Populism or Liberalism? The former is not actually popularity despite the sound of it!

 In the 21st century, the earth is in danger of almost melting with global warming and at the same time separating into two forms of political dogma which are frankly the last thing it needs, since those two forms are diametrically opposite and frankly irreconcilable !

The term "Populist" is not a representation of popularity, despite sounding similar! Populism is on the rise - especially among Europe's right, and in the US, where it helped crown the archetypal populist in Donald Trump. The word is misrepresented especially in Western society, where it is construed as a form of representation of the people !

But there's a difference between being popular and being populist. 

There are populist sentiments on both sides of the political spectrum and if we look at Venezuela there was Chavez, while in Spain there was Podemos both of which are left wing!

Hugo Chavez President of Venezuela

who inspired;

Pablo Iglesias Turrion leader of Spain's "Podemos" Party

In Europe, the term right-wing populism is used to describe groups, politicians and political parties that are generally known for their opposition to immigration, especially from the Islamic World and for Euroscepticism !

Ring any bells in the UK??

Nigel - Britain's epitome of a "populist" politician!

The only plus is that this clown will never get a hold of the reins of power ! 

Oh wait a minute! There is one other clown whose hands are on the reins !

Do you wonder why I'm an avid supporter of "Liberalism?

Scotland is such a drain on the UK purse ! The NHS is safe in Tory hands and not up for grabs by investors with offshore accounts`

 I genuinely think that Westminster is the cradle of kindness and that we, the Scottish people should be eternally grateful for England's largesse towards us !  

I mean what have Scotland got that could possibly make our English partner in this marriage, want to keep us in this wedded bliss (?) that is the 1707 Act of Union?

Meanwhile Westminster grant themselves 10% pay-rises annually but do clap for the NHS in gratitude for the sterling work that they and the rest of the "key" workers fighting the pandemic carry out on behalf of the country.

That says it all really !  Independence is coming and is unstoppable!

Time to go ! The UK marriage is over and it was too one-sided anyway.

 Marriage is a "union" between two willing and equal partners in which they commit to each other for "better or worse, richer or poorer in sickness and health".  

However, in the 21st century the divorce rate and break up of marriages has rocketed to circa 100,000 per annum in England and Wales alone. This due in many cases, to infidelity on one or indeed both partners. Equally the case of a domineering partner to the marriage has contributed to a large percentage of those divorces!

The Scottish Parliament

The English Parliament

This marriage between England and Scotland was "arranged" with the "Act of Union" between the two Kingdoms on the 1st May 1707. Divorce then would be as rare as hens teeth.

For clarity it should be noted that the Scots signatories to the Act were "bribed"

The role played by bribery has long been debated; £20,000 was distributed by the Earl of Glasgow, of which 60% went to James Douglas the second Duke of Queensberry. Another negotiator, Argyll was given an English peerage. 

Robert Burns is commonly quoted in support of the argument of this corruption; 

"We're bought and sold for English Gold, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation." 

Professor Sir Tom Devine a very highly respect historian, agrees that promises of 'favours, sinecures, pensions, offices and straightforward cash bribes became indispensable to secure government majorities'. 

As for representation going forwards from the Act, Scotland was, in the new united parliament only to get 45 MPs, one more than Cornwall, and only 16 (unelected) peers places in the House of Lords. 

This last statistic speaks volumes for the attitude of The English Parliament in Westminster to their marriage partner. Scotland as a country, had only one M.P. more than the remotest county in England.

For 300+ years this marriage of unequal's, has bumbled along and in truth, has shared many highs and lows! 

That was until the smaller (in population terms) partner decided that in the 21st century she'd had enough of the domination and very often, bullying from her dominating marriage partner. In a form of tokenism towards self governance Scotland was given it's own parliament Holyrood in 2004 by Tony Blair, with a modicum of devolved powers. Powers that this clown of a P.M. Boris Johnson wants to remove!

Enough of this history malarkey though, in present day terms, both parties to the marriage have gone their separate ways with diverging politics and the truth is that Scotland was always left leaning and a bit socialist, whereas the numerically larger party to the marriage, England had at its heart, Toryism!

 

A woman that was actually despised and I don't use that term flippantly.  Her crushing the traditional industries in Scotland has left a nation burning with frankly hatred of her and her ilk !

Just when the Scots thought the Tory party couldn't get more despicable, up comes the least effective leader in the history of democracy. He is the very epitome of narcissism, self absorption, he's morally defunct and an inveterate liar, cheat and a charlatan so Boris charges over the brow of the hill ! 

Taking us out of the E.U. against the democratic vote of the Scottish electorate. 

His antagonism towards the Scottish race is unsurpassed even by Thatcher.

All of this, allied to our having had 17 consecutive polls showing the growth of Scottish Nationalism gathering momentum even in traditional Unionist broadsheets, with sweeping support for the removal of Trident at Faslane and the redundant nuclear submarines at anchor here in Rosyth as opposed to the Thames.

The UK government secretly planned to dump the radioactive hulks of 22 nuclear submarines in the sea off north west Scotland, documents released by the National Archives reveal.

A survey for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 1989 identified six sites for “seabed storage” of defunct naval submarines near the islands of Skye, Mull and Barra for up to 60 years – and probably longer.

Ergo, not only is the UK Government using Scotland as a nuclear car park for submarines, but they also had plans to dump the 22 identified above !

Well we have news for the UK's £shop Trump; a.k.a. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, not anymore Bojo !  
Take them and stick them where the sun never shines matey!  

We've never had a Tory Government in Scotland since 1955 and there is more chance of me being made Pope Tamas the first than there is of our having another !

SAOR ALBA

Brexit - Lies, Damned lies and Boris' statistics !!

 Finally the mask of the Brexiteers has been rent asunder and shown to be a fig leaf towards xenophobia and tax avoidance !  

I make no bones about having "Socialist" leanings politically and indeed always have had!  Even while serving in the RAF I was touting early membership to the AUEW for tradesmen who would want to get a job at Heathrow.  

The dilemma in the RAF was always that, the members of that service were about 95% Tory for various reasons, but primarily because the Tories in the 60's were more likely to maintain bases in the sort of exotic countries that frankly the UK with its dying "Empire" could not afford ! 

The reality is that Denis Healey was, as Labour Secretary of State for Defence, the man who introduced the Forces best wage structure in 1970. However, the lure of overseas postings appealed to the vast majority of servicemen with attendant allowances. Ergo a predilection for voting for the party who appears to put the jam on the sandwich.

This digression from the Brexit topic is merely to highlight the left of centre leanings of your truly.

Back to Brexit then; The big red bus and the shameless lie on the side!

The Prime Minister’s actions since taking office, have already resulted in his brother Jo Johnson, a former Conservative minister resigning from the party as he no longer trusted Boris Johnson was acting in the “national interest.”

Now the PM’s sister, Rachel Johnson, has spoken out, warning she believes the PM’s bizarrely aggressive behaviour may be due to pressure from “people who have invested billions in shorting the pound or shorting the country in the expectation of a no-deal Brexit.”

This week it has been revealed in the By-line Times that the Cabinet Office has been asked to investigate if Boris Johnson has breached the ministerial code by not declaring hedge fund donors, some of whom also funded the Leave campaign that Boris Johnson jumped onto in 2016. 

Hedge funds and financiers who have poured millions into Tory coffers stand to make a mint by speculating on the economic pitfalls of a no-deal Brexit.

(It may be a picture of NY above, but the principle is the same if not more so in London !)

So what is "Brexit" really about? 

The simplistic answer is that the English nation need Brexit to assume the mantle of superiority to "Johnny Foreigner" and the EU represents a sign that no nation is superior to its neighbours. This attitude is still held in England despite the fact that the "Empire" that Britain did have in past centuries, has long since gone. The E.U. is a collective group to trade with neighbours within its group and to make it relatively easy to do so!

In the face of global trade and giants in those terms such as China, the USA, Russia and India it makes sense to be in some form of collective arrangements with like-minded partners.

The E.U. does have faults of that there is no doubt, but the sensible approach would have been to work with partners in Europe to rectify those, not to spit out the "Dummy" and throw the toys out of the pram.

Boris' election to P.M. was on the back of his leading the charge for Brexit, despite the fact that he was a remainer not too many months ago!  He is, if nothing else, an opportunist and seeing Theresa May struggling with this dilemma, he pounced with help from less savoury political allies such as Farage, Redwood and Duncan-Smith!

What of the man himself?  His antipathy towards Scotland is well known and has never been hidden such as the speech in which he likened us to drunken yobs who were lucky to have England to bail us out. The rise and rise again of the S.N.P.  and attendant demand for "Independence" is unstoppable and with the best will in the world an ineffectual Eton toff at the helm of GB is more of an oar to the voyage to Independence than an anchor.

Brexit might well be the "English" version of Independence and fair play to them, they are as entitled to it as we are from them.

Boris Johnson has told friends his minister’s salary of £150,000 a year is not enough to live on, according to reports.

The Prime Minister has apparently told friends his annual earnings were insufficient because of his “extensive family responsibilities”, according to a report in a Sunday Broadsheet. (The Tory PM has four children with his second wife, Marina Wheeler. He also fathered a daughter during an affair with arts consultant Helen MacIntyre, failing to get an injunction to prevent the reporting of her existence.)

Sadly he can't even afford a "Nanny" for his recent familial addition Wilfred, with Carrie Symonds! 

Perhaps archetypal Etonian toff and outright Tory snob, Jacob Rees-Mogg could lend him his as she's probably still nurse-maiding him.

The metamorphous transformation by Boris from a remainer to the banner carrying "Brexiteer" might well be attributed in part to his financial straights if it comes to pass, that his fund manager cohorts are seen to be grossly profiting from the damage done to the population of the UK as it exists at this moment. Personally I'm more inclined to the comments of his sister Rachel earlier vis the hedge fund speculators. 

Allied to Covid we have a perfect storm economically and politically so thank God we have Nicola at our rudder !

Has "Global Wellbeing" died or is it merely in terminal decay?

 The twenty first century has seen turbulence in a variety of different scenarios, Right Wing Fascists antics, Coronavirus, Religious and Racial intolerance and the inevitable rise in temperature globally which as usual impacts on those least able to combat it !  

Flooding, Forest fires, Droughts and loss of habitat for wild animals, rising sea levels all mean there is a real danger that our system of "Greed is God" Capitalism is in danger of destroying the planet much less individual countries and low lying islands in the oceans.

Global Warming Causes Glaciers to Melt

Not including Antarctica and Greenland's large ice sheets, the world has about 150,000 glaciers that cover about 200,000 square miles of Earth's surface. In the last 40 years, the glaciers have lost what's equal to a layer of ice 70 feet thick due to global warming-related causes, according to a 2019 New York Times article. 

Should I, as a 74 year old coffin dodger worry?  In reality the answer will be no I needn't as I'll probably be so much ash before this all comes home to roost! 

Yet I do worry even more than I did as a glorified youngster during the height of the "Cold War" when serving, on the relatively speaking, "Front Line" of the RAF in Germany while we held our collective breaths in view of the potential of nuclear conflict.

At least then there was "MAD" (mutually assured destruction) to stop the irrational use of nuclear weapons by either side and not too long in the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for anyone to think their use would anything other than catastrophic!

I do worry though for my family and indeed society as a whole, as this Global Warming is out of the hands of humans by and large. It is the force of nature over which the human race has very little control but we can take steps to at least slow the process! 

As a true "carnivore" the most painful one for me is the need to cut down on meat consumption since it appears that cows farting contributes largely to the inordinate amount of Methane Gas !  Woe is me when I could murder a T Bone steak by just even thinking of it.