Scots Begin Struggle For Independence:

Discussion in 'Western Europe' started by janpor, Jan 26, 2012.

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  1. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    For all you Irvine Welsh fans, I notice he has decided that the fact it is ordure being Scottish can be alleviated by voting for Independence and removing Scotland from the Political Union, isn't it?

    [video=youtube;6_Pwb9_J400]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6_Pwb9_J400#![/video]
     
  2. Colonel K

    Colonel K Well-Known Member

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    The Nationalists actually started their struggle to persuade the Scots to go with them yesterday. Only two years to go.......
     
  3. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    And are you a citizen of an independent country, Colonel K?
     
  4. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    Brian Cox's speech at the launch of the Yes Campaign launch.

    The fact that he is Brian Cox is neither here nor there..it is his eloquence and passion which moves me.

    [video=youtube;WFAizFDK678]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAizFDK678[/video]
     
  5. edao

    edao New Member

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    You have to wonder if Scotland did become independent if it would start a domino effect across Europe. The Catalans watch on in envy!
    [video=youtube;ZrrAC_zAgDo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrrAC_zAgDo[/video]
     
  6. Colonel K

    Colonel K Well-Known Member

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    I'm a European from Morningside!
     
  7. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  8. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    That would be no then! ;-)
     
  9. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    It is a brilliant speech and it's evocation of Scottish history is illuminating. It's interesting thought that he cites the Red Clydesiders who were anti-nationalists and who saw themselves as workers of the world. In fact the Scottish socialist tradition was always ant-nationalist. It's interesting that the immense Scottish poet Hugh MacDairmuid was a communist and a nationalist and was expelled from the CP for his nationalism. The British Left even in its old Stalinist clothes was internationalist to its very core.

    It took Thatcher to change things. But even then it was "North Britain" she attacked and it still seems incongruous with the proletarian solidarity that Cox cites, that Scots should abandon their English comrades. Cox even hints at a rejection of Europe and his assertion that Scotland will show other small nations the way is puzzling. Which way does he need to show Norway, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Luxembourg, Belgium? Out of the EU? Into isolationism? It's a negative running away from the capitalist world into a fudged nothingness. If Scotland leaves the UK for socialism it will be an utter disaster for them. Because socialism doesn't exist any more in any coherent form of relevance to a twenty first century world that is witnessing the inexorable rise of capitalist China and India.

    Socialists have no program or worldview now of any coherence. Like Cox's fine speech they are only against things. His country's fine cultural voice came from a protest song. Like Ireland's. They have no idea what they are for. Just what they are against. This is the flip side of nationalism. It eloquently protests against the foreign yoke, but when they are victorious, as James Connolly himself predicted about Ireland (that socialist Scot who was shot in a chair by the British in 1916), without a program they will merely resemble oppressors who wear the harp (or the thistle) instead of the crown. They will degenerate into suburban churlishness as much as the worst of their English neighbors. And shamefully as in Ireland they will develop their own xenophobia against slavs seeking a better life.

    I can't really hear echoes of Maxton or Shinwell here. For them the repression of Scottish communities by Westminster over the last thirty years would only have increased their yearning for solidarity with English communities in the same boat: Liverpool, Sunderland, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds... all crushed by a Thatcherism as culturally alien to these places as it was to Scotland. To the Clydesiders their brothers and sisters dug the coal in the Yorkshire and Lancashire coalfields or were called Tynesiders or Merseysiders. The Internationale unites the human race.

    Nationalism remains the sop of the mean spirited. When it comes from a struggle against injustice it can have a noble ring. But where it avoids a specifically internationalist vision it is ultimately a call for isolation. Whether its English Europhobes who think Britain can survive as a protectionist enclave or Scottish leftists oblivious to their own lack of any credible economic program, the isolationism at the heart of their vision is the same.
     
  10. cenydd

    cenydd Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If the 'Yes' camp in Scotland were calling for an exit from the EU and a defence force to mount a vigil along Hadrian's wall I'd agree with you, but they aren't. It's not isolationism - quite the opposite, in fact. The problem Scotland currently has is that it can't be internationalist in its own right - everything international has to go through the nation next door, and as a nation it can't operate with the rest of Europe or the world according to basic internationalist principles of agreement, compromise and mutual advantage and understanding. It has no diplomatic voice. If its people agree or disagree with the people of France, or the USA, or wherever, the nation has no vehicle for allowing it to deciding whether and how to work together internationally, because those decuisions are firmly made according to the prevailing electoral will and politics of it's much large and more populous immediate neighbour (which doesn't necessarily have the same collective democratic opinion about such matters).

    The country and its people can't operate in the world and deal with others with whom they may have more in common with politically than they do with the dominant forces in England (they may not do, of course, but that's up to them to decide/discover for themselves). In the modern world, working from within organisations like the UN, EU and the Commonwealth, internationalism isn't dependant on being a part of a large and powerful imperial force any more. International co-operation is not inconsistant with localisation of democracy and government at all - far from it. One of the main benefits of localising government in Scotland for Scotland is that Scotland can become more internationalist in its outlook, not less. It will no longer be isolate by being a small part of a bigger whole with no voice of its own to express the opinions and will of its people to other nations beyong the UK.

    Tha 'nationalism' of anti-European, anti-foreigner xenophobes should never ever be confused with the desire of a people (or some of them, at least!) to simply be able to govern their own affairs and communicate with the wider world according to their own will as a nation in their own right. The are not the same thing at all.
     
  11. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    The Red Clydesiders, I think, were cited as part of the history of the Labour movement.

    "There's a joke in the Scottish Party about our 1918 manifesto. Then we promised Home Rule, proportional representation and the prohibition of alcohol. And in more than seventy years we have managed to secure none of them." (Gordon Brown Daily Record 8/4/93)

    As far as I'm aware Keir Hardie first pledged the Labour Party's support for Home Rule in an election address in 1888 and Home Rule finally dropped off the Labour Manifesto and out of the Labour thinking after the Tories reached the start of Scottish meltdown in 1958....so just another tool to get votes, then. In 1970 - Labour's delegation to the Kilbrandon Commission states - "The Scottish Labour Party would actually prefer a Tory UK Government to a Labour controlled Scottish Parliament" Without the SNP growing in influence, sure as hell there were no UK Parties who would have volunteered even the limited devolution we got in 1998.

    There is no Scottish Labour Party but there are Scottish branches of all three main UK parties whose first loyalty lies with their UK parent...so the Scottish socialist tradition, is becoming more socialist/nationalist as the Nulabour "socialism" has been becoming subsumed by "getting elected in England" right-wing tendencies. If we got Independence and an election tomorrow, our choices would, as far as I know, be the SNP, The Scottish Greens and the SSP (though the Scottish Democratic Alliance may decide to put up candidates)...or the Pensioners Party, Nine Per Cent Growth Party etc.

    I guess its where you sit and your ideology....but Thatcher, for Scotland, didn't just change things, she confirmed things for many of us. While I am heart sorry for the plight of Northern England, then and now, I haven't ever noticed much solidarity between Scotland and England, given Scotland hasn't voted in a majority for the Tories since 1958. Let's not talk crap, Heroclitus, there is no such thing as proletarian solidarity...that is a myth produced by left-wingers with a specific agenda who think there should be. Maybe a link to whatever Cox, whoever he/she is, said...the context of the writings and the time period would be useful? Maybe he/she means that Scotland, unlike Ireland, can show the way to other small nations who want to achieve independence as to how to peacefully achieve their aims?

    Out of the EU would be good...but I'll take what Scotland decides.

    We are not heading for isolationism...that is what Scotland has had for the last 305 years, isolation from the world within the UK, wedded to UK opinion, politics and sense of importance which has not allowed us any voice as Scotland...with independence we would taking our place in the world. It may not be as important a place as we didn't actually have within the UK...but it would be our place, nobody else's.

    I guess it depends on your definition of socialism. I define socialism as fairness and equity for all citizens in Scotland, rich or poor. I don't see socialism as a defined political policy with hidebound parameters which allow more fairness to some than others. That, imo, is Toryism or NuLabourism...a UK concept. Capitalism is what has led us to the economic meltdown the West is suffering now. I see the best way to make decisions for a country is to embrace pragmatism, co-operation and consensus and commonsense...things which no UK Government has ever offered...which is why we are where we are.

    Why would Socialists in Scotland need to have a world view? What should it matter to Scottish Socialists how Socialists elsewhere in the world decide to interpret their socialism? The only thing we are against is the political UK Union (and the Nuclear weapons that Union has imposed on us). None of the rest of the above is more than the burbling of a Unionist with little brain, thinking that if he can quote enough pointless crap somebody else with little brain impressed by the big words would think he knows what he is talking about and not do thinking but just accepting.

    Note...for future reference...Scotland is much less racist and xenophobic than England is. Sure we have an element of sectarianism as well...but it never bothered the UK that we had when we had no way to do anything about it ourselves, and it never bothered the UK Unionist "Scottish" Government when they could have done something about it. Generally we have no problems with anybody seeking a better life...but like in England, we have our ********s...but a lot less of them.

    Why would you expect to hear echoes of Maxton or Shinwell anywhere? Look, Heroclitus, get your head round the fact that, however much you whine about international and solidarity...if it doesn't work within the UK between Scotland and England, because England doesn't consider Scotland at all, it isn't perceived to be working. Maggie Thatcher killed off the "big society" which included the unions and any real cohesion between various groups trying to achieve the same aims in Scotland and England. You are living in the distant past..those days are long gone..and a UK Tory Government killed it...deliberately. You can rant as much as you like about the past...but it is gone...and, with Thatcher's Children in the ascendancy in England, will never return.

    The Scottish people are not responsible for the problems in any other part of the UK, however much we may sympathise with their plight. Their remedy to unfairness and inequity is in their own hands, as ours is. If they are content to live as they do, that is their choice. We have decided we just might not be content to do that..and that is ours. Misery may love company, but we cannot be forced to forgo our future so that the North of England has company in their misery in order to fulfill some long outdated leftist political agenda that few even seriously espouse any more.

    Thought you'd get into your anti-nationalist mode eventually. Thing is, Heroclitus, in Scotland, we perceive the UK Government as being mean-spirited and the epitomy of injustice...not nationalism. We perceive nationalism, and the hopefully resulting independence, as being the only way left to stop being represented in the world by a country which is mean spirited and unjust. Scotland does not think an internationalist vision can be achieved by only having interaction with those who think as we do...international encompasses all ideas, beliefs and ideologies...we may be closer to some countries than others...but we won't be invading any countries who don't think as we do.

    Btw, Scotland, however you care to think of it for the purposes of reiterating your biases, is centre-left, mostly, not Marxist or the like, and the nationalism which exists in Scotland is not limited to left-wing ideologists, but includes all political shades. Many of those who are undecided about independence are not Unionists per se...but people who are not yet convinced of the difference it will make in our lives. If we can't convince them, then independence will not happen in 2014...but believe me, it will happen, as my age group, brought up in the aftermath of WWII die off, and with them the concept of Britishness and the Union, and the UK Government continues, as it will, to be the divisive entity it is.
     
  12. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Excellent reply as usual Oddquine. I would just like to add that I came upon this article the other day and notwithstanding all that you said, I think the following article shows that even fron his stance Heroclitus is misguided.

    http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=795&issue=134
     
  13. highlander

    highlander Banned

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    Well said oddquine.....I only wish I could be that eloquent.

    Regards
    Highlander
     
  14. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    I'm sorry Oddquine I'm on my mobile so I can't do the quote and answer bit but I'll try to answer fully.

    I must say I'm perplexed that you posted a link to Cox and then when I referred to him dismissed references to what he actually said with "Cox, whoever he/she is". Did you forget? He's the person you cited and to whose eloquent speech I replied. He gave a leftist vision. I replied to that and then you asked what a leftist vision had to do with anything. Strange! You posted it.

    I paid you the respect of listening to the man you posted a speech of for ten minutes and then replying to the points he made. Your response was - apart from the usual personal abuse that Tartan Tories (clear as anything) revel in - to decry Scottish leftism. Well did you actually listen to what Cox said? I might now think leftism is a failed pipe dream and liberal capitalism to be our only hope, but it certainly has more idealism and solidarity in it than the mean spirited nationalism that you very clearly delineate. Cox I'm afraid is not with you when you express your indifference to what is not Scottish. My point was that Cox has inadvertently aligned himself with the inward looking, selfish, chauvinist and parochial when this is the opposite of the leftist tradition with which Cox really identifies. You proved my point beautifully with your specific rejection of Shinwell and Maxton - cited by Cox, not me, in the speech you posted but clearly didn't listen to. My anti nationalism is vindicated by you briefly (and clearly opportunistically) making common cause with a leftist (Cox) whose central worldview - international working class solidarity - you show that you clearly despise ( from what you posted above). You slate me for talking about Thatcher. But this was Cox's subject, that you posted, and why I addressed it. Did you actually listen to the link?

    You prefer the obscene identity of nation to basic human solidarity that transcends borders. This is clearly because your "socialism" is nothing more than an intellectual mush, of Scottish people being nice to each other, and your rejection of capitalism is disingenuous, as evidenced by your embracing of "practicality" which allows you to accommodate capitalism's reality whilst impotently moaning about its perceived ills. It was the finest example of a description of socialism to mean absolutely nothing, that I have ever read. Almost a parody!

    There is nothing Scottish about this drivel. This mush of yours is actually the New Labour Trojan horse that abandoned Clause 4 and a clear anti-capitalist vision for a thoroughly dishonest con-trick that pretended a socialism where everyone is nice to each other (your soggy mush of a definition) as it tolerated the "reality" of capitalism. So hoodwinked were the intellectually dead LP members when Blair presented this that they were actually surprised when Blair followed on logically when he later embraced capitalism. What fools! What else is there once you have rejected common ownership or cooperative models of production? Only capitalism. The whole Labour Party, Scotland included, colluded in the destruction of the Lefts ideology. When it was gone they reaped what they sowed. Your attempt to blame England for Blair and absolve Scotland is childish ant-English bollocks.

    There is every honor in internationalism. Nationalism in Scotland is as insidious as nationalism in China. I couldn't give a stuff if you insult England. I'm a European living in China. I don't reject Scottish nationalism to choose British nationalism. Of course England had many bigots and ********s. But this is an age when people need to build bridges of solidarity across nations and cultures: "that man to man the world o'er shall brothers be for 'a that". Once, with Burns who wrote that (I think you all forget what your greatest poet wrote sometimes) or Paine whose country was "the world", or Emmet, who spoke to the world against a colossal British oppression, nationalists were internationalists as well. "The cause of America is the cause of all mankind", said Paine. They stood for universal global values. But your post shows beautifully that nationalism today seeks to look inwards, churlishly proclaims its indifference - as you did - to the world, or neighbors or any universal human vision (of course the Scottish Enlightenment was such a despised thing as a "worldview" and it changed the world to boot!).

    Cox ( you know: the guy whose speech you posted a link to saying how eloquent you thought it), is not of your ilk. When you forget that you have posted what he said in a youtube link, and slate it as you did: his heroes Shinwell and Maxton, his solidarity with England, his outward looking vision of Scottish global leadership - all explicitly rejected by you in favour of a clear "each to his own" isolationism, you prove how much you reject his reasons for "yes". You prove how much this is a movement that aims for rejection - and in British politics there may be much to reject - rather than an affirmation of anything worthwhile, progressive or of enduring value. If Scottish people vote "yes" it won't be for the bitter chip on the shoulder resentment of those who look inwards. It will be for those like Cox who lament the ineffectiveness of Westminster for all the people of "these islands", as he says. They will wake to find they have let in through the back door the narrow, ungenerous troglodytes of nationalism and have turned their backs upon the world.
     
  15. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    Good post. But read what the nationalists here are saying. Not what you are saying. Oddquines anti EU, anti "worldview", "everything bad about politics is English" (ignoring the leading role played by Scottish Labour in ripping the heart out of the British Labour Party), is widely applauded. The SNP might be hiding it's chauvinism away and parading reasonable anglophiles like Cox, but they are soon disowned by and differentiated from a mass of inward looking nationalists.
     
  16. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    Don't make me spit my coffee again, Hero. There are few more nationalistic than the English and why would you care what Scots are? All we want is nothing to do with England. It's nothing personal, to want your country back and to live in peace, developing your own country in the way which best suits the people who live in it, rather than the people who live in an interfering, overbearing country nearby.
     
  17. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    Ach, Heroclitus....my bad...I thought the way you were quoting Cox's opinions that you were quoting facts from somebody called Cox who had produced a learned treatise.....and I wanted to see the facts you were quoting. I did mean it when I said that the fact that it was a video by Brian Cox that his celebrity was neither here or there....I had forgotten who made the video by the time I posted it on here....my short-term memory isn't great. All I said was that it moved me...I didn't say I agreed with it. (I checked back to see what I said). Tbh, any eloquent and passionate speech from a died in the wool Labour Party sympathiser is great in my book...but then so is any eloquent and passionate speech by anybody in favour of Independence.

    You are not completely correct when you say Cox is not of your ilk.......I was brought up in a household in which both my parents and grandfather were Labour (old Labour) to the core....my parents were active members of the local Labour Party..and of their three children, two have been nationalists since they were old enough to vote.....and the other voted Labour (to my knowledge) all his life..though I would have been gobsmacked if he could have named the leader of the Labour Party if anyone had asked him.......but none of us have ever been Tartan Tories...even though until Winnie Ewing came along, ours was a rural Tory Constituency for decades......and the previously wasted Labour vote has mostly gone to the SNP ever since. Funnily enough, as I was reading and responding to your previous post, I came away thinking you were a Tory.....funny how our perception/interpretation of what is written according to our biases delineates our opinions, isn't it?

    I do know the history of the Labour Party in Scotland and the UK, but I just don't give it the prominence in Scottish life that Cox does...because, having grown out of the "voting as my parents did because my parents did" which is, to an extent, why the Labour party still gets elected in Scotland at all....coupled with the fact that, as I have said, the Marxist and further left philosophies are an irrelevance in the Scottish mainstream in 2012....it came across to me as nostalgia for the past. Marxist philosophies may well not be an irrelevance after Independence, that remains to be seen. It may well be what Brian Cox hopes......but I get the impression he'd be happy with a Scotland under the old Labour Ethos. Personally, in an independent Scotland, I'd vote for whichever party promised to stop filling the county I live in and the county I come from with pointless windmills....whatever their other policies. :smile:

    Out of interest, why do you not despise Cox because by your lights, he has abandoned the very political philosophy I'd be surprised if you have ever been able to vote for in your life in the UK, in favour of Independence...while despising me who never had that mindset? Could it not be that he, like many of us, can see the writing on the wall of more and more right wing UK Governments for all eternity, and is not prepared to wear that? Or do you think he is just another Scot without the utter brilliance of your world view and your ability to talk utter crap?

    Independence is about having choices.......the Union is about having none.....and that is the bottom line. What Scotland, if it votes for Independence, will be is up to us to decide..and if that is Communist or to the right of Ghengis Khan (or the UK Tory Party, which is much the same thing) so be it..and those of us not of that mind will put up with it....but it will be our choice, not the choice of the English Voter. Until we look inwards and decide for our country and ourselves........we will be unable to look outwards, join the world and be internationalist.
     
  18. Oddquine

    Oddquine Well-Known Member

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    I am one person, Heroclitus.....I give my POV, but I deny it is as anti-English as you make out..I loathe all Unionist politicians without fear or favour, regardless of their national origins...and always have. You sound exactly like someone on another thread who, having been called a nasty name by one Scot in one pub in Scotland, used that experience to say all Scots are racist bigots.

    Sheesh!
     
  19. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Wow! It can be difficult communicating online. The thing is Independence is not about a socialist revolution. It is about Independence. After that it will be up to the will of the people. If Internationalist socialists choose to smear and belittle the Scottish people, being as how people tend not to like people who do not like them, it is unlikely to have influence. If you ask people to go against their own and give you priority they simply will not.

    Hero you make out that Scottish people are nasty uncaring nationalists who want to leave the English behind. Oddquine quite correctly pointed out that the Scot's cannot drag people where they do not want to go. We are talking about democracy here. My own position is to the left but I am much more liberal than authoritarian. Hero you appear to be left but authoritarian and that possibly is more where the problem is...

    So let's go to the place where England and Scotland reached a point where they moved apart. Of course places in England were also hit by Thatcherism and Scottish and English people were often working together against this. However you completely miss out John Smith and his work to correct the situation. We forget that Democracy is still young in the UK. We do not have a written constitution. Charter 88 got together with ideas concerning a written constitution, bill of rights and the right to information. It took Thatcher and her disregard for even our unwritten constitution and the subsequent inability of Scotland and other parts of Britain to have a democratic voice for many to realise the system of Democracy was not working. Charter 88 and John Smith came up with a solution. The idea was for devolution. Scotland was to get her parliament which had been left in recess for almost three hundred years again and devolution for Wales and Northern Ireland followed by Regional Assemblies to England resulting in a United UK but a Federal UK.

    http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkin...ter-britains-new-age-of-democratic-resistance

    The Problem was that John Smith died and Tony Blair did follow through with Scotland, Wales and NI but only played lip service to England. They were offered Regional Assemblies with no real power, told they would just cost extra money and would be best not to have and they went along with this and got left behind. There was nothing Scotland could have done about that. It was their choice, in that they should have been more active and demanded more and been willing to pay for the opportunity to create change. Scotland left no one behind. It was their choice even if slyly presented to confuse them. Blair sold English Democracy to foreign bankers. The English were asleep and went with this. We can not force them.

    Now Hero, as I have already made clear in this thread, your anti independence views are not shared by all who consider themselves Internationalist Socialists http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=795&issue=134 My own opinion of people with your view is that you are a bit like the people who say they are feminist or liberal and who hate Muslims because they believe all Muslim women are oppressed and all Muslims hate gays. By so doing they allow themselves to further demonise and act in a racially oppressive way to a group suffering extreme prejudice while at the same time patting themselves on the back that they are doing the 'right thing' when really they are just allowing themselves an excuse for an inbuilt prejudice. This of course in no way means that ill treatment and homophobia does not need to be addressed wherever it is an issue but how can you expect solidarity when all you are showing is hatred and intolerance because everyone is not following your particular mindset?

    Scotland chose a way out. England has chosen the deluge Blair describes above. England could have chosen Regional Assemblies and then we could all work together for the common good. It will be up to Scotland how she develops if she chooses Independence. She has at least a well spoken feeling that it is part of her heritage to address the common good as well as individual rights and that was evident in the draft Constitution I saw. Now that might be the sort of thing it would be better to start thinking of because that is going to lay the norms of how Scotland will develop. We are seeing a lot of thought going into our education at the moment. If we get that right we will be giving our young a chance for the future.

    I think we could build a new and different style society but I will put my vote first on it being a liberal not an authoritarian society. My hope would be that we have good relations with the English people and for the main I believe this is how it will be. Now friendship, not authoritarian bullying is what leads to solidarity.

    P.S. Oddquine says you misread her. That's my reading too.
     
  20. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    Not so. My experiences in Scotland are very favorable. I am of course no "unionist", more a federalist and internationalist but you use abusive words about my person if that's all you have. I'll focus on the drivel you post. I don't remember using the term racist about you either - that's what some of your comrades have been calling me ( all you can do is use these low debating techniques).?

    Aren't you embarrassed to be saying what a great speech Cox made on the one hand and then denouncing his socialism the next saying "Cox, whoever he/she is"? Rather inept? Not too concerned with the ideas eh? It's clear that loathing and hate drive what you write here rather than ideas, just from your post here. Can't you even have the integrity to admit you lost your way there? My view is quite clear. I loathe chauvinist nationalism such as yours. Nationalism can be liberating in the right hands. But as with your incoherent bollocks it often just turns to abuse as the only defense when challenged.

    Just look at the three of you here. Highlander...well we all know the anti English diatribe he favors as with his posts here. Alexa, easy with the cry of racism, and her confusion about nationalism being something that Scottish nationalists don't follow (amazing!). And now you with your "Cox, a fine speech" followed by "Cox, who's he/she?" and an attack on everything he said and a denunciation of his heroes. Arent you a little embarassed that once you stop waving your saltyre and open your mouth all you have is contradiction and abuse?

    Then when your narrow chauvinism is exposed by your clear distancing of yourself from Scottish leftism and your "loathing" of cross border human solidarity, you can only resort to ad hominem. You dont hate a belief or an ideology, you hate people: "Unionists" meaning anyone who disagrees with nationalism, or anyone who favours a union with another country. So you loathe people, not ideas apparently. And that would be the majority of theScottish people, who reject independence each time they are polled, that you hate. This is the nasty world of nationalism: personal, abusive, intolerant inward looking and driven by hate. You paint a clear enough picture,

    Internationalists don't have to think too much to realize their intellectual superiority to nationalist rabble, whether it's Chinese Stalinists whipping up anti Japanese sentiment, American exceptionalists and their nations divine role, or mean spirited inward looking Scottish nationalists with their mushy sentimentalism. We internationalists don't hate nationalists; even if you hate us. We hate the ignorance of nationalist ideas, the poverty of their experience, the lack of courage in their narrow vision. Sarkozy with his France for the French. Argentina with its xenophobic anti-British Malvinas myth. Separatists in Lombardy and their neo fascism. But we don't hate them (actually we do hate the fascist nationalists). Always appealing to rejection of their fellow humans as you expressed your indifference to universal values (such as the Scottish Enlightenment, apparently "worldviews" are not for Scotland). Nationalism is driven by rejection of darkness, not the quest for light. You have your moment but eventually Burns prediction will emerge...the whole world o'er and nationalists, the whole clamjamfrie, will be swept aside as a parochial anachronism.
     
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  21. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    Alexa. You've changed your tone from your low personal attacks of "racist" to long posts seeking engagement. Maybe somewhere else well agree on something but I don't take accusations that I am racist lightly. You may make them with a nonchalance that cheapens and neutralizes the term. I take them seriously.

    Yes again you misread basic concepts of what's posted. It helps to read or in the case of Cox's speech, to listen. I'm not a leftist, but Cox, whose uplifting speech I was addressing after it was posted by Oddquine, is very much of the Scottish left and introduced himself as such and rooted his while argument in his leftism! I was a leftist once before I accepted that without common ownership there was only capitalism (not the soggy mush of "be nice to each other" meaningless drivel that goes fir sicialism in Britain these days), and I collected money for Scottish and English miners and saw working class solidarity first hand. Cox and I are one here. Oddquine is explicitly adrift from us. But what did I do when Oddquine posted Cox's speech with high recommendation? I addressed the leftist "yes" argument that Cox made and was met with "how's that relevant?"by her, the person who posted it! However much I disagree with Cox, his position is much more powerful than the Tartan Tory position that rejects the heritage of the Scottish left. I feel myself inclined to line up with Cox against those who reject "worldviews" and proletarian solidarity.

    There is nothing authoritarian in what I write. Thats just more abuse. Personally I favor devolution max and am a republican. I certainly acknowledge that Scottish people are the ones to choose for Scitland. But I assert my right as a liberal internationalist to campaign against the reactionary nature of nationalist views everywhere. Nationalism, in it's broadest sense, is the cause of massive human emnity in this world. As it spins out if control into hatred, in the way it has done in the hands of you, Oddquine and Highlander in here, it demonstrates this. If the yes campaign is won by nationalist internationalists (the contradiction is there and will destroy the position eventually) like Cox, it will at least be won by those who have courage, vision and a worldview. But they will soon find out who they are in bed with.
     
  22. alexa

    alexa Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Be aware I take 'racism' very seriously whenever I see it whether it is related to a person's culture, race, religion or sexuality. I have seen nothing to change my opinion on you with respect to your stated disdain for the 'Celtic' nations. Of course if you are not 'liberal' then I may have been wrong in my believe that you took a standard liberal belief and used it without proper investigation to degrade the entire supporters of Independence.
    Patronising at first leading on to down right superiority complex. You make it very difficult to reply to your posts.
    OK. Why are you (*)(*)(*)(*)ing other people for not being International Socialists then?

    Which is the history of Scotland and is certainly anticipated that that would be the foundation - not nazi nationalism as you perceive.

    There is no socialism to speak of at the current time in the UK. As I think Oddquine said the basis for this has been destroyed. By reducing the power of the Unions the Thatcher regime also reduced the supportive infrastructure which went with it. This provided, often through 'working men's clubs' support, political education and the ability to exchange views. The end of communism was the last straw as once it was no longer seen as a threat, any need to pay lip service to social policies was lost. 'there was no society'

    You always seem to see things in very black and quite terms. There is a broad spectrum. You seem to see it as either communism or capitalism. I would be interested in regulated capitalism with strong social and community background not least because research shows that you have a far healthier society when inequality is low. This has to be rooted in equality of opportunity something the UK is the worst in Europe with. The UK has social mobility and inequality at the rate of Victorian times and all the signs are that this will become worse and worse resulting in increased social unrest such as we saw in the Summer in England. England as I said is owned by the bankers. Democracy is simply voting for the same thing from different parties with a few tit bits thrown in by focus groups. That is the direction started with Thatcher and her destruction of our industrial base rather than investing in it with North Sea oil. She went for using that to fund unemployment, some of whom and the descendants of are still unemployed and are an underclass within society. Blair finished the situation of. My biggest concern is that Scotland find a way where she does not sell her soul to bankers allowing her some possibility for democracy and ability to choose the way she will develop - that is base her economy on real things, green energy, quality manufacturing.


    I very much doubt it. You have already said that you have moved from one extreme to the other.


    There is no 'us'. You are choosing to hide behind someone who you have already said you no longer agree with. Oddquine is her own person. She does not have a need to hide behind someone else. She is well informed on what she responds to and I have always got the impression she is left of centre and having an open mind. You try to create a caricature of her, just like you have done of 'celtic' people in general.

    You replied as usual with an inflaming post which was far from accurate in what you said. I was replying to said post myself but got tired and left it till the morning by which time Oddquine had replied. When you make such mistakes as to claim the left in Scotland has never gone for an Independent Scotland or home rule, it suggests you yourself know very little of what you are speaking about.

    She admitted she made a mistake on that. When you come on in an attacking way and are attacking with misinformation, it can get the adrenalin going. As she said the way you put it it sounded like you were talking about some thesis someone had presented. She has admitted her mistake. Have the grace to leave it there.
    and yet this is the person about whom you earlier said
    There are no Tartan Tories. Yet again you show how you always like to put things in stereotypes and how you have little knowledge of the situation and indeed if you look at Oddquines post she corrected you on this. It may be that the SNP was conservative in the past but what has made it popular is that it has been acting as the most socialist party in Scotland. That is why it got votes when Nu Labour and yourself it would seem gave up the core values of Labour.
    The SNP rejects no heritage. The Scottish people have found that she has been presenting socialist policies better than nuLabour and that she has been working first for the people of Scotlland. NuLabour has rejected the heritage of the Scottish left. That is why it has lost support.

    and yet you choose to degrade Oddquine for saying something different and view her disinterest in this as signs that she is an antisocial person. What was your post to her about then. An attempt at entrapment?


    I was trying to work out the reason for your insults to someone just because she did not agree with some fixed view which you were presenting. That appeared authoritarian. If you want to look at insults I suggest you look at your own posts. They almost always are a personal attack or attack on 'celtic' people collectively. They rarely have a point to argue or if they did to find it under your abuse is hard work.


    I do not and in any case Devo Max would never be accepted by the English. It would require reorganisation of the whole system and ten years or so later Scotland would likely go for full independence anyway - our concepts on foreign poicy and defence being extremely different which I think Cox himself mentioned. The Republican one is a highly contested one in Scotland. Many people feeling strongly that way but others being pragmatic in that they are more likely to get a yes vote if they allow this institution with no powers to stay in tact. That for some people it is part of history and our links with the rest of the UK. As it is only symbolic I will not lose sleep over the choice.
    You as you have already stated make generalisations of all things. The SNP as you have already been told is a social democratic party. Your desire to equate that with the worst of Nationalism which was of course National Socialism is a sickening kind of hate. You wish to equate me with that. I think we have spoken for the last time. I have never shown hatred of the English because I do not hate them, nor have I shown Nationalism because I am not Nationalistic. When you cannot win an argument, you present nothing but sickening stereotypes, attempts at character assassination and unfounded accusations. You have reached such a debased level that further debate is impossible.
     
  23. Viv

    Viv Banned by Request

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    Equally low blow to describe anyone's posts as "drivel". You're lucky anyone responds, if that is the line they can expect.

    You've made your point. Move along. And consider the pot and kettle before I reintroduce the birch on you. The debate in this thread is probably one of few well informed threads on the forum at the moment...if you have the attention span of a sun reader, it doesn't indicate the other poster is writing bollocks. She is writing on a subject close to her heart.

    You are either displaying willful ignorance, or you're less informed on Scottish politics than expected. It's fairly well established the wave of Scottish Nationalism is nothing to do with the normal associations people make with the word "nationalism" and is instead inclusive and everything to do with dissolution of the UK union.

    I have often thought it's a mistake for the SNP to carry on using that name. Whereas UK/ex UK people (except you) tend to understand the aim of the party, it does us no good on the international stage where people can't be blamed for making those associations.

    You can be blamed though. Because you know better. And shouldn't be blackening the aims of the independence agenda by trying to smear it in the minds of the uninitiated.

    None of this is driven by hate. It's driven for me, by the excitement of releasing the potential Scotland has to do good in the world, instead of being hobbled.

    Intellectual superiority:w00t:. Hero, we are as entitled as anyone else to want to run our own country in a way which suits the people who live here. England is too. It's not something to abuse us for. It is our right.

    It doesn't even denote nationalism per se, I'm sure some of us wouldn't mind becoming a federal State in the EU like everyone else and contributing to the international scene. As it happens, I am an advocate of global government. As long as my State within it is Scotland and not UK.

    Of course your expressed views are exactly on the nail as what we want to escape. You describe a parochial anachronism and that is how England treats Scotland. We're not parochial, we are a different country and we're sick of taking that from people like yourself. Now bugger off and let us run our country and we'll see who is parochial without Scotland standing behind it, doing the thinking.
     
  24. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    You have cheapened the accusation of racism by your completely unjustfied and hateful use of it. And yet you then go all "victim" when you receive a robust response. And I am a liberal as I said. You should read what is posted.

    And calling someone racist over and over again for comments they make about their own kin is supposed to make it easy to reply to yours?

    Is it difficult to understand?

    Oddquine posted a link to Brian Cox speaking about voting "yes", with a recommendation that people watch his ten minute speech. I did so, on Oddquine's recommendation. Cox's speech was based firmly in a leftist tradtion. He spoke about the Red Clydesiders, Maxton and Shinwell, the protests against Thatcher and the vacuity of New Labour and his anglophilia. It was a powerful leftist speech.

    This speech was posted by Oddquine. With a recommendation that we should watch it. I did so.

    I answered Cox, acknowledging the power of his speech, but pointing out the contradictions in my view between leftism and nationalism. Oddquine's response was to berate Scottish leftism and to ask me what this had to do with anything! She was the one who posted it! It is as if she and you never listened to Cox.

    As Oddquine developed her views they were clearly very hostile to Cox's argument, which was firmly a leftist argument and based in the Scottish leftist tradition.
    But she did do by attacking me, not Cox. She berated me for mentioning Thatcherism and the eighties, when this was key to Cox's speech; she berated me for talking about Maxton and Shinwell, when these were cited by Cox as heros.

    I don't agree with Cox, but I don't disagree with everything he said either. My response to him was nuanced. I focused on the inconsistencies in his argument,not why I disagreed with his leftism. This is fair enough. I was addressingt Cox, the person whom Oddquine had posted and all I got was abuse from Oddquine for doing so. (She accused of being a baby or something, I can't quite remember but it was nasty and insulting when I had never said a word to her - just as I never said a word to you alexa before you started with the personal attacks on me). I was actually trying to discuss - in a highly respectful way to him - the views of the person Cox that she had linked us to and urged us all to read.

    Another lie that I accuse the SNP oif being Nazi. This is an utter disgusting and deliberate lie. It is totally without foundation. It is desperate.

    You are the person who denied that the SNP was nationalist and when you coulkd no longer defend this absurd position you INVENTED the LIE that I had equated the SNP with neo Nazism. This is an utterly disgusting personal attack. It is the only argument you make - abuse through lies about what I have said.

    I am not hiding behind anyone. I wonder if you read anything. I have stated quite clearly that I disagree with Cox, but certainly not on everything. Cox was the person Oddquine linked to. Have you missed this or something? She linked him with an extremely positive comment. But as soon as I started to discuss his position she proved to be extremely hostile to his views but did so on the basis that she was hostile to my views. Cox believes in working class solidarity in my view. I know there is working class solidarity, so on this point I agree with him. Oddquine stated quite clearly that she did not believe that there was any such thing.

    How many more lies must you post?

    And did she apologized for slamming me for raising it asking what relevance it had, including aiming personal abuse at me for doing so? You guys can give it out but you can't take it can you?

    Its a matter of opinion. Denying opinion with a statement of fact is an authoritarian debating technique. I subscribe to the widely held opinion of Scottish leftists (yes, I disgree with them on most things but agree with them on some) that those who seek independence and reject the leftist tradition can be described as Tartan Tories. Liberals are defined by their internationalism and by the fact that they believe in universal principles (ie a "worldview", something that Oddquine rejected in her response to me).

    Both you and Oddquine addressed personal attacks to me before I addressed you back. When someone responds to your personal attacks robustly you cry foul. That is authoritarianism. One rule for you, who started the personal attacks, and another for those you attack.

    A disgustinbg a filthy lie. When you posted this lie the first time I made it explicitly clear that not only did I not think this but that you had no basis for saying it. But in your desperation you keep on repeating this lie which has utterly no foundation. This is a vicious personal attack, deceitful and vile. It is a hundred times worse than anything I have posted or insinuated. I have never suggested that the SNP is anything other than a moderate party wholly at odds with the FN BNP or other neo Nazi parties. It is a nationalist party, and a moderate one, as I have said. To eny this is to deny that the sky is blue. I have made this clear over and over again. The politically illiterate twaddle you posted that seeking independence was not the same as nationalism, got you in a corner, on your own as well. So you posted these abusive lies that I accuse the SNP of extremism to get out of it.

    I hope so. I posted this for Viv, not you.
     
  25. Heroclitus

    Heroclitus Well-Known Member

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    I think Viv that if I am addressed like this:

    for addressing the person whom Oddquine posted and discussing the things he cited, then I am entitled to a robust response.

    And to see you participate in this bollocks that Scottish nationalism is somehow not the same as other forms of constitutional nationalism, well I thought Viv that you were at least fair. This is such perposterous noinsense. I thought we were friends but now you join with your political kin in insinuating the lie that I equate Scottish nationalism with Nazism or extremism. You people who support the Scottish Nationalist Party would do well to educate yourselves on the meaning of the N word. It is perfectly reasonable for the SNP to use it. It is totally disgusting to allow it to be stolen and misappropriated by the Fascist Right.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
     
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