Wings Over Scotland

You Gotta Move link to youtube.com

Well I didn’t think I’d ever agree with Jacob Rees Mogg but I suppose a broken watch. Of course HM civil service is politically bias, half the Treasury were awarded gongs for terrorising Scottish grannies in 2014. However, that’s the extent of my agreement with JRM, who appears to be a throwback to a less civilised time. A man with apparently zero appreciation of what life is like outside of his extremely privileged bubble.

Sociological Perspectives on Austerity

At the core of austerity measures are cuts in state expenditure. The outcomes (reduced benefits, wages, pensions and state services) have been severe for the more disadvantaged in society, who have experienced a significant fall in living standards and growing insecurity. There are profound differences – of geography and generation, gender and ‘race’ as well as class – in how austerity is experienced. These inequalities are increasingly taking on a spatial dimension, with the social zoning of cities and the disparities between regions becoming more pronounced. The south-east of England is becoming increasingly distinct, though is itself the locale of deep and growing inequalities.

Austerity includes a massive rolling back of the boundaries of the state – a restructuring of state services. Many services are simply ceasing to be provided or funded by the state, with 20% cuts to most government departments, local
government, the BBC etc. Third sector organisations, which are largely funded by the state, have been subject to similar pressures. On the grounds of increasing efficiency, other services are being marketised, ‘modernised’ and privatised, with the massive and growing use of contractors, which in many cases are large US-based corporations (e.g. G4S, Capita). Thus austerity is being used as a rationale for fundamental reform of the state, and of the relationship of the individual with the state, for which there was no manifesto commitment.

In the process, some argue, we are seeing the dismantling of (for example) the NHS in England. Even if this is to over-state the situation, the NHS and welfare state are experiencing major reform, driven by the austerity policies which were introduced to resolve the banking crisis. One consequence of austerity is a predictable growth of concern about immigration and threats to UK sovereignty. UKIP’s agenda, reflected in the Daily Mail, focuses on cultural swamping and the threat to England and Englishness – and represents a powerful political force (36% of the vote in England in the 2014 European elections). Not confined to the Daily Mail, we see too an increasing stigmatisation of poverty. Such processes, commonly, are exacerbated at times of recession….

link to gbz.hu-berlin.de

the cultural politics of austerity: past and present in austere times

Abstract

Through the strictures of the global financial downturn and its aftermath citizens have been urged to ‘keep calm and carry on’. This slogan, first coined in the 1940s and revived in the 2000s, found its way into political rhetoric, media commentary and popular culture and was embraced with consummate irony and aplomb by many Britons. Some cultural critics on the left, in particular, regarded the revival of this and many other rhetorical returns to the Second World War with deep suspicion, spying in them a propagandist drive to manage a citizenry beleaguered by financial cuts and the rolling back of the welfare state. For critics, the discourses and practices of mid-twentieth-century austerity, revived and revised for modern times, were worryingly nostalgic and literally retrogressive. Surely, the re-emergence of mid-century archetypes (the resourceful homemaker, the resilient working class, the middle class with upper lips held quite stiff, the frugal senior citizen) heralded an unwelcome return to the gender and classed politics of another period, when inequalities and material deprivations were tolerated by the quiet majority for ‘the common good’? Rebecca Bramall’s insightful book The Cultural Politics of Austerity tackles these concerns head on while also asking us to think differently and more progressively about the opportunities of the current moment.

link to link.springer.com

‘People in this country have had enough of experts’: Brexit and the paradoxes of populism

Abstract

In June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, creating massive political turmoil and controversy. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to a discussion about how to analyze such critical moments in policy and politics. Rather than searching for one ‘real’ cause (whether the micro-politics of the Conservative Party or popular disaffection from neo-liberalism), we offer a form of conjunctural analysis that highlights issues of multiplicity and heterogeneity. We sketch this approach and then explore two puzzles that have particular pertinence for Critical Policy Studies. One is the puzzle of populism: how new imaginings and representations of the ‘British people’ were constructed. The second is the puzzle of expertise; how antipathy to ‘expert’ knowledge was shaped to challenge British and European ‘elites’. Conjunctural analysis, we argue, offers a vital means of engaging with such puzzles, and of grasping the heterogeneous and contradictory forces, tendencies, and pressures that enabled Brexit.

link to tandfonline.com

And great to meet you too, Thepnr. We intellectuals must stick together, y’know.

Favourite line from last night was when Mr. A. “Asbestos Pants” Carmichael breenged up the stairs after Bob The Builder had called him a liar and Ian Brotherhood said, “Alistair, I can see up yer kilt!”

Nature Notes No. 351:

I have a potted azalea in front of my patio door and I noticed a wee goldcrest today flitting from twig to twig in a most energetic fashion. I’ve never seen one so close up. I thought it might be eating insects caught in some spiders’ webs but it then flew down to move along the bottom of the window frame of the patio door, cocking its tail and moving restlessly. It stayed for well over half an hour, an amazing display.

I eventually worked out it had spotted its own reflection in the glass and thought it was either a female or another cock bird, hence the agitation.

Thought you might be interested, Smallaxe. I know you and Gaia are one.

Hi Tinto, I hope that Harvey has come oot o’ the huff. You were quite right to sheild him from SiU, poor soud shouldnae be exposed to that nonsense. Talking of being exposed, was liar, liar pants on fire a true Scotsman, or just a kid oan yin like the rest o’ the Britnats. Asking for a friend, cough.

I’ll leave you with a wee song.

link to youtube.com

Hi Tinto, has Harvey come oot o’ his huff yet. I think you did well to sheild him from SiU. Poor soul shouldnae be exposed to that lot. Speaking of exposed, was liar, liar pants on fire a true
Scotsman, or a kid oan Britnat version. Asking for a friend, cough.

Here’s a wee song.

link to youtube.com

Well done, guys. Glad you have fun last night.

TC, I see goldcrests quite a lot, they nest in mature spruce. From the bathroom you can watch them flitting in and out, nest building and feeding, right outside the window. Also from the kitchen, different tree, different goldcrests. Beautiful wee birdies.

OK, a rare input from me to ‘off-topic’.

It’s that night again…

link to youtube.com

I think this was released in 1974 or thereaboots. I thought it was an excellent single – a cover that was 180° different to the original.

Of course, because I liked it and bought it, its failure as a chart entry was guaranteed. What I call “The McTernan Syndrome”…

link to youtube.com

BTW: Mike Berry had some musical/acting career. See here:-

link to en.wikipedia.org

Hey link to youtube.com

“For no particular reason…”

😉

I recall the last time I offered this link, Thepnr didn’t rate it. Onnyhoo, have had ‘Celtic Conections’ on as my aural wallpaper and I was reminded of this so I’m gonna post it again – and I would urge Thepnr to follow the links.

The first time I watched this video, my optical organs over-lubricated, specially when the pipers came in.

Here’s the video but check out the background links following.

link to youtube.com

Background info:-

link to maidofheaven.com

link to en.wikipedia.org

link to en.wikipedia.org

After the generous remark earlier from Smallaxe about my Buddy Holly Show last night I played Matchboxes “Loves Made A Fool Of You ” he had provided a YouTube link to and came across the best hour I’ve enjoyed in ages.
link to youtube.com a Buddy Holly Tribute hosted by Kris Kristofferson with everybody who’s anybody and some absolutely fabulous performances.

I am left in no doubt that the invention of the electric guitar in the early fifties changed the world

Thanks a lot Michael, I enjoyed that and I’ve had that version on my show last year. Nanci did a lot with the Crickets (appeared with them at the venue at Paisley Road Toll in Glasgow for instance)and that is a particularly great version of Well Alright,which I think vies with Not Fade Away as Buddy’s best composition. Blind Faith’s Well Alright is a cracker too (as is Santana’s).

That was Sonny Curtis to her left. I think his earliest recorded song was “Rock Around with Ollie Vee” during Buddy and the Crickets unsuccessful short spell with Decca.

BTW Jerry Allison is I think the best drummer by a long way of the rock’n’roll era and his very individual style contributed hugely to the recordings. He is the last surviving member of the original Crickets.

A sparkling sunday here. Birds singing, sun shining. Have a great time folks.

Talking about faith, Brexit is bad, mky.

The Political Economy of Brexit and the UK’s
National Business Model.

Brexit Aesthetic and the politics of infrastructure
investment

We need to talk about infrastructure

The British Business Model (BBM) – which combines a dominant financial sector, flexible labour market regime and openness to international capital flows – describes a system that reproduces inequality and is economically unstable. Its precipitous decline has been discussed so frequently that ‘declinism’ is now a recognised thing (Tomlinson, 2009). High and increasing levels of social and economic inequality, low levels of political responsiveness, geographical polarisation of wealth and opportunity, financial predation, atomized labour markets, low productivity, failing welfare health and care provision, relentless indebtedness are now defining features of the BBM. Many of these factors have or will be linked to the Leave vote of June 2016 forcing the question: was Brexit the consequence of a constitutional failure in British politics or the cause of it?

Culture and economy have played an important role in the UK’s EU Referendum and the rise of populist movements across the modern industrial world (see Inglehardt and Norris, 2016; Curtice, 2016). But their analytical separation has avoided the question of how they relate, especially in relation to policy decisions. Immigration, for example, played a key role in the Leave campaign but the impression that immigrant demand was overburdening social services cannot be understood without acknowledging how austerity agendas cut back on their supply. Austerity hit hard on structurally weak economies in the UK (Fothergill and Beatty, 2016) just as refugees were more likely to be distributed to poorer wards as local authorities had to take on national obligations (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, 2017). These are the areas that also voted Leave.

The BBM offers an institutionalist account for exploring the UK’s economy after Brexit. We can see what reproduces the failures outlined above and how these relate to policy agendas. Infrastructure ‘provides the services that enable society and the economy to function’ (Armitt et al., 2013: 17): it is central to the to the way a country operates, delineating the character of the economy, the relationship between state and society, the forms of public procurement and the ownership of critical assets. The procedures used for infrastructural investment and the agendas that they respond to transcend history and at their core differentiate one country from another. These long standing infrastructure investments are typically captured in institutionalist accounts. They may extend over a generation and certainly beyond the mandate of one government and the path dependency of infrastructural investment matches well with an institutionalist emphasis on the costs of change and the routines enabled by infrastructure investments.

One of the failings of an institutionalist approach is that it can normalise, rather than reveal, existing hierarchies. The “echo chamber” politics of the Referendum debates reinforced how representational bias informed both expert and post-truth positions in the debates over Brexit. The rejection of the political establishment (including EU membership) expressed in the scale of the Leave vote may have implied that the BBM failed to deliver the infrastructure capable of supporting society and the economy. In identifying a ‘new infrastructural turn’ Ash Armitt aims to make sense of human being and sociality in the city, in ways that acknowledge the ‘liveliness of socio-technical systems’ (ibid. p138). Infrastructure, or the lack thereof, has agency and can be productive of social experience. It therefore offers a narration of the social life of a place that allows us to look beyond institutions and the capabilities they offer to recognize what informed that choice of institution, and that type of infrastructure….

link to speri.dept.shef.ac.uk

* A BBC sponsored report has just found that non-church going Anglicans are, on the whole, hostile to immigration and are pro-Brexit.

@BLiS___d
What is the most important to you as an accounting unit, ‘British’ nationalism or the welfare of your constituents?

Critical political economy, free movement and Brexit: Beyond the progressive’s dilemma

Abstract

The progressive’s dilemma suggests that a trade-off exists between, on the one hand, labour and welfare rights underpinned by solidarity and shared identity and, on the other hand, open immigration regimes. With reference to debates on EU free movement in the United Kingdom, it is argued (1) that a progressive European critical political economy literature of the Left has a tendency to accept this dilemma and resolve it in favour of the former; (2) that it does so because it erroneously conflates the free movement of people with the (increasingly neoliberal) free movement of goods, capital and services; and (3) that it could and should treat human mobility as qualitatively different and, consequently, need not accept the terms of the progressive’s dilemma. The argument has important implications for a progressive politics in general and for the Left’s (particularly the Labour Party’s) position in the United Kingdom on free movement (and, by extension, on Brexit).

link to journals.sagepub.com

Here you go Ian B and Tinto, you too Smallaxe.

Johann was there after all, don’t the men look handsome in their kilts 🙂

OK, so it looks as if Scotland is defending itself from an expansionist form of English cultural nationalism, characterised by increasingly authoritarian, right-wing populism and sentiments of Anglican religiosity. A state of affairs that is almost certainly related to the ‘strategy’ of austerity and the widespread social insecurity it has produced.

@Church of Scotland
Do you support this state of affairs or the well-being of your congregation?

Cultural nationalism

Cultural nationalism generally refers to ideas and practices that relate to the intended revival of a purported national community’s culture. If political nationalism is focused on the achievement of political autonomy, cultural nationalism is focused on the cultivation of a nation. Here the vision of the nation is not a political organisation, but a moral community. As such, cultural nationalism sets out to provide a vision of the nation’s identity, history and destiny. The key agents of cultural nationalism are intellectuals and artists, who seek to convey their vision of the nation to the wider community. The need to articulate and express this vision tends to be felt most acutely during times of social, cultural and political upheaval resulting from an encounter with modernity. Cultural nationalism often occurs in the early phase of a national movement, sometimes before an explicitly political nationalism has appeared. But it can also recur in long-established national states (see Hutchinson 2013)….

link to stateofnationalism.eu

Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches

Abstract: Building on recent literature, this paper discusses four ways of studying the relation between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power, or its distinctive character in
particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The paper concludes by reconsidering the much-criticized understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.

link to sscnet.ucla.edu

NATIONALISM, ETHNICITY AND DEMOCRACY:
CONTEMPORARY MANIFESTATIONS

Nationalism in the Contemporary Era

Protest nationalism

Not unlike ethno-nationalism, the phenomenon of what we call protest nationalism can broadly be explained as a response to perceived social, political, cultural or economic insecurity brought about or subsequently exploited, directly or indirectly, by state policy.

1. Right-wing nationalism in Western Europe

According to conventional wisdom, wealth, individual freedoms and political maturity should have inoculated Europe against xenophobic and parochial forms of nationalism and ushered in a heightened sense of tolerance and acceptance of the “other.” On the other side of the coin, modernization theory assumed that the experience of industrialization and urbanization would gradually reduce ethnic differences and ultimately assimilate all minority groups (principally through the educational and occupational systems) into a single homogeneous culture defined by the boundaries of the nation state.

Yet, as recent European history has shown, xenophobic nationalism, embodying characteristics of neo-fascist ideology, can also emerge among groups within so-called advanced societies. These reactions have tended to flourish within a more general context of socio-economic decline and political change. The ensuing insecurities have found their principal target in the settled or newly arriving immigrant communities. As many analysts have pointed out, at a time of economic stress, all ‘foreign’ elements and new arrivals are bound to be resented – even ethnic Germans from ex-GDR wishing to settle in Germany. “The Germans have been gripped by fear,” reported Der Spiegel in 1992. “Fear of strangers, fear for their jobs, fear of inflation and recession, fear also of the unavoidable impression that the island of prosperity on which they live can no longer be preserved.”11

These phenomena explain in part the popular appeal of right-wing parties and groups in Western Europe12 which seek to defend so-called national and cultural identity and norms on the basis of reactionary, authoritarian and racist slogans advocating for the most part the severe restriction of immigration and asylum policies. The phenomenon or, as some put it, the traumatism, of immigration has been used as a convenient target for public discontent and has become a politically important and sensitive issue.

Some also explain the popular successes of these groups or parties in terms of the reaction to the political disorientation arising from the rapid collapse of the communist menace and the accompanying psychological need to transfer the “enemy” image to new sources of threat. As has traditionally been the case in history, most notably with the Jews, in times of economic crisis and social instability, ethno-nationalistic sentiments offer groups an opportunity to put the blame on others outside their own community.

A further attraction of these right-wing parties appears to lie in their promise to eliminate corruption, misery and unemployment and their ability to exploit people’s aspiration for a better life. Sadly, they speak for those Europeans who have lost faith in more moderate or mainstream political parties,13 who are disoriented by post-communist upheavals and who fear interlopers from other countries and other cultures.14

The real threat of these parties is not that they will take over power in Europe. Their pernicious impact lies in the fact that they are forcing the center-right parties to shift further to the right, threatening, in some cases, to undermine the very foundations of democracy. In France, for instance, the ruling conservatives have stolen the far-right’s thunder by tightening French citizenship laws and officially calling for “zero immigration,” leading to the observation that the moderate right is simply trying to “outflank the National Front by being even tougher on immigrants” (The Economist, 27 April 1996, p. 33). The German government has similarly restricted the country’s asylum policies, a step that can hardly be unrelated to mounting xenophobic sentiment expressed not only by fringe groups, but also by far-right parties. In Britain, asylum and immigration policies have been tightened to a point where state policies are considered by some to seriously breach liberal values and to “betoken a dangerous defensiveness” (The Economist, 4 May 1996, p. 16)….

link to gmu.edu

Bob Marley vs. Funkstar De Luxe:”Sun Is Shining”;
link to youtube.com
🙂

Enjoy it, cearc, my friend, I can see clouds over Cumbria from here, probably the SNPs fault they do it deliberately you know.
🙂

Levellers:”What A Beautiful Day”
link to youtube.com

Want some music with that?

link to youtube.com

@chasanderson200

Well done Chas, you’ve done a good piece of work there you can count me in for starters. C’mon you lot the more the merrier.

chasanderson @ 9.40
Thank you for organising that …… sounds like a good night!
Count me in..

If the landlord is ok with it we could all bring a dish of something each,and get a nice wee buffet going on.
Obviously it’s up to you but let us know if you want us to do that?

liz g
Liz, I”ll double-check and get back to you later this week.

Given the weather, I feel a peom coming on:

link to poetryfoundation.org

Awaiting hammers……

Peotry is it, Tinto,

The Semmitt is a little vest
You put it on to warm your chest
Alas when Summer comes again
The end.
😉

My Name is Bill and I’m a Headcase,
link to youtube.com

@TC –

If you get some hammers be sure and hang on to one to knock yer joints back into working order after the game tonight. Properly baltic oot there…

🙂

That’s the one Tinto, U know I’m shite at these links. Quite fond of De La Mare’s “The Listeners!” tae! Off Topic’s Bloomsbury phase, what!

Refused a whisky mac? Should we be crowd-funding for flowers? (unless, of course, she was actually just threatening to dump ginger in your best malt unless you did the dishes).

cearc: even more amazing, SWMBO had bought one of those wee 10cl bottles of grain whisky you get as offcuts in The Whisky Shop just so my malt would remain unsullied by the Crabbie’s.

Wottawummin!

-4 C where I am, which is probably not where anybody else is.

Morning, Smallaxe. I always thought Trevor Burton looked the most completely psychopathic one of The Move.

My strawberries are coming up already:

link to youtube.com

Tinto,

Your strawberries are coming up and you’ve discovered a hole in the space-time continuum that’s as funky as Freuchie. What the funk more could you ask for in one morning?

“Be Thankful For What You Got” William de Vaughn;
link to youtube.com

“The world is crazier” are you sure it’s the world?

Gansta whitewalls are supposed to be on the wheels, not the car and driving topless will only get you arrested or hospitalised with severe nipple nip in this climate.

Your mention of the ferry reminded me of the cover that Bryan Ferry made of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” so here’s Frankie Millar to sing it for you.
“Jealous Guy”
link to youtube.com
I looked for Nana’s wonderful rendition of this song but I seem to have misplaced it atm.
😉

That guy’s so weird he should be here on O/T, Smallaxe.

There’ll be a welcome in the hillside, etc.

*Strokes chin, shakes head (can’t do it the other way around)*

Rarely have I seen such twisted depravity, Smallaxe. The first in particular was simply fowl.

That young shaver could give ME a run for my money in the Strange, Unnatural Beauty stakes, although I think my dimple just edges it.

Was that two neutron stars blootering the bejaysus out of each other near the start of that clip?

link to physics.stackexchange.com

I believe we need neutron stars to produce iridium and gold and other heavy elements.

It’s a funny old game, Saint.

Where’s Chic(k) when you need him? He was a great expatiater on physics ‘n’ that.

Indubitably, old sport, as the blushful Hippocrene, although on this occasion the content was obscured by something called “Date Russian Singles Online. Chat now”.

Probs Putin trying to steal our unclear secrets.

Ye cannae be up to them, the Ruskies.

England football fans, be afraid, be very afraid!

Robert Peffers has just told us on the MT
That his youngest sons funeral was yesterday
Just thought everyone would like to know…..
Heartbreaking!!

Aye Fred he is a trooper right enough.
I swear to lucifer if that Craig starts with him in the near future….
Well….ye know!

K1 @ 9.28
It’s only right K1…while Robert is perfectly capable of answering anyone……and….deploying a thick skin towards personal abuse (the “verbal bullying “ shit “) sometimes..just sometimes….it’s nothing but cruel .
And I am not prepared to tolerate that.
Never have been
Never will be…….Nobody decent would be..
And I suspect we are not the only ones….

To clarify my last post –
The date of 5th Feb relates to the date I made the original post and not the date of the event.

After yesterday’s sad news, I was saying to a friend how unfair life can be. I know Robert’s health is not good, and his wife was seriously injured in a car accident involving a drunk driver. For most of his life he has been one of the few voices crying in the wilderness for our independence yet he has never stopped.

It’s strange that some of the most informative and inspirational contributors on Wings are people who rise above their personal difficulties every day but keep going because all they want is for the people of Scotland to control their own affairs, without the influence of the malign, treacherous and greedy forces which hold us all back.

Smallaxe: I believe he lives there but that’s all I have gleaned from his posts, apart from the health probs he has mentioned. I’m sure he will be well-known there, with his wee dog and Yes badge-festooned hat.

There must surely be some Wingers in the area?

Tinto,

I got the information from Mr Peffers posts also, I’m sure that some Wingers must live close by. My concern is that Mr Peffers may try to struggle on regardless of his infirmities, I don’t think that he would ask for help even if needed but I think an attempt should be made to find out if there is anything we can do for him.

The problem may be trying to get him to accept help but I would like him to have the offer, this is the kind of thing we Wingers are striving to attain for all in Scotland, surely we can start with one of our own. I would gladly contribute towards any expenses that may be required, I’m sure most of us would.

Smallaxe: amen to all that.

I think Robert will be a man o independent mind.

😉

Aye Tinto, I think that you’re right about Robert, a man o’ independent mind. My heart goes out to him, poor soul, to bury a child is every parents worst nightmare.

I’ll leave you a wee tune, might cheer us up a bit.

link to youtube.com

PS whit’s happened to Chic, he seems to have disappeared? I hope that he’s all right.

Love the Jazz Waltz by Old Shosters, Marie. Fair cheers you up.

I think Chic(k) said before Christmas he had had a nasty virus. Think he also visits antipodean relatives so he might be Doon Ablaw a ce moment.

Pity, ‘cos me and Smallaxe wanted to discuss the quantum mechanics underpinning Multiverse Theory.

Smallaxe loves a good boson, soan he does.

This has hunners o’ bosons, pour example:

link to youtube.com

Title refers to “There’s been a Murdo” Fraser (word on the street).

A Wee Song for Fluffy Mundell link to youtube.com

Tinto, I see Chick has reappeared on the MT. Nothing to stop you and Smallaxe discussing the fancy theory that you seemed keen on.

Odet

Cheers Odet, I look forward to seeing see you and your lurker.

Norman, is that you?

I passed out after “noodly appendage”.

Am doubling the tinfoil layers in my tartan onesie. You can’t be too careful these days.

Remember The Mentiads in Dr Who? I can’t go through that again!

She may start miming too early, but I forgive her……

*Stares dreamily into middle distance*

link to youtube.com

It’s actually a pretty good version, Marie. But they don’t wiggle like Jackie does……

Just finished listening to Pravdasound 4’s account of Barnier’s inevitable comments on the transition period and the NI border. I’m convinced, like you, after hearing the words of prize planks Diddy Davis and Ian Smithson Dunk, that FOBO (Flounce Out and Blame Option) approacheth at a top rate of knots.

If “It’s them bally unreasonable Johnnie Foreigners” doesn’t work, it’ll be, “It’s them bloody micks!” All the tax-exile billionaire press barons will pile in behind this line and the proles ablaw the dyke will lap it up.

Beam us up, Nicola!

Epic, I must agree, Marie. I thought the baffy flick towards the end was most impressive. Wotamover!

Svelte, moi? Too many “bacon rolls” recently, I’m afraid, if you get my meaning 😉

Heard a song thrush (smeorach in gaelic) belting it out today, which always makes me happy, so I’m playing this again. Only Fred’ll notice it’s a repeat.

link to youtube.com

We are lucky now to have so many young Scottish artists with self-confidence, whether in Gaelic or Scots.

John Steinbeck once said, “Scotland isn’t a lost cause, it’s an unwon cause” or words to that effect.

Our children and grandchildren will be free, Marie. We just have to do a wee bit more heavy lifting and then, “Free at last, free at last!”

What are Wee Willie Wonky, Tricky Dickie and Ruth Tank-Straddler going to do on Indyday 1?

“Not Wanted on Voyage”.

Och, Fred, that’s a conundrum.

But we’ve got form in this old country, e.g. Wallace and Menteith and a dozen other tropes.

The Norwegians called their enforced life under the Swedes “the four hundred year sleep” and look at them now.

Not long now, #MankyMate.

We live in interesting times Tinto, hopefully Nicola will hold her fire till she sees the white of their eyes!

Is “The Conundrum!” no a pipe tune kid?

Excellent Tinto, picked up the Loch Fyne kippers at Glesga X so will try the hot-watter dook the morra!

In view of the tragic sinking at Tarbert, it’s no fish yer buyin it’s mens lives!

@chasanderson200

Count me in for the Wingers night out 🙂

Risking hammers again:

link to poetryfoundation.org

Written at the dawn of the 20th century. Unfortunately, the poet was a bit too optimistic…..

@Tinto Chiel
Truly Scottish TV has a history channel & for the last couple of weeks have been spotlighting Mark Nichol & his search for history in the Borders. From mass graves to caves in riverbanks & much more besides, it’s fascinating stuff & I’m hooked!

Strangely enough, Lollysmum, Nana put me on to this young man recently and I have watched his clips on the Douglases and Roxburgh castle.

The man who largely re-established Scottish historiography in the 60s was GWS Barrow, a Yorkshireman who was roundly attacked by Oxbridge “academics” for his masterwork, Robert Bruce. They, in both in their arrogance and ignorance, denied there was such a thing as a separate, distinct Scottish history.

Strangely, Tank-Top Boy Torrance wrote a pretty decent obituary of The Great Man before the former became a bitter and twisted little Yoonster. Prof Barrow would always answer personally letters of enquiry from amateurs like myself and was a great help in directing you to useful documents.

We’ve been missing your bulletins from the Borders since you came north, LLM. You should post more and keep us all sane.

Brexit’s bad for the brain…..

Yes, Fred: he’s as carnaptious as feck but he’s a breath of fresh air and it’s a quick but informative read. “Reframing” is an in-word but it’s what he does, and very effectively.

Worried about you, Ian. That glimpse up Carmichael’s kilt is more than any man should be asked to bear.

🙄

Dave McEwan Hill @ 9:53 pm

Good to learn that the Glasgow meeting went well.

You write: “I also suggested we find ways to coordinate the design and production of campaigning materials and I’d be happy to hear ideas etc on this. I would like to design very hard hitting little leaflets for instance that would destroy the big lies one by one and could be cheaply printed in their thousands.”

Sounds very sensible. In addition, and along similar lines, I’ve sometimes thought about the merits of this – good to get your thoughts: to request key online sources – Wings, WGD, IndyRef2 etc. – to agree to provide access to, via their online sites, properly formatted printable versions of their blogs, appropriately attributed/branded (and with info/ links to the source online site), that could be readily printed to distribute/leave lying around/hand out – as with ‘old style’ political pamphlets.

DMH

In my opinion, the most successful thing we did in the Kirrie Yes shop was the installing of a window monitor which ran leaflets, videos and intimations on a 24/7 basis.

Often, especially in the evening, you could see folk stopping to watch it. Especially young folk who would most likely never go into the shop.

Colin Dunn gave us permission to use his fantastic indy posters and these, animated a little, were a significant part of the loop.

Newspaper articles and other textual stuff as well of course.

Audio visuals, like Duggie the Dug, or other hard hitting propaganda videos were subtitled by us so street viewers could follow them.

And, of course, there was some stuff created by ourselves, usually of a local nature.

Kirrie Aye TV we called it.

If every Yes shop for indyref2 had such a setup it could make the difference and with centralised coordination for a ‘news bulletin’ section it could go some way to providing an alt TV to the UMSM TV propaganda.

@Chick –

Great tae see ye back man!

🙂

Re TV – you may have noticed Paula’s tweets on the subject – Brechin Yes shop is installing a video projector to show TrulyScottishtv.com with full permission of the broadcaster.

Ian

Hey, thanks for that.

@uno mas

the River Plate concert is live stadium rock at it`s best,

do you know there is a statue to Bon Scott in Kirriemuir where he is carrying a set of bagpipes from the `It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)` song.

I’ve been listening to a lot of BBC radio 4 recently and I’m getting a very uneasy feeling that the BBC are softening up the public to accept wholesale deregulation of the biotech and agribusiness sectors, post-Brexit. Is this what leave voters really voted for?

I’m less concerned with the safety of future technologies, tbh, than I am society’s ethical maturity and capacity to ensure institutional transparency and probity. Particularly under the dominant paradigm of neo-liberal political economy and the deification of market forces. How will we ensure the application of technology doesn’t add to the ongoing stratification of society and agency.

@BBC
I dare you to try and justify eugenics.

“Eugenics talk” and the language of bioethics

Abstract

In bioethical discussions of preimplantation genetic diagnosis and prenatal screening, accusations of eugenics are commonplace, as are counter-claims that talk of eugenics is misleading and unhelpful. This paper asks whether “eugenics talk”, in this context, is legitimate and useful or something to be avoided. It also looks at the extent to which this linguistic question can be answered without first answering relevant substantive moral questions. Its main conclusion is that the best and most non-partisan argument for avoiding eugenics talk is the Autonomy Argument. According to this, eugenics talk per se is not wrong, but there is something wrong with using its emotive power as a means of circumventing people’s critical–rational faculties. The Autonomy Argument does not, however, tell against eugenics talk when such language is used to shock people into critical–rational thought. These conclusions do not depend on unique features of eugenics: similar considerations apply to emotive language throughout bioethics….

link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Eugenics and the Criticism of Bioethics

Abstract

This article provides a critical assessment of some aspects of Ann Kerr and Tom Shakespeare’s Genetic Politics: from eugenics to genome. In particular, I evaluate their claims: (a) that bioethics is too ‘top down’, involving normative prescriptions, whereas it should instead be ‘bottom up’ and grounded in social science; and (b) that contemporary bioethics has not dealt particularly well with people’s moral concerns about eugenics. I conclude that several of Kerr and Shakespeare’s criticisms are well-founded and serve as valuable reminders to the bioethics community. These include the claims: that bioethics ought not to consist entirely of applying moral theory to cases; that bioethics must take account of relevant empirical evidence; and that bioethicists should be on the look out for those subtle social forces which can undermine the voluntariness of people’s choices and consents. However, we should reject some of Kerr and Shakespeare’s other criticisms and I conclude (amongst other things) that even ‘mainstream’ bioethics is better able to deal with difficult issues like eugenics than Kerr and Shakespeare suggest.

link to link.springer.com

Queer Genes: Realism, Sexuality and Science

Abstract

What are ‘gay genes’ and are they real? This article looks at key research into these hypothesized gay genes, made possible, in part, by the Human Genome Project. I argue that the complexity of both genetics and human sexuality demands a truly critical approach: one that takes into account feminist epistemologies of science and queer approaches to the body, while putting into conversation resources from agential realism and critical realism. This approach is able to maintain the agential complexity of genetic materiality, while also critically challenging the seemingly stable relationships between sex, gender and sexuality.

link to tandfonline.com

P.S. The omnibus edition of Will Self’s bus journey lost the two leave voters from East Kilbride. However, Will managed to find a member of East Kilbride Golf Club, who voted Yes in 2014 but who swiftly changed to No as a result of the way in which the “nationalists” behaved after loosing the vote. WTF?

Chick McGregor at 11.52
We also have in the Forward Shop in Dunoon a large screen continuous display running. It would be great if we could get material designed for that use

@ Tinto, the poached kippers worked Fyne, used a frying pan & lid, they were big kippers, from Kintyre Smokehouse! Peace & geez peace!

Getting a wee bit mushy with Valentine’s day in the offing, a 70’s song, a cover version of Love Hurts by Scottish band Nazareth came to mind.

This was a major international hit at the time, top 10 in many countries, including the US and no 1 in 5. In Norway it is the all time best selling single there, staying in the Norwegian charts for an incredible 61 weeks.

In the UK, it did not get into the top 40.

Instead an English version, a strangely incongruous up-beat, I’d say almost bubble gum, version was brought out and managed to get to no 4 in the UK charts.

I’m sure ’75 coinciding with the peak of the first real indy scare was purely incidental in that charting anomally – err , cough!

Anyway, prepare to be well and truly mushed.

link to youtube.com

@ Thepnr, Macpherson’s a patronising balloon who has never tried on a workin jaiket! Strangely enough, is Jackie Burd not also a Macpherson? is genetic coorie-doon-ism at play here?

Tinto Chiel at 7.53

Good guy, Bob Crampsey. His brother Frank played for amateur Scotland in goal and Bob worked with the the school football teams (he was originally a history teacher)as I laboured to get into a school team that already had Paddy Crerand, Charlie Gallacher and Tony Connell in it with Harry Hood and Dennis Connachan coming up behind. Those were the days when school football was really big in Scotland and pumped out a huge array of talent. I had good days running the teams at John Ogilvie HS in Hamilton

@TC –

re a model of The Archie made from ‘modelling clay and bits of old string’, do you know someone who can fashion such a thing? If so, ah’ve got needles, a special juju bag fu’ ay chicken bones, and badness oan ma mind…

When Archie commentated on a game, I frequently wondered whether he was actually watching the same game or they had mixed the AV feeds wrongly.

@Thepnr, Chick, DMH, IanB: I’m pretty sure, given his sly digs at the FM and the QFC, that Cowan wears UJ boxers. He’s not an augur bit in the brain department, imho. Cosgrove is a groovy Lefty Yesser, methinks, although the discussion of the football act “repeal” on Off The Ball was pretty dreadful.

I’m afraid when I watched TV Oor Erchie made me boak, and that was before I discovered what a crawling little Britnat toadie he was. When Alec Cameron got whacked by the police horse’s arse in that classic footage, I was wishing it was Brillo Pad Heid.

DMH: am I right in saying John Clark of Sellick fame (whom I saw last week down the Clydeside) started playing with Larkhall Thistle? or was it Royal Albert? Bizarre either way.

Bring back dear old David Francey, master of bathos:

(Voice rising all the time) “John Greig bursting through, he beats one, beats two shoooooooooooooooots…….

Oh, a daisy-cutter there……..”

BTW, Fred, I’m off down the fish shop. Can drone you over some samphire and cod roe for that “special” Valentine’s Day risotto, si tu l’en veut.

If anyone missed it last night, Big Ronnie’s sanity clause clip should bring back some memories.

Tinto Chiel at 10.10
I believe so and John Clark is the unsung hero of that great Celtic team. I never saw a better or more efficient defender and he “made” Billy McNeill. Celtic could use him now with a defence like a colander.

The McStays were Larkie boys. I had an epic experience at the Robert Smillie Memorial Park in Larkhall when my John Ogilvie HS team beat Holycross HS for the Cameronian Shield. Some eejit before my time had determined that the Ogilvie team play in green and gold hoops. FFS
I see your MP is a Ogilvie ex pupil.

Agreed: JC was a great reader of the game.

When I taught in the town I kept a big picture of the Ancell Babes on my wall just to annoy the more frothy Weearrapeepull types. It only came down for HMI visits.

I always remember Bobby Shearer’s comment when he did Bert McCann’s knee:”He should nae a riled me.” Such a Corinthian!

When Pat Quinn played for Bridgeton Waverley he was desperate to sign for Celtic but he was considered too wee. Celtic’s loss….

He was the pre-Iniesta Iniesta..

A shortbread prog’ coming up on the wireless about R.B.Cunninghame Graham but I missed the details.

On you go with your footie chat – I’ll start my reminiscences of Netball in the 1970s a high point in the game.