La semaine dernière, Nicola Sturgeon a décidé qu’un nouveau référendum ne va pas être organisé entre la fin de 2018 et le début de 2019. (Cependant, selon elle il va « probablement » être organisé avant la fin de 2021.) Elle a raison. Dans les paroles de Theresa May, « maitenant n’est pas le temps ». Maitenant, un tel référendum serait sans aucun doute un échec. Il y avait déjà trop de référendums et d’éléctions dans cette décennie.
Il y a huit ans, quand la population du monde était en dessous de sept milliards, j’ai cité Christopher Isherwood, ou plutôt Mr Lancaster.
Aujourd’hui, l’ONU dit qu’il va y avoir dans six ans plus de huit milliards.
Voici la citation pleine: “They breed like vermin. That’s the real menace of the future, Christopher. Not war. Not disease. Starvation. They’ll spawn themselves to death.”
Et même si la planète pourrait continuer à nourrir les nombres en hausse, il reste le problème mentionné par Kurt Vonnegut en Abattoir 5 ou la Croisade des enfants:
O’Hare had a little notebook with him, and […] he came across this, which he gave me to read:
On an average, 324,000 new babies are born into the world every day. During that same day, 10,000 persons, in an average, will have starved to death or died from malnutrition. So it goes. In addition, 123,000 persons will die for other reasons. So it goes. This leaves a net gain of about 191,000 each day in the world. The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world’s total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000.
“I suppose they will all want dignity,” I said.
“I suppose,” said O’Hare.
Je ne suppose pas qu’ils vont l’obtenir.
Ten nights after the one following the polling day I should be able to write this without being too verbose. Even though my attitude towards the results remains rather ambivalent …
At first sight it’s great that Tories lost the overall majority. But one wonders whether a situation where Theresa May can only continue as the PM (which is by now obviously her primary, if not only, concern) by making a deal with the DUP isn’t actually even worse. Both on account of Northern Ireland, because there’s no way anybody could stay neutral in the current negotiations while being held in power by one of the two main opposing parties – even a Tory can see this; and on account of the rest of the UK, despite whatever Ruth Davidson may think (it seems this picture needs some retouching).
Likewise, while the UKIP failure looks fine, one mustn’t forget they only failed because Tories began emulating them.
Also, while I don’t mind the SNP’s loss of seats per se (in fact, I wouldn’t condemn them if, given what they stand for, they followed Sinn Féin’s example and never went to Westminster at all), I’d like them to either keep their seats or lose them to Lib Dems, as they did in the ‘Gaelic’ areas. The fact that not only Scotland’s south, but most of the area between Stirling and Banff & Buchan was gained by the Tories (thus helping to keep May in power) I can only call by the old phrase ‘a fucking disgrace’.
Much less importantly, it was fine to see Cable retake his seat and Carmichael retain his, but sad to see Salmond, Robertson and Clegg go (the first moreover with the biggest swing of the election).
And so on. With all that it was no wonder the sterling fell. With all that I was quite glad when the stream of menacing updates on the after-election day was interrupted by this pleasant tweet, reminding me that after all we were still only talking a peacetime UK general election, and while there were casualties, there were no fatalities.
PS The BBC usually makes a page with several interesting maps: this election’s one is here. And incidentally, there was also a Holyrood by-election taking place.
Feumaidh mi aideachadh nach urrainn dhomh tuigsinn ciamar a thionndaidh Èirinn bho dhùthaich anns an robh feisen gèidhe toirmisgte gus 1993 gu tè far an do thachair ann an 2015 reifreann soirbheachail às leth phòsaidhean ghèidh, agus a-nis eadhon tè le prìomh mhinisteir gèidh. Ach chan eil sin gu diofar. ’S e an rud cudromach gun do dh’atharraich i ann. Agus an rud nas fheàrr gu bheil coltach nach robh ùidh mhòr aig daoine gun robh e gèidh no gun robh athair air tighinn bho na h-Innseachan, ach dè a dhèanas e le eaconomaidh na dùthcha. Sin mar am bu chòir cùisean a bhith.
The results of the general election have only begun to trickle in, but another vote took place yesterday, one whose result was known while the polling stations were still open: the Scottish Episcopal Church voted to allow those of its priests who opt in to conduct gay marriages in its churches. Given that this approval “required the backing of at least two thirds of each house of Bishops, Clergy and Laity”, I’m pleasantly surprised it really did go through and Scotland’s Anglicans thus joined American ones.
Years ago I wondered how long would the world let the country play cat and mouse with it. So far, we keep seeing the same scenario: North Korea conducts another test defying the sanctions imposed on it, the US, Japan and South Korea call it unacceptable, China urges everybody’s restraint, sometimes there are more sanctions … and North Korea keeps doing what it pleases, all the time getting nearer the point where it will be able to start the third world war. Even when the US try to bring it down a peg, South Korea gets a new president who stops the effort, allegedly concerned with its possible environmental impact. And the North goes on stretching its wings …
The results are somewhat ambiguous.
On the one hand it’s nice that Glasgow has finally an SNP majority, and the fact that it’s not an overall majority and the party may go into a coalition with the Greens makes it in my eyes even better. On the other hand, of my other two favourite regions, Argyll & Bute saw the SNP win as well, but only just, and Perth & Kinross was a huge disappointment.
In Scotland overall, the upsurge in Tory seats is definitely worrying; that said, they’re still way behind the SNP and only slighly ahead of Labour. And the Greens gained more seats than the Lib Dems lost. (An interesting fact is that no party won an overall majority in any council.)
There were some funny moments too, like the Rubbish Party winning a seat in East Ayrshire only two months after coming into existence, and John Finnie’s tweet about the Greens now being the largest party in Orkney (they hold one seat, all the other 20 went to independent candidates).
UK-wise the picture is fairly bleak as well. Yes, it finally showed quite openly that, as John Nicolson put it, “Tories have absorbed [UKIP’s] irrationality & xenophobia, selling it to the public as strength & stability”. But the Tories didn’t win only on the strength of destroying UKIP; the only other parties who made gains were Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
Then again, local politics doesn’t mirror national politics all that faithfully. The results of 8 June will no doubt be somewhat different.
Only I’m feart they’ll be worse.
An rud mu dheireadh a thachair sa Mhàirt mu nach do sgrìobh mi ri linn na daoraich: shiubhail Ray Collier, fear dhe na h-ùghdaran Country Diary a’ Ghuardian. Nise, is toil leam cha mhòr a h-uile sgrìobhadair a’ chuilbh, ach tha fios gum b’ e Mgr Collier fear dhiubh a tha as fhaisge air mo chridhe, oir bha e stèidhichte ann an Alba. (Agus ’s ann tric a luaidheadh e ainm Gàidhlig an ainmhidh no an eòin mu dheidhinn a sgrìobh e.) Cuideachd, b’ e dìreach Christine Smith a lorg mi na bu thràithe agus a bha mi a leughadh ùine nas fhaide. Bidh mi ag ionndrainn na cuilbh leis-san gu mòr.
The Swedish government has decided that as from 1 January 2018, conscription into the country’s armed forces would be reactivated.
BBC: Sweden brings back military conscription amid Baltic tensions
The Local: Why Sweden is bringing back the draft
Government Offices of Sweden: Sweden re-activates conscription
It’s interesting to consider how one’s perception of conscription is influenced by one’s country of origin. The Local suggests that to Brits it may “sound archaic”, but support amongst Swedes themselves is said to be strong. Having been drafted myself in the then Soviet Bloc, I’m used to the sentiment of young men there and then: “two wasted years of one’s life”. Then again, we never expected to ever actually have to fight: we reckoned there were but two possibilities for an Iron Curtain country, peace and total nuclear destruction.
Du 1er mars, les mariages entre personnes de même sexe se produisent au 22e pays: Finlande. Ça signifie qu’ils se produisent dans tout les pays nordiques (y compris le Groenland mais sauf les Îles Féroé).
(Et aujourd’hui, 7e mars, c’est l’anniversaire de la perte de ma virginité. Intéressant: en ce temps-là, j’avais 22 ans. Et en juillet il sera 22 ans depuis mon dernier rapport sexuel. Je serai chaste plus longtemps qu’avant le premier …)
It seems that the attempt to oust him from his post for stating his opposition to Trump’s addressing the Houses came to nothing. And rightly so. All he did was claim (naturally, not in so many words) that even if a Brexit PM feels obliged to toady to any US president for the sake of UK economy, the Speaker can afford to be concerned about morality.
Apparemment, le recensement canadien n’a pas été fait en 2011, mais l’année dernière, et les résultats clés ont été publiés ce mois: il y avait 35 151 728 habitants. Je me suis étonné que le tiers des trente-cinq millions vivent aux trois villes les plus grands (Toronto, Montréal et Vancouver) et les deux tiers à 100 kilomètres (62 milles) de la frontière sud. C’est bien plus fou que l’Écosse avec sa Central Belt . . .
The eyes of the world were unsurprisingly mostly directed at the new US president’s first days in office. He began by attacking his predecessor’s health care and climate change achievements. This failed to bring as much publicity as hoped for, so he banned entry to people from certain countries. (That would occupy journalists enough to have little time left to ponder about his following near-U-turns on the issues of NATO, Taiwan and Putin.)
Closer to home, Martin McGuinness resigned as NI deputy first minister to necessitate snap Stormont election; Theresa May realistically admitted UK would leave the common market; and the Supreme Court decided that the referendum result wasn’t binding. Not that it made much difference except perhaps to some lawyers’ wallets.
Sadly but naturally, there were some deaths: Peter Sarstedt, Gorden Kaye and Tam Dalyell.
And the number of pollution zones in Scotland has risen to 38, with Hope Street, despite its name, still topping the list. It was cold comfort to remind oneself that Edinburgh and Glasgow had more green space than any of the other 10 most populated UK cities.
December news in February, hmm . . . anyway, here goes:
There were some minor surprises in politics. The Icelandic Pirate Party was asked to try and form a new government (but would later fail to become part of it). Donald Trump sort of broke decades lasting pretence that the US doesn’t recognise Taiwan (more publicity stunts would follow). The European Court of Justice ruled against the Snooper’s Charter (giving the UK government another bad reason respect the referendum result and leave the EU). And the SNP disclosed that despite the comtinuing devolution of powers from London to Edinburgh, the Scotland Office’s budget rose over the last five years by 20% (although a much more interesting question was how much would Derek Mackay have to compromise to have his first budget voted through Holyrood).
A sadder surprise was the death of George Michael at the age of 53 (making me look up what was it he sang at all, the biggest surprise being Freedom! 90). On the other hand, air an làimh eile, bha deagh naidheachd ann gun do chomharraich Tormod MacGilleathain an t-ochdadamh cho-là-breith aige (’s dòcha gum bu chòir dhomh The Leper’s Bell a cheannach mar faidhle Khindle is a leughadh a-rithist).
More good news were the opening of a new Edinburgh railway station and the reopening of Kelvingrove Museum’s Life Gallery (pity I may never see it again).
The sporting surprise, for me at least, was how close to each other the teams at the bottom of the Scottish Premiership were: Partick Thistle, last (ie 12th) three matches before the end of the month, got by just two wins to the 6th place and after a Hogmanay draw ended the year as 7th. Another sports-related news was Andy Murray’s knighthood; but to be honest, I admired more Lynn Faulds for rejecting her MBE – or rather, for her reasons to do so.
Quite a lot happened during the 30 days. The bad news first.
The High Court decided triggering Article 50 must be first approved by the Parliament, and different lawyers later figured they could make some dough out of challenging whether leaving the EU means automatically leaving the EEA as well.
Even so, Brexit still has a chance; across the Pond, Trump has become US president, while Republicans still dominate the Congress. Surprisingly, he began by claiming the US would quit the TPP trade deal, which may mean the axe for the TTIP too; let’s hope the presidency won’t likewise mean the axe for the Aberdeen Bay Wind Farm.
One side effect was that the de facto final approval of the Snooper’s Charter went by almost unnoticed by the media.
Also, eight military bases in Scotland, including Fort George, were chosen for closure; CLÌ Gàidhlig did fold at last; T in the Park is to skip 2017; but the saddest day was probably the one on which we learned that Leonard Cohen had died. (This even made me post specifically about that, while the article about Fidel Castro’s death I didn’t even read.)
And of course, the first storm of the winter and the consequent floods came to the South; nevertheless, the North experienced the sunniest November on record. Which brings us to the good news.
Holyrood voted to finally put an end to the tax freeze, at least for the top four bands. Andy Murray became world number one. Kelvin Hall reopened after the first phase of its refurbishment. All three Quensferry Crossing towers are now connected. Beavers were allowed to stay in Scotland.
Across the Pond, marihuana for recreational use was legalised in the 5th and 6th US states (California and Massachusetts); and globally, the Paris climate deal came into force.
Given that Trump may yet do his best to sabotage the Paris deal, several big bad news, a few wee heartwarming ones. Seeing where the world’s heading makes one wonder whether there’s really any reason to envy the younger ones …
It may seem strange that an almost-lifelong-celibate gay like me should relate so much to songs of a singer-songwriter whom even obituaries call a ladies’ man. But then Cohen’s love songs are not of the “she loves you, yeah yeah yeah” kind. There is more love than sadness in them – but only just.
I have never considered him my favourite singer. But ever since I heard him for the first time – it was the I’m Your Man album, which luckily had the lyrics printed on the sleeve – there were a few of his songs I definitely did count among my favourites. In my early twenties these were Everybody Knows and I’m Your Man, joined in my mid-twenties by Bird on the Wire; in my mid-thirties they were Sisters of Mercy (only I twisted ‘sisters’ to ‘brother’) and Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye; now in my exile and my late forties they are Tower of Song and Closing Time.
Maybe there will be another when I find and read the lyrics of his latest – and last – album.
For almost a half of the month I was still boozing and thus offline, but I stopped this in time to learn that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (well deserved, there is no reason why songs’ lyrics should not be perceived as literature) and that Nicola Sturgeon announced the Indyref2 bill (published a week later – it is virtually the same as the first one).
As regards culture, it is also worth mentioning that the Burrell Collection (one of the few really famous Glasgow museums I never found time to visit) closed for a 4-year revamp. As regards politics, it is also worth mentioning that proposals for Westminster constituencies’ boundary changes were published (the Tory government sticking to the idea that there are too many MPs elected by voters and too few Lords chosen by the PM).
Getting a bit more international, the EU-Canada trade deal called CETA was blocked by Wallonia but after some more negotiating signed anyway (I wonder what they promised them). Getting completely international, it was amusing to read that the Icelandic Pirate Party became the joint second in number of seats in the Alþingi (with the Greens, which too tells us how different Icelandic politics is from ours most).
What else? The minimum price saga drags on, while the one of the oil rig grounded on Lewis is over (at least as far as we are concerned), and work to spoil Edinburgh city centre has begun.
The only really ‘new’ story was that of the first Church of England bishop’s publicly coming out.
The rest were either developments of old stories, mar an co-dhùnadh gun tèid an clàr-ola bho Leòdhas dhan Tuirc, the first charge in the Volswagen fraud, David Cameron’s resignation as an MP, and the approval of Hinkley Point C; or things which were expected, like the TV licences becoming necessary for legal watching of iPlayer programmes and the publication of Scotland’s legislative programme for the next parliamentary session.
Of course, as I said earlier, since the 15th of the month I’d been on a bender, so I have no idea what was happening during the second half of the month.
Not a bad month for transport: the ScotRail strikes over guards were finally called off to allow further negotiations; Queen Street station tunnel reopened and so did Glasgow Subway; and the Tay Road Bridge was 50 years old. The exception was the oil rig, travelling from Norway to Turkey, which was blown ashore on a western Lewis beach instead, losing thousands of gallons of diesel and later temporarily moved to a bay on the other side of the island.
Of course, there were the Olympics in Rio, but I’m not into this kind of showbiz, so I’ve only seen Ross Murdoch qualify to semifinals and my namesake create a new British record before ending 5th – yet later with not one but two silver medals from relays (the first with 2 other Scots, or 3 if you count in Renwick). But somehow I admired no less Ieuan Lloyd, whether bottle-fliping or dabbing – and even more than all these Nick Skelton. Winning an equestrian gold aged 58 … can you beat it? (Of course, I couldn’t help noticing that Team GB ended second in the medal table, with 16 Scots getting such a disc or two.)
In other news, bha briseadh-dùil ann mu dheidhinn fo-thiotalan air BBC Alba, on a tha Urras a’ BhBC dhen bheachd nach urrain dhaibh leigeil le luchd-amhairc an roghainn a dhèanamh; Michael Russel was appointed the Scottish government’s Brexit negotiator, although the UK government later indicated they’d only pay lip service to negotiating with Holyrood; Poles overtook Indians as the largest migrant group both in the UK and in Scotland (which slightly surprised me, I thought they’d already done so); and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation named (on p 10) both ‘my’ Keppochhill and Tommy’s Wyndford among the 5% consistently most deprived areas in Scotland since 2004 (which didn’t; but it is interesting that the allegedly most and least deprived areas in Scotland are only about 7 miles distant).
It looked a bit as if everybody – except for Glasgow Subway, which closed to be reconstructed – was in a hurry to have everything over and done with so they could go for holidays.
The Scottish Parliament was officially opened, only to be effectively adjourned for several weeks (then again I suspect they do this on a regular basis). Two days later, Nigel Farage resigned, as his “political ambition has been achieved” (good on him, if he means it). Two days later, the Chilcot Inquiry completed its report (having taken seven years to find out what everybody but Tony Blair already knew anyway). The following week, with Fox, Crabb and Gove already out, Leadsom surprisingly quit the final and two days later Cameron handed over 10 Downing Street to Theresa May (probably a lesser evil than Gove, but only just), who the next day formed a new government: nice to see Osborne and Gove go, fun (if a bit bitter) to see Johnson become the Foreign Secretary.
Westminster still managed to vote through Trident renewal (the British Empire strikes back) … and then nothing, until at the end of the month, the results of a major online child sex abuse investigation were announced* and the Right to Buy ended in Scotland (so all’s well that ends well).
* With Det Insp Andy McWilliam reported as claiming that “new technology meant there was no way for perpetrators to hide or erase what they had done online […] Whether they throw the computer in the bath or not, we can find what they have looked at. And we can use covert technology to identify who you are and where you are”, in other words confirming that all that hullabaloo about the Snooper’s Charter is just smoke and mirrors. Big Brother has come.
Going to the end of the line 
