Why I Love Scotland – and Despair of my Once-Loved England 159


In general I deplore violence. But I do know that if a braying Etonian bully wandered round this country telling people how to dress, it would be very bad for their health. As someone who lived almost half of my life in England, I cannot understand the right wing intolerance, xenophobia and contempt for liberty that now characterises that nation.

And I cannot understand the degree of cringing servility that causes English people to want to be ruled – and told how to dress – by this.

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159 thoughts on “Why I Love Scotland – and Despair of my Once-Loved England

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  • Phil

    Speak for yourself sunshine. Your the one here who spent a career arselicking your way up their bureaucracy. Some of us have always railed against these people.

  • Ruth

    Don’t worry a lot of young people are moving out of the country because they can’t stand the oppression

  • Anon1

    Corby does need to smarten himself up, though. It matters if one wishes to be taken seriously. People look at Corbyn and wonder how he can look after a country if he can’t even look after himself.

    Scotland, of course, has its fair share of top public schools (of which Tony Blair attended one), its landed gentry, and a silly national dress.

  • Anon1

    Just to add, I don’t think you’re in a position to accuse anyone of contempt for liberty given your absolute support for the EU.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Corbyn should have told the glistening turd he couldn’t hear him, could he take the condom off his face?. No, seriously. If Cameron’s reduced to that level, he’s got fuck-all else to offer. Corbyn now has the opportunity to do the next PMQ’s in full twattish Bullingdon gear (and get the rest of his front bench to do the same) and get tuition in uttering a hectoring bray.

  • MJ

    “And I cannot understand the degree of cringing servility that causes English people to want to be ruled – and told how to dress – by this”

    Not to worry, they may soon redeem themselves by voting to leave the EU.

  • Michael

    “I cannot understand the right wing intolerance, xenophobia and contempt for liberty that now characterises that nation.”

    Did these things not characterise that nation whilst you spent decades working for Her Majesty’s Government?

  • glenn_uk

    Corby does need to smarten himself up, though. It matters if one wishes to be taken seriously. People look at Corbyn and wonder how he can look after a country if he can’t even look after himself.

    What do you mean, “can’t look after himself”? By your definition almost everyone in the country, or the world for that matter, is unable to look after themselves.

    Your trivial, content-free and appearance driven prejudices are exactly what is wrong with this country.

  • Scholl

    Phil & Michael: whistleblowers who’ve worked for the government do much more to help humanity than people who oppose torture from the sidelines. Without the likes of ex-government employees like Murray, Manning, Shayler, etc we wouldn’t even know about the violence that goes on. Show some bloody respect for the whistleblowers who put their careers, liberty and reputations (and even lives, in the case of Dr David Kelly) on the line!

  • Tony M

    Jesus fuck they are an ugly looking lot. Narrow gene-pool indeed, are any of them, against the odds, still alive?

  • Chris Rogers

    @CM,

    I actually share your sentiment and despise what the UK has become, if only because most of constitutes the UK is resident within England, or more specifically within the confines of the M25 and Home Counties.

    For some unknown reason, most of my fellow countrymen in Wales seem opposed to breaking free of shackles imposed by a overwhelmingly English and Tory Westminster. There is something much to be said for ‘Home Rule’, if not an outright break with the Union and full independence – its a bit of a dependency issue in Wales, but calls for Home Rule may increase after Osborne’s austerity max measures take their toll on our already under resourced public services.

    Indeed, most of Wales’s most educated youth shun Oxbridge, which shows some reluctance to embrace English mores and values, many of which are alien to us.

    However, I’m not sure independence and a move to full independent membership of the EU would benefit us given its present addiction to neoliberal economic prescriptions, the same prescriptions that Westminster has administered with huge societal consequences.

    Indeed, the construction of a wall to keep the English out and globalisation at bay seems tempting, particularly given our small number we could actually established a true sustainable society where wealth is spread equally and all burdens are shared.

    One thing is for sure, if nearly a thousand years of Norman/English rule and multiple abuses have taught us anything, it is that Westminster is not our friend, quite the reverse, we are prisoners in our own land stuck in a cycle of welfare dependency with all its associated social evils. Why so many voted UKIP at the last GE really concerns me given the fact as a country we don’t suffer from increased immigration, the reverse is true, many are leaving and not returning, leaving us in an even worse predicament. Hence ones natural desire to return to my own community and engage in its struggles – tis not nice living in exile, particularly one imposed by Tory racists.

  • John Goss

    It is a typical Tory ad hominem attack (the type trolls use on here) because Cameron knows he is hiving off something we and our predecessors paid for with National Insurance, and does not want the debate to get into real argument. All credit to the way Jeremy Corbyn handled his snide remark. People like Cameron are the leeches of society sucking the blood from the main artery of the people. He has to go. If the NHS is hived off piece by piece it needs to be taken back without compensation from those who are ready to deprive the poor of treatment to line their pockets.

    http://action.sumofus.org/a/nhs-privatisation/4/2/?

  • MerkinScot

    Well said!
    Never mind Heseltine grabbing the Mace, my mother would have grabbed the PMs scrawny neck and said “Who loves ya, Baby?”. Glasgow Kiss to follow.
    Anyway, as we know, the current saviour of the human race – Mr Gove – would have all pupils dressed like ‘the way they should’.

  • Chris Rogers

    MerkinScot

    “Anyway, as we know, the current saviour of the human race – Mr Gove – would have all pupils dressed like ‘the way they should’.”

    You forgot to add in that statement that Gove would not only force pupils to wear cloths he find s suitable, but would no doubt charge them an arm and a leg for said cloths, and embrace further debt extension by the pupils to purchase said cloths so that they remain compliant debt slaves for their remaining days. It’s the only way to make real money so I’m reliably instructed.

  • Davrod

    Hmmm. Well Craig I’m English (well British actually, I’ve always thought that just holding to England was, well, petty minded), not intollerant, xenophobic or contemptuous of liberty and dont have any of this cringing servility, nor does anybody I know here. Perhaps in future you could hold back on the English this and English that, being as its just prejudiced bullshit.

  • john young

    You don,t have to “throw a stone very far” to find plenty of servility/headbowing ib this benighted land,go on to the streets of Glasgow/West of Scotland most weekends from now until whenever and they will be marching in their finery,I only wish we had some English confidence/bottle.Davrod it,s not about being anti English I don,t find much of this sentiment,there will be some but in general?

  • Davrod

    Indeed John. Servility to authority can be found everywhere, in roughly equal proportions and expressed in awe of different totems, but that doesnt make it a defining characteristic of any particular sub-set of humanity as craig seems to assert about the English

    I dont think Craig is anti-English, just increasingly lazy in his thought if he assumes “the English” are all alike, or indeed that any nation are.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    And I cannot understand the degree of cringing servility that causes English people to want to be ruled – and told how to dress – by this.

    I can’t understand how you deduce that ‘we’ want to be ruled by ‘this’. We’ve agreed that the electoral system usually offers no real choice between a list of buffoons and business suits, and that the corporate media will reliably swing the lowest-IQ quartile in the direction desired by the market monkeys. Perhaps you’re just being provocative – well and good – but I think you’re wrong. The feelings that enabled both Corbyn and Farage haven’t gone away; the same feelings in the US have engendered Trump and Sanders.

    The realisation that we are being intentionally hoodwinked is slowly growing, and, if we’re being stereotypical, the English have always been a little slow in responding to injustice, and may be more effective for that when the crunch comes.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    PS – This may have been touched on before, but as a supporter of the EU, you’re allying yourself with Cameron (and Mandelson, and Blair, and Kinnock). Can I call that cringing subservience, please? 🙂

  • Kempe

    Cameron and his mates are in power not because people wanted to be ruled by him but because they didn’t want to be ruled by Ed Milliband.

  • Tony M

    Davrod: I think a clear line was being drawn between the people of England and its perpetual ruling clique. The latter and their apologists do though much prefer to hide under the pseudonymous ‘British’ cloak, the guise behind which it commits its worst crimes. But they’re English crimes all the same, the rest of us on these islands are just helpless passengers. Searing shame and blame that will stick, through the ages, should always be apportioned as accurately as possible, for the record. When action was called for, probably 1984-1985 was the critical period, when England’s people should have been on the streets with pitchforks and flaming torches, be-seiging in their castles, the toxic Red or Blue Tories, before things went too far -they failed epically, suddenly found football and Cilla Black more important, when an Englishman’s ex-council house became their prison, albeit complete with parquet-floored shithouse and incongruous looking new front door that proclaimed “TRAITOR”.

    Stick around we’ve many more insults, some we’ve not even thought of yet, to belittle and beat you with.

  • Republicofscotland

    It’s a genetic thing I suppose looking at that picture of inbred self serving cads, one can only imagine that in a genetic sense at least that they have much in come with hillbillies and rednecks.

    I see Boris Johnson in the front row, who pretends to be a carefree type buffoonish character, when infact he’s a cold calculating self advancing amoralist.

    Those men (I use the term loosely of course) need to pass a initiation test. The wannabe Bullingdon boys need to burn a £50 note in front of a down and out person.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/21/bullingdon-club-five-things-we-know_n_8169064.html

    Boris Johnson, Gideon Osborne and David Cameron, are all former members of the Bullingdon boys club.

    From a young age the boys are drilled and taught that they are better than the public at large and that they’ll hold powerful and responsible positions in society.

    Unfortunately most are emotionally detached from the real world due to a lack of love and affection as children. That steely cold lack of empathy allows them to foist any policy no matter how vile and punishing on the poor and disabled, or sny other section of society that comes under their icy gaze.

    It also allows them to vote for illegal wars in far off countries, lacking a conscience or any morality, they rise through the ranks at Westminster, Blair Brown, Cameron, Thatcher, need I say anymore?

  • Davrod

    Tony M: Sorry, but in Craigs post above I cant quite see the clear line. He says the nation is characterised by xenophobia and intollerance and that its populace are cringingly servile, without pausing to mention that many are, in fact, not. Thus he falls into the usual pit.

    The thing about your [insert noun of out-group], is that they are all [insert derogatory comment] and etc etc etc yawn.

    More insults though please Tony 🙂

  • Republicofscotland

    “Corby does need to smarten himself up, though. It matters if one wishes to be taken seriously. People look at Corbyn and wonder how he can look after a country if he can’t even look after himself.”

    ________________

    Anon1.

    Parroting David Cameron’s childish jibe at Jeremy Corbyn’s attire at PMQ’s doesn’t do you any favours.

    Have you any idea how foolish David Cameron appears now, using classroom jibes at PMQ’s when the country is watching and listening.

    But I suppose like you he has to obfuscate and divert, from the points at hand, that show his lack of leadership, afterall, if I may add, David Cameron was picked not because of his intelligence or ability to act on the peoples behalf. No he was hand picked as Tory leader because he looked the part in a £3000 grand Armani suit.

    What does that say about the shallow public, that a smart suit equates to a compitent and able leader.

    Give me Corbyn and his non Savile Row suits, at least the body inside stands for something other than emotionally detached wealth.

  • Republicofscotland

    I suppose when you look at the upper echelons of society especialy in the political and very top of the corporate field. One could in a sense be forgiven thinking that some not all but some posses psychopathic tendencies.

    If one mentions Blair or Bush Sn, or Bush Jr, and their overseas actions, (and at home) then, it becomes a bit clearer.

    The hallmarks of the psychopathic personality involve egocentric, grandiose behavior, completely lacking empathy and conscience.

    Additionally, psychopaths may be charismatic, charming, and adept at manipulating one-on-one interactions.

    In a corporation, one’s ability to advance is determined in large measure by a person’s ability to favourably impress his or her direct manager.

    Unfortunately, certain of these psychopathic qualities – in particular charm, charisma, grandiosity (which can be mistaken for vision or confidence) and the ability to “perform” convincingly in one-on-one settings – are also qualities that can help one get ahead in the business world.

    There is a good book on the market by Paul Babiak, called “Snakes in Suits” that reveals how cold amoralist, but well, educated people rise to the top of many professions, including politics.

    I suppose we know them better as neocons.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    TY Kempe. The perception is certainly growing that Europe exists solely for megabusiness and banks. But I’m not so sure anyone has thought much about the alternative.

  • MJ

    “But I’m not so sure anyone has thought much about the alternative”

    Just muddling along as usual I suppose.

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