On Twitter, a bunch of Labour activists led by one Duncan Hothersall are having a hilarious time tweeting and retweeting their incredulity that I should have been both in the St James’ Centre during the fake nationalist “scuffle” with Miliband during the referendum, and at St Enoch’s in Glasgow during the fake Murphy Riot, or that I can be called an “impartial” source.

Well, I was in the St James Centre but I wasn’t anywhere near Glasgow. Nor am I impartial. The Labour numpties are incapable of distinguishing between a blog, and comments on a blog. What they are aiming their hilarity at is a comment left by a lady named Anne Keay at 7.38pm yesterday:

I was there. I am in the photo. I did not plan to be there. I was shopping and heard the crowd and went to watch. I saw nothing except healthy democracy in action – a politician goes walk-about and people gather passionately to protest, call out, crowd in and generally make a lot of fuss and noise, as is their right.

I had read on sites such as yours about these Labour rallies and watched in disgust at the stage managed event unfolded. There was no passion, no attempt to reach out to voters, no attempt to engage with the people of Glasgow. It was a press event, purely and simply. P

I also saw and heard around me, from the few people who watched, only bemused indifference and/or dislike of Labour then, gradually, disgust at the pointlessness of the whole event.

If I had ever believed that Jim Murphy cared one whit about the ‘ordinary’ men and women of Scotland, I would now know better. Neither he or any one of the Labour activists with him had any interest in talking to, engaging with or convincing anyone. It wasn’t about us – it was about tonight’s news and cheap headlines.

I was revolted by the whole thing and, pardon my ignorance, astounded at seeing for myself what depths modern politics Labour style has sunk to.

So far as I am aware I have no connection to Anne Keay, who seems a very reasonable witness. By demonstrating their typical Labour Party stupidity @dhothersall, @stuart_w64 (who has a strange interest in my sexual preferences), @kb32904, @rnzhdad, @BrianSpanner1 have given me reason to highlight Ms Keay’s testimony. To be fair to Hothersall, he has as many followers as there are members of the Scottish Labour Party.

I am so much looking forward to reading their tweets this time on Friday.

I am not going to apologise for not being profound. Have just reduced book from 212,000 words (originally 243,000) to 197,000. About to tackle footnotes which I want to get down from 1,480 to 800. But have a parting thought from David Hume, which points the way forward for the UK: “Let us therefore lay aside all Anger, shake Hands and part Friends.” Somebody might want to leave a comment explaining who David Hume was, for the benefit of Labour Party members.

This is how you make a speech outdoors. It doesn’t involve starting a row, getting scared and running away. And the circumstances were much scarier that anything Murphy faced. Here is a clue – all those police aren’t protecting me.

Is this the world’s worst photoshop?

Mr Clerkin appears to have a shrunken head. And the light cannot be shining on Mr Clerkin from top right, and on Murphy from the opposite direction.

The Herald headline is that political leaders are lining up to condemn the six anti-Labour demonstrators for being noisy. Are political leaders also lining up to condemn the total lack of journalistic ethics of the Herald?

I phoned the Channel 4 Newsdesk to report a story. It went like this:

Male Voice: Hello Newsdesk
Me: Hello is that Channel 4 News?
Male Voice: Yes, how can I help you
Me: I want to report a story
Male Voice: Well there’s not much time left the news is about to go out
Me: It is quite a big story
Male Voice: Well run it by me
Me: It’s about a totally corrupt journalist named Alex Thomson who claimed there was a riot in Glasgow today when no such thing happened
Male Voice: Oh
Me: Are you interested?
Male Voice: Well, obviously I know who Alex Thomson is
Me: Are you interested?
Male Voice: Well I can put you through to viewer complaints….
[Click – goes to answerphone]

I phone back
Female Voice: Hello
Me: Hello. I was talking to someone about Alex Thomson invention of a completely untrue story, and I seem to have got put through to an answerphone
Female Voice: I can put you through to viewer complaints
Me: No, that’s the answerphone
Female Voice: Well, then the editor will hear what you say
Me: Really? Does the editor listen to the answerphone?
Female Voice: Yes
Me: The editor listens to every comment left on the answerphone
Female Voice: Yes
Me: So how many comments per day are left on the answerphone?
Female Voice: The editor doesn’t listen to the answerphone, they get the comments typed out
Me: So each and every message is typed out separately and the editor reads them all
Female Voice: No it’s a summary
Me: Alex Thomson was lying about events in Glasgow to try to influence an election. I want to talk to your superior.
CLICK put to answerphone

This is a picture of the actual scene, exactly as I described it earlier today. Alex Thomson should be sacked. he is a disgrace to journalism.

Thanks to Wings Over Scotland for the picture.

The Mainstream Media are anxious to invoke the “violent nationalists” meme at every opportunity. Today Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard ran away in Glasgow because evil nationalists shouted back when he was haranguing them. That’s what they did – shouted back. Nobody punched anyone. Nobody shoved anyone. Nobody threw anything. But people had the gall not to listen in hushed silence to Murphy.

The idea is that Murphy with a massive media pack turns up and speaks in front of two dozen Labour activists, who huddle behind him with placards, and the media then show only cropped close shots which make it look like there was a crowd of pro-Labour people. The media do this obligingly several times a day for all the unionist parties, and it works well with closed halls with heavy security. But of course it doesn’t work on the streets, where evil people can have the gall to shout back instead of doffing their caps.

So then a different narrative kicks in, that of evil nationalist violent thugs. Now we have a news story about Murphy and Izzard “escaping” nationalist thugs. But look closely at the video clip in the Guardian, which has gone into unionist orgasm on the story. All the people with the multi-coloured placards are the planted Labour supporters. (Scottish Labour placards have now to be not only red, but also blue and orange, for obvious reasons). At the time Murphy “escapes”, there isn’t anybody apart from the vetted Labour posse within twenty yards of him. And the horrible people who dared to shout back don’t total more than half a dozen.

The Guardian claims there were “minor scuffles”. Watch the video at 11.42 on this Guardian feed. There are no scuffles, except for Jim pushing past people to run away and pretend he was in danger.

It is a trick they have pulled before, and doubtless will pull again.

The essence of Conservatism is that people doing quite nicely out of the current system do not want anything to change, in case the consequences are not good for them. That is why John Stuart Mill said the Conservatives would be better named “The Stupid Party”. Conservatism does not require a thought process. Generally it does require a callousness towards those not doing well out of the current system.

Radicalism is more diffuse. Its essence can be a cold certainty of the rationalist ability to calculate risk and consequence. Or it can spring from romanticism, the gambler’s instinct, or plain having nothing to lose. (In my case, all of the above).

The First Past the Post electoral system is a historic relic not fitted to a modern society. But by definition elected politicians have done rather well out of it, so have no incentive to change. With the neo-conservative consensus embracing all the main Westminster parties, it doesn’t make any difference who governs us apart from the question of which particular snouts are in the trough, which is no help to the man in the street.

Then along we come in the SNP and challenge some of the pillars of neo-conservatism, like the possession of vast hordes of nuclear warheads, the utility of ever increasing wealth inequality, a pre-Keynesian, Thatcherite attitude to public finance, and trying to get our way in the world by bombing poorer peoples. The SNP has managed to gather enough support for a radical agenda to pass the FPTP tipping point and for the system to work massively in our favour in Scotland. Cue massed panic in the Westminster establishment, including the corporate media. For the first time in a generation, people have appeared on a main television channel arguing that possession of weapons of mass destruction by the UK is not a good thing.

Whole sections of the Establishment have therefore woken up, for all the wrong reasons, to the fact that FPTP is a bad system. Yet neither the Blue nor the Red Tories are likely to embrace proportional representation.

The Blue Tories will not embrace PR because they are the Stupid Party. There is a right wing majority in England. If you separate Scotland, then UKIP and the Conservatives have about 48% of the vote in England compared to about 42% for Labour plus the Greens. I have left the Lib Dems out, though post Clegg they might fairly be added to the conservative total. Because of this right wing majority outside Scotland, PR would keep the Tories in government almost all of the time, though generally in coalition.

By contrast the Red Tories would be stuffed by PR. There just is not enough support for them, even after five years of a very unpopular coalition government. The reason there is not enough support for them is that they do not offer any kind of real alternative in policy. More austerity, more nukes, just fronted by an even less appealing set of neo-con “personalities” than the Conservatives in Miliband, Balls, Cooper, Murphy and Alexander.

What the SNP have shown is that there is a real public hunger for a more radical politics. PR would be the death of the Labour Party because the large majority of its voters lend the party their support purely to keep the Tories out, not because they are enthused by the policies or the line-up. PR would give the chance for a genuinely radical alternative to grow. There are legions of Labour supporters who would love to vote Green but fear it would let the Tory in. Under PR, other left alternatives besides the Greens would soon blossom. The Red Tories don’t actually have a unique offering to the public. There is not really a market niche for another set of Tories. They are maintained entirely by the inertia of the FPTP system. And they know it.

Expect a lot of angst about FPTP following major SNP gains. But do not expect the Establishment to do anything about it – the status quo suits them fine.

Every single accusation against the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, I witnessed being done by Lord Patel’s enforcers on behalf of Labour in Blackburn. My thoughts are today with those, particularly women and young people, in the Islamic community there who are now under terrible pressure. They are obliged to show their completed postal ballots before sealing to community elders, often themselves Labour councillors. They are not allowed to vote other than by post. The heads of household who have to enforce discipline on their families are themselves sometimes not happy, but tied in to mostly Gujerati tribal structures of subservience. That this still happens in the United Kingdom in 2015 is disgusting. What is worse is that it happens with the knowing connivance of Labour Party officials and of Blackburn Council.

Remind me again. What precisely qualified Patel to become a member of the House of Lords?

Were the Union to last long enough, doubtless they would send this girl too to join the Unionist classes at Murrayfield, dressed in tartan as a kind of insurance policy against our ditching the firstborn. Fortunately neither the union nor the monarchy in Scotland will last long enough.

Another over-privileged right wing little tosspot is born to live off our taxes. I wish harm to no baby. But every one of the babies the UK killed in bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya was worth just as much as this one. If the murder of one of those babies by the British state had received a ten thousandth of the attention of the birth of this baby to live high on the British state, the world would be a slightly fairer place.

During the course of this campaign, a quarter of Tories in East Renfrewshire have switched to voting Labour to back Jim Murphy against the SNP.

Polls by Ashcroft of the constituency at the beginning and end of April shows the Tory vote dropping by 25 to 20%, and the Murphy vote increasing from 31 to 36% – a direct transfer of Tory tactical votes to Labour.

The Tories willingness to back the leader of the Scottish Labour accounting unit is the starkest possible illustration of the collusion of Red Tories and Blue Tories. It comes on top of Miliband’s preference for a Tory government rather than a deal with the SNP. As I have been saying for almost a year, I view a Tory-Labour “grand coalition” as perfectly possible.

Just been working on this section of Sikunder Burnes:

The only evidence for Pottinger’s heroics was allegedly in his journals, which were the basis of the account of “The Hero of Herat” by the doyen of British Indian historians Sir John Kaye. But this evidence disappeared in one of those infamous Victorian study fires, in which papers potentially embarrassing to the Imperial narrative were apt to vanish.1 It seems likely that this fire is where Alexander Burnes’ private diaries disappeared too, with their evidence of religious scepticism (and perhaps sexual adventure). Kaye published that “the journals and correspondence of Sir Alexander Burnes were given to me by his brother, the late Dr James Burnes”2, but there, to my extreme frustration, the trail ends. The same conflagration took private papers of those martyr icons of Victorian India, Henry Lawrence and John Nicholson. This almost certainly destroyed evidence of homosexual relationships among some members of the circle including those two and Herbert Edwardes, known as “Henry Lawrence’s young men”, and paedophile relationships with the young boys in their charge.3

It was a continual process. I just came across this, written with apparent naivety in John Lawrence’s 1990 biography of his ancestor, Henry:

“The papers collected by Herbert Edwardes came to my grandfather and were passed down to my father… Unfortunately some of them were lost in a fire while they were with Macleaod Innes, who had known Henry in his youth.”

“Known Henry in his youth.” I bet he did. The most tragic of the study fires was of course Isobel Burton’s destruction of Richard’s papers, though that was rare in being avowed. I was wondering if there is not an interesting little book in Victorian study fires and the bowdlerisation of history.

This great British tradition continues of course with the loss of paedophilia dossiers in the Home Office…

For the footnotes you’ll have to buy the book!

Can anybody find me a text of Jan Prosper Witkiewicz’ suicide note in the original language? I assume it was Russian, not Polish.