Ramblings of a now 60+ Female

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By Jason Michael

Early yesterday morning the Spanish military police launched yet another phase of Spain’s crackdown on Catalunya’s 1 October referendum, arresting state officials and raiding more government offices. No one is to blame for this but Mariano Rajoy.

“Guardia Civil police arrests Catalan Secretary General of Economic Ministry in big anti-referendum operation” is not the kind of headline we are used to in 2017 – certainly not from an EU member state. It was however breaking news from Catalan News first thing yesterday morning. Shortly after eight o’clock local time the Guardia Civil, Spain’s military police force, began an intensive operation involving raids on Catalan government offices and the arrest of a number of Catalunya’s civil servants and politicians. This is the latest phase in Spain’s anti-democratic approach to the wish of the people of Catalunya to hold an independence referendum on 1 October.

As the…

In just ten days time, the government of Catalonia is determined to hold an independence referendum that the government of Spain is equally determined to prevent. What’s happening in Spain is heading towards the logical conclusion of what you get when the loyalist defenders of the central state refuse to countenance that a country within that state has a right to self-determination. The situation in Catalonia is growing fraught, it’s getting dangerous.

The Catalan independence movement shares an important and highly praiseworthy feature in common with the Scottish independence movement. Apart from the activities of a tiny fringe group during the 1980s called Terra Lliure ‘Free Land’, the Catalan movement, like its Scottish counterpart, is dedicated to peaceful and legal protest, and to achieving its aims by persuasion and through the ballot box. Like members of the Scottish independence campaign, the Catalans believe that the kind of independent state you…

Another day, and another day of silence about events in Catalonia from BBC Scotland, the local accounting unit of the UK state broadcaster. You’d almost imagine that no one in Scotland could possibly relate to or be interested in the goings on in a modern European nation which is seeking independence, statehood, and membership of the EU in its own right. Nothing like that has ever happened in Scotland. Oh no. We can have wall to wall fitba, but no news from Catalonia that might be relevant to Scotland’s very own home grown independence campaign.

Catalonia is due to hold an independence referendum on the first of October. It’s only a couple of weeks away, but there has been almost zero interest in the Catalan independence movement from a British nationalist media in Scotland which is desperately trying to forget that there’s an independence movement in Scotland too. Or more…

Oh my god. I can’t get home. Apparently I live in a Scottish city’s no-go area. Everyone who lives in my working class district in the East End of Glasgow, predominantly consisting of social housing, is cowering in terror in the Forge Shopping Centre in Parkhead. Only Parkhead is a no-go area too and Greggs is about to run out of sausage rolls. Someone is hoarding bridies, and the shop shelves are being emptied of yum yums. Will the horrors never end? It’s far too terrifying to set foot in Easterhoose, in case someone glances in your direction as you pass them on the pavement and says, “The nights are fair drawin in eh.” The darkness. The darkness. It’s enough to make you wake up in the night covered in sweat from the fear. If you could get home to sleep in your own bed that is, which you can’t…

There’s a lot of talk about the Scottish Cringe, but the real Cringe making country is the British one. But that was a long time ago. Some of us long for the days when the British state was merely cringe-makingly embarrassing. Those days are now but a distant speck in the rear view mirror. Seat shuffling head in your hands is long gone. We’ve left the days of squirming mortification far behind, and now we’re deep into industrial strength tranquillisers, screaming night terrors, and repressed memory therapy territory. It has been said that the rate at which maturity arrives is directly proportional to the embarrassment that a person or institution can tolerate, which must make members of the British political establishment have an average age of 65 million years. The same as dinosaurs. That explains a lot.

British politics these days makes Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now seem like the…

Has anyone worked out what Britain’s stance on Brexit is yet? Because if they have could they please inform the Conservative government and the Labour party. Conservative ministers brief and counter brief against one another. David Davis disagrees with Phil Hammond. Phil Hammond disagrees with Liam Fox. Liam Fox disagrees with Boris Johnson. Everyone disagrees with Michael Gove. Although to be fair everyone has always disagreed with Michael Gove. Meanwhile the Labour party leadership issues one vague statement on Brexit after another, dancing around the question of membership of the Single Market like a horny 18 year old male virgin who keeps walking past the newagents but is too feart to go in and look at the top shelf magazines in case a friend of his granny sees him.

All that your average member of the public is seeing is an inchoate and bad tempered mess, which is indeed pretty…