Theresa May doesn’t do questions, or answers. Her response to a question is to talk about something else, and if she can she’ll squeeze in an unfunny wee jibe about Jeremy Corbyn. This is what passes for wit and repartee in the House of Commons. When former Tory Home Secretary and Chancellor Kenneth Clarke described May as a difficult woman, what he really meant is that it’s difficult to get her to give a straight answer to a straight question. She’s prone to answering questions with “I’ve been very clear”, which invariably means that she’s been as clear as six inches of thick mud plastered all over your windsreen. You’d get far more clarity and certainty if you nabbed her tea cup after she’d had her tea and innovative jammy dodger and attempted to interpret the patterns of tea leaves.

She insisted she’d been clear previously when she was non-responding to questions and uttering put downs about Jezza during Prime Minister’s Questions, otherwise known as Prime Minister’s Evasions, on Wednesday in the House of Commons. She was asked about the powers over fisheries and agriculture which are currently the preserve of Brussels, and what would happen to those powers after Brexit. Unlike Theresa, the law here is very clear indeed. The Scotland Act is quite explicit about the division of powers between Holyrood and Westminster, and specifies that everything which is not specifically reserved to Westminster is devolved to Holyrood. Under the terms of the Act, agriculture and fisheries are the preserve of the Scottish Parliament. Up until now, that’s only really had theoretical effect, since fisheries and agriculture are subject to EU rules and regulations. That will change after Brexit.

According to the Scotland Act, all powers over agriculture and fisheries which currently reside with Brussels should be repatriated to Holyrood as soon as the UK leaves the EU. The law, if not Theresa, is crystal clear. There should be no question or discussion about what happens to these powers once they are returned to the UK, because the UK government through the Scotland Act, has already agreed that these powers belong to the Scottish Parliament. But that’s not what Theresa thinks. Here are her exact words in response to the question on the devolution of powers which will be returned from the EU after Brexit.

I’ve been very clear, and this was echoed yesterday by my Right Honourable Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, that no powers that are currently devolved are going to be suddenly taken back to the United Kingdom government. What we will be looking at, and what we will be discussing with the devolved administrations, is how we deal with those powers that are currently in Brussels when they come back to the UK. And what we want to ensure is that those powers are dealt with so that we can maintain the important single market of the UK.

They’re going to be “dealt with”, according to Theresa. They’ll kindly and magnanimously pass on any powers from Brussels that they don’t want to keep themselves. Theresa gets first dibs on them and Scotland can have her leftovers. She’s the innovative jammy dodger, dodging questions, dodging responsibility to Scotland. There may be a universe in which the British government doesn’t treat Scotland like a backward child who sticks a fork into a fusebox for fun, but this isn’t that universe. In this universe the British government sticks a fork into the fusebox of the devolution settlement and then acts surprised when sparks fly. But whenever anyone points out that the British government treats the devolution settlement with arrogant contempt, you can hear the Unionists sounding their grievance klaxon. We’re supposed to be ever so ‘umble and grateful for the little crumbs from Theresa’s jammy dodging.

Theresa doesn’t understand the Scotland Act, because if she did she’d know that the powers in question are already devolved. But the truth is that she doesn’t care. She’s a British nationalist who was happy for Scotland to have the pretence of power when those powers were safely in the hands of Brussels, just as she was happy for Scotland to have the pretence of the Sewel Convention being written into law. But the moment there’s the chance that could make a serious difference British nationalists like Theresa aren’t so happy any more.

When Brexit happens there’s the very real likelihood that the British government will unilaterally make substantial changes to the devolution settlement and remove powers from the Scottish Parliament, yet assert loudly that it’s being clear that no existing powers are being taken away. Theresa May has just asserted her right to do so. The provision in the Scotland Bill that all powers are devolved except for those which are specifically reserved is just more meaningless window dressing like the claim that Sewel is enshrined in law, like the claim that the Scottish Parliament is the most powerful devolved parliament in the world, like saying that Scotland is an equal partner in a family of nations when the UK Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland is a region which can be kicked like a can down the street and left in the gutter.

As long as Scotland remains a part of the UK, it will be a subordinate region whose rights are subject to the whim of UK Prime Ministers who don’t need Scottish votes and so have no reason to care what Scotland’s people want or think. You can have your devo window dressing Scotland, but you can’t have any real power. Devolution is like the artificial food in the window of a sushi restaurant. It looks very tasty but you can’t eat it. You can have tax powers that are designed to be unusable. You can have legal clauses with no legal effect. You can have the world’s most powerful devolved parliament as long as it’s in a field of one. You can have all powers devolved except those which are specifically reserved until Westminster decides to claw them back. We love you Scotland, and you can have all the smoke and mirrors that you want.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

Or click HERE

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

Well now we know. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Westminster Parliament must have a voice on triggering Article 50 and starting the Brexit process, and that Theresa May cannot take us out of the EU and undo law and strip civil and legal rights without legislation. This is to be welcomed. But there was a less welcome message in the Supreme Court’s ruling. The British state has now achieved a legal ruling that in law, in fact, and in practice, Scotland isn’t an equal partner in a family of nations after all. The Sewell Convention which was written into the Scotland Act has no legal force, no meaning, and exists merely as window dressing to disguise Scotland’s powerlessness with nice words that have no effect.

Scotland isn’t a much loved and respected part of a Union whose voice must be heard and whose opinions and views must be taken into account. Scotland is in fact merely a region, a glorified county, a tartan ribbon making a pretty bow on the package of Britishness. Rejoice in your inferior status Scotland. Being British means Scotland is not a country and its status as a nation has no legal meaning. Welcome to monolithic Unionism where the monolith will crush all life and distinctiveness from you.

The Supreme Court has decided that the Westminster Parliament must have a vote on triggering Article 50, but when it comes to having a voice on major changes to the devolution settlement that could strip the Scottish Parliament of important rights and Scottish people of important rights, the law says that Scotland, along with Wales and Northern Ireland, can go screw itself. Your opinion, Scotland, is not required. If you look up the Sewell Convention in a dictionary of legal terms, you won’t find it.

We know now that when the Unionist parties swore that they were enshrining the permanency and powers of the Scottish Parliament into law, that it was just meaningless cant, a sleight of words to confuse and mislead, a deceit. The Supreme Court of the UK has ruled that a power devolved is a power retained by Westminster, and that Westminster needn’t even bother consulting Scotland if it decides to revoke or change those powers. The Scotland Bill is based on a lie and empty rhetoric than means nothing. It’s fine words to soothe but which have no meaning or force. The Sewell Convention is worthless verbiage whose purpose was to placate Scotland. We didn’t get the permanency of the Scottish Parliament, we got a carrot on a stick that forever remains out of reach, an unreachable treat to keep the donkey of Unionism on the road to submission.

We were promised that Scotland would get the most powerful devolved parliament in the world, but the unelected unrepresentative House of Lords, stuffed full of Tory and Labour party donors, rich businessmen, and Michelle Mone, has more say over devolution than the Scottish Parliament itself. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, all countries which have fewer people than Scotland, will have a seat at the table during Brexit negotiations and will infinitely more power over the future of Scotland than the people of Scotland themselves. Even the Belgian regions of Wallonia and Flanders have more power over Scotland’s future than Scotland does, because those regions have the legal right to veto any Brexit deal that they don’t like. Never mind not having a right to veto a deal that could cause immense damage to our economy and society, Scotland doesn’t even have the right to voice an opinion, doesn’t have the right to be consulted, doesn’t have the right to a say.

They told us we could have the nearest thing possible to federalism. But you can’t have federalism in a state where one of the members is larger than the rest combined and which believes that it has an inalienable right to impose its views on the others. If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cannot prevent England going down a particular path, but England can always drag the other three along with it irrespective of their own views, we are not talking about a Union. We’re talking about a state with its subordinate quasi-colonial possessions. That’s not what was on offer from the Better Together campaign back in 2014, but that’s what they have delivered. Scotland’s role in this so-called Union is to make Britain look diverse and mask the ugliness of English nationalism with a veneer of Britishness that English nationalists can use as a comfort blanket to tell themselves that their nationalism isn’t nationalist at all. And if you’re a Scottish Unionist, you’re helping them in their delusion, and you’re deluding yourself that you’re opposing nationalism when all you’re doing is to foster someone else’s.

This is not the Union that Scotland was promised in 2014 in return for a No vote. This is not the safety and security of EU membership they told us a No vote would achieve. This is not the Scotland which is a much loved and respected equal partner in the great project of Britishness. This is not the Scotland whose parliament and legal rights are enshrined permanently in legislation beyond the reach of capricious British governments which Scotland didn’t vote for. We are living in a bunting bedecked lie. They lied until they were red white and blue in the face. The only surprising thing is that the liars and cheats who drafted the infamous vow didn’t expect that they’d be found out so quickly. They sold us a lie. They sold us a cheat. They deceived, they dissembled. Democracy is dead if the people can be sold a lie and not have any redress. If the powerful cannot be held to account then the people are chattel. There must be another referendum.

The UK won’t respect Scotland. Their judges have ruled that there is no reason to grant Scotland respect, no reason to give Scotland a hearing. Today’s the day that Scotland’s No voters discovered that the UK is not a Union of equals after all, and they’ve only got their cognitive dissonance as a comfort. Scotland won’t get a voice in the UK, we know that now. The only way in which Scotland’s voice can be heard is to stop the pretence that Britain speaks for Scotland and to start to speak for ourselves. It’s time for a second independence referendum.

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-24th-jan-2017

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

Or click HERE

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

You might think that a constituent part of a union was deserving of respect by virtue of being a constituent part of a union, and that no further qualifications would be necessary. You might think that, but if you do you’re clearly not a member of Scotland’s Unionist party leadership. This week the Furst Meenister Nicola Sturgeon stated that MSPs must have a vote on whether Brexit is triggered, and that she’s going to ensure that the elected representatives of the Scottish people have their say.

This is outrageous, apparently. At least according to the usual suspects. It’s a waste of time and money. It’s wrong for Scotland to want a say on our Prime Minister’s wizzard wheeze of a plan to get the entire world, or at least the European bits of it, to roll over and concede everything that Britain wants. With Brexit there will be pixey dust. There will be trade deals with global powerhouses like Togo. There will be ginger beer, and high tea, and lashings of innovative jam. We’re going to have our spacecakes and eat them. And we’re first in the queue to be shafted by the rabidly protectionist Trump. How dare a glorified parish cooncil demand a say on the latest chapter of the Great British Fantasy Tale. The British people voted for buttercups and sunbeams, and that’s what Theresa is going to give them.

Let’s be clear here. Theresa May’s Brexit plan bears much the same relationship to the real world as Donald Trump’s press secretary. It is a farrago of nonsense clung onto by fools who delude themselves that Britain has all the cards to play and that the EU is desperate to give Britain everything that it wants, so that it can wander off into a sunny uplit land of free trade and zero regulation while still having unfettered access to all those parts of the EU that it sees as beneficial. It rests upon the assumption that other EU members will be perfectly content to grant the UK a deal that allows Britain to keep most of the advantages of EU membership, but with none of the disadvantages. It’s a plan that will dissolve into five year old girly tears like a Nazi’s gob meeting a protester’s fist the moment it encounters the EU negotiators.

It’s only right that the Scottish parliament gets a say on May’s dreamscape. It’s not like May is giving Scotland any say. Her idea of listening to Scotland is to stick her fingers in her ears and sing Rule Britannia. If Scotland wants to air an opinion we can only do so ourselves. It’s either that or rely on Fluffy Mundell to stand up for Scotland in the cabinet, but hedgehogs on the A9 are more successful in standing up to passing lorries than Fluffy is at standing up for Scottish interests. But then he doesn’t think that standing up for Scotland is his job. He thinks his job is standing up for the UK cabinet in Scotland, like a hedgehog preaching the benefits of becoming roadkill. Fluffy doesn’t respect Scotland, his boss doesn’t respect Scotland, but in the face of their arrogant intransigence Scotland can show them some self-respect.

May doesn’t think she needs to bother about what Scotland wants, she doesn’t care about protecting Scotland’s interests, because she’s managed to convince herself that talk of a second independence referendum is a bluff. She’s mistaken. Before the last independence referendum the received wisdom of the Unionist media was that Alex Salmond was bluffing, that he didn’t really want a referendum. It’s the same self-deluding story this time. The Unionist establishment is so much in love with itself that it can’t bring itself to believe that anyone would really want independence from it. It must be a bluff in order to leverage something out of them, and because it’s a bluff they can safely ignore it. Then they discover too late that it wasn’t a bluff after all. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson by now.

Labour is bugger all help in pushing the distinctiveness of Scotland’s perspective. That’s not unsurpising however, since the perspective of Labour is the view you get when you’re stuck down the bottom of a sewer and you’re swimming against the tide. The Lib Dems aren’t much use either. The so-called Europeanists of the Lib Dems are more consumed by their hatred of the SNP than they are by any opposition to Brexit. Just like the Tories they tell us that Scotland shouldn’t become independent because then we’d be a small powerless country that was all alone. But that’s what we already are within the UK. If Scotland was independent it would be able to make alliances on its own account.

We’re heading into the unknown, led by people who have no care or concern for what’s best for Scotland but who complain constantly about the ‘threat’ of a second referendum. They think that democracy is a threat. They think that it’s dangerous for the people of Scotland to have a say. They’re right. It is dangerous. It’s dangerous for them.

On Tuesday the UK Supreme Court is due to give its ruling on whether the government is legally obliged to gain parliamentary approval before it can trigger Article 50 and start the Brexit process. It may or may not decide that the devolved administrations must also be consulted. If it rules that they do, there will be a constitutional crisis as the Conservatives and Ukip scream that England’s will is being ignored. If the court rules that they don’t there will be a constitutional crisis as Scotland protests that Westminster’s promise to enshrine the Sewell Convention and ensure the permanency of the Scottish parliament has no legal validity after all, and it was just empty words. We’ll find out soon enough. And we’ll find out soon enough which shade of crisis we’re in for. The only certainty left in this decreasingly united kingdom is that we’re in a crisis and will remain so as long as we stay a part of this dysfunctional union. If they won’t respect us, we’ll show them that we respect ourselves.

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-23rd-jan-2017

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

It’s difficult to get your head into the mindset of Scottish Unionists. There is overwhelming evidence that the Conservatives are cruel and duplicitous money grabbers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. This is the party which insists that everyone – with the exception of corporations, bankers, and the rich – must pay their own way in life, to the point where they will kick away the crutches of the disabled in order to teach them to stand on their own two feet. In pursuit of that aim they’ve spent the all their time in office since the 1970s slashing social support, axing benefits, and ending subsidies. They are blind to the social damage caused, immune to any appeals to their better natures, because they have no better natures. If it doesn’t pay, it must be axed, and if it does pay it must be sold off to their pals in the City of London.

Yet despite a pattern of bloodsucking which is as obvious as a vampire in a bloodbank, Scottish Unionists affect to believe that the Tories gladly subsidise Scotland to the tune of billions annually, out of a sense of patriotic altruism and nothing more. Scotland is, uniquely, the sole recipient of Conservative largesse. It makes as much sense as Jackie Baillie with a pocket calculator. The truth is if Scotland really was such a massive drain on the coffers of the UK, we’d have been independent long ago. But then the people who propagate the story of a Scottish poverty and fecklessness also tend to believe that the British Empire was a saintly example of self-effacing charity, and not the colonialist exercise in rapacious asset stripping, theft, imperialism, and genocide, that it really was.

Still, the financial lifeline which the benevolent UK supposedly bestows on Scotland allows Unionists to cry “But what about the deficit!?” every time an independence supporter points out the really crippling deficit in Scotland, which is the democratic deficit. And then they tell you how proud they are to be Scottish and British. To be honest, some Unionists will cry “But what about the deficit!?” no matter what an independence supporter says to them. Even the most innocuous statement, from “It’s a bit nippy outside,” to “Would you like a wee cuppa tea?” is met by an anguished cry of “But what about the deficit!?” It’s their trump card, and just like the Trump in America it’s dishonest and misleading.

It’s difficult to understand why Unionists believe that the supposed weakness of the Scottish economy after centuries of Westminster rule is a point in their favour. Given the embarrassing abundance of resources that Scotland has, far in excess of most European countries, our supposed poverty is no advertisement for Westminster rule. It’s an argument that we need to escape a system which has criminally mismanaged our economy.

I’m not going to get into the GERS figures here. It’s enough to point an interested reader in the direction of the analyses carried out by the CommonWeal and Dr Craig Dalzell, which you can read here https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/9140/gers-201516-debunked and here https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/9879/report-beyond-gers-scotlands-fiscal-position-post-independence Suffice to say that the GERS figures tell us nothing about the financial situation of an independent Scotland.

The real deficit which cripples Scotland, the real deficit which damages our society, the real deficit that weakens and diminishes us, is the democratic deficit. The democratic deficit means that Scotland is being torn out of the EU into the hardest of hard Brexits, despite the fact that Scotland voted to remain a part of the EU by a larger margin than we voted to remain a part of the UK. And let’s not forget that we voted to remain a part of the UK in no small measure because we were repeatedly told that doing so was the only way to retain our EU membership. The democratic deficit means that the wishes of Scotland’s voters have precisely zero influence on the actions and policies of the UK government. The democratic deficit means that the single Conservative MP, the man who rejoices in the title of Secretary of State for Scotland, tells us that it’s not his job to represent Scotland in the British cabinet. He thinks that his job is to represent the British cabinet in Scotland.

Theresa May’s government, and the government of David Cameron before her, have rejected every suggestion, amendment or proposal from Scotland’s MPs. Every single amendment to the Scotland Bill from Scottish MPs was voted down by MPs from the rest of the UK, who rammed through a Bill that fell far short of what the Better Together campaign promised during the 2014 referendum. They promised us the Moon and the stars, but then they delivered a small rock which they used to batter us over the head saying, “You’re seeing stars now.” And the exact same pattern of arrogant dismissal is characterising the UK’s approach to Brexit.

The UK government has refused even to consider any of the proposals put forward by the Scottish government in an attempt to find a compromise on Brexit. They have ruled out any possibility of a special deal for Scotland, while falling over themselves to promise special deals for their pals in the City of London and Japanese car manufacturers with factories in leave voting areas of the North of England. Scotland isn’t just sidelined, we’re on the track to oblivion. We’re being shunted into the scrap yard by people who don’t care about us.

They tell us how lucky we are to be a part of this great Britain with its red white and blue Brexit. They say that we would have no influence as a small country in the EU, as if we had any influence in the UK. But the truth is that small EU member states like Malta, Latvia, or Slovenia, countries with fewer people and smaller economies than Scotland, have vastly more influence in shaping the form that Brexit will take, and in determining the future for Scotland, than the people of Scotland do themselves. That’s a democratic outrage. It’s the democratic deficit that is really screwing Scotland over. But you won’t hear a Unionist mention it. They only know the prices that the Tory government tells them, but not the value of real democracy.

Audio version of this blog article, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-21st-jan-2017

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

There’s an important question to be asked in Scottish politics. Important like it’s important to ask how much life remains in a zombie. That question is, what precisely would it take to get the leadership of the Labour party in Scotland to recognise that Scotland’s best interests would be served by independence, and not by remaining a part of the UK. We got an answer to that question yesterday, and the answer is “nothing at all”.

There are no imaginable circumstances under which Kezia Dugdale and Anas Sarwar would concede that the Union gemme is a bogey as far as Scotland is concerned. Theresa May is taking the UK out of the EU, out of the single market, out of the supervision of the European courts which guarantee our employment and civil rights, and Labour is fine with that. We’re deeply disappointed, said Labour in Scotland, but it’s not an excuse for an independence referendum.

Theresa May could announce that in order to tackle the UK’s eye watering national debt she had decided to sell off five year olds into a life of servitude in the slave army of the extraterrestrial lizard people from Alpha Centauri, and Labour in Scotland would put out a statement saying that they were deeply disappointed that children were being put on spacecraft and sent off to the radium infested dilithium mines of the Cygnus Quadrant, but it wasn’t an excuse for another independence referendum and we should welcome the opportunity that being a part of the UK single market gives Scotland to strike trade deals with our alien lizard overlords.

It would be just another example of what Theresa May called on Tuesday Britain’s proudly internationalist history. Which is an interesting way of describing the slave trade, colonialism, genocide, and imperialism. She chose to present her Brexit speech while dressed in a clown costume, because it’s the only way that anyone could make Boris Johnson seem like a serious statesperson.  And she chose well, because today the world is laughing at Britain, the toothless mangy cat that thinks it can roar like a lion.  Britain is an embarrassment.  There is a justifiable cringe in Scotland, and it’s the cringe that comes from the realisation that these selfish self-serving arrogant fools represent us on the world stage.

The Tories could announce that as a cost saving measure they were replacing the NHS with a wire brush and a bottle of dettol which could be hired for a very reasonable rate simply by calling a premium rate phone line, and Labour in Scotland would put out a statement saying that they were deeply disappointed but it wasn’t a reason for another independence referendum. And then they’d add that it’s important to show solidarity with working people in Birmingham and Bristol by scrubbing disabled Scottish people with disinfectant and poking them with brooms.  Showing solidarity with working people in Barcelona or Bonn or Bologna doesn’t occur to Labour, because they’re not nationalists at all.  Oh no. They’re British.  Nationalism is an affliction of lesser breeds.

Labour’s Scottish leadership doesn’t grasp the difference between solidary and a suicide pact. The UK government is driving their bus with its lying £350 million message off a cliff, and Labour in Scotland doesn’t want us to use the emergency door. Saying that there are no circumstances under which you could possibly conceive of a Scotland which would be better off escaping the nasty and vicious state that the UK is becoming is suspiciously cultish behaviour. Although that may possibly be a typo.

To their credit, at least Labour did support a motion in Holyrood on Tuesday to defend Scotland’s place in the single market, albeit with the caveat that it had to be within the UK. The Lib Dems, who like to present themselves as the most stalwart defenders of Britain’s EU membership, voted against the motion along with the Tories. And so Wullie Rennie’s wee band of bus passengers managed to prove that it is actually possibly to be more hypocritical and duplicitous than the Labour party in Scotland. That’s quite an achievement, like having worse hair than Donald Trump.

The Ruth Davidson Fan Club is desperately hoping we forget that just a few short months ago she was telling anyone who would listen that leaving the EU and the single market would be a disaster for the Scottish economy. But within twenty four hours of the EU vote she was bigging up Brexit as the best thing since a bacon butty. Although we’ll be paying a lot more for those in future as most bacon is Danish and the arse has fallen out the pound. Ruthie’s getting off very lightly in the Scottish media for her 180 degree change of mind, but that’s why she likes tanks, because the turret can swivel in any direction.

We know now that the Unionist parties in Scotland are not remotely interested in what’s best for Scotland. Their loyalties lie with the Westminster parliament. What May presented us with on Tuesday was the absolute worst case scenario for Brexit, and for good measure she foolishly threatened the rest of the EU with an economic race to the bottom that the UK can only lose. We’re heading off a Brexit cliff to smash on the rocks of right wing extremism, and what remains will be left to sink or swim as the rich head for the privatised lifeboats. And this foolish arrogant government has the nerve to demand unity.

Yet still Labour and the Lib Dems don’t want Scotland to examine all and every means of escaping the dystopian right wing neoconservative nightmare that is in store for us. A future in which Scotland will be little more than a glorified English region, stripped of all political significance and bereft of influence or any ability to shape the course of UK politics. It’s a state in which Scottish interests are not considered or even noticed.  A state in which Scotland’s role is to allow English nationalists to pretend that their Britishness means they’re not nationalist at all.  We’re destined to be the last vestige of a lost empire, a balm to Britain’s post-imperial angst, existing solely to boost the ego of a decrepit state and to reassure it that it still possesses something.  Britain is the Norma Desmond of Europe, manically cackling that it’s still great even though the role it can play has got small.  If the horrific magnitude of May’s economically catastrophic vision of a hard as nails Brexit won’t shake Kezia or Wullie Rennie out of their red white and blue complacency, nothing will.

Some folk are always going to be a lost cause. We must strive to persuade the less strident and the wavering No voters of last time that this time the disadvantages of remaining a part of the UK far outweigh any risks of becoming an independent country. If you value social democracy, if you treasure public services, if you believe that a country should be run in the interests of the many not the few, if you espouse tolerance and acceptance, if you understand that kindness and dignity go hand in hand, and equality is the lifeblood of a fair and just society, then you have to support independence.  The alternative is a future without a state pension, without the NHS, without public services in a down at heel version of a tax haven where most people struggle to make ends meet and must work like slaves in the dilithium mines until they drop dead from exhaustion and age.

Ironically, if we want to protect and defend the positive things about Britain, the NHS, our public services, an open acceptance of difference, an understanding that diversity is a strength not something to fear, we can only do so with independence. The Britain that 2014’s No voters thought they supported doesn’t exist any more. It has killed itself in the fires of hatred and fear. Scotland doesn’t have to follow. Let’s choose a different path.

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-18th-jan-2017

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

Well that’s it then. Remember during the 2014 independence referendum when JK Rowling said that if Scotland voted No we’d be in the position of the spouse who had threatened divorce but who had then agreed to stay, so we’d be in an incredibly strong position and have all our concerns and desires carefully listened to and taken into account? Well how’s that working out then? It was a complete fantasy, but coming as it did from a fantasy writer that shouldn’t be a great surprise.

The people who voted No in 2014 have been taken for mugs. England’s Tories have made it perfectly clear that they care deeply about the European Union, but they don’t give a shit about Scotland. It’s not that Scotland is low down on their list of priorities, it doesn’t even figure at all. Despite what the Better Together campaign told No voters in 2014, Britain doesn’t love you. It doesn’t care for you. It doesn’t value you as an equal partner in this family of nations. You’re just a useful tool to help maintain the power of Westminster. And Westminster doesn’t give a toss about you, just like it doesn’t give a toss about those of us who voted Yes.

Theresa May’s speech today makes it perfectly clear that not only is she not giving any consideration to the concerns and desires of Scotland, she doesn’t even know or care what they are. This Westminster government is not giving serious consideration to the proposals of the Scottish government, they filed them in the bin, unread. And after doing that she said that she wants the country to come together. She wants the UK to come together after she’s proposed to implement the most extreme right wing version of Brexit imaginable. She’s taken the concerns of the 48% who voted to remain in the EU and she’s trashed them. She’s put a bomb under the Irish peace process and will sacrifice Northern Ireland to the gods of neoconservatism. She’s told Scotland to get back into the shortbread tin. She doesn’t want unity. She doesn’t want collaboration and cooperation between the nations of the UK. She wants blind obedience. She wants submission. She wants to strangle us in red white and blue bunting.

This Tory government is leading the UK into a catastrophic Brexit that risks enormous damage to the British economy, with the consequent loss of jobs, financial security, and diminished life chances and opportunities for the vast majority of us who, unlike Theresa, aren’t married to multimillionaire investment fund managers. A special deal for Scotland isn’t going to happen. All May wants from Scotland is that we put up and shut up. Well she can think again because we will not be silenced.

The future for the UK is a Brexit that’s as hard as the heart of the Tory MP who once complained that homeless people were littering the street outside the opera. The country will be turned into a tax haven, social protection, workers’ rights, social security and the NHS will all be trashed and burned. We’re staring at a low wage low tax economy, where a minority enrich themselves and the majority struggle in poverty. What May told us today is the very worst form of Brexit imaginable. A heartless Brexit. A Brexit without compassion. A Brexit without care, consideration, or common humanity. All of our futures are now hostage to a Tory party that is now indistinguishable from Ukip.

They’ve had seven months to come up with this. Seven months during which they were supposed to be developing a plan to negotiate with the rest of the EU, instead they’ve been working on a way of selling an extreme right Brexit to the British media. Their negotiating strategy is to tell the EU that they’ll cut taxes, cut benefits, cut social care provision and ditch regulations on business if they don’t get access to the single market while still restricting immigration. It’s like Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles putting a gun to his own head, because the only people who will suffer from this strategy will be the working classes of Britain. The rich, as ever, will be just fine. The Tories’ great plan for the future of this blessed Union is to turn it into a ruthless racist rightwing bunting bedecked theme park for tax avoiders. Oligarchs R Us.

There’s now no doubt that the only way Scotland can avoid this fate is by holding a second independence referendum and voting for independence. Labour in Scotland is still opposed. Despite being presented with the absolute worst case scenario possible for Brexit, despite it being as clear as the look of scorn on May’s face that Scotland’s wishes are dismissed and traduced, Kezia Dugdale still thinks it’s not an excuse for another referendum. It does make you wonder what Kezia would consider a reason for another referendum, because right now it looks like there are limbo dancers who are less supine than Kezia. She’s still pitching her idea that Scotland within the UK could control its own immigration policy, despite the Tories ruling it out, despite her own party leader ruling it out. No wonder her party has become an irrelevance. They won’t stand up for Scotland. They won’t stand up for the working classes. They don’t even have the dignity to stand up for themselves. Labour in Scotland is what happens when the Tories have screwed you so hard that you’ve got a sore throat.

Labour in Scotland’s leadership might have abandoned all hope. They might have surrendered to a destructive hard Brexit. They might be complicit in the damage that the Tories are created, but they rest of us won’t be. We will not be silenced. We will not be ignored. Our voice will be heard.

There will be another independence referendum and this time the stakes have never been higher. Scotland either wins its independence or we die a death of a thousand Tory cuts, broken and bleeding as our society is destroyed, our futures trashed, our opportunities lost. We can be ignored, sidelined, patronised, insulted and abused, or we can look to a future that the people of Scotland determine and shape for ourselves. Let’s get organised. Let’s get going. Let’s get loud. The UK is over, and it was the Unionists themselves who destroyed it. Independence is coming.

Audio version of this blog post, courtesy of Sarah Mackie @lumi_1984 https://soundcloud.com/occamshaver/wee-ginger-dug-17th-jan-2017

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709

Over the weekend Theresa May hinted that she’s going to go full out for a hard Brexit, and prioritises controlling immigration over retaining British membership of the single market. This is despite the fact that prominent Leave campaigners during the EU referendum insisted that leaving the EU didn’t mean leaving the single market. We’re facing the worst case scenario, the hardest possible Brexit, which is likely to wreak havoc on the economy and do appalling damage to job opportunities and living standards.

Then the Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that a Britain outside the single market could find a new future as a tax haven, and abandon the current European style social model. That could have a catastrophic effect on social benefits, pensions, social security provision and the NHS. All the more so because the Dutch recently made clear that they’ll veto any trade deals with the UK if Britain seeks to make itself into even more of a tax haven than it already is. The future of the UK is looking bleaker and bleaker, our worst fears are becoming realised. This is not a country in which it’s safe to be poor, to be sick, or to grow old. If we want to maintain our commitment to a decent standard of living for all our citizens, the only possiblity is through independence.

If we want to win the next indyref, we need to do something about the substantial majority for No which currently exists amongst those of pensionable age. That means we need to speak to our grandparents and parents and try to find out what’s preventing them from voting Yes, and give them the answers that can put any fears they may have to rest. And while we’re doing that, we also need to speak to them about the very real threats that the Tories are making to dismantle the welfare state. There is a very real prospect that those of us of working age will have to work much longer than our parents or grandparents in return for a much lower state pension. That’s if there is such a thing as a state pension by the time those in their teens or twenties get to pensionable age.

It’s a fact that the longer Scotland remains a part of this dysfunctional UK, the more precarious the future becomes for those of us of working age or younger. We need to do all we can to reassure Scottish pensioners that their existing pensions are safe and secure and will continue to be paid after Scottish independence, but the truth is that if you vote against independence in the mistaken belief that it’s the only way to ensure your pension will continue to be paid, you are putting at risk the chances that your children and grandchildren will enjoy the same pension rights that you do. Another decade of Tory rule will see to that.

Before going any further, I need to make it clear that I don’t believe all pensioners are rampant unionists. I know that’s not the case. There are many thousands of older people who not only voted Yes, but who actively support and campaign for Scottish independence. But that said, it is a statistical fact that people of pensionable age are more likely to oppose independence, and that’s a problem that the Yes campaign needs to tackle. I believe that tackling it requires a two pronged approach, firstly to reassure older people that their pensions, the NHS, social care services and the like will be safer with independence than entrusting them to an increasingly right wing Tory government that’s hell bent on isolating us from Europe. And secondly we need to speak to people about the disadvantages, risks and downsides to Scottish public services, pensions, and social security provision by remaining a part of the UK.

I tweeted “We need to start talking to our parents & grandparents about how their fears for their pensions mean they’re depriving us of ours.” It must be a full moon, because Unionist Twitter went batshit mental. Although to be honest batshit mental is its baseline state. You’d think that I’d actually tweeted, “We need to tell our grannies that if they don’t vote Yes we’ll throw them from a bus.” And in fact that’s exactly the gloss that Labour stalwart Duncan Hothersall put on my tweet. Because talking to your granny about your own fears for the future is of course exactly the same as elbowing her off a number 60 bus and onto a busy road.

Others told me that what I’d tweeted was the most vile and disgusting thing they’d ever heard. And these are people who cheerfully retweet Brian Spanner. How dare I threaten pensioners in such a manner. It was far more of a vile and disgusting threat than when Better Together phoned up pensioners before the independence referendum to tell them that if they voted Yes their pensions would no longer be paid. Others insisted that it was greedy and selfish. Hoping that we can maintain a system that ensures that younger people continue to have the same rights to a state pension as their grandparents is clearly an act of utter selfishness on the part of independence supporters.

Having spent the day blocking and muting screaming people who insist that they are viscerally opposed to nationalism while having flegs in their avatars, it’s clear that any proposal from an independence supporter to pitch an appeal directly to older people in order to persuade them of the merits of independence hits a very sensitive nerve in the Unionist camp.

The projection is strong in them. They won their No vote in no small measure by terrifying the elderly, so they are convinced that any initiative from the Yes movement is likewise going to be similarly fear inspiring, negative, and bilious. The anger, odium, and sheer hatred emanating from the die-hardists in response to the idea was overwhelming. So clearly, it’s the right strategy. The Unionists are utterly terrified that older people might change their minds once they learn the truth about Unionist threats.

We don’t need to persuade everyone of pensionable age who currently doesn’t support independence. We only need to persuade 10% of them. And the very best people to address the concerns of older people are their younger family members. Sure, some are a lost cause and always will be, but if we can persuade just a minority to see why they should support independence, then we will win. So we need reassure our older family members that their own pensions and NHS services will be safe, but also let them know that they need to support independence in order to give the same assurances to their children and grandchildren.

No one wants to shove yer granny aff the bus. We want to keep her on the bus. But if Scotland votes No a second time, then the bus and all of us on it will head straight over a red white and blue Brexit cliff.

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at [email protected]

Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.

If you’d like to make a donation but don’t wish to use Paypal or have problems using the Paypal button, please email me at [email protected] for details of alternative methods of donation.

Signed copies of the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug volumes 1 2 3 & 4 are available by emailing me at [email protected]. Price just £21.90 for two volumes plus P&P. Please state whether you want vols 1 & 2 or 3 & 4. You can also order signed copies of all four volumes for the special price of £40 plus £4 P&P within the UK.

Copies of Barking Up the Right Tree are available from my publisher Vagabond Voices at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993 price just £7.95 plus P&P. The E-book of Barking Up the Right Tree is available for Kindle for just £4. Click here to purchase.

Get your copy of Barking Up the Right Tree Volume 2 by placing an order on the Vagabond Voices website. Just click the following link.

http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=2709