I was responding in a Guardian thread highlighting Cameron's ignorance of the true place of the Magna Carta in English politics and law when spell checker sought to replace Britishness with Brutishness. At first I was amused by spell checker's idiosyncrasy then I thought a bit and realised, what an excellent antonym this was and how accurately it describes the force fed phenomenon of 'Britishness' which has been pummeled down our throats since this whole independence malarkey started back in 2012.
Wings over Scotland has listed the BBC and ITV programs produced for UK viewing with the word British or Britishness in them and it is a long list, a very long list indeed. Charlie Booker in the Gruniad expresses this Animal Farm / 1984 brainwashing very intuitively,
"We've been celebrating Britishness with the strained determination of a man desperately trying to shit a cricket ball for the past five years. There's a Union Flag on every cushion, bedspread and Rimmel commercial. Twee cartoons of the London skyline adorn packets of biscuits. TV can't shut up about Britain. The Great British Menu. The Great British Summer. The Great British Sewing Bee. The Great British Bake Off. The Great British Bayou. The Great British Bull Run. The Great British France."
In Scotland as the scare stories of 'Project Fear' run their routinely farcical and self defeating course we see clearly that Britishness means Brutishness with every Reporting Scotland, Cochrane rant in the Torygraph and the self evident anger and hatred which comes from the average New Labour 'Scotch' MPs and those New Labour MSPs who still put their hatred of the SNP ahead of what is best for Scotland.
Read any comment by a Davidson or a Kelly or a McTernan on Scotland and see British brutishness shining through with laser like precision. Listen to Clare Lally's ignorant response to an apology for relating her to Pat Lally and you once again see British brutishness in its full hateful and small minded glory.
We have had Brown spouting more mince about how Scottish education should be run by Gove at Westminster - clearly in Brown's eyes we Scots are too stupid to run our own education system, having done so more successfully than Westminster for the best part of 500 years. Brown's British brutishness leaps out at you in everything he says and does in running down Scotland. The 'Clunking fist' has little effect and even less power amongst his own folk while in their desperation the local London media tries to tell us otherwise, this is a great Scot, we should heed and act on his very word, bow down Scotland heed and listen to the Mighty Brown. I and many like me, have had enough of Gordon Brown's form of 'Brutishness'.
Cameron has lost the plot and is now claiming Magna Carta as the defining point of 'Britishness', the fount of our law, the beginning of our Brutish Parliamentary traditions. Just how can the man running the UK be so ignorant?
Magna Carta was an attempt by a bunch of rich French blokes with English titles to stop the King of the day emptying their coffers to fill his own. This document was law for only six weeks before the King had enough backing from other French rich blokes to tell the first bunch of French rich blokes where they could park the Magna Carta. This apart it has next to squat diddly to do with the current UK Parliamentary Union which is defined and established by one international treaty, the 1706 Treaty of Union, what ever impact this document had it is only effecting English Law. Scots Law has long been based on the concept of all are equal before law, including the King, a legal position first formally established in 1328 with the Declaration of Arbroath being adopted into Scots law and constitutional practice and the legal case established that the people of Scotland and not the crown are sovereign. An example of more British brutishness which fails to accept there is any other interpretation of events except for the English Establishment's own spin where they and only they are the 'good guys'.
Sadly Westminster and its media propaganda machine has conflated the idea of Britishness with Englishness for so long they can not see what a load of old nonsense their claims are or just how their ignorance shines through along with their British brutishness.
If there was such a thing as Britishness, it flowered just after the Second World War and came from a sense of common purpose, shared experience, all held together by the glue of the NHS and Welfare State. Within 40 years of its flowering this sense of Britishness was already in decline with the march of Thatcherism. Devolution was an attempt to prevent the inevitable end by the Thatcherite Blair and Cameron's blatant rush to copy the USA neo-liberals, down to creating poverty where none existed before, has ended any remaining 'British' sentiment amongst an increasing section of the Scottish electorate.
Ironically, Brutishness has killed off Britishness.
Wings over Scotland has listed the BBC and ITV programs produced for UK viewing with the word British or Britishness in them and it is a long list, a very long list indeed. Charlie Booker in the Gruniad expresses this Animal Farm / 1984 brainwashing very intuitively,
"We've been celebrating Britishness with the strained determination of a man desperately trying to shit a cricket ball for the past five years. There's a Union Flag on every cushion, bedspread and Rimmel commercial. Twee cartoons of the London skyline adorn packets of biscuits. TV can't shut up about Britain. The Great British Menu. The Great British Summer. The Great British Sewing Bee. The Great British Bake Off. The Great British Bayou. The Great British Bull Run. The Great British France."
In Scotland as the scare stories of 'Project Fear' run their routinely farcical and self defeating course we see clearly that Britishness means Brutishness with every Reporting Scotland, Cochrane rant in the Torygraph and the self evident anger and hatred which comes from the average New Labour 'Scotch' MPs and those New Labour MSPs who still put their hatred of the SNP ahead of what is best for Scotland.
Read any comment by a Davidson or a Kelly or a McTernan on Scotland and see British brutishness shining through with laser like precision. Listen to Clare Lally's ignorant response to an apology for relating her to Pat Lally and you once again see British brutishness in its full hateful and small minded glory.
We have had Brown spouting more mince about how Scottish education should be run by Gove at Westminster - clearly in Brown's eyes we Scots are too stupid to run our own education system, having done so more successfully than Westminster for the best part of 500 years. Brown's British brutishness leaps out at you in everything he says and does in running down Scotland. The 'Clunking fist' has little effect and even less power amongst his own folk while in their desperation the local London media tries to tell us otherwise, this is a great Scot, we should heed and act on his very word, bow down Scotland heed and listen to the Mighty Brown. I and many like me, have had enough of Gordon Brown's form of 'Brutishness'.
Cameron has lost the plot and is now claiming Magna Carta as the defining point of 'Britishness', the fount of our law, the beginning of our Brutish Parliamentary traditions. Just how can the man running the UK be so ignorant?
Magna Carta was an attempt by a bunch of rich French blokes with English titles to stop the King of the day emptying their coffers to fill his own. This document was law for only six weeks before the King had enough backing from other French rich blokes to tell the first bunch of French rich blokes where they could park the Magna Carta. This apart it has next to squat diddly to do with the current UK Parliamentary Union which is defined and established by one international treaty, the 1706 Treaty of Union, what ever impact this document had it is only effecting English Law. Scots Law has long been based on the concept of all are equal before law, including the King, a legal position first formally established in 1328 with the Declaration of Arbroath being adopted into Scots law and constitutional practice and the legal case established that the people of Scotland and not the crown are sovereign. An example of more British brutishness which fails to accept there is any other interpretation of events except for the English Establishment's own spin where they and only they are the 'good guys'.
Sadly Westminster and its media propaganda machine has conflated the idea of Britishness with Englishness for so long they can not see what a load of old nonsense their claims are or just how their ignorance shines through along with their British brutishness.
If there was such a thing as Britishness, it flowered just after the Second World War and came from a sense of common purpose, shared experience, all held together by the glue of the NHS and Welfare State. Within 40 years of its flowering this sense of Britishness was already in decline with the march of Thatcherism. Devolution was an attempt to prevent the inevitable end by the Thatcherite Blair and Cameron's blatant rush to copy the USA neo-liberals, down to creating poverty where none existed before, has ended any remaining 'British' sentiment amongst an increasing section of the Scottish electorate.
Ironically, Brutishness has killed off Britishness.
Excellent article & so very true
ReplyDeleteHave you read the authors Alan Wilson and Baram Blackettt? Their subject is the origins of the ancient Britions, apparently there was a King Brute and a Queen Alba a very long time ago. Worth Googling the two authors.
ReplyDeleteAn excellent article and as someone who always appreciated your writing to the comments section of the Independent it was nice to find you here. I always learn something.
ReplyDelete