Comment: Independence and the House of Lords
Kenny Sheerin
There's a standing joke somewhere that as soon as a politician succumbs to old age and starts dribbling into his Frosties, you do one of two things for him. You make him a Judge or a Peer.
The "open debate" (make's a nice change) inside the SNP over whether they should be participating in the House of Lords is characteristic of a party morally, socially and politically bankrupt. They seek to legitimise their party in the eyes of their (ahem) peers in the hope they can talk the Liberals into a coalition come some future election.
Crucially, Salmond reserves criticism, rightly, for those who buy their Peerages and those got them because mummy couldn't think up an excuse not to be in the same house as daddy that night. But I stop being impressed when he alludes to what happens if the House of Lords miraculously becomes fair and equitable for everyone. On that day, your humble narrator will pogo stick naked up the Royal Mile for all the chance it has of happening.
But let's go with it: Why shouldn't Scottish Politicians take part in an Upper House, duly elected, smelling nice with a suit from some Oxbridge tailor? After all, if the SNP wins enough seats in Scotland at either Holyrood or the Commons to merit a Referendum, isn't getting that referendum a mere trifle?
No, it's not. The policy of the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats always involves the Union. I've always believed the option of a referendum for Independence is naive at best, and hideously negligent at worst. Even if you matched the SNP lords member for member in the Upper house with the Commons, they still aren't going to allow a referendum or at the very least defer it "to allow more important matters" to proceed.
Do you really think a group of English lords, even with SNP representation, will give us a referendum? Of course they aren't. Politics is about what you can achieve, and what you don't want someone else to achieve. That's why the European Referendum was delayed for so long, because senior Labour Party members KNEW it couldn't be won. When the French had a hissy-fit over the issue, they must've been sighing in relief at avoiding the bullet which would've killed off Blair.
It works like this: SNP, SSP and Greens win 51% of the Scottish seats at either Holyrood or Westminster. Next step is a referendum. It will only be allowed legally, if the current government thinks it has a chance of winning the "no to independence" vote. If they don't, sorry they're too busy right now, but they'll found you some form of Crown Commission to investigate the "Scotland Issue" or something. In actual fact, they're going to bury it for a further two years while the Brit parties work out some form of policy to win back votes while the media has the biggest tantrum in modern times to further erode the issue. Since we don't have any pro-independence media outlets, publicly, there's little we can do.
You aren't going to get your Independence Referendum. And there's little point of taking seats in the Upper House because you are merely legitimising the authority you are trying to break away from.
This isn't really about "participation" as Alex Salmond says, it's about cementing a Political career for prospective SNP MPs. The current SNP are playing a long ball game, accepting the Union and wanting to reform it from within and getting a velvet-revolution divorce settlement in the long term.
Salmond and Swinney both have similar aims, and that involves aligning the SNP as a mainstream Political Party and aiming to get the donors and money that goes along with being a mainstream party. The SNP is the biggest fringe party of British Political History and wants some megabucks, clearly thinking that to outperform Labour in it's heartlands it needs the money to buy Lanarkshire.
If the SNP were serious about Independence it wouldn't be hiring people to work out facts and figures, it would trying to build a mass membership organisation on the ground to agitate and campaign like it had the 60s and 70s. But the difference between that SNP and this SNP is that the current Independentistas aren't freedom fighters in Kilts, they're professional political performers in it for the money and the fame and know that only the idea of Independence is required, not actually any physical committment to try and get it.
On a more positive note though, I do believe Alex Salmond a hell of lot more than I ever believed Walter the Softie. But the problem isn't whether or not you believe Alex and Nicola are sincere about Independence. It's whether or not you believe the mafia who run the part behind the scenes are.
So in my view, the arguments regarding the Lords aren't as important as it's a symptom of a party which has lost it's view of it's founding principle: i.e. that the power lies with the people and it is to them you must appeal. Clearly some SNP MPs have chosen the view that the Lords are far more important to them to the rest of us smelly neds are.
I hope they spend their thirty pieces of silver wisely.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Wha struts, and stares, and a’ that
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word
He’s but a cuif for a that.
The most moving moment in recent Scottish politics was also one of the most comic. Sheena Wellington was delivering a marvellous rendition of A Man’s A Man at the first opening of the Scottish parliament and there, but a few feet away from me, was Prince Philip, trying to understand the words, and the Duke of Hamilton, who had led the honours of Scotland into the parliament chamber.
What better example of the paradox of Scotland. We strive to be modern and democratic, to honour our egalitarian sentiment, but we present it side by side with the flummery of the past.
Nobody should be against putting on a good show and a bit of pageantry. The problems begin when the tourist attraction gets mixed up with the functional democracy, and they end when the institutions of a parliament are brought into total disrepute.
For whatever problems we may have in reconciling the past and the future in Scotland, in the present Palace of Westminster one of the houses of parliament is both corrupt and corrupting.
When Lloyd George sold peerages after the first world war, it was to fund his version of the Liberal Party and himself. He defended it on the basis that given he held the system in disrepute, there was no harm in bringing it further into the mire.
In Tony Blair, we have a Prime Minister who now funds his version of the Labour Party through the honours system and, in particular, through the House of Lords. He has brought the system into complete disrepute but has done so under the cloak of reform.
The facts are there for all to see. Since the 2001 election, every Labour donor who has given the party more than £1 million has been given a knighthood or a peerage. Twelve out of the 14 individuals who have given more than £200,000 have received an honour, as is the case for 17 out of the 22 who donated more than £100,000.
In total, 80p out of every pound donated to Labour by individuals comes from people who have been honoured in one form or another. Those who have been missed out thus far no doubt can have reasonable expectations for the future and, now that the 83-year-old Honours Scrutiny Committee has been scrapped, inadequate scrutiny will be replaced by none.
All of this gravy train involves rather more than just the House of Lords and, of course, there are people in the House of Lords who are neither large donors nor indeed small cronies.
However, have huge Labour donors such as Lord Sainsbury or Lord Drayson ever demonstrated the degree of political flair that would have brought them into government as ministers of the crown by a process of natural political selection?
In addition, the people of independent mind and real ability such as Baroness Kennedy look increasingly scarce in the Lords as the time-servers and place people move into position.
Would it be possible to suggest a revising chamber with less credibility than one still stuffed with hereditary peers? The answer is yes if it is largely occupied by people who are thought to have bought their way in. At least the hereditaries were by and large bought and paid for some generations ago and therefore capable of exercising some degree of independent judgement.
Of course, Labour are not alone in this. The Tories have just as many questions to answer and even the Liberals one or two. However, our “regular kind of guy” of a Prime Minister presides over this irregular system and is the main blockage of fundamental and democratic reform.
It is against this background that the Scottish National Party is debating whether we should dip a toe into these murky waters by nominating people for the House of Lords.
On the one hand, the arguments are beguiling. The hereditaries will soon be gone, removing one of our long-standing objections. It is also true that there would be opportunities to defend the Scottish interest in the Lords sometimes denied in the House of Commons, and the SNP has been throughout its history a participative rather than an abstentionist party.
It is also true that if the second chamber in Westminster moves to some system of an elective base before Scottish independence, then we will undoubtedly stand for election. It is impossible to conceive of any election in which the SNP would not turn up and put the case for Scotland.
No doubt, the pressure for this change will grow. The present position is not just corrupt but will be seen to be corrupt. It is likely to be the continuing scandal of the last years of Blair, just as individual MPs’ interests and their brown envelopes dominated the last years of John Major.
However, that real change is in the future and not now. Unless and until this particular byre is mucked out, I would caution against the SNP seeking admission lest some of the dirt rubs off.
There are institutions of the British state in which we must participate to advance the Scottish cause. However, there is a world of difference between representing the people with a democratic mandate and presenting yourself with nominated preferment.
Or to paraphrase Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons: what profit a man if he were to gain the whole world and lose his own soul – but for a few seats in an un-reformed House of Lords?
It would be tempting, of course, to put an SNP firebrand or two into the Lords, if only to wake up the newly ennobled Lord Foulkes or Lord O’Neill.
But then as the remainder of Sheena Wellington’s verse told us:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that
His ribband star an’ a’ that
The man o’ independent mind
He looks and laughs at a’ that.
SNP split over taking up seats in Lords
CATHERINE MACLEOD and MICHAEL SETTLE
From The Herald on June 10 2005
SENIOR figures in the SNP are openly defying Alex Salmond by urging the party to end its historic opposition to the House of Lords and take up seats in the upper chamber.
At least two of the Nationalists' six Westminster MPs publicly endorsed the move yesterday, and there is growing grassroots support for it within the party.
A formal proposal which would lead to SNP peers, after decades of antagonism to the Lords, is now expected to be debated by the party's decision-making bodies later this year. A debate has already begun within the parliamentary group at Westminster.
However, any such change runs the risk of infuriating Mr Salmond, the party leader, and splitting the Nationalist rank and file. Pete Wishart, SNP group leader at Westminster, believes the Nationalists should have a voice in the upper house to put the party line when legislation is progressing through parliamentary procedures.
"I want to encourage open debate in the party about whether we participate in the House of Lords. My own view is that we should take up places in the House of Lords," Mr Wishart, MP for Perth and Perthshire North, told The Herald yesterday.
"In the Commons, we do what we can to defend and protect Scotland's interests but, when legislation goes to the Lords, that protection is lost.
"With the disappearance of hereditary peers, our historical objection for not participating in the Lords also disappears."
Mr Wishart's position appears to have growing support within the party.
At the SNP's national council last weekend, the Kelvin City and Maryhill branches submitted motions insisting that the SNP should consider membership only of a directly-elected House of Lords, but both motions where rejected to allow a fuller debate to take place.
Angus MacNeil, newly elected MP for na h-Eileananan an Iar (Western Isles), also threw his full support behind SNP membership of the Lords. He said: "Westminster is a bi-cameral parliament and clearly it makes sense, especially with the changes in the Lords, that as
we're represented in one of the chambers of parliament, we should also be represented in the other.
"As a new member at Westminster, I am also of the belief that, wherever a parliament has power and makes decisions over Scotland, it is obvious that the bigger the SNP representation, the better.
"In a two-chamber parliament, the SNP should be in both chambers. I would prefer the second chamber to be elected, but we have to live with the world as it is at the moment if we are going to change it."
Mr Salmond, who hopes to be re-elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2007, remains hostile to SNP membership of the Lords, as long as the present system prevails. "There is no chance of us joining the Lords.
We would have nothing to do with a nominated system. If it was wholly elected, that would be a different set of circumstances."
Mike Weir, the MP for Angus, also stressed that the party's decision would depend on the government's final plan for a reformed upper chamber. "The more democratic the mandate, the more likely it is that we will buy into it. If the House of Lords is largely nominated, I can't see us having much truck with it."
Stewart Hosie, the newly-elected MP for Dundee East, was undecided. "The argument for it to be mainly or totally elected is a strong one, but I will listen to contrary arguments."
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Valentines Cards that were rejected:
For men:
“If it wasn’t for lack of confidence, I’d be with someone far more attractive that you.”
“Since I love you, could you please zero my bank balance a week earlier this time?”
“Giggling doesn’t make a fanny-fart attractive. Ever.”
“Now you’re in your thirties, short hair makes you even MORE attractive!”
“I only watch films with Cameron Diaz in them so I can sleep with you!”
“If I knew who Dolce and Gabbana were I’d kill them now and eat their intestines. Please enjoy that skirt that cost this week’s wages!”
“It’s not natural, it’s a rainforest and I have no intention of going to either.”
“You use your teeth when you give a blow job, and that scares me a little bit.”
“Yes, I was thinking about Angelina Jolie, but otherwise I’d have fallen asleep again.”
“It’s not just a car; it’s the thing I pick up
"Yes, the neighbours DO think you are a bunny boiler. But you go like a bunny and squeal like a whore. You didn't think I stayed because of the cooking did you?"
For Women:
“Love is a four letter word. Try and learn Clitoris cock-face.”
“Could you flash me one more time, I’m sure next time it’ll be funny!”
“If it was supposed to go up there, Buddha wouldn’t have designed it so that last night’s curry went the opposite way.”
“If you tweak my boobs enough, you’ll reach Jazz FM.”
“I’d like an orgasm this side of my menopause.”
“If you do it during my period, you love me. If I do it when you’re excited, I want to sleep and can’t think of a decent excuse.”
“If you learnt anything from porn, I wouldn’t be so angry when I caught you.”
“My Bra is not a ‘Krypton Factor’ challenge.”
“I only watch soap operas so I can find out how other people leave dicks like you.”
“I knew you were lying about your secretary to your friends because she was busy sleeping with me.”
"You made me the secret Lesbian I am today."
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Can't Stand Me Now...
Well brothers and sisters, I've been offline for a while. For all 200 of you, I apologise but life has been rather crappy.
One, a relative was diagnosed as being rather ill, and I had to make sure no bad stuff happened.
Two, I found out a girl I was e-mailing online was a scammer, and was a tad depressed.
Three, I actually work in hell and consequently there were few places I could go to escape from the general misery that is my life.
But fuck it, says I, I'm a survivor and get through this shit (at least this time). I guess I'm doing this blog article out of the same spirit of heroes of mine like John Keats, Kurt Cobain, Robert Burns... Confessional, despressing, but true.
The illness of my relative, you'll have to excuse me, but there isn't a lot I can say. I'll just say that life sucks for such a long period of time, sometimes it's a blessing when the inevitable diagnosis happens and you know what the fuck is going on.
The girl... Isn't there a girl in every story? There's been several in mines, and usually not in a good way. When they are, I usually screw it up one way or another.
I'm on one of these dating sites and this Russian Girl called Nadya e-mailed me. I replied, and it was pretty cool, for a while. She sent LOADS of photographs. In fact, fuck it, say hello Nadya: 
Nadya claimed to be 23. Nadya claimed to be from Kazan in Russia.
One day, after a few e-mails in which we talked trash (i do this, you do that, he does this, daddy is a soldier...) she said her mother said she loves me. This was after about five / six e-mails.
Now, call me cynical, but my spidey-sense was tingling. But I ignored it. I went with it because she was pretty. Honestly, stupid thing to do. Waste of my and the scammers time. Does that make me complete bastard? Probably. If she'd been less than what she was my spidey sense would've prevailed and scammer would've been over the hills and far away quicker than it takes a professional footballer to gravitate towards something blonde and hairy.
And so, your humble narrator continued to speak with Nadya over the coming weeks. He sent her pictures and grew more and more excited about the prospect of her.
The photo's, which continued all the time, were extremely convincing. They'd be digital numbers which had dates and times on them. The voice in the back of my head would say; "Who takes those bloody pictures?" But my libido prevailed and I ignored it, for a time.
By the end she started talking about how all her friends though she was onto a good thing, and how life was all hunky dory, and... and then I googled her name.
Imagine what it's like, you're drunk, lonely and happy on a Friday night, your relative is ill, and you need something to make life that little bit more bearable. And then the girl you think is for you comes up on this:
It is shite. Completely. Bad bad bad bad bad. I was more disgusted with the fact I fell for it, rather than what I said to her. If she was real I meant it, and I'm not ashamed of that.
The scammer, as you'll see when you click the link is some dude called Oleg. I toyed briefly with sending rubbish back and scamming him back, but in the end I sent the webpage URL with a brief: "What is this?" and have heard nothing since.
But a slight tinge of guilt remained upon me, and it wasn't based on any facts or knowledge. The girl in the pictures, is allegedly some poor girl called Tatyana Solovova who is "innocent". (whatever that means).
If she is just getting paid to be a scammers identity, then several things occurred to me. One was in relation to a Channel 4 movie called "Sex Traffic" where these Eastern European girls end up as prostitutes. What happens to Tatyana Solovova when no-one believes her scam anymore? If she really is from a poor family, then does the mafioso behind it sell her on to the highest bidder? Or just anyone who manages to call Oleg?
Did my e-mail make Oleg realise it wasn't going to work any more? Because on checking, that wasn't the only website. There were these ones:
http://www.womenrussia.com/blackpage389.htm#vladimirovna
http://www.stop-scammers.com/scammer.asp?profile=942
I'm not even sure if I'm just being paranoid. I have no idea.Had we never lov'd sae kindly, had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met --or never parted -- we had ne'er been broken-hearted. - Robert Burns
Fuck it. So be it.
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