Tag: Nicola Stugeon

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Politics & Current Affairs

GE 2015: Sturgeon, #DollGate and the Death of Dignity

Humza YousafIf truth is the first casualty of war then dignity is undoubtedly the first casualty of election campaigns.

I draw the reader’s attention to Exhibit A. Humza Yousaf (that’s Humza, by the way, John Pienaar. OK? Not Hamza), MSP for Glasgow and the Scottish Government’s Minister for Europe and International Development, thoughtfully drew my attention to the matter via his Facebook page.

While Scottish Labour canvassers have been, for some weeks now, begging their own voters to vote Tory to keep out the SNP in seats Labour can’t win (which, by now, is nearly all of them), Labour MP Tom Harris has provided a variation on the theme.

The ‘Honourable’ Member for Glasgow South, so terrified is he at his impending demise at the hands of the SNP, has sent a remarkable begging letter to his Tory-voting constituents. For those disinclined to read it in full, it may be summarised thus: ‘Dear Conservatives, please, please, please, save my arse from the skelping the Scottish working class is intent on delivering via the SNP.’

While your narrator awards the initiative maximum points for ingenuity and creativity, alas the complete absence of principle and dignity ensures an overall final score of zero.

Staying with the SNP and things Scottish, for a moment, The Scottish S*n distinguished itself still further in its quest to plumb new depths and go boldly where no toilet-dwelling excrescence has gone before in its latest attack on the First Minister. Determined to ensure that no barrel will remain unscraped in its efforts to serve the cause of its Unionist overlords, it ran a piece about Nicola Sturgeon’s psychopathic inclinations as evidenced by a childhood rammy with her sister involving a doll (currently trending on Twitter as #DollGate). The filth was quickly stirred with a disgusting allusion to matters intimate, allegedly involving the First Minister. Headlined The Scotweiler, the article included misogyny and sleazy smears and invasion of personal privacy all tied to that rag’s trademark reactionary hysteria and contempt for context, nuance and reference, never mind the truth.

Truly, the frothing hate, fear and loathing induced in establishment hearts by the formidable Sturgeon is as indicative of her coming triumph as the relentlessly apocalyptic Ashcroft polls.

Which reminds me; I must leave a note for the butler to get in a good Islay single malt to celebrate the ruin of all that The Scottish S*n holds dear, come May 7th.  One doubts that this England-dwelling exile will be alone in making such plans.

In other news The Jellyfish attacked the Eton Rifle for his responsibility in the recent deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean. The basis of the Jellyfish’s assault was two-fold. First, the government’s bombing of Libya, thus creating enormous numbers of homeless, terrified and fleeing people and, secondly, the government’s cutting of sea rescue resources; intended to discourage said people from trying to reach the UK.

He was responded to in kind by the Eton Rifle’s associates who accused him of making political capital of a human tragedy. I’m sure there must be many of us who find a politician making a political attack on a political opponent, regarding a political decision taken by said political opponent, for the purposes of political gain, somewhat unremarkable.

Sadly, the Jellyfish’s offensive was somewhat blunted by that most perennial of political phenomena; hypocrisy. Given that he and his party supported the mass murder of Libyan people and have been enthusiastically pursuing their own policy agenda to appease racists, this was, to be kind, not particularly well thought through.

We finish with a quick mention of the Democratic Unionist Party’s Jim Wells. Wells, as many will know, has the sort of homophobic form that borders on madness. Previously the instigator of the ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ campaign, Wells’ latest foray into bigotry and irrationality has attracted outrage. This week, at a hustings in South Down, the Northern Irish Health Minister said, “The facts show that you certainly don’t bring a child up in a homosexual relationship. That child is far more likely to be abused or neglected.”

However, no such ‘facts’ exist and these non-existent facts show nothing of the kind. Alternatively, there is strong emerging anecdotal evidence which shows that the children of Democratic Unionist parents run a real risk of becoming intolerant, homophobic, bigoted, raving right-wing, religious nut-case assholes.

‘Save the Six Counties’ Kiddies from C*nts’ anyone?

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Politics & Current Affairs

GE 2015: The Beautiful Game

threeBritish politicians, It’s not unreasonable to suggest, are not held in especially high regard; for reasons too numerous and wearyingly familiar to expound here. And yet last night’s leadership debate offered fresh delights. New opportunities to sharpen one’s contempt and indulge in some, as the parlance of the day would have it, LOLZ.

Watching The Grubby Chancer attack the Eton Rifle for his recent governmental record, for example, you’d be forgiven for assuming the Lib Dems had spent the last five years furiously manning the barricades and lobbing Molotov Cocktails into the bourgeois eateries where the 1922 Committee meets. Instead of, as we well know, actually being part of that government and rejecting any and every opportunity to withdraw Lib Dem support and see the coalition crumble.  It would, therefore, have been a most uncharitable soul who would’ve denied The Jellyfish his moment of unadulterated glee: “They’re blaming each other!” he exclaimed, before delivering, in all fairness, a truly great punch-line: “And they’re both right!”

The Racist, disconcertingly resembling a bellicose bullfrog more and more these days, is not a man to allow taste, decency or humanity to interfere in the serious business of demonising foreigners. His impressive resistance to those qualities displayed itself in even bolder form, however, when he insisted those AIDS-ridden dregs daring to come to the UK so they might just be able to, you know, live be denied. You just can’t fake the class a decent public school gives a chap.

The Lass from The Valleys was quickest off the mark suggesting The Racist be ashamed of himself. A suggestion that, one can only conclude, is as likely to be heeded as The Jellyfish declaring that “We will now proceed to construct the socialist order.”

Talking of lasses, there can be little doubt that Mz. Sturgeon was the surprise turn of the evening. So effective was she that those English persons previously given to bitching about Jocks coming down here and founding their national bank, sharing their penicillin, steam engines, telephones and whatnot, underwent conversions which could only be described as Damascene.

Yes, now it seems a significant number of our English brothers and sisters are demanding SNP candidates stand in the leafy Tory shires. One wag of my acquaintance going so far as to suggest the Scottish border be extended to the Watford Gap. Which would certainly make the phrase ‘the Deep South’ amusingly analogous…

The reaction of the Brit left was instructive. Once upon a time breaking up states, wrecking constitutions and so forth, was popular among communists, socialists and assorted revolutionaries. These days, seemingly, such things are passé. They’ve even got a new name for it: ‘pandering to nationalism’ they call it. As opposed, one can only presume, to pandering to the state, the Union and continuing austerity?

For example, twice The Jellyfish hung his head in what must be the closest thing to shame a machine politician can ever know. Firstly, on his assertion that under his premiership the minimum wage would rise to eight quid an hour by 2020, The Ozzie’s left-hook response of ten quid an hour landed the first of a number of embarrassing blows.

There was more. The Jellyfish, vainly scrambling for some lefty high-ground, insisted that corporate interests be allowed to make no more than five percent profit from the NHS. Whereupon the female trio successfully deployed outflanking manoeuvres stating that no profit at all should be made by anyone from the NHS. Ouch.

And that, in essence, was what really mattered about last night, insofar that such political beauty contests can ever be said to really matter. On one side The Eton Rifle, The Jellyfish and The Grubby Chancer comprise the Austerity All-Stars. On the other hand Progressive Social Democracy United with Captain Sturgeon as striker, Bennett spraying crosses from the left wing and Wood, in a holding mid-field role, offer an anti-austerity alternative.

Politics as the beautiful game eh? It could be…