Good Morning Britain by Aztec Camera and Scottish Independence

26 March 2013 23:37

Well the date has been set for the Scottish Independence referendum, it’ll take place on 18th, September 2014. Already there have been quite a few programmes on about it with talking heads all trying to get us to do whatever it is they want. It’ll be interesting to see how the campaign unfolds. One thing I do know for sure – if we are inundated by Tory toffs telling us what to do – it’ll be fatal for the union!

Apparently most women are undecided, me included and I suspect I might still be undecided when I walk into the voting booth to cast my vote. I must admit that I’m nostalgic for a Britain which doesn’t actually exist any more, which you probably guessed from all the old books which I read. Just as a matter of interest, as we’re all obsessed with the weather in the UK, according to Angela Thirkell’s books the summers weren’t any better way back in the 30s,40s and 50s. I know, that’s me going off at a tangent again, it’s just that it’s so much colder here than it should be at this time of the year and we’ll probably have a white Easter!

Anyway, I like Aztec Camera, a Scottish band from the 1980s. Have a listen to Good Morning Britain, the lyrics are definitely not upbeat, but the tune is. The film running behind them is interesting.

Songwriters: FRAME, RODDY
Words and music by roddy frame

Jock’s got a vote in parochia
Ten long years and he’s still got her
Paying tax and and doing stir
Worry about it later.
And the wind blows hot and the wind blows cold
But it blows us good so we’ve been told
Music’s food ’til the art-biz folds
Let them all eat culture.

Chorus:
The past is steeped in shame,
But tomorrow’s fair game,
For a life that’s fit for living
Good morning britain.

Twenty years and a loaded gun
Funerals, fear and the war ain’t won
Paddy’s just a figure of fun
It lightens up the danger.
And a corporal sneers at a catholic boy
And he eyes his gun like a rich man’s toy
He’s killing more than celtic joy
Death is not a stranger.

Taffy’s time’s gonna come one day
It’s a loud sweet voice and it won’t give way
A house is not a holiday
Your sons are leaving home neil.
In the hills and the valleys and far away
You can hear the song of democracy
The echo of eternity
With a rak-a-rak-a feel.

Chorus

From the tyne to where to the thames does flow
My english brothers and sisters know
It’s not a case of where you go
It’s race and creed and colour.
From the police cell to the deep dark grave
On the underground’s just a stop away
Don’t be too black, don’t be too gay
Just get a little duller.

But in this green and pleasant land,
Where I make my home, I make my stand
Make it cool just to be a man,
A uniform’s a traitor.
Love is international
And if you stand or if you fall,
Just let them know you gave your all,
Worry about it later.

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Categories: Current Affairs, Music, Personal, Politics

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NHS Reform!!

22 February 2012 13:59

Do you remember those Conservative adverts in the run up to the last election The NHS Will Be Safe in Our Hands – or words to that effect? Nobody really believed it, which is probably one of the main reasons why the Tories didn’t actually win the election. Not that you can believe that, given the way things have gone, with their Lib-Dem coalition partners rolling over and not doing what they should be doing – which is to save us from the worst excesses of the lunatic right wingers.

I happened to be working in the NHS the last time the Conservatives got into power (Thatcher) and in no time flat they had their claws on the Health Service and were busy ‘reforming’ away like mad. This meant that one whole tier of the NHS was abolished and thousands lost their jobs. At the time I was running the library in an NHS county HQ and obviously that was deemed to be something which was completely unnecessary. I actually think that the politicians must have thought that it was a library full of novels, rather than the medical books and journals which furnished the shelves.

So at great cost people were put out of work, and here we are 30 years on and the Tories are doing exactly the same thing again. The reorganisation is going to cost £billions and it will result in a worse service and is no doubt the preliminaries of the Health Service being privatised in the end.

There is definitely waste in the NHS as there is with any large organisation but the way to deal with it is to stop tinkering and slashing services and just identify where things could be improved and do it.

Will the Lib-Dems wake up and do the decent thing – or are they too feart (frightened) of Flashman and the rest of the bullies? The people who do not support Cameron wholeheartedly have not even been invited to any discussions. The word ‘fascists’ comes to mind.

I’m just glad that all this nonsense seems not to be going ahead in Scotland, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking about our ‘cousins’ in England.

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Categories: Current Affairs, Politics, Rant

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Riots in England

10 August 2011 22:50

I did predict rioting this summer in a previous post but I must admit that I didn’t think they would take the form that they have. I thought it would be like the riots in the early 1980s which were the result of the policies of that ghastly disgrace of a woman who went by the name of Margaret Thatcher.

Mind you I think that if you look back to those days when she was going about telling us all that there was no such thing as society then it’s quite clear that yet again we can lay the blame at her door. I’m making absolutely no excuse for the thugs and thieves who have been causing mayhem on the streets of various cities in England over the past few nights but a culture of greed and corruption has been nurtured over the past 30 years or so especially in the ‘institutions’ of banks, Parliament and the metropolitan police and youngsters can see that those who already have – get even more.

When we have people like David Cameron as our Prime Minister and Boris Johnson as the Mayor of London, and we all know how badly they behaved when they were young, then it’s difficult to listen to them condemning the behaviour of thugs when they themselves were thugs as youngsters. The only differences between Cameron et al is the fact that they were from wealthy families and when as members of the Bullingdon Club they trashed The Ritz and thieved from Fortnums, their parents were able to pay for the damage and for some reason wealthy people get off with it. They aren’t seen as thugs but just young men up to ‘high jinks’.

Almost the very first thing which Thatcher did when she got into power was to strengthen the police force and pay them more money. It quickly became clear that this was so that she would have them completely on her side when she came to tackle the miners and close all of the mines down. So when David Cameron announced that he was cutting the police force I was absolutely gobsmacked. He might call himself ‘son of Maggie’ but he didn’t learn much from her. It’s obvious that the police decided that they weren’t going to do much to stop the trouble on the streets. Why would they when they don’t feel that their jobs are safe? It was in their best interest to step back and look overwhelmed, in the hope that there would be an outcry about the lack of policing and Cameron would have to do yet another U turn and cancel the cuts to the police force.

There hasn’t been any trouble in Scotland and that’s probably because they don’t want to be seen as following in the footsteps of anyone in England. The same thing happened when English football so-called supporters were famous for being hooligans. There was never any trouble in Scotland because the Scottish football supporters liked to see themselves as being above all that nonsense – and they were. But the authorities in some countries have been advising people not to travel to the UK which is very annoying especially as the Edinburgh Festival has just begun.

It has been great to see the communities in England rallying round and clearing up and we should never forget that there are far more decent people than there are mindless morons around.

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Categories: Current Affairs

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Michael Gove – again

27 June 2011 00:32

This isn’t really what you would call a blogpost, if I were on Twitter I would tweet it but I’m not, so here goes!

I’ve always been a Monty Python fan and The Meaning of Life is on at the moment. Unfortunately it’s on a channel with adverts, which I hate, so between the adverts I switched over to BBC News 24 and what did I see shooting across the bottom of the screen?

The Education Secretary Michael Gove has warned teachers that if they go on strike on Thursday they risk damaging their reputations.

At this rate I’ll have to stop watching the news because I’m just about apoplectic. How can a man (and I use that word very loosely) who behaved as he has in the past even think of warning anybody about their reputation. Being an absolute swine seems to have done him no harm in life, maybe the rest of us have just been too damn decent for our own good!

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Categories: Current Affairs, Politics, Rant

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Public Servants’ Pensions

26 June 2011 12:10

I’ve just seen that absolute scunner Michael Gove – so called Education Minister – on TV. He was talking about the proposed teachers strike at the end of the week in England and Wales. Basically he was inciting parents to strike break and go into classrooms in place of teachers to keep them open. It doesn’t seem to hve occurred to him that they are unlikely to have any training in dealing with large numbers of young people and that most of them won’t have had a disclosure, which means that he is potentially allowing exceedingly dodgy characters access to other peoples’ children. Being a parent does not mean that you are automatically a good person.

Speaking of dodgy characters, in my opinion Michael Gove should be sitting in a prison cell at the moment as he was one of the worst MPs involved in the expenses scandal. He flipped his home and was gleefully getting the tax payer to pay for things which he had no right to do. Very interestingly he was keen to give our Prime Minister’s mother-in-law’s shop the business. Also he was quite happy to take his family off to a high class spa and chalked the whole thing up on expenses to be paid by the tax payer. How he can sit and pontificate on the rights of people who work so much harder than he does for so little pay is just beyond me. The man has no shame obviously.

The government seems to think that all teachers and local government workers, including people on very low pay, should quite happily agree to having to work a lot longer for much less of a pension. Apparently, it’s our fault because we are all living longer and the pensions are no longer affordable. That just makes me scream, I don’t know about you but I know absolutely loads of people who have died recently and most of them weren’t lucky enough even to reach pension age as it is now. It may be that people living in the affluent south of England are living longer but in the north things are very different. It’s because of a combination of genetics, poverty and the cold, damp climate.

Would it not be sensible to concentrate on the unemployment problem. If there were more people in work and paying tax and fewer people on unemployment benefit then that would go a long way to solving the problem of a black hole in the pension budget. At the moment, people are being educated only to end up in a dole queue, no matter how many degrees they have.

Better still, the government should tell the banks, who let’s not forget started this whole problem with their stupidity and greed, to stump up money to plug the hole instead of awarding themselves massive tax-free bonuses.

Please take a look at this link, from the Daily Telegraph, but be warned, you may need a sick bag/high blood pressure tablets!

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Categories: Current Affairs, Politics, Rant

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Loch Lomond – the theme park?!!

13 May 2011 12:49

I was listening to the Scottish news a few nights ago and found myself cursing when Jackie Bird said that there would be a report on plans for a theme park on the banks of Loch Lomond. Oh for the good old days when everything was controlled by the local council which ensured that the whole area remained unspoiled.

I suppose it did mean that there wasn’t much for tourists to spend their money on when they got there but I don’t think that’s a bad thing when you think of the tourist tat that most similar attractions are selling. After all the best things in life are free. The scenery,wildlife and atmosphere is the main attraction. It doesn’t exist when you stick blots on the landscape in the shape of massive man-made constructions.

When Loch Lomond was made a ‘national park’ some years ago I knew it spelled a death sentence to the place that I grew up with. Sure enough, what had been a completely unspoiled place due mainly to the fact that the local council refused planning permission for most things, has sprouted shopping centres and golf courses and is quickly losing its special charm.

It’s not what I call progress. The theme park which is being planned for Balmaha is a nightmarish thought and I really hope that it doesn’t come to fruition. But money talks so I suppose it’s a done deal already. It’s sacrilege!

If you want to read more about it have a look here.

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Categories: Current Affairs, Rant, Scenery

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Women and voting

8 May 2011 22:11

Thankfully all of the electioneering is over now, it was a seven week long campaign in Scotland so there were quite a lot of party political broadcasts to dodge in that time. I count myself as being moderately interested in politics, if only to see what lies and excuses they can come up with for their nonsense. I’ve always used my vote, as my own mother did. Quite often my parents went to the poll station and basically cancelled out each other’s votes, but it was still important to them to do it.

So I was absolutely flabbergasted one day last week when I was watching the news and they asked a woman in Northern Ireland who she would be voting for and her reply was – I’ll ask my dad who I should vote for. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t actually heard her say it, she was probably in her late 20s or early 30s, although I have to say I’m rubbish at guessing peoples ages, anyway she wasn’t 18.

To make matters worse my husband told me that a male colleague of his tells his wife who to vote for, because she isn’t political, they are both about 26 years old.

I’m left wondering how common this is in the 21st century. My Granny was one of those women who had to wait until she was 30 before she got the vote and she never missed a chance to use hers. So are we going backwards now with young women taking everything so much for granted that they are quite happy to slip back into such a Victorian attitude?

When I started work it was accepted practice for woment to be given a lower wage for the same work as a man. Then when we went into the European Union things like that had to stop because we had the Equality of the Sexes laws. In the library which I worked in at the time we weren’t allowed to wear trousers, not even smart ones and it was a big thing for us to be able to say to out boss that HE couldn’t stop us from wearing trousers anymore.

It seems that when some women have things too easy they get complacent, but I don’t suppose they really know what it was like in the bad old days of getting treated like an inferior just because you were female. The Suffragettes will be birling in their graves!

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Categories: Current Affairs

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The Royal Wedding

29 April 2011 13:58

Well I hadn’t really planned on watching the whole wedding because I was really only interested in seeing the dress, but I ended up seeing it all from when William was being driven to the Abbey. I get sort of mesmerised by it all and now I’m just waiting for the balcony scene! I didn’t like their choice of music at all, I believe we have the groom’s father to blame for that!

I thought the dress was lovely, a really elegant bridal gown, so I’m hoping that it will change the fashion which seems to have been around for about 15 years now, of brides falling out of the top of their dresses. I suspect that the lacy bodice and sleeves are removable. It would have been even better though if the colour had been creamier instead of such a Daz white. I’m not a fan of white.

Inevitably it all brings back memories of royal weddings from the past. The first one which I can remember is Princess Anne’s to Mark Phillips and like just about everybody in the country my parents bought their first colour TV for the occasion. Although I never thought of Anne as being particularly bonnie, she was a really beautiful bride.

After that it was the big one – Charles and Diana and by that time I was married and we went to my mum’s house to watch it with her, sadly my dad had died the year before. I had made a lemon meringue pie as my contribution to the feast and I think I must have had some sort of premonition because Diana’s dress did resemble a meringue! Frighteningly that kicked off the hideous bridal frock fashion which seemed to be around for years after that.

When Diana got married she had only seen Charles 13 times – and was still calling him SIR! – but we didn’t know that then, it was never going to work as she was under the impression that she was super special. Instead of which she was the only one daft enough to accept him; he is supposed to have asked at least 5 other women before her.

So all in all I have high hopes of this marriage actually lasting as they’ve known each other for so long and they seem to be good friends.

The scariest sight of the day was Beatrice and Eugenie who seemed to be under the impression that it was a fancy dress party and they had come dressed as pantomime dames. I don’t want to be bitchy about 2 young women, but you all know which panto I’m talking about! I think that an older female member of the royal family should take them in hand and teach them how to dress. It strikes me that they must all be saying to themselves – “I can’t wait to see what they’re wearing this time” – and laughing their heads off!

Well that’s it, I’ve just seen the balcony kiss (es)! AAhh!

If you’re interested in seeing royal wedding dresses from the past have a look at this interesting site.

From time to time the dresses are exhibited at various museums and it’s well worth a look if you get the chance.

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Categories: Current Affairs

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Statistics

7 January 2011 12:36

I used to work in an Information and Statistics department in the National Health Service,so I’m well aware that things are often very different from what they would first appear.

Which would explain why the Scottish Government is claiming that the influenza rates are much lower than they were at this time last year. The young people in my own family have been hit badly by the flu this year, from my sister’s grandchildren aged 8 and 10 to my own sons who were ill at Christmas and they are in their 20s. As none of the older folks have succumbed we’re presuming that it is the swine flu.

Duncan got it really badly and by Hogmanay most of his friends had it too. They crawled out of their beds to celebrate the New Year at ‘the bells’ but they didn’t have any energy and Duncan ended up coming home not long afterwards, clutching a bit of coal to bring us good luck for the coming year.

Due to the fact that it all happened over the Christmas period nobody has been to see a doctor, so they won’t appear in any statistics. It can take two weeks to get an appointment anyway, unless they think that you might die, so people tend just to stay at home and cosset themselves until they feel better.

So unless Fife has been more badly hit than the rest of Scotland I think we can take the statistics with a pinch of salt.

I’m also annoyed by the weather statistics because the weather people keep telling us that it should be about 2 or 3 Celsius here but my garden is telling me something very different. It’s still frozen solid and it has been like that since November. It was -12 C in Dunfermline during the day not long ago but according to the weather report it wasn’t anything like that cold.

Apparently it was the coldest December in Scotland since records began 100 years ago. I definitely believe that statistic!

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Categories: Current Affairs, Local interest, Rant, Weather

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Catching up

20 August 2010 12:20

I’ve been busy this week trying to catch up with all the things around the house and garden which are neglected during the school holidays. So I’ve been hard at it cutting back a lot of growth in the garden which is mainly the result of the amount of rain which we’ve had recently. This time last year I ended up with a frozen shoulder because I overdid it in the garden and by Christmastime I could hardly move my arm at all, so I’ve stuck to using the pruners and steered well clear of the saws.

I didn’t even get around to reading The Guardian so this morning I did some catching up. We always buy The Guardian but you can get most of it on-line I think. Unfortunately they don’t put the cryptic crossword on the site and we both love doing the crossword, it’s a bit of an addiction really.

There was an interesting article about biofuel. They are experimenting with by-products of the whisky making industry at Edinburgh Napier University. Apparently it can be used in cars without having to adapt their engines. Sounds good. I’m wondering what it smells like. It would be fine if it smells like the finished product, but some of the smells created by distilling whisky aren’t so good.

I was brought up in a distillery town where they made Ballantines, J&B and many more, but the smell could be pretty nasty at times.

I’ve heard that if you adapt your car to run on old cooking oil from fish and chip shops then the exhaust fumes have that distinctive chippy aroma. Very confusing if you’re in need of a fish supper and you don’t know where your nearest chippy is. You used to be able to rely on your nose to sniff one out!

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Categories: Current Affairs, Gardening, Weather

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