The Celtic Park theatre

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1. overseasbhoy on 24th September 2014 6:47 pm

   i’d have Griffiths in for Stokes – but what do i know
2. briggsbhoy85 on 24th September 2014 6:50 pm

   Long term lurker; first time poster…forgive the length!

    

    

   I’m posting because of the outcome and aftermath of the referendum vote, and in response to a lot of the positions I’ve seen advanced on the blog the past few months.

    

    

   Personally I’m fed up with being told I voted no out of a combination of:

    

    

   Ignorance;

    

    

   deception;

    

    

   timidity;

    

    

   gullibility;

    

    

   callousness.

    

    

   It’s presumptuous, arrogant and insulting.

    

    

   I’m also fed up with people pretending that the proposition put to the electorate last week was not a nationalistic one. It fundamentally was. It asked “Should Scotland be an independent country”. That’s as nationalist as it gets.

    

    

   I’m also depressed that the nationalists were able so readily to occupy the centre left terrain to the extent that many voters (if social media and this blog are a barometer) concluded the nationalist imperative was:

    

    

   (a) a better facilitator than the current constitutional arrangement; and

    

   (b) a pre-requisite

    

    

   of a more equitable society.

    

    

   To analyse those propositions, you have to ask whether an IS would have been able to enact the policies many of the people in the Yes campaign (although not all; business for Scotland and the Communist party seem un-cosy bedfellows to me) wanted.

    

    

   Well, government needs two things to do anything, political capital and money. Would an IS have enjoyed a more comfortable fiscal position? I’m not convinced it would have. In fact, looking at a balance sheet which includes 16% of revenues from north sea oil and gas, I suspect that public finances in an IS would have enjoyed less of a bulwark against volatility in the global price for those commodities than Scotland’s finances presently enjoy as part of the larger UK economy. Ideas about an oil fund are pie in the sky when you project to run a deficit which takes all (generously) projected revenues from oil and gas into account, and when the value of the revenue stream is subject to considerable, and impartial, scepticism going forward. I also look at the figures indicating that the deficit is higher per head of population in Scotland than the UK average and I am given pause for thought as to just how awash with cash (in which currency??) the country really would have been.

    

    

   Would we have enjoyed the political capital to make more “progressive” policies a possibility in perpetuity? Perhaps to an extent, if you look at the last set of election figures from Holyrood and from WM 2010. If you were going to conclude the existence of a perpetual centre left consensus though you’d have to ignore the 100,000 people voting UKIP up here a few months ago, and the fact that in 2010 over 30% of the electorate up here voted for the current two parties in government. You’d also (since yessers were looking to change a constitution, not a government) have to look further back in history, to when Tory majorities in the Scottish electorate were far from out of the ordinary.

    

    

   You’d also have to ignore (admittedly my source for this is a Gallup poll) the 20% of SNP voters who voted against independence, suggesting the direction of travel of an independent Scotland would not necessarily have been an uncomplicated one towards socialist nirvana. The existence of a permanent centre left consensus in Scottish politics is a myth.

    

    

   You also have to look at the achievements made by UK Parliaments over a longer period than I was encouraged to look at by Yes Scotland. I look at the welfare state, the NHS, the defeat of fascism, old age pensions, housing benefit, tax credits, the minimum wage, the best homelessness rates and strategies in Europe. However you slice it, the lot of the working man in 21st century Scotland is infinitely better than it was in the 40’s.

    

    

   These things have all been achieved by a Parliament now utterly derided by the Yes campaign. And please, by looking at things in context over a longer period, don’t insult me by saying I’m an apologist for the current government. For the record, I am fervently in hope that the current government will not survive until the general election, although I see the general election as my best realistic chance to remove them. I am also far from enamoured with the current condition of the labour party, particularly in Scotland. But suggesting our constitution is for the bin because of Parliament’s current and most recent incumbents is, in my opinion, to be wilfully ignorant of what Parliament can achieve, particularly when political parties are at their most invigorated by public participation. It is to be hoped the recent turnout in the referendum will lead to greater turnout at all elections; might those who have abandoned the political process over the past generation might want to question whether their non participation over decades has contributed to Westminster, and particularly the Labour party, becoming so alien to them? Decisions (on laws, policies, manifestos) are, after all, made by those who bother to turn up.

    

    

   So, I wasn’t convinced that the government in an IS would have had enough politics or money (choose your own currency to count the money in, btw, that’s the choice I was left with on the 18th) to do the things that seemingly motivated so many people to vote yes. That apparently makes me a tory loving; callous; ignorant; terrified apologist for needless poverty by voting No.

    

    

   I’m told that the nationalist imperative was the only route to ameliorating the conditions of the more vulnerable in Scottish society, that it was a pre-requisite, and I disagree.

    

    

   On a more fundamental level I’m also implicitly told that I’m to ignore the condition of the more vulnerable in English, Welsh and Northern Irish society, abandon my electoral capability to ameliorate their condition, and due to nationality prioritise the peculiarly Scottish interest at all times. I find that abhorrent. Even if IS really would have been as fiscally sound and constitutionally inclined as YES suggested, what would it say about me that I was ready to set sail on the good ship petro-socialism, happy to dish out the best public services north of the border, bank the “surpluses”….and ignore the english, welsh and northern irish, many of whom in the same economic condition and condemned to a far greater likelihood of tory majority this time and next? That is not solidarity, that is its opposite, which nationalism almost always is.

    

    

   Even saying all of that, outlining all of my motivations for passionately voting No (as opposed to the motivations many yes voters arrogantly attribute to me), I would have respected a Yes vote and made the most of it. That is not what “the 45” are doing. They are persisting with the nationalist imperative, manifest destiny attitude, with all of its divisiveness and uncertainty. The clear majority of voters be damned. “The 45” rationalise the vote of an overwhelming number of the electorate as illegitimate based on their (hugely arrogant) assumption as to the voting intentions and influences on those who voted No. Not for them the acceptance of the majority and the dedication to the infinitely more difficult and less binary task of fighting everyday electoral political fights to progress their aims through our current, and very clearly democratically endorsed, constitutional structures. No, for them it is entrenched opposition to the outcome and persistence with the nationalist imperative at all costs, even to the detriment of what might be a functionable, serviceable and hugely reinvigorated WM parliament at the next election. It’s “Yes or else”.

    

    

   I’ve got nothing but contempt for that position, and I hope it ends in the self regarding ignominious failure it deserves.
3. Tallybhoy on 24th September 2014 6:51 pm

   corkcelt

    

    

   Just because several posters criticise a player on here, how does that make them ‘chancers’, as you put it?

    

    

   Quite a few ‘chancers’ on here then over the last few weeks.

    

    

   Johansen has been poor, to put it mildly, recently.

    

    

   HH!!
4. timbhoy in spain on 24th September 2014 6:53 pm

   Thunder & lightning here.

    

   Think I’m gonnae lose my picture.
5. Jungle Jim on 24th September 2014 6:58 pm

   Right, just about to watch Celtic on BBC Scotland whose presenters make the CQN Negatrons seem like amateurs .

    

   JJ
7. Thunder Road on 24th September 2014 7:03 pm

   mike in toronto

    

   18:40 on

    

   24 September, 2014

    

   jeromek67

    

    

   I think SJ is doing what RD wants all of his players to do … pressurize the other team when we lose possessiion ….

    

    

   I think the problem is that, unless that is done as a unit (which it isn’t at the moment), it makes the one player who is doing it look ill-disciplined ….

    

    

   I think the problem is the rest of them who aren’t doing it ….

    

    

   I think that his more laconic style is why Biton (who I think is the best midfielder we have) isn’t starting …. RD wants more up tempo.

    

    

   …………..

    

    

   Said similar a few weeks ago when Johansen was being criticised for chasing the ball and supposedly leaving his position empty.

    

    

   THAT is what pressing is……but it needs to be done as a pack for it to have a chance of working properly.
8. vim_fuego on 24th September 2014 7:15 pm

   Right c’mon celtic let’s hammer the minis
9. bournesouprecipe on 24th September 2014 11:15 pm