Scotland Independence Debate: My Impressions

All right.  Now, not many of you would know this (except perhaps those who may know me from another life) but I am interested in the debate on Scotch separation from the United Kingdom.  Strangely enough, I hold no fixed opinion on this except for some vague, idealistic concept that it would be good for what's left of the Empire to stay together and not fight amongst ourselves like so many toothless Mancunian football hooligans.  So much for that.

Now, I find the British Labour Party plebeian and outre beyond belief.  But Alex Salmond, together with his ship of fools, is the merest blackguard, the most common blatherskite, and the worst possible sort of wanker ever to grace the Parliament of Scotland.  This is the arsehole that, through Imperial Decree, and out of petulant gall, established that universities in Scotland would be free for Scotchmen, free for Frenchmen, free for Dutchmen, in fact, free for damn near everyone except Englishmen!  I think that if he suddenly went on telly with a shotgun and shot himself in his bloody great stupid gob, he'd be doing us all a big favour.  I hate his guts.  Fucking douchebag.

So, yesterday's debate was between the great paragon of the proletariat Alistair Darling, and Scotland's ugly, obese, smelly fish, Alex Salmond.  And even if I didn't hate fuckface Salmond before I saw the thing, I fucking despise him now, just because of what he said.  Darling, despite his proletarian-ness, came across as intelligent, reasonable, and a real darling.  He was a lawyer before he sold his soul for a place in Parliament, that is, if he ever had one, and he proved that he still was every inch a competent lawyer.

Some background information: if Scotland separates, Salmond says, they will continue to use the pound, in a formal currency union with England.  Several of the big-wigs in the central British government, located in Westminster, have alternately said that this will happen when pigs fly, when it will rain up rather than down, when the grass turns blue and the sky turns green, and when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane.  Salmond has repeatedly ignored these hints, and stubbornly continues to believe that this is just pre-negotiation posturing.

The second part of the debate was where Darling shone.  He asked Salmond the question that has always been on everyone's mind: what currency will Scotland use if the pound is not an option?  Continuing to use the pound, Darling wisely said, was like insisting on a joint account with your ex even after you'd fucking divorced her.  The pound doesn't belong to Scotland.  Nor does it belong to England, Ireland, or Wales!  It is property of the Crowns united.  You can take your Crown back, Scotland, but the pound is community property... and if your ex-partners want to keep it... let them fuggin' keep it God damn it!  Fucking Jesus Almighty!

Of course, Salmond's reply basically boiled down to the same thing a petulant six-year-old in the middle of a temper tantrum might say: namely, that the pound is an option, no ifs, ands, or buts.  So Darling asked him to try something very difficult: to think, just for a short moment, of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the Great Gobshite Salmond might be mistaken.  Of course, Salmond had no reply.  That's when the boos and head-shaking started.

The childish misbehaviour of Salmond eventually caused even super-calm, super-patient Darling to lose his cool and say that a six-year old could identify a nation's capital, flag, and currency, and that Salmond couldn't even manage the last one.   At this point, Salmond said that the options were enumerated in some obscure government think tank report, but that he wasn't going to talk about that, but about what was best for Scotland.  The question wasn't what's best for Scotland.  The question was, what's plan B?  What's plan C for that matter?

Darling continued to chip away at the smelly old fish for quite a while like this.  He implied that because Salmond was so stupid as to not understand, he was going to take him on a process of elimination.  The euro?  No, says Salmond.  A new Scottish currency?  No, says Salmond.  Unofficial use of the pound (which would tank both economies at once)?  No comment, says Salmond, but I want what's best for Scotland.  Fucking idiot.

In fact, all this bullshit reminds him, says Darling, of the time gobshite Salmond claimed to have a court decision saying that Scotland could automatically enter the EU no questions asked after independence.  Where, people said, and sued Salmond's moron gallery to find out.  Two years later, it transpired that there was no decision.

Honestly, I had no idea Darling would do so well.  He essentially echoed my questions, and more or less in the same way I would have asked them, only he did it in a nicer way.  Salmond still hadn't come up with anything by the time his cross-examination was over.  Then again, he's a barrister.  I should have known.

So then it's fuckhead Salmond's turn.  Instead of asking pertinent questions like Darling did, his first two questions were in fact statements pointing at a few jokes made by British government people on slow days.  The first was something like Scotland will have to drive on the right side of the road if they separate, and the second was something like Scotland will now be vulnerable to attack by aliens from outer space if they separate.

Haven't you ever heard of a joke before? says Darling.  Well said.  Alex, old boy, you're going to lose this one... now do us all a favour, old chap.  Go in your father's barn, grab his fowling piece (you do know what a shotgun is, right Alex?), put it in your mouth or rectum or whatever that gaping hole in your face is, and pull the fucking trigger.

Putin... Godwin's Law incarnate?

Several months ago, Prince Charles, the future King of the United Kingdom, made his personal opinion about the Russian President known to the world, to wit: President Putin can be, in a number of ways, compared to the former German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.  Although there is an informal logical law known as Godwin's Law that states that comparisons to Hitler are fallacious if not proven otherwise, I believe that Prince Charles has the truth on his side.  Not because he went to my alma mater; I believe myself to be unbiased in this regard.

Cambridge edumacation or not, the situation in Europe today almost precisely mirrors that of Europe in 1939.  I will elaborate, but at least in politics, Putin can be compared to Hitler. First of all, it can be demonstrated that Germany in the Thirties and Russia in the New Tens have abused the letter of the law to crush political opposition.  I won't give German examples because any fool can Google them... but there are Russian ones which almost directly parallel them.

For example, a speech by Putin included a statement to the effect that Russians need to help raise the birth rate, and that this was very important to the economy.  Basically, Putin ordered Russians to fuck because it's good for business.  So a "protest" was staged in a musaeum of biology, where several men and women proceeded to obey Putin's instructions to the letter and tape it so that it could be proven.  The upshot of this was that some of the people involved, instead of being praised for their good humour, were arrested and imprisoned for indecent exposure.  On the other hand, the people who made loud, public love in a fountain were neither arrested nor charged, because this did not carry a political message.

Similarly, Ukraine, which was, until recently, a Russian client state, was plagued by selective enforcement of laws.  Specifically, price-gouging, kickbacks, and anti-competitive practices were committed and tolerated by the petrochemical-government complex; Julia Tymoshenko certainly took part in this, and may perhaps have been guilty as the Devil himself.  This has to be viewed in a relative way, though.  I don't like to quote sources or even use any beyond myself, but this is a special case: one of my mother's friends from university said, effectively, that kickbacks were standard operating procedure in the oil world, and its sine qua non.  They happen in every conceivable form, and in every country: Russia and pre-revolutionary Iran weren't just in bed with Big Oil, they were having an Eyes Wide Shut-style orgy with it.  "Environmental cleanup", my arse.  "Service fee", my arse.  "Facilitation fee", my motherfucking arse.  Now, this lady should know because she has a PhD in petrochemical engineering and, in 1967, invented the oil sands extracting technique that we all know and love while washing the dishes (this message brought to you by Palmolive).

So yeah, Tymoshenko was in the pay of Big Oil.  So was everyone else.  Russkies, Ukies, everyone.  The way it generally works is that in order to drill, you need to pay for a use-of-land permit.  Because this is time-sensitive, you pay a facilitation fee.  You get your drill set up, and then you get a visit by the permit man.  Of course, the drill "isn't up to environmental standards", so you pay an environmental cleanup "estimate", with the balance (and it's always a large one) to be paid or returned to you theoretically after drilling, but practically when the sun rises in the West.  You additionally pay the permit man another facilitation fee, so you can just start the god damn drill already.  Then some state-owned corporation or other makes a request for tender.  You submit a nice, low bid, which is rejected for being "inadequate" because there's no allowance for "losses/spoilage".  You submit a bid higher by say 10%, changing nothing, and it gets accepted. Every year, unsurprisingly, there is an oil "spoilage" of exactly 10%, no more, no less. In addition to this, you pay a generous "export duty", cash only.  You also pay a generous "import duty", cash only.  And on top of both of these, you pay a very generous and tailored "facilitation fee", cash only.

Tymoshenko was likely on the receiving end of this, as chairwoman of a large oil firm.  Other people in the Ukie government also received "facilitation payments".  Perhaps not in oil, as Ukraine has none, but I suspect the wheat business is similar in its... idiosyncrasies.  Oh God, I derailed this article, but what I'm trying to say is that she went to jail but a lot of others who participated in the same sort of thing didn't.  And don't give me that bullshit that nobody knows who the others were... I'll lay you ten to one that "the others" includes the gentlemen who were on the bench.  And I'll lay you a hundred or a thousand to one that the reason she was singled out in this way was because she was a proponent of increasing ties to the democratic, Western world.

So I mean that's how it goes.  Then there's his push for a World War III.  Even that mirrors World War II.  Although Hitler and Putin both display markedly aggressive foreign policy (in Hitler's case, open, and in Putin's case, through covert influence of European terrorist groups), their Western counterparts (Neville Chamberlain and Barack Obama) are very soft-spoken and reserved, and prefer to fight through diplomatic means only.  Even though Hitler threw the first punch, the war was started by the Allies (specifically, Churchill).  Also, popular opinion seems to vacillate between a more reserved, melancholic/phlegmatic leader (Obama is the latter, whereas Chamberlain was the former) and a choleric/sanguine one.  So it just might happen that not only is Putin like Hitler in many ways, but the New Tens are like the Old Forties in many ways.  Then there's Putin's constant xenophobic hatefests (much like Hitler's), and his views on Nineties Russia that so closely parallel Hitler's views on Weimar Germany. 

Although in a way, Putin is more like Stavro Blofeld than like Hitler; he has charisma, and you can't help cheering for the old boy if only his damn agenda were better.  His covert manipulation tactics smack of Blofeld, not so much of Hitler.  Hitler liked his bed-leg and his knife; Putin can accomplish more with a few words and an epic judo throwdown.  He's an insult to his family name, though: it is well known that Putin has blue blood of some sort.  Perhaps a cadet branch of Moscow's noblesse de robe?  Perhaps Ras-putin?  Who truly knows?  All I know is that a proper leader should be conservative.  Not wishing a return to communist days.