Ship of Fools

SHIP OF FOOLS: From The Province Of The Cat by George Gunn

Just when you think this current bunch of English Tories and their pet semi-feral Scottish Daniel Dafoe’s couldn’t get any more cruel, corrupt, inept, fatal and venal they never fail to exceed all expectations and fears by announcing something even more stupid, expensive, irrelevant, pointless and ridiculous than the last reactionary and mindless thing. The thing in question is the royal yacht replacement: the New Britannia.

According the Prime Minister Boris Johnson – for this is the sort of Boy’s Own jolly jape he is so keen on – the boat will be:

“A new national flagship, the successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia It will promote British trade and industry around the world and will be the first vessel of its kind in the world, reflecting the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation.”

Or it could be a big fat floating begging bowl. Not so, according to Bojo. The government intends to build the ship in the UK, at a reported cost of up to £200m. So that’s alright then. No 10 insists the vessel would be used to host trade fairs, ministerial summits and diplomatic talks as the UK seeks to build links and boost exports following Brexit. It would be the first national flagship since Britannia, which was decommissioned in 1997, but the new vessel would be a ship rather than a luxury yacht. Or, again, it could be a big fat floating begging bowl.

This is a government which is very keen to lecture the Scottish Government on concentrating on recovering from coronavirus pandemic and not to waste its time on side shows and distractions such as implementing the democratic will of the Scottish people, which is to have an independent country, as expressed in the last four Scottish parliamentary elections. Not to mention in every General Election since the referendum in 2014. But what matters democracy when you can have a New Britannia to waive the rules?

As to “recovering” from the pandemic the actions of Boris Johnson’s government, with its obsession with popular grandstanding and the announcement of dates events as opposed to the careful consideration of data, are responsible for the needless deaths of thousands of people. Bojo’s idea of dealing with the crisis is to ignore it, or get married (for the third time) in Westminster Cathedral and announce a new £200 million floating irrelevance. Meanwhile people continue to catch the virus, get ill and die.

Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he believed the third wave had begun.

“We can already see that the current measures are not stopping cases rising rapidly in many parts of the country. This looks very much as if we are now early in a third wave,” he told The Guardian (30/5/21). “Unless there is a miracle, opening up further in June is a huge risk. The rise in cases we are seeing now should cause a reassessment of the most recent relaxation.”

The ”miracle”, it would appear, is The New Britannia. The new Ship of State, or is it a Ship of Fools? This fushionless vanity project set me thinking about another vessel. A different kind of beast altogether. Skidbladnir is a ship from Norse mythology. It was built by dwarves for the god Freyr. The ship was big enough for all of the gods to travel aboard it with war-gear and weapons in tow, and that, as soon as its sail was hoisted, the ship found a good wind, and went wherever the gods desired. It could also fly through the air. It was made up of so many parts and with such craftsmanship that, when it was not needed at sea, it could be folded up like cloth and placed into your pocket. It goes without saying that it must have taken a lot of magic to create a ship like that. Skidbladnir at least was useful. The New Britannia, despite what the Prime Minister says, will serve no practical purpose and will cost a lot of loot. The idea that a post-Brexit Britain can roam the worlds oceans asserting her power and “reflecting the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation” (even when it has no ships) as if this was the 19th century and somehow, in retrospect, the Opium Wars were a good thing, is bordering on delusional This will be a ship of jollies. Like everything else that comes out of No 10 Downing Street these days it is a gimmick, a fantasy and as such represents a clear and present danger to the majority of the people of England, because what it says is that “We quite frankly, don’t give a fuck about you or your shitty lives. Here, have a daft boat, or a bridge across the Irish Sea, or a millennial tent, a garden festival, or a Stairway to fucking Heaven, because we don’t care.” Vote for Brexit. Get a yacht. Now fuck off!

Way back in the 1960’s when I was young and a peedie loon at Dunnet Primary School every Summer, when the Queen Mother was in residence at the Castle of Mey, the royal yacht Britannia would dock at Scrabster. The Queen, the Chookohembra and various offspring would disembark, get into a fleet of Rolls Royce limos and drive across the North coast of Caithness to see the old girl in her restored (sort of) medieval pile. We bairns would be dragged out of the classroom, given a Union Jack on a bamboo stick and told to stand in front of the school and eagerly wave our flags at the passing royal entourage. There was about twenty of us in the school at the time and none of us had a clue who these people in these huge shiny cars were. If they noticed us at all we were cute Hottentots. Our communal mud hut behind us glinting in the colonial sepia sunlight of 1968. This was the beginning of my political education. Britannia’s, new or old, are personal.

Freyr the Norse god can pull his ship out of his pocket. Bojo the UK Prime Minister pulls his out of a hat. Unfortunately the Scots are press ganged onto the Ship of Fools, chained to the oars of a non-existent constitution and the Treaty and Act of Union, which far from being legislation drawn up through consent is now one of constraint. The rule of law now takes precedence over the democratic process.

As Dominic Cummings was serving up his revenge red hot to the two committees at Westminster, Simon Case, a top UK civil servant who has served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service since September 2020, popped in next door to the House of Lords to wake up a committee therein with a few choice observations regarding Scotland, or rather, the Union.

“I think the experience of both Brexit and Covid means that much more of government, so much more of policy includes consideration of Union questions earlier in the process. In everything we do we should be thinking how it impacts on the Union.”

All civil servants in Scotland report to him, directly or indirectly. Being acutely aware of this Simon Case informed the milords that this arrangement should be strengthened “as there was no need for a separate Scottish civil service.” So, no matter what issue it is, no matter what guidance or assistance is sought by mere mortals in Scotland, to the man at the top of the UK civil service tree, the Union comes first before anything else. If one want’s to be promoted then the route is obvious. The Union is good for one. Scottish independence is bad for one.

In his consistently brilliant columns in the Sunday Herald John Drummond (30/5/21) reflected on the “Peter Principle”, which puts forth the proposition that,

“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. In time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties.”

The “Peter Principle”, a concept in management developed by the Canadian educator Laurence J. Peter, claims that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role they will be incompetent at the new level and will not be promoted again. If the person is competent in the new role they will be promoted again and will continue to be promoted until reaching a level at which they are incompetent. Being incompetent the individual will not qualify for promotion again and will remain stuck at this level. This is the idea of the “Final Placement”, or of “Peter’s Plateau”. So, John Drummond argues, we have the people we have at the top of the UK administration and, more worryingly, in the British Government. My favourite phrase in all of this Canadian hierarchical jabberwockery, which covers the illusory exception of when someone who is incompetent is still promoted anyway, is “percussive sublimation”, which describes the phenomenon of being “kicked upstairs”. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party. And captain of the Ship of Fools. Because he is so quintessentially vain Bojo assumes his rise to the top was inevitable, if not pre-ordained and that, in fact, he is a god – if not Freyr then Bacchus (why not?) – and that he will ride into his metaphorical India on the back of a tiger accompanied by an army of elephants. Percussive sublimation, indeed.

Or as Hannah Arendt put it more forcefully,

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

No matter how many crazy schemes the Prime Minister and his regime come up with to keep Scotland in the Union and no matter what the likes of Simon Case, the head of the UK civil service, think – the Scottish people do not need to ask for permission from what in reality is an increasingly English government to become an independent country. Neither will they tolerate for long an SNP government which drags its heals over a referendum to achieve that independence. They know fine enough what the Covid crisis has proven, that a Scotland which has no control over either its finances or its borders is vulnerable to the whims of our more powerful Southern neighbours. This, as the statistics show, has proven fatal, so far, for 7,669 of us.

As Professor Martin McKee has said, he believes the third wave of Covid infection has begun. If so we in Scotland become increasingly powerless and vulnerable. No matter what the SNP might think, this situation, politically, cannot endure. Being press ganged to crew the Ship Of Fools, to sell the world a fantasy and a lie is no future for a modern, progressive European people.

Comments (38)

Join the Discussion

Your email address will not be published.

  1. maxwell macleod says:

    thank you George , fabulous, I am amazed to hear that Brittania went to Scrabster every year. Was this really the case?

    1. George Gunn says:

      Aye, when the Queen Mother was in residence, during the sixties.

  2. meg macleod says:

    humility is far from Boris`s understanding.
    It is unikely he will ever know it in this lifetime.But re-incarnation is a wonderful thing, I believe.On what ship might he travel then with his tail between his legs?Patience. We must have patience. We must be sure. LET US NOT RUSH TOO TOO SOON TO THE POLLS ..LET EVERYONE SEE FOR THEM SELVES THE WAY THE STORY IS GOING.
    then it will be easier to get the yes we need.

  3. Alice says:

    Remember well the large black car sweeping past us girls as we waved a shoogly cheap paper flag. No one in the car waved back. I thought then as you did George, how ridiculous and forced upon us , was the drive past of these people. So enjoy your writings …thank you so much.

  4. WILLIAM PATRICK says:

    DEAR OH DEAR, DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THE THIRD WAVE, BUT NO ONE DIED TO-DAY OF COVID. THOUGH WHY NICOLA HAS TO LOCK UP A WHOLE CITY FOR THE G41 POSTCODE FOR AN EXTRA 2 WEEKS IS BAFFLING; MAYBE SHE WAS REMINDED THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE MIGHT NOTICE THAT GLASGOW MIGHT NOT BE THE PLACE FOR EURO TOURNAMENTS ?

    1. Joe Hughes says:

      Have you had Covid I have me and my wife both got it in November 2020 I am still off work my wife got takin into hospital on the 27th November and spent 104 days on a ventilator and is still in hospital as off 2nd of June almost 6 months so yes nicola sturgeon is right to do what she is doing if it saves just 1 life

    2. Colin Robinson says:

      Our freedom of movement and association is being restricted in order to contain the spread of a constantly mutating virus within limits commensurable with the capacity of our services to manage the potential public health consequences of that spread. The strategy seems to have worked in containing the first two waves of the virus’ spread; although it’s too early in the project cycle for any informed evaluation to have been done.

      The hope is that the mass immunisation process will have progressed sufficiently to contain subsequent waves, thereby reducing the need to continue the restriction of our freedom of movement and association.

      However, notwithstanding our hopes, much depends materially on how the virus continues to mutate, and we’ve no control over evolution. Which, as I keep pointing out, is true of life generally in all its manifold forms.

    3. Wul says:

      “..BUT NO ONE DIED TO-DAY OF COVID….”

      So, the restrictions have worked and saved people’s lives, but you want to abandon them? Genius.

    4. James Mills says:

      William Patrick – are you sure that you are not DRoss in Tory Armageddon mood ?

    5. Hamish100 says:

      William Patrick CAPS LOCK.

      12 deaths. After a public holiday and weekend figures are artificially low. No doubt the press we reissue their front pages as a correction.

      As for the new boat / ship? just another diversion similar to a bridge to Northern Ireland!

      1. Colin Robinson says:

        I still think a suitably bridged and tunnelled extension of the M8 through the Kyles to Belfast would be a good idea. We should get the Faroese onto it.

    6. John Mooney says:

      Dear o Dear,what a sad pathetic comment,you really show what type of person you are ,more to be pitied than traduced.

  5. SleepingDog says:

    According to historian of British secret quasi-constitutional arrangements, Peter Hennessey, the purpose of the Royal Yacht Britannia is for the Queen to bugger off in the event of imminent nuclear war with a mini Privy Council in tow, leaving us all to die, and ordering the launch of Armageddon (and with her bloody RP every order for ‘lunch’ carries a potential omnicide sentence).

  6. Neil MacGillivray says:

    Promoting British trade and industry. Translated: flogging arms around the world to kill innocent children.

  7. Helen McC says:

    What is meant saying “no matter what the SNP might think “. ? As one of the tens of thousands of grass roots avid independence supporters thinking that this political situation cannot endure ..Admittedly I’m stressed out by the incomprehensible behaviour shenanigans of some SNP politicians seemingly blindly unaware that not having Scotland s Independence is unthinkable. The imposition of WM politics upon us is already utterly intolerable
    A million thanks George for your eloquent insightful and engaging article

    1. George Gunn says:

      What I meant, Helen, was what the the leaders of the SNP might think, that somehow their hegemony will go on forever. I might be wrong and there might be a referendum soon. Certainly everyone I know here in the Yes Caithness movement wants one as I think do the majority of Scots. What do you think?

      1. Mouse says:

        The SNP have become the equivalent of the Royal family, Sturgeon is the Pope? Their boats are more expensive (and more relevant to Scrabster if the ferry wasn’t run by Serco – who get subsidies and profits the same as Liz2 inc. For running HM’s Prisons for example.).

        1. James Mills says:

          Mouse – living up to your moniker , hiding abuse behind an apt avatar !

        2. Hamish100 says:

          The SNP was voted in. Spot the difference “ wee timorous……

      2. Colin Robinson says:

        There will be a referendum just as soon as Nicola reckons she’ll win it. She knows it would be difficult, to say the least, to come back from a second defeat.

        Also, our glorious leader is currently engaged in nation-building, creating processes and institutions through which she can govern civil society in Scotland more and more independently of the UK government. Maybe we’ll wake up one morning in the not too distant future to find Scotland a fait accompli, incrementally transformed into an independent political jurisdiction without any great fuss or palaver – or, indeed, referendum.

  8. Squigglypen says:

    At seven years I questioned Daddy..who was this royal family.. somebody had died and gone tae heaven..first I heard of them. Decided then that we didn’t need these folk who lived far away and whom I never saw…my parents appalled at my traitorous behaviour and wondered what they had brought into the world. There’s yer answer..it’s in the genes..I was the new world order..get rid of the royal family…that was 1952..still waiting..an’ no I wouldn’t have waved that scabby flag..even at seven….a tin of sweets and a penny…keep the natives quiet…..I am still waiting….

    Excellent article..thank you.

  9. Gavin says:

    When I grew up, it was “normal” to describe a “Prime Minister of England”. Likewise Charlie was always the ” future King of England”.
    Now we have William, a Prince, Duke or Earl, depending on where he is, or how sycophantic his audience.
    So Bonnie Prince Hermless, or like another Prince William, Duke of Cumberland? I think the former, but malleable.

    Under the dire influence of Gordo the Broon, William will finally put the nail into the coffin of this Greco-German farce in Scotland, so perhaps a statue would be in order. King William the Last. Look nice on Rockall.
    Gordo is desperate for one thing only—a peerage, though they would require an annex built onto the Lords to fit his ego in.

  10. William Stuart says:

    On considering the independent sovereign status of Australia and New Zealand seems to me that Scotland requires a Constitution. It is in the power of the present devolved Scottish parliament to do so immediately. The Constitution must have two essential condition, namely:

    • Only Scottish citizens by birth or naturalization can vote or stand for parliament
    • A Scottish parliament will legislate for the safety and wellbeing of
    all peoples resident in Scotland

    1. Colin Robinson says:

      We already have a constitution, William; it just hasn’t been codified or ‘fixed’. There are advantages to having a constitution that remains, like life, fluid and mutable.

      And why is it ‘essential’ to restrict citizenship only to native or nativised people? Surely anyone who participates in the life of the community, and who is therefore part of its constitution, is entitled to citizenship. Why do you want to exclude foreigners?

      1. SleepingDog says:

        @Colin Robinson, by your (I cannot call it logic) unexplained royal-fawning mysticism, there are disadvantages to having a constitution that remains, like death, militaristically fatal and unaccountable to mortals. Like the Queen can launch megadeath from her yacht. Like the public have no constitution block to to the state (empire) waging declared, undeclared and secret wars. Your enormous deceit is of course that this UK quasi-constitutional arrangement is extremely secretive; your pitiful deception is the implication that codified constitutions cannot be change, when of course everyone with basic familiarity with the USAmerican constitution is familiar with the idea of the Amendment (of which there were great many during the democratic (limited) phase of its early Bill of Rights phase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights). Perhaps you can at least explain why around the world peoples have adopted codified constitutions which the creaking, backward, out-of-step, British Empire (whose Privy Council-commanded dispossessive actions in its British Indian Ocean Territory have been ruled illegal by the United Nations, and its royal-appointed diplomatic hierarchs are the blundering, strutting clowns of world diplomacy).

        1. Colin Robinson says:

          Yes, there are disadvantages to having an uncodified constitution too. Pros and cons… like everything. Nothing’s absolute.

          The biggest problem with written or formal constitutions is that they are prescriptive. They always embody a set of values, and a question arises as to whose values a polity’s formal constitution should embody, especially nowadays when the material constitution of nearly all polities is pluralistic. Scotland, for example, comprises many diverse communities; which community’s values should its formal constitution embody? Should its constitution embody only the values of native Scots or nativised foreigners, as William suggests; or should it somehow embody the values of non-assimilated/non-colonised people also?

          My own preference (which I submitted in a paper to the Smith Commission on Devolution back in 2014, under the pseudonym ‘Scallywag’) is for a written constitution which a) disperses sovereign power throughout civil society, to prevent its consolidation in tyrannies (including tyrannies of a majority), and b) is minimally prescriptive; that is, does little more than set out formal procedures for decision-making and conflict-resolution within the plurality. But that’s just my preference. The question remains: Why should the values that inform my preference be embodied in the formal constitution of the polity of which I’m materially only one constituent part?

          1. SleepingDog says:

            @ Colin Robinson, I think you are misrepresenting the nature of a codified constitution, especially in contrast with the British imperial/UK quasi-constitution. Rather than being ‘prescriptive’, for example, a codified constitution can set a legal override in favour of pluralism, for example in freedom of religion, speech and press: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
            We have no such constitution protection in the UK, where the head of state is a hereditary monarch with theologically-granted sovereignty who is the defender of the Anglican faith and head of established church. As for modifying the constitution, that is not in the gift of the subject populace in the UK, and certainly not in disenfranchised regions of the British Empire. It would appear that the British quasi-constitution is perhaps the most prescriptive on the planet. No wonder we cannot get anything useful done on constitutional matters by formal political channels.

            On your bizarre association of the UK quasi-constitution with ‘life’, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, having suffered under the British monarchy for centuries, notably the Tudor War On Nature. At least according to the WWF, whose hierarchs you might be personally familiar with, at least in a parasocial way. It was interesting, given the corporate press obsession with Jeremy Corbyn’s aversion to pushing the nuclear button, that fears the security of the country were not front-page questions on the incapacitation of Boris Johnson through Covid-19. Who had the nuclear rugger-ball then? Perhaps it was in royal hands all along. Should we care about constitutional British readiness to commit omnideath?

          2. Colin Robinson says:

            Are you saying that having an unwritten constitution prevents us from living in a plural society? But we do live in a plural society. Go figure!

            And we can’t modify our constitution? But we did modify our constitution through the Brexit vote and hope to do so again through a second referendum on Scexit. Go figure again!

            Where did I associate the UK constitution with life? I said that, like life, the UK constitution evolves. That’s a simile – a comparison of two unlike things – not an association.

            And surely it’s the US President who has his finger on our nuclear button.

            But you didn’t answer my question. Who’s values should our codified constitution embody? Should the values it embodies be liberal, social democrat, nationalist, republican, syndicalist… whatever? Or should it simply be left to emerge ‘organically’ from the ever-changing material constitution of the plurality itself?

          3. SleepingDog says:

            @Colin Robinson, for someone who continually spouts on about the wonders of the British (quasi) constitution, you seem blissfully unaware that only Anglican clerics sit as Lords Spiritual in Parliament, which makes the British system of government about as pluralistic as the Islamic Republic of Iran.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_Spiritual
            Not only that, but in Parliament as in other royalist institutions, members have to swear an oath to serve the Queen, therefore attempting to exclude all non-royalist factions, including republican Sinn Féin. And spare us all your witless drivel on republicanism. Even today, the privatisation of sovereignty is amply illustrated by the insistence of the Queen in keeping state correspondence between monarch and prime minister privately hoarded. Not to mention all the Queen’s Consent news dripping out about her secret private abuses of legislation formation.

            In the past, no constitutional right has prevented the British government from banning dissenters or non-conformists from office, or Oxford and Cambridge universities letting only Anglicans enrol or qualify, or making blasphemy law challengeable. In the UK, we do rely on ratified international treaties for human rights which other constitutions codify (and the USAmerican constitution elevates international treaties above their domestic law, which is perhaps why they ratify comparatively few). There is no constitutional equality for women, no constitutional right of privacy within the UK. Far from a pluralistic electoral system, First-Past-the-Post entrenches old establishment parties, and there is no democratic ideal that can be used as a constitutional challenge to it. Parliaments may remove past gains, and do. The recent heritage body loyalty oaths administered by the current Executive shows exactly how they view pluralism, and intend to stamp it out.

            The Brexit referendum was granted by the executive on what looked to commentators like a whim designed to resolve a ruling party problem, it was not a right exercised by the people.

            You made an association, whether in psychological or literary terms, between life and the UK (quasi) constitution. Your humbuggery is tedious.

            So, nothing in the UK quasi-constitution prevents the USAmerican President taking control over British nuclear weapons? Is that what you are saying? Then why defend this state of affairs?

            As I said before, a codified constitution can allow a wide range of values to be openly considered (liberal, social democrat, nationalist, republican, syndicalist and so on) without being prescriptive. My own view is that a codified constitution (especially if there is no overarching beneficial international treaty framework) can embody non-human values, that of nature, although this could also be seen as a stewardship approach. This would allow legal challenges to proposed ecocidal policies, for example. A codified constitution is not a magic bullet. It is a tool that has to be well-created, wielded, refined as necessary, sharpened. But its great advantage is that it makes the rules explicit and generally understandable to the public. And also may stand as a bulwark against executive or popular tyranny, and a deterrent against the wilder dictats of government.

          4. Colin Robinson says:

            You keep listing all these provisions in a British constitution that you say doesn’t exist… Isn’t it the case that your objection concerns what’s specifically in or not in that constitution rather than the fact that it’s uncodified?

            For example: what’s the problem with incorporating international treaties into our constitution as we do, via legislation; that is, by ratifying them as law? Another example: what’s the problem with removing the supremacy of the Anglican Church in England by repealing the legislation that grants it that supremacy? If you want to assign rights to animals or the planet or whatever, why not legislate accordingly? Why does everything have to be incorporated into a single sacred document entitled ‘The Constitution’?

            The law is our political constitution; it’s the rules by which we operate as a community and the sanctions we impose to enforce those rules. If you don’t like the rules, campaign to get the law changed. That’s what our legislative assemblies are for.

            Now, I know that the executive branch of our government – a.k.a. ‘the Queen’ – could in principle withhold its assent to such changes; but could it really, without breaking the rules and precipitating a constitutional crisis, as it did when it tried to prorogue the UK parliament in 2019?

            But you still haven’t told me why it’s better to fix a formal constitution on our plurality than to let it emerge ‘organically’, as a general will, from the ever-changing material constitution of the plurality itself.

  11. Iain MacLean says:

    Johnson and the tories behaviour is reminiscent of the times when African dictators built basilicas in the middle of nowhere, connected by five lane highways, where the people weren’t catholic nor car owners!

    1. Colin Robinson says:

      I think such public works were known as ‘follies’. They were pointless but provided paid work for unemployed folk to tide them over periods when the labour markets were depressed.

      It’s a feature of postmodern economies that so much of the work we’re employed to do is pointless other than to keep us fed and occupied.

  12. J Galt says:

    Perhaps we should direct Boris to the Scottish Government’s own shipyard at Port Glasgow for his new Royal Yat.

    £200m and counting for two ferries that should have cost £95m, one the Glen Sannox still just a half finished hulk after 5 years and the other only a few rusting blocks on the ways.

    Boris would be lucky to get the lifeboats for £200m and it would take a decade to build!

    Yes Westminster and Whitehall are a shower of corrupt, venal and thieving bastards however for world class incompetence our very own Edinburgh is up there with the best.

    1. meg macleod says:

      sadly the Edinburgh set up is an echo of Westminster..like father/mother to son/daughter but if we achieve independence than we have a chance to vote in a new system/values..at the moment the snp is the only way forwardas far as the numbers go…..they are a compromise with the possiblity of some fairer future …and perhaps the craft of boat building may be restored..but please no big royal gestures…hope springs eternal

      1. J Galt says:

        I hope you are right Meg!

      2. Colin Robinson says:

        ‘…if we achieve independence than we have a chance to vote in a new system/values…’

        Will we, though? I don’t think the Scottish government has any plans to allow us any such chance once it gains independence. I imagine it will be very much business-as-usual.

        And even if it did allow us the chance, who is this ‘we’? The Scottish electorate generally – soc-called ‘MIddle Scotland’ – has no appetite for new systems/values. How many seats do radical parties currently have in the Scottish parliament? How would this magically change under an independent Scottish government?

        1. Meg says:

          Of course there are no definite outcomes. But our future balances on the hope that there will be an evolution towards a better way. It’s what keeps me going forward through this chaotic moment in our journey…

          Our society is like a child learning. Every new knowledge creates turmoil and erratic behaviour till it settles …….

          1. Colin Robinson says:

            My future is secure, having fulfilled my biological function. Life goes on in its manifold forms. The rest is vanity, a conceit.

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.