Ina Disguise's Blog: New blog, page 86
March 16, 2016
Trump America
And yes, as with the village of Trump Turnberry, he will probably rename it, if the idiocracy is daft enough to vote him in. America is between a rock and a hard place, as far as we can see so far. Given a choice between Clinton and Trump, we can safely say that America is going to be a very dedicated corporatist state for the next ten or so years.
The timing could not be worse, really. Alex Jones will be rubbing his hands in anticipation of all his wildest dreams coming true.
Unfortunately, the reality for the rest of the world is that the truth is much worse.
Both of the likely candidates are corporatists, left or right makes little difference. There is no hope of adequate legislation to protect the American food supply, the healthcare system is likely to stay corrupt and selfish, and the insurance companies, chemical producers and pharmaceutical companies will get a free rein to persist in telling you that eating properly constitutes a disorder, and really what you need is some nice medicine and an expensive operation.
In the event that this clown gets in, there will be even more than 6 empty homes for every homeless person on the streets of America, since he is likely to inflate the property market to ‘make (white) America great again.’ Can someone please tell me why nobody is mentioning the money that all those sub prime borrowers had already paid on their foreclosed property, and why many of the ‘failing’ banks are richer than ever?
There will be an increase in armed policing, since disregarding the poor, or adopting pro-life policies always causes an increase in the crime rate.
Foreign policy is certain to be disastrous, and Europe is likely to increase business with Russia and China, with the exception of Tory Britain, which will, in the event of an exit from the EU, be even further into America’s pocket than we are already. The future does not look bright at all.
It is shocking to younger Europeans, brought up with American television, eating awful American food, and being trained to admire American products, that there are so many rednecks willing to publicly support an openly racist and sexist candidate. A man who has been recorded as bullying people out of their homes, who supports compulsory purchase of private property for his own benefit, who is suspected of fraud, and despite bankruptcy continues to shamelessly self promote and gain money from other morons.
As far as we can see, he will say anything to get ahead in the polls, spends and talks excessively to get more exposure, and despite claiming to be a Christian, appears to be so only in as far as he can gain votes from stupid people. There is nothing funnier or cuter than a person who pretends to be Presbyterian, and who prefers ogling young women and playing golf to feeding the hungry or showing the slightest respect to any of the lower tiers supporting his position on his own personal pyramid.
As far as his attitude to the planet is concerned, his behaviour in Scotland has shown us exactly how much this problem child cares about renewable energy and the environment, neither of which matter at all in comparison with his own ego. The man is a menace. There are quite a few notable examples of people who really should fear assassination, and he is one of them.
So, this afternoon a Republican author on my friends list posted yet another story from the USA supporting narrow-minded, selfish and frankly naive stupidity on facebook. Her lovely friends all made suitably moronic comments, and I replied that if the USA really wants to risk being bombed flat by a collaboration of other countries, then voting Trump is an excellent choice.
She responded, as Americans often do, by talking about his money. Who cares what you do to get it, right? The money is all that matters to these people. She then denied making any political postings or comments. She has been doing so for months. Either this woman is so stupid that she cannot tell from her own postings what her political leanings are, or she assumes everyone else is.
It is terrifying to me, how much the world has been sucked into a corporatist vortex, with the aid of the internet, in the last twenty years alone. As Mussolini said, corporatism is fascism. The only way out of it is to spend your money differently, and stop pretending that you are powerless. The future is in the hands of an increasingly disempowered and demotivated public, duped and subdued into assuming that they cannot do anything about it, so why worry as long as they are not actually dying themselves?
This stuff matters. You need to wake up now. You need to take the money away from the big players, and feed the competition to promote the future of democracy, because it is the corporations that will dictate your future. In order to get any semblance of rationality, it is in your interests to ensure that big companies get no bigger, and small companies grow to compete. Otherwise, you will very soon find yourselves at the mercy of quite crippling oppression and a war that you cannot handle, to suit countries only too happy to dispose of an apparently worthless population of surplus workers.
We know it is so, as we’ve been doing it for centuries.
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March 14, 2016
To be continued…
A quick note to let you know I have not forgotten my tasklist for the year. Now that things have settled slightly here I should be able to get back on track with the massive learning curve.
The writing schedule for this year was going to be dominant, but having invested in all these courses means that I have to be a bit pragmatic, and as anyone who has been through a great deal of stress and insecurity knows, it is very difficult to input information when you are experiencing trauma. Better to decorate when stressed, than waste time on half assed creation.
In any event, just in case anyone has not guessed what I am up to, I am returning to games as a medium this year. As I will not be doing it for nothing, I will be unable to make a direct reference to my lovely muse, as this would involve actual contact. So, you can expect an abstract anti-romantic adventure of some sort. I have a visual novel, and 3d game on the tasklist, and since my hand was damaged in the attack, the sewing is kind of back burner at the moment. Let us hope that I have wooed Wolfe to the point that he is willing to put some intellectual effort into decoding my amusing jibes. It is ironic, given that making a game is what made me so ill that I sought him out in the first place.
I noticed with some amusement yesterday, that Trump has already said he is expecting the economic bubble to burst for the USA quite shortly. There are several economists trying to cash in on this statement by playing on the fact that many Americans seem to think that money is a bit like magic, and some people are more magical than others. They do this by selling books and scare stories about the derivatives market, which is quite funny.
Money is not magical, the love of it is not pretty, and no, it does not make you smarter, funnier or more appealing. It is a useful weapon, but it is never infallible. If you choose to look on it as magical, however, why would you donate your magic dust to someone who already has a massive cellar full of it? Unless you are me, and trying to make a point to your beloved, I guess.
It is my view that we should be looking at life in a more time-related way, since so many of us have been sidelined in favour of stupid people who prefer cash to thinking. Time is something you never get back, and spending it wisely to build something new is extremely prudent in an age where only the innovators survive.
In an era of cultural blame, where we are encouraged to hate rather than think for ourselves, or attempt to change anything, where we are discouraged from close relationships, and encouraged to grab what we can get, it is wise to be an outsider, and patiently wait for our opening cue.
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March 5, 2016
Thank you, readers
Bit of stocktaking.
I was participating in an Etsy forum last night or so, and I answered the question of a crafter who was asking why people would be on Etsy if they did not want to put work into selling. As I am aware that I am not the only artist who uses Etsy for exposure rather than sales, I stupidly answered the question.
Imagine my surprise when a young mother responded to this by telling me that there was nothing special about my work and there was no information about the artist.
The clue is in the name, I said. Marketing products at these prices would traditionally take more money than selling the products would make.
Developing my work to this grade has so far taken twenty years, to amass the materials without it costing anybody else anything, and taking a craft and turning it into something a bit more original. I have not seen anybody else doing what I do, and so I assume that I am probably the only person doing it. If it sells, it sells, but right now it would be better if it was looked at rather than sold. I imagine the future will lie in custom work if it takes off, but approbation and curiosity will do at this point.
I am not the only artist who uses Etsy in this way. In fact anyone who retails more expensive pieces uses it much the same way I do. Getting into the glossies is something that I regard as a win, so I am not terribly worried what a young lady who makes baby products has to say about it. Sitting at a computer and sewing machine all day making low value items is not something that I would either have time for, or be interested in.
What was interesting, is that my first thought was not to worry about my work, which develops at its own pace. It was more along the lines of – why is this person going out of her way to annoy me? Since her attack, the shop has been mobbed, and people from several other countries have put the seal of approval on a variety of items, whilst any sign of support has been notably absent from the gaggle of American gossips that were involved in the conversation. I guess office bitches come in many forms, and some of them stay home and make baby clothes.
In the meantime, around seventy people have taken the time to enjoy and comment on Best Romance Ever. I am sure Wolfe will not mind if I extend his thanks as well as mine for their enjoyment and appreciation of our non-relationship, and I hope they will pass the book on to many more. It tickles me no end that our failure to communicate has inspired such joy all over the world. I am sure I will be able to fuel the third book in the series soon, but I am wondering if a change of format might work better, so I would like to develop my third branch of production before I complete the book. (wait and see)
Finally, thank you to the few thousand readers of the blog. Please go and check out the other stuff. It means a lot to me.
Cheers,
Ina
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March 2, 2016
New World Order and Common Purpose
First off, I am not particularly threatened by the thought of the New World Order. One world government used to be considered a desirable thing. My own father and his friends passionately believed that war was not inevitable and that political problems should be solved by pacifist means, meaning, in effect, that they were dabbling in communitarianism. Zero growth is also desirable from a planetary perspective. After he died, I got a phone call from Tony Blair’s office, no less, requesting money, so who knows how much money he gave New Labour.
Personally, I think New Labour were odious, and I am relieved to see some older school values in the Labour Party, although I will NEVER vote for them. There is nothing more sickening than an organisation who superficially pretend that they are doing good, whilst being told what to think, lining their own pockets and actually supporting extreme corporatism. Self determination and diversity are things that should be celebrated, not obliterated by Fabian garbage as far as I am concerned. People are different, and so they should be. Life will be very boring if everyone becomes the same, soma enhanced moron.
So you can imagine I approached my course in cultural intelligence, from Common Purpose, available now on FutureLearn, with some scepticism. I was aware of sites such as Stop CP and CP Exposed, but I have listened to Brian Gerrish, and I do not find his speech-making at all impressive or convincing. Give me some whimsy any day rather than listen to an ex-navy dude boring on about conspiracies. Two notches of reality at most from David Icke, who likes to end every paragraph with ‘but it is because they are all shape shifting lizards.’ Not really my bag.
Their leader on this occasion was their educational leader Julia Middleton, a trainer so awful that I spent the first two videos wanting to slap her hands down because she was so nervous. Why this biddy is worth £80k a year from Deutsch Bank, according to the rumours from 2012, is anyone’s guess but I would not have her feed my cats.
Basically the idea, from this taster course, is that you are an infant with no brain, confused by your conflicting emotions, so you must look upon yourself as a possible scientology candidate and follow Common Purpose instead for the benefit of your local government/utilities/public sector career. The information is not particularly advanced or interesting, and it is a bit low grade motivational in style. One of their favourite ‘witnesses’ shyly confessed that she had married a man of a different colour and religion, at which point I felt like throwing something at the computer screen. They progressed, if you could call it that, to recommending nice books to read, and that you should try some foreign food and music. Who employs these zombies? Why would you require a course from Common Purpose to identify that people from different countries do different things?
Having worked briefly for a local council, I am aware that local councils are fond of squandering money on utterly pointless and right on courses, but this one is particularly insidious due to the use of behavioural psychology, executed rather badly as far as I can see, unless you are easily confused by things like holidays, family memories, or what people are wearing. I appreciate that many people are very confused by these things, but personally I do not notice them so the mojo don’t work on me. It is just timewasting until you get to the point.
Allegedly, the point is that Britain is not to be British, just as Germany should not be German, or anywhere else retain a national identity, in a corporatist effort to replace governments and reduce national administration to zero. In the USA, the communitarian agenda is perceived as left, rather than right wing, since Obama is said to be keen on this plan. I am sorry folks, but the corporatists have hijacked traditional Fabian communitarianism and this is only about money. All that will be left is the plan to reduce the population to a stable and manageable level, and then our Brave New World will be complete. You can pretend this is a good thing, that it will save the planet, that it will reduce the need for war, or you can decide that actually, countries and national governments are quite cute and useful, and your interests are better served with local administration to prevent things like the inevitable chemical disaster and corporatist servitude that the bankers have in store for you.
It doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because I know what is going to happen, and many people and business will be killed off. I have been warning of this for some time. Common Purpose, the NWO and the corporatists can do what they like, because my life is over anyway. If you have children that you care about, however, you might want to change your spending habits and do something about TTIP, TISA. Stop assuming that you are ever told the truth, and move your money to smaller and newer banking organisations that do not fund the sinister move towards a branded and domineering tidy world.
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March 1, 2016
Back in the game
Regular readers will know that it is not usual for me not to post regularly, and I am sorry that I have been unable to concentrate on anything for the last three weeks or so.
I was attacked, and shortly after this my mother went for her usual February sleep. When I finally prised her out of bed as the family was starting to implode in its customary manner, she was unable to walk.
Happily I am a slave-driving bitch and she is now able to walk normally again, with assistance, but I am afraid that I find it rather difficult to think about myself when she is not functioning normally. I dread to think what I will be like when she finally leaves me. I need to work on that, fast.
Several other issues have sprung to my attention in the last three weeks:
The new health system in Glasgow, since the building of our new hospital, is basically a shift in responsibility from the NHS to the end user. There are no hospital places suitable for someone of my mother’s age, and so a mobile system has been introduced which means that even if she is extremely ill, I will be looking after her rather than a trained team of medical staff. This worries me, although on this occasion it worked out rather well, since the rehabilitation with me is 24 hours a day. I am sure that it is much better for the NHS, but it does not seem ideal for the patient.
Doctors who do not like the elderly are extremely dangerous individuals who can unwittingly kill people by telling their concerned relatives that they are simply old and refusing to provide treatment and/or referrals. Thankfully I had already identified this problem and changed her doctor.
It is amazing what you can achieve when suffering from anxiety. I have redecorated her kitchen and am now putting in modifications to the house to enable her to live here indefinitely since she became ill. These modifications should have been done ten years ago, but alas I was not the decision maker at that time.
Bullying family members will continue to push you until you push them back.
Sometimes being attacked can be a catalyst to force you to confront problems you have allowed to restrict you.
So, there we are, stress can be a good thing. It took until this morning for me to remember a couple of lines from Ode to Wolfe
“Alas I am but short and fat,
I don’t think he would go for that.”
At which point I laughed so much that I went back and read the poem. Then I had a look at Honey, I made you an icon, and cried for about two hours. Go figure. Now I am back studying leadership and branding.
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February 9, 2016
Dietary indoctrination
Stomach cancer patient hails clean eating
The above is a link that I added a couple of replies to earlier today. I would like to draw your attention to the comments below the article.
As you will see, the lady concerned was given two weeks to live in 2014. She took up a raw food diet (note that it does not actually say raw on the article, it says clean) and is still alive, and feels better. She also had conventional medical treatment, and all she has actually said is that she feels better and is still alive.
Now, tell me why the first respondents to this article are so threatened by this information? Has the entire population had a chip implanted into their heads, meaning that they rush to defend their crappy eating habits when they see articles like this? I doubt it very much.
Next possibility – are chemical, pharmaceutical, and large food companies paying people to make comments like this because people are buying less processed food? I doubt that they would go to this trouble. People will eat badly until they feel bad.
Third possibility – was I entirely correct when I said that this would happen in Best Scandal Ever? Bingo. The cultural shift that I predicted because of my conversations with my former friend Dalek has indeed come to pass. People are more willing to accept the loss of body parts than eat properly, because science is always right, and nature is always wrong.
Not that I would advocate giving up conventional medicine entirely. If you can get a doctor that actually listens to you and cares whether you live or die, go to them too. Cucumbers do not make good surgeons. The point is that if you eat properly you are less likely to need the surgeon in the first place.
Alas I have not been a religious raw foodist. It is very difficult to refuse all social contact, and people can be very insistent. I was very dedicated for about three years, then the inevitable heartbreak kicked in and I fought myself over whether I wanted to continue to live or not once again.
I can tell you that once I was less religious about it, my quality of social life improved, and my health slowly deteriorated over about a year and a half. So, bear in mind, nothing that you have done, even if you give up raw temporarily, is wasted. I am quite confident that I would have been requiring some form of serious medical intervention by now if I had not bothered with raw in the first place.
Also, when you finally manage to shut the door on saboteurs, it does not take long before you return to your good habits, simply because you feel (and look) so much better on a day to day basis. It takes a while to get back into the more frequent shopping habits of the raw foodist, but it does not take long to start craving things that are actually good for you rather than bad. It is an interesting new element to your life, this idea that you cannot go another day without your spinach/sugarsnap peas or pineapple rather than your former life cravings for coffee or bread.
So, I wonder, why are people so defensive about this woman eating properly? Do they think that if they just say good for her, that the vegetable police will turn up at their door, insisting that they eat properly? Do they imagine that the pizza gestapo will remove their televisions and take-aways? Or have they just been persuaded that science is clever and alternative health is for cranks?
TTIP TPP and TISA are closer than ever, and then the alternative health market will be seriously at risk from the pharmaceutical companies. You do not have much time left to create a strategy to make sure they do not have an easy time to destroy you. Told ya.
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Leadership and personal branding
I completed a couple of courses on this topic this morning, and to my surprise, my motivation for what I do is not what I thought it was at all.
Even if your business consists of one person – you – your business is only as good as you feel. Leadership skills are important, even if you are only leading yourself. My surprising revelation came from a personal branding exercise. Apparently my boat is floated by empowering other people – who knew? (I thought it was a bit angrier and more academic)
And from all sources, a life coach asked me the right questions. It just goes to show, that even with time on your hands you may not be asking yourself the right questions.
See how you feel after watching these two videos, and then scroll down:
Here is my branding exercise from this morning, I hope you find it interesting:
My very personal brand already exists, so here are my answers to the class questions.
What is wrong with the world?
Micro
Increasing Americanization/corporatisation has caused people to be valued by their financial worth or fame, therefore the population feel increasingly dis-empowered and undervalued. (This is exemplified by the refusal of Wolfe’s agent to give me somewhere to send seven years-worth of artwork, even after I had explained that I had spent two further years researching the academic work on his behalf without his knowledge.)
Macro
Large branded businesses and brands are now more powerful than national government, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to surmount barriers to entry, to participate as an individual rather than as part of a branded, policy driven team which enriches other people.
In addition this change in economic fortunes leaves entire countries destitute in its wake, which increasingly impinges on people’s consciousness as they carry out their duties as a consumer citizen.
Who are your audience and competitors?
My audience consists partly of undervalued people who would like to know how to be more expressive and more successful. My artwork audience, on the other hand, consists of cutting edge trendsetters who cannot remember the last time they saw something that was not mass produced and love novelty.
My competitors are motivational gurus, other artists who do not share the same interests, and authors, who do not really understand what I am doing or why I am doing it at all, since the writing side is not for cash.
So in brief
The economy is outrunning our ability to control our own destiny
People are disempowered and unmotivated by convenience culture
In order to rectify the situation, we need to feed the roots of the economy ie. the consumer needs to know how and why to vote with their wallets, rather than relying on government to do it for them. They also need to feel empowered to do so, and believe me they do not.
What gets me up in the morning
I have created an expressive space where I artistically embarrass myself in order to make a point – nobody is worthless or unimportant, no matter what they have to say. If people don’t hear you, say it louder. It falls under the category of sustainable couture, but it is just one sideline of my work (it has shown signs of potentially being very successful in the pre-launch phase.) This year I am branching in a third new direction, which will attract another new group of people.
Why is your brand special and how could it develop?
My brand is special because it is a statement about the economy which everyone can participate in, should they want to or show sufficient motivation. I have a unique emotional set up and education for the purposes of both seeing, and making the point, using the medium of my muse, Mr David Avocado Wolfe. (Do not worry, Wolfe, I did not use your name on the original answer)
What my brand could be – it already is but it could develop further – it is an empowerment concept based on individual action and response to the world around you. It is also a social activism concept which has developed from my painful awareness that nobody really reads academic books, and nobody apparently listens to a short, fat woman, no matter how earnest they are. It is a very big conceptual fashion statement, which ultimately will take the form of an individual economic development project.
So there we have it:
The questions are –
What do you see that is wrong with the world?
How are you planning to rectify it?
Who is your customer?
What makes you special?
Why are you doing it?
How is it going to develop?
Fill your boots.
Ina
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February 8, 2016
Plagiarism Update
People who have been reading the blog for a while will remember the unfounded plagiarism accusation by no less than four established authors against this book (please note the number of men who loved it enough to leave me some encouragement below the book.)
This post is just to ensure that the paranoid publisher who is trawling my website sees the evidence, and can assure themselves that I am not bored and nasty enough to pursue them, particularly since it turned out that Best Romance Ever seems to have been being used as a kind of hacker’s joke. They succeeded in knocking out the website for a day, and relaying several ridiculous comments and complaints from other pages, including these.
As you can see, it is pretty convincing, and it was only my speedy contact with the website that resolved the situation, since they seemed to be quite happy to accept that I had in fact plagiarised four separate books, but less happy to accept that their site had been hacked.
As those of you who are aware of the over-arching story and blog will know, nobody else could or would have written Best Romance Ever. It is a complex emotional puzzle which requires something behind it, wrapped up in a brightly wrapped parcel of Midsummer night’s Dream gossipy nonsense, which I felt was a perfect expression of the Wolfe saga at the time.
I have less than no interest in giving away other people’s books, and cannot imagine why anybody would go to the trouble, but since somebody has been scraping the website looking for the above images, here they are! No I will not be apologising, since it was not my fault. Go tell it to the hackers.
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Why I write
First and foremost, it should be said that I have not been writing regularly for all that long. I wrote intermittently for years, usually some male was involved, and I was unable for various reasons to speak to them. Men go from being callously immature in their twenties, to almost retirement in their forties if they are not carefully managed by themselves, their partner, or their lifestyle. You have to try very hard to get your message across in the brief romantic period during their thirties when they are wondering where their life is going. Since I veer between overworking, hiding in the house and doing things for other people, this has left little time for chasing dudes. Besides which, they turned up like over-ordered pizza for twenty years until I told them that their visits were pointless. Apparently all I wanted was a decent muse.
I do not write for the purpose of gaining fame, it would be a very inefficient way of doing it. I was originally working on a social commentary about natural health, the environment, economics and how these things link with your personal liberty and level of society-led brainwashing when I wanted to speak to Wolfe He was quite possibly entirely unaware of this until after the incident with the screen, which was really intended to make up for a rather caustic and probably embarassing film I had made about the state of raw food at the time, in addition to completing a piece of work I had put seven years into.
Since then, my primary purpose was to let him know what had happened, since he was unlikely to hear about it from his moronic staff. The hazard of using ‘friends’ as colleagues is that even when they get it wrong you are likely to give them the benefit of the doubt, and I am quick to admit that I am a very odd fish at times. I doubt very much that very much has changed, beyond the girls getting younger, and I am quite sure that he has no appreciation of what I do whatsoever, unless some richer person has told him that it is kewl.
It was something that I always knew I could do, on one hand, but not something I felt terribly motivated by. I always thought I would end up in some sort of heritage career. Then again, I did not think that I would be bullied for years by my dangerously stupid sisters, nor lied about for the purposes for their gaining money at the expense of all reason and the welfare of their own mother. Everything has been a bit of a mess for more than a decade.
The good thing about it is that I am less likely to accept the shirking of responsibility for their actions on the grounds that they claim to be too stupid/not remember/not understand what they have done on the grounds that I am a bit eccentric and they do not understand what acceptable behaviour is. The fact that I am now middle-aged and considerably brighter than them does not seem to occur to them.
The latest in the family saga is that they are attempting to bully my mother, since they are unable to get to me. I have curtailed their ability to do this, and I await their next assault. To give you an example, we went away before Christmas, and despite my mother’s claim that she had a marvellous time, they are telling her that she did something wrong by not forcing me to ask their permission. My eldest sister, as I have mentioned before, is a dangerous lunatic who is obsessively driven by her vendetta against me, which has no basis in anything I have or have not done. Quite the reverse, the more I do, the more she demands, so it is much better to prevent her from interacting with me as much as is possible. My mother, assisted by me, called her four times before we went away, and she did not return any of the calls because the only thing that matters to her is herself, and how much power she imagines she should have despite doing nothing at all to earn it.
So, despite a wall of ignorance, I have the comfort of knowing that I now have approximately fifteen thousand readers of the books, and a few thousand a month on the blog, all of whom understand exactly what I am saying. This provides me with a bit of emotional reassurance. It has been very difficult to remain unaffected by this barrage of irrational stupidity.
In the event that it is fame that you seek, I do not recommend writing as a way to do it. There are far more effective ways of gathering a following. Social media is also scheduled to fragment very shortly, so in the event that you wish to make a start, I recommend that you do it very fast indeed, since Facebook is now effectively useless unless you have an enormous marketing budget and team of groupies like Wolfe, or are sufficiently dogged to sit on it all day. Twitter is heading the same way, and so new avenues, such as Tsu and other social media providers are likely to become more popular. It does not make economic sense to pump money into a format that no longer works, even when chatting to your friends. It is a shame, but Facebook is fast becoming irrelevant.
I have completed about 16 or so courses, and have another 45 or so to get through, so work is postponed until I get through that. Twisty is now absent, so I have more work to do with mother. It is very strange, but her health appears to be improving as a result of all the peace and quiet. I think that it will be worth it, when all the courses are finished and I produce some new formats. Hopefully Wolfe can be induced to take a look at it, when he is not too busy being his usual ebullient self.
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February 6, 2016
New Scottish Culture
After the referendum last September, the Scottish National Party became the most popular political party in Scotland. The reasons for this may seem unclear to people who do not understand Scottish culture.
Before I go into that, here is my own position. As a former interviewer for a research organisation that formerly worked extremely closely with national government, I was initially a no. I just could not permit myself the space to consider whether Scotland could afford the number of disabled, long term sick, or unemployed people that we support without the ultimate insurance of the UK. When I finally discussed it with a friend who is a lot more interested in domestic politics than I am, I made the decision to take the risky, yet positive Yes route. Why did I change my mind? Certainly not because of oil revenue. Oil does not really affect Glasgow, it barely affects most of Scotland. The chattering classes on the east coast would tell you something different, but the chattering classes on the east coast are not really considered to be very pro-Scottish by most of Scotland. There are logistical reasons for this that most Scots, never mind anyone else, do not really understand. There is also a strong sense of rivalry between east and west, which historically far outweighs anything as mundane as the price of oil.
So, first, the east-west divide:
When you drive to Scotland from England, you have three main options – the A1, which takes you up the east coast, the M6, which takes you up to a fairly straightforward artery to the formerly industrial zones in the west, and a wee road that we like to send the English tourists through Galloway, via Moffat. The Moffat road allows you to delude yourself that you are seeing pretty parts of Scotland, whilst gently directing you towards Edinburgh. It never fails to make me chuckle, this idea that we are keeping the best bits for ourselves, and directing the tourist traffic away from Scotland’s actual capital, Glasgow.
I have lived in both cities as well as a considerable number of other areas in Scotland, and contentiously, I can tell you that it is a lot easier to live as a single person in Edinburgh. Like Kent, it has a steady through traffic of incomers, and an arguably more cosmopolitan atmosphere generally. Like Kent, although people are generally less friendly, they are actually a bit more tolerant of strangers. I have shocked many an Edinburgh native, when asked about the two cities, when I have said this, as they assume a natural rivalry exists. No, we in Glasgow are quite happy for Edinburgh to accomodate all the tourists they want. It keeps the place tidy for the extended clans that prefer to do Scottish business and shopping in Glasgow, from most of the rest of Scotland, including places that are actually nearer to Edinburgh. Glasgow is designed for mercantile and domestic business, central Edinburgh is designed for something somewhat more genteel and anglified.
So what implications does the information I have given you so far have for the new Scottish culture that has developed since the referendum?
What do Euan McColm, JK Rowling, and ‘what about my pension?’ Historywoman, all aggressive Unionists have in common? They are all residents of Edinburgh. They genuinely believe that their self-hating and often ill-informed opinions reflect the views of most of Scotland, because they are assured by their positions that the masses really care what they as individuals think. JK, as it turns out, is a titanic egotist that believes the slavish followers that hang on her every word, without any alternative information to her apparent dislike of the country she is choosing to throw her money about in. They are apparently unconcerned who they are bombing, and whose house gets fracked, as long as they are right, right, right. Euan even tried to tell me that the SNP were at fault for the activities of SEPA, an organisation that I am familiar with from my days working for the main utilities companies in Scotland. Sorry, Euan, but SEPA have never done what they say on the tin, it is nothing to do with the SNP, a party somewhat fettered by its own democracy.
As a result, many unthinking no voters believe that the question of Scottish independence is akin to a primary school exam question. It is multiple choice, and all they have to worry about is getting the answer right. They do not like the couthier elements of the SNP, or the devotion shown by some supporters (particularly those who are formerly left wing activists) and they do not trust that anybody in Scotland has sufficient wit to run a country. When you consider that Scotlands upper working and lower middle class are often heavy drinkers, who work extremely hard and have limited time for information gathering, never mind thinking, it is less surprising that they take the views of these people seriously and write the entire argument off as ‘lefties dreaming about oil.’
As the Scottish voting public have demonstrated since the referendum, the question of independence for yes voters is not at all about oil. Whether you are left or right wing, it is about your idea of what a nation is, your level of self confidence as a person as well as a nation, and your opinion of how well the UK functions for you as an individual. I am sure that if you are a mean-spirited academic worrying about your pension, a fearful author worrying about your house getting burgled by poor people, or a minor journalist who just wants to be in with UK bricks, the idea of independence is very frightening.
If you are a cultural observer, however, it is more of a question of how one would go about making the country work for people who have been forced to accept a culture of loss, historically, industrially and in terms of the lose-to-win social housing rules. What Scotland actually needs is a generation of factories, in order to achieve future generations of bankers, engineers and designers to move the country forward. Are we likely to achieve that by ensuring that we are under Tory rule from the over-populated England? Many middle class thinkers in Glasgow apparently think not, going by the referendum results. Despite an engrained class tension, exemplified by a friend of mine from Pollokshaws, who despite a £50,000 a year job as a builder, cannot imagine owning a house ‘because he has no capital like the middle-class c****,’ Glasgow apparently has the confidence that Edinburgh appeared to lack at the time of the referendum. What my friend requires, apparently, is an injection of morale that people like Rowling and McColm cannot find in their hearts to provide in the country they choose to live in. Good luck with that stinking self-hatred you are punting.
Meanwhile, the English media would have the snarling chavs believe that the Scots are whinging cowards, milking the teat of English supremacy whilst complaining about their lot. They have been trained to think this by enthusiastic misinformation, and they are very good at hating whomever they are told to hate. Hating is apparently much easier than thinking, or hoping, or building anything new. It requires no energy at all.
What the #SNPbad crew do not understand is that the SNP are a conduit. They are not just one party. Many of us in the party detest the couthier elements, but it does not mean that we will cease to support the SNP for as long as it takes to rebuild our country and create a new basis for healthy discussion. No, we do not sit over a brazier discussing the good old days of scraping a living off the croft, people working in mines or tales of shipbuilding. Yes, we are aware that there will be decades of hard work, just to persuade people that it is OK to think, OK not to hate, Ok not to rely on past wounds for guidance. What we all have in common is this dream of self determination, unchained to the desires of public schoolboys lining their pockets with backhanders, defence spending and welfare pensions which relentlessly punish people who are without hope due to a lack of strategy from the top.
My view comes from one of the most stratified cities in the country. Nevertheless, unlike the impoverished No voters, we managed to agree on one thing – Scotland needs to be Scottish in order to progress.
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