We've Sold our Cow ...

The new curling rink at Dumfries Ice Bowl is just the bee’s knees, thank you for asking; we won 8-2 on Thursday night- but the opposition from Lanark did not make the trip to Lockerbie on Friday (boo!). I see we are all still all alive, have not given up the ghost of hope, not had a national ‘George Town moment’.  So I guess there is still hope and we are not doomed to Fudd-dom for another 300 years.

Fudd-dom: now there’s a word (well it is now I made it up).  Close in sound to freedom... but, oh, so different.  It is the antithesis of the wishes of the Scottish people for full fiscal autonomy.  Akin to ‘Calman’, a word that describes an unpleasant form of servitude and colonialism that the English Empire excels in; of which Scotland, according to Carol Craig in ‘Scotland - a Crisis of Confidence’, clearly, is still a colony.

English Empire?

Well, yes. If you look carefully at the original Union Treaty you will read, in one of the clauses, that the parliamentary union gave Scots commercial access to the English Empire but not any form of ‘co-ownership’ or ‘sovereignty’ over the Empire or its colonies. Since the word Britain is derived from the name of the Roman province of England, calling it the British Empire was accurate. In the 1820’s, when Walter Scott created his ‘Jockanese’ parade for George IV, it was realised that there had to be the idea of co-ownership of the English Empire, so us Scots suddenly became ‘North Britons’ - but legally Scotland still did not have, and never has had any sovereign rights over the English Empire...all smoke and mirrors. The Industrial Revolution, English Empire expansion, growing use of coal, iron ore, educated manpower and Scottish innovation meant Scotland was needed to make ‘Empire’ happen. Fast forward 300 years, and nothing much has really changed; our biggest export remains our brightest & best - and the taxes, profit , and most of the benefit from our resources still heads south.

However  ....“You take all that is best from Scotland and you only give us Fudd-dom!”... does not quite have that inspiring ‘Braveheart’ ring to it.

Rab, over at the CallyMerc, brought us the brilliant, descriptive synonym for Iain Gray (the pseudo First Minister in waiting) - ‘Elmer Fudd’ - the cartoon character who’s only thought is to shoot, ‘Dat pesky wabbit!’,  Who clearly - in every Warner Brother Cartoon – fails miserably - as week by week, ‘Dat pesky wabbit’ runs rings around him. Remember - you Baby Boomers – December Saturday mornings?  No school footy because the ground was too hard... so Granny gave you sixpence to go to the Kiddies matinee at the ‘Dommie’ – included in the price was a bag of peanuts, a wee bottle of Leitch’s skoosh (ginger beer for preference but cream soda would do) - and two and a half hours of Pathe News, Bugs Bunny and, on good days, a John Wayne movie. Grannies “stupid” ???  For sixpence you were out of her hair for at least four hours – longer if she had given you a shilling (5p - for the younger readers)!  The antithesis of ‘Fudd-dom’ I think you will concur - or is it? Grannies  are positively Machiavellian.....

So Scotland has its ‘Fudd-dom’; and we understand exactly what that means. Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to go it alone outside of the ‘English Empire’ (aka Westminster rule) and yet the polls commissioned by the ‘Unionist media’ are indicating that Scots increasingly want more than ‘Fudd-dom’. The majority want Scotland to pay its own way and if it takes independence to make this happen, more folk seem to be thinking, ‘That is what it will have to be’.

The ‘Scottish Viceroy in Whitehall’ tells us that Fudd-dom is ‘the settled will of the Scottish people’ ...an accusation spouted as truth... is repeated loudly and often  (by his camp followers in Holyrood and the Scottish media)  in hopes that repetition will get us Scots to agree to continue on in this form of colonial servitude. The cracks in this Unionist edifice are clear and growing, Scots want freedom and not ‘Fudd-dom’ which brings me, nicely, back to the title of this piece;  and the ditty we could -nay should - sing to the Viceroy, Elmer and their ‘hingers oan’(imagine a barbershop quartet):

‘We’ve sold our cow,

We’ve sold our cow,

We have no need

For your bull now,

For yoooor bull now!’