by G.A.Ponsonby 
The UK died last week; the death though was not widely reported. There was no funeral and there is no grave.
The only sign that a passing took place was the sound of wailing and mourning from Scottish Unionist politicians and their assorted media sympathisers incensed that a Scottish First Minister would dare try to distance Scotland from the fallout from the English anarchy.
by G.A.Ponsonby
The UK died last week; the death though was not widely reported. There was no funeral and there is no grave.
The only sign that a passing took place was the sound of wailing and mourning from Scottish Unionist politicians and their assorted media sympathisers incensed that a Scottish First Minister would dare try to distance Scotland from the fallout from the English anarchy.
The riots hadn’t taken place in Scotland said the First Minister, eager to protect tourism jobs. They were not likely to happen here either he added, an assertion backed by respected academics and historians.
The reaction from various Unionist politicians, journalists and commentators to what were no more than matter of fact, mundane comments is indicative of a very real fear that the Union they so cherish and on which some owe their livelihoods really has breathed its last.
The rioting highlighted what many have known for years, that England and Scotland are two completely different nations with two completely different social and communal makeups.
When vast swathes of England’s green and pleasant land were turned into anarchic forbidden zones roamed by looters and arsonists, one had the sense that things would never be the same again. Scotland had a democratic political upheaval on May 5th – we exercised our political and social frustrations by electing an SNP government with a huge majority. England, bereft of any alternative to the various right wing policies served up by all three of her main parties had a riot.
Good England, decent England is now soul searching; its sons and daughters trying to make sense of the self-harm the nation inflicted on itself. The social democratic vacuum that inhabits the ideologies of Tory, Lib Dem and Labour has resulted in a near civil war breaking out within the London based UK political elite.
Each party embraces a similar right wing agenda that sees variously billions spent on illegal wars, billions wasted on a useless nuclear weapons system, civil liberties eroded and the gap between rich and poor widen – education, the bedrock of free social democracies and the path to enlightenment is slowly becoming a preserve of the privileged in England.
England has, at this very moment, the three worst political leaders in post war history – neither Cameron, Clegg nor the awful Ed Miliband have risen to the challenge the riots presented.
Labour’s cack handed attempt at blaming the unrest on Tory/Lib Dem cuts dissolved when it emerged that some of the cuts hadn’t yet been implemented. There was also a sense that Labour was trying to pretend that their 13 years in charge had nothing to do with the society England now had.
An unseemly spat between the coalition government and police was further evidence of a nation without a leader and without a clear direction. England is lost, floundering on a sea of confusion and anger and with no-one with the gravitas to bind the people together, acrimony is slowly building and the desire for vengeance is replacing the need for understanding. England right now is in a very dangerous place.
They are so preoccupied with their own self-inflicted strife that they haven’t noticed us Scots as we quietly slip from behind their shadow to re-emerge as a confident peoples in our own right.
The historic SNP win on May 5th was an uncomfortable indicator for Scottish Unionists of the new political landscape in Scotland and of a new found sense of self belief. Last week’s English riots re-enforced that sense of a separate Scottish identity and drew attention to the very real differences between today’s Scotland and today’s England.
The rioting itself stopped at the border, there were no copycat pockets of looting and fire-raising in Scotland. In fact there were no reports or evidence of violent uprising in any other parts of the United Kingdom – the riots were a purely English phenomenon.
This has caused no end of worry for the London controlled parties and their media sympathisers in Scotland. A collective frustration built up at Scotland’s refusal to show solidarity with our English cousins and torch our own cities and towns.
This frustration exploded in anger when Alex Salmond pointed out that Scotland had remained calm as England’s civil strife exploded, Salmond called for an end to the ‘UK’ description of the riots and asked for accuracy in reporting. A kind of media riot ensued where Salmond’s words were hacked, twisted then burnt on a fire of fundamental Unionism.
This fundamental Unionism that has for years infected once respected Scottish media institutions has brought us a cod journalism, or ‘junionalism’, where anything that threatens the constitutional status quo is poisoned by a cognitive dissonance that refuses to accept reality.
Point out the blatant inaccuracies and inconsistencies this media machine churns out on an almost daily basis and the messenger themselves are placed in front of the machine’s hall of squinty mirrors to be repackaged and caricatured by the ‘quack junionalists’.
So it was that Salmond found himself attacked by the Unionist riot pack angry that our First Minister had sought to protect Scotland from the rioting fallout. In the eyes of Unionists, Scotland was part of this damaged UK global product whether we rioted or not.
Johnny foreigner is unaware of insignificant little Scotland anyway so let’s just go with the ignorant portrayal of the riots being ‘UK’ was the line apparently being pushed by the Scotsman newspaper, to hell with correcting these misconceptions. If these riots had been in Scottish cities and instead of the Edinburgh festival being in full swing it had been the London Olympics, would the Herald have ran it’s headline ‘Britain under seige’? Would the Scotsman have branded the whole of the UK a ‘tourist danger zone’?
It’s this mindset that has now left Scottish Unionism looking like a kind of pseudo cult. A one sided sect that has replaced what was supposed to be a collaborative political agreement between two nations.
This mindset is unable to see the damage that is being wrought on Scotland and therefore cannot begin to understand the need for change that is now gaining widespread support in Scotland. That Scottish tourism jobs could be lost as a result of media misinformation was mere collateral damage, a sacrifice on the altar at the worship of Unionism.
This thinking has rendered Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories unable to appreciate just how out of touch they were last week when ordinary Scots were angered by the media’s insistence that these were UK riots.
The hypocrisy of the Unionists over the whole ‘UK riot’ media misreporting can be demonstrated with ease. One need only mention the banking bailout where HBOS and the Royal Bank were, and still are, described as “Scottish Banks”. That these institutions carried out 90% of their business in England and were regulated by an English based body is ignored.
We can throw in sectarianism, described by Labour as “Scotland’s shame”, and of course the spiritual home of sectarianism, Northern Ireland, never sees its own street rioting described as anything other than “Northern Irish”.
The hypocrisy will be further exposed this coming week when Scotland’s ‘junionalists’ reheat and sink their teeth into the Megrahi story once again. The compassionate release will be described as Scotland’s problem and Scottish health workers and professionals will have their reputations traduced as the medical evidence is criticised by the ignorant.
The same people who lied and misrepresented from the beginning will do so again and the same attacks on Scotland’s reputation will be wheeled out. Labour politicians, whose UK leaders were negotiating secret desert deals with Gadaffi will again condemn Kenny MacAskill.
The flames from the English riots shone an unexpected light into the dark recesses of Scottish Unionism. What emerged briefly from the cavernous labyrinths occupied by assorted Unionist disciples, careerists and ne’er do wells was as close as one could get to wishing ill on one’s own nation.
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