As the dust settles after the Olympics I have been reflecting on how the snp played their hand and I have to say very badly. They spent 5 years rubbishing the games and their London location; they saw this location as a godsend for them to stir up anti English sentiment and Scottish resentment. Too late they concluded that the games were going to be very popular and they were going to look like whinging scrooges thus adding to Scotland's reputation for being Bible black and mean.
Salmond said do something to get us out of this hole or heads will roll; and in common with most hurried panic schemes we got a botched project which caused hilarity and embarrassment by turns for Scotland and its people. I was reminded of the saying "there are very few bad situations that the arrival of a crowd of Scots. (the snp) on the make can't make worse" Down to London charged Salmond and his entourage of placemen and women as well as his Praetorian Guard whose job it is to keep people away from him. Armed with their very own custom made Scottish cutlery sets and Saltire napkins they cut a menacing and unruly sight particularly when the whiff of food and drink reached their snouts. Observers described them in trembling tones as like a "pack of starving dugs in a black pudden factory"
This now infamous project or "junket" as some have unkindly called it; cost nearly £500,000 for 2 weeks. Just like a fortnight at the 'but n ben' in Rothesay. Unfortunately for wee Eck (the spiv) it became known that they had hired a building owned by the Army and Navy when they could have used the ex Scotttish Office residence "Dover House" which was a couple of minutes away for nothing. Anyway they spent approximately £35,000 a day on this adventure; it was as they say a "dirty dangerous job but someone had to do it" Oh! And did you know that these people are running Scotland and, they want you to vote for independence?
If that vote ever comes remember that this snp fiasco is a real example of what they really think about you, the people of Scotland.
20 comments:
I've never heard the expression "there are very few bad situations that the arrival of a crowd of Scots. (the snp) on the make can't make worse". I assume you made it up? Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, I have to say: and I bet you wouldn't say the same about a crowd of Irishmen or Englishmen, or about anyone else. But I guess for you an internationalist is someone who despises his own country. I'm sure you know what Orwell said about the masochism of the left-or then again, maybe you don't.
Anonymous said...Saturday, August 25, 2012 6:55:00 PM
“there are very few bad situations etc”
It’s a true - ish quote but I first heard it said about the Dublin Police Force by the Irish Writer Brendan Behan, you probably haven’t heard of him he’s not Scottish.
Your jibe about internationalism is just cheap and silly, I don’t hate my country I just couldn’t care less about it, or indeed any other country for that matter. I find people who are proud of inanimate things like countries and proud of being from that place rather stunted intellectually actually.
Would you like to tell me if you are proud of being Scottish and if you are could you also tell me why? I promise to print you.
Am I proud of being Scottish? No, I'm not. I identify myself as the father to my children or as the brother to my siblings before I get to anything as abstract as nationhood. But I appreciate the historic values of a country where there were four universities in the middle ages-in one of the poorest countries in Europe-or where the state commited itself to universal education in the 16th century. I appreciate the values of hard work and self-reliance intrinsic in Scottish presbyterianism (just to head off your ever-so-predictable thought processes, I'm a non-practising catholic and a republican).
Does that answer your question? I'm a nationalist not because of any sense of superiority or pride, but because of a sense that the values of my nation's culture are submerged by union with a larger neighbour-possibly for the same reasons that Behan was an Irish nationalist. Or was he intellectually stunted too?
Sunday, August 26, 2012 8:57:00 PM
“an internationalist is someone who despises his own country”
Is what you said and I disagreed now you are saying you are not proud of being Scottish; so good for you neither am I.
I couldn’t really give a rat’s arse about your children or your siblings and that is the price you pay for wrapping yourself in the cowardly cloak of anonymity, how do I know if you have either?
The country you are so proud of which had 4 universities and a commitment to universal education was burning witches, painting itself blue in the face and stealing each other’s cattle at the same time.
Those values of hard work and self reliance which you attribute to Scottish Presbyterianism are bollocks. I love the stuff about your! Nation’s values and culture, I asked you to explain that to me? You haven’t.
You besmirch the name of Brendan Behan and every other Irishman and woman who died in the past and continue to die today for Irish freedom. Behan and many more of them were Marxists and Socialists and he was a nationalist because his country unlike Scotland, was invaded and occupied by a foreign power.
There is a historical difference which I would call a fact if not a character trait and that is that the Irish fight and the Scots. talk, and you it would seem talk very loudly.
Having a bad day, little man? It's not really a suprise to see such an ill informed, ill mannered diatribe. But I'll try to pick my way through the steaming pile of ordure you dropped off...so first. My anonymity. My job requires that I'm politically agnostic, and professionally I am.
You're right, the middle ages were pretty backward, weren't they? And your point is what?
Scotland was invaded by a foreign power. Hence the wars of independence...then it's aristocracy was bribed into union, because they'd been bankrupted by the Darien scheme: at the same time, the burghs and the Scottish bourgoisie were thriving.
And-to use your phrase-I couldn't give a rat's arse about Behan's belief in some mystical creed like Marxism. I doubt if you even have the first idea of the Hegelian nonsense the whole third rate edifice is constructed on.
So you don't have a problem with nationalism as such, do you? Just Scottish nationalism. Enjoy your evening, genius.
Anonymous said...Monday, August 27, 2012 5:50:00 PM
“Having a bad day, little man?”
Are you?
“My job requires that I'm politically agnostic, and professionally I am”
Me too, Terry Kelly’s not really my name and if I told you it I would have to kill you, I’m an international spy and must remain incognito just like you, maybe we are in the same branch of the secret spy union?
I knew that Behan would annoy you just like Connolly, Collins, Guevara, Castro, Zapata, Lenin and many more. As I said these people fight while people like you and the Scots. talk.
Connelly and Collins wouldn't annoy me, nor would Zapata. But Guevara and Castro? A couple of cynical petty bourgeois murderers. It was pointed out to you a few months ago that Guevara was a homophobic racist (who, incidentally, mentioned in his diaries his shooting of a 15 year old boy his men had taken prisoner: maybe that's a CIA lie, though). As for Lenin....you don't really admire someone who connived in the mass murder of political opponents, or who undermined a Menshevik government committed to parliamentary democracy, do you? Really? I bet you're the kind of person who believes the end justifies the means.
Anyway. Going back to your earlier post. So you think that hard work and self-reliance are bollocks. Oh dear. What's your alternative? Idleness and a misplaced trust in people with the ambition and ruthlessness to get themselves into power? It all smacks of a lack of self esteem on your part, Terence. Try to think for yourself. It's never too late for an old dog to learn new tricks, you know.
As far as your first paragraph is concerned I have pointed out to you before it depends on who you believe, and yes the end does justify the means depending on what the end is and what the means are.
“So you think that hard work and self-reliance are bollocks”
No I don’t.
You have written nothing that dispels my opinion of Scots. like you who talk a good game but when it comes to actually fighting they find an excuse to stay on their knees. Like your very important secret job. Poor old Scotland.
The end justifies the means, depending on what the end is and what the means are. You don't say, Sherlock.
My job's not secret, but I'm sure even you can get your head round the fact that anyone who works with the public probably needs to avoid broadcasting their opinions. Not that hard, is it?
"Scots...who talk a good game but when it comes to actually fighting they find an excuse to stay on their knees." Grow up. I'd like Scotland to be an independent country, but who should I fight? English people? Supporters of unionist parties? You're perfectly entitled to be thrilled with being part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Personally, I'm not. But then, I'm not a small c conservative like you.
So I just have to trust you when you say you can’t identify yourself?
F**k off, you are a Scottish quisling like the rest of them. You are only going to talk about it then tell someone else you are pathetic.
“I'm not a small c conservative like you”
Of course you’re not, you’re a large C Coward.
In what sense am I a quisling? Do you know what the word means? You're becoming increasingly incoherent. Trying to reason with you isn't debate-it's more like taunting an angry, yappy wee dog. The fact is, you dislike Scottish nationalism not because it's nationalism or even because it's Scottish: but because you have a burning, atavistic hatred for anyone who doesn't think the way you do. It's kind of ironic that a self-proclaimed internationalist like you is such a stereotype-you know, the ranting, inarticulate wee yahoo with a chip on his shoulder who represents the worst of the West of Scotland. Have a lovely day tomorrow,councillor. I'm sure you'll light up the life of everyone you meet.
Anonymous said...Tuesday, August 28, 2012 11:05:00 PM
Quisling? Never heard of the man. I seem to have upset you Mr. Anonymous.
There is a certain freedom attached to swapping insults with someone who is too much of a coward to identify himself.
As far as nationalism is concerned I agree with Einstein (another man I’ve never heard of) who famously said “nationalism is the measles of the planet earth, it is an infantile disease” but what would he know he wasn’t even Scottish!
So when Einstein said that, I assume he qualified it by saying, except Irish/Kenyan/Indian/Ghanaian etc nationalism? How about Latvian or Estonian or Ukranian nationalism? Do you think those are acceptable? Bet you don't, since they're at odds with your own dogma.
Anyway, you haven't upset me. But in conclusion, I should say how much I admire your courage: most people as stupid as you would try to hide it, but you flaunt it proudly. Congratulations.
Anonymous said...Wednesday, August 29, 2012 6:07:00 PM
I think and this is only my opinion that Einstein sometimes assumed that people were cleverer than they were.
Even then I think most people (perhaps not you though) gathered he was talking about the essence and fundamental nature of nationalism.
The kind witnessed in Nazi Germany, White Supremacist South Africa, Fascist Italy etc. etc. Similar to what we see today in Scotland with the snp.
Einstein wouldn't make that mistake with you.
Did you hear that the SNP have just classified anyone without ginger hair as untermenschen?
Hey Anonymous,
Can you please point out to me the passages of Hegel's 'Science of Logic' or 'Aesthetics' that are 'nonsense'? I ask because I have heard a lot from the 'windbag semi-educated' (I use the term to imply people who talk expansively of subjects of which they know nothing or very little) about 'Kantian/Hegelian' 'nonsense'but my readings reveal very different observations. I got used to hearing the same blather about Nietzsche's non-existent 'anti-semitism' some time ago, but these philistine phrases still crop up every time German philosophy is mentioned.
With all best regards,
Ernst Bloch
To Ernst: No, I can't, because I've never read either. But I have read the Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Law, and what I thoroughly dislike about his philosophy is the effective apotheosis of the state as something that transcends the sum of the individual existences of it's citizens. Hence the appeal to mystics like Marxists. I don't think it's philistine to see something flawed in the ideas of romantics and idealists like Hegel. Or Nietzsche, for that matter: his legacy is aesthetic, not moral.
Anonymous,
Thank you for your answer. Again I must disagree. In the Philsophy of Right, the individual gains self-recognition by rights granted by law, law is impossible without the state. The phenomenology of the self gains mastery of itself by virtue of its dialectical relationship with the state. Law as law must transcend the individual or it is not law, merely partiality - that is why it is blind. The rights within the law of the state guarantees an individual it must not take as the determining principle of its existence. What most liberals take to be absolute individualism contra Hegel would lead to nothing more that the rise of dominant individuals who gain mastery by virtue of their supremacy over other lesser 'individuals' This is the secret lie of liberalism, it purports to praise the individual but in essence it is a liscence for the barbarism of the strong exploiting the weak - or the rich exploiting the poor. This all assumes that the state is neutral of course, an assumption Marx was quick to discredit.
As for Marxist 'mystics' I once visited the area of Manchester which Engels wrote about so vividly. I saw a section of the city morgue where the urban and working class poor were dumped by the cartload every morning after dying of hunger, disease or cold the previous evening. This was at a time when industrial capitalists and their apologists were writing of Manchester as the 'most advanced city in the known world'. Which description is the more 'mystical' I wonder?
Nietzsche's attack on assumed 'morality' is hardly news, it is in the end a geneology not an aesthetics - despite the style.
With all best wishes,
Ernst
Ernst, thank you for a courteous and considered reply. If you say that the individual gains "self-recognition by rights granted by law", then that looks like nonsense, I'm afraid. Either the individual has innate human rights by virtue of being human-a generally accepted postion, I would say-or the rights granted by law are so arbitrary as to be completely meaningless. A Prussian junker in the 1930s had a certan level of recognition by the German state, a Berlin Jew didn't: a heterosexual in the UK in the 1950s had a certain affirmation of his right to self-expression, a gay man didn't. The idea that the state has an innate moral authority is completely wrong. It doesn't, because the state is not something transcendent: it's a mechanism for the exercise of power by a relatively small group of individuals. So where does that differ from your comment on what you see as the perceived lie of liberalism? I'm a liberal, and I don't advocate lawlessness-it's somewhat disingenous of you to equalte liberalsim with barbarism.
As far as the mysticism of Marxism is concerned, it's mere dogma: the offspring of German Romanticism and a naive 19th century faith in the scientific method.
And, concerning your comments about 19th c. Manchester, even Marx himself commented on the revolutionary nature of bourgeois capitalism: in his words, it rescued millions from the idiocy of rural life. More importantly, it rescued millions from the likelihood of death in the event of a bad harvest, just as it's being doing in Asia for the last 50 years.
Dear Anonymous,
A few points to consider. First, I did not say that the state has 'moral authority', I indicated that the state (meaning of course much more than just the police and judicary)allows for a possilbe univeralasition of rights under law. People have innate rights not to be murdrrd or riobbed, but if I am waylayed by bandits or another tribe who do not recongnise my 'innate rights' then they are essentially meaningless. In other words, the state is a step up from tibal tabbos, clan vendettas and the 'law' of the stongest'. Hegel thows how this is a necessary development out a state of partiality. Despite its great flaws and contradictions this was the gift of the Roman state - the universal idea of law and jurisprudence enshrined in workings the state and the 'civic' body - if you believe that some notional solitary 'individual' somehwere in his or her cave is free then I believe you are mistaken. That creature would be neither free nor unfree, neither moral or immoral. The examples you give are instrucive inasmuch as they offer the possilbity, by your own account, of being changed. In tribal or clan prohibitions and customs this is not possible.
Of course, the Marxist admiration for the dynamism of capitalism. The difference is that liberals such as yourself adopt the very 'final stage' doctrine that you accuse Marxists of. In other words, Marx saw clearly that liberals as apologists for capital wanted to claim that no other condition other than capitalism could exist and that it was essentially the final stage of history. All other ideas to the contrary are 'utopian romanticism' right? Thus, liberals adopt the position that says 'capitlism' is the 'only' social condtion we can achieve - it was essentially this that Marx set out to dismantle.
Dialectics and even materialism have been around a lot longer than the 19th century, since Democritus in fact.
Let me quote Adam Ferguson whom I'm sure you know and who Marx knew through Hegel. It was Ferguson who promoted the idea of civic duty and civil society for he knew that liberalism and commercial society as he called it, if permitted to act on its on mechanisms as liberals always claim to want, would lead to nothing but the 'fraudulence and decline of decency to which it is always prone'. Not quite barbarism , but bit similar nonetheless.
Finally, you may want to consider that your propensity to explain the essential condition of things though an explanation of their history is really a Marxist rather than a 'liberal' approach to understanding what a 'thing' is.
I regret I will not be able to reply in future as I am going on a vist to China to visit their universities in order to see if they are really as bad as 'liberals' say they are. Like all good 'romantics' I ceased the humiliating employment relation some time ago and now live by my own work.
With all best wishes,
Ernst
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