Yet another new blog

I was going to call this 'Who owns government?' but it's blindingly bleedin' obvious in the UK right now who owns government. Dominic Cummings and his glove puppet Boris Johnson are in charge of politics and they are going to do exactly what they want.  You can line up all the bishops and archbishops (though not enough of them have come forward in my opinion), all the opposition politicians in 'the House', all the NHS and care staff currently slogging away and sometimes dying on our behalf, all the grateful public who rely on the NHS, all the 'devolved' nations and their governments, all the folk who clap and bang their pots every Thursday night, the pathetic 60 Tory MPs who are the only ones that have found a conscience, the working class people who voted Tory in 2019 and have now changed their minds, all the scientists working on a Covid-19 vaccine - and it will make not one bit of difference. Johnson wants things back to 'normal'. He wan...

Dear Fellow Citizens, First of all, as one who has been self-isolating since the 31st of December 2019, I want to thank you. I've been staying in since then, only seeing one of my family occasionally from the other side of the hall outside my flat; and getting my shopping dropped off by Sainsbury, Waitrose and the Fish People at Shields Road. Excellent service too - the Westminster government dropped businesses right in it way back at the start of the lockdown by not issuing any advice or instructions but most businesses have rallied round. I'm also grateful to Waterstones and Amazon, who keep me supplied with books. I live in a small block of pensioners' flats where there are about a dozen 'shut-ins' and the warden checks on all of us every single day by text, phone or email. I've left the building once since New Year, ironically to go by taxi to the GP surgery for a blood test, because no one there would come to me. This is partly my responsibility: I ...

Suddenly, the UK media are full of articles about migrants: BBC website: Net migration from outside EU hits highest level Sky News: stopping migrants crossing the English Channel is a 'top priority' for the government Clearly, some sort of crisis is coming. Could it be that the media are getting UK voters ready for the idea of dumping the EU without an agreement? That's a shameful exit, but one a lot of people seem to be happy with these days.  I think the problem I have with England is that I don't really know much about it. Of course, we all see a lot about England in the press and on TV. England dominates 'national' life, at least in the sense that many TV programmes are broadcast from there and that means most of the work for actors, production units, techie people etc is in England. All the politics that matters seems to come from there. Nobody else's politics seems to matter. The union flag is everywhere (even on bottles of Scotch which - so fa...

Looking at the news online is a risky business these days. You have to be ready to encounter some of the stupidest people in the world. And they're all in the UK. People like Neil Gaiman who thought it was okay to fly from New Zealand, one of the safest countries in the world right now, to take refuge in Skye where a care home for the elderly has been taken over by the NHS in an attempt to stop residents dying. Gaiman's argument is that he's a UK tax payer. Yeah, amazingly, we are too, Neil, but you don't see us behaving like this, do you? But then, we don't all own several houses and we're not all not self-absorbed, heid-up-yer-arse celebs, are we? Or there's the numpty who turned up at a 'freedom' protest in Glasgow without any form of PPE, demanding to exercise his rights to do whatever he wanted. The 4 year old boy he brought with him didn't have a mask either. But he's just a child and has no rights. I can only hope the police and so...

I don't take any newspapers except the National but I read articles from the Guardian and the Independent most days. I keep an eye on what appears on the BBC Scotland website. I don't watch  BBC TV or listen to BBC radio. I watch short extracts from Sky, STV and C4 News. And I sometimes watch the press conference the First Minister gives daily. So I can't tell if what I'm telling you is a general trend. I can only share with you what I've noticed in the media I'm aware of. The National remains where it usually is: weak on policy but good at defending the Scottish government's actions on C-19 and the NHS, and promoting new ideas like Universal Basic Income. It reports from other parts of the world without ignoring that's happening in Scotland. The Guardian and the Independent discovered Scotland about 6 weeks ago and have carried decent reports on what's happening here. Both have given credit where it's due: praising the Scottish government,...

There’s an article in Wednesday’s National: “Thanks to SIF for backing the National during Crisis.” Now you – like me – may have no idea who SIF are or even that those letters stand for Scottish Independence Foundation, but you are undoubtedly aware of what they do. SIF, it turns out, are the reason we have so many successful Yes marches. They help fund them. SIF also provide the ‘seed’ money for Broadcasting Scotland and Independence Live so we can have video footage of every Yes march. They also provide funding for the uniforms of the Saor Alba pipes and drums*. The National article gives a lot more information about SIF. And there’s a full description of SIF online, but look it up under Scottish Independence Foundation rather than Sif or you’ll be knee-deep in Norse gods. Now SIF are backing the National in a time of crisis, when all newspapers, many much less deserving than the National, are about to go under. (And no, frankly, I don’t give a rat’s bahookie what...