Ina Disguise's Blog: New blog, page 72

Creating visual novels

First look for renpy or buy yourself a builder.  There are around five or so free builders online, but having bought one, I can tell you that this is a great option for adding bells and whistles.

Visual novels are particularly popular in Japan, but they are catching on everywhere as the ideas are often quirky and interesting.

From a user perspective, I personally find hitting enter over and over again pretty tedious, but then I cannot understand the fascination with comics and comic based art, so I am not a great example of a fan. I am more interested in it from the perspective of structure and branching storylines.

Do not involve an artist in your early dabblings, either you will waste weeks, or in my case months, for them to even pick your first picture and make it ‘perfect’ or you will waste the same amount of their time on ideas that you do not necessarily want in your finished product.  Far better to look for an approximate image online and use it as a stand in until your ideas gain some finesse.

One of the many good things I am learning from doing this, is the nature of scripting and how instructions have to be broken down to create scenes.  This is why I am doing it, so I am not quite so lost in the fog of learning to script.  I think it is a worthwhile thing to do.

In terms of the money you can make, there are a few kickstarter projects requesting tens of thousands of dollars for creating great artwork, and potential customers seem to be throwing money at it based upon a few visuals.  If that is your bag, this is probably the best way to raise yourself some capital before you even finish the project. Hardened visual novelists put out three or four a year to make a living, so at an estimate, each one is bringing in $300 or $400 dollars a month once their marketing gets going. Certainly beats writing, which brings in nothing at all for years and then if you are very fortunate, you might scratch a living for five more before you either hit the big time or fail.

I am going for a different option, which is to see what I can do without assistance, and then punting it on Steam if I create a good enough product.  Steam has two layers of prequel creation, Early access, which costs around $100 or so to put your product on there for perusal and purchase, and they have a hidden section for trialling ideas, which if you have a few graphics ready, is a good way of gauging reactions to your efforts.

As far as I can see from my brief bits of research, fans of the genre like great graphics more than a great storyline.  They are comic fans, after all, so far, but I have seen extended versions, such as 80 days, which are a bit more fulfilling in terms of story, and heavy on style rather than detail in terms of graphics.  I hugely enjoyed 80 days, and so I am leaning towards this stylistic method of putting out a product.

Thereafter, I will return to learning to script whilst doing a couple more.  In the meantime I am working hard on the furniture line with a view to getting the photography done and the products sold off to pay for more products.  Thankfully I have found a great supplier in India for my chosen weaponry in terms of originality.

I am effectively extending the current themes, Jazz, Beach and Sheep in wolf’s clothing, although I kind of have Boris in mind whilst I am doing it.  You will see for yourself how this pans out in terms of a visual feast towards the end of next month, barring accidents.

The post Creating visual novels appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

Work, work, work

Serious personal problems but I can report that work on the next few items is going very well.

I have created a range of items that take a few minutes every day for a month or so, at twelve hour intervals, which take up a horrific amount of space, but once I have completed the prototypes, I will have products which can be made in batches and have a serious amount of added value.

Possibly a little fussy for modern tastes, but you never know, perhaps I will start a trend for the decorative.

Have managed to get almost a thousand pounds worth of stuff I had lying around up for sale, slow and steady sales have meant I can continuously invest in the new lines.

Not in the mood for sewing just now, so I am working on the visual novel, and considering whether I want to write.  I tend to go a bit full focus on writing, so the issues with the house are bothering me a bit too much.

It is amazing how free your timelines become when you make a positive decision to ignore politics. I am very sad that so many people do not understand the problems they create.

 

Ina

The post Work, work, work appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

A final word on the Survey and new work

Thankfully, I have shut down the survey and presented the results, such as they were.  Managed to get a no voter in conversation, but he then tried to get details in order to present the information himself, which basically translates as yet another act of ‘war’ between yes and no, so I am just not going to bother talking about it any further.

I have to say I am thoroughly disillusioned with the entire scenario.  As I said in my previous post, Scotland is very good at fighting first, feuding later and only after five centuries or so does anybody bother actually discussing anything.  It is very boring to watch.

At the moment, I am pretty annoyed with the SNP’s use of the media in the form of bandying the xenophobia word around a lot and fostering a great deal of ill will with England.  I am sure it is politically expedient, but when populations all around Scotland have waited for decades for a better life, it is a bit rich to go on and on about bringing more people in and complaining that their lives aren’t good enough.  No, SNP this entire situation comedy isn’t good enough.

There are upsides and downsides to Brexit.  Perhaps inadvertently, the English and Welsh, and slightly more yes voters than no voters actually. voted for the best thing for the poor.  One thing a low pound does is create unskilled work.  I, for one, am delighted at that prospect.  You can look on it as swapping variety of goods for circulation of cash, and circulation of cash is always a good thing, because it has its own benefits to your immediate welfare.

I have no idea why the media are toeing this party line of calling 17 million people racists, but the SNP are making very good use of it to WIND YOU UP.  The newspapers have the excuse that they will fail entirely if they do not ensure sales by making sure you are permanently outraged.  The SNP are using it to distract you from taking care of your own fellow nationals in favour of inviting a gulag full of new residents with no discernable additional jobs.  I forsee a very ugly looking and stressed Scotland if this gets to fruition.

I was alarmed by the lack of awareness amongst all voters of the likelihood of unrestricted building in Scotland.  How do you think foreign investment is attracted without building the premises that they want to see?  Where do you imagine the two million or so extra people I guesstimate after a successful transition to independence and into Europe would go?

Where are the jobs for Kilmarnock, Stranraer, Glenrothes, Argyll?  When are you going to prioritise work for the people already here?  If you don’t prioritise employment, you are left with two and a half million workers struggling to support the other half of the population (two thirds if you count the new residents) which WILL NOT WORK.

One of the good things about Brexit, is bringing back our lost tourism and creating great conditions for foreign investment.  The time to generate the extra jobs needed is NOW.  The SNP is wasting valuable time that they should be spending working on this, as far as I can see.

Anyway, as I showed in yesterday’s post, the one thing everyone agrees on is that investment is sorely needed to provide work in deprived areas.  Perhaps you could start a more serious and less warlike debate on that basis, instead of bandying around a bunch of false or skewed figures that are essentially meaningless unless the country can pay for itself IN THE FUTURE without oil or suicidal fracking.

The English are entitled to their nationalism.  If you try showing a bit of respect for it, you will have a lot more energy to devote to Scotland, and a lot less time will be wasted arguing with people who really do not matter at all.

I have a new series of items coming out, to produce a catalogue of workstyles so far.  Thereafter I have the visual novel to complete and the work on Boris will commence.  I have no more time for nonsense.  If you want to know how to grow a country, it is not difficult to spend a few years reading up on international history, rather than wasting your time being outraged by stuff we have seen a million times before.  The socialists who are spouting this internationalist bullshit should be ashamed of themselves.  The real socialists are the ones that voted to stop their wages crumbling in the EU referendum as far as I can see.  Getting suckered in to a communitarian globalist agenda is a very very bad mistake, and that is what the SNP seems to be buying into.

The post A final word on the Survey and new work appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

The Alternative National Survey results – Scotland

The Alternative National Survey results – Scotland

The History of Scotland has always been kind of boring to my mind. I was never a big Neil Oliver fan. It is boring because it always involves conflict. Conflict between clans over surname, conflict over the reformation, conflict over the correct monarch, conflict over who is wearing the right kilt. Football is a big favourite for hate generation, and now it is the independence issue. We are really great at killing people, but we aren’t very good at cooperating with each other.

Scotland would have made a lot more progress as a nation if we could give up conflict, and if we could give up hating each other. It is very easy to conquer a nation that is so obsessed with hating their neighbours and ignoring anybody that actually talks any sense.

I had a great deal of difficulty persuading no voters to participate in the survey, despite it being tailored to not attempting to hook anybody into anything, and so it looks from the results as if independence supporters are around nine times more motivated as no voters. I tried the political angle, I tried the sectarian angle, approaching people directly in an attempt to get some answers, but to no avail. If no voters are this demotivated, I am not sure how they managed to win the last referendum. Having said that, the typical suspicion of anybody who actually does anything kicked in with many yes voters, and I have been thoroughly exasperated as a result. If nobody does anything, nobody discusses anything, which means an inevitably unhealthy atmosphere.

Anyway despite this, we have some results:

Q1 – How much do you know about economics?

Yes voters feel they know more about economics – 34% rather than 23%, feel they know a lot, with almost 2 percent more no voters believing they know nothing at all about economics

Q2 – How much do you rely on politicians to do your thinking for you?

No voters are more likely to trust politicians to do their thinking for them – 23% rather than 6%. A whopping 56% of yes voters saying they are just people with careers, more than double the No voters.

Q3- Did you vote remain?

86.5 percent of yes voters thought that remain was the best option for Scotland, whereas only 46% of no voters thought this. 7% of no voters and 4% of yes voters voted for Brexit on behalf of the UK in this sample. 6.35% of yes voters in the sample voted for Brexit because they think it is the best option for Scotland, whereas none of the no voters believed it was the best option for Scotland.

Q4 -Do you believe in Scottish independence?

82% of yes voters believe that independence is the best decision for Scotland. The other 18 percent believe in open, socialist values. 23 percent of no voters vote no for political reasons 15.4 percent fear losing their jobs, and 61.5 percent believe in the union.

Q5 – What vision do you have for an independent Scotland?

65%of yessers  imagine that an independent Scotland should focus on the national economy and world status, whereas 45.5% of no voters believe that Scotland should focus on a society which demonstrates the importance of work and social mobility. 25 % of yessers and 18 percent of no voters believe in an open and inclusive society with higher taxation to benefit others. Naturally the no voters are more sceptical, with 18 percent believing that independence is all about punishing the rich.

Q6 – How irritated are you by never getting the government that you vote for?

Unsurprisingly 90 percent of yes voters are irate and want to leave the union right now. The most popular answer for no voters was that they did not care as long as they could pay the bills, at 54 percent, the others admit to faint irritation at not getting the government they vote for, but this could mean within Scotland.

Q7 – Do you think there are enough jobs in Scotland to sustain a larger population?

Frighteningly, nearly 87 percent of yes voters believe that there are enough jobs in Scotland to sustain a larger population, whereas 77 percent of no voters believe that there are not.

Q8 – If it were to lead to more jobs and a larger population, would you be in support of?

37% of yessers and 50% of noes would like to see incentives for business in deprived areas rather than more spending on public services in Scotland. At last we can see some consensus!!  68% of yessers can see the need to develop improved port services for exports. 41 percent of yessers would like more taxation, versus only 8.3 percent of noes.

Q9 – How many months of unemployment have you experienced in the last decade?

53% of yes voters and 69% of no voters have been in constant work for the last decade, so there goes any theory of deprivation as being a factor in voting decisions. The no voters have had less severe time periods of unemployment overall, but they too have had unstable employment over the last ten years

Q10 – How do you really feel about immigration and social class?

65% of yes voters believe that Scotland is a tolerant country who are friendly to everyone, whereas no voters are more likely to believe in a cautious approach to immigration at 69%. A very small number on both sides voted for no migrants at all, or believed that the three areas mentioned were evil whingers. Other answers were evenly split between no and yes, including the honest answer about immigration and its relationship with social class. Good on you if you picked that one, that is the most common private moan and nobody admits to it in public.

As a brief conclusion, debating tactics are woefully lacking and I experienced quite a lot of very tiresome abuse to gather this information.  If independence supporters and campaigners want to avoid sounding whiny and repeating the same information, they might try asking questions instead of throwing virtual rocks at people.  An additional problem is the rise of sectarianism as an issue within the debate, and the suggestion that class is an issue is also of increasing relevance due to some SNP policies.  My advice to those on both sides is to just accept that independence and politics are two separate issues.  Our careerist politicians are just that – they will very quickly adapt and form more relevant parties.  Or perhaps you could actually do it yourself?

Thank you Ina

You’re welcome.

The post The Alternative National Survey results – Scotland appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

The Alternative National Survey pre results post 3

 

I am loving this new piece

It has been a difficult and rather tense week, all things considered, but I have a reasonable number of votes, thanks to my understanding friends on twitter and facebook.

Definitely well worth doing.  As someone who worked in research jobs for twenty odd years, between my alternative investigations into banking, utilities, engineering and the NHS in Scotland, my decision to make a survey which was not boring and which had recognisable themes has paid off rather well for the speed of results gathering and most of the attention it attracted.

What we should end up with is a picture of motivation, idealism, economic awareness and flexibility amongst a small sample of the Scottish population.  The fact that we cannot do anything on the scale of the original survey is unfortunate, but I wanted to give you a snapshot of what is right and what is wrong, and what we need to tweak to improve life for everybody no matter what happens.

These surveys cost money.  Only the first one hundred answers are free on surveymonkey, in case you ever do one of these, after this you need to pay to get the results you went out and got, which is rather annoying, but I will sort it out tomorrow hopefully and then we should have an idea how best to unite, so to speak, rather than remaining a divided and conquered nation.  More information is always a good thing, especially when it comes to communication in Scotland.

If you are thinking of doing something similar, be aware that it does not matter how bland or clinical you make it, you will get much the same armchair criticism as surveys are boring and tiresome and people get restless after the first ten questions, so you need to be incisive and keep it short.  Even then, there are always pedants with ideas which bear no resemblance to the ones you actually want to hear about. About one in twenty people will give you twice as much information as you want, and then tell you how to do your job.  Some people assume that they are stupid, so you need to provide a little relaxation in the form of levity or outrage to get the best results, so that the ice is nice and smashed.

A much larger sample of no voters would have been nice, but I did try approaching them personally as well as via general tweets, and they seem to be remarkably shy and/or unmotivated to answer any questions.  They need to be provided with this information as well, so that they can make an informed decision, so do not assume that this is a one-sided thing.

Again, thank you very much, all who helped get the word out, and I will go through the results as soon as I liberate them from the collection box on surveymonkey.

 

Ina

The post The Alternative National Survey pre results post 3 appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

Snobbery in the SNP and Loki the rapper

Today I was called a ‘pleb at the bottom of the heap’ by an SNP member who objected to my raising the question of the SNP commitment to Europe.

Let me demonstrate what a ‘pleb at the bottom of the heap’ in Scotland looks like:

Underemployed and unemployed graduates – the SNP have done nothing for these people, in fact have insisted on maintaining an influx of migrant graduates with fresh start grants despite there being no jobs for them.  Many of these people do not vote SNP or for independence because they have correctly identified that they will have to go to England to find work and ill feeling between Scotland and England is not a good idea.
People who fell through the educational net.  These people used to be sent to war by the UK, when they still had ground wars.  The Conservatives are attempting to revive a dead fighting strategy with their announcement of cadet corps in schools.  Let me remind you that people who fell through the educational net include Richard Branson.
People who have had to become ill in order to keep a roof over their heads.  We still have a points culture of vulnerability which make it necessary for people to either have children they do not necessarily have the means to support, or develop illnesses to get sufficient points to obtain social housing.
People who would like to live in the house they bought and paid for, who do not have the means to keep funding increases in council tax and alternative taxation.
Elderly people who have worked all their lives and do not wish to disclose their means to the council, who cannot get the help they are entitled to as they would render themselves open to exploitation by the social work department. This means that they are charged for services which other people get for nothing, which then means they are considerably worse off.
People who live in areas who have been subject to large migrant populations, who object to people having unreported gangfights in the street, people defecating on their doorstep, and people getting attacked, sexually assaulted and raped in the street.

This is the last of half a dozen personal attacks, mostly on the basis of the survey this week.  I actually had an individual attempt to tell me yesterday what questions I should be asking, which bore no resemblance to the questions I was actually asking in the survey.  I told him to go and design his own survey.  That is rather the point of my doing it.  There is nothing to stop you asking the questions you want the answers to in the absence of anybody being able to discuss anything in the SNP or independence movement.

Like Loki, and paradoxically for much the same reasons, I now have serious misgivings about the SNP after the bullshit of last week.  I no longer have any confidence that Scotland is good at anything apart from arguing about things that don’t matter in lieu of things that actually do.

I do not have a problem with the SNP making a directly oppositional stance to the Conservatives.  What I do object to is the faux moral superiority demonstrated directly from the First Minister last week.  Leadership should not be about grabbing the high ground and seeking yet more sources of conflict, but coming up with strategies to counteract the inevitable friction caused in the general population.  Were I giving advice, it would be for the SNP to demonstrate how they plan to ease the problems for several local areas and actually improve things for the existing population before committing Scotland to taking on even more of the same problems.

I have voted SNP for years.  I have supported independence until this point, but I now have serious doubts as to the honesty and awareness of SNP supporters of what is important to Scottish people.  I had a somewhat idealistic view of making things better for Scotland via independence.  I now think that all it will do is make things worse, for all of us ‘plebs at the bottom of the heap’ that constitute most of the Scottish population, actually.

Ironically I now see why Loki the rapper was so keen to see who would fund his book.  He was actually doing a pre-book survey to see who actually gives a shit about Scottish people.

 

The post Snobbery in the SNP and Loki the rapper appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

The Alternative National Survey Blog Post 2

Please take the survey titled “Alternative National Survey”. Your feedback is important! https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BSKXX7S 

 

I would like to say that this week has been hilarious, with the number of outraged lower middle class former New Labour Voters, who assume that if a piece of research is not sanitised so that you don’t know how small-minded and thoughtless your views are, it is automatically offensive.  It reminds me of a few years back, where people imagined that you could not say the word Muslim if there was a Muslim in the room.

Having worked with Muslims several times, they are not in the slightest bit offended if you say the word Muslim, question them about aspects of faith, or converse about anything at all, actually.  Likewise, it is not at all outrageous to point out that if you imagine there are no problems with the very limited amount of immigration in Scotland, you are kidding yourself on, or you hate other Scottish people, including a great many concerned Scottish Asians,  far more than you hate immigrants.

There is not a single point of view in that survey that has not been taken from real life situations.  If you have been fortunate enough to avoid them, good for you.  Other people, who you evidently do not know, have been severely affected by our lovely globalist EU experiment, migrants and native dwellers alike.

Having studied reasons for racism and expressions of racist sentiment, there is nothing unusual about the strain the minimal number of new arrivals have put on communities in Scotland.  Likewise there is nothing unusual about areas in England, who have borne the brunt of EU immigration saying that they would rather not have it any more as they are, in some cases literally starving.  Apparently many in Scotland have divorced themselves from this, preferring to listen to the totally offensive anti-Conservative (and in some cases anti English) rhetoric coming from the SNP this week, and I say this as someone who has voted SNP for years, and who strongly disapproved of the last thirty years of Conservative policy.

I am fortunate enough to have a very open mind, and to have a wide variety of experience to draw from for the purposes of tolerating the drivel that has been said to me this week.  Drivel on top of drivel, because as a middle class Scottish person, I have experienced appalling treatment by the very people expressing such outrage over the selection of views portrayed in the survey.  It is perfectly OK for such people to hate other Scottish people, and they like to let rip if they imagine that you have something they don’t.

So, as far as exposing hypocrisy is concerned, the project thus far is a big success.  270 people bothered to read the last blog post on this, but 200 of them were too scared to answer the survey questions, despite the fact they are anonymous, because they imagine if they don’t express their views, then I am somehow invalidated.

Grow up Scotland.  This is no way to get what you want.

I will post the results when I have a proportionate representation of Scottish views.  This may take some time, since apparently people have been trained out of saying what they actually think.

The post The Alternative National Survey Blog Post 2 appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

The Alternative National Survey Blog Post 1

The Alternative National Survey

Please find above, the link to the Alternative National Survey.  You will find it is worded as if you are having a conversation with an actual person, and so you will find slightly off beam additions to each response.  Each question is tailored to answer a different set of questions, which I will explain when I have sufficient data.  It does not matter what you vote, or whether you get the answer right, it just matters whether you answer and/or select from the options available.

Please do not insist on attempting to speak to me about making it look like every other survey you have ever done, because I will not be interested.  This is not a job interview, and even if I presented it the way you think you want it, you would not give me the job, because I am not just like you, thank goodness. There is nothing at all wrong with this, but this is an informal survey, so feel free to answer as honestly as you can or not bother, depending on how tramped on your precious tippy toes are feeling.

I would particularly welcome answers from No voters, Orange Lodge members etc to get a more even picture of what people think when they imagine independence and how they view economics. My overall impression is that class tension is what really divides Scotland, and yesterday’s performance reminded me just how much class hatred masquerades as liberalism in Scotland.

Therefore the survey has been worded by a posh (first generation) person, with one conservative (Govanhill) and one communist (school truant from Govan) parent, with a huge amount of experience of people all over Scotland, who once specialised in dealing with ethnic minorities and migrants, specifically to encourage honest and possibly slightly outraged answers.  If you cant deal with it, it is because you do not understand it.

Thank you to all who responded so far and took it in good spirit, I will give you a full explanation when I have a decent and reasonably representative chunk of responses.  We need more no voters at the moment.

Thanks

 

Ina

The post The Alternative National Survey Blog Post 1 appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

Mixed Feelings -Scotland

Two topics today.  One, the attempt by a journalist at  the National to make independence a class war and two, the unthinking accusations of xenophobia related to Teresa May’s Brexit speech.

A possible third is Ruth Davidson’s objections to grammar schools in Scotland, because she went to a comprehensive in Buckhaven and turned out OK.  Good for Ruth.  She is actually from Largo, which has some of the most expensive undersized property I have seen on my travels in search of a house around Scotland.  Ruth’s upbringing was far from deprived.

Neither was mine, but unlike my siblings I also attended a comprehensive school in Glasgow.  Within the first two weeks, I had been identified and targetted as a ‘snob’ by the kids from the estate, which is notorious but basically just a bit odd in its defensive class-based self supression.  One of the exs, a builder who was earning at least seven hundred pounds a week, claimed that I came from a ‘big, posh house’ and was to be treated like shit  because ‘he had no capital and needed a council hoose.’  This is not an unusual attitude from his neck of the woods, but like me, he was considered an outsider because he had actually achieved something and so we ended up in the same rejected social circle.

Making independence a class issue is, as I have said before a really big mistake.  That means making aspiration a bad thing, and we know from experience that killing aspiration kills the country.  Having been at the mercy of inverse snobbery for my entire life, between school and searching for the work I actually studied for in Glasgow, I can tell you that people like me have a great deal to worry about if you start making independence about class.

If I had got the career I studied for, I would have been able to afford the children I could not afford to have.  I would have been able to afford the pension I do not have, and if I had been able to do this in Scotland, I would have been able to support my elderly parents whilst I did that.  Instead what I and many others got was a bin bag full of rejection letters.  No I am not kidding – I actually took it to the jobcentre at one point for a back to work interview whilst claiming benefits and they told me to take it away because it was too much for them.  One DIY supermarket manager who actually took the time to interview me said he had had much the same experience as a middle class Hindu in Glasgow. Instead of the work he studied for, he eventually took a job shelf stacking and eventually became manager of the same store.

In case you assume that I am going to talk about ‘British jobs for British workers’ as being a xenophobic thing, I am not.  Like me, my friends struggled to find work, and either moved out of the country, stacked shelves, wasted their education working in bars and gradually gave up hope of getting anything out of their lives that they actually wanted.  Graduates don’t tend to talk about it, because it is a source of personal failure and miserable embarrassment, and nobody ever feels sorry for you or makes it part of their ‘class struggle for the worker.’  During the protests about nursery nurses many years ago, I remember tearing a strip off my super lefty friend for his protestations over £18k a year for nursery nurses, when people who study for far longer get no consideration at all.

So, according to Twitter today, apparently the rights of migrants are superior to the rights of people who were born here, who support their relatives here, and whose lives were constantly maligned here.  I lost count of the number of  bitches I encountered in temporary work who sneered at my ‘posh’ voice as I did their filing.

Thanks a lot Scotland.  For goodness sake don’t bother getting an education, or working to actually pay for anything because according to the latest ‘class struggle’ theory, anything you actually do with your life will be taken away in taxes to pay for people who more sensibly had babies at fifteen and got themselves a council house in order to sneer at the ‘snobs’ who actually wanted to work.

This is not what my great grandfather was fighting for when he attracted those tanks to George Square.  He would not be impressed, although, like my experience of the wider public, my father was rejected by his revolutionary communist family when he started his business as being against the interests of the masses.  This is not progressive, and it does not provide opportunity or widespread growth.  It simply encourages a friction which is good for nobody, and doesn’t get us anywhere. If you want suppressed wages, suppressed lives and a dearth of opportunity, you are welcome to carry on without further input.

The post Mixed Feelings -Scotland appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.

Mixed Feelings

Two topics today.  One, the attempt by a journalist at  the National to make independence a class war and two, the unthinking accusations of xenophobia related to Teresa May’s Brexit speech.

A possible third is Ruth Davidson’s objections to grammar schools in Scotland, because she went to a comprehensive in Buckhaven and turned out OK.  Good for Ruth.  She is actually from Largo, which has some of the most expensive undersized property I have seen on my travels in search of a house around Scotland.  Ruth’s upbringing was far from deprived.

Neither was mine, but unlike my siblings I also attended a comprehensive school in Glasgow.  Within the first two weeks, I had been identified and targetted as a ‘snob’ by the kids from the estate, which is notorious but basically just a bit odd in its defensive class-based self supression.  One of the exs, a builder who was earning at least seven hundred pounds a week, claimed that I came from a ‘big, posh house’ and was to be treated like shit  because ‘he had no capital and needed a council hoose.’  This is not an unusual attitude from his neck of the woods, but like me, he was considered an outsider because he had actually achieved something and so we ended up in the same rejected social circle.

Making independence a class issue is, as I have said before a really big mistake.  That means making aspiration a bad thing, and we know from experience that killing aspiration kills the country.  Having been at the mercy of inverse snobbery for my entire life, between school and searching for the work I actually studied for in Glasgow, I can tell you that people like me have a great deal to worry about if you start making independence about class.

If I had got the career I studied for, I would have been able to afford the children I could not afford to have.  I would have been able to afford the pension I do not have, and if I had been able to do this in Scotland, I would have been able to support my elderly parents whilst I did that.  Instead what I and many others got was a bin bag full of rejection letters.  No I am not kidding – I actually took it to the jobcentre at one point for a back to work interview whilst claiming benefits and they told me to take it away because it was too much for them.  One DIY supermarket manager who actually took the time to interview me said he had had much the same experience as a middle class Hindu in Glasgow. Instead of the work he studied for, he eventually took a job shelf stacking and eventually became manager of the same store.

In case you assume that I am going to talk about ‘British jobs for British workers’ as being a xenophobic thing, I am not.  Like me, my friends struggled to find work, and either moved out of the country, stacked shelves, wasted their education working in bars and gradually gave up hope of getting anything out of their lives that they actually wanted.  Graduates don’t tend to talk about it, because it is a source of personal failure and miserable embarrassment, and nobody ever feels sorry for you or makes it part of their ‘class struggle for the worker.’  During the protests about nursery nurses many years ago, I remember tearing a strip off my super lefty friend for his protestations over £18k a year for nursery nurses, when people who study for far longer get no consideration at all.

So, according to Twitter today, apparently the rights of migrants are superior to the rights of people who were born here, who support their relatives here, and whose lives were constantly maligned here.  I lost count of the number of  bitches I encountered in temporary work who sneered at my ‘posh’ voice as I did their filing.

Thanks a lot Scotland.  For goodness sake don’t bother getting an education, or working to actually pay for anything because according to the latest ‘class struggle’ theory, anything you actually do with your life will be taken away in taxes to pay for people who more sensibly had babies at fifteen and got themselves a council house in order to sneer at the ‘snobs’ who actually wanted to work.

This is not what my great grandfather was fighting for when he attracted those tanks to George Square.  He would not be impressed, although, like my experience of the wider public, my father was rejected by his revolutionary communist family when he started his business as being against the interests of the masses.  This is not progressive, and it does not provide opportunity or widespread growth.  It simply encourages a friction which is good for nobody, and doesn’t get us anywhere. If you want suppressed wages, suppressed lives and a dearth of opportunity, you are welcome to carry on without further input.

The post Mixed Feelings appeared first on Ina Disguise - Author.