Saturday 23 November 2013

Scotland is not Gaza but ...

"Feeling frustrated at there being so many nutters, lunatics and psychopaths running this planet. So much pain and suffering everywhere. What to do."

So wrote one of my friends on her Facebook page last night. This is a lady who has been a rapporteur to the Gaza Strip, a trip that left her overwhelmed by the world's indifference to Israel's daily, small cruelties to the Palestinians who live there. The power cuts, the lack of basic essentials, random shelling, air raids while all the time the Western press puts the blame on the Palestinians for making their own fate, for siding with 'extremists'. This week the Israeli power cuts have left streets in Gaza awash with sewage while Western pressure has 'persuaded' Egypt to close her border with the Gaza Strip.

Closer to home, my last blog on one of our own home grown, elected 'nutters' inability to understand his own brief as Justice Minister attracted the most hits for any of my blogs since I started, with over 360 and still rising (thank you readers).


More and more folk in the UK recognize Westminster and its Parliament are not in the least representative of the people of the UK's wishes. Their answer to this democratic deficit appears to be variations of, 'But what can you do?' or 'I'm not effected, it is happening to other people: poor people, ill people, handicapped people and I am none - of these.'  Pastor Niemoller's warning goes unheeded, once more, by a generation now separated from direct contact with the Nazi period in person or through relatives:

They came for the socialists,

I said nothing -
I was not a socialist.

I have a suggestion. Instead of buying all the absolute crap you read about Scottish Independence in the UK Government manipulated media you ask yourself a different question in the face of all the angry hubris pouring out of the London based MSM. The question is this:

Just why is the UK Parliament at Westminster so scared out of its tiny, mono-synaptic skull at the idea of the 'subsidy jocks' going their own way?


I thought the point of neo-liberal economics was to let the market take control and by doing so 'lame ducks', such as the 'subsidy jocks', would go to the wall as the country of Scotland is a drain on the UK's resources. There are only two answers:
  1. Westminster does not actually believe in the austerity economic policy it is selling the electorate
  2. They are lying about the vital importance of the Scottish economy to the rest of the UK
The UK economic figures currently show only two economic areas showing economic growth within the UK, London and the SE and Scotland. The rest of the UK remains in recession. Scotland's economy grew by 0.8% in the last quarter and is leading the UK Regions for inward investment in the quarter, most investment in Scotland is in the energy sector (oil, gas and electrical generation plus its R&D) but recently there has been a growth of US financial businesses opening European HQ's in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Edinburgh is now home to the largest value of managed funds in Europe.

When you look at the contribution the Scottish economy is making to the UK economy on per capita basis Scotland is outperforming the rest of the UK regions, even London and the SE. The startling reality is Scotland provides Sterling with over 40% of its foreign exchange earnings which keeps the UK balance of trade deficit down to manageable proportions. On this basis why would the Bank of England go along with petty English Westminster politicians throwing their toys out of the pram over Sterling because Scotland took its ball home? This is just one of many key areas where Scotland's economy is vital to the current UK, areas the UK's MSM and politicians do not wish in the public domain and rush to block with ad hominen attacks on the person they now most fear - Wee Eck, the Scottish First Minister.

The problem for Westminster is the Scots have recognised they are, to re-quote my friend:

"Feeling frustrated at there being so many nutters, lunatics and psychopaths running this planet."

Now we Scots can not do much for the planet just now because we are entangled in a UK system which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The first problem we have to solve is shedding ourselves from the 'psychopaths and lunatics' at Westminster. All going well that process will start on the 19th of September 2014. Give us to 2020 and I hope by then current wishes of the people of Scotland for a more egalitarian society where folk are not rendered homeless simply because they have an empty bedroom has become a reality. In this transformation away from the narrow Dickensian reality of  a neo-liberal austerity where the rich get richer and bugger everyone else, I trust Scotland will become a beacon, a better way to be a country than the current, micro-managed, greedy, self interested, neo-liberal UK.

Sadly for my friend, who acted as a rapporteur in Gaza, Scotland will not be in any place to wave a magic wand and solve Gaza's problems of violence and oppression from within and without but we can and will add our voices to our European neighbours to end this US / Russian war by proxy which scars the Middle East. A Middle East with enough religious turmoil and violence within an Islamic population which remains split as to who was the first prophet's real successor. An issue of contention which has been killing followers of Islam for over one thousand years and shows little sign of abating as we enter the 21st Century.

First, before we can do any of this we have to cut up and eat the UK Westminster elephant, a process which we Scots are now doing, one little piece at a time.

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