Happy New 2012!

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I hate focus group politics. But we want to to know what you want more of – and less of from us and our squad of scribes here at Bella Towers. So here’s a sneak-peak of our stats report from Word Press’s digital monkeys and then an opportunity for you to say ‘yay’ and ‘boo’ and that sort of thing for the year ahead with our first ever Bella Poll. There’ll be another one tomorrow.

First our 2011 Year in Blogging… London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 480,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 6 sold-out events for that many people to see it. If they could get a ticket, or gave a shit.

Our top 5 referring sites were Facebook (natch), Twitter (obviously), Infowars.com (eh?), Reddit.com (natch again) and … (secret).

Our Top 5 most popular posts are hilariously diverse covering Icelandic Economics (pictured, comments thankfully closed), Chomsky on Libya, David Hume’s Tercentenary, Celtic FC’s Green Brigade and a typically delightful post by LPW on The Gruniad, Britishness and its One-Faced Janus…

So – what do you want from us in the year ahead? The first of a couple of polls, feel free to leave rambling explanatory comments too…

Happy Birthday Alasdair Gray

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Scottish genius

Dear Alasdair

Have a great 77th birthday..

And thank you for everything from Lanark (which in 1982 changed my life and showed me what great literature could aspire to be) to Why Scots Should Rule Scotland (which has helped prepare the ground for what comes next) to the Bella masthead at the top of this page (which has been well borrowed in recent days).

Keep working as if you live in the early days of a better nation whose birth you will have helped nudge and inspire.more than most.

There have been happy returns on our part.  Wishing you many more of the same.

With love and affection.

KW

Do We Know it’s Christmas?

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“Christmas always seems that most English of festivals – from the cathedrals, to the music, to the food, to the commercialism, to the landscapes. Across the Channel, the feast has preserved more of its religious flavour; they go back to work sooner; there is less panicked preparation. And Scotland? Scotland has Hogmanay. This is the season when our differences are most visible and most keenly felt.”

So writes Mary Dejevsky in this weeks Independent (see here ‘Breaking up should not be so hard to do’). Well, no Mary we do know it’s  Christmas – as apparently does Africa (‘Yes we know it’s Christmas’ say African musicians). It’s a good piece from a woman with a vast international experience that – importantly – points out the benefits for renewal that independence would create for England too.

In other news, if you have one New Years Resolution this year its should be to cancel that Daily Mail subscription. Writing on Gus O Donell’s comments Nick Wood says: “The scheming SNP leader Alex Salmond is persistently fanning the embers of Scottish grievance, never a particularly difficult task, in the hope that he can spring on them a referendum on quitting the UK and signing up to the European Union as tartan version of some inconsequential place like Latvia.

The Scots, notoriously canny when it comes to money, are reluctant to turn their backs on the bank of Mum and Dad. They know that with the rest of the UK forking out £11 billion a year in subsidies, they have got a great deal from the English taxpayer. No tuition fees, free personal care for the elderly and free prescriptions are just some of the wondrous perks of living north of the border (read more of this here).

So now we’ve established that we KNOW about Christmas and we can live high on the hog this Xmas thanks to the benevolence of our Southren neighbours, it’s time to switch off this machine until early in the New Year when we’ll be back, if not refreshed then at least revived by digital detox.

Before we go and crack open the sherry, we are delighted to issue to all of Scotland our Christmas card via our Christmas helper, Alex who said he was delighted with the Bella Caledonia card which “personifies Scotland as a strong woman with a passion for social justice”.

Thanks to all our readers and writers, have a great Christmas & Hogmanay!

A Xmas Letter To A Neoliberal Friend

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Dear Friend

I totally agree with you that the Arab Spring was the big story of 2011.  Toppling dictators means putting your life on the line.  That takes guts and, politically, nothing else comes close.  So no arguments there.

But what you havent quite grasped is the political significance of the other big international protest story of 2011: the Occupy movement.  Whether its all middle class kids or not is of little importance.  The fact that the Occupy movement has ebbed away, while the banks continue as before, isnt important either.  Street protests against banks were never going to put an end to financial skullduggery. That needs legislation, government regulation and progressive taxation.

The major significance of Occupy is that it redefined leftist politics almost overnight.  The old lefty jargon about working class, ruling class, middle class, capitalists versus workers, has been all but swept away.  What has emerged is a new class-based politics which the Occupy movement have defined as the 99% versus the 1%.  And, crucially, this has struck a chord internationally.  This is so breathtakingly simple it masks the subtle but far-reaching shift in thinking that has taken place.

The significance is that people all over the world are beginning to identify with and politically align themselves with the “99%”.  Against the 1%.  The 19th and 20th Century concepts of “working class” and “middle class” are becoming politically redundant.  Its only aging political dinosaurs like you (and me) that persist in speaking this archaic incoherent terminological gibberish.

I can see why you hate this new development with a passion because it undermines your entire political vocabulary.  But whether you or I reject the concept of the 99% is irrelevent.  What matters is whether it will provide an ideological framework for a serious and sustained international challenge to the financial elite, corporate power and neoliberal agenda.

Of course its too early to call either way but given the way the world economy is screwing up so badly, and given that people are increasingly realising that its the financial institutions and corporations (the 1%) who are responsible for global austerity, my gut instincts tell me that the concepts of 1% v 99% are here to stay and will become deeply entrenched into political thinking and actions.

The millions of trade unionists who took strike action against the Westminster posh boys?  The kids camping out in tents?  The Arab Spring youth?  The students on the streets demanding free education?  The Greek workers striking and protesting against austerity measures?  There is no differentiation.  These are the 99% resisting the agenda of the 1%.  There is no “middle class” or “working class” anymore, my friend.  Its a case of out with the old, in with the new.

The jaded ideological remnants of the 20thC left are being overthrown in the process too.  And not before time either since they spoke political Esperanto as far as most folk were concerned.  But by identifying the 1% as the removable object to social justice, and by merging the politically divisive concepts of underclass/working class/middle class, a giant ideological leap has been made in 2011.

I’m surprised you aren’t grasping the bigger picture.  Even Time magazine get it.  But as you say, each to their own.

Have a great Xmas

Kevin Williamson

Campaign to Save Leith Waterworld. It’s D-Day this Thursday. Please help.

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SLW Banner at Easter Road versus Rangers on Dec 8th

The Splashback! campaign to Save Leith Waterworld from Edinburgh Council’s cost-cutting axe has moved into a decisive week.  The full Council meets on Thursday 22nd to discuss a motion (from the Greens) to reconsider the 2005 decision. The Splashback! campaign has a delegation speaking to the meeting.

Before then there is a crucial ‘Save Leith Waterworld’ public meeting at:

Leith Academy
Tomorrow (Tues) night.
7.30pm-9pm.

Councillors have been invited to come along to justify themselves and explain what they inrtend to do on Thursday.  If enough pressure cant be exerted on the Council by this Thursday then Leith may lose one of its best-loved leisure facilities.

To date over 5000 folk have signed the petition (4300 outside the swimming pool) and another 850+ have signed the online petition here:

Save Leith Waterworld – Petition Online – UK

Article in yesterday’s Scotland on Sunday:  Peter Ross: Community fighting against the tide in bid to protect swim centre – Features – Scotsman.com  The campaign also features on the front page of tonight’s Edinburgh Evening News.

The good citizens of Leith need your help.  Please consider signing the petition.  Email/social meeja it.  Come to the Public Meeting tomorrow evening. Write to Edinburgh Council.

As the great John Steinbeck once wrote to Jackie Kennedy: “Leith Waterworld is not a lost cause.  It is an unwon cause.”  (Okay I’m paraphrasing but the sentiments apply).

Kevin Williamson

Letter to Johann

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By Patrick Small

Dear Johann
Congratulations on your victory. If you’re to dispel the notion that Scottish Labour leaders have steadily diminished since Donald Dewar, each one seeming progressively less capable and less attuned to the country they seek to lead, you’re going to need to take advice from across the board.  For what it’s worth, here’s mine:

1. Get Humble

Labour didn’t just lose the election in May, you got horsed. You are where you are because the Scottish electorate put you there. Your victory speech  suggested you you may understand this. So shut down the old duffers. Whenever Brian Wilson or John McTernan take to the airwaves you can almost feel thousands of voters turning away. The Wilson/McTernan message is one of simple entitlement: Labourdominance is the natural order, the election results of 2007 and 2011 were some kind of abberation, instead of the democratic choice of the Scottish people.

2. Endless Naysaying is a No No

The art of opposition requires that you choose carefully when to be positive about your opponents. A constant stream of negativity will just put people off. So commend and support the SNP government where it does things well. You will look like a bigger politician, and a potential first minister, instead of a slightly nippy loser. Iain Gray didn’t get this, and look what happened to him.

3. Apologise

Your party decided to oppose the Scottish government’s attempts to introduce a “Tesco tax” on the supermarkets, a modest proposal which would have brought in revenue from the very rich. You oppposed this -either because you’re funded by Sainsbury’s or due to basic political lunacy. If you’re committed to being the Supermarket Owners’ Party, don’t expect to be taken seriously on social justice. And without a commitment to social justice, Labour can really pack up and go home. Just apologise. People will respect you for it, and it will mark you out as different from your predeccessor.

4. Develop policies for a difficult age

Your victory speech also intimated a desire to develop real policies that might
work for Scotland. If they could be new, original, practical and costed that would be good. Top of these should be social and economic justice, taming feral banks and corporate excess, tackling drugs and homelessness and developing a climate change strategy. You might think these are intractable problems but if you have nothing new to say about them, don’t stand for high office. And don’t say you can only articulate policy in line with the powers devolved in the Scotland Act, that’s just going to make you look like a pygmy.  Build links with community and campaign groups and talk honestly about poverty in Scotland. No-one else does.

5. Ditch Trident

We relentlessly hear about the age of austerity, the dark days ahead, the lack of cash and the “logic” of cuts. On Saturday you said we were “no longer living in an age of plenty”. But Trident, and its £75 billion price tag is to be left untouched. This has been shut down as a subject of serious debate in mainstream British politics. Except that last May the Scottish people elected two Greens and 69 SNP MSPs. Both parties’ manifestoes explicitly reject nuclear warheads on the Clyde. You have previously suggested you may be against Trident, but have now gone quiet on the issue. If you really want to look people in the eye and say we must carry on closing schools and nurseries but keep blindly paying through the nosefor a Cold War relic, you’re going to project both dishonesty and contempt for  mainstream Scottish opinion.

Scotland needs an articulate, imaginative opposition to function as a healthy democracy. If Labour can’t provide this, something else will fill the vacuum quicker than you think.

First published in PRODUCT magazine.

Speaking our Language

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By Fiona MacInnes

One of the rare fond memories I have of Stromness Academy in the 70s, was the cubby hole of a classroom which was the Latin teacher’s lair. This cramped den complete with fireplace, was converted from the former female staff room of an earlier era. A time when male and female staff were kept socially apart. The men’s staff room emitted pipe smoke and the other whiffed of spinsterhood. Those were the bygone times of Boys and Girls entrances, cold outside toilets dropped like tardises (tardii!) in the mud and gravel playground, and a world fragranced by Jeyes-fluid.

The small groups that trooped to the Latin room eschewed Woodwork and the finer intricacies of Home Economics having in most cases been reluctantly steered there by aspiring parents coercing them into the ‘usefulness’ of  a dead language. Thereby a tranche of conjugating university fodder was brought forth who could neither bake a scone nor fix up a shelf bracket.

But no, the Latin teacher knew that education was about much more that input and output and that the brain was like bicep and triceps requiring to be equally and oppositely stretched. She willingly allowed herself to be diverted by topics of all kinds, her classes flowing untrammelled into serendipitous spheres of history, philosophy and gossip. All the while the necessary input of Latin text, translation and vocabulary managed to settle itself as if by stealth, somewhere inside our heads, exams, as they should be, a mere blip in the real world.

Because of the flexibility that our particular school had then, and the linguistic enthusiasm and interest of the teachers, pupils could learn Latin, Greek (ancient and modern), Italian, Spanish, French German and Norwegian. That’s eight languages all taught within one small department. The Latin teacher was the catalyst, often learning alongside us and keeping one step ahead in order to teach what she had just learnt. Mrs Hunter was the ‘can do’ of language tuition. Continue reading →

Recent Futures

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From Neil Mulholland and Robin Baillie on The Recent Future of Scottish Art reviewing Scottish Art since 1960 Historical Reflections and Contemporary Overviews
Craig Richardson (2011) London, Ashgate, 230 pages ISBN: 978-0-7546-6124-5 in the new issue of Variant.

“These artists may well have been formative influences on his own practice, but to imagine that this alone makes them ‘exemplary’ is folly. Exemplars of what we might ask? Of their time and place? How can anyone be certain of this, that we have chosen the correct canon? We can’t convincingly argue that some artists (those included) are any more exemplars of ‘Scottish’ art than others (those excluded). To do that we would need to have an ethnic, possibly essentialist, understanding of the ‘Scottishness’ of art, as if there were somehow degrees of ‘Scottishness’ by which we might evaluate matters. This act of territorialisation is Arnoldian, Leavisite even. It implies that the ethnic constructions of ‘Scottishness’ that we find in and around art, imaginaries that need to be deconstructed, are the method by which we should judge this art. The problem here, of course, is that we can make almost anything seem as if it is uniquely and essentially ‘Scottish’. Hence Scottish Tories, Scottish Labour, Scottish Sun, Scotmid, dotSCOT, etc. Since ‘Scottishness’, like any other form of ethnic identity, is constantly contested, a moving target, we can’t use it as a benchmark to evaluate anything.”

from Neil Mulholland and Robin Baillie on The Recent Future of Scottish Art reviewing Scottish Art since 1960 Historical Reflections and Contemporary Overviews
Craig Richardson (2011) London, Ashgate, 230 pages ISBN: 978-0-7546-6124-5 in the new issue of Variant.

Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lockpickers

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Jacob Yates and the Pearly Gate Lockpickers Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 5 Nov by Tess Ferguson

Early during a too-brief set, the eponymous Jacob Yates proffered Three Pieces of Glass, souvenirs from the roadside where his first love died. These metaphorical fragments of shattered windscreen have gouged themselves deep beneath the skin of his hand over the years he has clung onto them. Wondering whether the argument that preceded the fatal collision clouded her vision, he traces the heartbreak that ensued and exonerates himself by sharing with us part of the only human brain that retains this memory. We watch his visceral beauty as he howls at the moon, the sinews of his body flexing in cathartic bliss. The ghost of Uncle John (and Whitelock – Jacob’s earlier band) looks on in approval at the man his progeny has become. Continue reading →

The Ink Truck

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By Mike Small

Watching the snakes and ladders of the Scottish print-media is an unnerving business, but the Herald’s idea of moving behind a paywall seems like a deathwish. A paywall works (ish) if you have a secure baseline readership of premium content. It’s a club. ‘What’s going on behind the curtain?’ zings the appeal in (slightly desperate) expectation. This paywall seems like more of a shroud than a curtain. Continue reading →

Infinitely Demanding

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…we are entering into a period of increasingly massive social dislocations and disorder which harbors within it countless risks, defeats, dangers, false dawns and fake defeats. But…we are all coming to the powerful and simple realization that human beings acting peacefully together in concert can do anything–and nothing can stop them.

Something is happening. Something is shifting in the relations between politics and power. We don’t know where it will lead, but the four-decade ideological consensus that has simply allowed the creation of grotesque inequality has broken down, and anything and everything is suddenly possible.

Simon Critchley asks: What is Normal?

Love Life – December

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‘Love Life’ is Bella’s Agony Aunt column by Jamie Heckert… because the personal is political and the ‘state we’re in’ is complicated. See here for more background.

Dear Jamie,

Do you think that anarchy can really work? I mean, it’s a beautiful idea in theory, but when I look at the people around me, I fear that it would all go horribly wrong. What do you think an anarchist Scotland would look like? How would it work?

Yours,
Tired and cynical in Tiree Continue reading →

Offensive Behaviour

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Disppeling some myths about the new anti-bigotry bill. Extract from a great piece by Humza Yousa (read the full article over at The Glaswegian):

Everybody remembers the first football match they were taken to. Be it in the 1950s or just last week, there is no greater excitement than when you are taken to watch your team play for the first time.For me, it was the 1995 Scottish Cup fourth-round tie between Celtic and Raith Rovers.

My uncle, a lifelong Celtic fan, had decided that at the age of 10, I was finally ready.

I’ll never forget the experience; the sounds, the tastes, the fans, the atmosphere, the singing, and of course the match itself (Celtic won 2-0).

None of us want to see that atmosphere and passion leave football. It is what makes the beautiful game the world’s most popular sport.

There has been a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation regarding the Scottish government’s proposed legislation on tackling offensive behaviour at football. Continue reading →

Ailing Scottish Football Needs Alchemy

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By Thom Cross

How do the great clubs attract big money and big crowds? They play magic football and win matches. How? Their managers are alchemists. They turn 11 into 22.

Seriously, our Scottish managers/coaches need to give us two for one as they do in the great teams. (I include Manchester United in this analysis. One of my teams (with ‘oor’Alex) has fallen harshly from a state of grace to limbo in the EUFA league.) How do we make magic? Let’s look at Barcelona; (winner of El Classico against Real Madrid just last weekend.)

In defence Barca plays ten. The goalkeeper is an extra sweeper then its five and four across the back or sometimes four and five. In attack they play five-up like old time 50s fitba with two in the channels like inside rights and left.

But the real alchemy is in mid-field where seven makes it perfect. This is Barca’s dominant presence from box to box. The ball is held within the matrix of the magic seven until it is released for goal scoring. But it is more than the quality of players ; quantity plus guile win the mid-field. Quantity of ball possession and the number of players involved in midfield play dictate the strategy of the modern game. Continue reading →

Transition Branching Out? Land Reform: Losing and Recovering the Commons

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By Justin Kenrick asks Can Occupy and Transition merge?

The morning mist obscures the mountain, and smoke rises through the thatched roofs of the round or oblong earth and wood walled huts, as people, goats, sheep and cows wake . .

Cows munch on the nearby grass, their bells tinkling, goats call from their little huts on stilts where they have slept overnight, pooing and peeing through the slatted wooden floor, and sheep emerge from the room they have slept in at the end of the oblong houses. There are two other rooms in the oblong homes: one for the family, and the other a large room that acts as kitchen and living room with its firepit in the middle of the earth-floor. There were ten of us sleeping on that floor after talking, music and laughter late into the night. Continue reading →

Labour’s Leader Lamont

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By Mike Small

It’s unfair I know but the idea that there’s more likelihood of Hearts players getting paid on time than Johann Lamont breathing life energy and the feelgood factor into Scottish Labour seems to be doing the rounds.

Don’t belive us (nasty nat separatists and all) ask self-styled ‘Labour Man’ George Galloway who unleashed an astonishing attack in this weeks Daily Record likening Johann Lamont to Rosa Klebb: Continue reading →

Iceland’s Revolution Response

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By Deena Stryker

This is a long Overdue Response to “The Reykjavík Grapevine” and all those who have taken exception to my August blog: “Iceland’s On-going Revolution”.

This article is written at the instigation of Bella Caledonia, which received 27,000 hits on my original article (‘Why Iceland Should be in the News But Is Not’). As it made its way around the world, many commented on the factual mistakes that I translated from an Italian radio text. Bella understood that the gist of the article was more important than the factual details, and encouraged me to respond to my critics, once and for all. Continue reading →

Dave’s Big Adventure

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By Mike Small
Dave’s Big Adventure yesterday has the Tory right and far-right dancing with glee. He’s being compared to Churchill for walking away from Europe (as far I remember Churchill stood by Europe but let’s not quibble it’s the action they’ve been ganting for for decades). For some this is a great bat to beat the nationalist movement. But to the Twitter question ‘Why would Scotland want to join an unelected superstate?’ the answer quickly came, ‘We’re part of an unelected superstate, called Britain’.

Angus Macleod of The Times was ‘rubbing his hands at the deafening silence’ from SNP HQ, but we reckon that he and  Kenny Farquharson of SoS have got this one far wrong. Even the struggling mega-bland Eddy Miliband has it right: “We should be under no illusions about the import, the impact or the reasons behind the decision. The significance is that we have chosen to let 26 countries make crucial decisions without us. The prime minister’s apparent warning at the meeting that they “couldn’t use this building for their meetings” would be laughable if it was not tragic.”

This is a terrible decision for Britain but potentially good news for Scottish independence. A reconstituted eurozone could offer a safe haven from the crazies of big business Bullingdon and hedgefunds represented by British Govt PLC. As news seeps out (shock horror) that RBS boss Fred the Shred will escape ‘further’ (sic) sanction, what Cameron’s antics expose is a reckless xenophobic ideologue posturing as Tory New Man. Gone are the Huskies, Sam Cam and Hug a Hoody, back are the Same Old Tories. Continue reading →

For a New Scottish Democracy

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By Gerry Hassan

The concurrent Scottish, British and European debates go on as mostly separate, but interconnected conversations; political and economic parallel universes often seeming oblivious to the existence of each other.

The British state sovereigntists wax lyrically as if their moment has come, the Tory Party, in David Cameron’s once revealing remarks, returning to its comfort zone of ‘banging on about Europe’, while Labour slowly shift away from two decades of pro-Europeanism, and the Lib Dems and SNP fall nervously silent. Continue reading →