Give us a damn elected President...

Apparently... your humble narrator was wrong in suggesting Freddie Windsor as being the Royal at the centre of the blackmail plot mentioned in the London Times at the Weekend.

Both Ninemsn and The New Zealand Herald name Viscount Linley as being the target of the blackmail plot. Throneout offer a lifetime supply of smarties to the person who posts the offending video on the internet. I'll match their "lifetime supply of smarties" and up that to a "lifetime supply of cremola foam and the entire Bruce Springsteen back catalogue".

This isn't a personal thing, this is almost entirely political. Our masters have decided that it is better for us to have amatuer, inbred socialites to take the top job in Scotland (President / King / Supremo / etc) rather than someone who WE can select.

Linley is 12th in line to the throne. That means that if there is a couple of car accidents we get someone who clearly isn't qualified for the role to get the job.

Sack the royals. Sack Westminster. Give a real parliament or build a bypass through that shithole in Holyrood.

Pop Star Rant

Apparently KT Tunstall has gotten stuck into Scottish Independence in this post... Before I get to my rant however, please consider this...










On the left... President Laura Roslin of the Battlestar Galactica, on the right, er, KT Tunstall... (I think). Separated at birth... two space cadets. Aye thang kew...

To the rant though... I know only a few Scots who've left these shores to go to America. One of whom is President Matthew (mentioned in a previous post) and the other is... well... erm... that's it really. The rest I've read about in the press on seen on TV.

Every Scottish song you'll read in the "big groovy book of Scottish Songs" concerning not being in Scotland has the same motif: "eeeven thoooughh ah'm on eeeassster iiissslaaandddd I still wwaaaaannnttt taaee beeeee in Scccoootttttlllaaaannnddd...!" Think Caledonia, or virtually anything you'll hear at new year.

The tartan army are evidence of this hypothesis. They drink the beer, shag the locals and fuck off back home again telling the rest of us how homesick they were. Aw the nice.

But pop stars. No... that's not for them. No... they like to take pot shots. We're "nasty" "arrogant" "drunks" "the old country" and a host of other petty insults, vague backhanders, malevolent comments amid the general luxury of getting felt up by whichever pickup artist they've deigned to let entertain them for that night whilst out their heads on cocaine.

I'm sorry... no... I'm not about get off my high-horse whilst a series of drunken, dope-headed nonentities have slagged off where they came in the vague hope that Bono or Madonna will jump them in whichever coy charidee event their publicist said it would be cool to turn up at.

My most abject contempt is reserved for the inevitable cop out you get from Scottish popstars and celebs abroad when they've said they'd blow up govan if they had the chance only to realise that their next video is to shot amongst govan's sharpened pitchforks. The persona-non-grata of worthless excuses: "The press misreported me." No they didn't. Like the rest of us, at some point in your pointless existance you fucked up and regret what you've said. I get that same crappy excuse every day in my day job. Someone sends them a letter, and they phone me. They've ignored the previous fifteen nice ones and want to rant at me for the one nasty one they get. So to make sure I can't tell them off, they say: "I never got those letters." So while they're gearing up their rant engines I tell them that every other caller has told me that and that the Post Office isn't that bad. Then I shout at them until they hang up.

I have a grudging respect for Billy Connolly though. No... listen to me. If I went up to Billy Connolly, I reckon he'd stand up for himself and what he said. He might say I misunderstood the joke, or that he DID think such and such. But the rest of our celebs? I fucking doubt it, brothers and sisters. I reckon if either of the Maryhill Mob (who sometimes read this) took KT aside, or even Lulu when she got stuck into home rule as well, I reckon we'd get a host of excuses about how "that wasn't what she said".

I have several policies I'd like to see enacted. Some aren't relevant to this rant, but they're along the same theme (ish... very ish...)

One. If you decide to become involved in the "entertainment industry" and then fuck off abroad, we reserve the right not to let you back in when you've slagged us off in the press. Your family (who will no doubt disagree) can officially "fuck right off" since they spawned you.
Two. Anyone who gets a driving license has to take anger management lessons for six months being being allowed to continue to drive.
Three. Women should have subtitles detailling what they actually mean as opposed to what they actually said.
Four. All celebrities should come with "as much a lying and cheating bastard as any politician is" mental health warning.

Pant... pant... I feel much better for that rant...

[whiteamerica]

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between" Oscar Wilde

Scotland has a strange relationship with America. On the one hand our socialist politics are entirely incompatible with their way of life, yet we lap up their movies, bands and pseudo-morality as if we were an alcoholic in an empty off license.

I can never get a handle on America. For the record, most of my favourite movies are American, but I despise almost all of its politics. I’ve friends who are Confederates and support it being broken up into its constituent parts. The rise of Microsoft and Haliburton is reprehensible to me. But the cultural contribution of the people is a great thing. “So wash you car in your X Baseball Shoes…” Yeah…

One of my favourite bands, Rage Against the Machine, have been guilty of being naïve and blurry on their beliefs. Their classic line: “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me…” repeated various times, is as vague as you’re likely to get from any cock rock band. But they combine Rap music with Rock music and quote communism and mention Carlos from Mexico. So that’s okay then.

Rap music though, is equally as a fascinating for a quick digress. This is street poetry corrupted by the iniquities of the American system. Bono can laud Martin Luther King all he likes, but the system he pontificates upon spawned Malcolm X and Cassius Clay when he refused to go to Vietnam. More recently it spawned the Washington Sniper and held court to a war of Gangster Rap musicians who decided that killing Tupac and Biggie whatever was more important than the street poetry.

But here’s my point. The declaration of Arbroath was the founding statement of America. We should, apparently, be proud of this. Scottish people were present at the signing and did this, that and the other. We provided the philosophy, yes, but that just makes us part of the blame. We provided tactics and expats for the confederates, so apparently we tried to be a part of the solution, but I guess the loss suggests the time wasn’t right. Either way we are the inheritors of our own mistakes. The Confederacy has itself to free, and we have ourselves to free. Little people in little houses with a few votes with which to free ourselves.

We are the seduced, the protagonists and the exploited. And in every Native American reservation, in every film, in every song, in every band, in every genre it spawned, in every cynical quote you’ll find on the internet, you’ll find Scotland’s influence. We’re the guilty and the victims. We’re the poodles who now bark at Iraq for the black gold. We’re the supporters of the CIA torturers of Guantanamo Bay. We’re the victims of suicide bombers. We reside in a bankrupt culture, alienated and pretentious without Embra Tattoo and Festival.

“Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.” Margaret Thatcher