Strike when the oil is hot?

I am not a graduate of social economics, nor do I profess any real insight into the ways of a union, but I just don’t understand the action of Striking. It obviously is a last resort and is action that cannot be leagally taken without union backing, but it just seems a little overboard, slightly petulant and above all exactly the opposite to what the groups are trying to come to a compromise over, and by not working both sides are doing the wrong thing.

Recently there has been some real headline grabbing stories from the rather gorgeous Daily Mail and the mainstream media. For the uninitiated, here is my Septics Companion guide to the Daily Mail, courtesy of a glance at a fellow bloggers recent gift.

The Daily Mail to me has never been a “news” paper. It is an opinionated party preaching rag paraded as a publication of new paper. Every story has some kind of opinion added to it to appease the British mentality of us, not them – this is not isolated to the Daily Mail of course, The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch and as such is heavily influenced by promotional steers and the usual working class level of writing that is more CAPITAL LETTERS and BOLDS to make sure that the people reading are outraged at the right parts, leaving no inference from the tone (which the sun has an abject lack of, except maybe laddish nude-nudge pub talk) and that they know what their opinion should be. The Daily Record is almost as bad, except it is all about the Scottish angle, so much that at a stretch they will find almost anything patriotic about a story and build it up, and when there is no such angle they try to make it out that that is the stories fault, not being Scottish enough to tickle the fancy of the reading public.

But why should I care? I don’t read it, do I? I’m a Guardian reader, for shame, and that’s only because it reads like a website. I get most of my opinions from reading various sources and places online to make sure I get as much of a spread of comment and reaction as I can to help me pick my opinion. The Daily Mail reader, in a generalisation that would make even the most staunch Stereotyper blush, is led by the opinions of men who specifically write pieces to create tension and ignorance knowing it will get them attention. This is how newspapers make their money in this time of free accessible press.

But recently there has been OUTRAGE at the whole Italians being brought in by a multinational corporation to work on an oil refinery rather than employ British fitters instead. The Daily Mail (and many other publications) have taken the angle that Gordon Brown should be trying to secure these for British people and companies. There is a fair few problems with this.

- What if the Brits are not the best for the job? No where have I seen a piece that proves that we are entitled to the job without competition. If the Italians will do a better job than a British counter part why the hell would anyone, even a British company, consider to employ them?
- What if the Brits are not as good as the Italians? I mean, surely there might be an actual quality difference in the work. Brits might not be as good as the Italian fitters who might have more experience in the job of may have done a similar job somewhere else. That is pretty obvious reason.
- What if the Brits are charging too much? The engineering business is all about undercutting the other persons bid – whether it be by undercharging or over specifying, or even having the better people on the job – if a company is looking for a contract then obviously it will choose the cheapest option if it is viable.
- The Italians are allowed to bid for the job. The above three reasons only work if they are allowed to apply for it and of course they are! That’s a legal requirement of the EU sanctions on working abroad. Part of the deal is that we can work in Europe and they can work over here without any complications. This is part of the whole European thing, and if you disagree with that (like the Daily Mail does) then that’s a whole different argument.

The main problem I have though is the double standards. We are complaining that people are coming to our country to take our jobs away from us, and this is wrong – the logical explanation there is that if there were the effective and rightly priced British workers competing for the same work then there would be no need to worry about it. That’s in an ideal world of course.

More realistically, and more hypocritical: we are outraged when people come to our country to work, but find it fine to go to other countries and work alongside people getting paid a fraction of what we are being paid. That takes serious delusion, balls, ignorance and stupidity. It has to work both ways. We go to poor countries and get paid a fortune so we must expect that poorer countries will come to our richer country to get paid more here, and if that is less than what we expect, then tough shit.

Back to my original point about striking in general – stopping work makes sense as a protest but as anything but a “toy-out-of-pram” act of defiance it must not work. Showing that you care enough about the job that you are willing to not work is backwards logic, is it not?

The Dead Flag Blues.

The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel.
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides,
And a dark wind blows.

The government is corrupt,
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn.

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death.

The sun has fallen down,
And the billboards are all leering,
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles.

It went like this:
The buildings tumbled in on themselves,
Mothers clutching babies
Picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair.
The skyline was beautiful on fire,
All twisted metal stretching upwards,
Everything washed in a thin orange haze.

I said, "Kiss me, you're beautiful,
These are truly the last days"...

You grabbed my hand
And we fell into it
Like a daydream
Or a fever.

We woke up one morning and fell a little further down
For sure it's the valley of death.

I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, from F#A#∞.

One of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, and one of the greatest monologues in modern music. Two of my favourite lines are "I open up my wallet and it's full of blood." and "I said "Kiss me, you're beautiful, these are truly the last days and we fell into it like a daydream, or a fever."

It never fails to get me thinking about things in a more top-down view, but mostly I think it is a stunning marriage of ochestral beauty, human despair and futility, and modern post-rock.

To A Louse, or “To see oursels as ithers see us” - Happy Burns Day on the 25th.

Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

Robert Burns eh? He is as close to Scots can get to a proper figure head that we can all love – Wallace was a mercenary and Charlie was a bit of a cheat, but Burns? He was a lovely fellow wasn’t he, with his poems and his songs… well not really – he fathered 14 illegitimate children and wrote letters of unrequited love to a married woman, the sly devil, but overall I really like a lot of what he wrote, especially the above “To a Louse”, written about a mouse he saw playing on a woman whilst sitting in church on a Sunday.

For our American, English and other nationalities that are reading this, it might be a good time to have a Scot read the poem out.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/robertburns/works/to_a_louse/

Dawn Steele might put a little of a harsh Glasgow accent to it… and maybe pushes the words out a little more profoundly and drunkenly than it should be… but it gives you idea of the way it is pronounced. But the line picked out is this:

“To see oursels as ithers see us!”

The most quoted line from the poem is brilliant Burns, but has more resonance if you flip it – what about as ourselves see others? Recently, trading with the resident Americans in the different in our cultures has been the main topic of conversation, regarding guns mostly, but also Football / Football and others, but why the condition to find more about a foreign country? Why the need to know about lands that we may never reach?

I think it is a precondition of the human being to have to know – that’s what intelligence gives us, the curiosity to work out the many problems facing us. Infact, the most common theory for our intelligent survival is that problem, the biggest one the world can give us – the Ice Age. In meeting its hurdles hominids passed the test and were able to problem solve their way out of certain doom, and indeed to the place we are now. It is plain to see that ever since that passage in our past we have strived to find out more about everything.

And I can imagine that no matter who you are there is a tendency to want to know. There are people who are ignorant, who don’t profess any general knowledge that is worth a damn, and these people are ignorant, but they choose not to know, or don’t have the means to know, but I think that they still have the instinctive hunger to learn, even when they cannot and don’t.

Anyway, happy Burns night on Sunday, I’ll be having haggis, but I don’t think I’ll read out Address to a Haggis just yet.

Names.

Long before I received the email from Steven I was already writing about names and what they mean to us, and mostly how they automatically attribute some baggage with them, no matter who we are told has the name or who we are to meet. What I mean to say is that whilst first impressions of people are always the most important, the instantaneous connotations with a name may condemn a person before you have even spoke to them.

For example, if I ever meet another Mark I instantly have a rapport with them simply because we share nominal assets, even if they guy turns out to be a total tool. The reason for this is totally irrational, and to be honest, I can’t really explain. However, some take more from their name than I do – I mean, my name could be religious if I was so inclined – Mark the Evangelist, the author of the Gospel of Mark, is basically one of Saint Peter’s best mates, and to be honest that is a damn good mate to be friends with, as any person who is friends with a bouncer at a night club will attest. He also is the founder of Christianity in Africa having founded the Church of Alexandria having an obvious keen eye for successful franchising.

The odd thing is that both my names are slightly unusual in that they both appear in the dictionary as both nouns and verbs (to shield, to mark, a mark and a shield) but also that they mean totally different things when used as names. My surname apparently means to “belong to”, which… to be honest means nothing until you realise that it was countered with a first name. So, I would’ve been called Mark Shields of Aberdeen, meaning that I belong to, or “shield” if you will, Aberdeen. At least that’s how I take that to mean.
My first name doesn’t actually mean anything – unlike some which have equivalents in other languages, mine comes from Marcus, and has only been in use since the Middle ages when it was used along side Marcus. Indeed, Mark is the English and Russian language equivalent of the Latin Marcus. The 19th Century is where it was given it’s major boom, becoming more in use after Mark Twain used it as a pen name instead of his real name, Samuel Clemens, and he himself took it from a measurement of depth. So no real profoundness there… until you go to the origin, Marcus, and where it came from – the roman God Mars which means I share a namesake with a very nice chocolate bar, a planet, and Mars is the god of war, which is fine by me – better than being the god of flowers, huh?
The funny thing is that don’t have a unique name, which should not be surprising, but when I started to research this I found three famous people (properly famous) that share my name. One of which has the domain name of our name, and is a total geek out fest… Another is the rather famous political commentator on PBS, which is pretty awesome actually… but limits my brand power in the Americas. I’d need to change my name if I were to ever become an actor or musician. I was thinking Mark Walker or Mark Finlay… something Scottish or impressive – how about Mark Danger Detroit? Or Mark Fire-killer? The third person who has my name is a policeman that ended up in the spotlight twice, once for his transfer and secondly for the murder of a member of the sport at the Cricket World Cup.

But back to Steven’s email – it gave me a link to census results for names in the UK. After trying a few, the results became clear and fun to see… and spurred this post to be finished.

99% of people with the surname are British (in Britain)
96% are English
0.66% are Scottish
0.09% are Hispanic
0.04% are Italian
0.00% are Russian
The largest population live in Glasgow
The most populous post code is the Isle of Cumbrae
United States top state is Delaware
The name is British and Irish origin, with no entries in Africa or Asia worth recording.

Link for the Map of 1998 spread: http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/Map.aspx?name=SHIELDS&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=name

National Trust Surnames: http://www.nationaltrustnames.org.uk/Surnames.aspx

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6483849.stm The Policeman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shields The Politicalman

Madness

Well, not madness really, but M.A.D. Ness. Mutually Assured Destruction. Basically it goes something like this: You have a bow and arrow and so must I; You have a pistol and so must I; You have rocket tanks and so must I; You have nuclear weapons and so must I. It isn’t so much respect or understanding, but is actually a sort of never said threat against another and they say the same back to you in no uncertain terms. It is the backwards version of “Do unto others as you wish they would do unto you” instead saying “you try to fuck me up I’ll fuck you up the same back, so don’t”

It is also of the same kind that you have a lot to loose and so I, which works the same way, if a little more like actual respect than the unsaid threat above.

However, where does it end? Can it end? Could at some point in the future all nuclear arms be destroyed? The logic that can applied to this will let us know that yes, why not? If everyone has no nuclear weapons then the level of one-up has decreased, meaning that no one requires them to be threatened as there is no one at that level. That logically makes sense. The second logical statement is obvious – it is unlikely that anyone would ever use them, simply for the Mutually Assured part. A single war head let off in combat would set the world up for total annihilation, with almost no going back. So if there is no chance that someone who rationally use them, why have them at all?

I am not for nuclear disarmament, as even though both statements above are logically sound and would make sense if argued in a rational era, we don’t like in a rational era and we don’t live in a time where such a thing could actually be governed –who’d be in charge of taking all the weapons in and disposing of them? And who is there to stop them from just keeping some of these weapons to them selves? It has gone too far for anything to be done about it now, assuming that any country would want to. Then why would they? They’d counter argue that at some point someone would use their weapon and they would need them for that – and even if that never happened, if they don’t expect to ever use them, then what harm is there in having them at all?

Let’s move away from the world reaching nuclear weapon angle and approach it with a more local example. This weekend, under the influence of a few light hearted beverages, my self and the Americans were talking about guns. Y’see, Noah has some. Two hand guns, a shotgun and an assault rifle. I explained that if I ever saw them in his house, just sitting about, I’d probably need to go to the bathroom and relieve myself – and I wondered if it was because I am British, or is it because I am not American?

I see guns as these sexy, brutal, and scary objects that I have had no experience with. I don’t think that I’d own one if I lived in America and I don’t think I’d be comfortable around people who have them in the house. Is this because I don’t have any experience with them? I see them as this kind of object that I don’t get a chance to ever see, or to have lost my fear of them. I have done enough hill walks for me to no longer be scared of falling off the cliff, but I know that there is the probability that it could happen, and I wonder if this is the same reason that I am potentially scared of bearing arms.

Or is it because I am not American? I grew in a country where no one I know has a gun, and no one I know has ever needed to have something to protect their family against such a weapon. I understand that in America everyone has the right to own a gun (a normal citizen, not a criminal or anything like that) and that it is constitutionally written as such, whereas in Britain, not having a constitution aside, is that why we don’t have the respect for such weapons, the fact that we have no need to use them?

It comes down to mutually assured destruction, and that if my neighbour can have a gun then so must I. And also, like nuclear weapons, it is too far gone. There are too many people who associated carrying weapons as integral to their nation, whether or not it actually is, for the right to be outlawed, and even then, where would all the gun companies get money from, and the criminals would still all have them. America is guns, and guns are America.

Maybe I would buy one if I lived there, just to be safe.

Football / Football

I have the legs for football. What I mean is that my ankles are strong, my calf muscles are large and my knees are able to take knocks and blows of varying weights. My legs are what I consider to be the most attractive part of me, especially in a kilt. The reason for this is not that I am fit - far from me to say that I am - but that when I was young I played an inordinate amount of football. The problem I always had was that I was never that good at it. I always found my self being picked for the reason that I was able to be in the right place at the right time, but I never had the mind for a real game of football at all.

This only recently became apparent. My first few games as a teenager with mates turned into an almost daily two hour bought of football. Friends from all over the area would descend on the playing fields next to my house and we would kick a ball about in teams of up to 7 or so each. This is without a doubt the peak of my physical ability - able to run for several hours after Scott Gailey, the most stamina laden guy I knew is something that you have to be able to evolve into.

This wasn't all for nothing though - my game ability went skywards. I really learned a lot playing that much football day in day out and it wasn't until I started to play regularly with older fellows at The Link's five a side games did it dawn that all that training had helped my skill level to rise. Now, we played weekly, and I feel that whilst I pale in comparison to some, my ability is not too bad, if lacking a little confidence.

Recently, the numbers of our games have been bolstered by the introduction of two Texans to the ranks of the football playing masses. The good natured minds of these new comers is apparent when, out of know where, they will body check you, or kick the ball out of the pitch into the stratosphere. This is because even though they know what they are doing and can do it to a good degree, they are not obviously born footballers.

They grew up on American football - playing it or watching it, they know how to play that game. It is the little nuances that change - most the first touch isn't quite as reflexive as someone who has been playing for years, and neither is the mindset to defend. What we take for granted, they don't do automatically.

The funny thing is that I am starting to think that one weekend in the future we should try and get a game of American football going, give them a shot at beating us at their own game. Sure the rules would have to be sorted out (I mean, I have no idea how a regular, non televised game of American football works without the several referees and the lovely cheerleaders, though maybe we could get some of the female engineers to stand in) but it would be quite an challenging thing to learn to play. I think the tables would be turned - they'd notice us not being natural at tracking back or following the ball... indeed, I have no doubt that I'd not be able throw a football any distance...

Rugby on the other hand... that might be a good level playing field, if you excuse the pun.

6 = 6

Something dawned on me this weekend and it gave me an awful fright. It appears that from this June I will have left high school longer than I was there. I went to school for six years, leaving (graduating, if you want to call it that; I mean we had a ceremony and all but to be honest it was a mere formality) in 2003, and in 2009 that will have been 6 years ago. 4 years of University and 2 years of working later and BOOM not only is my youth vanishing so are my memories. I can remember being in a lift one time with my mother and a man walked in and said “Hello, how are you!” and the usual question and answer session followed. The man was a stranger to my mother, who only later that day realised he was someone she has been in the same class with at school. I remarked at the time “Come on, how can you forget their name?”… to which I can now say “Easily”. I cannot remember all 19 people who were my practical class at high school, never mind my registration class of 30.

So what does this mean in real terms? Nothing much, other than just a side note to the fact that the rest of my life has started. I mean, there could be some poignancy if I looked harder, like maybe after this point, nearing the mid twenties my life crises should start (or maybe already have). I remember school being a mix of shit and awesome, somewhere in the middle between excruciatingly embarrassing and the most fun I have ever had.

There is something to be said for wanting to go back to school. I’d love to go back with what I know now and be smarter, wittier, and more street wise... less worried about it all. I’d like to go back and if I am not allowed to change things, just to watch from afar my self as an awkward teenager, stumbling and warbling through voice breaking jokes. It would be a cathartic experience to see myself not as I saw myself then, but as I would see a similarly young schoolboy at my age now.

Or maybe I just wish I could remember more about School. Or could forget some of it too.

Microsoft Cathedral 2009 Office Edition

The thudding pulse of the cursor that invites opinion in Word is a welcome respite to the shrill sound of a Project Manager and his wants and the overall silence of people working away at bits of paper and discussions about whose job it is to fix what seemingly has gone wrong. The office is the new cathedral, quieter and more revered than any holy place I have ever been.

Has it become our generation’s battlefield? The men and woman of our past spent hundreds of years in the open wilderness, fighting for survival in the harshest areas of the world – and we, now, in the height of human intellect, we are stuck sitting down infront of a screen that shows up items and objects that we labour over and spend hours working on, until the sudden realisation that they are actual nothing – I mean, nothing of any weight. The internet is made of nothing but large hard drives and wires connecting everyone. It is a wonder when all I make a lists and drawings that I rarely engage with anything I work on.

The office is a place for thinking and for talking. It is almost as bad as a Sunday afternoon, so listless when you have nothing to do, and yet horrendous when we have everything to do in a short space of time. We can only stave off the feeling that to be honest… we are all just waiting to die – I mean, that we are literally dying, and the stuff we do between life and death is just an inconsequence really. The thing is that do we need anything more than the simple fact that in the end all that we amount to is someone else’s carbon?

I recently read somewhere a clever way of thinking about death – it is as metaphysical as an atheist will be allowed to get before being stung up and handed a Bible before being cast asunder to the Church. It is a simple fact that through the universe, if our laws are to be believed, we can’t create energy, nor can we destroy it – it is transferred into different types of energy. As I type my fingers are creating sound energy and kinetic energy, fuelled by the joints. They are being powered by blood and tendons, controlled by electricity created by my hearts’ pressure pumping blood to where it is needed. This energy comes from my food, which takes it’s energy from the sun who likes to change particle movement energy into extreme levels of nuclear solar energy. So when we die our energy goes to somewhere else – you will break up and break down and break away into million upon billions of bits of something… that will in later years become something else. That is a rather inspiring thought.

Why have I suddenly started thinking about all of this? Well, yesterday on my way home I happened upon a rather lovely and brilliant sight – a bus advert. It said:

“There is probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy life.”

An atheist bus advert is new to this country. I like it’s sentiments, and its intentions, but it might be going about things the wrong way – I mean, surely those who have faith are not worrying about meeting their maker… surely their imperative to be good is a deep seated human emotion, one that we don’t need to be scared into doing with the threat of eternal damnation? And surely, even if we have to be righteous and good to all, a person in a faith that restricts certain activities, say sex before marriage, do they really stop themselves enjoying life with the arbitrary rules of a God? If they wanted to do things they surely would, and then not worry about being struck down by their maker about it.

The above is what I find absurd about religion. I understand why people believe it – some have to. The thought of nothing after this life might scare some, but it exhilarates me – it makes me cherish what happens now more knowing that this is it. This makes logical sense, but making rules on what you can and can’t do personally is fine, that’s how things work. Don’t want to do it? Then don’t do it. If you want to, there should be no reason stop doing it (within reason) but the rules set down by a book from hundreds of years ago that in all probability is just exactly that – a set of rules? I find that quite an intriguing human aspect, and one I don’t understand.

However, everyone is different. In the same way I don’t believe in god, other do. Neither of us are right and wrong, which is why the atheist bus adverts might be rubbing me up a little wrong. Not everyone who is a religious person is worried all the time and is not enjoying life, and not all atheists are happy every moment and enjoying how things are going. I’ve never seen a Christian advert saying “Atheists need rules, so start worrying about eternal damnation.”

But what of my opening gambit – if we cannot destroy or create anything, how did everything get created in the first place? If the office is the new cathedral… then my only answer has to be Microsoft.

Being Scottish. Is it shite?

One of the most famous moments in Scottish film history is the arse baring chieftains of the Scottish troops in the thoroughly hilarious Mel Gibson epic Braveheart shouting “Freedom!” as they run at the bastard English, ready to kill all who wish to take from the Scots and their land. I wonder what Wallace would have thocht o’ the wild lands that are now Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Would he be sympathetic to our woes that we should put up with the fact that we are not a sovereign state for the benefits or would he hate the fact that there is not a King of Scotland?

The other famous scene is that of the simply mesmerising Trainspotting, a film that depicts a Scottish life so disastrous you might wonder what Wallace died fighting for. The scene is a defining moment in Scottish cinema for several reasons: It shows that we know what a shit way the whole arrangement is, that we can take the piss out of our selves, and also that we can do it in a way so brilliant, set against the exact backdrop that makes many love this country (myself included), that it is funny even though the truth is being spoken in an entirely unfunny way.

“It's shite being Scottish! We're the lowest of the low. The scum of the fucking Earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers. Can't even find a decent culture to be colonized by. We're ruled by effete assholes. It's a shite state of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference!”



The question is, is it shite being Scottish? Is Scotland a shite country? I don’t think it is shite being Scottish – for one thing it is not being English, which can make more a difference than some would believe and some would understand. It is a distinction to be from the underdogs, the subservient, the pilloried and pillaged, and the ones that the small timers. It carries with it a baggage of sorts that instantly will give you rapport with many a foreigner for that count. And don’t forget the not-being-English-fact.

Indeed, in researching this blog post, it occurred to me that my heritage is something I take for granted, whereas our American and Canandian cousins positively relish in the fact that they are from somewhere. It is not necessarily Scotland or Ireland, but Germany, Jew, Dutch, Mexican, Portuguese, Italian, it seems that the big great democracy has an identity of it’s own, and that identity is built around being from somewhere else. Being “Scotch-Irish” doesn’t mean that you are from Scotland or Ireland, but from the band of travelling folk that made the Eastern side of American what it is now. The nationalities get all screwy.

Is Scotland a shite country? I don’t think so either. I t has some incredible history, the stuff that films are literally made off, and along with Europe has a history the US are envious of. The scenery could give anywhere in the world a run for it’s money. The cities are all distinct in their style: Edinburgh has it’s castle and windy roads; Glasgow has it’s sandstone Mackintosh styles and incredible industrial scars; Dundee has the hilly city centre and massive Tay Estuary on it’s doorstep and Aberdeen, the much maligned Aberdeen, has the grey granite that is jokingly given stick for but can be unsettlingly beautiful in the right light. The thing is that these are the places that make Scotland what it is, not what the people think of these places.

So, is Scotland shite? Yes. You might be thinking why can I come to that conclusion after refuting both of the above questions? Well there is the third question that I have deliberately left out, and that is simply to do with ideas. Ideas above our station, in particular. Indeed, Scotland is home to many of the great inventions, many of the great scholars of the early period of Enlightenment, and had more Universities than the whole of England for a long time… but there lacks any real greatness. The common folk today expect much more of such a simple, small, unwealthy nation. We expect more of our country because of the pedestal raising of our forefathers, those who we see as heroes who were actually terrorists and murderers. We see their view of the country as what we could have, but are much less inclined to kill hundreds of English to fight for it. We are a nation hurtling towards the brainwashed masses voting us out a Union with England and Wales that could ruin everything for all countries involved. Could we raise an army big enough to defend our shores in time, or could we split any assets with England at all? No we couldn’t.

And the fact that a growing minority seem to think that we can is a car crash in slow motion, hurtling towards a long, expensive and pointless program of devolution and independence. Why should we think that we can pull out of the Union when if anything we have been the ones who a benefited most from it? That is why Scotland is shite. With all the amazing scenery, the brilliant cities and the international ego-rubbing, we seem to have became aware of some aura around us that doesn’t exist.

In saying all that, at least I am not English.