Tag: independence

A Covid Ramble

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Well it appears with winter on the horizon the world is settling for a miserable one. If we thought enduring lockdown while Britain basked in what was likely the warmest April and May on record was hard just wait until we hit January and the recently lifted Christmas restrictions are firmly smashed back into place. Thankfully I’m not in the UK now, in Greece you wouldn’t even imagine there was a virus, not where I am anyway. They’re handling it the most Greek way possible and just getting on with things. Saying that despite my ridiculously ignorant attempt at national stereotypes when they did have a lockdown it was a hard one apparently. It allowed them to open up for the summer and despite a few flair ups wherever the Brits like to holiday, the country has remained reasonably virus free. Last weekend in Thessaloniki the guy working in the hostel told me Thessaloniki had about five cases a day and Athens had two hundred. I think I may have mentioned that at the time but looking at the rest of the rates around Europe, well into the thousands, that is quite remarkable.

In that knowledge leaving this country, which I’m likely to do, seems a little silly. It’s like seeing prison and deciding you would like to go spend some time there. I never fully experienced lockdown the last time because I was working delivering bread and being clapped every Thursday like a hero. This time I would be going full power and disappearing for a couple of months. At least I may find the time to read those books I had for so long complained I was too busy for. Sounds quite exciting. I might study something too. There is so much to study. Look at me getting all excited about something everyone else is dreading. In truth I am too I’m just not sure what I’ll be experiencing enough to dread it.

I can’t wait to read the literature that people put out in a few years about this time. There will likely by films or television series in 2021. Perhaps the aftermath will be more of an interesting topic. Stories set during lockdown would likely focus on the psychological elements of the experience, but events after would likely be either on human versions of flowers opening up in Spring or will be about system change as Brexit flounders, the economy crashes and people overthrow the government and create peoples assemblies.

Either that or I’ll just be gloating about how I finally put in that application for Irish citizenship. Twelve to eighteen months and then probably another one or two for me to get off my arse and apply for the passport. That’ll be it. I give up on the Scots for being the only country in history suffering from Stockholm Syndrome bad enough to reject independence and the Brits for being a typical version of a people incapable of accepting their glorious history of domination and empire is now nothing but an illusion. If it were ever anything else. Fuck it the Irish seem like they’re having fun, I’ll go see what they have to say for themselves. Apparently too Covid rates below the border in the Republic are a fraction of those in the British controlled North. Well that’s telling. Handling it well are you Boris. I hope history is harsh on you.

Bojo The Wildling

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It appears Bojo came north of the wall today. He mingled with those pesky wildlings he ordinarily has no time for. When I say north of the wall, I mean nearly as far north as possible. He went all the way to the Orkney Islands. One suspects this wasn’t because he loves Scotland so much he wants to see as much of it as possible of course, it’s a lot easier to avoid the baying crowds when they consist of Angus and his dog than what they would be were he to brave Edinburgh, Glasgow or just about any place with a population capable of creating an angry mob.

He finally visited Scotland on the one year anniversary of his still slightly inexplicable rise to power. If that was supposed to fill us with some sense of honour that he would bless us with his presence on such an important day, all it did was remind us it’s taken him so long to come north. It took him one whole year despite the fact there was an actual election midway through the year. Perhaps his no show in that time was down to his love of the Union and the damage his presence would do to it.

Undeniably there is truth in that. The latest polls, and there’s more than one of them, puts support for independence at 54%. Nicola Sturgeon may try and take credit for this but when a country votes in droves for anyone but the man elected as leader yet has this very man foisted upon them it’s quite easy to see why opinion polls are only moving in one direction. When you see a country being dragged out of the European Union despite voting to stay in it, then expecting to be forced to endure an inevitable ‘no deal’ Brexit as the zealots in government return us to Year Zero and the ashes they hope to grow a new and glorious society out of, it’s fair to say the Scottish people want nothing to do with it.

Even the coronavirus has played it’s part. Nicola Sturgeon herself is very divisive, usually down the Independence / Unionist line in all fairness, but compared to Boris’ fumbled mumbled approach in confusing an entire nation on what’s expected of them while not actually doing anything himself, she has looked decisive and strong. She didn’t even have to really do anything, just be clear about what she meant when she did make a statement. Clearly there is something dark going on in the corridors of Whitehall and Number Ten, it’s no surprise more and more Scots are wanting out.

As Sturgeon said;

“I welcome the PM to Scotland today. One of the key arguments for independence is the ability of Scotland to take our own decisions, rather than having our future decided by politicians we didn’t vote for, taking us down a path we haven’t chosen. His presence highlights that“

It says a lot for a man that the opposition openly admit he does them more good than they do themselves. There is no way for sure to say one way or another whether Scotland becoming a free state would work in the short, medium or long term, and while it’s dangerous to suggest or believe that happiness is just waiting around the corner, let’s be honest anything has got to be better than this lot right now.

I remember the day after the independence referendum in 2014, I was in France picking grapes and I barely said a word all morning. I was infinitely disappointed that a people had rejected not the opportunity of independence because what is that really, but that they had rejected the chance to even attempt improving their lot. A people chose fear over hope. But who knows, there may just be light at the end of this tunnel of a horror show after all.

A Power Play

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There is one thing I enjoyed about not keeping an eye of the rolling news stories and it was that I got less caught up in the party political soap opera of Parliament. We live in a sensationalised world, not just the constant need to excite through 24/7 news channels but through the algorithms on social media that feed us constant anguish and thrills. They know what makes us tick and they’ve tapped into it. It’s so easy when writing this blog just to go onto a news website or see what Facebook has to say, and find enough material in one article on politicians and face masks for example to write something suitably scathing about dithering so called leaders bumbling their way to an end result we don’t notice because we couldn’t actually understand what they were saying. You see I’ve just done it there. It’s just too easy. They’re not inept, they’re incredibly good at what they’re doing, but it’s also obvious and therefore a treasure trove of things to write about.

At what point though do we stop listening and just get on with life. I’ve touched on all this before of course, it’s impossible not to bring up certain themes over again when writing every day. But when do we ignore the theatre of democracy, accept the demos are impotent and watch the shit show go on regardless. I feel powerless, these last five years politically have been incredibly trying and demoralising. Scotland voted no to independence from Britain, England voted yes to independence from the EU and England voted no to the first leader in generations who actually seemed to want to make positive changes to society for people. Instead we overwhelmingly got Boris. As you can see I think we are being dragged down by the English but I’m also wary of putting a single egg in a nationalist basket even if it is one promising liberation over subjugation. Politics has moved to the right and while there are signs of it’s coming back to, well, the centre-right, I am not filed with confidence.

Which means I am at the point of being defeated. Or maybe I already have, maybe that happened ten years ago when I naively thought myself an environmental activists and nothing changed. Of course I’m not defeated, I wouldn’t be writing this if I was, but this is no rallying call. I’m not all of a sudden going to build some ramparts and run up them. It is an acknowledgement though that there are people out there, people much smarter and with far more determination than me fighting for and enacting change. There’s a reason we don’t have a twelve hour work day and it’s not because of keyboard warriors like me. But then again everyone at all levels is important, even those blindly repeating lies and rhetoric in the cesspit at the bottom. If I believe in a holistic approach to the health of our bodies, why not believe it for the health of our societies. We are not just a series of strata within a hierarchy of power, that is not a healthy society. That is power, that is personal self-interest and that is exactly what we are hooked on with party politics. How can society nurture it’s people when it’s leader’s focus is ultimately themselves. While it is time to take the power back, it’s probably more the time to readdress our understanding and relationship with power generally. It is just a word and a concept after all, it’s down to us what we make of it.

A Union of Secession

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m going to attempt to recreate the main points of a conversation I’ve just had with my Dad. For context he is both pro-Brexit and pro-Union. These ideas discussed have come up in the past but seemingly have taken a step further with recent events.

The Tory party in the UK won a stonking majority of some forty seats and in Scotland the SNP won an equally stonking forty-eight out of a possible fifty-nine seats. Both of these result can be and have been spun in numerous ways but arguably what it does do is give a mandate for Brexit and a mandate for a second referendum in Scotland on independence. It is hard to argue against either of those things when Brexit and Scottish independence were the main priority of both parts respectively. However as with everything in politics this is not as straightforward as it seems. We in the UK have a voting system called First Past The Post, which allows for people to win seats once they get a certain number of votes but which for numerous reasons too many to get into here, creates a voting system which arguably favours the larger parties, creates a two party system like we have in the the UK and in the US too and which often allows for a larger percentage of seats that percentage of the vote.

The point is that while this may have been a Brexit election the Remain supporting parties actually received more votes in total than the Brexit supporting parties yet received vastly fewer seats. The same can be said for Scotland which has so many tight marginal seats that can be won by less than one hundred votes, the SNP received a far fewer percentage of the vote than percentage of the seats, which also equated to fewer pro-independence votes than pro-union. The argument made by my Dad was that the SNP don’t actually have a mandate because were there to be another referendum they would lose it because of this share of the votes but it is also an argument which can be made back in regard Brexit.

Put simply; the unionists want to maintain one union while breaking up another while the separatists want to break up one union while also maintaining another. The unionists believe they have the mandate to break from the EU because they hold a resounding majority in the UK parliament but not break up the UK because the majority of those voting in Scotland voted for parties not pushing for independence, whereas the separatists want to break from the UK because they hold a majority of Scottish seats in parliament but maintain the connection with the EU because the majority of Scottish voters voted to remain. Confused? You should be.

Ultimately that is the more ridiculous nature of politics and power. We pick and choose what we want to see and believe depending on what fits our narrative. We have a belief, we see facts, numbers, ideas which support this belief and fervently repeat them even in the face of contradictory points we choose not to see. I don’t doubt I do this too and hope one day to develop the self-awareness to stop. It’s just both amusing and depressing to see both sides using the same argument against each other and being oblivious to the fact its exactly the same argument. And whats worse, this road of obliviousness appears to stretch from one horizon to the other. This madness has always been, the question is then, will it always be?