Metro Dude

I know a lot of my readers find me because of BlogCatalog or Entrecard (but shouts to people from DigitalPoint and AWF), and I know a lot of you have never been to Scotland or even know anything about us Scots. Well, here’s a short video commercial for Irn-Bru, Scotland’s other drink. Hope you like it.

Anyone who’s read any of my previous posts will know I’m a fervent Scottish nationalist, but I try not to force my opinion on others since I know how much I hate it when JW’s come knocking on my door.

BUT, this whole thing with Wendy Alexander and the Scottish Labour Party is cracking me right up like a walnut hit with a hammer.

Here’s the situation for those of you who don’t know Scotland well. First, we don’t all wear kilts, secondly, for 300 odd years we’ve been in an ‘Act of Union’ with the English and Welsh. For the last few years the SNP has been waging a political battle for Scottish independence. Up until very recently the other major political parties have been against independence and for continuing the union.

Devolution gave us our first Scottish parliament and last year Alex Salmond and the SNP won the Scottish elections and formed a government, and in the process kicking Labour squarely out of the sandpit for a lot of their own long time supporters.

My own father is a Scottish nationalist but always voted Labour coz he was in the union and Labour was always the party of the the unions, but last election he switched to the SNP, he got a bit sick of people like Blair with their snobby accents and flash cars trying to tell him how to live his life.

Anyway, getting back to Wendy ALexander, well she’s the current leader of the opposition at Holyrood (our Scottish parliament) and is supposed to take instructions from Labour down in Westminster but just recently she came out in favour of an early referendum on Scottish independence. Supposedly she wants to preserve the United Kingdom and thinks an early referendum will oppose independence.

To me and my muddled thoughts this can only mean the mainstream parties are starting to get worried about the depth of feeling growing in Scotland over the independence issue, and that gives me a warm glow inside. The SNP have stated Scotland isn’t ready for a referendum, they want another year or two in power to prove themselves to the Scottish people, well I agree completely.

Unfortunately for Wendy Alexander she’s fallen out of favour with Gordon Brown, also a Scot, but who would prefer the independence issue would just go away.

I’m thinking this issue is going to haunt the Westminster Labour party well into Brown’s term as Prime Minister, it almost seems to me like Scottish Labour have realised the people of Scotland want independence and they want to distance themselves from the UK Labour party and set themselves up a credible alternative to the SNP in a post-independence Scotland.

I could be wrong, but if the First Minister and his cabinet ever read this I want you to know you have the support of one Scot in staying your hand. Don’t let Labour rush you into something until you feel the time is really right.

When I’m bored and want a laugh I often read some of the ‘news’ from other parts of Scotland, and Fife, that bit on the other side of the Forth from Edinburgh is almost always guaranteed to get a giggle from me.

Now for anyone outside of Scotland, let me explain that Fife occupies a rather unique position within the United Kingdom and indeed in Scotland, in that Fife is actually a Kingdom and is one of Scotland’s original pictish kingdoms from about 650AD. Officially it’s known as the Kingdom of Fife, and the word kingdom features on everything.

Everywhere you go you see signs pointing to the kingdom this or kingdom that, and I pity the visiting JW who gets assigned anywhere in Fife, “Oh, so where do you hold your services”, the JW proudly says “In the Kingdom Hall”, to which they get a strange look, “You meet in the shopping centre, daft eejits”.

This morning I glanced at the Glenrothes Gazette at the reader photos that get submited, try this one out under the headline Beautiful Botanic Garden, Mr Tom Christie was keen to show them a picture of his recent trip to the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. Tom wrote, “During a visit to the botanic gardens in Edinburgh on September 8 I took this picture and would like to share it with you and the Gazette readers”. Thanks Tom, really nice picture.

Or this from anonymous, a head in the sand, quality reporting this, I think the Glenrothes Gazette needs to offer free journalism courses for their readers, I mean neither of these stories really tell you very much do they, and they’re hardly worth publishing on their own, but that’s Fifers for you.

And before you bleeding heart liberals start telling me it’s not nice to make fun of other folk just you remember it’s Fifers who voted for Gordon Brown as their MP, so don’t bother.

This is great news for Scotland and her actors, Ewan McGregor who you’ll recall was last seen as Obi Wan Kinobi on the big silver screen has been signed to play one of the main characters of the next Dan Brown film, ‘Demons and Angels’.

Ewan, a man I admire greatly although sadly have yet to meet, will be playing the part of Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca, who in the book is first seen as one of the good guys but by the end of the film becomes the sad twisted villain.

I think this role will give him some real challenges, not least because the character’s personality seems to change over the course of the story and the final scenes should be really interesting as he slowly goes mad, a role I’m sure Ewan will play masterfully.

However, I have sad news for the ladies, he’ll be playing a devout Catholic priest so I don’t expect we’ll be seeing anything for them to be getting excited about, although if memory serves me his character does bare his chest in the book albeit covered in blood. So ladies, if it’s romance and good looks you’re after, perhaps you need to borrow ‘Moulin Rouge’ from your local video store, then watch as Ewan seduces and falles in love with the Satine, played by Nicole Kidman.

Ouch, Scotland’s national musical instrument, the Bagpipes, have been declared a danger to the environment because the timber used to make the chanter and drones is from the endangered African Blackwood tree.

Well now, this is no good, how can us Scot’s tolerate a situation where one of our national symbols is contributing to the extinction of a precious tree?

So a conservation group known as Fauna & Flora International (FFI) is now encouraging Scot’s pipers to mount a rescue mission, first by getting Scots to recognise there is a problem, and then by helping to create a sustainable economy for African Blackwood by planting new forests.

Well excuse me, I don’t think the African Blackwood is going to be a terribly successful import into Scotland, call me stupid if you will, but I can’t see a tree that takes that thrives in dry conditions liking our wet soil very much.

Now if we were like other big former colonial powers we could just bully our way back into one of the countries where this tree grows and that would be that, except the only colony Scotland ever had was on the north coast of America, coincidentally enough, also in a cold place with wet soil.

So I guess we’re left with option of doing what Scottish explorers were so good at doing back in the 19th century, bartering with the locals for a bit of land in exchange for something they want. Aye, but what?

I don’t think it would be politically correct to give them guns, whisky, or blankets anymore, and Scotland has no money, och I know, we’ll teach them to play the pipes to an African beat. Then we can trade pipes for timber. Bloody genius I am.

Picture from Bagpipe Store

They’re calling her the Strip and Dip Specialist aka Jackie Brown, a crazy Australian who’s decided her contribution to cancer research is to strip off butt naked and take a dip in every one of Scotland’s wonderfully freezing cold lochs.

According to the story, Jackie’s best friend is going to travel along with her in the summer and take photos of her skinny dipping in all of Scotland’s 138 lochs to prove she does it.

Och the poor wee lass is goin to freeze ‘er tits aff, but I’m thinkin’ the right thing to do would be take a first aid course and follow her around ready to offer the kiss of life when she needs it. It’s something any self-respecting Scottish male would do ye ken.

No right minded Scot would ever skinny dip in any of our lochs, we really do know best, you freeze to death or get eaten by Nessie and her cousins. We don’t even swim at our own beaches, this is why so many of us holiday in Romania, Egypt, or Australia!

Aye, and for those of you who won’t be able to join us on our tour of the lochs, she’s planning to sell the photos afterwards, although I don’t know that a girl with blue skin and chattering teeth smiling weekly into the camera is goin’ to be worth very much.

Photo courtesy of the Evening News

The Evening News today are talking about more Scots in favour of independence than ever before after a year of successfully managing the country by the SNP and my hero Alex Salmond, whose title First Minister is frankly an insult, the man should be our Prime Minister.

I must say as a proud Scot I don’t wish any harm on the UK or its people, I just don’t want to be part of it anymore, the time is right for Scotland to rejoin the other independent countries of the world, I mean if Iceland with only 316,000 people can be successful so can we.

So I imagine I’m going to get a few nay-sayers commenting here, especially since so many people are visiting my humble little blog, but before you do, think about this. Scotland was independent before, we’ve contributed a lot to the world already, some of the best inventors and economists have been Scottish so I know we can make a success of being independent, and look, if we’re all part of the EU, we don’t even need to put up border posts between Scotland and England.

Nothing much will change, but we’ll finally be able to make choices about how our country is managed, and even though we speak English, our legal system is different from England and always has been, we have a different culture, different history, even a different language if you choose to speak Gaelic. I hope you can all join me in standing up for an independent Scotland.

The photo of the Scottish Flag is courtesy of freefoto.com