Scottish Political News

Just a tiny update to say that I'm watching the eurothing debate on Newsnight and I FUCKING FUCKING HATE HATE HATE JOHN FUCKING REDWOOD.
3 million unemployment
Poll tax
VAT on fuel
Selling everything that wasn't nailed down, and quite a lot that was
Remember that when you hear him talking about fucking prosperity.
And the 'Brussels political class': since he stuffed every quango going with Tory donors when he was Welsh Secretary he'd be an arrant hypocrite if he weren't just referring to 'people who live in Europe and understand a bit more about politics than the average knuckle-dragging Tory voter.' And of course he isn't an arrant hypocrite, is he? (is he?)

Got it. Goddamn. (That's a good 'goddamn,' like the americans say it, with a sort of funny hand-signal and a baseball hat... anyway, what I mean is that I'm pleased.) I went to the interview and gave the folk a lot of stuff about how much I adore the public, which I don't really - well, a bit, but I'm not entirely - I'm not one of those public-lovers - I don't mean I wouldn't do it in public, I just mean - oh, forget it. I'm glad to get the job, even though it's an hour's walk from my house. Especially since it's a hour's walk from my house. Need to lose a bit of weight. I've got a body mass index of 22. I think.
Oh, the French Referendum. Bad business, that. I think. Neil Kinnock says it is, and he's probably right. Even though he would have expelled me. I wouldn't have needed to join Militant back then. Unilateral disarmament... god. Them were the days. Nationalisation. Michael Foot. And that. God. (That was a 'god' of nostalgia, unhappiness and looking into the distance with a world-weary smile, rather than any reference to a mythical supreme being. Supreme beings don't have anything to do with the Labour Party, cf. The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Thank g... Oh dear. Sorry. Anyway.)

Dhiùlt na Frangaich am bun-reachd Eòrpach an-dè. Bhòt 55% an aghaidh e agus thàinig mòran a-mach le 70% a’ bhòtadh. Bidh e coltach gum bi Jean-Pierre Raffarin, am Prìomhaire Frangach, a thoirt suas a dhreuchd a-nochd.
Bhòtaidh na Òlaindich air am bun-reachd air Diciadain. Tha dùil gum iad a’ bhòtadh an aghaidh e cuideachd. An e seo deireadh a’ bhun-reachd Eòrpach?

Is urrainn dhuimh leughadh am bun-reachd (anns a’ Bheurla) an seo

Heysel football disaster marked.

Amidst all the celebrations after Wednesday, we shouldn't forget.

Unfortunately, it seems almost everyone has.

I don’t know what the figures look like here, or where to look for them, but I think it’s probably true that everyone multitasks more than they used to, and some of us multitask virtually all our waking hours.

In short, we are all teenagers now.

Faodaidh sinn a bhith a’ faighinn latha-fèille ùr an seo ann an Alba. Thaic 76 Buill Pàrlamaid am bile-buill aig Dennis Canavan BPA a stèidicheadh latha-fèille ùr air latha naomh pàtran na h-Alba. Ach ged a tha, thuirt Jack McConnell, am Prìomh Mhinistear, nach robh e cinnteach den bbuannachd den bheachd. Cha diùlt e a’ mhòr-chuid den phàrlamaid, an dhiùlt?

Tha là Naomh Anndrais air a’ chomharrachadh air 30mh an t-Samhain.

Got my job (placement, but never mind) interview tomorrow; the bloke on the phone told me it was an 'informal chat,' which presumably means it isn't a proper interview but a quick look on their part to see just how much of a maladjusted sad freak I am, and I'll be given the job (placement, but who's counting?) if I don't come in naked/give them a display of uncontrolled Tourette's Syndrome (I do tend to shout FUCK!!! occasionally, but that's only when I hear about the latest id card fiasco or dead Iraqis or what-bloody-ever I voted for)/have a swastika tattooed on my forehead. So that would maybe do all right.
I told them rather a lot of half-truths to get onto the programme; there was a list of Potential Problems in the Job [free] Market, and I couldn't really say I was homeless or used illegal substances, and the man asked me eventually (about half-way down) if I felt I 'would be discriminated against on the grounds of [my] gender or sexuality'. I automatically answered yes - I'm a woman living in the patriarchy, of course I'm going to be bloody discriminated against - and he asked how. I made up some gibberish about people not wanting me to work with children because of my sexuality
"Are you gay?"
And I just said "yes," and that was it, it had been said, it wasn't inside my head any more. I said it was a half-truth and of course it is, but it would have been just as bad to say 'I'm bisexual' and I wouldn't have got any points for that.

Bha e deireadh beothachail an t-sèasain. Chaill Hibs an aghaidh Rangers air Didòmhnaich ach a dh’aindeoin seo, thàinig iad anns an treas àite agus cluichidh iad ann an Eòrpa an ath bhliadhna. Bidh sinn fios againn cò a cluichidh iad aig deireadh an Ògmhios.



Bhuannaich Rangers an lìog an dèidh chaill Celtic an aghaidh Tobar na Màthar agus bha Dùn Dèagh ag ìsleachadh.

Bha e deireadh beothachail an t-sèasain. Chaill Hibs an aghaidh Rangers air Didòmhnaich ach a dh’aindeoin seo, thàinig iad anns an treas àite agus cluichidh iad ann an Eòrpa an ath bhliadhna. Bidh sinn fios againn cò a cluichidh iad aig deireadh an Ògmhios.

Bhuannaich Rangers an lìog an dèidh chaill Celtic an aghaidh Tobar na Màthar agus bha Dùn Dèagh ag ìsleachadh.

A horrid sort of day: muggy. I went off to the job centre to see my new deal adviser and tell her the wonderful news that I've got an interview for a placement in a library far far away arranged by Edinburgh Council's Deal Me In for the Terminally Hopeless. I thought my appointment was at 11am; I arrived at quarter to and told the man on the reception desk, who looked down a list in front of him and frowned. After taking down my national insurance number he told me that yes, my appointment was at eleven o'clock, but... next week. Could be a good deal worse, of course, I could have missed it and thus got much shit from my adviser and all connected to her (especially the scary woman who does New Deal for the Disabled; I swear she never blinks), but the fact remains that I trailed halfway across town in unpleasant weather, wearing my 'smart' trousers with the shiny nylon or polyester or some kind of synthetic ugh thing lining, for no reason at all. So I went to the library, paid a fine on a book, and then went to the goth boutique on George IV Bridge and bought a t-shirt saying QUEEN OF THE FUCKING UNIVERSE for fifteen quid.
That's what I did today. The end.
(Shit, I can't believe I spent fifteen quid on a t-shirt.)

Consider the irony, most corporations in the USA pay very little tax when they make a profit, using all sorts of legal moves to avoid doing so. However, if they make a loss, they are very happy to pass it on the taxpayer.

Bha òraid na bànrigh an seachdain seo. Thuirt i gum bi a riaghaltas a’ thoirt a-staigh cairtean-aithneachaidh agus Clàr Nàiseanta na h-Ionannachd. Bhòt am Pàrlamaid na h-Alba an aghaidh cairtean-aithneachaidh an bliadhna seo. A dh’ aindeoin seo, bheir iad a-staigh an seo fhathast.

Tuilleadh fiosrachaidh (anns a’ Bheurla) aig No2id

Now I - well I didn't envelope my arse off last election, but I know people who did, and I stood at a bloody freezing polling station doing nothing but smile at people which was probably a waste of time but never mind I did it, and I didn't bloody do it for this. 'Condoning or glorifying terrorism'? What kind of wonky thinking/wanky language is that? Who decides if you're condoning or glorifying terrorism (and what's with the christian jihad terminology? I haven't glorified anything since I was 17, and that was only because I was being stupid)? And the ID card thing for benefit cheats (cliche of the aeon) and scroungers off the state (so I suppose they'll be fitting Rupert Murdoch out with one then? - No? Jolly good). Haven't they twigged that this is not wanted on voyage? Expensive, pointless and sinister. Actually that seems to be Our Leader's litmus test on policy, now I come to think of it.
And making the taxpayer subsidise big business when it's running state schools and setting the curriculum there? And - Jesus, it's all wrong. It's a rubbish queen's speech, is what it is.
Oh, and:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1485653,00.html
Excuse me while I don't combust with disbelief.

Traffic has been banned from travelling along Edinburgh's Princes Street. Councillors also say it will significantly improve local bus services to the capital's famous shopping strip, which runs below and alongside Edinburgh Castle.

Which is all very bizarre, because the side of Princes Street that suffers from congestion is the side that cars were already banned from driving down.

But hey, since when has the council let facts get in the way of a stupid decision??

I've been staying with my parents over the weekend, 'sorting out' my books. Damn them. They painted my bedroom white (this is the parents not the books I'm talking about here), they took my chair out from besides the fireplace, they took all the books off of my shelves and put them on the floor, and now they tell me to look through and see which ones I want to get rid of.
I didn't mind it too much, actually, although it was mildly disorientating. There were easy choices; George Orwell's essays stay, detective stories I've already read go. But some of them were more difficult, I must admit. The abridged edition of Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall' was tricky, for example. Do I keep it and use it as an offensive weapon against possible rapists? Do I chuck it, and with it my pretensions to intellectuality? And am I ever going to get round to reading 'Perestroika'? 'Kosovo: a short history'? It didn't feel that short when I read it, but I was 16. Might I want to read it again, even though I only bought it because Michael Foot recommended it in the Observer? And I must have spent fifty quid on all those Private Eye books, and now they just annoy me. How many biographies of Neil Kinnock do I actually need? I'll keep the one with the red cover and throw out the black-and-white one. Same for German dictionaries; and English dictionaries, come to that. Why the fuck did I buy Norman Tebbit's autobiography? And what made me think I'd ever need 'Irish Politics in the 1980s'? Half an hour later I'm standing in the middle of my bedroom looking mournfully at what my mother calls the Keeps and Not Keeps piles of books and thinking about the person who used to live in the room who was and wasn't me; different hair, different handwriting, different vocabulary, different ambitions. I was going to Be Someone. By this point (if you'd asked the fourteen- or fifteen-year-old me) I should have been a PPC, writing pamphlets which would revolutionise the Socialist Vision and the way the Labour Party was run and novels and short stories which would make people compare me to Disraeli; I'd have had at least one profile in the Guardian, a husband, probably a child or so... and I'm just a depressed diseased underachiever with no job and a cat to support, and I still haven't read Capital. It's funny how things turn out.

Cheangail mi Air Fàire ri an làrach 'Scottish Blogs' an-raoir. Cha lorg mi ach aon blog Gàidhlig eile an-sin - Inbhir Narann.
Tha e uabhasach inntinneach agus tha ceanglaichean aige ri dhà no thrì blogaichean Gàidhlig eile. Bheir mi sùil orra nas fhadalaiche.

Thug suas Jim Wallace a obair dhen ceannard Libearalaich Dheamocratach an seachdain seo. Bidh farpais ceannardais agus tha e coltach gum bi Nicol Stephen an ceannard ùr. Thuirt Nicol Stephen gum bi e beachdaich air aonachadh le am PNA an dèidh an taghadh ann an 2007. Shìor-dhiùltadh Jim Wallace a leithid de cùmhnant. Bhiodh seo a' ciallachadh gun robh am Pàrtaidh Làbarach gun ùghdarras airson a' chiad turas o chionn fèin-riaghladh.

Tha an t-àm ann airson rudeigin nach eil mu spòrs!

Tha co-labhairt EuroMedLab 2005 ann an Glaschu an t-seachdain seo. Thug Jim Swan MD òraid an-dè agus thuirt e gu bheil mòran 'ellagic acid' aig uisge-beatha. Tha 'ellagic acid' anti-ogsaidear gu bheil a’ marbhadh ceallan aillse. Thuirt e gu bheil an ellagic acid aig uisge-beatha nas motha na an ellagic acid aig fìon dearg.

Slàinte mhath!

This is the unfortunate headline accompanying an article in today's 'Scotsman' which,if taken at face value, clearly indicates that a Powellian 'Rivers of Blood' scenario is just round the corner. And where,in the case of the Northern Constabulary area, with a 364% rise in racist incidents in the past five years! a gathering of The Klan seems more likely than a Gathering of the Clans.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this has everything to do with a change in the methods used to record 'racist incidents' and indeed, a change in the very definition of such an incident, and very little to do with any real change in community relations in the areas cited. That a newspaper who, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, continues to refer to itself as Scotland's Quality Broadsheet, chooses not mention this is regrettable and can only add to readers anxieties concerning the much vaunted 'Fear Of Crime' which is, in this case, as in many others, perceived rather than real.

My latest experience with Tribe body-piercers/tattooers to the gentry on West Nicholson St will apparently not be my last. Tattoos, allegedly, are addictive. In my opinion they're just sore. It's a shame, because it was supposed to be a celebrating - celebrative - celebratory, that's it, thing. I made the appointment on Friday on the first day of a historic third term, and I walked into the tattoo room, which looks a lot like a dentist's, to a stencil of a two-inch-tall long-stemmed red rose. It looks nice, now it's on, but it did hurt. The biggest cosmetic problem is still the blood seeping through the ink. When it's settled down it'll be a lot better. Exactly the reverse of the English and Welsh education policy reforms, then.

Cluichidh Sgioba Rugbaidh Dun Èideann ann an co-fharpais ùr - an 'Rainbow cup'. Bidh seo a’ chiad turas gum bidh clubaichean leth-chruinne mu Thuath agus clubaichean leth-chruinne mu Dheas a’ cluich le chèile. Compàirtichidh Glaschu, na Crìochan, ceithir sgioban Èireannach, ceithir sgioban Cuimreach, ceithir sgioban Eadailteach agus naoi sgioban bho Afraga a Deas. Tòisichidh an co-fharpais an ath-bhliadhna agus mairidh e seachd seachdainean.

I've been coasting around the Tory websites and apart from conservatives.com (how interesting that they should be a .com while even Newlabour is an org.uk) can't find a single one updated since Thursday. Queer. A nice one to visit is http://www.gavinbrown.org , the charming website of Gavin Brown, unsuccessful Tory candidate for Edinburgh South (the Liberals actually came second. Boundary changes schmoundary changes) for all your motivational speaker needs. He will no doubt be able to cater for these very effectively, since he has so much time on his hands now, having lost the election, hence the words unsuccessful Tory candidate which I wish to repeat as often as possible. Why not leave a message casting doubt on his mother's marital status while you're there? I wish him every success in his small business career, which will probably be more successful in any case than that of my parents, who ran a petshop (catering to real needs, ie the need of pets to have food, litter, etc, rather than intangible needs, such as that of executives to have people tell them to chin up a bit) until the second Thatcher recession, when they went bust. (I know what you're going to say; but it's rather odd that an entire road's-worth of shops should become incompetent at the same time in the middle of a recession. And they've got a very successful farm under this (Labour) government.)
A rather more tragic case than that of Mr Brown (let us not forget, the unsuccessful Tory candidate for Edinburgh South) is documented here:
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=sandra.howard.page .
Look at her. In't she gorgeous? Lovely woman. Baffles me how she could end up with him.
Then read it. It's appalling. It's fucking appalling. Think of the mirror-image of me during the past month or so, distort it horribly, add three gallons of bile, a metre-large smirk, and several metric tonnes of chintz, and you're still nowhere fucking close. There are three possibilities here:
1. She didn't write it herself.
2. Her brain's been hacked.
3. He's the one who's drawn the short straw.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be that unkind. (Well I did, but you know what I mean.) But she's used the EU exclamation-mark quota for the whole UK; and halfway down the page she starts looking like Christine Hamilton.

Chluich Hibs an aghaidh Tobar na Màthar an-dè. Bha e deiseil aig dà thadhal an urra. Chuir Caldwell agus Konte am ball a-steach anns an dàrna pàirt an dèidh chuir Tobar na Màthar dà thadhal.
Chaill Obar Dheadhain gu Celtic an-diugh. Ma buannaichidh Hibs an aghaidh Obar Dheathain Disathurna seo tighinn, cluichidh Hibs ann an Eòrpa an ath bhliadhna!

Education in Britain cannot truly be considered affordable and in most respects lags behind some allegedly expensive countries such as the United States.

The cynic might point out that this is exaggerated by the weakness of the American dollar...

Fàilte oirbh! 'Se seo a'chiad blog agam. Tha beagan Gàidhlig agam, ach saoil mi gum bi e uamhasach feumail airson mi a bhith sgrìobhadh an seo.

Tha mi duilich ma tha mi a' dèanamh mearachdan. Ma tha thu ag iarraidh a' ceartachadh rud sam bith, fàg do bheachd. Tapadh leibh.

We made it. Half a rainforest of leaflets, many many phonecalls, lots of billboards and much shouting and 100 people still didn't manage (Stephen Twigg, for fucksake! Apparently it was the Liberals), but we made it. Iraq was a big issue throughout the campaign, so I think what finally swung it for us was Michael Howard, as a person, and the presence on polling day of my lucky Bagpuss socks.
My Dad analysed the result over the phone while I was still in bed at the ungodly hour of 11.45am; majority of 66, 40 Blairites, 47 Brownites, however-many (I can't remember) swingers, and around 30 bolshy bastards of the kind that I love best. So Our Leader may have a slightly more difficult time getting the ID cards et al through than he thought. It'll be a wee bit odd having a smallish majority like that, though. I'm used to seeing the Labour benches crammed to bursting point with women in suits, but - ach, we're in, shut up. And Michael Howard is leaving the building, or at least stopping being leader of the Tory Party (yes, Tory, not Conservative, see entry last month), so we'll not see anything of his strange face soon, good. They may of course choose someone even more repellent, but apart from Boris Johnson there's not really anyone quite so annoying. Watch this space.
And finally. My tory candidate, as I have said, has been bombarding me with leaflets, free gifts, et cetera ad nauseam, for over a year. Gavin Brown. Gavin Brown vs. Nigel Griffiths MP (Edinburgh South: Lab). Nigel Griffiths, with the help of my Bagpuss socks, fucking wasted him. Go Nigel.

There's a good chunk of the middle class that, although certainly nice people, hard working, reliable and whatnot, are not particularly bright, creative, or too fond of original thought, nor taking risks.

This class I see being bled white over the next few decades, as their niches dry up like summer puddles.

I'm getting two letters a day from my tory candidate, my latest containing a potted biography describing him as a former World Debating Champion* and a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do (as my sister points out, you only need one or the other), an outstanding 'trainer with the Junior Chamber of Commerce,' which I've had a run-in with myself (it seems the kind of body in which a maggot like Gavin Brown might well flourish), an outstanding litigation lawyer (there's nothing wrong with lawyers, except - it must just be a coincidence that Michael Howard - anyway) and - he has the good grace to pretend somebody else said this - 'a star.' Modest boy. A lot a lot a lot of resources are being channelled into Edinburgh South, so people like me get free DVDs (OK I'm on his mailing list, but it's expensive to send anyone DVDs about how great you are) and Nigel Griffiths, who isn't sound on the war but despite everything is a Labour MP, is their top target; so if you're living in Edinburgh South and reading this please please.

*I don't know how they decide these things, but apparently all the debates are conducted in English; which is unfair, to my mind. Much like only letting people from Earth enter Mr Universe.