They were too extravagant to be buttonholes. The SNP’s MPs wore elaborate corsages. The unextinguishable impression is that they were going the extra mile in dressing up as particularly obsequious flunkies chuffed to be appearing before Her Maj, herself bedecked with the Koh-i-Noor and other jewels gained by the rape of conquered peoples, and enrobed in the furs of butchered rare animals.
Even if the white rose really were a symbol of Scotland – and a single allusion by Macdiarmid does not make it so – I would not want it used to make us look like the class creeps on a Royal visit. Much has been made of the battle for Dennis Skinner’s seat. But at least that awkward old man has repeatedly had the guts to make plain he does not approve of all the ludicrous flummery of faded but still vicious power – still vicious as the snooper’s charter and attacks on coastal Libya will shortly make clear. The SNP looked like a very determined set of entries for the toady of the year competition.
We should leave this loyalist monarchical crap to the unionists. An independent Scotland should not be a place where you dress like a florist’s advert before some fur-draped billionaire pensioner.
The SNP MPs are just settling in. They have that look about them of children let loose in a sweet shop. Provincial nobodies pinching themselves with disbelief at their new-found importance, they will make fine troughers.
Patronizing ersewipe.
Anon1, not you Craig.
Anon1
You are wrong – the handful of them I know personally are outstanding people, and I hope will resist the blandishments of the system. But this is not a good start – the Angus Robertson effect – and they have to know that.
I would have preferred more business like than Ascot.I did cringe a bit.Hopefully not a taste of things to come.” The Angus Robertson effect” Craig?
I knew him when he stayed in Vienna. I would hardly call him a Royalist.
DonnyDarko
He was showing one newly elected MP the type of knot he liked to see in a tie. But I am genuinely interested in your experience of him. I have always found his enthusiasm for NATO, officer family background and relationships with spooks rather worrying.
wonder if defence savings will be swallowed by internal “security” services?
Glad I didn’t lose a life fighting for human rights only to become the enemy within.
Didn’t listen to / watch it, but from the news I gathered that it was exactly parallel to first day of term at the apalling boarding school which blighted my childhood. SNP = new bugs to be treated with utter contempt and slapped down (eg for new bug stuff like clapping) at any indication of individuality. The criticism of apparel not authorised by sixth-form consensus was another feature.
The temptation to post this in the style of molesworth is overcoming me, chiz chiz.
Anon1
Right on the ball again!
I think we can reconcile your post with Craig’s reply by saying that the majority of the new SNP MPs will soon acclimatize (and become what Mary likes to call “troughers”*) but that there will be one or two (maximum) wannabe Dennis Skinners amoung them.
___________________
* except for George Galloway, of course (£300000 outside earnings last year).
‘Appalling’…molesworth won, there.
Glad that’s been sorted. There was I in blissfull ignorance thinking their attire was a piss take on all the pomp.
Still, it would not do for the SNP intake into this parliament to upset tradition by upstaging The Beast of Bolsover in the piss taking stakes.
Another thing the Scots are better at than the English, who themselves specialise in taking the piss out of those stuck up their own arses, and you have to go and spoil it by insisting it was really kow towing to the Establishment.
Some people just have no sense of devilment in them.
It’s to be hoped that when the hardworking taxpayer shells out either for major repairs to or a replacement for the Palace of Westminster, that a less archaic chamber will encourage less archaic* attitudes and customs. Most of the traditional bollocks is only of Victorian age, in any case. Half-digested Gothic ecclesiastical knockoff is not the architecture of choice for any assembly intended to reach rational and logical conclusions…
*Or more archaic, even. A Saxon moot or Viking Þorn would be preferable to the current nonsense.
‘Þorn’…brainfart. ‘Þing’ is what I meant. More coffee needed, and less pretentiousness.
Craig, you would’ve had to been wearing an invisible muzzle if you were one of them. Not to prevent you from troughing, but simply from speaking your mind. Enjoy your (personal) freedom. Whether Scotland frees or not.
Hope you’re well, and the book too! Please share your thoughts more often.
Thanks and best!
My take from the Queens Speech was that the whole upper royal family looked very tired & shaky, need more Zinc!, sorry I didn’t see any SNP members on the news; meanwhile some MP’s have actually seemingly been working in the US trying to clear up the mysteries left behind from previous regimes:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3100121/U-S-won-t-let-Guantanamo-Briton-free-ll-tell-torture-Senior-MP-says-evidence-authorities-want-Shaker-Aamer-remain-jail-quiet.html
(Daily Mail here mentions Andrew Slaughter/Jeremy Corbyn (Lab), David Davis/Andrew Mitchell (Con) trying to help release a torture victim)
Lets face it, no matter what yesterdays Qspeech said about the snoopers charter, they’ll go for an illegal full-take, even in the US when Congress fails to ratify, the snooping will continue at warp-speed. Frank Church said this in 1975
but that was a l o n g time ago
I’m with Dave – I thought they were taking the piss out of the pomp and ceremony by going OTT.
I’d be sorely tempted to get out a top hat and tails for the state opening.
FIFA – Craig, would be very interested in your insight.
How is it Sepp Blatter is always left untouched.
He is the mastermind criminal
Stephen King’s (sorry, Richard Bachman’s) “The Running Man” is coming true before our eyes. Sod “The Hunger Games”, it’s not a patch on King’s / Bachman’s novel.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/bbc-to-pit-lowpaid-against-each-other-in-hunger-gamesstyle-show-to-find-britains-hardest-grafter-10279386.html
And here’s the great Johnny Void’s take on the Queen’s Speech.
https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/
Kind regards,
John
Richard Gadsen
I wish it was a piss-take, but I am afraid it wasn’t. Definitely.
Anyone in need of a good hollow laugh should take a listen to this sky pilot at 7.50 today. I’m still scraping me cornflakes off me curtains!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00szxv6
Hello Craig, Angus was a DJ on Radio Danube for , must have been 10 years at least and was a regular at the biggest Irish Pub in the 1st District.Back then it was the after work place to go for all the Embassy staff across the ring in the 3rd.He enjoyed a pint with them as did I.But Vienna is full of spooks and military people as well as OPEC and UN people.Always has been. He was a media celebrity on English radio in Austria,so he moved in quite high circles.
He used to organise the annual “Burns Supper” doo in Vienna ,and the list of guests were from the Embassy/Ex Pat & UN crowd.You had to wade past all the SNP parapharnelia to get into the doo and he was never shy at selling the pins and badges and promoting membership.
I do remember being surprised when he ended up as SNP defence spokesman in Parliament cos I didn’t think he knew the first thing about it… I suppose that’s when he was knobbled by the deep State to change his and then the SNP’s tune on NATO.
But his commitment to Scotland and the SNP is total,and I would view him as a republican,not royalist.
“Richard Gadsen
I wish it was a piss-take, but I am afraid it wasn’t. Definitely.”
People will look through the lens of their conditioning. Not seeing things as they are, but as they wish it to be. Especially during a honeymoon.
Rose:
“Anyone in need of a good hollow laugh should take a listen to this sky pilot at 7.50 today. ”
Not quite sure what you are referring us to? Admittedly not a regular radio listener.
The SNP MPs wore corsages not jewellery. It was in a way a statement about respecting the importance of the ceremony without flaunting wealth.
Perhaps it was too subtle for you.
From your description, it sounds as though the State opening of Parliament was a splendid royalist affair, and we may look forward to more terrorists and human traffickers being frustrated!
Is it not the case that SNP members wear these flowers at the opening of the parliament in Hollyrood and they’re just transferring their own tradition to Westminster?
If so then Craig’s problem with the flowers, at least, is overstated?
But yeah, the tie knot thing. Can’t remember what it’s called at the moment, but I certainly have noticed it’s a favourite of masons and fellow travellers.
Does look smart though.
Anyway.
Bercow was a tad testy. Nookie off the menu at the moment, eh.
What’s wrong with clapping a colleague’s speech. That’s what normal human beings do. That’s what they do at Hollyrood.
Seems to me a few less Westminster traditions might make the world a much better place.
“we may look forward to more terrorists and human traffickers being frustrated”
Doubt that very much, Abe.
Westminster is one of the major sources of such evil.
The rose is the national flower of England and has been for over 500 years. The white rise is the emblem of Yorkshire. Scotland has it’s own emblem the thistle. Apparently the rose was not warn to show SNP allegiance to Scotland but to honour a Fascist sympathiser who wanted Germany to win the war and was indifferent to the bombing of Londoners who’s sons were giving their lives to prevent what happened to the Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals of Europe happening to the Jews, Gypsies and Homosexuals of Scotland.
The buttonholes and Windsor tie-nots rather miss the point, which is a lot more serious than the frivolity of attire – fashionable or unfashionable. The future demise of our country at the behest of the bankrupt and war-mongering US, the abrogation of human rights, demolition of the NHS, privatisation and expansion of prisons, and the militarisation of the police force are what bothers me. Even the Telegraph is concerned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11631112/Is-this-the-most-dangerous-Queens-Speech-in-living-memory.html
a Fascist sympathiser who wanted Germany to win the war
Didn’t know Lord Rothermere liked roses…