This is a guest piece from Lorna Cal
Part1.Today
Part 2 Wednesday
THIS piece will not be about ‘trans’ solely; it will not be about ‘immigration’ solely; it will not be about ‘DEI’ (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) solely, although it will touch on all of them; they are part of the whole postmodern/queer theory/cultural Marxist trope that has captured political discourse in recent times, and which infiltrates every aspect of public life, and, indeed, many aspects of private life, too.
Fall of democracy
If we fail to tackle the fall-out, our democracy will fall while we struggle to accommodate everyone, despite the Human Rights Act (HRA) of 1998, and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The HRA and the ECHR are both part of domestic British law, meaning they are equally part of Scots Law. So far, so good as these rights extend to everyone in the UK. Except that, as in the Garden of Eden, the snake turned up to spoil everything.
Businesses, our public institutions and trade unions, have been influenced all too readily by false Stonewall law which has sought to infiltrate every aspect of life, including much of private life, at huge cost to both. This is not just a women’s issue; it affects all of our society.
Although this piece will touch on post structuralism/post modernism, I do not wish to labour these either. It is in relation to the pernicious effect as a whole, on society as a whole, that these issues, almost completely of the left, that needs to be discussed.
Bad faith actors
My aim is to show that our entire society is being undermined at every level and across all services, both in the public (mainly) and private sectors because bad faith actors have wormed their way into our political system, legal system, civil service, cultural life, the arts, all public services, most of the charity sector, our educational systems and establishments, etc.
We owe a great deal of our modern Scottishness to our Christian heritage and to the civilizations and traditions of the past that have influenced Scotland as part of Northern Europe. Greek and Roman (classical) cultural influences have been the most powerful and enduring in shaping the overarching civilization we call, ‘Western’. It means, in essence, that, apart from our shared humanity, we do not share common cultural, linguistic, artistic, political, etc., foundations with other nations which are not part of the Western tradition.
Scottish enlightenment
The Scottish Enlightenment was part of the European Enlightenment, and Scots contributed out of all proportion to our population, to the forward movement of the political, social, cultural, literary, philosophical, scientific and engineering sum total.
Scottish, British and European thought were influenced by Hume, Smith, Reid, Ferguson, Telford, Macadam, Stevenson, Burns, etc. One woman, among others, who changed our history was Isabella MacDuff, daughter of the Earldom of Fife and married to John Comyn, Earl of Buchan; she placed the crown upon the head of Robert Bruce. The MacDuffs were the hereditary ‘crowners’ of the monarchs of Scotland, and, with no male of the House of MacDuff available, Isabella defied tradition and crowned the Bruce King of Scots, an act that changed our history forever. She was to pay a high price for her flouting of convention when she was captured by Edward I and hung from a cage at Berwick Castle. No record of her exists after Bannockburn, so it is unlikely that she lived long after such terrible treatment, but her contribution to Scotland was enormous.
As a lifelong nationalist and democrat, on the moderate left, I believe that independence is both necessary and desirable, a natural state of affairs that the whole ‘woke’ project – and it is a deliberate project – is in danger of destroying along with the very fabric of our society. The only way this malign influence will be defeated will be when all Scots, both nationalist and Unionist, come together naturally (not politically) and root it out before it brings down over 1000 years of Scottish civilization and nationhood, which, although we view those differently, are common to both. A joint effort will become unavoidable if Scotland is to survive as part of the Western tradition. The longer we leave it to challenge this take-over, the worse it will become and the more difficult it will be to dislodge.
I do not belong to the school of thought that thinks that it is on the wane or that independence would kill it stone dead. It will have to be confronted.
Sexless msps
Holyrood is already abandoning all references to the sex of MSPs on its website (Kirsteen Paterson, Holyrood Magazine). Who decided that position? The civil service? Will this now spread to other institutions where accurate data is vital to future and present policy?
Let us take just one example of where it matters very much: DNA. If we are not allowed to say that this DNA came from a man and this other DNA came from a woman, can someone in the Green Party explain how our criminal law (rape, sexual assault, grievous bodily harm, murder, etc.) or civil law (identifying a father, race, ethnicity in disputed cases of paternity or eligibility for a visa or passport or for establishing identity) can possibly work? Or does it not matter because no one will be going to prison (Green candidate, Kate Nevens) and everyone should be allowed into our country regardless of status?
The whole point of ‘capture’ or indoctrination is to resist reason and critical thinking, where the subjective, ‘what I feel’ trumps objective reality. Let us start at the basic level: until recently, people in work or applying for a job had to show competence in said area of work. They had to show a level of experience or be willing to gain experience and competence as a trainee, relying on the experience and competence of their mentors.
Now, all too often, in what should be a fair society, people are hired, fired or promoted on the characteristics they have rather than their ability, or on the fact that they support those with these ‘special’ characteristics. Those already in situ will hire or promote only those with a similar mindset and/or characteristics (example: Professor Kathleen Stock, forced out of Sussex University). It is blatant anti meritocracy. It is in-built structural failure.
The Scottish parliament is the very epitome of this malign activism where LGBTQ+, a small percentage of the overall population, present in numbers far greater than their population percentage. We must also assume that many people vote for LGBTQ+ on the same basis, leading to a parliament that is entirely out of kilter with, and remote from, the vast majority of the Scottish population.
The majority in any population will be the working-class, not the middle/managerial class who now dominate every parliament in the West and whose ‘luxury beliefs’ are leading to the undermining of the very foundations of our Western civilization. Demanding aggressively that people accept the very antithesis of what they see, hear and can prove scientifically, biologically or mathematically can only be profoundly damaging. The fear engendered by the consequences of not conforming (hate crime)) to what the brain knows is subjective rather than objective must, eventually, result in psychosis and a form of dichotomy of the mind.
Lack of economic acumen
An evident lack of business and economic acumen and an attitude that will not tolerate any advice or experienced voice to mitigate that lack, regardless of how beneficial to the economy or the society, is the now the NuNorm. Stuart Ballantyne, chairman, Scot, of Australian-based Sea Transport Corp and inventor of the global speed ropax (drive on/drive off) catamaran passenger ferry was rebuffed by the Scottish government when he offered advice on the replacement of the Scottish ferry services to the Isles.
Although not exactly catamarans, the Scandinavians have developed, meantime, a kind of ‘flying’ ferry that is not dissimilar. It seems that Scots must resort to the coracle of the ancients to cross the rivers and seas of our nation. Legal advice is also disregarded routinely now, so that public monies have been wasted by government in fighting cases that are foreseeably unwinnable. Essentially, the social contract has been broken and no one has the courage thus far to attempt to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Which is why so many Scots voted for Reform, showing the cracks.
It is tempting to believe that only rUK and Unionist Scots voted for Reform, but that would be to miss the nuance (many nationalists voted for Brexit). The moderate right has been ignored in the UK, and in Scotland, to the detriment of our services, businesses and public and private institutions. It has been accused of being ‘far-right’ when it is nothing of the sort. That mantra no longer has, or should have, any currency.
roiling magma
The vicious nihilism of the ‘woke’ has terrified people into resentful submission, a resentment that is simmering just below the surface, like a volcano with underground roiling magma ready to erupt to the surface.
Never before have we seen this level of totalitarian (1984 Orwellian) control over institutions and the public. It is regression, not progression. Once the domain of invention, scientific knowledge, medical knowledge, engineering, etc., Scotland is now a place where fear and vacuous orthodoxy rule, and this is not because we are not independent. Independence has nothing to do with it.
It is doubtful that our political class has the nous or self-awareness to put a stop to this ‘toddler-like’ behaviour or to see what is coming down the road. Society, as a cohesive whole resting on consent of the population, can only dissipate. The supposed loss of a Utopian vision that others are trying to ruin can lead only to failure. The objective truth is that there is no Utopia, just reality.
Many good and decent human ideals have stemmed, in the West, from fighting injustice. Democracy might have been born in Ancient Athens, but the West has improved upon it and expanded it throughout the centuries. Scots, too, have founded a system of jurisprudence and law that serves the greater good, where the many are protected. It is not perfect, far from it, but can we destroy it all and expect a cultural, political and social renaissance that will be fair to all, or even to the greatest number?
Ask Pol Pot’s victims who survived Year Zero. Ask those who suffered exile and hard labour in Maoist China. Pol Pot had to be rooted out before it was possible for Cambodia to rebuild itself, and Mao’s China, still, ostensibly, a ‘People’s Republic’ is leading the world in technological advances and capitalist projects after the hard-liners were ousted.
” Never before have we seen this level of totalitarian (1984 Orwellian) control over institutions and the public. It is regression, not progression “. Yes, Lorna, what you say – above – is all valid; but your overall argument is seriously undermined by your – an other similarly G.C people’s – glaring omission and apparent complete inability to acknowledge the outrageous interference in and malign influence over – not just UK Politics, but those of the entire West, of the Apartheid State of Israel. Such is the degree of which – in the UK alone – that it is warping and effectively erasing previously held to be inviolable concepts like Freedom of Speech/Expression of Opposition to perceived wrong-doing – domestically AND internationally.
Until you do so acknowledge the severely deleterious influence of that foreign country, it is difficult to take anything you say on, eg ” Trans/Gender ” issues seriously
Robert: my aim was not to discuss either Israel or Russia. They might well have some influence here, but this ‘woke’ – not just ‘trans’, which is just a part of the whole – is home-grown, having been adapted via the Denton’s Document, from America. Yes, the entire West is affected, but, now, so is Africa where the Kenyan government has just passed a law allowing self-ID. Sorry, but I’m not swallowing the ‘it’s all the fault of Israel (Jews)’ narrative for everything that goes wrong in our country, Scotland. That was the opposition to the Weimar Republik’s narrative that led to WW II, the Holocaust and the loss of millions upon millions of lives.
You evidently believe that ‘trans’ is a woman problem and nothing to do with the higher things that you, as a man, are interested in, but I have news for you, Robert. It’s all – all of the ‘woke’ stuff – completely totalitarian. If you know your history, you will know that Stalin murdered marginally more people than Hitler, although it’s not a numbers game. Far left and far right (and I don’t mean Reform) are equally dangerous. We are presently in a fairly far left phase, and, as every student of politics should know, the pendulum always swings back, and it will swing back to the right. We had best all pray it’s not the real far right.
The Murrell case and the Salmond case both show that we are just as adept as anyone else at creating hubris for ourselves, yet we continue to point the finger at others. How on earth can we have an independent country when we cannot even take responsibility for our own problems and make an attempt to solve them. You are free to believe or disbelieve whatever you like, Robert. I will be very happy to be wrong about all of this, but I think that the damage is severe now and, perhaps, the effort required – and the cojones – will prove all too much for the faint hearts of Scotland.
I have no idea where you got this idea…” ‘it’s all the fault of Israel (Jews)’ narrative for everything that goes wrong in our country, Scotland.” I have never thought that, let alone written it anywhere.
The point is….the West’s capitulation to * Woke * Ideology ( had to smile that you ” accuse ” me of being only focused on the ” Trans ” shit when that specific aspect of * woke * is the one that has been the subject of the overwhelming majority of your online comments for as long as I’ve been reading blogs such as BB, WOS, PAB et al ) is mirrored by it’s capitulation to, let’s say…Zionist interests and it could be argued is having an equally malign effect on Global stability: just look at the utter calamity that is happening in the M.E – in the Gulf of Hormuz in particular. All because Israeli + U.S psychotic warmongers launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran.
No, Lorna, I’m not in any dismissive of women’s concerns and I would have thought you would remember the several exchanges we’ve had on the issue or just seen my comments on threads you have also been on.
I care about all people, and it seems to me it’s you that often brings in the Man v Woman angle: maybe that’s because you feel women are – still – treated unfairly by men, and that may be true – I don’t know if it is or not and how would ” bad ” and ” good ” be defined?
For the record ….I think – excessive * Woke * Ideology and – excessive – Zionist Ideology are BOTH forces of destruction and are leading the world into a kind of lethal insanity
Robert: I focus on ‘trans’ because I am a woman and have everything to lose to this malign men’s rights/men’s sexual rights movement. That you don’t see it for what it is, is very evident. The aim of the piece was to show how ALL aspects of ‘woke’ combine and collude to undermine our society – and not for the better. ‘Trans’ is part of a bigger whole.
Zionism, usually used pejoratively, actually means nothing more than a desire for a Jewish homeland. Many peoples have lost lands throughout history: the Native Americans, both North and South, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Maoris of New Zealand, the Bantu people of South Africa lost land to the Zulu (both black!); in Scotland, the traveller community was hounded off the roads and its culture and way of life destroyed; the Gaels were evicted from their land; and many went to America and evicted the Native Americans from their land. Mass killings and high death tolls are taking place every day in parts of Africa. Consistency and logic would demand that these are just as important as the Palestinians/Gaza.
As I said, my aim was to underline how ‘woke’ is choking the life out of Scotland, the UK, Ireland, Europe, the West. Now, the Kenyan government has introduced self-ID into Africa. The geopolitical and domestic repercussions of post modernism, queer theory, cultural Marxism, all totems of the hard left and the virtue-signalling, educated middle-class (often Greens) who are not affected in any great way by them has betrayed the working-class of every country infected by ‘woke’. I’m sorry you can’t see past Palestine and the Israelis. Every people has good and bad faith actors, and the Palestinians and Israelis are no different. Do you truly believe that, had Hamas not butchered, raped and captured nearly 2000 Israelis, the Gaza conflict would have begun at all? Do you truly believe that Hamas did not anticipate the terrible toll the Gazans would pay for their actions? Do you truly believe that Israel, of all nations, should not be allowed to protect itself? The Sabra (first generation Israelis) and the children released from the camps to Palestine made an oath that they would never, ever again allow themselves to be butchered without reprisal. Modern-day Israelis will fight to the death in the Middle East no matter how many rallies and marches you hold on our streets.
We live in Scotland, and, although the world should be important to us as human beings, it cannot be more important than our own people. If we cannot even protect our own people and our own country from the utterly deluded, middle-class, tantrum toddlers of the SNP, Green and Labour hard left, how can we expect to look after ourselves as members of the grown-up world of reality where bad things happen every day to good people?
” ….Do you truly believe that, had Hamas not butchered, raped and captured nearly 2000 Israelis, the Gaza conflict would have begun at all ……” Utter Israeli bullshit propaganda; just like the ” Babies put in ovens by Hamas ” ludicrous – and totally debunked – sensationalism dribbled by Biden and others.
Contrastingly, there is ACTUAL video footage of rapes – of women AND men – by IDF scumbags. Though, I imagine you’ll be able to tell yourself it’s fake
I’m not interested in conversing with idiots still pushing this shite.
You’re obviously a very intelligent person, but, in many, crucial areas, you don’t have a clue.
I recommend listening/ reading people who DO have a clue, in fact are extremely well-informed, have decades of completely relevant experience and, most importantly, can see through the endless lies and bad faith of the U.S of Israel psychotics – namely people like John Mearshimer; Jeffrey Sachs; Col Doug MacGregor; Chris Hedges; Norman Finkelstein among – not that many – others. You may just be able to break out of your self-imposed ” Israel the permanent victim ” bubble
Robert: I claim to be nothing other than a commentator. I have studied Israeli/Palestinian history, both past and modern, and it tells me a very different story to that which you are stating. I’m sorry, but, while I feel very sorry for any people who are suffering – and God knows there are millions – my intention was to show how Scotland and hopes of independence are being destroyed. These are our own people.
I can do nothing about Gaza and neither can you. What I do know is that the Israelis will never give up Israel and that the Palestinians, apparently, will not give up in trying to destroy Israel. It is a marriage made in hell!
Edward I besieged Berwick and, when it surrendered, eventually, he had every man, woman, child, dog, cat, domestic animal killed, every building razed, every field burned. He then stocked Berwick with English. Those people he massacred were Scots, but the Scots survived as a nation. I cannot change history all these years later, and I do not hate the English of today. The Palestinians cannot change history either. I think it is four generations since the Nakba. Time to allow their children to have a life worth living.
Anyway, we are not going to agree, so let us leave it there. You succeeded in derailing my piece. I hope you will remember my warning when things start to fall apart – because they will. It is what will fill the vacuum that should concern everyone in Scotland.
Lorna Cal, that’s one of the best commentaries I’ve read for a long time. I wish it could receive far wider readership.
Thank you, Davey. I hope that it will stimulate some debate – which is sadly lacking from politics on these issues, that should concern us all just as much as the wider geopolitics. We are missing the bigger picture on ‘woke’, post modernism and the stranglehold of the hard left – which are all at odds with independence. Some simply do not see the bigger picture and how it plays into the wider geopolitics.
“The majority in any population will be the working-class, not the middle/managerial class who now dominate every parliament in the West …”
ABC1 is now 55% of the UK population. Your assertion that the majority of the UK is working class is just false.
The reason why we have “middle class” policy is because the UK skews middle class. The UK skews middle class because it made a choice around 30 years ago to encourage more young people to go to university.
The ‘luxury beliefs’ that you malign are actually the beliefs of the educated majority.
Tony: I maligned nothing. I pointed out that the ‘woke’ mess we find ourselves in across the board is attributable directly to what I would term the new middle-class. The first modern education expansion took place in the 1960s and most of those who benefited were drawn from the working-class, the middle-class having always benefited from educational opportunities closed to others. The new middle-class has been drawn from the long-term, existing middle-class which is why I call their beliefs, ‘luxury’ in that they have known no opposition to their world viewpoint, having never known anything but class privilege across the board. If the middle-class has expanded to 55%, then we really are in trouble as far as any significant change being likely in the short – and even the longer-term. Without working-class (in which I would count the benefits class, too, as they will move in and out, and former working-class) grounded reality will be at a premium.