Sunday 24 January 2016

in a little box with nasty barricades

For the anti-outsider racism against Scotland's diaspora which made it morally necessary to vote No, the worst of the leading nats was Jim Sillars. He it was who actually proposed that the Scots born in diaspora as the offspring of our emigrants - whose emigration itself was supposed to be a nat issue - should be filtered for desirable skills the same as migrants with no roots here, before they can live in their own country. He took this line of xenophobic hate speech towards a section of his own nation, in his campaign dialogue with George Galloway and to the Yes meeting on 7 May 2014 at Liberton school, Edinburgh. SSP leader Colin Fox was sitting beside him and continued to do a campaigning tour with him calling him a friend.

I saw it because it was my question on citizenship by descent that he was answering. He told the same meeting that he was a Eurosceptic who would rather Scotland be like Norway and join EFTA, he retains from 70s nationalism its anti-EU strain, the idea of sacrosanct national sovereignty not getting pooled and united with anyone. Anti-Europeanism is now another racist anti-immigration position, because it means, and at British level much of it is motivated by, ending the union of free movement and travel. Going back to having nasty barricades up to the rest of the world outside your little box of global apartheid.

It fits him perfectly that he has now announced he's campaigning for an Out vote in the referendum, and splitting with the SNP mainstream by it, as he has ranted against the party control created by Salmond. The nats are better off without him, but will they realise it and break with his sick level of anti-diaspora bigotry?

Sillars will have no claim to moan or to claim any crisis if Scotland votes In and Britain votes Out. It is a matter of record that he wants the opposite.

Saturday 9 January 2016

term time

Green leader Patrick Harvie to wrote a column in yesterday's National, accepting as routine and uncontroversial across all oarties the bill to put off the 2020 Scottish election to 2021. He writes that he anticipates our electoral term becoming 5 years from now on to fit with the British and European terms and avoid clashes.

What's so wrong with clashes then? What is wrong with simply having an election at some other date than May when you want to avoid a clash? What, only since 1997, is suddenly so magic about May for elections?

Why the hell do the Greens, on the whole the most reformist party, want to go along with a consensus to make elections less frequent? How does that help reform anything?

Why would they, or indeed a nationalist government, want to change for worse Scotland's election cycle to acommodate Britain's, when there is no need to? Especially when there is much discontent by British-level political journalists that the term is too long. This 5 year term, this reduction in elections now presented as permanent, originated entirely from the party interests only for the 2010 parliament in making a right wing coalition deal of despised memory!

It rather looks like the Greens have succumbed to temptation to accept the gravy train giving them a free ride of holding their seats for the extra year, between having to see how they as small party perform in elections.