Whit's goan on?
...as we say in Glasgow.
I'm not very well right now (ME) and have spent most of the past fortnight in my bed, but every time I surface it's like waking into a nightmare.
The telly is full of Tories. In parliament. All shouting. Presided over by a Speaker who is also shouting. When Labour appear, their leader is shouted at. The DUP - which represents next to nobody - appears on telly interviews more often than either the LibDems or the SNP, who have more MPs than the DUP. And this despite the fact that most people in Northern Ireland did not vote for the DUP and must be frothing at the mouth every time Sammy Wilson appears on the telly.
The situation as far as I can make out is this:
- the Tories are split in two: there's what used to be the bulk of the Tory party (Theresa May belongs to this lot) and there's the right wing bampots who should really be in UKIP. Except that UKIP got seen out of town in the last general election and, as a result, moved even further to the right, so they're now pals with bastards like Tommy Robinson. Tommy is very bad news. (I'd love to see where his funding comes from).
- Labour are also divided into two camps: the Blair/Brown faction and the Old Labour faction. Corbyn belongs to the latter - as do a lot of his supporters. I don't know much about Corbyn but I do know that Labour is not doing as well in the opinion polls as they should be. And they are, frankly, finished in Scotland. Even Wales is coming round to the idea that voting Labour may not be that good an idea.
Meanwhile the electorate seem to be standing by stunned and even more divided than the two main UK political parties. Some folk now hate all politicians (if they didn't before), some hate Theresa May, some feel sorry for her (I have to ask why - she can resign, so why doesn't she?). Some don't give a rat's arse but just want all this to end.
The sensible people, as far as I can see, have worked out there's a whole of money depending on the present state of the UK.
First, there's the national debt - last I heard it was 1.6 trillion quid. I wonder who we owe that to. In other words, who owns the UK?
Secondly, there's the vast internal market called the NHS - who stands to gain from tapping into that after brexit?
Thirdly, there's agriculture and fishing. There's money to be made there. But who will make the cash?
Fourthly, there's the US connection: Scotland houses the US's nuclear weapons in Europe - what's that worth to the exchequer?
Then there's North Sea Oil - Scottish Oil as we call it here - what happens to that? Do we go on paying for English fripperies like HS2, Crossrail and the new London sewer system? While people in Scotland are driving on terrible roads, paying a fortune for broadband, and mitigating the horrors of the UK government's mad ideas (like the bedroom tax).
I reckon the immediate future for us Scottish voters is to be as annoying as we possibly can be. Same goes for our MPs in Westminster, even if they're not in the party we support. I certainly don't want the current batch of MPs to be withdraw from Westminster. There are too many good ones: Kirsty Blackman, Joanna Cherry, Mhairi Black - and under the leadership of Ian Blackford, more and more are finding their feet in 'the house.'
Most of all, I want to know that the poor and the disabled in Scotland will not be forgotten in the next couple of years. And that's what seems to be happening in Westminster.
I'm not very well right now (ME) and have spent most of the past fortnight in my bed, but every time I surface it's like waking into a nightmare.
The telly is full of Tories. In parliament. All shouting. Presided over by a Speaker who is also shouting. When Labour appear, their leader is shouted at. The DUP - which represents next to nobody - appears on telly interviews more often than either the LibDems or the SNP, who have more MPs than the DUP. And this despite the fact that most people in Northern Ireland did not vote for the DUP and must be frothing at the mouth every time Sammy Wilson appears on the telly.
The situation as far as I can make out is this:
- the Tories are split in two: there's what used to be the bulk of the Tory party (Theresa May belongs to this lot) and there's the right wing bampots who should really be in UKIP. Except that UKIP got seen out of town in the last general election and, as a result, moved even further to the right, so they're now pals with bastards like Tommy Robinson. Tommy is very bad news. (I'd love to see where his funding comes from).
- Labour are also divided into two camps: the Blair/Brown faction and the Old Labour faction. Corbyn belongs to the latter - as do a lot of his supporters. I don't know much about Corbyn but I do know that Labour is not doing as well in the opinion polls as they should be. And they are, frankly, finished in Scotland. Even Wales is coming round to the idea that voting Labour may not be that good an idea.
Meanwhile the electorate seem to be standing by stunned and even more divided than the two main UK political parties. Some folk now hate all politicians (if they didn't before), some hate Theresa May, some feel sorry for her (I have to ask why - she can resign, so why doesn't she?). Some don't give a rat's arse but just want all this to end.
The sensible people, as far as I can see, have worked out there's a whole of money depending on the present state of the UK.
First, there's the national debt - last I heard it was 1.6 trillion quid. I wonder who we owe that to. In other words, who owns the UK?
Secondly, there's the vast internal market called the NHS - who stands to gain from tapping into that after brexit?
Thirdly, there's agriculture and fishing. There's money to be made there. But who will make the cash?
Fourthly, there's the US connection: Scotland houses the US's nuclear weapons in Europe - what's that worth to the exchequer?
Then there's North Sea Oil - Scottish Oil as we call it here - what happens to that? Do we go on paying for English fripperies like HS2, Crossrail and the new London sewer system? While people in Scotland are driving on terrible roads, paying a fortune for broadband, and mitigating the horrors of the UK government's mad ideas (like the bedroom tax).
I reckon the immediate future for us Scottish voters is to be as annoying as we possibly can be. Same goes for our MPs in Westminster, even if they're not in the party we support. I certainly don't want the current batch of MPs to be withdraw from Westminster. There are too many good ones: Kirsty Blackman, Joanna Cherry, Mhairi Black - and under the leadership of Ian Blackford, more and more are finding their feet in 'the house.'
Most of all, I want to know that the poor and the disabled in Scotland will not be forgotten in the next couple of years. And that's what seems to be happening in Westminster.
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