal' marriage between an Anglo-Germanic prince and his chosen receptacle for the royal seed has the worrying possibility of giving renewed credence to two equally outdated institutions. Those are the 'British' royal family and marriage. Marriage though as we know it appears to be dying despite a blip in Scotland last year when the numbers were up slightly from the previous year's all-time low. The fact remains though that most relationships break up. Why then try and contain human sexual relations within a narrow Judeo-Christian box that is increasingly a coffin for true natural feelings?
In a Western European context, the 'institution' of marriage continues to be shored up through the twin evils of religion and authoritarianism. Religion at least seems to be dying too. Perhaps 'dying' is too strong a verb as there will always be a significant minority who either believe in a god or want to get hitched in whatever way god or state decides. It is however a cause of celebration that both these institutions seem to be withering away to their 'irreducable core'.
Those who do not or cannot marry are still hindered by the archane laws of many countries in Europe. One example is that of the late Stieg Larsson, author of the Millennium Trilogy. He died at the age of 50 in 2004. However,the law in his native Sweden refuses to acknowledge the 32 year co-habitation between Larsson and his partner as legitimate and decrees that his estate should go to his blood relatives.
Germany too creates difficulties for those not married, even when one of the partners and their child are born abroad. Should an unmarried German mother attempt to take her Scottish born baby into Germany there could be problems if the baby carries a different name to her mother. Should they wish to enter Germany via an airport, the customs and excise guards could refuse entry and fine the mother 2000 Euros. Should the mother drive or walk across the border from the Netherlands, France, Poland or Denmark then this isn't an issue.
Which god is that?
Civil partnerships may be a step in the right direction. However, should the love or co-habitation between two people of any gender have to be 'recognised' by the state? The word 'marry' simply means 'to unite' or 'to come together' and this was the way it was for most of human history. Monogamy too has not always been an issue though in almost all cultures it's usually been the men who have enjoyed various partners. Even early Christians were not as hung up on a formal ceremony and recognition of marriage as their modern equivalents are. For the early Christians, the intention to live together was signal enough of the love between two people.
The philosopher AC Grayling in his book Life, Sex and Ideas - The Good Life Without God states:
The roots of socio-legal marriage lie in a profoundly sexist financial arrangement. Its originating aim was to constrain women's sexuality and fertility so that men could be sure they were bequeathing their property to their own offspring. When the poorer classes also began to acquire property... various marriage traditions were at last reduced by law to a single type.
Control of sex is what it comes down to. Rich men wanted to make it illegal for another man to 'shag their burd'. And if the law failed then at least the groundwork was done to deny the fruit of another man's loins wealth that it didn't deserve. As with modern drug control though, the law and religious morality failed and continues to do so. Hence, what is natural becomes illegal. Grayling goes on to offer the following quotes:
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink but he did not die of it. He degenerated - into vice. Nietzsche.
Nature knows no indecencies, man invents them. Mark Twain.
"Is your scrote bigger than mine?"
As with the old definition of 'marriage' having being corrupted, so too is 'monogamy'. Monogamy originally meant one partner for life. Aye right. The fact is though that should you be lucky enough to marry the person with which you spend your remaining decades of life, it is highly unlikely that it will be your first sexual partner. Equally, despite all the fuss, money and continuing morality surrounding marriage, around half of them break up. If this isn't reason enough to give it a miss, why not look to biology. According to Dutch biologist Midas Dekkers, the inclination of a species to play around can be gauged by the size of the scrotum:
The greater the chances of unfaithfulness , the greater the sperm production will have to be. Within a single group of animals the degree of infidelity from species to species can be determined by the size of the scrota.
We apparently, on the scrotal swingometer, are somewhere in the middle between the chimp and the gorilla with a slight inclination towards gorilla-style fidelity. Infidelity remains a popular habit for married couples though. What will Prince William be? A chimp, gorilla or maybe a bonobo? Certainly, his family have no claim to the moral high ground of family values in a married Christian context. His wee brother Harry is a carbon copy of the 'lecherous cad' James Hewitt. His father Chas allegedly had 'liaisons' with a male servant and enjoyed adulterous relations - "I want to be your tampon" - with horse-faced Camilla while still married to Saint Di.
Interestingly the word 'infidelity' originally meant a 'want of faith, unbelief in religion'. Polly Vernon in the Guardian states that up to 40% of people in marriages or long-term relationships will be 'unfaithful' at some point. Again though, our obsession with sins of the flesh should have no place in a modern progressive society. Partners can be ill-treated in many ways. Why then should a sexual liaison with another person be worse than sitting in front of a computer growing a beer belly while 'the wife' does the washing-up?
In the progressive Scandinavian nations, religion and marriage are becoming increasingly sidelined. In Norway and Sweden, the majority of kids are now born outside of marriage. This has caused some consternation amongst Catholics, still reeling from the Pope's condom U-turn who fear a loss of control.
Marriage remains an outdated and usually expensive millstone around our necks. In Europe it is promoted by a Judeo-Christian philosophy that expects us to circumcise our sons or sees unmarried elderly bachelors sermonise us on family values. It is a unnecessary capitulation to authoritarianism and backward religious 'morals'. MPs and priests, churches and registry offices can no more express the diversity and unpredictability of human love than can Loving magazine or a comic strip from The Sun. On April 29th, I'll celebrate the likely demise of the forthcoming royal marriage and hopefully of both 'institutions'.
That lone voice of reason, the Daily Mail today reports with horror that...
The astonishing speed at which traditional family life has collapsed is laid bare today.
Shocking figures reveal that births outside marriage are at their highest level in two centuries and nearly half of children can expect their parents to separate by the time they turn 16.
Nine out of ten couples now live together before – or instead of – tying the knot. Before the Second World War, it was fewer than one in 30.
I am indeed shocked. Its the first good news that I've read in the Mail, ever.
Great Britain with its thousand years of democracy finds itself once again perfectly placed to be the world's polisman. Of course, Uncle Sam has to give the nod first. Let us explain why Great Britain has the moral authority to rid the world of all bad people like the very very bad Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi thinks that he can oppress his own people AND do business with us. Who does he think he is? China? Saudi Arabia?
For a start, Britain would never clear its own people of the land, especially for reasons of profit or ethnic hatred.
The Clearances in Uist, 1895
Nor would Great Britain shoot its own people while they demonstrated for basic human rights.
Bloody Sunday, 1973
Even dirty hippies living on the edge of society would not be subject to violence at the hands of the British state.
'The Battle of the Beanfield' 1985
Though dirty striking miners with left-wing tendencies did occasionally provoke the police into suppressing their dissent by any means necessary as they were called upon to do at the so-called 'Battle of Orgreave'.
Orgreave, 1984
Our parliament is lead by honest and accountable politicians. This duckhouse is the symbol of the probity of the 'Mother of Parliaments'.
A necessary expense for London MPs
And our leaders would never join forces with religiously motivated extremists to wage an illegal war on a third world country.
Repeat, would not enjoy a 'special relationship' with a country that covertly financed terrorist groups such as the Contras in Nicaragua.
CIA manual - part of US 'covert' warfare against Sandinista Nicaragua
Were atrocities against innocent civilians ever to have occurred then that of course is a matter of great regret. Rest assured though that no breaches of international human rights law take place today.
Guantanamo Bay, still home to 172 'detainees'
Britain is so assured of its morality that it would take swift and effective action against any nation guilty of human rights abuses. Be it China...
Bodies of student protesters, Tianamen Square, China, 1989
Or in democratic and capitalist-friendly Russia...
Massacre of Chechen 'rebels', 2000
We are also confident that Great Britain's friendship with nice Saudi Arabia is having a positive effect on human rights there. Particularly in its attitude to women.
'Be thankful you're not getting stoned'.
Lastly, Great Britain would never tolerate the maintenance of a dynasty of unelected persons living at the tax payers' expense.
Er...
Gone are the days when our government was run by a privileged clique of white Eton-educated rich men.
Cool Britannia was never... so cool.
Please remember all of this if you read of claims that Great Britain is wasting £billions on another foreign war while the economy withers and thousands lose their jobs. Please remember to stand in respectful silence when the coffins come home. Our boys die for you.
Even if you can't read Scottish, you know what it means. Our complacency broken, its time to roll out the anti-nuclear power campaigns again.
Once in generation it seems as if we have a major nuclear accident. One too many. And even if these major accidents are few and far between - low level radioactive leakage seems to be regular and the cost to the taxpayer of subsidising nuclear power is enormous. Then there's the question of what to do with the waste. I remember Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight with his trademark incredulous frown asking the then chair of British Nuclear Fuels if he was 'seriously proposing that we bequeath to our grandchildren tonnes of radioactive junk'.
Generations are often marked by their tunes. So, where are all the anti-nuclear power tunes? Nuke war has got a few. But atomic energy? Well, perhaps my 5 minutes of half-hearted research wasn't thorough enough but I managed to dig up a few examples - all from the 80s it seems. And all from the 'anarcho-punk' genre. The anarchist strand of punk music didn't quite change the world but its impact was to be seen in movements such as CND - given the kiss of life by Crass - and the animal rights movement. Unfortunately for some, it was also the mother of all chastity belts. The Pope would've been proud. No condoms needed as adolescents were consumed by marching for CND and against vivisection, reading veggie cookbooks, squatting and latterly by getting filthy and growing dreadlocks. Though this was mostly by those who later graduated to a job in banking. Sex was viewed with frustrated suspicion - maybe it was 'sexist' to chat someone up?
Anyway, Edinburgh's anarchos Oi Polloi seemed to shout most about nuclear power. Songs like Resist the Atomic Menace, No Filthy Nuclear Power and Go Green provided a soundtrack for protest trips to Torness to rage against nuclear power stations that Labour gave us before they opposed them before they advocated them again.
Loanhead based noise-merchants AOA also got in on the act with their split LP with Oi Polloi. AOA also came from an area where the miners' strike was at the heart of the community. Today it may seem as if environmental activists and 'spokespersons' all speak with the same kind of Oxbridge accent. AOA weren't of that ilk.
Flux of Pink Indians emerged out of the Crass-inspired wave of punk. They were responsible for memorable anthems such as Tube Disaster but also for the weird and pretentious, though superbly titled, 'The Fucking Cunts Treat Us Like Pricks'. Flux later produced the Buddhist-inspired 'Uncarved Block' on their own Little Indian label which also gave us the likes of Bjork and the Shamen. Here though is their own anti-atomic anthem.
Lastly is Discharge. Again, very influential - certainly on thrash metal bands such as Metallica and Sepultura. Lyrically, they are best described as 'uncomplicated' and 'straight to the point' though 'repetitive' may also be apt. They definitely had a bee in their bonnet regarding things nuclear though to be honest, war was by far their biggest bugbear. 'The Possibility of Life's Destruction' is open to interpretation though. Here are the lyrics. All of them.
Can you hear the sound of an enormous door slamming in the depths of hell
The possibility of life's destruction
Can you hear the cries of pain the mournful sound
At present, Scotland's SNP minority administration government is committed to making Scotland nuclear free. Should the election in May see the uninspiring former radical Iain Gray become first minister as head of a Labour-lead government, then Scotland could once again become a nuclear dustbin.
Amazing but true... London BBC plumbs new depths in insularity in their coverage of the impending nuclear crisis in tsunami-hit Japan. While helicopters hover over the stricken countryside, our well-spoken English correspondent tells us that one of the main problems in gaining information from the local populace is that they are... Japanese speaking. And thus, the navel-gazers of Englandshire are rocked by a quake of higher magnitude that than which hit Japan - these people actually exist without the English language!
While David Attenborough extols the wonders of Madagascar's flora and fauna it seems as if the BBC has sent Germano-Hellenic Prince Philip to marvel at the plight of those yellow and slanty eyed foreigners.
Phil the Greek, "Come ahead all you slitty-eyed Jock jigaboos and wops"
And then, the Beeb's helicopter returned to more urban areas where islands of Engerlish are often to be found. As people stuck on top of buildings and bridges signalled their need for rescue, the camera crews of the British Broadcasting Corporation had another priority - film first, rescue later, all the while hoping that it doesn't overshadow news of the royal wedding. But while we Brits were reassured that we are too clever to learn others' languages we at least were able to identify language as one of the cultural markers which differentiates Japan from Engerland.
Meanwhile, back in yon green and pleasant land, a nation of Daily Mail readers awaited their next visual feast amid dire warnings that a Scottish media service would be... 'narrow and insular'.
Its census time and the onslaught against our indigenous culture continues. The auld myths about Scotland and her cultural roots are being trotted out by everyone from the General Register Office of Scotland to Newsnet Scotland. It is often said that 'divide and rule' is the best strategy of the aggressor. And thus, we were divided. Scotland became, not the Celtic kingdom of Alba, but a nation divided between 'Highlands' and 'Lowlands'. This took time though and this distinction between Highland and Lowland only emerged relatively recently. Highland was 'Gaelic' and Lowland was... well, what was Lowland? The Anglo-Saxons brought 'Inglis' and Inglis it was until it suddenly became 'Scottish'. What then of Scottish? Scottish became Gaelic, Highland or even worse 'Erse'. More than divide and rule, the Scots found themselves identified by another nationality and thus dispossessed.
The Lowlands therefore became the sole preserve of Inglis/ Scots - even though at the time much of the Lowlands was still Gaelic speaking.
Scotland then became 'Northern Britain' and eventually the powers that be, in a fit of irony, even decreed that Inglis was just 'badly spoken English'.
Historical extent of Gaelic expansion
This supreme piece of anti-Scottish spin-doctoring and cultural airbrushing provided the perfect springboard for centuries of repression starting with the Statutes of Iona, continuing with the Clearances and the education act of 1872 that permitted the forcible Anglicisation of Gaelic-speaking children and communities until the present day when one can still read derogatory comments about 'Erse' and 'garlic' in the comments sections of the Daily Mail and Scotsman. It can allow the likes of Marilyne Maclaren - Edinburgh's education chief (!!!) - in her attempt to hinder the establishment of a stand-alone Gaelic medium school in Edinburgh to claim that Gaelic's place is in 'Argyll or the west Highlands'.
The 'Aye Can' website - a product of the General Register and the ironically named 'Scots Language Centre' - which seeks to help people determine whether or not they speak 'Scots' states:
Are Gaelic and Scots different things?
Yes. Scots belongs to the Germanic family of languages (which includes Dutch, German, English and Swedish) and has traditionally been spoken in the southern and eastern parts of Scotland known as the Lowlands.
Gaelic, on the other hand, belongs to the Celtic family of languages (which includes Irish and Welsh) and has traditionally been spoken in the northern and western parts of Scotland known as the Highlands.
At best, this is a collection of half-truths. At worse, it is anti-Scottish. A good example of this can be found in the 'View from the Wasteland' blog which also states that the 'flag of our country is the Union Jack':
Yet ours is a rich language , spoken by plain men and men of learning for many centuries . John Barbour wrote in Scots for the Scots King when the English monarchy and aristocracy spoke French and English was regarded as a rural patois . Let it be remembered that , such was the strength of the Renaissance in this country , The Aeneid was translated into Scots before it was into English . This is no ill-spoken rustic dialect .
It would be tragic were it to disappear . Or , worse , be killed by the onslaught of meejah culture and aggressive Gaelic promotion .
I am a Scotsman . I speak Scots , not Erse .
The Census , due on the 27th of March , asks questions about our fluency in the guid Scots . It is incumbent on all who love our country and its heritage to answer truthfully and support oor mither tongue .
The idea that the Lowlands was devoid of Gaelic culture was certainly a new one to the last native Gaelic speakers of Arran in the 20th century:
"Some years ago I heard Gaelic speakers in Arran describe the
entire stretch of coastland from Galloway to Ayrshire as part of the
Gàidhealtachd. They knew some of the place-names of that region in
their Gaelic form; it was traditional knowledge among them that the
Gaelic language had been spoken there in the past; and they assumed
that, just as in Arran, it had survived to the present day."
To sum up, the Gaelic perception of the Lowlands is in
essential agreement with that of the medieval Scots writers who regard
the Gaels of their time as 'contemporary ancestors', people who
preserve the language and culture which were once shared by all. But
from the Gaelic point of view, we the Gaels are the disinherited, the
dispossessed.
(John MacInnes, The Gaelic Perception of the Lowlands, "Gaelic and Scotland/Alba agus a' Ghàidhlig", ed. Wm Gillies, Edinburgh University Press, 1989)
Coronation of King Alexander III on Moot Hill, Scone on 13 July 1249. He is being greeted by the ollamh rìgh, the royal poet, who is addressing him with the proclamation "Benach De Re Albanne" (= Beannachd Dè Rìgh Alban, "God's Blessing on the King of Scotland"); the poet goes on to recite Alexander's genealogy.
This is not to paint Scotland/ Alba as a monolingual nation. I'm unsure if such a concept exists. Even the relatively linguistically 'pure' Iceland has a smattering of Gaelic placenames, handed down from Celtic monks who reached the islands before the Norse and latterly by Gaelic-speaking slaves brought there from their homelands of Scotland, Man and Ireland. Some seek to muddy the waters by highlighting Pictish and 'Welsh'. Though the minute someone speaks of 'Welsh' in a Scottish context, one should treat their arguments with the same amount of salt you'd give to a Daily Mail article. Brythonnic which was closely related to Gaelic was spoken here and is evidenced in poetry - Y Gododdin - and in placenames - Niddry for a starter. However, Watson in his 'Celtic Placenames of Scotland' states that 'there are more placenames of Gaelic origin around Peebles than those of Brythonnic origin'. The strange conclusion for some though is that 'Welsh' was spoken in the Lothians but not Gaelic. Were pre-Celtic Pictish, Brythonnic or Norn in the Northern Isles still to exist then their survival would be equally important. I get the feeling though that even in that situation, we'd hear the same complaints from the same people.
"It was during this period, probably from about AD 960 onwards,
that Gaelic came to be current in Lothian: there is some evidence that
it extended beyond the present boundary of Scotland." Page footnote:
"Gaelic place-names are found in the north of England."
("The Celtic Placenames of Scotland", WJ Watson, published by Birlinn)
So, what of Scots? There is no doubt that a northern branch of Anglo-Saxon did develop separately to that spoken in much of England and that it too has a place in our culture. Most of us still speak it to some extent, though I'd argue that for most us, it has become very much diluted and not only by 'standard' English but by recent inputs from Hispanic, African-American and American English. I'd argue that 'Scottish English' would be a more suitable and honest term for this tongue.
This is not acceptable to some though - including some nationalists who have now started to revise history by claiming that 'Scots' and not 'Inglis' was historically spoken in Alba. As mentioned, 'Scots' was a term that was pasted onto 'Scottice' in the 1600s and even today is not a universally recognised term by its speakers - Lallans, Doric, Scotch or the more regional Shetlandic are as often heard. Possibly because some see these Anglo dialects as being sufficiently different from each other to qualify as languages in their own right. The cumulative effect of this romantic airbrushing, historical revisionism and aggressive anti-Celitc prejudice is that many Scots do feel that Gaelic is 'foreign' to them. Ask them to explain their local placenames and they're stumped. Ask them what the daily language of William Wallace and the Bruce was and you might get a shrug of the shoulders and the reply, 'English?'. Ask them the source of the icons which give us our Scottish identity - even accounting for Victorian remixes by Walter Scott et al - such as bagpipes, whisky, tartan, the clans, the Stone of Destiny, ceilidhs, shinty (and arguably golf), the toponymy of lochs, bens and glens... and you'll get another shrug. I once witnessed a folk singer in a Highland Perthshire pub being questioned by a German on the meaning of the line 'tha tighinn fodham' in the auld pro-Jacobite song 'Rise and Follow Charlie'. He looked puzzled for a few seconds and then replied, 'well, they're just kind of... Scottish sounds'.
The new Scotland? Forward with ignorance? Is it any wonder that tens of thousands of our youngsters tend to identify with an 'Old Firm' view of their lives in Scotland - Irish, Ulster Scots, British, English, Irish Catholic, proddie, 'Norn Iron' and Orange. Anything but Scottish.
Let us continue to speak our own form of Anglo-Saxon. Let us marvel at the words and use them in place of 'standard' English. Let us embrace the diversity of our new communities. But, we should be under no illusion that it was Gaels who gave us our nation, our iconography and much of our nomenclature. We should also ensure that it does not go the way of Pictish or Brythonnic.
"We look in vain for any hard and fast 'Highland Line' in the
minds or actions of these landowning families of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries...
This essentially mixed situation, quite the reverse of black and white, characterised in the late medieval period and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the gradual disappearance of the eastern Gàidhealtachd. The contribution of the 'western Gàidhealtachd' to the history and culture of Scotland may in some quarters have been sadly misunderstood and underrated, but it has never been in danger of being lost to sight. I would like to balance west with east by highlighting what I believe to have been the historically and culturally permanent contribution of Gaelic language and social organisation to the east of the country and the lowlands in general."
(GWS Barrow, The lost Gàidhealtachd of medieval Scotland, "Gaelic and Scotland/Alba agus a' Ghàidhlig", ed. Wm Gillies, Edinburgh University)
Update - Does Scotland and Gaelic needs enemies when its own people are this ignorant? Due to complaints, it seems as if 'Aye Can' has changed their tone... and made it worse. It now reads...
Gaelic, on the other hand, belongs to the Celtic family of languages (which includes Irish and Welsh). In recent centuries Gaelic has mostly been spoken in the northern and western parts of Scotland.
Have the Top Gear team taken control of history at the 'Scots Language Centre'? 'Recent centuries' would see Gaelic spoken in much of the Lowlands including Fife and Galloway...
What a melange! And only the English language could have such a groovy word as 'melange'. I bet those French are still trying to get their tongues are 'entrepreneur'. Whatever, it seems as if tongues have been winding people up big time.
The Gaelic tongue has wound up the usual bigots - a small but vociferous minority who think that Gaels don't pay taxes and that money spent on Gaelic could be better spent on Trident missiles and an Anglo-German wedding due to take place in April. They also believe that the multitude of Gaelic placenames in Edinburgh and the Lowlands in general means that... Gaelic was never spoken there. Apart from having unreason on their side and George W Bush in charge of history lessons, the anti-Gaelic brigade have enlisted the help of Third Reich apologists. I guess this must tie in with the Royal Wedding somewhere...
Marilyne Maclaren - "Speak English or die"
Last week, the stooshie surrounding Edinburgh's Lib Dem education chief and anti-Gaelic bigot Marilyne 'Butterball' Maclaren prompted a flurry of... er one letter to the local organ of truth, the Edinburgh Evil News. This letter came from none other than Alistair MacConnachie or in the original and ironic Gaelic Alastair MacDhonnachaidh. He railed against the fact that Gaelic speakers were indeed bilingual and therefore should ALL use English whether they like it or not. To quote:
Rather, it is a deliberate political project intended to promote a particular concept of Scottishness.
This is done in order to revise our history as if to suggest that such Gaelic represents some kind of "authentic" Scottishness which has hitherto been "repressed" by the English speakers, and to make uncomfortable those Scots and other British who do not identify, or who are unsympathetic, with this element of our history.
In short, every time we see a bilingual sign it is a little bit of ethnic cleansing propaganda from the SNP administration telling us: "If you don't like this, then xxxx off to England."
We've been here before, several hundred years ago.
The Hasselhoff of UKIP
But who is this anti-Gael who bears a Gaelic name? You could maybe forgive his ignorance as it turns out that MacConnachie was born in Hong Kong. No Asian he though. This is the man who hit the headlines a few years ago as the Scottish organiser of UKIP who denied the holocaust. UKIP stood by their man though until MacConnachie left - after it seems that UKIP discovered his attempts to play the lead part in the Hong Kong version of Knight Rider - to set up a one-man show known as Sovereignty. He uses this to campaign under the pretence of being 'independently Green'. Despite this, postings to blogs reveal that he still harbours a hatred of the Jews and reckons that... well let's give this basket case the free-speech he wants:
Is sucking up to Jews a requirement to get into heaven these days? Strange...never used to be!
If you were Jewish, I would understand your attitude, but since I presume you are a "Christian", then I advise you to pray deeply and ask your Maker just whom Jesus would bomb.
The Scotsman and its sister rags regularly prints letters from this neo-Nazi bampot. Further proof of the Scotsman's decline since... since the days the Highlanders called it 'the Daily Liar' due to its support of the Clearances. Now, who said the enemy was English?
But, the weakened defences of the endangered English language are not only being besieged by Gaelic speakers demanding services in return for their tax money - imagine that?! - but by a cartoon mouse who speaks in Jamaican English. Rastamouse has raised the ire of English people who can't decide if this mouse who speaks like a bleckmin will sully their children's education or will upset the blecks themselves. Here's the BBC's response. Here's another message to rearrange: life/ a/ get.
More bad news though for the Invisible Knights of the British Empire in their struggle to defend the Queen's English against Celts and cartoon Rastafarian mice. Tocasaid can reveal that from next year the new presenters of Blue Peter will be...
Not being a fan of expensive metal boxes on wheels, I'm not really into Top Gear. And not being an middle-aged overweight sleazy right-wing private school rugger type, I think that Jeremy Clarkson is a prize bawbag. The team of misfits and freaks have now shown how brave and witty they are by insulting Mexicans. Needless to say, this was done at a safe distance of several thousand miles. Were they to try out their 'edgy' humour on real Mexicans in say, Tijuana, they might actually find themselves beheaded by one of the local drug gangs. That though would assume that these thick middle-class white boys were intelligent enough to speak Spanish.
There are some in Scotland who think that the arrogant, bigoted and posh Sassanach as embodied in the Top Gear team is representative of the English generally. While there are those who even when being benign treat us and others like curious pygmies, it is telling that you rarely hear a working-class English accent in either Top Gear or amongst the 'white settlers' who come to Scotland.
For the uninitiated, Jeremy Clarkson is himself a stereotypical motoring nerd. Podgy, white and privileged, he attended - surprise, surprise - a posh English private school whose 'edgy' former pupils include the Earl of Scarborough. Cool or what? He is attended to in his program by sleazy lizard eyed short-arse Richard Hammond. What is more worrying is that Hammond - who looks like the offspring of Fred West and an iguana - also pops up in a sleazy black leather trenchcoat on a kids' science program. Hammond's forked tongue is usually seen zipping in and out of Clarkson's bum sheuch while Jeremy guffaws like a typical public school oaf. Is Hammond exempt from Disclosure checks? Lastly, is the ironically effeminate James May who could possibly be the bastard son of Michael Heseltine and Anne Widdecombe. Is it my imagination or does he wave his bouffant grey mane as a nervous tick adopted as a result of being bullied at school? Apparently he often takes the role of 'the biscuit' when the other two engage in the schoolboy masturbatory pursuit of 'shoot the biscuit'.
Steve Cougan, a man who has spent the last decade searching for a funny joke, succinctly summed up the generally sad nature of these dicks in the Guardian. Here's a taste:
Richard has his tongue so far down the back of Jeremy's trousers he could forge a career as the back end of a pantomime horse. His attempt to foster some Clarkson-like maverick status with his "edgy" humour is truly tragic. He reminds you of the squirt at school as he hangs round Clarkson the bully, as if to say, "I'm with him". Meanwhile, James May stands at the back holding their coats as they beat up the boy with the stutter.
Reading about three privileged white guys rip the easy piss out of a safe target reminds me of yon railroad scene in classic film Blazing Saddles. In the clip below, I wonder if you can spot the Top Gear guys amongst the white boy braindoners seeking to exploit those they see as below them? All in all, this film that has more genuinely laugh-out-loud edgy witty and un-PC humour in its first 5 minutes than in the combined 'creative' output of the Top Gear team - and that includes their various columns in such rags as The Sun, Times and Daily Telegraph.
With the saga that is Egypt's current uprising against dictator Mumbarak still playing on our TV screens, English telly has never been so outward looking. Not since, perhaps pictures of starving Africans were shown 3 decades ago was so much airtime wasted on news that didn't concern Great Britain. Two-faced millionaire Nick Clegg was pleased by this - he described the ongoing battles and deaths as 'exciting'. I somehow suspect that he's never been charged by police on a picket line and I know that his children won't get involved in the kind of gang violence that leaves youngsters dead in the slums that still blight Glasgow.
The situation in Egypt is indeed sad. The loss of human life is not something to celebrate, especially when the chances are that this struggle could all be in vain. As we've seen in the past, religious fascists such as the Taleban, Ayatolla Khomeni or Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood are always willing to step in to fill the void. They are often well enough organised and fuelled up on god-given zeal to complete their mission too. For an account of how Islamic fascists hijacked the mainly socialist revolution in Iran that overthrew a UK-backed dictator, read/ view the graphic novel/ film Persepolis. Here's hoping that Egypt doesn't soon see young Egyptian corpses hanging from lampposts after being found guilty of un-Islamic practises such as being socialist, gay or independently female.
The only thing worse than this would be if Satan-faced non-entity Tavish Scott flew in to Cairo to weasel himself into a 'coalition government'. In the year that sees Scotland's electorate choose a new government we see Scotland's Unionist opposition plumbing new depths in mediocrity. This is even being acknowledged openly in the media. I heard one independent political researcher talking of the choice between Alex Salmond's SNP and the respective parties lead by the limp and uninspiring Iain Gray and Tavish Scott. He observed that even if you didn't agree with Salmond, you could at least recognise that he was fighting for a distinct cause. What are Gray and Scott fighting for? To protect devolution? That's hard to imagine as they seem reluctant to even implement the Calman proposals which they spent our money on researching. It may be mildly interesting to note that 'calman' is Gaelic for pigeon/ dove. I hope then to see Iain Gray later this year puffing out his large grey chest as he strutts around Princes St gardens pecking up crusts thrown by an uninspired public.
But what of Tavish Scott? He of demonic countenance? He is a typical two-faced mealy-moothed Lib Dem. During the snow chaos which hit Scotland, he hit new political heights by calling for the resignation of the Scottish Government's transport minister. When the same chaos hit England a week later, the calls for the Con-Dem counterpart to resign were... not forthcoming. Fancy that! Irrespective of political allegiances though, the word on the street... well from civil servants in the Scots Parliament who have to deal with him, is that Tosspot Scott is an arseloch par excellence, if you don't mind the Franco-Germanic profaning.
Interesting fact and further proof of diabolic status - Tosspot Scott was born on 6 May 1966. Amazing but true - check it out.
"I used to be a cauliflower-like growth this size on Clegg's anus."
The only other interesting fact regarding Satan-face is that prior to becoming an MSP in 1999, he enjoyed an existence as a cluster of warts around the anus of the then unknown Nick Clegg. Known in colloquial parlance as anal cauliflower, Scott is said to 'have enjoyed immensely' just hanging around the biggest a-hole in London. Despite being the most interesting, active and honest period of Tavish Scott's existence, being an anal cauliflower was to provide Scott with the perfect grounding to become the leader of the Lib (but also Con/ Labour) Dems in Scotland.
