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 