HAPPY HOGMANAY!

In Scotland New year is probably a more important celebration than christmas.

As well as Christmas presents there is a tradition of ‘first-footing’, which means being the first person round to someones house after 12 on the 1st of January - you should also bring a gift when you do this.

We even have a separate word for December 31st - ‘Hogmanay’, and the 1st and 2nd of January are national holidays in Scotland rather than just the 1st. This is probably hangover recovery time because, as the old line goes, the parties don’t stop till about March.

This particular clip doesn’t have a great deal to do with Hogmanay but it is funny and well done though I think some of my American readers may have a bit of difficulty with the accents. However, they can just try harder because we have learned to understand their accents so I am sure with a bit work they can understand ours. Some of the words we use are different but I am sure from the context it is not that difficult.

Scottish language lesson A1

Yes = Aye - pronounced like (i)

No = Naw (like ‘o’ in the word ‘not’)

The negative N apostrophe T ending (isN’T, wouldN’T, didN’T) becomes ‘ae’, pronounced like the capital A. Therefore isn’t=isnae, didn’t=didnae etc etc

Double letters also tend to be deemphasized so ‘Scottish’ is said almost without the T’s at all. The word -all- is -a’- (the same sound as ‘Naw’ for ‘No’. Same with -Ba’- for ‘Ball’)

‘oo’ sounds also generally change to ‘ae’ sounds. For example, ‘What are you doing?’ is ‘Whit ye daein?’

I could write at length about this but is not the current issue, enjoy yourselves.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit - by Half Man Half Biscuit (lyrics below)

There was one of the gang, who had Scalextric and because of that he thought he was better than you.
Every day after school,
You’d go around there to play it,
Hoping to compete for some kind of championship,
But it always took about 15 billion hours to set the track up.
And even when you did, the thing never seemed to work.
It was a dodgy transformer, again and again.
A dodgy transformer, again and again.
It was a dodgy transformer, again and again
A dodgy transformer that cost 3 pounds 10.

So he sent his doting mother
Up the stairs with the stepladder,
To get the Subbutteo out of the loft.
It had all the accessories required for that big-match atmosphere.
The crowd and the dugout, and the floodlights, too.
And you’d always get palmed off
With a headless center-forward,
And a goal-keeper with no arms,
And a face like his.
And he’d managed to get hold of
A Dukla-Prague Away Kit,
His uncle owned a sports shop and he’d kept it to one side.
And after only five minutes
You’d be down to ten men,
And then he’d send off your right back for taking the base from under his left-winger.
Come to half-time, you were losing four-nil.
Each and every goal, a hotly disputed penalty
So you smash up the floodlights
And the match was abandoned,
And the dog would bark
And you’d be banned from his house.
And your travelling army
Of synthetic supporters
Would be taken away from you
And thrown in the bin.

And now he’s working
In a job with a future.
He hands me my Giro [as in fortnightly govt unemployment money] every two weeks.
And me I’m on the lookout
For a proper transformer.

errr…

TALKING KKK-RAP

All through the story the immigrants came
The Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane
From Pakistan, England and from the Ukraine
We’re all Scotland’s story and we’re all worth the same
(From ‘Scotland’s Story’ by the Proclaimers)

Some of the KKK propaganda cites Scotland as having the ‘racial purity’ that they long for. Some websites suggest that some of the founding members of the KKK were Scots who had emigrated to the US. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. You can find a few mindless, moronic bigots in any country, or any race or religion. The myth of Scotland being a ‘racially pure’ country is one I would like to explode if I can.

“The Scottish Nation is generally acknowledged to have come together between the sixth and fourteenth centuries, absorbing several races in the process of creating what certain individuals like to think of as the pure Scot. In fact, there is no such being. The early Scots were a post-Roman Gaelic-speaking people who invaded and settled the west coast, known then as Dalriada, having travelled over the sea from Ireland, and before that, it is fancifully suggested, although not as yet proven, the Middle East.”[i]

The proponents of this middle-east link point to the similarities between traditional Scottish and middle-eastern music and instrumentation as evidence. If this is true, and you claim your link to Scottish heritage, then YOU ARE AN ARAB. The possibility of a middle-east link doesn’t upset me at all, but if you are a KKK type then you should start thinking. Ha ha.

The burning cross symbol is another thing that various racist groups have tried to attribute to the Scots…

The “Fiery Cross,” as KKK groups call it, is vaguely linked to an apparently real Scottish practice immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in his 1810 poem “The Lady of the Lake.” But really, the Klan picked it up from the movies.

In Scott’s poem, a small, handheld wooden cross is carried from village to village to announce a meeting of the clans for war. The cross was fiery only at first; it was extinguished with the blood of a sacrificial animal before making the rounds as a charred object. (Most likely it was the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.)

Scott’s story was copied by Thomas Dixon for his bizarre 1905 novel “The Clansman,” a highly romanticized tale of the original, pre-Civil War KKK. Obsessed with the incorrect notion that the KKK had been founded by secret Scottish group, Dixon had them carrying the Fiery Cross around.[ii]

I don’t know if this is true. Maybe it was used as a way for the clans to meet for war. If it was, there is still a difference between that and a group of cowardly thugs using it to intimidate an innocent person.

In the 19th century there was another wave of Irish immigration and in the earlier part of the 20th there were many new waves of immigration from Poland (to get away from Hitler), Italy (to get away from Mussolini) and Lithuania (for all sorts of reasons). Most of the Lithuanians changed their names to make them more Scottish.

After WW2 new groups arrived from India, Pakistan, China and surrounding countries and the Caribbean. In the later part of the 20th century there have been more people coming from Africa. They are all welcome.

Apparently ‘Braveheart’ is required viewing at some of the KKK meetings. I would like to spoil the fun by pointing out that the majority of it is not true.

Now I am more of flag-burner than a flag-waver but I also see that the Scottish flag is being used by these people…

ONE of the fastest-growing white supremacist groups in the United States has hijacked the Saltire [the Scottish flag) to symbolise its struggle for a political system run by Celtic "kith and kin".

Scottish tourists visiting Florida and the southern states on holiday have been warned that displaying Scotland's national flag on their clothes now runs the risk of association with the extremist followers of the League of the South.

Kate Smith, who is researching nationalism at Glasgow University, said: "I think the league's hijacking of the Saltire could cause the average American citizen to confuse our nation's flag with right-wing extremism."[iii]

This seems to be a parallel with what happened to the Swastika, which, before Hitler hijacked it was an Indian symbol promoting good luck.

Whilst this nation has its problems with racism just like anywhere else, some of us are trying to deal with them. One of the steps in this is to explode the myth of Scotland as a pure-white country and a haven for racists. It isn’t. We don’t want your false history, false propaganda, displaced anger and vile attitudes foisted onto us. This country is, has been and always will be a country of immigrants. We like it that way.

[i] http://www.electricscotland.com/world/english/scots.htm
[ii] http://archives.stupidquestion.net/sq111402.html
[iii] http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=525&id=1060392002

“UNLIKE YOU, WE HAVE NO ILLUSIONS”

An excellent article from John Pilger in the Guardian…

Left for dead by New Labour, liberal Britain must urgently fight back

Blair and his cult have wrecked the very beliefs millions thought they were voting for. The time for direct action is now

The former Murdoch retainer Andrew Neil has described James Murdoch, the heir apparent, as a “social liberal”. What strikes me is his casual use of “liberal” for the new ruler of an empire devoted to the promotion of war, conquest and human division. Neil’s view is not unusual. In the murdochracy that Britain has largely become, once noble terms such as democracy, reform, even freedom itself, have long been emptied of their meaning. In the years leading to Tony Blair’s election, liberal commentators vied in their Tonier-than-thou obeisance to such a paragon of “reborn liberalism”. In these pages in 1995, Henry Porter celebrated an almost mystical politician who “presents himself as a harmoniser for all the opposing interests in British life, a conciliator of class differences and tribal antipathies, a synthesiser of opposing beliefs”. Blair was, of course, the diametric opposite.

As events have demonstrated, Blair and the cult of New Labour have destroyed the very liberalism millions of Britons thought they were voting for. This truth is like a taboo and was missing almost entirely from last week’s Guardian debate about civil liberties. Gone is the bourgeoisie that in good times would extend a few rungs of the ladder to those below. From Blair’s pseudo-moralising assault on single parents a decade ago to Peter Hain’s recent attacks on the disabled, the “project” has completed the work of Thatcher and all but abolished the premises of tolerance and decency, however amorphous, on which much of British public life was based. The trade-off has been mostly superficial “social liberalism” and the highest personal indebtedness on earth. In 2007, reported the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the United Kingdom faced the highest levels of inequality for 40 years, with the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and more and more segregated from society. The International Monetary Fund has designated Britain a tax haven, and corruption and fraud in British business are almost twice the global average, while Unicef reports that British children are the most neglected and unhappiest in the “rich” world.

INTERNATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

Monty Python classic - Marx was claiming it was offside (each part about 2 minutes).

A FACT

I can’t remember who I got this from so thanks to whoever it was but I just wanted to reprint it…

Price of a share of Halliburton stock:

March 19, 2003: $20.50
March 18, 2007: $64.12 (adjusted for a split in 2006)

Who stands to benefit from Iraq? Well, as if you didn’t know, there is one of your answers.

I also heard that many of the contracts in Iraq are awarded on a cost plus basis. That means that however badly a given contractor messes things up they still get their costs back plus a percentage on top of that. This is why the price of simple things seems mysteriously high.

IN BED

Apologies for not answering comments and emails but I don’t have net at home at the moment and I have been a bit sick this week. In the course of being sick I have done what I usually do in such circumstances which is get myself to bed and watch a whole lot of documentaries.

Some of the subjects are not necessarily designed to cheer you up and make you better but it is like doing something in a not doing something sort of way.

I watched ‘Life Running Out of Control’ about GM food. Probably the most striking point in which is that chemical pollution will reduce after a while as long as you stop producing it whereas genetic pollution will behave differently and in ways we can’t know because DNA is self-replicating.

 

I also watched something called ‘Hawaii’s Last Queen’ which, despite being a rather loving tribute to an (albeit nonviolent) autocrat, is an interesting enough look at the tactics and strategies deployed to bring a highly reluctant Hawaiian population into the USA. The role of the missionaries was particularly pernicious.

I have had ‘War Made Easy – How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death’ for a long time but never got round to looking at it so I finally did. This statistic, which I already knew but always find striking was in it…

 

Civilian percentage of casualties..

 

World War 1 10%

World War 2 50%

Vietnam 70%

Iraq 90%

 

All hail the great march of civilization.

 

I watched a 2 hour presentation by Dahr Jamail for which I can’t find a link but you should really just search for just about anything by him to get the point.

I also watched ‘Speed’, which is about US soldiers being given amphetamines while on duty.

 

Finally, I took a look at ‘Behind the Labels’ which is about sweatshops in Saipan and is also definitely worth a look.

 

Hopefully normal service will be resumed next week.

THE SIDESHOW

In Rob Newman’s ‘History of Oil’ show he commented that the extraction and burning of the fossil fuels that are still left in the ground ‘would make the mere collapse of industrial capitalism seem like a sideshow bagatelle.’

George Monbiot developed the theme a little in the Guardian today…

The real answer to climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground

All the talk in Bali about cutting carbon means nothing while ever more oil and coal is being extracted and burned

George Monbiot
Tuesday December 11, 2007
The Guardian

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called … leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used.

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned.

VOMIT

An old photo and a borrowed line but really…some things make you think that there isn’t enough vomit in the world…

A PRE-CHRISTMAS MESSAGE FROM OUR BEST FRIENDS

We the undersigned dogs have a special request.

Don’t misunderstand us, we like you humans - that is why we hang out with you a lot. You only have to look to see how happy we are when you come back from work.

Nevertheless, there is something we wish you would stop doing, and this special time of year is when you tend to do it to us most.

Please stop putting ridiculous clothes on us. We don’t need or want them and all the other dogs laugh at us. They are uncomfortable and itchy for us and ruin christmas because we  quite like the squeaky toy things you give us to destroy but if we have to wear clothes to get them we would just rather forget the whole thing.

Have you not noticed we have fur coats to keep us warm? Well, some of us do, others have had theirs cut off and/or dyed pink. We wish you would stop that too.

We  also do not require cosmetic surgery and we wish you wouldn’t cut our tails off either. If you started calling it amputation instead of ‘docking’ you might understand better how we feel about it.  

We find it very odd that you seem to buy us all these things that we don’t want or need and don’t look after some of your own kind at all. Have you not noticed that the only time we ignore you is when there are other dogs around? For heavens sake -you spend more on us than you do on your own children.

So, for our sake and yours could you please spend that money on someone who really needs it this year.

Signed,

Canines Against Anthropomorphisation.