I'm back!!!

Yes, I know a bit like Arnie in The Terminator it seems I've never been away but the last couple of months have been comparatively slow here due to work commitments, extended holidays, exploding computers and the like.

All now sorted. My three rolling links sections (Friends of the Unionist, Nationalist Insurgency and Other Favourites) have also been updated; they total over a hundred blogs, although you will need to click on the blue "Show All" at the bottom of each section to get to read more than just the last five updated.

Just a final quick thanks to the folk who send me in links and articles via email; keep it up, it's much appreciated and anyone else who feels the urge to do so, please you go right ahead- address is on the right.

And that's it for my 1506th post, heads down for the next 494:)

The Future for England?

On Wednesday evening "The Future for England?" conference took place in one of the rooms at the Palace of Westminster.

There were four speakers; George Monbiot (Guardian newspaper and environment campaigner) , Peter Facey (Director: Unlock Democracy), Paul Kingsnorth (author of 'Real England: The Battle against the Bland') and occasional communicant of this parish, David Wildgoose (vice-chairman The Campaign for an English Parliament).

Paul Kingsnorth and David Wildgooses’ speeches are now up at the English Parliament website here and here. Kingsnorth, who would be positioned on the left of the political spectrum has the kind of provocative piece I wouldn't really have expected of him about England’s "cultural mess", whilst David continues on the federalist theme most of you here will have first read on Open Unionism and also laments the democratic deficit present today at all levels of political life.

The Poppy- what's the Irish language connection?

The Angrytown News is angry. Really Angry. Again.

It's November, so obviously this time it'll be the right of people to wear their poppies in public which is disturbing their sense of equilibrium- and obviously,the usual "I've a right to be outraged" mob needs to be requisitioned for their views. But alongside those individuals, the kind who'd complain to the Met Office if the sun set with an orange tinge, is Jake MacSiacais:

"While people have the right to wear the poppy, it must be remembered that we are a divided society and there is a lot of sensitivity around the issue.

"I am a licence fee payer and I wouldn’t like to think that my money was being used to buy poppies for the BBC."

As an individual he has a right to express his opinion and in comparison with the bile spewed out by others on the subject on the A/town News, his views sound almost ecumenical. But bearing in mind the "sensitivity" surrounding a certain other issue in our "divided society", was it really that clever for Jake MacSiacais, "Director of Irish language development agency Forbairt Feirste" as opposed to Jake MacSciacais, the private individual, to be giving his opinion on the rights and wrongs of poppy-wearing?

Quote of the day

An outbreak of honesty from Hugh Henry, the Labour convener of Holyrood's public audit committee:

"We all in each of our parties try to outbid each other in promising what we will do, and yet knowing privately that most of that is not possible."

A comment followed, no doubt, by embarrassing shuffling of feet, looking at the ceiling, humming and haaing from his fellow committee-members.

They'll need to get some act together though and soon, a recent report has "highlighted a potential £2.9 billion budget black hole in three years"- the devolved chickens are coming home to roost.

You scratch my back...and the Montblanc stays

Gordon Brown failed to include any of the legislative measures recommended by the Kelly Report in the Queen's Speech; notwithstanding 30 grand lunch allowances and hotel video channels, the main relevance of the Kelly Report to Northern Ireland is, of course, the end of double/triple jobbing- "the banning of MPs sitting concurrently in devolved legislatures".

There are presently 16 Northern Irish double/triple jobbers- all nine DUP MPs, all five Sinn Fein MPs and two of the three SDLP MPs. In contrast, all Conservative and Unionist MPs elected next year will be required to be full-time MPs.

Putting two and two together...

Jonathan Isaby is raising the possibility here of a grubby backroom deal between the Dupes and Brown, they get the chance to fight another day as semi-detached MPs in return for supporting him in the event of a hung-parliament arising from next year's election.

Sound plausible?

Look out! There's a conspiracy about!

Who said:

But the Catholic hierarchy seems to have disproportionate influence with the SNP government.

Not who you'd probably first think. The Church's spokesman reaction was also surprising, "spirited", I think, is the best description!

"It Takes a Nation of (English) Millions to Hold Us Back"

I’m still (thanks to DW) reeling from what can only be described as a quite astonishing ethno-nationalist diatribe delivered by the Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price.

For students of the euphemistically labelled "cultural" nationalist theorists lurking throughout the United Kingdom today it’s a classic:

1.The employment of what Conor Cruise O’Brien described as "ancestral voices" to support a present-day political opinion.

2.The use of, at times, offensive hyperbolic terminology- keep words like "genocide" for the deliberate wiping out of entire populations in the likes of Bosnia and Darfur, not for the "murder" of a language.

3.The employment of the "False Consciousness" *argument*, so beloved of the Provos during their terror campaign: ie "There is no such thing as Brits in Ireland or Wales, only misguided idiots fooled by the English oppressors into thinking they are".

4.As mentioned, the mangling of historical fact (e.g Wales was the "first" colony of the Normans? Really?)to prove a political point.

5.The concept of "Collective Responsibility" being used to denigrate an entire people for the actions of a few. Is he, for example, really saying the English miners and factory workers toiling in the mill-towns of Northern England were the *oppressors* of the miners and factory-workers likewise toiling in industrial Wales? Following his logic and the throwaway term of "English" to constantly label the baddies of the piece then, yes, he is.

Push a few gratuitous "indigenous" into the mix and you’re left with the burning question at the end...this man is supposed to be positioned on what is considered as the "progressive" wing of Welsh nationalism? If so, then I’d really hate to see the reactionaries let loose...

Quote of the day

Walcome tae the Scottish-Pairlament:

"Ye hae mony weys tae mak yir views kent [known] whan ye hae strang feelins aboot issues. This leaflet will help ye finn oot mair aboot the Pairlament and weys tae involve yirsel in its wark.

Ye can cam and veesit the exhibition, tak a guidit tour or hae a shot at the bairns ..."

Ah, that last bit probably should read "hae a shot at the bairns quiz".

Via the Mail on Sunday and FD.

Nutty Nats go pan-European

Almost beyond satire-

The British National Party (BNP) has joined forces with far-right groups in a new European Alliance of National Movements.

The movement will not be recognised as a political bloc in the European Parliament, but it might receive EU funding as a pan-European grouping.

When I saw that "Movement", the immediate word association in this case was "bowel". And how can a collection of xenophobic, far-right, nat nutters be happy at being described as a "pan-European"?

Fellow MEPs Bruno Gollnisch of the French National Front and Balczo Zoltan of the Hungarian Jobbik party launched the new movement in Brussels, alongside Mr Griffin.

I guess most readers are familiar with Le Pen's mob; Jobbik, however, are from even loonier stock than Griffin and Co, its leader, Krisztina Morvai has blamed the world economic crisis fairly and squarely on the, and I quote, "men with small circumsized dicks" (3 guesses who they may be).

...there is also a question mark over how well the new allies can work together, since an attempt to form a similar group in the previous parliament - known as Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) - collapsed in November 2007.

It collapsed principally over an important idealogical difference because the Italian fascists kept referring to their Romanian brothers as "dirty gypos". Not a promising precedent really.

Among the conditions set by the European Parliament for funding pan-European political parties is a clause saying they "must observe the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law".

That should prove an interesting meeting then when the "pan-European" nats take the begging bowl round to the Eurocrats.

The Right Hon Member for W. Belfast's Toronto Poetry Reading

Gerry Kerouac's "World Whimsy Tour" hits Toronto:

The auditorium at the Ontario Institute For Studies in Education (OISE) in Toronto was filled with Irish nationalism on Saturday.

...not filled with a very well-informed "Irish nationalism" it would seem though:

Posters with photos of men and women such as Michael Collins, an Irish revolutionary leader and Bobby Sands, a hunger striker who was elected into the British government in the 1980s, were spread, among other Irish nationalists, along the stage.

...or perhaps Gerry K is rewriting inconvenient history again- Gerry and Marty weren't the first Republicans to adminster "British Rule in Ireland"?

Other than that inconsequential side-issue, nothing whatsover for Unionists to worry about here, though it was eh...ironic to see the caption "Glamorizing the grotesque" directly to the right of Gerry's mug.

Apathy romps home in Glasgow North-East

The result:

Labour - 12,231 votes (59.39%)
SNP - 4,120 votes (20%)
Tory - 1,075 votes (5.22%)
BNP - 1,013 votes (4.92%)
Solidarity - 794 votes (3.86%)
Lib Dems - 474 votes (2.30%)
Total votes cast - 20,595
Voter turnout - 32.97%
Rejected ballots - 43

I really wish now I’d followed my instincts on Tuesday and put that fiver on Labour- I’d have been half a pint better off this morning. Not to worry. Labour winning is not a shock, the brakes being gently applied on the SNP juggernaut was predictable. But a 32.97% turnout? Whilst, quite rightly, the SNP can argue it’s hardly a sparkling endorsement of the Brown government, it can equally be argued that the fact almost ¾ of the electorate stayed at home is a sign of SNP (as Labour’s main opposition in Scotland) weakness.

Biggest shock for me though was that 62 voter difference between the Conservatives and the BNP- at one stage during the counting it was though the fascists would actually capture the third spot. Considering it was thought the Tory candidate had run a "good campaign", definite food for thought there for the Scottish Conservatives.