politics - Ina Disguise

Depression Britain with Philip Schofield

January 5, 2017 1 Comment

Millionaire Philip Schofield berates mother for spending tenner on herself at Christmas

First of all, sorry I have not been posting regularly. There is something about losing all your work, despite paying a so-called professional a fee for taking care of it, that leaves you feeling rather demoralised.

Work on the collection stopped over Christmas as it was difficult to keep the supplies coming on with the post. The game is moving on, but since my eyes started to deteriorate the sewing is rather behind at present.

Also, this is likely to be a very difficult personal year, as my former friend has quit his position taking care of things. (he didn’t, so it is probably just as well)

Anyway, do take a look at the above article, wherein multi-millionaire Philip Schofield berates a foolish former teacher for spending a tenner on alcohol at Christmas and admitting to it. How different from the bland children’s TV presenter many people remember? He is presumably looking to be on the New Year’s honours list next year for services to the poor.

Speaking of which, the honouring of two civil servants for services to welfare seems to be some kind of Tory attempt to undermine the monarchy, given that even I was shocked by this. Advisers to the Queen should be aware that it is not only the starving poor that view this with some horror. Are we to honour the supervision of starving a sector of the population, at a time when THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH JOBS IN THE UK and the Conservatives, this time in the form of the blisteringly thick Andrea Leadsom, are tooting their little hunting horns to maintain immigration to keep farmers’ wages bills down?

Speaking as someone who has habitually worked twenty hours a day most of my life, although it is now for the princely sum of £5k per annum, (since the fact that carers effectively save £45 to £50k per year in fees to Tory-owned care homes is apparently worthless) I have never stopped in all my working life to begrudge money to people who cannot work or are not considered to be worth employing. I cannot even conceive of being that thoughtless and mean spirited. Shame on you, Philip Schofield.

We are not amused, Boris. We are not amused at all.

business, economics, politics

The Joy of Trump

December 23, 2016 No Comments

Now that he has seduced the rednecks with this lovely performance from his campaign, we are being told that the Rockettes have been told that they are not permitted to refuse to perform for the presidential inauguration. Take a look at the Rockettes for comparative purposes:

This is a clear upgrade on the same theme, Trump is simply announcing a move to the big league of desperately old fashioned American entertainment.

In addition, Putin and Trump have evidently agreed to renew their arms race with a view to telling he rest of the world what to do, presumably involving killing a lot more people.

Expect increased radicalisation, more terror attacks and further moves to divide and conquer at the expense of hippy dipshit Europe in the developing nations. There are cost-effective ways of countering this impending doom scenario, but will anybody in the Conservative government have the time or inclination to notice? This after all gives permission to up national security and buy more weapons with money which is needed to stop sectors of the British population from starving to death.

So, as usual you are being told the opposite of the truth. Buying more weapons is supposed to be the answer to world peace, spending more money will help people by killing them, and America persists in thinking they are policing the rest of the world.

Likewise we have now been told that starving the unemployed does not work No evidence that welfare sanctions work and that they cannot find a way of preserving the income of the one million millionaires, so they cannot figure out how to Brexit. Brexit is essential for your future safety, never mind actually earning a living. The misery of domestic political lies started a very long time before the crash of 2008. As far back as 2002 we were told not to admit to the lack of jobs, because middle class people don’t talk about struggling.

Fuck that, frankly, we have been mismanaged by self-interest for some time. At some point during the Thatcher government, the brakes were taken off the banks in the form of them no longer having to ensure that virtual money represented real money. We have ridden a false wave of spurious growth ever since.

This has not been helped by the fashion in recent decades for employing people who will say yes to anything to pay their mortgage. In real terms the economy of the UK as well as America benefited hugely from a culture of honesty and innovation, which is why Trump is so fond of using this terribly old-fashioned imagery. He has no intention of backing that up, but this is why it is appealing. Those of us who remember the popular post-war culture of honesty, bravery and growth feel some fondness for the spirit of patriotism in the form of working together towards a common goal.

The reason for the encouragement of dishonest behaviour for money, lack of empathy for others, labelling people who do not share our views, and fear of admitting that actually borders are a good thing is corporate expediency, which is what both Clinton and Trump represent in real terms, but on a different basis. Trump is all out for himself and his fellow billionaire, with the same trickle down lies that goes with that that Clinton would support in the form of open globalisation. It is all at your expense. At no point does anybody want to help you, unless it involves you giving them yet more money.

And so the cycle continues, and as long as you use the same shops, vote the same way, respond emotionally with helplessness and play facile games on facebook instead of actually taking action, the cycle will continue until one day you will find yourself walking past a starved corpse on the street and not caring. At all.

Think about that whilst you eat your Christmas dinner.

business, economics, health, politics

Immigration and cultural problems

December 18, 2016 No Comments

Earlier this week, a young lady was posting about unemployed people sitting on their bottoms and complaining about immigrants taking jobs. She was very young and clearly had a job, and so I said:

“Spoken like a person who has never filled a garbage bag with rejection letters.”

She immediately retorted that as someone who has, I was not her target. So I wondered, does this mean you are to pay for your assumed racism with job applications? This is the logical conclusion of her conversation so far, is it not? She is basically saying that in order to have a legitimate complaint against immigration, you need to have an unreasonable obsession with finding work and not getting it.

For one thing, unemployed people sitting on their ass and not applying for jobs no longer exist. These people are sanctioned and are supposed to starve to death under the current rules. Other ‘useless eaters’ such as the disabled are also penalised and told that with three limbs missing (in at least one case) they are fit for work. For another, concerns about immigration rise directly in relation to the availability of work and other resources. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH JOBS IN THE UK TO SUPPORT THE CURRENT POPULATION.

Syrian Girl, a vlogger on youtube, was actually the first person I heard who was keen to ensure that everyone is aware that the European experiment, free movement and the welcoming and dispersal of asylum seekers is actually just about depressing wages and making it easier for employers to exploit workers.

The people who you are keen to blame for their unemployment, meanwhile, used to be employed in factories, in catering establishments and in small businesses which the European experiment has gone quite a long way to phasing out. Manufacturing suffered because it was cheaper to outsource, catering suffered because of the reduction of cash in the economy and the smoking ban, small business suffered because bigger businesses successfully lobbied for concessions to expand, hence the corner shop is being replaced by mini versions of the large supermarket chain. Tesco, Sainsbury’s both have a presence in the smaller main streets to wipe out the sole trader businesses that immigrants and locals alike started when they could not otherwise find work.

Hence, your opportunities are more limited all the time, and more people means more competition for jobs which pay less. No sensible person that genuinely cares about the people around them supports unlimited immigration and a reduction in basic wage and self employed opportunities.

And yet we hear people doing this all the time, associating it with being a ‘right on’ open minded person. The population have been conned into a trap, where they are exploited in order to justify spending their taxes on bombing other countries, whose populations quite rightly decide to leave and seek safety and work elsewhere.

If you are following what I am saying so far, you will now be aware that you are screwed, and that continuing with the same views will ensure that your children, and their children will be even more screwed. The alternative, of pulling out of violence in other countries, of being more prudent with your borders, of safeguarding your own opportunities, may not be fashionable, but it creates a healthier micro level economy and competition for the future. Supporting business at the expense of the individual is basically supporting corporate fascism.

So, the next time somebody calls you a Nazi for being concerned about your country being overcrowded, you can easily explain why the real fascists are pro-Europe, pro-immigration right on liberals who want to see you crushed out of starting your own business, earning small wages for your underemployed situation with one of the big players such as Walmart (Asda) who in turn have direct ties to pharmaceutical companies. They also tend to have places on the Board of Nutrition to tell you what to go out and buy. Hence, you adhere to the nutrition guidelines and wonder why you always feel under par, ending up with heart disease, diabetes and dementia in line with whatever drug is most profitable.

If you particularly relish this, carry on pretending that borders don’t matter.

creativity, games, politics

The Gambia, and a general progress update

December 10, 2016 No Comments

I see the deposed President of the Gambia, Jammeh has decided on a strategy for clinging to power. As a result, many young Gambians are proposing to take to the streets to protest.

It is interesting that scenarios like this still exist. To any hardcore strategy gamer, the plan is merely entertainment, and seems rather simple and quaint. Jammeh has decided to promote key members of the military, denounce the impartial IEC who supervised the vote, and replace them with a corrupt, self selected version who will give him the result he wants.

As a formerly keen player of Tropico 3, I can tell you that this does not lead to long term stability. It does lead to a more violent form of government which employs increasingly immediate means to quash dissent. I have advised my friend in the Gambia to stay well out of it and read some politics in preparation for deposing the guy, rather than rushing out and getting himself killed.

It is unfortunately unlikely that there will be any international intervention. The Gambia has a small population of two million extremely poor people, and since Jammeh’s announcement that he now considers the Gambia to be Muslim, this makes it less likely that anyone will rush to the aid of the population, which is not a good thing if you happen to be Gambian.

What Gambians should bear in mind, is that nobody remembers a dead protester. They remember the great educationalists, the politicians, the social actors that survived.

Jammeh, unfortunately, looks physically healthy, but his current behavior indicates that his knowledge of history is lacking to the extent that he is using techniques that are as old as the hills. There are safer, and better ways of eradicating corrupt rule than getting killed. Look for free texts online and get them printed off or saved if you can, for reading up on historical ways of removing dictators rather than getting yourself shot.

Another nice snippet for this week, is that my blonde bombshell is considered to be acting out again. He has my so far undying admiration for this. Boris, so far, is turning out to be more interesting, more fun and far better looking than his predecessor. Nice one, Boris. We were admiring your powerful brand earlier this evening.

The artwork is not going too badly either. Jemima Khan is looking good, Iain Duncan Smith is on the way, and Darius Guppy is going as expected. I am not sure how many I will release at once when they are complete. Although it is not a taxing daily workload, the curing times mean that these pieces are very slow and space consuming, so I may yet be some time with the artwork.

The game is also progressing nicely, and I should be past graphics preparation and into writing after the weekend. This is the first of three that I want to release at the same time, preferably alongside Best Adventure Ever and Lucifer Ogilvie, so it will be a few months yet.

As you can see, I had to restart the blog again, as wordpress had some problems updating. I sincerely hope that this doesn’t happen again, but I will have to start backing up more often.

economics, politics

Alternative National Survey post 2

October 15, 2016 No Comments

I would like to say that this week has been hilarious, with the number of outraged lower middle class former New Labour Voters, who assume that if a piece of research is not sanitised so that you don’t know how small-minded and thoughtless your views are, it is automatically offensive. It reminds me of a few years back, where people imagined that you could not say the word Muslim if there was a Muslim in the room.

Having worked with Muslims several times, they are not in the slightest bit offended if you say the word Muslim, question them about aspects of faith, or converse about anything at all, actually. Likewise, it is not at all outrageous to point out that if you imagine there are no problems with the very limited amount of immigration in Scotland, you are kidding yourself on, or you hate other Scottish people, including a great many concerned Scottish Asians, far more than you hate immigrants.

There is not a single point of view in that survey that has not been taken from real life situations. If you have been fortunate enough to avoid them, good for you. Other people, who you evidently do not know, have been severely affected by our lovely globalist EU experiment, migrants and native dwellers alike.

Having studied reasons for racism and expressions of racist sentiment, there is nothing unusual about the strain the minimal number of new arrivals have put on communities in Scotland. Likewise there is nothing unusual about areas in England, who have borne the brunt of EU immigration saying that they would rather not have it any more as they are, in some cases literally starving. Apparently many in Scotland have divorced themselves from this, preferring to listen to the totally offensive anti-Conservative (and in some cases anti English) rhetoric coming from the SNP this week, and I say this as someone who has voted SNP for years, and who strongly disapproved of the last thirty years of Conservative policy.

I am fortunate enough to have a very open mind, and to have a wide variety of experience to draw from for the purposes of tolerating the drivel that has been said to me this week. Drivel on top of drivel, because as a middle class Scottish person, I have experienced appalling treatment by the very people expressing such outrage over the selection of views portrayed in the survey. It is perfectly OK for such people to hate other Scottish people, and they like to let rip if they imagine that you have something they don’t.

So, as far as exposing hypocrisy is concerned, the project thus far is a big success. 270 people bothered to read the last blog post on this, but 200 of them were too scared to answer the survey questions, despite the fact they are anonymous, because they imagine if they don’t express their views, then I am somehow invalidated.

Grow up Scotland. This is no way to get what you want.

I will post the results when I have a proportionate representation of Scottish views. This may take some time, since apparently people have been trained out of saying what they actually think.

economics, politics

Mixed Feelings Scotland

October 12, 2016 44 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.

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

Alternative National Survey post 1

October 6, 2016 1 Comment

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 1 Comment

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.

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