Book I enjoyed

I now understand why some Scots hate the English!

There is a commonly held belief that Scottish people are naturally anti-English. In popular culture this may be seen on the football field where the rivalry between two adjacent teams will give rise to some very forthright banter. However, most of this banter is fairly harmless and given in a spirit of give and take that sports fans always experience when competing to shout louder than those of the opposing team.

I have lived in Scotland for over 15 years and I have never been aware of anti-English feeling directed against me. 

Anyway a wee while ago I was on holiday in Mallorca. Sitting outside a sea front cafe for lunch on a beautiful day. My meal was disturbed by the monologue of complaints from the table next to us. I hadn't seen the folks come and sit down but when she started her diatribe I turned. The woman speaking was in her fifties or sixties, fat and had tattoos.  She had a south of England accent, perhaps Essex? I should point out that I am not prejudiced against the overweight or those who have inked infantile drawings onto their skin!

Her monologue to her silent companion went like this.

"This Scottish woman she said to me that she had voted yes in the independence referendum.  And I said to her That was a waste of time. Who will pay your pension? And look at that Alex Salmon - what a disgrace. And Scotland is such a dreadful place. My niece had to go up near Edinburgh when her husband was sent to a barracks up there. They were an army family you know. She couldn't stand the place. It was wet all winter and full of midges all summer. She said to him if you don't get a transfer from this God awful place then I will leave you. And they got transferred back down to England after wasting two years of her life there.  Can you imagine that cold wet place and all those flies - no wonder you get people like Alex Salmon. Perhaps it is to do with the diet. They eat that horrible haggis stuff and porridge. Maybe they need the porridge as the mornings are so cold and miserable and as for drink - there are so many drunks..."

And on and on she went. I wondered what Scotland had done to her. As I listened to her rambling on and on I realised how easy it is to react and hate the English as a whole. But this was just an ignorant, patronising twit from south of the border, who should make sure they know what they are talking about before they open their mouth to speak! 

Scotland - the facts

Scotland has only 8.3% of the UK's population. 8.3%! Remember this important figure... 8.3%

But we DO have...

32% of the land area.
61% of the sea area.
90% of the fresh water.
65% of the natural gas production.
96.5% of the crude oil production.
47% of the open cast coal production
81% of the untapped coal reserves
62% of the timber production
46% of the total forest area
92% of the hydro electric production
40% of the wind wave and solar energy production
60% of the fish landings
30% of the beef herd
20% of the sheep herd
9% of the dairy herd
10% of the pig herd
15% if the cereal holdings
20% of the potato holdings
...obviously 100% of the Scotch Whisky industry.

We have a...
17 billion pound construction industry
13 billion food and drink industry
10 billion business services industry
9.3 billion chemical services industry
A 9.3 billion tourism industry
7 billion financial services industry
5 billion aeroservice industry
4.5 billion pound whiskey exports industry
3.1 billion pound life sciences industry
Scotland still has 350 million pounds worth of textile exports

We have 25% of Europes wave and wind energy potential.

And finally we are blessed to have 1.5 trillion pound worth of oil and gas reserves.

All of this, yet only 8.3% of The UK's population... Whao Scotland should be rich!

IGNORANCE...
If you hear anyone saying "I DONT LIKE ALEX SALMOND" or "I DONT LIKE SNP"...
THIS VOTE IS ABOUT SCOTLAND'S RIGHT TO ELECT ITS OWN GOVERNMENT... IT HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ALEX SALMOND OR THE SNP. 
DONT LET POLITICAL IGNORANCE RUIN THIS OPPORTUNITY.

Do you know... This is the UK's legacy of success in our history of being better-together is as follows...

The UK has the 3rd lowest pensions in the 34 OECD countries of the world

The UK has the single most expensive childcare in the European Union

The UK has the second lowest-paid economy in the entire developed world

The UK has the 3rd longest working hours in the EU

The UK has the lowest number of holidays in the EU

The UK has the 8th highest gender inequality pay gap out of the EU's 28 countries

The UK has the highest likelihood of poverty in disablement in the EU

The UK has the highest rail prices in Europe

The UK has the second highest housing cost in Europe

The UK has the highest fuel poverty rates in Europe.

The UK is the 4th highest country of wealth inequality in the entire planet!

But surely these awful figures cannot be possible when you read the following Scottish statistics...

Now, finally, did you also know that in all of the UK's elections for Westminster ever!... Not one vote cast in SCOTLAND has ever mattered! Because of the Westminster numbers, whatever government England votes for, the UK gets. So we have no democracy here!!! 4 decades of tory rule that we voted against is proof enough, and our defiance was punished by the closure of all the mines; closure of all the steelworks; closure of all the shipyards losing hundreds if thousands of jobs. The term used by Westminster's Thatcher when these industries needed some assistance was "let the markets decide". Funny how when the greedy bankers collapsed everywhere they were bailed out to the tune of over a trillion pounds of our money... Not a mention of "let the markets decide".

FACTS:
Fact: Scotland has an oil boom waiting to happen on the West Coast, but Michael Hesaltine signed a cessation of any form of oil exploration in the entire area in the 80's to make way for nuclear submarines which Scotland doesn't want!

Fact: Scotland has shown its revulsion time and time again to nuclear weapons but they place them here against our countries wishes. A recent contingency report was carried out a out the feasibility of relocating them in Portsmouth. The report stated that it was unfeasible because the detrimental risk to the area of an incident was too high. (Ok for the Clyde though)

Fact: Scotland, with only 1 Tory MP, was forced to take the shocking attack on the poor & disabled called The Bedroom Tax, even though as our nations government, Holyrood voted to utterly reject this awful tax on the poor. Westminster gave us it anyway!

Fact: We are led to believe that the oil in our waters is finished and its a dying industry. Yet 13.5 billion has been invested by oil companies in the last 2 years alone!

Fact: The Clair Oil Field is about to open, and on its own has over 650 million barrels which will be extracted over 20+ years with production reaching a hundred thousand barrels a day!

Fact: Scotland gives more to Westminster than it gets back. Do you really think they'd be so keen to keep us if we were being subsidised like they'd have us believe?

Fact: Westminster has amassed over £1.3 trillion debt and still growing at nearly £6000 a second. Thats another £516 million today alone which YOU will have to pay for.

Fact: Of the 178 countries that have gained their own independence across this planet, not one single one of them has ever asked to reverse this independence, and very few of them have the assets we have.

SCOTLAND, WHAT ARE WE SCARED OF? WE HAVE A CHANCE... WITHOUT A SINGLE BULLET BEING FIRED, WITHOUT A SINGLE DEATH... TO GET OUR FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT A CROSS IN THE YES BOX.

SCOTLAND, ITS TIME TO STAND UP AS A NATION AND VOTE YES ON THE 18TH OF SEPTEMBER... AND BECOME A FREE AND CARING NATION AGAIN!!!

VOTE YES AND SET OUR COUNTRY FREE!!!!

Y E S ! ! !



note: I didn't write this. . The above is circulating on the internet as part of the YES campaign but it seems to be an accurate portrayal of the facts!

Why I am voting YES!

I have been silent on this blog for a while but here are my thoughts on the Scottish referendum:

Why I am voting YES

The first reason for my "yes" vote is that we may be able to get rid of Trident. Removal is not on the policy agenda of any Westminster political party. Everyone knows that Trident is useless against the complex threats faced in today's world. It is hugely expensive. Westminster want to keep it as it gives the UK a permanent seat on the UN security council. But Trident is not an independent UK deterrent. It is a US weapon system that UK would never use without US approval. Would we have Trident if the base were sited 30 miles from London?

We will be able to write a new constitution fit for the modern world (and we could choose to keep the Queen - God bless her Majesty - as Canada and Australia have done). We could even use a participative process involving many people as is currently happening in Iceland. We could be a better and less centralised democracy with more powers devolved to councils and localities. We would live closer to the centre of power. Our election results would not be skewed by peoples votes hundreds of miles to the south of us.

I am not a great fan of Alex Salmond but he is head and shoulders above all the other party leaders in terms of statesmanship and political leadership. The SNP has provided stability and good governance in their years in Holyrood. (By contrast, think of the mess that both the last Westminster government and the present one have made!) I believe Scotland would do better being independent. It is about time Scotland voted positively to change itself.

We have been bombarded by relentless scaremongering from the NO campaign, particularly over oil, currency and Scotland’s ability to complete internationally as a small, independent nation. In the last days before the vote it will get worse. 

The oil that Scotland has is a huge asset and NO campaign propaganda about it running out is nonsense. The oil assets in the North Sea are coveted by Westminster and have been a major underpinning of the pound’s strength over the last 40 years. The pound needs the oil assets and would not wish to lose it. England is likely to be the loser, not Scotland. Furthermore, even if Westminster somehow refuses to cooperate with Scotland over the continued sharing of the pound, there are plenty of small countries that have successful independent currencies. Some would argue that Westminster is clinging to the delusion that the pound is still an international powerhouse.

Nine of the top 10 wealthiest countries in the world are small - six smaller than Scotland - some with oil and gas and some with a strong social, national and/or industrial policy, such as Singapore.

Tying Scotland, with its assets and potential wealth, to a steadily declining UK economy is a strange long-term idea of being better. A No vote would be a vote for the long-term decline of Scotland and would be backward looking. 

The many cultural, social and religious ties between Scotland and other parts of the UK would not be broken after a Yes vote.  Scandinavia, comprising three separate adjacent countries, share many cultural, social and religious commonalities despite being independent states. 

We can remain a strong contributor to the British Isles, the Commonwealth, NATO and the European Union - inside or outside of the UK. We would have a stronger position in the EU as we would more than double our number of MEPs.

The UK government is negotiating away the NHS through privatisation that will be forced on us through the TTIP. (This was confirmed by an article this week in the Lancet)

People in Scotland are angry about the corruption in the Westminster system - remember illegal wars fought for imaginary weapons of mass destruction, rendition flights to torture destinations that landed in Prestwick, cash for questions,  and the MPs expenses scandals. There are no doubt some honest and honourable MPs, but there are many who aren't!

Devolution is a grace or favour gift and can be withdrawn on a whim. Some powers have been withdrawn. The House of Lords removed the renewable obligation powers from the Scottish government with a single vote!

The YES campaign has a disadvantage as the media puts a Unionist spin on everything. (For example, the BBC report of the Queen's statement on the referendum: though the Queen said  "It is a matter for the people of Scotland" the item ended with the commentator saying "If Scotland vote YES her majesty will be upset". That was not news but journalistic spin based on speculation to make the story more favourable to the NO side!)

The next few years may be messy. It will not necessarily be better immediately if we vote YES. Things will not happen as fast as some want. For the vast majority of life things will be unchanged. If there is a problem, it will be our guddle to sort out! Both Scots and English people are pragmatic and will sort out the many issues to be resolved. Have you ever heard someone from the Republic of Ireland say " I wish we hadn't become independent and were still ruled from London!"   All we are voting for is the right to elect our own governments, raise all our taxes and spend them as we want - just like any other country. Telling us not to “go” comes over as: “We don’t want you to run your own affairs. You must always have the governments we give you.” 

Independence is not about erecting barriers. The Scots and English would still be the closest allies. We will be able to cross the border freely as we can between the south and north of Ireland (and which we could, even at the height of the troubles.)  Independence gives us a chance to build a country that better reflects the identity and priorities of the majority of those who live here (both “ethnic” Scots and those like myself who have come here and taken the land to heart).

Most people in Scotland follow Burns in our scorn of privilege and our pursuit of fairness. We would rather spend taxes on schools and hospitals than protect banker's bonuses or project our might around the world with nuclear missiles and foreign wars. These are high-minded values and they rarely guide the governments we get lumbered with in Westminster.

The people of Scotland are currently being bombarded with scare stories, threats and vague promises. The BBC has abandoned its neutral stance and seems to be campaigning for a NO vote. But we have spent two years thinking about the issues so we will not be deterred by the No campaign's panicky last minute reactions.  

(This is my personal view and reflects the reading I and research I have done over the last year and a half.  Authors I have found helpful and whose views you may find echoed in this blogpost include George Monbiot, Gerry Hassan, Angus Roxburgh, Ian Godden, Lesley Riddoch, Owen Jones, et al )

Frances Fyfield book review

Book review Frances Fyfield “Safer than houses”

Frances Fyfield writes intelligent thrillers with a twist. She handles characterisation very well and adds some unusual twists to the story. She was a former lawyer and I note many references in the book to the legal profession. The central character is a prostitute (an ex lawyer) and the principle bad guy is a lawyer, struck off for corruption. Another central character is a magistrate who has used the law in an illegal way.

The story revolves around a disputed inheritance that is being challenged by the unbalanced son of the psychopathic deceased. The central good guy is an ageing arsonist who is going through a crisis of confidence.

The book is about relationships as the people are being very much themselves and being misunderstood for it. It describes the effect that hatred and greed and desire for revenge has on people and how this can be exacerbated by physical pain. The novel is set in a small are of the city of London (but could be any city) which functions like a village for those who live and work there. It is well written with deeply developed characters and the plot has many twists and turns yet it is all believable. Highly recommended.

Book Review: Mitch Albom "The first phone call from heaven"

This novel is an exploration of the vulnerability of those suffering with grief. Losing a loved one is very hard and often there are things that you wish you had said to them when they were still alive. A small town in America gets that opportunity when selected residents start receiving phone calls from heaven. They recognise the loved ones voice and although they are tempted to keep it to themselves, the news gets out and a media circus ensues - together with many wacky religious groups wanting to get in on the act. The main protagonist, a recent widower who has suffered in other ways, wants desperately to prove it a hoax. The incidents provoke an epidemic of hope and high church attendance. Perhaps the novel is an examination of what people consider as hope. I liked the fact that one of the recipients of the phone calls disconnects all her phones as she cannot live with the upheaval of not moving on from the loss of her dead son.
I will not say more about the story because to do so would inevitably introduce spoilers. The premise is a good one, and the book will not upset people of faith. But herein is the weakness of the novel. Unlike the powerful book "Tuesdays with Morrie" also by Albom, this book is poorly written, with confusable shallow characters. Some will read it as inspirational spiritual fantasy but that doesn't get away from the fact that it is poorly written, with an unbelievable, fantastic plot, and a writing style that uses too much of the passive voice. As a quick relaxing read I enjoyed it but it is pointless to look for anything deep or significant in the work as it is not there.

New book

My good friend, Jean de Beurre, has just published a new romantic novel set in Scotland about an angel intervening in the lives of ordinary Glasgow folk. Please take a look.... Click here to go to Jean's website...

Link to the Amazon USA page for this book and link to the Amazon UK link

Slavery in Britain today - a rant...

There are millions of people enslaved in our country today. They are prisoners of debt. They have bought into the credit dream - they can have anything if they borrow the money. "Borrow as much as you want" the credit companies and pay-day lenders say. The politicians egg on the lenders because the plebs will be enslaved. They will work hard for whatever wage they can get to replay their mounting debts. Britain is the only country in Europe where there is no cap on credit!
Consumer credit is a means of controlling workers with illusory dreams of prosperity.  It can be seen in the pressure to own your own home. Why buy a house? Because it is what everyone does. Because it will go up in value. Because if you don't buy one now you never will be able to afford it. But these are not good answers. You will mortgage your life to a small piece of real estate and your standard of living will be much reduced because of the proportion of you income that goes in interest to the real owner of the home you are trying to own.
The economy is skewed by consumer lending which is not real growth. Low interest rates are compounding the problem.
I am not an economist but I know something is wrong; very wrong! What do we do about it? 
I don't like most of the answers the politicians come up with and only the Greens have a view that makes sense!  

Some days

This poem can be read at many levels - it can be seen as a analogy of society and those who really live and those who just survive. It is also an insight into the working of the church and ministry. Like all good poetry it needs reading several times to see the depth of meaning. Some Days
by Billy Collins
Some days I put the people in their places at the table, bend their legs at the knees, if they come with that feature, and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs. All afternoon they face one another, the man in the brown suit, the woman in the blue dress, perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved. But other days, I am the one who is lifted up by the ribs, then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse to sit with the others at the long table. Very funny, but how would you like it if you never knew from one day to the next if you were going to spend it striding around like a vivid god, your shoulders in the clouds, or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper, staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

What is a nation?

I find the following helpful in the current debate in Scotland.

“I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.... Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.... Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings.” 

― Benedict Anderson   Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism


(Image courtesy of Darren Robertson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Called to Say Yes

I have recently discovered Edwina Gateley's poem Called to Say Yes which reminds us that our Christian calling is to say no to death in all its many forms by saying yes to life.

We are called to say yes.
That the kingdom might break through
To renew and to transform
Our dark and groping world.

We stutter and we stammer
To the lone God who calls
And pleads a New Jerusalem
In the bloodied Sinai Straights.

We are called to say yes
That honeysuckle may twine
And twist its smelling leaves
Over the graves of nuclear arms.

Edwina Gateley.

We are called to say yes
That children might play
On the soil of Vietnam where the tanks
Belched blood and death.

We are called to say yes
That black may sing with white
And pledge peace and healing
For the hatred of the past.

We are called to say yes
So that nations might gather
And dance one great movement
For the joy of humankind.

We are called to say yes
So that rich and poor embrace
And become equal in their poverty
Through the silent tears that fall.

We are called to say yes
That the whisper of our God
Might be heard through our sirens
And the screams of our bombs.

We are called to say yes
To a God who still holds fast
To the vision of the Kingdom
For a trembling world of pain.

We are called to say yes
To this God who reaches out
And asks us to share
His crazy dream of love.

Photo from edwinagatley.com  

Karen Armstrong says it so well

I love this quotation from Karen Armstrong:

“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

― Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

photo from Iona by me

On a Spanish roadside

I am just back from a week of cycling in Spain. This was the perfect midwinter break that I needed.We stayed near Benidorm (which seems to be a multi-story old peoples home) and went out into the hills and along the coast. There is still much wonderful scenery so close to the urban coastal jungle that is the Costa Blanca.
But there was one sight that I found somewhat disturbing though I have since found out that it is common throughout Spain. 
On the side of an ordinary main road, in lay-bys, and often seated on wooden dining room chairs were women in isolated spots and seemingly quite alone. The looked at me as I cycled past with a strange sort of look. They were of course following the so called oldest profession. They were prostitutes. They were a mix of ages. Some were quite mature women with a fixed smile and others looked like ordinary teenagers, passing the time of day by talking on their mobile phone. 
Were these trafficked women brought in from eastern Europe with the promise of exotic jobs in the entertainment business by organised crime? Their colouring indicated that they might be Roma but in Spain many of the local people people are deeply tanned so it was impossible to ascertain their ethnicity. Was this just the result of the deep recession of the euro zone? 
I suppose the moral I draw from the experience is that wherever we are in the world there will be the attractive face that we see on the surface and there will also be a underside which may remain hidden for the most part. If we look beneath the surface view, as presented by the tourist brochures, we will begin to see the real world that makes up the everyday experience of the local people for whom this is home. 

Yesterday I saw the following slogan on a tee shirt which spoke to me of the plight of women in this sort of situation:

Feminism - teaching girls to be somebodies instead of somebody's.

Image courtesy of mapichai  / FreeDigitalPhotos.net