Broken Britain

c8kb4r_vwaanq4qGreat Britain just became Little England.

My feelings took me by surprise. I did not expect the anger, the boiling full-on rage that swept me as I read about Article 50. Inside my head I was on the streets, smashing windows and setting things on fire. Screaming. Breaking.

Me, a person who has never so much as thrown a punch.

In all the years of my political talking and, eventually, independence activism, I find today that there must still have been some small part of me that felt (whisper it) British. I didn’t know. I suppose it can’t have been helped. We’re surrounded by that bloody flag and the endless propaganda.

That small British part is gone today. Just gone.

I have *never* felt so disconnected from the rest of the UK. In my life we’ve been ruled by Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and May.

There have been wars aimed at stealing the resources of people of a different colour and the ongoing abomination of owning an arsenal of nuclear weapons. There have been countless sickening policies attacking the poor and vulnerable and at the same time a total lack of media discussion on their effects and legacy. We’ve seen the ‘mother of all parliaments’ revealed as no more than a childish shouting hall, stuffed with pigs, snouts deep in troughs – some even in moats. Above all, we’ve been witness to a systemic lack of accountability and a disconnect between the visions of our UK-wide politicians and the day-to-day life of our peoples.

We, on this unhappy island, have experienced the long and winding road of the perversion of democracy – not that we can in truth even call what the UK has democracy. It’s a sham. An insult.

Yet even after experiencing the mother of all shams, it has taken the actions of today to drive the final vestige of Britishness from me. Not just in the actions of an entirely undemocratic government, but also the support of a debased media – accountable only to a handful of billionaire, tax-avoiding owners. Worse yet are the countless individuals cheering on. Whether – I assume – despicable or delusional, these are ordinary people in whose outlook I can find no common ground, no sense.

I’m not even particularly a fan of the EU. In its current state, it clearly has veered from its original goals. Yet it can be fixed. It’s a big and awkward beast, too in thrall to the corporate world, and yet the potential for evolution seems viable.

The UK’s potential, however, does not appear viable. Through calculation, or more likely arrogance and utter, utter idiocy, the fracture that has run for decades through the Conservative Party has been cast over the entire United Kingdom. Something horrific and momentous is on the horizon and the UK is being intentionally steered into it.

Then we discover that May has chosen to place the sharing of information on terrorism with the EU on the same par as trade with the bloc. In simple terms, ‘You trade with us, or we won’t help catch terrorists.’ I can’t find words for that. I really can’t. I read earlier a comment that referenced Mitchell and Webb: ‘Are we… are we the baddies?’

We’re told that we can expect ten more years of this, maybe more. A murder of Tory Governments. This is not going to end well.

Comments (28)

Join the Discussion

Your email address will not be published.

  1. bringiton says:

    The glue which has been keeping the nations of these islands together,isn’t the Monarchy or the Tories but rights bestowed on us citizens of the European union.
    The Tories clearly feel that the only way to keep us together outside that union is to dispense with devolution and bring power back to the centre of the universe in Westminster.
    That is the direction of travel mainly because the present Tory mindset is one of Rule Britannia (Westminster) and everyone else has to just do as they are told.
    Will people simply roll over and take what is about to be dished out or will they decide that there really is an alternative to Tory narrow minded politics?
    We shall see.

    1. Wul says:

      I predict a great deal of fear mongering in the years to come; “Hold onto mummy’s skirt children, or the wolves will get you”.

      They may even manufacture events to make clinging to Westminster seem like the only safe choice.

      We will need cool heads, sane & coherent leadership and a trustworthy media.

      The Tories have only a few tools in their bag, but they are well tested and historically successful:

      “Divide & Conquer”
      “Beggar thy Neighbour”
      “Dunkirk Spirit”
      “Dulce et Decorum est…”
      “Blame the Victim”

      1. Chris Clark says:

        I feel just as sick and abused as our author.
        Dear Wul, please allow me to add a few more false mantras to your list:
        “Brexit means Brexit.” (Shorthand for get back in your playpen; we’re going for FULL ENGLISH BREXIT whether you like it or not.)
        “Now is not the time.” (Meaning we will never allow Scotland another say if we can avoid it.
        “The Scottish People don’t want another Referendum on Scottish Independence.” Meaning we will cherry-pick or fabricate media polls to our advantage and rubbish those that don’t follow our dictates.

        1. Bill Weir says:

          How can we consider Tory mantras without including “we’re all in this together”.

  2. Dorothy Bruce says:

    Unionists at Holyrood, Westminster and in constituencies have gone into a red-hot, bubbling froth, determined to stop another referendum at any cost. Yet remainers are expected to sit back and allow Brexiters to wrench us out of the EU. I’ve never felt British, so don’t feel any loss of that, but I do feel European and am determined to remain in the EU. Yes, it needs changed, but that can be achieved without impoverishing ourselves and subjugating ourselves forever to Westminster’s fads and dictates.

    You only have to see the way our MPs are treated to realise why it will never work for us, irrespective of the promises or crumbs thrown our way. We now have a real fight on our hands. I only hope Nicola has indeed a magic lamp up her sleeve.

  3. Al says:

    I can UK pasonly hope that the EU comes through with the vaguely uttered promise that one of its officials made a few weks ago that a system could be put in place which would allow those UK passport holders that wished to do so to retain elements of EU status, such as free movement within the EU and some version of an EU passport. While not being exactly the same as a full EU citizenship, it would allow those of us who wish to retain at least a vestige of kinship with the rest of the EU. My fear is that even if that is proposed, Theresa M would torpedo it on the grounds of it being out of step with her political view of GREAT Britain – stronger together!
    At the moment, I feel bereft, not to mention angry (and ashamed to be a person generally identified as a UK citizen). I supported all movements for UK to join the EU (as it became), partly as it was one way I could see the Irish problem being solved, but principally because I wanted Scotland to escape total domination by England (or more correctl, Tory ideologies). The EU was the protection against UK Nationalism, providing a cool head, sensible discussions with fellow EU members and a sense of having a place in the world other than as an diminished
    appendage to England that was only useful for providing a sporting playground for the wealthy from south of the border. That has all been ripped away now so that we are once again left at the mercy of the Little Englanders. I now feel very afraid indeed for the future for all of those who supported the Remain camp in the referendum.

  4. Mae says:

    I feel exactly like the writer. I am a Scot who lives in England with and english husband. I had to move my Mum to England (reluctantly) as she is elderly and is now in a care home, nearby, with dementia. Despite this, as a result of Brexit, I feel totally alien here now. I am appalled at the misogynistic and jingoistic attitude of many of my neighbours, especially since moving to the countryside from London. I would move back to Scotland in a minute if I could. I know many Scots in England feel the same way. During the 2014 referendum, people who had been friendly towards me before, started to make hateful comments about the Scots, loudly, in my earshot. A preview of things to come. There is a really backward strain of ignorant, fascist thinking alive and well in England. Those people exist in Scotland too and the media will do everything it can to embolden them. Yesterday, I was in a supermarket, and I saw the triumphalist “Freedom” headline on the front page of the express. It was all I could do to restrain myself from going over and tearing them all up, and like the writer I have never been actively aggressive or political in my life.

  5. Patrick says:

    Jobs for Unionists, special for Teresa May, and her team
    The British Royal House is looking for who the thing the cushions

    The website of the British Royal House has published a job offer to find the perfect candidate who will be responsible for the preparation and care of the curtains and cushions of the palaces of Buckingham, Windsor and St. James. The salary is 22,000 pounds annually, about 25,400 euros. You will have to take care of the textile elements of about 1,000 rooms, which is no easy task.

  6. Lesley Docksey says:

    Trying to reply to you all!

    First, being English but never ever a ‘little Englander’, my spitting anger is fighting against my feelings of despair.

    Stewart – I can well understand your feeling of not being British anymore. I personally have a different take on that. After the Ice Age, people migrated here from Europe. That makes me European. Britain is an island, and not a big one at that. But, because all my ancestors (as far as I know) were born in this island of Britain, that makes me British. As my more recent ancestors were England based, I am English. What I am NOT is United Kingdomish, and although I am English I will NEVER be Westminsterish. To quote Ian Paisley, ‘Never, never, never!’

    While I belong to this island I am at ease with recognising the different parts of it. I am supportive of Scotland’s need to be independent of Westminster. Same goes for Wales. And as Ireland is another island it is really time for some unification there.

    Bringiton – the glue, as you rightly say, has come from the EU, and despite the reforms needed in the EU, the one good thing about Brexit is that the EU has used that glue to unite all the other European countries.

    Wul – I know that the Tories will come out with all their stock phrases and tools in the bag. But Brexit has at least enabled many unpolitical people to see the dishonesty of Westminster. The ‘Remainers’ are ready for that, as I will have confirmed when I attend a ‘county for Europe. meeting tonight. We ARE beginning to fight back.

    Dorothy – The problem with Westminster and the Tories in particular, is their total lack of respect for anyone whose views differ. The fact that we can prove that their views are ill-informed, ignorant, set in a long-distant past (and weren’t defensible then) and totally, but totally, self-important, is still not quite puncturing their comfortable balloon. But it will.

    And Patrick – the idea that the powers-that-be should offering £22,000 for a specialist job (many of those curtains/cushions will be antique textiles needing an army of people even more cheaply paid to repair and renovate) is quite outrageous – I’ve personally seen the army of women needed to keep Lord Salisbury’s Hatfield House in good repair, doing this kind of work. No one can exist on £22,000 in London or Windsor. Are they offering along with this paltry salary a ‘grace and favour’ cubby hole in the attics to live in, free food, clothing , transport..?

    Scotland can go for independence, and Ireland for re-unification. Wales can at least return to being the thorn in the side of the English, if not more. But for the English, all we can really do is try to:
    1) stop Brexit
    2) get rid of the Tories.

    Grrrr!!!

  7. Alan says:

    I also share in the same feelings as the author. The last vestiges of Britishness were extinguished in me yesterday.

    Britishness has become something that it was not before. It has now no basis in union. The self-proclaimed Unionists are in fact not unionists and therein lies the problem. May’s Brexit project is to extinguish both the European and British unions of nations. From this she imagines will arise a new nation of one people, Global Britain. It’s a deeply delusional and undemocratic project. As Stewart concludes, it will not end well. For discussion see this this recent essay by Anthony Barnett on Open Democracy, particularly the section on May’s Power Grab: Brexit is an old people’s home…and it’s English, not British.

    1. Alan says:

      To add to the above, I want to flag the rather amazing exchange between Robertson and May yesterday. May in response to a lengthy and angry statement by Angus Robertson on the imposition of Brexit on Scotland against the will of the Scottish people:

      My constituency voted to remain in the European Union. The point is we are one United Kingdom and it was a vote of the whole of the United Kingdom.

      This is the new undone union of one country in which Scotland has been annexed and has the same standing as Maidenhead, a foreshadowing of Scotland’s post-Brexit standing inside ‘Global Britain’. This is unity by imposition.

    2. Alan says:

      University of Cambridge Law Professor: <a href="https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/10677/top-law-professor-tory-brexit-plan-implies-taking-power-away-scotland-westminsterRepeal bill plan implies power-grab from Scotland to Tory Government at Westminster.

  8. Almuth Ernsting says:

    And remember the despicable fact that the UK government and Parliament have deliberately turned 3 million EU nationals resident in this country into “bargaining chips” into the negotiations. Parliament overturned a House of Lords Amendment which would have guaranteed our rights. So we can all look forward to another two years of not knowing if we can remain in our homes, jobs, and for many of us with our families. For all the talk about wanting to protect the rights of UK nationals elsewhere in the EU, groups representing those have been strongly opposed to turning EU nationals into bargaining hips, and have complained the government won’t speak with them either (though thankfully there are no reports of any other EU country treating UK citizens in anything like the hostile and threatening manner in which the Home Office if treating EU nationals).

  9. Eleanor Ferguson says:

    I can only agree with all that has been said so far. I too was taken aback by my feelings of pure anger, made worse by the feeling of helplessness. Nicola Sturgeon has been looking exhausted and disillusioned and I realise I’m putting all my faith in her being able to do something.
    What is really depressing is that time and time again I hear people parroting the idea that people are tired of referendums as that has become the mantra of Ruth, Kezia and Willie. It is almost like brain washing but I feel such a sense of urgency that I want to shake them!
    I find myself hoping that Brexit will be such a complete and obvious disaster, that people will wake up and go all out for independence.

    1. Interpolar says:

      I share you sentiments like no other post here. My Britishness died in 2014. Thus yesterday I would certainly have felt sadness In any event over a country committing such self-harm, but the fury I felt was because my country, Scotland, is being dragged into an abyss by a neighbour now more foreign than Germany (so yes, if the EU were indeed beholden to a German diktat, which of course it is not, It would even then be a favourable course given that Germany is by far the stronger democracy than the U.K.).

      What I fear now is that a beleaguered English press will weave a narrative of an evil Europe actively bestowing all the problems that the people of these Isles must now jointly face and manage to conjure up widespread Stockholm Syndrome. In this discourse, the SNP and we here would be traitors and quislings.

  10. Alf Baird says:

    Disregarding the sovereign will of the Scottish people puts us into dictatorship territory. It also gives grounds for, if more were needed, the SNP x 56 to assert Scotland’s nationhood.

  11. Mike17 says:

    This BTL comment in the Guardian say what I would say more eloquently than I can. From Greatbearlake, a BTL commenter on The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/30/bbc-urged-to-stand-firm-against-accusations-of-brexit-bias

    “As we sit on our helpless arses and watch, the BIG LIES take root on both sides of the Atlantic after the biggest cock-ups in our respective nation’s histories. Patriotism has been used a handiwipe, the BBC is useless and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Maybe it’s time for a little home truth:

    Labour has proven itself to be a clueless enabler and now probably defunct while May and the boys front yet another very British coup . And we, as a nation, appear lost, a disreputable collection of warring fragments, scrapping with our neighbours, picking fights with our friends and victimizing the innocent. To hell with the economy, EU residents, Brexpats, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are ridiculous and terrifying at the same time, more than a little contemptible and not a shred of progressive principle in sight.

    Now the Brexists are ready to prostrate themselves before their Supreme Leader, Il Trumpisimo, the epitome of their kind, who’s sell-by date has already passed. And there is no one with the grit and the savvy to stop them, despite his scary clown routine. In a competition to see who can extrude the most prodigious whopper, they’ll soon join forces in a true test of our ‘democracy’, a clear and present threat to our prosperity, environmental sanity, equality and peace; all led, not by May who is a butler like her grandfather, but by our lethal press and the alt right social media grapevine, to the tune of Moloch Murdoch and his Cambridge Analytical neuro-messaging pals.

    As a result we’re about to trade Europe in it’s tattered glory for Chumpland, and what a bad joke it is! Make way, here comes Boris, shilling the ‘World’s Best Prosecco, I Trumpi a L’Ivanka’! Such is the Art of the Deal we’ve been dealt.

    Culture? The Scots, the Irish and I will stick with the EU, the Enlightenment, good wine, rational thinking and the single market. And welcome lots of well educated, multilingual, hardworking immigrants too, thank you very much. England’s homegrown stock needs drastic rejuvenation, obviously, but that’s not going to happen. They’ve not been left behind – they’re being herded to the stockyard.

    Is this the future you had in mind Brexiter? A newly truncated Britain as a shabby fifties Cuba without the sun, an offshore 24 hour casino run by the Tory mafia, the population ‘in service’? The NHS as the chief means of stock management through strategic culling of waste people? No corporate tax, starvation wages, gutted public services,normalized tax evasion and money laundering, government’s only duty to preserve the inalienable right of the rich to prey on the weak? Patriotism?

    Too late to take back control in the face of manipulation, treachery and deceit? I suppose pigs may fly.

    Why is it so difficult to understand that these people no longer have a financial stake in our country’s stability? That their money lives in the offshore world and they use Britain as a convenient base of operations and its population as livestock? To them Brexit is just more shit happening upon which to speculate. There is no real ‘strategy’ other than how to conduct their personal investment options and a deeply abiding will to demonstrate who runs this place.

    They are very different from people who must work to pay their bills, and fools are they who follow them. They do not have ‘safe hands’! May is a shape shifter married to an ‘investment banker’: it’s his job to launder money and evade taxes, FFS! Totally conflicted, she shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near government, let alone PM.

    If you don’t get this you are missing the fundamental condition of our nation.”

    1. c rober says:

      which is why we need a single answer on our future at the economical and fiscal level.

      That answer is a soverign bank , tied to a soverign wealth fund , bringing in the people from all spectrums as stake holders and investors , yep including the 10 percenters whom can use its own country as a tax haven offsetting the highest level of taxation partially in investment bonds on their highest tax level.

      If our wealthy will vote for the status qou of self wealth protection , then the above is the way to get them to jump ship , more so if we play the currency game , and reject both the Sterling and Euro option , and with it our own fiscal levers that mean a new currency pegged to the difference between our import and exports currencies.

      With a new currency , comes new debt bonds. This method above not only enables our people to invest , but that of external investors , keen to play the currency market. And as we all know the world needs a new working currency , but we have to ensure the likes of Soros being able to bankrupt such a new “pound” is prevented.

      Then along comes the German model of investment banks , able to invest for returns that benefit Scotland more than those that caused austerity the banks themselves.

      Part two of investment banking , councils as banks seeing as how they are leaving the Highstreet , along with such council banking can come home building , holding of mortgages , and rentals returning 10-12 percent before the private corporate model takes over – just like it will with long term care housing and the tax avoider Virgin Care.

      Then we have our own 100 percent returned lottery , NsandI premium bonds and isas.

      AS an investor , a very risk averse one , in those scenarios I forsee a very successful Scotland , based on its people as its assets , not volatile NSO.

      Speaking of NSO , we already know of the tax bias of the corporations , and WM benefitting through the stealing of it with McCrone. We then have a situation where we can adopt the Norway model , but with the caveat of the spend being returned on post oil investment from day 1 inot the euro eco grid with Norway and Germany , tidal , back pumping , wind as a state asset – cheaping power for industry and preventing a heat or eat normality for our nations poor and retired.

      Housing , we need to rethink our current model and use the absolute projections. Our aged population need care , and before as mentioned above either the corporate housing , or care model comes in , holding Scotland over a barrel. By gearing housing creation for new care villages , near hospitals you have a double whammy effect on housing. As our aged and care need population grows so will its costs , so ALL housing should be gearing for that market today and for the next 10 years , without subs. The second part of the double whammy is that both council and private market can mean opening up the supply elsewhere it downsizing – preventing the sell off of our own homes to pay for care , making a more dignified retirement existence , and importantly removing the banks and their siphoning of gdp from the equation.

      Secondary GDP as mentioned is VERY important to a post indy Scotland , as I stated in the current situation banks simply are tapping our internal GDP. This is primarly with 8x multiple mortgages , where a 30 year mortgage means banks being the biggest benefactor. By reducing those multiples , now portrayed as affordable by the banks themselves , then it means more cash directly into GDP. Currently the SNP , Holyrood , Labour and Tory WM model promotes it as normalcy , this has to change.

      Housing and the low wage economy. If we are to compete with EU , China , and low wages then that also means at the end of the scale that takes the most from the workers pockets at the end of the week and month. Cheaper energy , cheaper housing , so by being a part holder of mortgages could be that answer , as could a return to Social rented where the council see the returns not the banks , thus able to build more even as a private model wholly or partially. Councils could easilly return to flat pack housing , or being the supplier of self build plots , making much more money than simply selling off land to developers to land bank.. more so if we make Leashold conditions or sweat equity contracts. Councils could even cheapen the supply of self build by being the contractors , suppliers as employers , or as colleges for training trades.

      As I said I am not scared by an independent Scotland , I am Scared of not having one , and simply worried that post UK we simply continue the Tory and NuLabour model in its creation.

      1. Alf Baird says:

        O how an independent Scotland could ‘herness’ the innovations of the great thinkers among our people, fowk lyke yersel c rober. We wid shuirly develop such a sustainable competitive advantage it would be embarrassing. Mair peuchle in oor ain fowk is aw it needs. Holyrood needs tae open its lugs!

  12. Hendrik Miller says:

    So in the last few days we’ve has Holyrood voting for Scotref, May triggering Article 50 and refusing Scotref till after Brexit plus the announcement of a massive oilfield in Scottish waters.

    This adds up to one thing, Westminster will fight tooth and nail to stop Scottish Independence. There are no depths which they will not plumb to get the result they want because if they fail the whole hierarchical structure of English society will be dealt a blow from which it will not recover. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

    The English ruling classes have been living the life of Riley for hundreds of years by exploiting others. First it was the colonies, then as they gained their independence the only people left were the Scots. Scottish Independence would deprive them of their last plunderable resources in the form of oil, fishing rights and agriculture.

    Without Scottish fishing rights they will have no bargaining chips with which to negotiate passporting rights for London financial traders, now mostly owned by foreign companies who would move to Europe on losing those rights in order to continue trading in Euros. So they would not only lose the tax revenues from the London financial markets but they would lose the revenues from Scottish oil.

    London would lose its status as a global financial hub and property prices in the capital would crash, having a knock on effect throughout the country. Let’s not underestimate the impact of this, rising house prices have been the holy grail of UK economic policy for decades. So long as house prices continued rising the property owning classes could overlook all kinds of economic stupidity on the part of the government and keep voting them in. Once that stops or goes into reverse the whole game changes, and Westminster knows this.

    So this is where the gloves come off. It will not be a pushover. The English establishment has some powerful weapons in its armoury, virtually the whole of the UK print, tv and radio media for a start, and they will hammer away with these for all they are worth. We are about to be deluged with a barrage of fake news, distortions, outright lies and propaganda that the likes of Goebbels and Stalin would have sold their souls for. And millions of people will believe it, as we have seen in Indyref1 and Brexit.

    This will be the fight of our lives, but it will be well worth it. The enemy is corrupt beyond the possibility of redemption. They are so convinced of their divine right to rule that they don’t care if what they are ruling is a toxic, stinking pile of excrement so long as they are in charge and they have a few oiks, plebs and sweaties to feel superior to. The Scottish Independence movement occupies the moral high ground in this situation and if we stick to that and don’t lower ourselves to their level we can win.

    Make no mistake this is the political struggle of our generation, and when in a few years time in a prosperous independent Scotland our children and grandchildren ask us what we did in the Great Independence Campaign we will be able to answer with pride that we got off our arses and went out and bloody well did somethingabout it. And our children and their children will be proud to have us in their family.

  13. kenmath says:

    Several posters have mentioned the need for reforms within the EU, which I won’t deny, but it’s worth pondering the extent to which UK’s failure to take a serious, pro-active role in the EU over many years has hindered healthy dialogue about the EU’s direction of travel and the development of relevant economic and political strategies.

    The Germans, burdened by their own 20th century history, craved a strong, pro-active UK voice as a counterweight to their own and there is no doubt that, had UK elected to play such a role, EU politics would have developed in a more pragmatic and multilateral way.

    I worked in Germany in the 1990s and a German work colleague used a striking analogy to express his (and his nation’s) frustration about the Brits: “Imagine it’s a football match. A crowd is heading to the stadium and some of them go into the dressing-rooms, change into their kit and come out on to the field to play the match. The Brits, however, go into the stands and shout abuse at the players!”

    When we see how Farage and many other UK MEPs behaved with open contempt in the EU parliament, my friend’s analogy rings very true. My view is that UK disinterest is to blame, at least in part, for many of the EU’s deficiencies. It’s also my view that UK’s withdrawal will in time improve the EU and turn it into an organisation which will be a considerably more natural home for Scotland than the UK being planned by May and her cronies.

    At the base of the UK’s troubled relationship with the EU has been the English taste for adversarial politics, whereas an organisation like the EU requires a consensual approach to achieve its ends. This adversarial fixation stems ultimately from England’s obsession with its class system and the Tories’ determination to preserve it with themselves firmly at the top.

  14. Donald McGregor says:

    I join you in your sorrow and spitting rage, compounded by my aghast realisation that yes, many many people WILL just shrug and ask to be left to ‘eat my cereal’.

    In the course of my family and local experience in exploring day-to-day conversations that may help sway people’s opinion on independence here in Scotland I am growing a gnawing fear that the people I want to reach have wilfully shut down.

  15. Calum MacRae says:

    Stewart, we are being run as a colony, always have always will!

    A dictionary definition of colony:

    “a country or area under the full or partial political control of another country and occupied by settlers from that country.”

    The English elite have always had the ability to lie, how do you think they built an empire or persuaded people in Scotland that they had persecuted to go fight wars for them or people in India that the riches of India were better spent building fabulous wealth in London.

    Scotland receives the crumbs from union, whilst we remain in this union its all we will receive!

  16. Redgauntlet says:

    I’m totally with you Stewart, 100%…

    Reading the newspapers in a bar in Madrid
    I suddenly thought on the rosy days
    Of 2014 when the world was at our feet
    And anything was possible
    And remember that we talked about
    Our worst nightmare which has
    Just come true
    Scotland voting to remain in an
    Old hat Union
    And England voting to leaving the EU.
    Nati, I said, gie me another glass of vino blanco
    Gie me another glass of good old Albariño
    And Nati did her duty and filled me up
    ¿Qué te pasa? she said, ¿Que te pasa, my friend?
    I gied her the gist
    And she laughed it away
    Ach, you Scots are different
    Everybody kens that
    Dinnay fash, things will sort themselves out
    It’s just a passing phase…

    1. Alf Baird says:

      “Ach, you Scots are different”

      Deid richt, RG. Thon’s whit we’re fechtin fir – oor nation, oor langage, oor cultur, oor wey o daein awthing, oor verra bein. Oor unfreendly Tory maisters an aw thair unionist thirlfowk wid blythely raither Scotlan wis nae mair, nae mair. We’re fechtin fir oor nationheid, an tae bi unalike! Fir Scotlan’s fowk tae bi juist alike anither kintra’s fowk is fir thay fowk an oor nation no tae exist, thon’s whit Anglicisation an colonisation’s aw aboot – i.e. tae wrack an remuive oor cultur an nation stick-an-stowe.

      Vive la difference! Vive la Escocia!

      1. Redgauntlet says:

        They know the difference in Madrid, Alf, eh? The Spanish Republicans are the best people in the world. They’d gie you their last penny. You don’t meet people like that every day. They look after me: el escocés. That’s why I live here. I love them so much. The good people of Madrid, who hate the Official Spain. We all hate that…

  17. Willie says:

    To Westminster, Scotland is its ” living space ” and I know now how Poland felt in 1939. Like 1939 the Nazi menace needs to be resisted. We must not flinch in that resistance.

Help keep our journalism independent

We don’t take any advertising, we don’t hide behind a pay wall and we don’t keep harassing you for crowd-funding. We’re entirely dependent on our readers to support us.

Subscribe to regular bella in your inbox

Don’t miss a single article. Enter your email address on our subscribe page by clicking the button below. It is completely free and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.