September 16, 2014

Yesterday’s adventures included finally finishing the Essentials training for the software I’ve been documenting for a year. Training, until a couple of months ago took a back seat to just catching up with the astounding amount of writing that had to be done. My manager agreed with me that I could take Mondays as my training day. It’s nice that the same week that I sign a permanent contract with the company, I finish the prerequisite for all the advanced training.

For several years I refused to utter the word ‘barbecue’ because I felt it jinxed things. Invite your friends over for a barbecue and rain is guaranteed. So I started calling such events OGFEs: Outdoor Grilled Food Experiences. This past summer, after having a couple of OGFEs rained out too, I decided to chuck the word. Yesterday evening, my friend Cara invited me over for a barbecue – her man Trevor built a brick grill in front of their place and in fact, his dad was in town from Australia, and her folks and sister came over as well. Her sister’s man (John? I think so) is another American, from a small town in Illinois. Always good to expand the American contingent abroad, I say.

Right. Cara’s Scottish. I told her I had no dog in the fight, but I was curious what she and her folks felt about the referendum. Having lived in the Netherlands as long as they have (30+ years), they don’t have a vote, but are solidly pro-independence. It’s an exciting time and I’m pretty sure I’d vote for independence too, given the opportunity. This is a gut thing that has a lot to do with the amount of wealth from Scotland that moves to London without the Scots getting much in return. I also feel that modern conservative governments in the UK (and there hasn’t really been a liberal one since before Thatcher) haven’t done well by the citizenry in general and any chance not to have the banks of London set your monetary policy is a chance to take and run with.

The old political dictum, cui bono holds sway in England as it long has in America. Translated strictly as ‘to whose good’ or ‘who benefits’ it more loosely means ‘follow the money’. You don’t have to follow it far to know that the US no longer has any semblance of a democracy. Policy is about who contributes to the campaigns, who offers the greatest future lobbying salary to current congress-critters. Eric Cantor, case in point.

I’m pretty sure it was Tom Robinson who said, ‘When you see a politician speaking, you have to ask yourself one question: Why is this asshole lying to me?’ When the powers that be in Whitehall, today that being the leaders of the three main UK parties, plus former PM Gordon Brown (a Scot), say ‘We’ll make things better for Scotland, the question is ‘What aren’t you telling me about how union benefits your bottom line?’

There are numerous graphs online that detail how much tax money flows from Scotland to London and how much Scotland gets back in services. The ones I’ve seen tend to have a Scottish bias, but this has a lot to do with self-selected sourcing. I know I’m biased and that the blogs I read and the articles I tend to finish agree with my own points of view. That said, the numbers I’ve seen recently indicate a deficit of 10-20 billion pounds per year. Even if the Scots forego any kind of currency union, that’s a number they could make up pretty handily (says your humble reporter who has no background in economics at all).

It’s sad, however, that the heard sane voices of conservatism tend to favour the establishment and that the heard less sane voices of English conservatism are folks like Nadine Dorries and the BNP. Dorries gets quoted talking about Scots who ‘are paid to eat deep-fried Mars bars’ which does little to help the Yes camp. parties, plus former PM Gordon Brown (a Scot), say ‘We’ll make things better for Scotland, the question is ‘What aren’t you telling me about how union benefits your bottom line?’

There are numerous graphs online that detail how much tax money flows from Scotland to London and how much Scotland gets back in services. The ones I’ve seen tend to have a Scottish bias, but this has a lot to do with self-selected sourcing. I know I’m biased and that the blogs I read and the articles I tend to finish agree with my own points of view. That said, the numbers I’ve seen recently indicate a deficit of 10-20 billion pounds per year. Even if the Scots forego any kind of currency union, that’s a number they could make up pretty handily (says your humble reporter who has no background in economics at all).

It’s sad, however, that the heard sane voices of conservatism tend to favour the establishment and that the heard less sane voices of English conservatism are folks like Nadine Dorries and the BNP. Dorries gets quoted talking about Scots who ‘are paid to eat deep-fried Mars bars’ which does little to help the Yes camp. Source: http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/Mid-Bedfordshire-MP-Nadine-Dorries-gives-view/story-22927469-detail/story.html

My feeling, if you haven’t cottoned onto it yet, is that I’d rather see a new experiment in democracy come out of the referendum, and perhaps see London look to new ways to be more representative of the people of England rather than less. I’d like to see the Conservative party live up to what they’re promising in the last days of the campaign – more power devolving to the territories and greater representation and less power in the hands of the House of Lords. If they really believed such things would be to the greater benefit of their voting constituencies, however, they would have campaigned on them several years ago. And followed through. The fact is the constituencies of the PM, the deputy PM and the opposition leader are the banks and the other denizens of the City of London. Follow the money.