SCOTLAND 2014

Another Labour big-hitter, former Lord Provost of Glasgow Alex Mosson, has said he’ll be voting Yes in the September 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. I think we’ll see many more such declarations between now and referendum day. I say that partly because leaving the big decisions with London is less attractive than in previous decades simply because the modern Labour Party is so little different to the Tories.

What’s more, with the reduction in the number of Scottish MPs there’ll be a consequential reduction in those MPs’ clout. The days of Scotland sending forty or fifty Labour MPs down to London to influence, if not control, Labour governments is a thing of the past. More and more Scottish Labour supporters are realising that their wishes – be it changes they want made, or services and benefits they want to retain – are more likely to met in Edinburgh than London. Yet devolving more power to Edinburgh will result in even fewer Scottish MPs – with London still retaining control over defence, macroeconomics, foreign affairs and some forms of taxation. When faced with that prospect many Labour supporters will view independence as the better option.

For as The Scotsman said in reporting Alex Mosson’s decision: ‘He (Mosson) said the historic vote next September is “not about the SNP, or Labour or any other political party”. A Yes vote would help boost Scotland’s self confidence, grow the economy and make society fairer, he claimed.’ Exactly. This debate has long past the SNP v The Rest stage. It’s about what’s best for Scotland. Between now and September 18th next year I expect many more Labour supporters to come around to the view that the best option is independence.

BEVERLEY! BEVERLEY! ARE YOU OUT THERE, BEVERLEY?

A couple of months ago someone managed to break into my blog and make a few changes, such as an image of steaming dog turds in the header. Nothing really damaging; it was as if someone was just letting me know they’d been here. I have since changed the Log In password to a load of gobbledygook that even I can’t remember.

Then, in the past couple of weeks, I’ve received a dozen or so e-mails addressed to Beverley@jacothenorth.net. All from banks, or Companies House, with one from H M Revenue and Customs. All official looking and all with attachments. As far as I’m aware there is of course no such e-mail address. I certainly haven’t set up one. So why would anyone else take out such an address?  Odd.

But then, as I’ve said before, I am getting unwanted attention from a few sources, with others trying to impersonate me. One being ‘Jacques du Nord’, whose e-mail address is jaconorth@btinternet.com. I have sent an e-mail to that address asking why he or she is impersonating me, but of course I’ve had no reply. Another minor irritant is jaco the north, to whom anyone trying to access my old Google Blogger account is directed. But I’m philosophical about these things, they’re nothing that a bottle of Argie red can’t put into perspective.

Less easy to laugh off is news I received last week from  my host (in Dyffryn Silicon, Aberaeron). It seems my blog came under attack on November 12. Many of my host’s clients complained that their websites were slow or at a standstill, with the answer to the problem coming from his server in Texas, who had “restricted” the service “to avoid a complete collapse”. The issue was that my blog had come under sustained attack in the hope of bringing it down. My host traced the culprit’s IP address given him by the server – 62.219.8.230 – to Israel. Which I find rather disappointing, given my support for Israel.

Still, I suppose it’s better than being ignored.

POWER TO THE PLONKERS!

Politicians, political commentators, anoraks, interested bodies, and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh an’ all have been getting excited about today’s announcement of further powers being devolved from London to Cardiff. Among these powers is the ability to set business rates and er, that appears to be it, apart from powers (after a referendum) over income tax. But this would be under a ‘lockstep’ sysyem, which would mean that reducing the lowest rate of tax would have to be applied, penny for penny, in the higher tax bands. Oh yes, there was also mention of borrowing. In other words, a poor country being allowed to go further into debt. But these new powers, we are told, make Wales more like Scotland.

Let me explain why it’s all a load of bollocks. Unlike Scotland, Wales is close to all the major English conurbations bar one. That one, the Tyne-Wear conurbation, is still 150 miles from Glasgow. To a far greater degree than Scotland, Wales suffers from cross-border institutions and ‘arrangements’. Unlike Scotland, Wales lacks her own legal system, education system, financial sector, media, cultural life and other features of nationhood that have, over centuries, created an indigenous middle class which, even though many of its members might oppose independence, will always defend what is uniquely Scottish. Which is why Scots live in Scotland, and we live in Englandandwales.

Giving more power to those buffoons down Cardiff docks is bound to result in that power being misused; is bound to make Wales poorer; and is guaranteed to lock Wales even more firmly into the Englandandwales framework. Let me explain. Thanks to the socialist culture prevailing here there is an obsesssive desire to prove how more ‘caring’ we are than the English, and especially them wicked Tories, to whom we must always send ‘messages’ . . . achieved by, um, voting Labour. The more power (and sources of funding)  ‘Wales’ has, then the more freedom the aforementioned buffoons have to show the world what a bunch of altruists inhabit this little corner of Europe.

If the ‘Welsh’ Government has more power to make Wales more ‘caring’, then I can predict with certainty – based on countless examples from the past decade and a half – what will happen. Shysters will slip over the border to take advantage of the funding. The halt and the lame, the workless and the degenerate, will appear as if by magic. Englandandwales bodies will heap upon us fulsome praise for being so caring . . . then transfer their ‘clients’ and ‘service users’ to properties in Wales that our politicians have helped them buy. In short, we shall be taken advantage of. Wales will become both poorer and more English. But to even whisper that we are being exploited, or to dare question why another three busloads of ‘homeless’ ex-cons have turned up in Swansea will make us, not only ‘uncaring’, but ‘racist’.

Increasing the potential for such disaster by giving more powers to a bunch of left-leaning incompetents driven by the desire to please the Third Sector and get Brownie points off the Guardian is not only a mistake – it’s positively bloody dangerous! Which might explain why the UK government has given Carwyn Jones and his gang more rope more powers.