Burns Night is upon us again…..no one here will be celebrating, apart from a Canadian who owns a kilt and can play the bagpipes. Leo is too ill to enjoy black bun, but we have haggis, though wthout the neeps, and whisky in which to toast the Immortal Memory.
Unfortunately, in moderation. And not only because the Speyside stuff is all you can get here….nothing from the islands. No Laphroaig, no Lavagulin, nor my father’s favourite, Highland Park, sweet from the peat cuttings which smoked the barley. Now, would you believe, they are marketing the stuff as Viking whisky…though I trust a glass of ‘the creature’ would not send one off on an orgy of murder and looting.
Still, one never knows……
Burns flourished in the period of the Scottish enlightenment…and grew up in the determination of the Scottish Presbyterian church that every child should go to school. He was well equipped to view his society, nomatter how his society viewed him.
Given his views on freedom and liberty, how would he react to what is happening in his beloved Scotia…where a government voted into power to gain independence from the United Kingdom hangs onto to power under UK control rather than strike out to fulfill its promises. Where in order to stay in power it aligns itself with the Greens – a party whose policies are now being inflicted on the nation.
Years ago, a good friend, a retired German vet who had been through post war imprisonment in work camps in Russia, described the Greens, then becoming a force in German politics, as terrorists, hell bent on overturning everything that made life worth living. That man was a prophet!
What he could not have foreseen was that their ideas would be adopted by governments world wide – apart from the governments producing the most pollution, that is.
We have net zero targets with governments galloping ahead to rely only on renewable energy sources without thinking for one moment whether these are as yet sufficient to maintain civilised life for the mass of people. In the meantime the suppliers of these energy forms enjoy state subsidies, paid for, of course, by the public, who are those who will suffer power outages when the renewables fail to produce.
The car is the enemy – unless it is electric powered. Let alone the cost, which will make it impossible for most people to buy one, what about the misery of those – including children – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo mining cobalt to produce lithium? Do the Greens care…or is the relief of that misery the job of charities? Save the planet…stuff the children.
The list is endless, but what concerns me currently is a recent development in Scotland whose parliament has recently passed the Gender Recognition Reform Act 1922 with the aim of permitting those wishing to change their legal gender to do so with less restrictions.
Given the blanket provisions of the act there has been public dissent, giving rise to demonstrations in support of the Act, on one of which these placards figured, behind the smirking faces of two Members of the Scottish Parliament
TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist…or, in English, women who do not think that trans woman are women.
How is it possible, in a land which used to pride itself on its respect for liberty and free speech, that its society has produced people who can think it possible to turn out with such disgraceful slogans? Where are the police, so hot on hate crimes? Where is the condemnation in the press…..in the Scottish Parliament? If you follow the link be prepared for some very disturbing content.
Robert Burns, unforgettably described by Mike Biles in his ‘A Bit About Britain’s High Days and Holidays’ as a chap whose brain was generally used merely as a periscope for his willie, and known to make appearances on the penitence stool at the kirk, might these days find himself cancelled should he now proclaim that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’.
Happy Burns Night……
Here’s tae us,wha’s like us,
Gey few, an they’re a’ deid
The Venomous Bead 
This is frighteningly like the days when those born with physical disfigurement, or who were left badly scarred by disease or accident, were shunned, driven out by their “nicer” fellows.
If you don’t like a person’s choice of dress just walk away.
Quite. It is the level of hatred shown by those placards which worries me.
We’ve still a long way down to come up again!
I sometimes wonder if we will….
The hatred continues to be fed by the press and so it grows. The signs reminiscent of Salem all over again. And as for electric card… good luck finding a charging station.
Yes, we have a wicked press – no investigative journalism when there is so much that needs to be brought to light but plenty of smears and jeers.
What a world. So much inequality. So much violence. Ours is a complicated, peculiar species.
Cooperation and solidarity seem to have gone out the window.
Good morning Helen, Nothing to say, really, as I stand shoulder to shoulder with you on what you’ve written. Just one aside – back in our early days here in Turkiye the ‘Tekel’ state-owned booze and fags monopoly used to produce, along side the most disgusting gin you could possibly imagine, a sublime single malt whiskey called ‘Ankara’. It was so good (and dirt cheap in those days) that most Scots that I knew used to carry home as much as they could get away with. Then the dastardly EU forced the privatisation of this, and much else, as part of the process of preparation for entry to that doomed entity and Tekel was sold to Seagrams and Ankara single malt was consigned to history. I never thought I’d live long enough to see the US empire impale itself on its own hubris but now I’m stuffing vitamin D and looking ahead to the pitchfork-wielding rabble routing/skimming the scum that sits atop brew of humanity. Warm regards to you and Leo.
Another dastardly deed by the EU! The worst being forcing the change in the constitution that buggered the secular state, or so I thought until you told me about the whisky! What worries me is those who run the U.S. going for a gotterdammerung scenario.
Somewhere in my lifetime government completed its Quatermass-esque transformation into a vast and unamusing blob insistent on dictating the minutiae of everyone’s life every minute of every day, everywhere. Everyone has to be “in charge”. Under unfettered capitlaism (and it’s not like it needs much fettling, really, just a few moral compasses and a corporate conscience and some manner of responsibility) the inexorable rise of ‘The Expert’ has doomed us all to constant (violent) bickering. Someone else always “knows best”, and these sad days, also has power to legislate. Sometimes when I look up at a lovely clear night sky filled with stars I am actually searching for a nice big rogue asteroid on intercept. It would demonstrate what’s important and what’s not.
My drinking days are reduced now to a tot of rum in the cocoa and the occasional gin served by some hairy pump-puller, but I confess that when I loved whisky I was a wuss – Jura was my favourite, a beginner’s whisky for children if ever there was one. 🙂
I’ve never tried Jura – and unlikely to be able to now….more’s the pity.
One of the worst aspects of government is the reliance on modeling…..if ever there was a false science it is that and look where it leaves us, following something called ‘the science’ which turns out to be whatever rubbish the modelers come up with, uncannily often linked to those all ready to profit from the rubbish. It seems you become a professor these days based on the moolah you bring in from private sources.
It seems this is the age for protesting and complaining about anything. I wish people would use their heads for something other than a coat rack!
Wha passes for education has a great deal to answer for.
You got me there.
Pity I left the ‘t’ off ‘What’!
No problem!
I sit here, cuddling my black bottle of ‘Highland Park’ a Viking whisky distilled and bottled in the Orkneys. I’m hoping for an orgy of murder and looting later on, after the football that is.
I have thought for a while that Nicola does not want indy 2. There is the possibility she will lose, but even so, she prefers to be queen in her cabal now, and can run off soon in glory.
This gender lie is everywhere, and as I commented many times, will not stop, but will be forced through. People have not noticed how it takes over sleekit like. And when the Archbish of York tells us two men living together is not a sin we know the CoE is done.
Westminster may hinder Nicola’s law today, but Labour will soon bring similar in down south. ‘Stonewall Rules’ today.
Now, where did you put that whisky Rabbie…?
An orgy of murder and looting? The church is having a jumble sale?
On the single sex spaces, Gordon Dangerfield has a clear exposition of the legal position – https://gordondangerfield.com/ – as concerns sex and gender under equality legislation but no doubt local authorities will buckle under pressure and will need to be taken to court, which means the sort of money of which few dispose.
When Stonewall achieved its early aims it turned to moneymaking, with, I think, the covert backing of the Common Purpose brigade which seems to infest the public services.
Sadly the waff and weave that runs through humanity has one thing in common, no matter who displays its biases and stupidity; they’re all the same. It’s stunning to think we’ve evolved at all, making the same mistakes over and over and have learned little from our past.
It’s the lack of any sense of decency in society which upsets me, from top to bottom, the lack of control over governments, the stifling of individual effort….well, you get the picture.
The lack of civility and just plain decency in today’s world is just quite alarming.
Honestly it is not clear to me, Helen, what the Greens have to do with hate filled placards about trans people (or not trans people actually I don’t follow this topic or discuss it much because it’s so toxic – guaranteed to lose one friends! The Greens can seem a bit impractical and cranky, it’s true, and in the UK they have no hope of winning an election, like many other minority parties. But I sympathise with their voices partly because they are NOT political enough and essentially aim in their various woolly ways to simply stand up for the birds bees and butterflies who keep the ecosystem going. Without them, we literally wouldn’t be able to breathe, and that would certainly be the end of politics when I am sure we all agree a huge supply of hot air is always necessary. On the subject of Burns, I don’t think he would be kept down wherever he was, and also wouldn’t fit in with the establishment, whatever it was like. I quite enjoy wondering what famous folk of long ago would be doing today, but of course their upbringings and assumptions and culture are so far from ours that we may as well wonder about long forgotten Minoan public figures, or whichever brilliant caveman realised that the stars in the sky actually told us something about immeasurable time.
I meant “without the birds bees and butterflies”, not “without the Greens”!
Unfortunately, in Scotland, they do have a great deal to do with the trans agenda, not all of it pleasant. The Scottish Parliament link leads to an article which goes into the somewhat unsavoury details.
I wish the Greens would just stand up for the bees and butterflies, because their other policies are potentially disastrous for the majority of people – unreliable power, no autonomy for transport, farmland reduced to solar panel parks – not to speak of the profiteering associated with the establishment of said policies.
I too wonder how historical figures would act today…would Alexander swap Bucephalus for a Challenger tank? Would Genghis Khan lob virus laden material into cities?
There seem to be so many things now that cannot be talked about without raising hackles…Brexit, Covid, Transgenderism, Climate change….it’s as if disagreement on these subjects permits people to forget their manners. But nothing can excuse those placards!
“Wings Over Scotland” didn’t make much impression on me, it is very political about Scotland, which is totally fine of course except that my own political energy is fully engaged with the corrupt, entitled, asset stripping lying cheating Westminster government. The folowing article, though, engaged me enough to feel very sad https://www.thenational.scot/news/19878879.scottish-greens-debate-cutting-ties-green-party-england-wales-transphobia/ It shows that the Scottish greens have, as you suggested, totally lost the plot. Everyone I speak to thinks that gender issues are a toxic subject to be avoided if you want to keep your friends and sanity. The reason must lie with whatever spiders are controlling the spinning of that particular web, but it’s very sad that the Greens have become ensnared. The environment desperately needs a political voice and the people working on its behalf must care far more about nature and our planet than anything else in the world. It’s awful to think they’re wasting their time on fruitless divisiveness about gender instead.
Thank you for taking the time to look into this…..it really is very unsettling. Obviously, being concerned with Scotland, ‘Wings’ works for me, but it is for the Scottish tribe and is rather parochial!
Let us hope that the English Green party do not go down the same road….water companies releasing sewage into waterways is a lot more important than what I must regard as false flag involvements with sex and gender.
So much anger and hate everywhere. My belief is that it’s caused by the global widening gap between those who have too much and those who don’t have enough. There’s no control over the former, and no hope for the latter, who are permanently boiling with rage and frustration over their powerlessness and hopelessness, and seeking any available outlet. And magnificently fuelled by the press who are paid by those who have too much. It’s a pretty horrible world out there.
I’m sorry that Leo is still so ill. 😦
Sending you both love from south-west France.
Divide and rule, divide and rule….split people apart, set them against each other while those who control governments roll sweetly on, amassing money they do not need.
We have a poisonous press, any freedom on the internet is about to be lost in the interests of ‘controlling misinformation’ and damnfool Green policies will leave people stranded and cold.
The worst thing is, how can you reform that situation without violence?
I am so tired with all the bad news.
I’m more worried now about just surviving than I ever was in the Cold War period.
I’ve almst given up caring.
Don’t give up on caring…if people like you, with kind hearts and good brains, give up caring then what moral force is there to oppose the current vileness of public life?
I don’t have the energy to care any more. I suppose that’s the plan. Grind us down till we give up.
That makes me so sad.
What you’ve described is very prevalent in the United States too. The level of hatred that is tolerated as long as it’s directed toward anyone who is not “progressive” is scary. And so is our headlong rush to depend on electric cars, never mind we don’t have the grid to support them, and at the batteries that run them are bad for the environment and worse for the people who make them. It’s madness and rather scary.
Indeed it is. It makes me ask for whom, exactly, are we ‘saving the planet’?
Those placards really gave me food for thought….how is it possible to reach that level of hatred? And no reaction to it…neither from police nor politicians.
That certainly qualifies as “hate speech” in my book!
And mine!
Those two in the picture look so happy. They are warm and don’t appear to be missing any meals. As if they were strolling down the street and saw the protest and wanted a selfie 🙂 “Hey Margie, let’s get a selfie in front of those people!” “What are they protesting, says Annie?”. “I don’t know, but we can post our selfie on Facebook! says Margie”. These make up the deluded suffragettes of a distant day and time. That asteroid won’t hit us, right? Anyway, regarding the trans… when England is excavating for another parking lot and finds some ancient bones, they will know Arther as what his parents produced, but not what he identifies as. Bummer.
No doubt the appropriate pronouns will be marked on the sarcophagus to assist them.
And a belated Happy Burns’ Night to you two, too! Ill-health is a bugger – best avoided, in my experience. Thank you for the mention – of course, it is only unforgettable if someone saw it in the first place; unfortunately, most people haven’t! 🙂 I’m afraid I don’t understand much of the debate around gender issues; I just want people to be and feel safe. I don’t understand Scottish independence, either – anymore than I do Welsh or English independence. Nationalism, unless you’re seeking liberty from a repressive occupier, is generally an anachronistic, unpleasant, trait. Pride in your country and culture is another matter – even allowing for the warts. All of the nations of the UK have attributes and achievements to be proud of – individually and collectively. Sadly, Scottish nationalism often comes over as merely being whinging and anti-something (Conservative, Westminster, UK, English etc). If Labour got its act together in Scotland, the SNP would revert back to relative obscurity. On a far more serious note, I was given a bottle of Tamnavulin for Christmas and it’s gorgeous!
Oh for a decent whisky! Or even an indecent one!
I would like Scotland to be independent….but agree with you about the whinging and anti English isms…no need for thatat all.
Labour in Scotland needs to remember who they are supposed to be representing rather than jumpng on all the trendy bandwaggons as they pass.
I see where the Scotnats are coming from and am sad that most British people don’t know about our historically awful behaviour to all the devolved nations,or that Britain still displays such arrogance now. But I wonder if independence might end up with Scotland falling into another Brexit type situation? Because “Freedom” and “independence” mean nothing when the politicians entrusted to deliver a more glorious life can’t do it because their big selling point was negative emotion, not economics, proven efficiency, honesty, proper planning etc. The Scots showed such sense in opposing Brexit’s trashing of our relationships with the EU and the Tories’ clearly unworkable rhetoric. I hope they apply the same discrimination in evaluating the SNP’s ability to establish the strategic sensible groundwork necessary to help Scotland to go it alone. What are the SNP’s achievements so far, other than firing up populist emotion? I genuinely don’t know.
When Alex Salmond stepped down as First Minister, all realistic hopes of independence failed. Sturgeon prefers power for herself and her cabal, rather than for the country and after several rather murky incidents people are losing faith in her as it is clear that the parsnips remain unbuttered for all her fine words. Her regime is a perversion of what government should be.