Craig Hoy MSP - ready to take responsibility ...
As she says, trust and respect has broken down and it is not going to be restored any time soon. The vicious partisanship of the Tories, especially when defending alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson - the Starmer attacks were an attempt to create an equivalence between the Labour leader and Bozo’s Downing Street lawbreaking - was unforgivable.
So it should come as no surprise that where the Tories are not in power, the viciousness gets dialled up just that little bit further. Which brings us to the devolved administration in Scotland, where the SNP is now in alliance with the Green Party. But in the City of Edinburgh, the SNP and Greens do not command a majority on the council, and so are not in power.
That distinction falls to Scottish Labour, which runs the council with the support of Scots Tories - and the Lib Dems, an arrangement that would be unthinkable south of the border. This unwieldy convocation has found itself in the hot seat at the most unfortunate of times: refuse collection has been hit by another of those strikes. So the Tories have gone to work - blaming the SNP.
And it’s not just the SNP who are getting it in the neck: as so often, the Tory attack is not merely poisonous and intolerant, it is highly personal. This is exemplified by Scots Tory chairman Craig Hoy sneering “Nicola Sturgeon is spending millions on fake foreign embassies But, in Edinburgh, she’s failing to pay properly to collect the bins. They say a picture tells a thousand words, but five words say it all First Minister: Focus on the day job”.
That’s right, the Tories are partly responsible for the increasingly visible mess on the streets of the Scottish capital, but, as south of the border, it’s all someone else’s fault. Who? You guessed it: “The SNP has slashed council budgets for years. And now councils can’t even afford to pay the bin-men. The rubbish piling high in Edinburgh is down to Nicola Sturgeon”'
So it should come as no surprise that where the Tories are not in power, the viciousness gets dialled up just that little bit further. Which brings us to the devolved administration in Scotland, where the SNP is now in alliance with the Green Party. But in the City of Edinburgh, the SNP and Greens do not command a majority on the council, and so are not in power.
That distinction falls to Scottish Labour, which runs the council with the support of Scots Tories - and the Lib Dems, an arrangement that would be unthinkable south of the border. This unwieldy convocation has found itself in the hot seat at the most unfortunate of times: refuse collection has been hit by another of those strikes. So the Tories have gone to work - blaming the SNP.
And it’s not just the SNP who are getting it in the neck: as so often, the Tory attack is not merely poisonous and intolerant, it is highly personal. This is exemplified by Scots Tory chairman Craig Hoy sneering “Nicola Sturgeon is spending millions on fake foreign embassies But, in Edinburgh, she’s failing to pay properly to collect the bins. They say a picture tells a thousand words, but five words say it all First Minister: Focus on the day job”.
That’s right, the Tories are partly responsible for the increasingly visible mess on the streets of the Scottish capital, but, as south of the border, it’s all someone else’s fault. Who? You guessed it: “The SNP has slashed council budgets for years. And now councils can’t even afford to pay the bin-men. The rubbish piling high in Edinburgh is down to Nicola Sturgeon”'
... for blaming someone else
Wouldn’t that he his party that is mostly responsible for that? Shouldn’t he think about winding his neck in just a little and take a little responsibility for the bin strike? Would he care to support a tax rise to ease the budget constraints about which he so volubly complains? Is his party willing to back a council tax hike in Edinburgh? As if. He’s just whining for the sake of it.
So the political climate north of the border resembles its counterpart to the south: the Tories, intolerant, vicious, hyper-partisan and utterly poisonous, congenitally unable to take responsibility for anything, waging personal campaigns against opposition leaders, “lefty lawyers”, anyone and everyone in the EU, asylum seekers, trade unionists, and Scotland’s First Minister.
Why should this matter? Ah well: what Craig Hoy, and so many other Tories, are indulging in does not stop with them: as can be seen with the social media armies of “Back Boris”, “Never Labour”, “Love Europe, Hate The EU” and the loose convocation of variously jolly Brexiteers, the example set by the Tories is then taken up, and amplified, by their followers.
Thus the debate is poisoned. Which, no doubt, is also someone else’s fault.
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6 comments:
Nothing good ever comes out of nationalism. As the SNP will eventually discover if it gets its way. Initial euphoria would give way to the hard capitalist realities of a small planet in the 21st century.
The fact is all the countries in the so-called "British Union" need each other. The lesson is not that no man is an island but that we all live on the same tiny group of islands. We are inextricably interdependent.
The present Parliament and its political groupings have failed us all. The figureheads are a mixture of liars, thieves, hypocrites, stupid and outright evil men and women. Britain has become a sort of vicious totalitarian state of wilful ignorance, racism and spivvery.
Who would bet against this course of events leading to an even deeper abyss of malevolence? That this is NOT a temporary aberration but an inevitable consequence of handing social power to a gang of crypto-fascists.
"Nothing good ever comes out of nationalism."
Erm, excuse me Mr. Anon, but there's a Mr. Gandhi on line two wanting to speak to you. A Mr. de Valera rang earlier. And you've had a letter from a Mr. Washington...
Funny how BritNats are never - but never - 'nationalists', isn't it? Like that nice Mr. Starmer at the start of this year, proclaiming that NooNooLabour (so called because it sucks) wasn't a nationalist party whilst posing in front of two huge f-off Union Jacks?
"We are inextricably interdependent."
Of course; but it is possible to be interdependent without being dependent; in fact, that's how the rest of the world works. Would you have Estonia and Ukraine still ruled from the Kremlin, because that's the logical corollary of what you're saying?
On the subject in hand, the Scottish government - irrespective of which party/parties form it - can only spend what London so graciously hands back to Scotland from all the taxes collected from it by London; so the whinging of Caledonian Tories - and their Labour enablers - is simply dishonest, especially as - to the best of my knowledge - those same Tories have never demanded that their masters in Westminster hand more of the people of Scotland's taxes back to them.
If it's the standard Anon, he's a total talkie, so probably doesn't mind hegemony, as long as it's the right power in charge.
16:56.
Er, no. You miss the point by several country kilometres or miles or even kilometers...depending on your version of nationalism.
Your second paragraph - in each of those cases nationalism was used to resist tyranny. But led to internal civil wars and mass slaughters. In India's case to partition and religious genocide, the rise of Pakistan nationalism and then the rise of Bangladesh nationalism. In the US version it led directly to invasion and annexation of part of Mexico and a failed invasion of Canada, genocide of indigenous Americans.....and now the insane extreme nationalist nonsense that the USA is "exceptional" and "indispensable".
Your third paragraph inadvertently demonstrates the poisonous nature of nationalism, be it English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, US, French, German, Italian, Russian or any other nation-state. The lesson of past and present history is that nationalism ALWAYS requires an external enemy to maintain its existence. The inevitable consequence is war and a necessary war economy, then mass destruction. It has been that way since the inception of the nation state. Amongst many others, you can find the historical process described in Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker.
Your fifth paragraph - it is NOT "...how the rest of the world works." If it was, there wouldn't be such inflicted poverty in the global South and East following the retreat of European empires and the rise of the American empire and its ring of military bases around the world (for details of which, see Base Nation by David Vine. In fact the world is infested with different versions of nationalist regimes that cause genocides, mass poverty and misery.
In the long term Scottish nationalism will fail as surely as all the other versions, including British nationalism. It is a small example of a false remedy to a deadly disease threatening the survival of humanity. A sticking plaster over a cancerous tumour. If that's what the Scottish people want then they should have it, but be prepared for the inevitable long term consequences.
Nationalism has never been or will be an aid to human progress.
Anon - 12:23 and 11:48
I'll write this real simple for you: we here, in Scotland, are more than capable of governing ourselves - but thanks for your unhelpful opinion.
There can't be many other nations on this Earth who would wish to be governed by the Conservative and Unionist Party of England.
18:42.
Scottish capability of self-governance is not in question. Never was.
Nor is the sheer evil of the tories. Or, for that matter, the equal treachery of self-styled "New Labour". Both of them have betrayed ALL of Britain, not just Scotland.
The point is the long term consequences of nationalism. ANYWHERE. The historical record is full of its disastrous outcomes. Scotland is no more invulnerable to that than anyone else.
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