Blogging Ina Disguise - Page 41 of 57

A final word on the survey and new work

October 14, 2016 No Comments

Thankfully, I have shut down the survey and presented the results, such as they were. Managed to get a no voter in conversation, but he then tried to get details in order to present the information himself, which basically translates as yet another act of ‘war’ between yes and no, so I am just not going to bother talking about it any further.

I have to say I am thoroughly disillusioned with the entire scenario. As I said in my previous post, Scotland is very good at fighting first, feuding later and only after five centuries or so does anybody bother actually discussing anything. It is very boring to watch.

At the moment, I am pretty annoyed with the SNP’s use of the media in the form of bandying the xenophobia word around a lot and fostering a great deal of ill will with England. I am sure it is politically expedient, but when populations all around Scotland have waited for decades for a better life, it is a bit rich to go on and on about bringing more people in and complaining that their lives aren’t good enough. No, SNP this entire situation comedy isn’t good enough.

There are upsides and downsides to Brexit. Perhaps inadvertently, the English and Welsh, and slightly more yes voters than no voters actually. voted for the best thing for the poor. One thing a low pound does is create unskilled work. I, for one, am delighted at that prospect. You can look on it as swapping variety of goods for circulation of cash, and circulation of cash is always a good thing, because it has its own benefits to your immediate welfare.

I have no idea why the media are toeing this party line of calling 17 million people racists, but the SNP are making very good use of it to WIND YOU UP. The newspapers have the excuse that they will fail entirely if they do not ensure sales by making sure you are permanently outraged. The SNP are using it to distract you from taking care of your own fellow nationals in favour of inviting a gulag full of new residents with no discernable additional jobs. I forsee a very ugly looking and stressed Scotland if this gets to fruition.

I was alarmed by the lack of awareness amongst all voters of the likelihood of unrestricted building in Scotland. How do you think foreign investment is attracted without building the premises that they want to see? Where do you imagine the two million or so extra people I guesstimate after a successful transition to independence and into Europe would go?

Where are the jobs for Kilmarnock, Stranraer, Glenrothes, Argyll? When are you going to prioritise work for the people already here? If you don’t prioritise employment, you are left with two and a half million workers struggling to support the other half of the population (two thirds if you count the new residents) which WILL NOT WORK.

One of the good things about Brexit, is bringing back our lost tourism and creating great conditions for foreign investment. The time to generate the extra jobs needed is NOW. The SNP is wasting valuable time that they should be spending working on this, as far as I can see.

Anyway, as I showed in yesterday’s post, the one thing everyone agrees on is that investment is sorely needed to provide work in deprived areas. Perhaps you could start a more serious and less warlike debate on that basis, instead of bandying around a bunch of false or skewed figures that are essentially meaningless unless the country can pay for itself IN THE FUTURE without oil or suicidal fracking.

The English are entitled to their nationalism. If you try showing a bit of respect for it, you will have a lot more energy to devote to Scotland, and a lot less time will be wasted arguing with people who really do not matter at all.

I have a new series of items coming out, to produce a catalogue of workstyles so far. Thereafter I have the visual novel to complete and the work on Boris will commence. I have no more time for nonsense. If you want to know how to grow a country, it is not difficult to spend a few years reading up on international history, rather than wasting your time being outraged by stuff we have seen a million times before. The socialists who are spouting this internationalist bullshit should be ashamed of themselves. The real socialists are the ones that voted to stop their wages crumbling in the EU referendum as far as I can see. Getting suckered in to a communitarian globalist agenda is a very very bad mistake, and that is what the SNP seems to be buying into.

economics, politics

The Alternative National Survey results – Scotland

October 13, 2016 No Comments

The Alternative National Survey results – Scotland

The History of Scotland has always been kind of boring to my mind. I was never a big Neil Oliver fan. It is boring because it always involves conflict. Conflict between clans over surname, conflict over the reformation, conflict over the correct monarch, conflict over who is wearing the right kilt. Football is a big favourite for hate generation, and now it is the independence issue. We are really great at killing people, but we aren’t very good at cooperating with each other.

Scotland would have made a lot more progress as a nation if we could give up conflict, and if we could give up hating each other. It is very easy to conquer a nation that is so obsessed with hating their neighbours and ignoring anybody that actually talks any sense.

I had a great deal of difficulty persuading no voters to participate in the survey, despite it being tailored to not attempting to hook anybody into anything, and so it looks from the results as if independence supporters are around nine times more motivated as no voters. I tried the political angle, I tried the sectarian angle, approaching people directly in an attempt to get some answers, but to no avail. If no voters are this demotivated, I am not sure how they managed to win the last referendum. Having said that, the typical suspicion of anybody who actually does anything kicked in with many yes voters, and I have been thoroughly exasperated as a result. If nobody does anything, nobody discusses anything, which means an inevitably unhealthy atmosphere.

Anyway despite this, we have some results:

Q1 – How much do you know about economics?

Yes voters feel they know more about economics – 34% rather than 23%, feel they know a lot, with almost 2 percent more no voters believing they know nothing at all about economics

Q2 – How much do you rely on politicians to do your thinking for you?

No voters are more likely to trust politicians to do their thinking for them – 23% rather than 6%. A whopping 56% of yes voters saying they are just people with careers, more than double the No voters.

Q3- Did you vote remain?

86.5 percent of yes voters thought that remain was the best option for Scotland, whereas only 46% of no voters thought this. 7% of no voters and 4% of yes voters voted for Brexit on behalf of the UK in this sample. 6.35% of yes voters in the sample voted for Brexit because they think it is the best option for Scotland, whereas none of the no voters believed it was the best option for Scotland.

Q4 -Do you believe in Scottish independence?

82% of yes voters believe that independence is the best decision for Scotland. The other 18 percent believe in open, socialist values. 23 percent of no voters vote no for political reasons 15.4 percent fear losing their jobs, and 61.5 percent believe in the union.

Q5 – What vision do you have for an independent Scotland?

65%of yessers imagine that an independent Scotland should focus on the national economy and world status, whereas 45.5% of no voters believe that Scotland should focus on a society which demonstrates the importance of work and social mobility. 25 % of yessers and 18 percent of no voters believe in an open and inclusive society with higher taxation to benefit others. Naturally the no voters are more sceptical, with 18 percent believing that independence is all about punishing the rich.

Q6 – How irritated are you by never getting the government that you vote for?

Unsurprisingly 90 percent of yes voters are irate and want to leave the union right now. The most popular answer for no voters was that they did not care as long as they could pay the bills, at 54 percent, the others admit to faint irritation at not getting the government they vote for, but this could mean within Scotland.

Q7 – Do you think there are enough jobs in Scotland to sustain a larger population?

Frighteningly, nearly 87 percent of yes voters believe that there are enough jobs in Scotland to sustain a larger population, whereas 77 percent of no voters believe that there are not.

Q8 – If it were to lead to more jobs and a larger population, would you be in support of?

37% of yessers and 50% of noes would like to see incentives for business in deprived areas rather than more spending on public services in Scotland. At last we can see some consensus!! 68% of yessers can see the need to develop improved port services for exports. 41 percent of yessers would like more taxation, versus only 8.3 percent of noes.

Q9 – How many months of unemployment have you experienced in the last decade?

53% of yes voters and 69% of no voters have been in constant work for the last decade, so there goes any theory of deprivation as being a factor in voting decisions. The no voters have had less severe time periods of unemployment overall, but they too have had unstable employment over the last ten years

Q10 – How do you really feel about immigration and social class?

65% of yes voters believe that Scotland is a tolerant country who are friendly to everyone, whereas no voters are more likely to believe in a cautious approach to immigration at 69%. A very small number on both sides voted for no migrants at all, or believed that the three areas mentioned were evil whingers. Other answers were evenly split between no and yes, including the honest answer about immigration and its relationship with social class. Good on you if you picked that one, that is the most common private moan and nobody admits to it in public.

As a brief conclusion, debating tactics are woefully lacking and I experienced quite a lot of very tiresome abuse to gather this information. If independence supporters and campaigners want to avoid sounding whiny and repeating the same information, they might try asking questions instead of throwing virtual rocks at people. An additional problem is the rise of sectarianism as an issue within the debate, and the suggestion that class is an issue is also of increasing relevance due to some SNP policies. My advice to those on both sides is to just accept that independence and politics are two separate issues. Our careerist politicians are just that – they will very quickly adapt and form more relevant parties. Or perhaps you could actually do it yourself?

Thank you Ina

You’re welcome.

economics, politics

Mixed Feelings Scotland

October 12, 2016 No Comments

Two topics today. One, the attempt by a journalist at the National to make independence a class war and two, the unthinking accusations of xenophobia related to Teresa May’s Brexit speech.

A possible third is Ruth Davidson’s objections to grammar schools in Scotland, because she went to a comprehensive in Buckhaven and turned out OK. Good for Ruth. She is actually from Largo, which has some of the most expensive undersized property I have seen on my travels in search of a house around Scotland. Ruth’s upbringing was far from deprived.

Neither was mine, but unlike my siblings I also attended a comprehensive school in Glasgow. Within the first two weeks, I had been identified and targetted as a ‘snob’ by the kids from the estate, which is notorious but basically just a bit odd in its defensive class-based self supression. One of the exs, a builder who was earning at least seven hundred pounds a week, claimed that I came from a ‘big, posh house’ and was to be treated like shit because ‘he had no capital and needed a council hoose.’ This is not an unusual attitude from his neck of the woods, but like me, he was considered an outsider because he had actually achieved something and so we ended up in the same rejected social circle.

Making independence a class issue is, as I have said before a really big mistake. That means making aspiration a bad thing, and we know from experience that killing aspiration kills the country. Having been at the mercy of inverse snobbery for my entire life, between school and searching for the work I actually studied for in Glasgow, I can tell you that people like me have a great deal to worry about if you start making independence about class.

If I had got the career I studied for, I would have been able to afford the children I could not afford to have. I would have been able to afford the pension I do not have, and if I had been able to do this in Scotland, I would have been able to support my elderly parents whilst I did that. Instead what I and many others got was a bin bag full of rejection letters. No I am not kidding – I actually took it to the jobcentre at one point for a back to work interview whilst claiming benefits and they told me to take it away because it was too much for them. One DIY supermarket manager who actually took the time to interview me said he had had much the same experience as a middle class Hindu in Glasgow. Instead of the work he studied for, he eventually took a job shelf stacking and eventually became manager of the same store.

In case you assume that I am going to talk about ‘British jobs for British workers’ as being a xenophobic thing, I am not. Like me, my friends struggled to find work, and either moved out of the country, stacked shelves, wasted their education working in bars and gradually gave up hope of getting anything out of their lives that they actually wanted. Graduates don’t tend to talk about it, because it is a source of personal failure and miserable embarrassment, and nobody ever feels sorry for you or makes it part of their ‘class struggle for the worker.’ During the protests about nursery nurses many years ago, I remember tearing a strip off my super lefty friend for his protestations over £18k a year for nursery nurses, when people who study for far longer get no consideration at all.

So, according to Twitter today, apparently the rights of migrants are superior to the rights of people who were born here, who support their relatives here, and whose lives were constantly maligned here. I lost count of the number of bitches I encountered in temporary work who sneered at my ‘posh’ voice as I did their filing.

Thanks a lot Scotland. For goodness sake don’t bother getting an education, or working to actually pay for anything because according to the latest ‘class struggle’ theory, anything you actually do with your life will be taken away in taxes to pay for people who more sensibly had babies at fifteen and got themselves a council house in order to sneer at the ‘snobs’ who actually wanted to work.

This is not what my great grandfather was fighting for when he attracted those tanks to George Square. He would not be impressed, although, like my experience of the wider public, my father was rejected by his revolutionary communist family when he started his business as being against the interests of the masses. This is not progressive, and it does not provide opportunity or widespread growth. It simply encourages a friction which is good for nobody, and doesn’t get us anywhere. If you want suppressed wages, suppressed lives and a dearth of opportunity, you are welcome to carry on without further input.

motivation

Why aren’t you happy?

October 11, 2016 No Comments

Getting the work out in time for the Supermoon was very tiring, however I stayed awake for 44 out of 48 hours to do it, because although I am not at all superstitious or into astrology, the theory with a lunar event is that it causes change. Very possibly this change is entirely in your imagination, but what the hell, let’s have some of that. The icon is also based on the idea of switching polarity, and so far, it seems to be working, because I am losing my fear of self-exposure to my pre-determined and rather limited extent. (I do not intend to embarrass Wolfe by becoming a public figure) I did crawl back under my stone with some relief, however, after a couple of chaotic days ensuring that there were new items to put out in the next couple of issues of Tatler.

Many years ago I retrieved a copy of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ from the box room and I have to say, I found it one of the most helpful self-help titles that I have ever read. Transactional analysis, carried to its logical extent even when dealing with your own emotions, is extremely helpful. In recent years, however, I have noticed a flaw in the motivation market, stemming quite possibly from a misunderstanding of how the ‘I’m OK’ part really works.

You are supposed to self-examine before you decide that you are OK. It is not sufficient to simply decide that your wish to make a billion bucks/get promoted/marry at least four times/stop speaking to people you don’t like is OK. If you aren’t happy in the first place, no amount of weight loss, money, women/men, moving on from unfinished business is going to help. Happiness is very much a decision that you make. The difference in Eastern philosophy and Western is said to stem from this decision – Western philosophy, and in fact economics, stems from the premise that you spend your life seeking happiness, where Eastern stems from the premise that you are born with happiness, and your duty is to preserve and protect that happiness.

From an economic perspective, you can see why Western economies have performed better, and you can also see why you just aren’t happy. Happiness does not keep you shopping to make yourself feel better or replace all those belongings that you lost when moving on from that unfortunate person you got tired of. Many of the thoughtless masses suffer from this inbuilt sense of something missing, since they have been educated, particularly in recent years, to purchase rather than create things that make them happy.

Persuading us that we are unhappy with our appearance means that we spend money on clothing, surgery, makeup, diets etc. Persuading us that we are unhappy with our partner can mean that we spend money on cars, houses, meeting a new partner, socialising, and changing our appearance. Can you see how this works? Happiness is bad for the economy. Introspection is, therefore, also bad for the economy, because we cannot have people self examining to the point where their happiness means that all those lovely purchases, and all these charming new people become meaningless.

My grandmother apparently used to joke that ‘man must strive,’ an open ended but meaningful statement which covered everything from seeking work to nagging. What we should really strive for is the sense of inner contentment that we lack through the constant bombardment of reasons why our adequacy could be improved by the next new person/object/bit of gossip rather than the development of our inner self or skillset.

In my case, the very thing I was so ashamed of, having romantic feelings, is now the thing that defines me and in a huge respect develops me as a person, despite there being no positive outcome to look forward to. Paradoxically, the thing that should make me unhappy, is now the thing I will be most known for, in my anonymous way, and despite the constant driving sense of stress, the current path leads to a better developed outcome. This idea makes me happy. When I compare it to the happiness of your average, thoughtless, high earning couple, destined to divorce when he spots a younger model, or she spots a sugar daddy, I wonder to myself whether I am not far luckier than they are, despite my limited, lonely and despondent life.

Why aren’t you happy?

business, economics, politics

Kindness is a Sin

October 11, 2016 No Comments

Businesses do not exist to take care of people, they exist to extract money and provide something that the customer wants. The businesses that tell you that they are taking care of you are often the worst of the lot. Take the cuddly advertisements for chemical companies, which often use childlike graphics to persuade you that they are doing something good for you, your family and your immediate environment whilst doing the exact opposite.

Until this point in global history, governments have been, with the exception of very unusual circumstances, bigger and in possession of better credit than businesses, and people have trusted them to take care of their welfare. TTIP and TIPP seek to reverse that. I forsee several developing nations collapsing entirely, jobs going to the ASEAN nations whilst America and Europe become rather backward regions where most of the population exist at the mercy of the very few. This will be enhanced by modifying education and the media to enable people to genuinely believe that money means merit. A scanty look at the people you know will tell you that the smart ones are not the same as the rich ones. It is a matter of priorities as well as your ability to look convincing when you say yes to anything said to you.

As I have mentioned in several previous articles, it is in your hands. You as the consumer, could reverse this progress tomorrow if you stopped feeding the companies large enough to control governments. You probably won’t do it. Why? Because you have a busy life, scraping your living from your employer, who requires you to say yes in order to pay for the roof over your head etc etc. This makes, for example, going to the supermarket more convenient, which in itself precludes you from starting a grocer’s, deli, goods store etc because everyone else is, like you, going to the supermarket to hand over their money to the same people. It is as much a question of convenience as it is belief.

It is not complicated to think that if you do enrich smaller businesses, it puts them in a position where the barriers to entry to compete with larger businesses in a hugely monopolistic situation are more manageable. I would like to know what happened to Anti-trust laws, now only non-cronies appear to be prosecuted for creating situations in which small versions of large supermarkets, for example, put successful corner shops out of business. Another example was Remax, who had the employees pay for over-expansion to reduce their competition. We all live in an inherently corrupt society, where we are told that we have no power because we have little money and we sit back and believe it whilst sustaining a system that cannot work well for us.

In the event that you have a problem, the simple answer is to pick up your wallet and go elsewhere. That is the nature of capitalism. There is now no other way of rebelling against a system that does not suit us, because we allowed businesses to become bigger than government, and the trade agreements that America is conning our middle management politicians into signing will nail this to the wall. Never trust a corporatist. America is a corporatist country. Mussolini had very interesting things to say about corporatism, feel free to look it up yourself.

In contrast, I wake up with a list of things I would like to do to help people every morning. Many of those things make no sense to anyone but me. I do not think that it is odd to do this, it would take more effort not to. I explained this to many of my friends before I removed them from my life. Why did I remove them? I was told that this was a crazy way to live, that you should always consider yourself first. When it comes to parting with my money I understand this, but not when it comes to giving people what they actually want.

What everyone, no matter how scatty, longs for is a sense of becoming what they dream of being. There is no shame in asking for what you want, however oddly this is presented. There is shame in rejecting what you want when it is offered to you.

My personal system of responsibility is entirely different from someone who has other wishes, for their children’s future, or a new car, or their parents to be neatly tidied away rather than free to make a mess, keep them awake and generally tell them they are awful. My responsibility is to the soul. I think there should be more people like me, and less corporations who exist to take your money, your future opportunities and those of your children for their own growth, in order to dictate the future of a declining planet. I am goddess of my own personal religion. I do not ask anyone to join it, but I do care to point out that my crazy, kind little niche is a lot more pleasant than the current future of the Western world. I do not play by the rules, because the rules are wrong in the first place. Dreams are real. Reality is transient. I plan to remain defiantly kind, even if it means my inability to tug my forelock or respect the cash means that I will be financially poor.

economics, politics

Alternative national survey results post 3

October 10, 2016 No Comments

I am loving this new piece.

It has been a difficult and rather tense week, all things considered, but I have a reasonable number of votes, thanks to my understanding friends on twitter and facebook.

Definitely well worth doing. As someone who worked in research jobs for twenty odd years, between my alternative investigations into banking, utilities, engineering and the NHS in Scotland, my decision to make a survey which was not boring and which had recognisable themes has paid off rather well for the speed of results gathering and most of the attention it attracted.

What we should end up with is a picture of motivation, idealism, economic awareness and flexibility amongst a small sample of the Scottish population. The fact that we cannot do anything on the scale of the original survey is unfortunate, but I wanted to give you a snapshot of what is right and what is wrong, and what we need to tweak to improve life for everybody no matter what happens.

These surveys cost money. Only the first one hundred answers are free on surveymonkey, in case you ever do one of these, after this you need to pay to get the results you went out and got, which is rather annoying, but I will sort it out tomorrow hopefully and then we should have an idea how best to unite, so to speak, rather than remaining a divided and conquered nation. More information is always a good thing, especially when it comes to communication in Scotland.

If you are thinking of doing something similar, be aware that it does not matter how bland or clinical you make it, you will get much the same armchair criticism as surveys are boring and tiresome and people get restless after the first ten questions, so you need to be incisive and keep it short. Even then, there are always pedants with ideas which bear no resemblance to the ones you actually want to hear about. About one in twenty people will give you twice as much information as you want, and then tell you how to do your job. Some people assume that they are stupid, so you need to provide a little relaxation in the form of levity or outrage to get the best results, so that the ice is nice and smashed.

A much larger sample of no voters would have been nice, but I did try approaching them personally as well as via general tweets, and they seem to be remarkably shy and/or unmotivated to answer any questions. They need to be provided with this information as well, so that they can make an informed decision, so do not assume that this is a one-sided thing.

Again, thank you very much, all who helped get the word out, and I will go through the results as soon as I liberate them from the collection box on surveymonkey.

Ina

Published on October 10, 2016 17:21 • 2 views

economics, politics

Snobbery in the SNP and Loki the rapper

October 9, 2016 No Comments

Today I was called a ‘pleb at the bottom of the heap’ by an SNP member who objected to my raising the question of the SNP commitment to Europe.

Let me demonstrate what a ‘pleb at the bottom of the heap’ in Scotland looks like:

Underemployed and unemployed graduates – the SNP have done nothing for these people, in fact have insisted on maintaining an influx of migrant graduates with fresh start grants despite there being no jobs for them. Many of these people do not vote SNP or for independence because they have correctly identified that they will have to go to England to find work and ill feeling between Scotland and England is not a good idea.
People who fell through the educational net. These people used to be sent to war by the UK, when they still had ground wars. The Conservatives are attempting to revive a dead fighting strategy with their announcement of cadet corps in schools. Let me remind you that people who fell through the educational net include Richard Branson.
People who have had to become ill in order to keep a roof over their heads. We still have a points culture of vulnerability which make it necessary for people to either have children they do not necessarily have the means to support, or develop illnesses to get sufficient points to obtain social housing.
People who would like to live in the house they bought and paid for, who do not have the means to keep funding increases in council tax and alternative taxation.
Elderly people who have worked all their lives and do not wish to disclose their means to the council, who cannot get the help they are entitled to as they would render themselves open to exploitation by the social work department. This means that they are charged for services which other people get for nothing, which then means they are considerably worse off.
People who live in areas who have been subject to large migrant populations, who object to people having unreported gangfights in the street, people defecating on their doorstep, and people getting attacked, sexually assaulted and raped in the street.

This is the last of half a dozen personal attacks, mostly on the basis of the survey this week. I actually had an individual attempt to tell me yesterday what questions I should be asking, which bore no resemblance to the questions I was actually asking in the survey. I told him to go and design his own survey. That is rather the point of my doing it. There is nothing to stop you asking the questions you want the answers to in the absence of anybody being able to discuss anything in the SNP or independence movement.

Like Loki, and paradoxically for much the same reasons, I now have serious misgivings about the SNP after the bullshit of last week. I no longer have any confidence that Scotland is good at anything apart from arguing about things that don’t matter in lieu of things that actually do.

I do not have a problem with the SNP making a directly oppositional stance to the Conservatives. What I do object to is the faux moral superiority demonstrated directly from the First Minister last week. Leadership should not be about grabbing the high ground and seeking yet more sources of conflict, but coming up with strategies to counteract the inevitable friction caused in the general population. Were I giving advice, it would be for the SNP to demonstrate how they plan to ease the problems for several local areas and actually improve things for the existing population before committing Scotland to taking on even more of the same problems.

I have voted SNP for years. I have supported independence until this point, but I now have serious doubts as to the honesty and awareness of SNP supporters of what is important to Scottish people. I had a somewhat idealistic view of making things better for Scotland via independence. I now think that all it will do is make things worse, for all of us ‘plebs at the bottom of the heap’ that constitute most of the Scottish population, actually.

Ironically I now see why Loki the rapper was so keen to see who would fund his book. He was actually doing a pre-book survey to see who actually gives a shit about Scottish people.

economics, politics

Alternative National Survey post 1

October 6, 2016 No Comments

Please find above, the link to the Alternative National Survey. You will find it is worded as if you are having a conversation with an actual person, and so you will find slightly off beam additions to each response. Each question is tailored to answer a different set of questions, which I will explain when I have sufficient data. It does not matter what you vote, or whether you get the answer right, it just matters whether you answer and/or select from the options available.

Please do not insist on attempting to speak to me about making it look like every other survey you have ever done, because I will not be interested. This is not a job interview, and even if I presented it the way you think you want it, you would not give me the job, because I am not just like you, thank goodness. There is nothing at all wrong with this, but this is an informal survey, so feel free to answer as honestly as you can or not bother, depending on how tramped on your precious tippy toes are feeling.

I would particularly welcome answers from No voters, Orange Lodge members etc to get a more even picture of what people think when they imagine independence and how they view economics. My overall impression is that class tension is what really divides Scotland, and yesterday’s performance reminded me just how much class hatred masquerades as liberalism in Scotland.

Therefore the survey has been worded by a posh (first generation) person, with one conservative (Govanhill) and one communist (school truant from Govan) parent, with a huge amount of experience of people all over Scotland, who once specialised in dealing with ethnic minorities and migrants, specifically to encourage honest and possibly slightly outraged answers. If you cant deal with it, it is because you do not understand it.

Thank you to all who responded so far and took it in good spirit, I will give you a full explanation when I have a decent and reasonably representative chunk of responses. We need more no voters at the moment.

Thanks

Ina

creativity, economics, politics

Shifting Cultural Boundaries – John Cleese gate

October 3, 2016 No Comments

Shifting Cultural boundaries – John CleeseGate

It has been a very hard week. I have finally finished this piece:

I think the Misery Mandala went rather well. It is not cheap, but nothing worthwhile is. I refuse to undercharge as I would rather wait than work for no money. Besides which, I have to look on any work that sells as working capital.

I am working on three design concept strands at the moment, so I should bring out a catalogue of sorts towards the spring of next year. It is a lot of work, but I think it is a worthwhile idea to bring out an interior design concept to distribute to people who may be confused by my lack of compromise in terms of interior fashions. I cannot stand lightbulbs in fishbowls, for example, so I am unlikely to be the next Kelly Hoppen.

I was attacked by two Scottish Nationalists last week for my comments on the quick way of building our economy to withstand the demands of remaining in Europe. As someone who has a keen interest in Cultural Economics, I think grumpy old men should stop looking at their wrinkles and assuming that they know better, because a steady ‘diet’ of BBC and mutual backstabbing is unlikely to broaden their minds. Talking of which, I would like to advise that you be very gentle with John Cleese, who rather stuck his foot in it with his complaints about Scottish journalists this week.

John Cleese has lived through a period where the British Empire died, where Scottish people were considered cannon fodder, and then whingers who were to be starved of income for political purposes, and he has benefitted enormously from Britain just the way it was. He cannot be expected to evolve, because he is in the downward spiral phase of his life.

Yet that empire phase was considered charming by many Scots as well as English. Only a week or two ago my mother suddenly chastised me for my lack of conservatism, since she was brought up in a militarist, monarchist, conservative family who struggled to feed themselves and the poor down the hall for decades via extremely hard work. Her father died very young thanks to damage sustained in WW1. Her brother did very well during WW2 and like many of their generation, they remember the war as being a paradoxically happy period in British life, when everyone worked together.

What we are seeing at the moment, is a massive cultural shift, not to the left or to the right, but to a consideration of what is best for the future. Cleese would like to see a return to the past, like many Englishmen and Brexit voters. This is unlikely, but a stronger sense of English nationalism is not something that as Scottish people, we should misunderstand and call racism. They want to have some national pride. So would we.

It is a nonsense to suggest that nobody should express feelings of nationalism when we as Scottish nationalists are doing that when we express our wish for independence. As I was saying this morning, to suggest that curtailing free movement in Europe limits graduates is also a nonsense when Scottish graduates have to move to England to get work experience, frequently stay and run newspapers, (and indeed the whole UK in the case of Scottish politicians) and only after acquiring experience in English supported businesses come back to work at home. English rule made sure that was the case by the simple method of destroying our industrial economy.

The whole point of independence is that we can change that, create a real economy based on the principle that Scottish, not English, culture is superior when in Scotland.

We need to regain our sense of Scottish pride and encourage greatness at home. Taking the piss out of each other, expressing whining outrage at the rantings of a grumpy old man like Cleese, or rising to the bait when media figures choose to be offensive is not helpful.

I was extremely irritated by the two nats that had a go at me for making some very pertinent points last week and I actually considered leaving the SNP as being a tiresome, parochial and small minded party, until I considered that both of the men trying to discourage me were from the old school, tartan trouser and folk music generation that we as a country need to grow out of, in stature and mentality.

So, I implore you, think bigger and educate the boors, rather than simply labelling them and moving on. If you find yourself getting annoyed, take a step back and look at the situation again. You are right, and they are wrong. Be patient. be broad minded and stay sharp. It is going to be a hard two years.

economics, politics

Chitty Chat

September 27, 2016 No Comments

chitty chat

I have no particular topic today, so just a bunch of random thoughts.

I watched the debate between Trump and Clinton, and am shocked to see the number of Americans who are completely incapable of thinking politically. Two people today that I bothered trying to talk to not only failed to notice that I was not American, but assumed I was a Clinton supporter. Their political arguments seemed to consist of repeating everything Trump says. This lack of awareness or education is quite frightening.

Many relatively sane Americans are now comparing Trump to Hitler, but to be honest he is more of a Mussolini figure. Actually, scratch that, even Mussolini was advanced in comparison with Trump, who now looks like a whining self advertisement with no actual awareness of what he is doing, or why.

It is rather insulting to have to watch it to be honest, never mind seeing the mind numbing response of Americans to watching Trump eat his own feet in front of millions of people. Why is someone this dodgy even being considered as a candidate? Why would anyone consider voting for him?

Apart from that, the mandala is in its final stages, and I have found that galleries are very keen to see what I can do with furniture, so I will be working on a quick furniture collection over the next month or so. The carpets and handbags are quite expensive, so I figure some furniture items and creating a design concept that can be acquired might provide me with more of a portfolio. I do find two dimensions very limiting, so I cannot imagine doing much in the way of painting.

The Boris Experience is not going well. I find I like him less as he gets older, from the books so far, and I am shocked to find Stanley is not the person I thought he was at all. From a seemingly kindly and pleasant individual, I now find that he is a sort of gadabout socialite, and Boris, in comparison seems relatively human and serious. This was not what I expected at all.

I am also having some problems with vision at the moment, which is a bit limiting when you are trying to do any reading. I am hoping that this improves, but it is not fun when you are used to having perfect eyesight.

Apart from that, I should be doing a mandala post shortly, so please do look out for that. It is an interesting piece.

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