The Roads to Referendum: 1

A campaigner in the 1979 Scottish Devolution Referendum

This year’s Scottish Independence Referendum is  one of the most important political events in the lives of most living Scots. It outweighs in importance, for Scotland, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It outweighs the powerhouse rise to prominence of a rejuvenated China or an India that is on its way to being not just a regional, but a global, superpower. It is even more important, though perhaps less so, than the accession of the UK to what was then the EEC and is now the European Union. In this series of articles I am going to outline the history of the Referendum, as I saw it evolve.

The coming Referendum is the single most significant event to occur in Scotland since the end of World War Two. That event brought about the end of the Imperial era, in which European states used their military strength to dominate the planet. With Europe in ruins, and the United Kingdom pauperised, the control systems that had held empires in place collapsed. The British Empire, which Scotland had been a part of, was consigned to history.

Word of the day: Religionard

I’m going to do a series on words and phrases. Some of these will be ones I made up, others will be borrowed. I’ll tell you which ones those are. First up, one of mine :-

Religionard

Now before we go any further, let’s make something clear: I don’t hate all religious people, in fact I'm very fond of quite a few of them, even though we will never agree about this. I do have serious issues with some religious people, though, and that’s why I need a new word, to differentiate between the nice people I know who happen also to be religious, and the nutjob fruitcake headbangers whom I would cheerfully strangle if only I were allowed to, in order to get them to shut the fuck up. And stop them trying to interfere in my life, or anyone else’s, because of their absurd delusions.

Whither Now Scotland

Pic: Rod Fleming
Whither Now Scotland:
Dateline: Friday 19 September 2014
By Rod Fleming, reporting from Calton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, for Rod Fleming’s World.

This morning, the whole of the United Kingdom woke up to the most important announcement in its history: the Scottish people have voted to bring it to an end.

After 307 years of often troubled partnership, in two years the partners in the unitary state will separate and become independent states, Scotland and what has been christened the ‘rUK’, the ‘rest of the United Kingdom’.

In a speech delivered, unusually, on the steps of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh after the poll result was announced, Scotland’s First Minister and the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Alex Salmond, was statesmanlike but clearly delighted. Congratulating the Scots on their momentous decision, he called on ‘All the people of Scotland to put their differences behind them and work together for our country, our nation, and our future.’

Pursuing the Goddess

[caption id="attachment_1273" align="alignleft" width="230"] Aset or Isis, Egyptian Queen of Heaven[/caption]

Since 2002 I have been researching into something that I felt more than anything else. Something was nagging me. At the time I lived, as I do now, in France, and the signs of Goddess-worship were all around me. Cathedrals were full of images of the Goddess, the art replete with them. I could see this but I couldn’t define it, I couldn't understand what it meant.

When I returned to Scotland I was a very busy man for a long time, building a house and trying to make ends meet from my freelance work, and also my own mother became ill and died, so the research went on hold. But it was always there in the back of my mind, and as I travelled round Scotland, that epicentre of dry Presbyterianism, I saw again and again the unmistakable mark of the Goddess all over the architecture and in the symbolism.

The Goddess was the principal focus of my Masters’ Degree research and even though I came a long way, I didn’t reach the answer I sought. When I came back to France I began to write, but in April of 2012 I had to stop. I was getting too confused.

Faith Destroys Friendship

A while ago I lost a friend. I don’t mean to say he died; he didn’t. I hope he is well, and has a long life. But we aren’t friends any more.

My friend, whom we shall just call David, was close. For many years he had been a pretty permanent part of my life. We operated a non-audited favour system; whenever he needed something, like help with his computer, or moving his stuff or, well, whatever, he called me and I helped. And if I needed some help, for example when I was building my house, David turned to. There was no imbalance, and while we often argued about matters of philosophy, we are both educated Scots; argument is in our blood.

So it came as a shock to me when he ended our friendship.

Wot? No Rabbits? - The Brither

Wot no Rabbits?

Now my brother was a bit of a character. I’m not talking about my wee brother, here, or the big one I suddenly discovered I had  in 2004 that no bugger ever told me about before (aye, we’ll get to that.) I mean my other big brother Sandy, AKA Sye.

Now Sandy did things his own way. He ran a car breaking yard—and trust me, there is no more joyous place to spend your school hols than in a place like that—and he lived in a wee cottage in Arbroath, one of those sandstone ones. Sandy’s wife was called Toos and she was Dutch.

Sandy was always coming up with schemes and one of these was inspired by Toos, who told him that people in Holland raised rabbits for the pot.

The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted

Anti-apologism 1: The ‘Ontological Argument’= busted.

When dealing with religious apologists it's always better to nail them into the real world and insist on the same standard of evidence that is required for Gravity, Plate Tectonics or Evolution, because no apologist can ever provide these. Insisting on real scientific proof is a perfectly legitimate position, any time that someone is proposing the existence of something in the real world, including a god.

However, it is worth knowing about some of the more ridiculous philosophical ideas you might find used by apologists, and I’d like to discuss a few.

The first is The Ontological argument

The Big Snip

[caption id="attachment_1249" align="alignleft" width="200"] Gratuitous picture of a pretty girl in a wedding dress. Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

The Big Snip. Vasectomy, that is. This is a contraceptive procedure performed on men, wherein the connections to the male testes are severed, by cutting a tube called the vas deferens; thus, vas-ectomy. The result is that though the man can continue to enjoy sex normally, he’s shooting blanks, as it were, since his seminal fluid, which is mainly produced in the prostate, contrary to popular opinion, contains no sperm and is therefore incapable of fertilising an ovum.

This procedure has become very popular in many countries, where it is offered as a normal form of contraception. Many men are persuaded that this is the right course of action to take for a number of reasons. But in fact, vasectomy is something that no man should ever, under any circumstances, consider doing, and I will explain why.

The Call of Duty?

[caption id="attachment_1241" align="alignleft" width="236"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

The last time I was back  in Scotland, I was asked, ‘Would you ever live here again?’ I gave a non-committal answer to avoid offence, but inside myself, I believed I knew; no, I would not.

In truth, I had not then and still have no plans to live in Scotland again. I love the country and the people, but I am both a Scot and a European; the day life in rural France gets too humdrum, it won’t be to Scotland that I turn.

In the last few months I’ve thought a lot about this, however.

Sticks, Ice-Creams and Specks of Dust

[caption id="attachment_1235" align="alignleft" width="249"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

A long time ago, when I lived in Arbroath in Scotland, my role before opening up the old Fleming Partners office was to do the school run. Our kids went to a small village school just outside the town itself and there was no bus.

On these runs I always tried to entertain the boys by talking about whatever came into my mind (and would not take more than 10 minutes.) So one day I explained why humans can see in colour and many animals can’t. This is because, I said, there are two types of vision receptor cells, rods and cones. Cones see colour and rods see brightness—monochrome, in other words. (I do know it’s a bit more complex than that, but these were primary kids.) Humans have both rods and cones, and many animals, like dogs, only have rods. So we see colour and they don't.

This went fine and was met with all the usual approval that could be mustered from a 5-year old and an 8-year old.

RIP My Lovely

[caption id="attachment_1231" align="alignleft" width="271"] Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]

Sniff! She died. She’s been with me these last five years, and she’d been around a good few years before we met. She was like a female character out of a Springsteen lyric, kinda worn and raggedy, but she stuck with me through thick and thin.  I don’t know how many films or repeats of TV series I’ve watched with her, or how many words I wrote with her, but I do know the paint was gone from most of her keys at the end…I did explain it was my old laptop that died, didn’t I?

45% of Americans are Retards.

[caption id="attachment_1224" align="alignleft" width="234"] Pic: NASA[/caption]

45% of Americans—well, people in the United States of America, which is, as far as they seem to be concerned, all of America—are retards. Not only is this truth shocking, it is dangerous and threatens all of us.

That 45% of Americans are so gravely afflicted has already caused pause for many commentators, including other Americans. The scientist and media personality, Bill Nye, for example, lamented it publicly, and not for the first time, in a YouTube video posted yesterday.

If there is consolation, and there’s not much, it only comes from the fact that for the last twenty years that the Galup polling organisation has been researching this, the figure remains relatively unchanged. So how did Galup come to its findings?