Taking A Break

Off on holiday this evening for a week.

Proletarians, To Horse!

At a meeting today of interested parties from various unions to discuss resistance to the crisis. This is going to hit most harshly the weakest, the poorest, the least able to organise against it, but numbers attending were very low. OK, it was a sunny Saturday but a lot is on the line. It was good to hear the passion of those who came along and to learn of unions taking on the sharks of the big companies and winning victories but too many of us were of a certain age and we were too few. Where were the young men and women who are going to be hit by the redundancies, the public service cuts, the firms going belly up? Who are left in this airt with no better options than call centres and burger-flipping or its equivalent? Oddly, I wasn't depressed by the event's poor attendance. I'm 90 years too late, to say nothing of being too old, overweight and unfit, to be galloping across the steppes in a tachanka but whatever I can contribute to the struggle I will and I'm resolved to give even more time, money and effort to my union to do so. And to plan better ways to educate, agitate and organise.

Wackohimmelfahrt?

'Location of Jackson's body a mystery' says the MSN headline. Waiting breathlessly for Germaine Greer's piece in The Graun.

Over A Barrel

Diageo is threatening to close down its bottling plant, with a loss of 700 jobs, in Kilmarnock, home of their Johnnie Walker brand. There's talk of strike action but also, amazingly, reports of East Ayrshire Council considering offers of financial incentives to the bloated plutes to make them change their minds. I can't believe the naivety of people who think that offering what will be sweeties as a bribe to a global behemoth like Diageo is a clever move. Have they never heard of the phrase, 'Take the money and run'? Expect nothing from a Scottish Government that is too chummy with home-grown capitalists or a Westminster Government that has bottled out of firmly regulating the nationalised banks. Expropriation, on the other hand.......

Somewhat Understated

Weather back to normal for the Scottish summer: pouring almost all day ('If you can see the hills, it's going to rain. If you can't see the hills, it's raining.') Holed up with Evan Mawdsley's history of the Russian Civil War and found this description of Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg--'an unbalanced Baltic nobleman.' And some. In a conflict not remotely lacking in carpet-chewing monsters of a generally anti-Semitic bent, this man was the psychopath's psychopath, unleashing the only pogrom in Mongolian history among other atrocities. Access to a cossack host and absolute power must have seemed like all his birthdays come at once. The Red Army shot him, not a moment too soon.

Green Thoughts In A Green Shade

Two months ago I paid to have the back garden, which was not so much inspired by Gertrude Jekyll as by Gertrude Hyde, gutted, permeable membrane laid on all surfaces, the beds covered in bark chips and the centre in stone chips. The intention was to plant shrubs in the beds in gaps cut in the membrane. The plan is that weeding will be minimalised if not eliminated. Largely because I do not drive/own a car, I haven't been able to get hold of the shrubs as yet and have found extremely soothing the almost Zen-like aspect that I look out on from the kitchen window as I wash up. The temptation is to leave it as it is and just make patterns in the pebbles with a rake but now my wee sister is back from her holidays her wheels will be pressed into service and the grand plantings can take place.

Why I Am Not In Glasgow Today

It's the summer and I'm actively getting out and about on the bodach's bus-pass which costs me nothing. It's some time since I visited Glasgow and especially the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Today might be perfect for such an excursion. Except for one thing. The city's 182 [yes, that's one hundred and eighty-two] Orange Lodges will be parading through the city centre to Kelvingrove Park. According to the Assistant Chief Constable in Friday's Herald, 'The force's priority is public safety. We want to make sure people can come into the city centre without too much disruption or feeling intimidated by excessive drunkenness and sectarian or disorderly behaviour.' Leaving out the excessive drunkenness and disorderly behaviour, which, I imagine, the police can do something about under the law, there's 'sectarian behaviour.' What the fuck do they think the whole swaggering, bullying piece of shit is predicated upon but sectarian behaviour? Frankly, and I speak as an atheist, this is the equivalent of a march, with military bands, by the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler as far as propagating hatred and asserting perceived domination and racial superiority is concerned. This exposes completely the reality of a desperately sick and vicious strain in the country's psyche. The fact that no political party has proposed more than feeble palliative responses in terms of ending the whole despicable business indicates how useless they are.