I am going to make no apologies for boring you with " a bit of politics" as I think after the week that has just passed it may just be warranted.
The week started off pretty intense with the assassination of that fuck-wit Bin Laden and I know that in the eyes of a lot, if not most Americans and a considerable amount of Muslims that is what the week beginning the 1st May 2011 will be remembered. But up here in the northern part of the United Kingdom and especially West Central Scotland it will be remembered for a momentous shift in the psyche of the ordinary punter, no longer prepared to be taken for granted by a party that no longer looks out for their interests or even takes into account the opinions of their core voters.
I have stated before that I am no Nationalist, in fact I get quite a bit of stick when I say that I am British first and then Scottish and have no truck with anti-English sentiments (apart from all the pish we have to put up with about 1966), but for the first time in my life I voted for the SNP, not because I want independence, although sometimes I have to give myself a shake when I read the comments of tossers like AA Gill, Quentin Letts, Kelvin MacKenzie and the like. But because for the first time since Donald Dewar we have a First Minister with some back bone and stature, although his smugness does get to me and more than a few times I would have readily punched that "sonsie face". I realise that politics is about more than the cult of personality but when you have a clever, quick witted, articulate person in the spotlight it does help.
I joined the young Socialists in 1983 and come from a proud tradition of Labour Party activists, my grandfather being present in George Square in 1919 when the then Coalition government sent the troops in, which must have been sickening as he had enlisted in 1914 and survived the horrors of the Somme and Ypres. My uncle was a Union leader in the steel works in Lanarkshire in the 1960s and 70s who regularly spoke at Labour National Conference during those days. So it was with a heavy heart that I left the Labour Party in 2004 but I still voted for them and found it increasingly hard to justify to myself let alone anybody else in subsequent elections why I was doing so.
I am not saying that Alex Salmond is a modern day Manny Shinwell, far from it but I have realised over the past wee while that times have changed and party loyalties aren't what they once were, indeed, if they ever were for some of the muppets we did vote for in this part of the country.
I heard someone recently say something which has resonated with me over the past week, that " we should no longer vote for our parents and the past but instead should vote for our children and the future" and for me at least, there was only one party with any vision for the future.
It is no longer enough to invoke the spectre of Thatcher,(Labour) because as a nation I don't think that we are scared of her progeny any longer and since 1999 we have been able to hold our heads high and have found the self-esteem that was lacking or had been trampled down prior to devolution.
This rather incoherent and disjointed rant was brought on by having one too many gins and for some reason I felt that this song was applicable as I have visions of quite a few former career politicians in Scotland crying into their favourite new world wine while listening to this song having realised that now like many others they will have to try and find some other gainful employment.
Sly And The Family Stone - Que Sera Sera
