Unemployment fell in Scotland on yesterday’s new figures, while it rose everywhere else in the United Kingdom. There is no doubt that the difference was caused by the fact that the Scottish government has a (limited) ability to effectively spend forward and thus postpone the results of the Osborne public spending cuts. But the interesting result of that, is that the employment increase in Scotland was in the private sector, not the public sector, while private sector employment fell in England.
The Osborne theory – that public sector employment “crowds out” private sector employment, and cutting public sector jobs will somehow automatically increase the production of private sector jobs – appears, in this large scale example in the actual UK economy – the opposite of the truth. Cutting public sector jobs cuts private sector jobs too. That is intuitively correct – people who have just lost their job, their car and their home are going to be spending less buying things from other people.
As Miliband’s appearance before the TUC reminds us, the truth is that, were New Labour in power, the difference between what Osborne is doing and what New Labour would do is very marginal indeed. Only in Scotland do the voters have a real alternative, and they have flocked to it in droves.
While some old people will die this winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, the Westminster government has had no trouble at all in finding over £100 billion to burn in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, in the interests of the wealthy elite in charge of a few mega-corporations. These wars have been solidly supported by all the unionist parties, with a brief wobble by the Lib Dems under the good Charlie Kennedy, quickly disposed of.
The SNP have provided the only electable alternative to extreme neo-conservative policy (including neo-liberal economic policy) available to electors in the UK. They have had stunning electoral success as a result. The Lib Dems were perceived briefly in England as opposing the neo-cons, with some justice, but were hijacked by the right wing Clegg, and their wider leadership was bought up by the present and future riches office brings in our corrupt system. But in the period the Lib Dems did seem an alternative to the neo-con Tory and New Labour parties, they rose to new heights of popularity and support.
The almost 100% correlation today between unionism and neo-conservatism among professional politicians and media pundits is why I am absolutely confident Scotland will achieve independence very soon. That neo-con recipe is well and truly rejected by the Scottish people.
But where does that leave a newly independent England? (presumably still attached to Wales, but I leave that and Irish union aside) Political progressives in England have traditionally been the most hostile to English independence because England would have a permanent Tory majority.
Well, I am not so sure it would. Only ten years ago Scotland seemed to have a permanent New Labour majority. Things change. But also, how thick do so-called progressives have to be, not to see that New Labour is absolutely another neo-con party?
Who launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Who introduced university tuition fees? Who brought in control orders and 28 days detention? Who sanctioned kettling? Who gave unimaginable sums of your money to the bankers? Who massively expanded the Private Finance Initiative? Who invented Academy schools? Who was complicit in torture and extraordinary rendition? Who presided over the greatest ever growth in the gap between rich and poor in this country? Answers: New Labour, New Labour, New Labour, New Labour, New Labour, New Labour, New Labour, New Labour and
New Labour.
The truth is that, within the union, there is no practical chance for England to have any government other than a government of neo-cons. It needs a seismic shift to break this up. What we have seen is that the party system is resilient even to moments when its corruption is revealed to all, as in the MPs’ expenses and Murdoch scandals. The United Kingdom as an entity is in the power of a corrupt political class controlled by corporations, for whom perpetual war, hydrocarbon dominance worldwide and access at will to taxpayers’ pockets are the necessary conditions of their existence. Only a truly seismic shock in the political landscape can save the English from this. That much-needed shock can be the break-up of the United Kingdom. Who knows how politics in England would fall out afterwards, but it cannot be worse. A shake of the kaleidoscope is a moment of great potential. England needs that.
Paul, I’m not quite sure where the connection between the SNP and the Nazis was made, but I might be guilty. Anyway I get blamed at home for things I don’t think I do too.
Quote Craig “Only a truly seismic shock in the political landscape can save the English from this. That much-needed shock can be the break-up of the United Kingdom.”
If you want to change the course of politics in this cointry for the better, then come up to Scotland and help this Ancient Nation overcome the lies fed to it’s people continually by the British media.
“The truth is that, within the union, there is no practical chance for England to have any government other than a government of neo-cons.”
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True, it would be easier to have a sensible policy without those scotch cunts like Blair and Brown and Cameron running the country. However, it is entirely possible to have a policy of national independence not driven by US/EU/NATO. You just have to get the fuck out of the EU, NATO and the grip of the United States of Aggression.
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The real Hitlerites are the Scotch imperialists driving British foreign policy. And to keep the sheep in order, they have the BNP, a fake anti-war, nationalist party designed for people like you to call Hitlerite so nobody will vote for independence.
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But you don’t actually want independence, obviously, otherwise you would not be for Scotch Nationalism, which amounts to reducing Scotland to a trivial dependency of the EU: a virtual nothing, far too week to achieve any degree of real independence.
True, it would be easier to have a sensible policy without those scotch cunts like Blair and Brown and Cameron running the country.
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Tell us more about your manifold bitter hatreds.
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The real Hitlerites are the Scotch imperialists driving British foreign policy.
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At least it’s a novel spin on the whole, “Teh Zionazis are taking over the world OMG!”
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I think I once wrote a post about to ridicule the whole Jews-rule-the-world meme which is somewhat popular in these here parts by making up a Scottish conspiracy to rule the world. Didn’t know it would be taken seriously.
You think Brown and Blair aren’t cunts? Well I suppose if you’re a Zionist, killing a million Iraqis for nothing doesn’t count — just like Cameron and Sark dropping 30,000 bombs on Libya for no morally defensible reason doesn’t count either, after all NATO doesn’t do body counts, do they.
Craig
I thought you were all for slashing the public sector and to hell with people’s lives?
Quote Canspeccy “which amounts to reducing Scotland to a trivial dependency of the EU: a virtual nothing, far too week to achieve any degree of real independence”.
This statment is comic genius,oh and “Scots” is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland and is not to be cofused with “Scotch” unless of corse you were refering to the whisky or maybe it was the egg or the broth or even the pie.
The very mention of developers building on green field sites can stir the most placid of us into rowdy protesters; that is if the green field borders your own property.
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The Daily Telegraph has launched the Hands Off Our Land campaign to urge ministers to think again.
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I would like to think the campaign would have some success but it’s extremely doubtful. Of course the usual ‘consultations’ and public meetings will be held to satisfy the legal aspects of new developments, but they are purely PR and mean nothing. Councils will bend over backwards to please developers if it means they will reach their targets for ‘social housing’.
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For the past couple of years I’ve been involved in trying to save a local field which, only 20 years ago, was again refused planning permission because it was home to one of Scotland’s biggest red squirrel populations and also a large community of bats. Enter a property developer and, before we noticed, they had received planning consent for a large estate of 80+ homes. The first of these homes is now wind and water-tight and will cost an average of £270,000.
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http://subrosa-blonde.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-developers-world.html
Saor Alba, sounds like a black supremacist.
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But glad, anyway, to see my genius recognized at last.
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And if the Scotch do abandon the Union, will they revert to the use of gaelic and engage in other forms of Hitlerite nationalism? One plus, I suppose, of the Scots ceasing to speak English would be fewer of them trying to tell the English how to use the English language.
“I’ve been involved in trying to save a local field which, only 20 years ago, was again refused planning permission because it was home to one of Scotland’s biggest red squirrel populations and also a large community of bats.”
I love this sensitivity about bats and squirrels while the English are being ethnically cleansed from London and other English cities with the full support of the Lib-left establishment.
“… while the English are being ethnically cleansed from London and other English cities with the full support of the Lib-left establishment.” can Speecy.
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More potentially inflammatory, supremacist guff.
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As has been pointed out ad nauseam on this blog, Bosnia-Hercegovina 1992-1995 was where the phrase “ethnic cleansing” came into common usage. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered and/or riven forcibly from their homes – Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats – and that, and the Rwandan massacres (millions of dead) was ‘ethnic cleansing’ (though persoanlly, the term itself is repulsive, the concept of ‘cleansing’ inappropriate to mass murder and pogroms).
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Its use in the context of the UK today is ridiculous and detracts from what is an important issue in the UK and more generally. It is also, I would argue, an insult to those who really have been ‘ethnically cleansed’ in Rwanda, Bosnia or elsewhere.
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We’ve had the chicken-and-egg situation wrt MI6. And now, once again, the hobby-horse is rocking.
The English are not being ethnically cleansed from anywhere, they are leaving voluntarily having over-inflated the prices of their properties to such a height that other English people cannot afford to buy them. They then move to France, Spain, Scotland, etc, to live the good life.
Others like John Cleese (in Can Speccy’s link) move to California and then blame the UK for letting people from abroad into his beloved London. Makes one question if he was really acting in Monty Python or just being himself.
English Independence will happen by default, once Scotland has made its mind up, England will automatically be Independent.
An Independent Scotland then can sequester Faslane and abolish it, just send all the nuclear material to Windscale, they love to make something of it, well ehem, store it, because reprocessing will be stopped and the MOX reproccessing facility, costing billions, will be shut.
As for England getting a reduced, accountable Parliament? I think we have to fight for it, the establishment will not lay back and think of England, they will want to preserve their rotten influences and self serving ways, and they will use the police to stay in power. This will be Syria.
Off course, Independent countries will have to make their mind up whether they want to be part of a bloated Europe, or belong to some other trading block.
Looking at the annual rucking migration going to Ireland for some ‘racialist diversifications’ during the Orange season, when peacefull dreams go up in flames and blood red paint resurfaces on the tennament blocks, here I can see a loving relationship developing, Ireland is saved! No more devaluations and cheating by its central bank, Scotland will kiss it better.
What both countries need are Independent politicians who refuse ot play these party ganmes currently played with us, who make it clear to local authorities that they have to make ends meet and/or save to get there. Mandates from localities have to matter again, not be wiped off our screens by ‘the media’, a complicit, caniving political entity in itself, belitteling and marginalising their efforts. Abolish the BBC as it stands, it has lost its impartiality were it counts, break it up for all I care and ensure that it is not just governed by the great and good, my local butcher would make a great Governor.
But what do I care… people in England, who profess their love for their country, whilst driving past mountains of rubbish and filth thrown out of their cars, an extension of their homes and the only place they can call their England, have no idea what this notion is they support.
So all those who profess to love England, clean this place up!
Decentralise power for all I care, I will suit us fine, because then we would demand accountability locally, we would hold people responsible and take more care in who we elect.
If enough Scottish voters want Independence, then it will happen for both of us.
@Rob
You mentioned John Cleese
Can I be the first to point out the Proud Scottish Nationalist Sean Connery will not return to Scotland until it is free and until that happens to live as a tax exile.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7261161.stm
CanSpeccy Leave Subrosa alone. We love our native mammals, or what’s left of them.
Just because we Scots want to govern our own affairs and finances that some how makes us “Hitlerite nationalists” is a ridiculous anti Scottish view constantly spewed out by the unionist party’s propaganda departments. Independence for Scotland seems to be perceived by a lot of English people as us being anti English which is totally wrong we have nothing against or any bad feeling for the people of the rest of the UK we simply want control of our own destiny, would you hand your wage packet to your Neighbour and ask them to run your household budget?. I think People in England should be more concerned with the after effects of Scotland’s impending Independence, you think the Tory/ lib Dem cuts are harsh now this will be nothing in comparison to what they will have to cut when they loose Scotland’s resources, now cue the old propaganda about Scotland being a “subsidy junky”. But the truth will come with independence and leave many liars with red faces and empty pockets.
Paul Johnston: You mentioned John Cleese
Can I be the first to point out the Proud Scottish Nationalist Sean Connery will not return to Scotland until it is free and until that happens to live as a tax exile.
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I like it, Paul. I was thinking of Sir Sean Connery myself (Sir Sean?!?). I didn’t know about John Cleese’s rantings about “immigrants”
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It could be a sketch:
“What have immigrants ever done for us?”
“Well, they gave us doctors, nurses, Nobel-prize-winning scientists, writers, manual labourers, service workers, curry, couscous, spring rolls, music…etc…”
“Yes, but apart from doctors, nurses, Nobel-prize-winning scientists, writers, manual labourers, service workers, curry, couscous, spring rolls, what have they ever done for us?”
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It’s funny how many nationalists live abroad. We have our very own PhD biologist labouring well behind the curve of scientific discovery in the wilds of Canada bemoaning the “ethnic cleansing” of London and his not-so-subtle support for the BNP who can’t bring himself to live there. And there are tax dodging multi-millionaires like Sir Sean who contributes THOUSANDS of pounds to Scottish independence.
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There are silly clowns like Jim Davidson who live in Dubai on the grounds that he’d “rather be an ethic minority there than wait for himself to become one in Britain” (?!?)
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You get some funny people in this world!
Ingo: Abolish the BBC as it stands, it has lost its impartiality were it counts, break it up for all I care and ensure that it is not just governed by the great and good, my local butcher would make a great Governor.
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I disagree. I think it is too tempting to look at something which is either not perfect or even badly corrupted and then decide it is useless or worse than useless and therefore must be done away with. This is illogical. In fact, I think the BBC is still very good and unless you can think of something far better to replace it then be aware that there are plenty of others who have a great idea about how to replace it and it won’t be Right-On-Hippy FM that wins out. It will be FOX NEWS UK.
Qark: You think Brown and Blair aren’t cunts?
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Oh dear, “Qark”. I think I was making a reference to No Can Speecy For Himself’s use of “Scotch cunts”. Which I imagine is a vagina wrapped in breadcrumbs or a deliberate bit of trolling by Alfred/CD/Qark.
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But anyway, as abusive husbands and pedophile priests have known for some time, when all else fails always blame the scotch.
hence my suggestion to break it up, Angry, I’m well aware of the fact that m,any have becvome conditioned to its output.
A public broadcaster that is pandering to whoever is in power, dependent on their franchise from politicians, not us, the public, a broadcaster that has lost its scrutiny for fear of being castied for it by politicians.
When times are hard for us, they comply, diversify thoughts with comedy programms galore, they take us for a ride when asked for, by those who decide on their future, but not us.
Visions of Fox News and right on Hippie Fm do not disappear the arguments, nor does it stop the BBC protecting the establishment.
What I want is irrelevant, what we all want and agree on should matter there is no blueprint to follow.
Good sketch, angrysoba! I too didn’t know about Cleese ranting – and am very saddened by that, if it’s true. I guess, for some of the public school rebels of yore, it becomes easier to revert to type, eventually. A few years of colour, of dream and inspiration, then it’s back to boring black (and white).
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I’m conflicted about the BBC. I tend to to watch much of its TV News coverage now, but still I think that (apart from the News), its radio programming is excellent. Politically, I agree with ingo on its seeming lack of independence. The irony is that the BBC World Service – an arm of the Foreign Office – broadcast news that was far more impartial an dbalanced than the domestic BBC. That was its appeal. The World Service was excellent and has been cut. Yet many – not all – of those clamouring for its destruction come from the ideological corporate Right, who would like to give everything to Fox et al. Gerald Kaufmann, for instance, doesn’t like the BBC and thinks it should be privatised and broken up. I have to say, I think that would be a mistake. I’m not sure ITV/C4/Fox et al are any more independent of imperialist elites than the BBC. It’s the pretence to objectivity which they all sport but which in the case of the BBC has become increasingly hypocritical which aners people. They are justifiably angry that the BBC News coverage – and that a great, if flawed, institution – has been turned into some sort of propaganda and also that TV programming has been dumbed-down. Ironically, in the early 1990s, when the dumbing-down began, John Birt, to some extent justifiably the bete noir of most on the Left, actually wanted the BBC to go upmarket, not downmarket. Sadly, he lost that particular battle. the BBC does a lot of work around the country with local communities, children, etc. and do a lot of training – most broadcasters cut their teeth with the BBC. It’s the biggest producer of radio-plays in the world. We don’t see that local, grassroots work, it’s not foregrounded. Commercial broadcasters don’t need to bother with any of that valuable work.
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So, while equally angry about the propandistic aspects, on balance, I would not like to se the BBC go.
That should have read, “I don’t tend to watch much of its news coverage now”. I’ve watched enough, though, to know why I don’t watch it.
I don’t watch the BBC either. Or not much of it. And I sometimes listen to some of its radio broadcasting.
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I don’t want to see it go because I have seen nothing that even comes close to being as good as it for what it is supposed to do.
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I’d like to hear of viable alternatives but I won’t hear a bar of it if the likes of Prison Planet, Press TV, Russia Today, FOX, CNN, MSNBC etc… are offered in its stead. Clearly the BBC is better than all of those.
‘What have immigrants ever done for us?”
“Well, they gave us doctors, nurses, Nobel-prize-winning scientists, writers, manual labourers, service workers, curry, couscous, spring rolls, music…etc…”’
Immigrants are also executing the dodgy FOREX trades that the English can no longer be bothered to do, apparently-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14950873
Re: Ethnic cleansing
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“Its use in the context of the UK today is ridiculous, blah, blah, blah…”
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Sure. There used to be 8 million mostly English people in London, now there are about four, the other four being immigrants or the children of immigrants.
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No prob!
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But hey look at the brutal way those poor squirrels are being driven from their native habitat.
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Actually, all that the use of terms like supremacist and racist indicates is that a liberal is losing the argument.
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Now who is it
On foreign policy there’s been almost no difference between Labour and the Conservatives from Blair on – but on domestic policy there are some big differences.
The Conservatives opposed a national minimum wage, Labour introduced it. The Conservatives opposed devolution – without which Independence would probably be much further off – Labour introduced it. Labour also started direct peace negotiations in Northern Ireland that have brought relative peace there.
The Conservative led coaliton have cut housing benefit and allowed social housing rents to go up to 80% of private sector ones – which effectively means making many people homeless in the street. They’re trying to force even many of the genuinely disabled off disability benefit. They’re going beyond Thatcher’s internal market and Brown and Blair’s PFIs in the NHS to pretty much outright privatisation of the NHS.
That’s why a lot of people still support Labour as at least preferable to the Conservatives on domestic policies that can make the difference between being able to survive and homelessness and poverty for many people – and i can see their point. There hasn’t been much other choice for a long term.
I chose to stop supporting Labour after 1997, but whether i’ve been right to or not, i really don’t know. I thought the Conservatives couldn’t be any worse than New Labour. I was wrong – they are – even if the Blairite wing of New Labour move right so fast they’re almost doing the Conservatives’ job for them in the long run on some issues.
I tend to support independence mainly because the Scottish parliament has a more representative electoral system so gets better governments. Will the SNP continue to do a decent job now they have a majority or will they cave to big business and billionaires the way they did to Donald Trump? I’m hoping it’s the former and there are lots of things the SNP have done that i like (e.g ending contracting out of cleaners in NHS hospitals, investing in Green energy) but i’m concerned it could be the latter. We’ll see. Either way there needs to be some coherent opposition from someone in scotland – whether it’s Labour, Greens, Independents, conservatives or a mixture.
@angry
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For that image of the vagina wrapped in breadcrumbs, I forgive you everything.
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You’re wrong about the BEEB though – you’re saying that if there is nothing to eat for miles around but camel dung then the best thing to do is acquire a taste for it. Nope. Mine is still pussy au gratin. Yours too, I bet.
Joe Kane. I don’t want to get bogged down in your misinterpretations of what I wrote, but the debate was not about Scottish independence, but what would happen to England if Scotland was independent. But then you have to read the post, not just the comments, before going off on one.
Rwanda: Millions of Tutsis dead due to being massacred because of who they were. Conclusion: Genocide.
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Bosnia-Hercegovina: Bosnians, Serbs, Croats: Hundreds of thousands dead because of who they were. Conclusion: Genocide.
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Jews: Six millions dead due to being massacred because of who they were. Conclusion: Genocide.
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Roma: Two million dead due to being massacred because of who they were. Conclusion: Genocide.
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White English: Almost zero massacred because of who they were. Conclusion: No genocide.
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Conclusion from all these conslusions: Anyone who asserts that white English people are victims of genocide is totally wrong and is likely to adhere to a specific political agenda which one might describe as White Supremacist/ White Separatist. In other words, to put it simply and honestly, they want brown, yellow and black people out of England because, their argument goes, brown, yellow and black people are committing “genocide” against white English people. That political position might be defined a racist political position. It is also, I would argue, a somewhat bathetic position. The bathos is infused with irony and, I think, not a little sadness. It is difficult not to feel pity for those who hold such beliefs.
Poor Suhayl, doesn’t seem to have much grip on the English language, which must be a handicap for a writer.
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Still we can try once more to implant the original and authentic meaning of the word genocide in his mind:
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“The crime of the [German Nazi] Reich in wantonly and deliberately wiping out whole peoples is not utterly new in the world. It is only new in the civilized world as we have come to think of it. It is so new in the traditions of civilized man that he has no name for it.
It is for this reason that I took the liberty of inventing the word, “genocide.” The term is from the Greek word genes meaning tribe or race and the Latin cide meaning killing. Genocide tragically enough must take its place in the dictionary of the future beside other tragic words like homicide and infanticide. As Von Rundstedt has suggested the term does not necessarily signify mass killings although it may mean that.
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“More often it refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.
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Raphael Lemkin
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[Mod: Poor Canspeccy, doesn’t seem to have much grip on HTML, which must be a handicap for a blogger.
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Canspeccy: I’ve edited your comment to confine the italics to where they belong. The “i” tag is depreciated, the “em” tag should be used now. Please try to close your tags properly; you can’t close an “i” (or even an “em”) with a “slash a”, no matter how many times you try it.]