Chris Page's Blog, page 16

David Cameron phones home rule

I got an email from David Cameron today.

The email asked me to phone random strangers in Scotland to ask them to vote to stay in the union.

Phoning in dependence

The message is couched in urgent and passionate terms.

‘I desperately want our family of nations to stay together – and if you do too, please do everything you can to help save our great country,’ he says.

So pick up the phone and ask Scotland to stay. That was his message.

No, really, that was the message.

In other words, plead.

Pleading always works when a relationship is on the verge of breaking up.

The Conservatives have apparently arranged some kind of phone bank to put you in touch with your own random Scottish person. You just have to log in, sign up, and bell away!

Phoning strangers in Scotland and asking them to stay in the union is an excellent idea if you want Scotland to become independent. It is a very bad idea if you want the union to persist.

The people of Scotland are considering going it alone partly because England, and more specifically the affluent south, has for generations been trying to tell Scotland what to do.

Imagine how perfectly innocent Scottish people are going to react if they suddenly receive calls in the privacy of their own home just when they are settling down to an evening of telly after a hard day’s work and suddenly on the phone they’ve got the cream of the shires pleading with them to vote no on Thursday.

‘Hello, may I speak to a random Scottish person, please?’

‘That’ll be me.’

‘I’m calling from the affluent home counties to plead with you to stay part of the union. David Cameron asked me and he said in an email he sent this very morning that he desperately wants our family of nations to stay together.’

‘David Cameron, you say? That privileged, cosseted, Tory numpty? That representative of the class of Tory numpties that has been trying to rule Scotland by remote control since the Union of the Crowns in 1603?’

‘Yes, that’s the chap. Do you know him? Terribly nice fellow and very dismissive of anyone who isn’t rich and English. So, are you going to vote no, then?’

People with an actual memory might like to recall The Guardian’s 2004 campaign to persuade the undecided voters of Clark County, Ohio, not to vote for President Bush. The result was a swing to Bush and a near invasion of Britain.

The result of Cameron’s call-a-random-Scot campaign will be queues of voters camping outside the voting centres from this very minute so they can be the first to vote yes on Thursday.

Good luck with that, Mr Cameron, and will that be the high road or the low road you’ll be taking out of Scotland then?

@grantshapps Thanks for the follow :-)

For a change some good news. Imagine my delight when I woke this morning and found that overnight Grant Shapps, chairman of the Conservative Party had followed me on Twitter.

(I deeply regret, Mr Shapps, that I have not returned the follow for the simple reason that I have reached my following limit.)

Yes, delighted indeed, because now I have the attention of the honourable gentleman, I can point out that the tacit support of this government to the ongoing massacre of Palestinians in Gaza by the Isreali armed forces brings shame on this country, and that I cannot possibly consider voting for any party that does not speak out against this crime and break all links with the government of the child killer Benjamin Netanyahu. I can also tell Mr Shapps that I am with George Monbiot in supporting a wealth tax — yes, a tax on Britain’s richest people.

This tax is a proposal of the Green Party, of which I am a proud member.

I am also able to tell Mr Shapps that the TTIP trade agreement between the EU and the US is one of the most vile and undemocratic piecss of legislation yet devised. It will, if enacted, be a direct kick in the balls of democracy, removing the right of ordinary people to live free of, for example, GM food, cigarettes and generally make informed decisions about how their government spends the money of taxpayers.

I can also let Mr Shapps know that health and wellbeing are not commodities and that he can keep his hands of the NHS.

I have many, many things to share, and those are only the ones that are top of my mind.

I look forward to a good Twitter chat with the good gentleman. @psipookian

The Underpants Tree: Pigs on chemical wings

Hades, Persephone, Hilda and Dr Pickles are hiding from the evil Dr Hieronymus Mangler. Deprived of an actual scientific laboratory, Pickles has set up in a conveniently nearby barn. Now read on.

‘Is it normal pig behaviour’ Persephone asked, ‘to be flat on the back with trotters in the air, drooling and grinning inanely?’

Hades, Persephone, Hilda, Pickles and the barnyard animals were clustered around a pair of delirious, supine porkers.

‘Not really,’ said Pickles. ‘What’s more, I’ve been telling them about sausages and all they do is giggle. The fact is, I’ve been experimenting on them. Didn’t have any guinea pigs so had to use the full-size ones.’

‘And what sort of experiment involving giggling pigs would be relevant to our predicament?’ Hilda wanted to know.

‘Ah! I’m glad you asked. I think you’ll find this interesting. I’ve been feeding them Mangler’s underpants and this is what happened to them — they came over all zonked.’

‘Say what, Mr Man?’ Hades was not impressed. ‘You’ve been feeding undies to piggies? What on earth is the point of that? Have you run out of useful things to be doing?’

Hilda fixed Hades with one of the hard stares he could feel even from under her burqa.

‘OK,’ said Persephone. ‘You may need to walk us through this because the relevance of daft pigs to a worldwide coup d’état by a dangerously crazed über-loon is eluding us.’

‘It’s all very simple and very evil,’ said Pickles, ‘except for the actual science, which is all very fiendish and extraordinarily evil. I was investigating the properties of these Manglers, getting to know the enemy, hoping to back-engineer and I discovered some interesting things about them.’

‘Go on,’ said Hades watching as one of the pigs appeared to rapture and ascend to another plane of being.

‘First, the pants seem to be alive.’

‘That can’t be good,’ said Persephone.

‘That’s exactly what I said, funnily enough,’ said Pickles.

This is how a novelist might spend his day, imagining stoned pigs, which makes this a fine occupation. The above is an extract from the work in progress, The Underpants Tree.