Thursday 18 September 2014

Yes, please, North Britain

So the native and adopted Jockanese have a vote to decide on the fate of England. 

It's all been rather interesting.  

Most interesting of all has been the opportunity to hear coverage of the hustings on BBC radio.  These days television for me is restricted to test cricket, a few football matches that seem like they could be of very high quality, the major golf tournaments and the occasional drama (but only if the cast is good and the name of the show indicates a likelihood of gory death).  I have not watched television news for several years and restrict my radio listening to BBC 5 Live and Radio 4 (I will add the shameful part in parentheses, sometimes I listen to football commentary on Shout Sport which, for reasons that make no sense at all, calls itself Talk Sport).  No doubt that has resulted in a somewhat skewed vision of the main arguments being fought-out in the streets of Scotland, but there it is.  

Politics in Scotland seems rather different from politics in England.  Ancient religious bigotries still dominate much of the discourse, with the obvious result that there is little discussion and an inordinate amount of certainty and bitter shouting from all sides on every issue.  Part of the religious bigotry that seems to hold greater sway than the Protestant-Catholic divide is the position of Socialism as the religion of choice in North Britain.  

For someone who finds it difficult to accept theistic theories, it is even more difficult to understand the widespread belief the Scotch seem to have in the religion of Socialism.  

Theism cannot be disproved by events, not least because its very nature makes it incapable of proof or disproof by reference to concrete fact.  

Socialism, on the other hand, has been proved beyond doubt to be a political, social and economic system that results on every occasion it is applied in an accumulation of power and wealth to a self-appointed political elite, the repression of dissent by social ostracism and criminal laws aimed at thoughts rather than acts, the stifling of industrial innovation, systemic corruption in all public bodies, a consequent systemic inability for the poor to make themselves richer and the bankruptcy of the State.  Every single State that has run itself on avowedly Soclialist lines is evidence of these appalling degradations of the human spirit. 

The voters of Scotland have chosen their MPs and MSPs predominently from the hard left.  It is hardly surprising that this is so.  A country divided by religion just as profoundly as Northern Ireland is divided can only be united by a common cause that allows the Protestants and Catholics to find a common enemy.  That enemy is the English.  Labour and SNP politicians have espoused the English as the enemy for more than forty years and with that comes the need to define what it is about the English that should be despised.  

Unlike their English fellow-travellers, the Scotch Socialists do not wage a class war.  They cannot do so because class is not a Scottish phenomenon.  There is no identifiable Scottish upper class to be blamed for the current condition of the poorest Scotch people.  Instead they have to aim higher and argue that capitalism is the cause, English capitalism.  English capitalism causes misery, English capitalism steals Scotch wealth, English capitalism deprives all Scotch people of opportunities, English capitalism deliberately keeps the Scotch suppressed in order to fill the bank vaults of a select few down in that London.  

From this position of racist hate-crime (they invented it, don't blame me for using the phrase), they argue that only a Socialist independent state of Scotland can deliver milk and honey to the poor down-trodden masses.  

If they vote No, the foolish "leaders" in Westminster have promised them powers that almost deliver the same as a vote of Yes.  Save for one thing.  The thing that is at the heart of any economic system that will ever have a chance of surviving and delivering a more comfortable life for the least wealthy people.  And that thing is the threat of having to face the painful consequences of failure.  

The man who, in his own words, saved the World - one Dr James Gordon Brown - decided that the little people should shoulder the losses caused by banks following his direction when they advanced too much money to people who could not pay their debts.  By making those loans they increased GDP and made him look good for a while, but like any Ponzi scheme it could not last.  The Bubble burst and he used future taxes to bail-out the banks when the banks did what he directed them to do and came a cropper.  I say "future taxes" because he had no money in the vaults to hand to the bankrupt banks, instead he borrowed it - a massive debt that could only be paid from future tax revenue.  

Now that same man has taken charge of the campaign to keep the Scotch in the UK.  For once, probably the first and last time, I commend him for his consistency.  He used future taxes to bail-out the banks and now he is promising future tax revenue to bail-out the Scotch when its Socialist government bankrupts it, as it will.  

Within my ample stomach there is a rumbling discontent because there seems a greater chance of the Scotch voting No than Yes.  Were they to vote Yes, the consequences of inevitable economic failure will lie at their door.  Were they to vote No they will be given sufficient powers to introduce the bankrupting policies the Yes campaigners believe will lead to Nirvana and the English will have to bail them out.  

There is hope.  Dr James Gordon Brown is in charge and everything he has ever touched has turned to excrement.  Perhaps it is too much to hope for that his intervention has not come too late and that he can still wield his magic sword of failure to guarantee a Yes vote.  

Let them have their Socialist paradise, is what I say.  Free England from the yoke, rid the House of Commons of 47 hard-left and 11-fairly-hard-left MPs.  Let England have its chance.  

I'm not hopeful because when push comes to shove a big change is a difficult thing for people to vote for.  In fact I would be very surprised if the privacy of the voting booth, where loudmouthed lefties cannot hold the majority of attention, did not register a clear verdict in favour of continued subsidisation by England.  

But I hope.  

And I end as I started.  

Yes, please, North Britain. 


4 comments:

Antisthenes said...

Excellent article.

It must be very depressing for those of us who do not live north of the English border as it is a given that they will vote no. After all they will not vote to bite off the hand that feeds them.

A yes vote would be wondrous for many reason; we would be shot of there socialism and there lefty MPs and it would marvellously destabilise the EU as many more will want to follow Scotland's example.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"Shout Sport which, for reasons that make no sense at all, calls itself Talk Sport"

I'm reliably informed that "Sport" is also a misnomer as it's 95% football coverage.

john miller said...

So it came to pass that the very worst has happened.

And the first thing the odious Cameron does? Announce how pleased he will be to enter into negotiations with the SNP regarding further devolution.

Our only hope is that Cameron, pathological liar that he is, keeps true to form.

john miller said...

A stunning example of how the general public get their news:

Mother in law was over today. Mrs Miller and she were chatting, saying how Gordon Brown came up trumps again!

Now, neither of them has any interest in politics, but they had vaguely followed the referendum. "The No vote was in trouble until General Gordon arrived on the scene!" "How do you work that out?" says I, showing them Guido's graph showing the Yes vote gaining 17% since GBH joined in. "Well, that's not what a journalist in the Daily Mail says" they point out.

And the name of this "journalist"? One Damian McBride...