Sunday 31 August 2014

What can you say about Clacton?

The old joke used to run ' Harwich for the continent,Eastbourne for the incontinent ' but what can we now say about Clacton?
Perhaps the new intolerant capital of Britain? or maybe the final resting place of white flight ?Or perhaps the final resting place of British, or more precisely English,political thought.

Douglas Carswell is just one more mediocre Tory backbencher, it is perhaps an ironic joke that so many of his former colleagues have described his an an 'intellectual'.
Well if he's a Tory intellectual this this country surely has need of a zeitgeist.But then the same Tory idolaters  raise Boris Johnston too and claim he is some sort of advanced thinker!
On that scale then I suppose Nigel Farage must be counted as the Einstein of the right.

Clacton looks like a dreary place, it can be no coincidence that within the constituency boundaries there is the poorest ward in Britain.Other towns have welcome to our town signs at the entrance, I guess Clacton has 'Abandon hope all you who enter here'.
It must be hard to get enthusiastic for a town that offers an unyielding diet of mediocrity, a place with no vision,no hope,a Dickensian throwback with no Dickens to speak up for the place.
Sad misbegotten places throw up sad misbegotten politicians and in the current climate of despair they gravitate to the party that speaks volumes not on behalf of the sad and desperate but rather howls at them.
And the cry is not one of hope but rather a message that says 'blame the other bloke', give the europeans a good kicking, or better still give 'Johnnie Foreigner' a good seeing off!
The irony of course that whilst immigration is top of the average Clactonians' hate list, there are hardly any migrants in the place.
Hardly surprising really, why would anyone seeking to make a better life for themselves and their family gravitate to a place where even Terry and June left several decades ago.
Ukip's pitch is that it is the anti-politics political party, that it is somehow different from all the rest.It makes a virtue out of the fact that it somehow says things that nobody else dare utter.
That of course is pure horse shit.What Ukip says is what many, if not most  hopeless back bench Tories really think and discuss behind cupped hands in the Commons bars.
Sadly we all know in our heart of hearts that there are several Labour MP's who think the same.Whilst they might not have the overt racist overtones of the far right, they share a belief that if only things went back to the time when MP's were allowed to lead unhindered and everyone knew their place...
We live in a country where elitism of the mediocre is the dominant ideology.It is a pattern of thought that wants to retain the status quo as long as possible.Thats why the campaign in Scotland for a No vote should not be called 'Better Together' but rather'Better as it was-for some of us'

There is however one small shining light in the horror that i9s Clacton, a Tory party dominated by the 'Lets get out of the EU' might just alert many more Scots that further Tory domination might mean an exit from Europe regardless of what the people of Scotland might want.
Schisms and tensions are starting to pull the fabric of the free market apart, if you can't have a free market in the movement of labour,how can you have a continuing free market in the movement of capital ?    

Sunday 3 August 2014

Soon every Scot must do their duty

In about 45 days Scotland will be able to make the most important decision since they hammered the English aristocracy at Bannockburn.The vote for an independent Scotland is almost too important to leave to political parties that are more interested in partisan positioning than in the future,not just of Scotland but of the whole of the British Isles.
A free and independent Scotland,based on the principles of equality,justice and internationalism could be the blue touchpaper that will light the way to a fully functional federation of free and independent peoples who have no need of a patronising ruling class and an overbearing establishment.

I had better make it clear from the outset that I believe in an Independent Scotland, that can build a successful social democratic country with no need for nuclear weapons,sabre rattling military alliances, indeed no need for a military anyhow.Whilst the country could have a civil emergency force it has no need for a standing army-the days of 'gallant heilan' chiels saili' aff tae fight in  some foreign field' is frankly historic mythology.
Andy Stewart may sing wistfully of dead Scottish Soldiers but I for one want to see no more young men leaving to protect BP oilfields anywhere.

However I do have one or two reservations about the SNP's campaign and some of the positions they have taken during the referendum campaign.
largely I think they have been far too timid.When the anglo-Scots aristocracy decided that they wanted sheep occupying their hillsides rather than people they set in motion the tragedy of the clearances.Thousands were dispossed and sent off to populate miserable parts of the empire.
Well Alex I think its time to repay the compliment and if they prefer sheep to people then Scotland should determine that it might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
Why have you agreed to keep as a titular head of state that miserable wee German offspring of the Saxe-Coberg-Gotha dynasty?
I have never thought much of the louche Stuart bunch, but then they are all much of a muchness.Let us be bold and follow the example of one ofv the greatest Scots of the last century.The great John McLean of Glasgow argued for a Scottish Socialist Republic and he argued that Scotland should play no part in the Imperialist WW1.
For that the establishment slung hin in Peterhead prison and the experience killed him
An independent Scottish Republic might encourage the others in these islands to see it possible to get rid of a whole layer of parasites.
Now what is interesting is the panic that the establishment and its media is demonstrating about the possibility of a Yes vote in Scotland.Now its no surprise that the Tories are leading the No charge, for most of my life they were known as the Unionist party=and of course they had and still have huge vested interests up there,after all they own most of the country!
Many of them view Scotland much in the way that TV ad used to run-'Daddy-chops', except in the aristos.view the equation as 'grouse-poor people'
The Lib-Dems of course will do anything that their masters tell them, and they have a few seats on the fringes to try and hold on to.
What depresses me most is the attitude of the Labour Party,once the repository of socialist idealism and vision North of the border is now no more than the parliamentary suppository of the London elite.
There are 41 Labour seats held in Scotland by 42 useless articles.
Even if you are outside the debate, just stop and think, what kind of campaign can it be that is
1.run by Alastair Darling, unique in being the least clever Edinburgh  lawyer to ever leave the country and
2.Supported by Danny Alexander,George Galloway,david Bowie and Trinny and Susannah!
Enough said.
The only other mistake that Alex has made is not making provision for exiles to vote, it would have been quite easy, after all those of us born in Scotland have birth certificates issued in Edinburgh!
Simples.