The worst thing...
...about having a Tory government in power in Westminster for 10 years may be that there will be many people in the UK under the age of 40 who don't remember any other kind of government.
I'm not saying the governments that preceded the Tories were good but we knew at least that change was possible.
It was possible to have a government that wasn't so arrogant that the Prime Minister appointed a bunch of hedge-fund millionaires with no political experience as MPs and called them his cabinet. The PM didn't dump most of the experienced politicians in his party out of government so no one could argue with him. He didn't bypass parliament and senior civil servants and replace them all with personally-appointed advisers.
And he didn't bugger off on holiday several times in the middle of a pandemic, leaving an inexperienced ministerial appointee and one of his advisers in charge of the country.
Do you really need evidence that government by SPAD (Special Adviser) isn't working? Let me list a few of the ways: Brexit negotiations, the English NHS's response to the Covid-19 catastrophe and A level/GCSE/BTEC results.
The Tories don't run the day to day lives of people in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. We have our own administrations for that fortunately. But the Tories in Westminster have unbelievable financial power over all of us in the British Isles. The devolved nations can't borrow so they can't pay their way out of the pandemic. And worst of all, the Tories can veto just about any attempt by devolved governments or English local government to make things better. Does Andy Burnham look as if he's found any way to improve Westminster's miserable record in 'the northern powerhouse'?
But none of that is the absolute worst about having the Tories in power for a decade and for the foreseeable future.
The absolute worst is that the Tories think voters are thick. They think we're so stupid we don't see how Johnson and his advisers are playing us.
They think they can divert us by getting us worked up about poor souls from Sudan and Syria trying to get to the UK in wee boats. It helps, of course, that newspapers like the Mail, the Express, the S*n and the Telegraph will happily rally round this right wing government with stories of "invasions" by "illegals", but ask yourself: if they treat refugees like this, how would they treat us if they could get away with it?
They think we don't notice they have been in a state of permanent crisis since the brexit vote in 2016.
They are now passing the blame for the pandemic crisis to the public and the NHS, with billions of our money being handed over to their pals to pay for PPE and ventilators that have never been delivered, and for thousands of people in care homes dying because it was UK policy to send these people out of hospitals to be looked after in privately-run care homes that were staffed by people who weren't qualified. It seems that's the fault of Public Health England (established in 2012 by a Tory government), so they will just abolish it .
They think government isn't responsible for young people who have lost their university places. That's the fault of Ofqual, a government agency. Nothing to do with the mean-minded, ignorant, lickspittle minister currently responsible for it.
The Tories have overreached themselves. People who have lost relatives to the Coronavirus know that. So do young people who have lost their university places. Their parents also know it. And all of these people are voters. Surely they know what to do now.
Myself, what I most want is to take the dead hand of the Tories off Scotland's neck.
We've shown year after year that we can look after ourselves. We don't just have the economic resources - agriculture, fishing, wind and wave power, whisky, electronics, scientific research, etc - we've proved we are a community. That's what's seeing us through the pandemic and will see us through the economic recovery to come.
We can now see that the remaining unionist politicians in Scotland are simply holding us back. What can you say about a joint Tory-Labour council in Aberdeen that refuses to cooperate with the Scottish Government during a Covid flare-up in the city?
It's a bad sign for the unionists when they claim to deny us the right to an independence referendum but try to dictate from Westminster who can vote in it.
People power has never been so important. I wish our friends in England much luck. The Scots are on our way to independence (55%-45%). The Welsh are now polling 30% for independence. The rumblings from Northern Ireland suggest there's an urge to unite with Eire. England needs to make its own salvation.
I'm not saying the governments that preceded the Tories were good but we knew at least that change was possible.
It was possible to have a government that wasn't so arrogant that the Prime Minister appointed a bunch of hedge-fund millionaires with no political experience as MPs and called them his cabinet. The PM didn't dump most of the experienced politicians in his party out of government so no one could argue with him. He didn't bypass parliament and senior civil servants and replace them all with personally-appointed advisers.
And he didn't bugger off on holiday several times in the middle of a pandemic, leaving an inexperienced ministerial appointee and one of his advisers in charge of the country.
Do you really need evidence that government by SPAD (Special Adviser) isn't working? Let me list a few of the ways: Brexit negotiations, the English NHS's response to the Covid-19 catastrophe and A level/GCSE/BTEC results.
The Tories don't run the day to day lives of people in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. We have our own administrations for that fortunately. But the Tories in Westminster have unbelievable financial power over all of us in the British Isles. The devolved nations can't borrow so they can't pay their way out of the pandemic. And worst of all, the Tories can veto just about any attempt by devolved governments or English local government to make things better. Does Andy Burnham look as if he's found any way to improve Westminster's miserable record in 'the northern powerhouse'?
But none of that is the absolute worst about having the Tories in power for a decade and for the foreseeable future.
The absolute worst is that the Tories think voters are thick. They think we're so stupid we don't see how Johnson and his advisers are playing us.
They think they can divert us by getting us worked up about poor souls from Sudan and Syria trying to get to the UK in wee boats. It helps, of course, that newspapers like the Mail, the Express, the S*n and the Telegraph will happily rally round this right wing government with stories of "invasions" by "illegals", but ask yourself: if they treat refugees like this, how would they treat us if they could get away with it?
They think we don't notice they have been in a state of permanent crisis since the brexit vote in 2016.
They are now passing the blame for the pandemic crisis to the public and the NHS, with billions of our money being handed over to their pals to pay for PPE and ventilators that have never been delivered, and for thousands of people in care homes dying because it was UK policy to send these people out of hospitals to be looked after in privately-run care homes that were staffed by people who weren't qualified. It seems that's the fault of Public Health England (established in 2012 by a Tory government), so they will just abolish it .
They think government isn't responsible for young people who have lost their university places. That's the fault of Ofqual, a government agency. Nothing to do with the mean-minded, ignorant, lickspittle minister currently responsible for it.
The Tories have overreached themselves. People who have lost relatives to the Coronavirus know that. So do young people who have lost their university places. Their parents also know it. And all of these people are voters. Surely they know what to do now.
Myself, what I most want is to take the dead hand of the Tories off Scotland's neck.
We've shown year after year that we can look after ourselves. We don't just have the economic resources - agriculture, fishing, wind and wave power, whisky, electronics, scientific research, etc - we've proved we are a community. That's what's seeing us through the pandemic and will see us through the economic recovery to come.
We can now see that the remaining unionist politicians in Scotland are simply holding us back. What can you say about a joint Tory-Labour council in Aberdeen that refuses to cooperate with the Scottish Government during a Covid flare-up in the city?
It's a bad sign for the unionists when they claim to deny us the right to an independence referendum but try to dictate from Westminster who can vote in it.
People power has never been so important. I wish our friends in England much luck. The Scots are on our way to independence (55%-45%). The Welsh are now polling 30% for independence. The rumblings from Northern Ireland suggest there's an urge to unite with Eire. England needs to make its own salvation.
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