What Does Important mean?

Obama now has a further term in the Whitehouse - for good or bad dependening whether you think everyone should be able to access basic health care in the USA or you are Donald Trump railing at the fact even his billions could not buy Mittens the Presidency and calling for revolution against the undemocratic electoral college system used in the presidential election. Donald, like bullies everywhere, does not do irony.

The BBC spent a small fortune shifting Dimbleby clones across to Washington for the event because of the 'importance' of this election. The question is important to who? The pointy heads in the Tories and New Labour probably thought it 'important' and clearly the scourge of the ill health shysters, Ian Duncan Smith, thought it 'important'. So 'important' did he think this election was, he chided the UK as a country for our instinctive dislike of Mitt Romney's apparent message of: "Its OK to shaft the poor, they do not count for much." Maybe what Ian Duncan Smith really did not like is the increasing awareness that his DWP and ATOS are now out Mitt Romneying, Mitt Romney in the untrammled swathe of destruction for families across the UK which his continuation of a New Labour policy on incapacity benefit is now creating - but I digress.

I ponder at how much the BBC's coverage of the Presidential Race has cost those who still pay their license fee. For a start 6 hours of live airtime / sattelite from the US can not be that cheap, throw in the silly money the Dimbleby clones will be paid, plus travel, plus accomodation, studio time and all the rest and you come up with a program cost of in excess of £1 million - no doubt the guest 'experts' also had their palms greased with an appropriate fee, in the land of the free where everything is charged for. This from a BBC that has already decided the Scottish Referendum is not important enough to cover, neither are the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. So it is important to throw money at a big jamboree in the USA but not to the potentially constitutional break up of the Union and the BBC itself. I am probably not alone in wondering what and how the BBC define 'important'.

The more we hear about Westminster's approach to the independence referendum and its potential consequences the more you are left with a sense that it is a head in the sand methodology based on the premise if Westminster ignores Scotland's pretendy referendum it will just go away. The Westminster parties' pointy heads and their politicians have fallen for their own line of Scotland being too wee, too poor, too stupid to ever to vote 'Yes' to breaking up the Union. As part of this process, just like their propaganda arm the BBC, they think by reducing their financial provision in Scotland they will show us who is boss and cow us into submission. The BBC takes financing away from BBC Scotland while Westminster does it by cutting the Scottish budget by 3% per annum in real terms and introducing further cuts via the backdoor of Barnet consequentials. The message is: This is what happens when you Scots get uppitty - we take back your pocket money. Somehow these Westminster politicians and their wonks believe this is the way to 'save the Union' by making an already disgruntled section of the UK electorate even more disgruntled. Where is the logic in a campaign that is, in effect, saying: 

Stay in the Union and get even less of your Scottish taxes, than you do at present, in return?

But we will still refer to you as 'subsidy junkies'. Yet even the New Statesman is struggling to accept the subsidy junky Scotland line, in a piece on the 6th of November James Maxwell wrote:  

"But why should Unionists let the economic facts ruin the image they have built up of Scotland as a nation of selfish, indulged welfare "mendicants"?The subsidy myth is too politically useful to be simply abandoned. Of course, if they ever do come to terms with the reality that Scotland could survive on its own - and even prosper - it will probably be too late anyway."

 This week has seen New Labour's Scottish peons in even greater straights as Lamont has been forced into accepting the London line on everything from Trident to privatising the NHS (which begs the question just what does Jim Murphy mean by 'autonomous leader with their own policies'). Every Thursday Lamont comes forth with more unsubstantial bilge prepared for her by London focussing on personal attacks on 'Wee Eck'. Gordon Brown asks his 20 questions - no where near any parliament, he is above that - all of which were answered by Professor Gavin McCrone in his 1974 secret report, including the line, '..an independent Scotland will be cash rich and have a hard currency.' Clearly Gordon can not be bothered to read the economic report that has predicated the 'Scottish Subsidy Junky' cover up for all these years. Apparently Scotland was more than paying its way all through the 1960's, according to news paper reports of the era covering the Church of Scotland's concerns about the excess money being taken south, out of the Scottish economy, never to be seen in Scotland again.

In Westminster we saw the biggest Unionist gaff of the week when the 'set piece' debate on Scotland's place in the EU never happened. It appeared the Scottish Region Labour MP who was to lead the debate was late / didn't get her speech printed / was ill / hung over / pulled by New Labour at the last minute - so the great defining debate that was going to put those uppity Scots in their place on the EU never happened. It could not have been because of the circulation of a House of Commons paper, on the internet, concerning the status of Scotland and Scots in the EU that explained there was no EU process in place to expel, from the EU, people who were aleady EU citizens, as a direct result of the Maastricht Treaty which rendered the purpose of the debate, to embarrass the SNP, null and void. 

No, that would be just too cynical ..... but actually not that surprising. When looking for 'subsidy junkies' maybe ATOS should start on the MP's, as the Dennis McShane case is once again exemplifying, and I wonder just how many of the MP's would be fit for 'other work' rather than relying on hand outs from the taxpayers.. subsidised food, drink, travel ..... add your own as you think of more examples for yourself.