Scottish Independence – How many Referendums?

Once again we see the rather unlovely sight of Unionists making a fool of themselves.  This time it is over the issue of a referendum or more precisely over how many referendums will need to be held before Scotland can  become independent.  For years now, if not decades, Unionists of all stripes have stated again and again that there was no need for even one referendum.  They asserted as if Gospel, that any referendum was a waste of time as Scots didn’t want independence anyway.  Now that they are out of power at Holyrood, they have suddendly discovered the attractions of referendums.  To such an extent that like a greedy little child they now want two of them.  It is all very revealing of just how scared and lacking in ideas Unionist have become.  Trully the Unionist Emperor has no clothes.

The argument, to the extent that there is one, is a phoney one.  As Gerry Hassan has pointed out there has never, repeat never, been a case of two referendums before a country has become independent.  The main point that Unionists make is that the Scottish Parliament has no jurisdiction over constitutional matters and that therefore any referendum held by the Scottish Government would have no legal or consitutional validity.  Which of course is true.  No one has ever suggested otherwise.  However a yes vote in such an advisory referendum would carry great political weight.  Which is why David Cameron and other Coalition ministers have always stated that they would respect the result of a Scottish referendum.  So why all this talk about the need for a second referendum?

The simple answer is that there is now a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament.  Which means that there will now almost certainly be a referendum.  And the Unionists are clearly terrified that a majority of Scots will vote yes to independence.  Otherwise  why are the Unionists so frightened of a referendum?  What the Unionists now want is a second bite at the cherry.  If Scots vote yes then we will need to vote again in a few years time after the negotiations have been completed and the terms known.  This of course would give all the key powers back to Westminster and the Unionists.  The UK government could prolong the negotiations in the hope that opinion in Scotland changes.  They will be able to decide when to hold this second referendum and most importantly, be able to choose the wording of any question.  So one can see why Unionists are so keen to get this idea of a second referendum accepted.

However there is a little matter in all this which the Unionists seem to have overlooked.  The whole basis for a second referendum is that a Scottish referendum would have no real validity.  It would not in itself give the Scottish Government any additional powers.  In which case why have this first referendum?  The logic of the Unionist case is that the Scottish Government has all the political powers it needs to start negotiations with Westminster.  It has the support of well over half the MSPs, who were all elected on a platform that included independence.  So why does the UK government not just recognize this and offer to begin full negotiations on Scottish independence?  This way there would still only be one referendum, but this time at the end of the negotiations.

One can see immeditately the bind that Unionists are in.  For a referendum at the end of the negotiations to have any validity, the UK government would need to be willing to start these negotiations now.  Which is almost impossible for them to do.  So all they can hope to do is to try and frighten the Scottish people about the dangers and complications of independence and hope that fear works in their favour.  Not much of a prospectus for maintaining the Union.  For a more detailed look at the issues around a second referendum, Lallans Peat Worrier has a very good post here.

When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro

This was the Reading Group’s book for May and I was much looking forward to reading the novel.  I have previously enjoyed two of Ishiguro’s other works.  I listened to the audio version of Never Let Me Go and I also saw the film version.  Remains of the Day is of course a wonderful film.  So it was with great expectations that I started When We Were Orphans, particularly as this would be my first experience of reading one of Ishiguro’s novels.

It was alas a bit of a disappointment.  Though the novel starts with an interesting and promising idea the whole book is to my mind a great conceit on the part of Ishiguro.  Nothing in the novel or in the writing is ever what it appears at first sight to be.  Take the first part, which, like all the others is given a very precise place and date.  In this case, London, 24^th July 1930.  However the first sentence begins – It was the summer of 1923…….  We are then almost immediately taken further back in time as the narrator recalls various incidents from his past, including a reference to his leaving Shanghai as a young orphan in the years before the 1^st World War.  It is not until later on that we finally emerge in 1930.  A similar approach is taken with other parts of the novel.  Ishiguro clearly likes to play with time and with his narrator’s memories of time.  I suspect he also likes to play with us readers.

It is all beautifully done, as Ishiguro is a master of deliberate imprecision in his writing.  Here is an example of the convoluted way he allows the narrator to prepare us for an account of something that happened in the past.  – There was one other small incident from those weeks following my father’s disappearance which I have now come to believe highly significant.  I did not always regard it so; in fact, I had more or less forgotten it altogether when a few years ago, quite by chance, something happened which caused me not only to recall it again, but to appreciate for the first time the deeper implications of what I had witnessed that day. (p113)

There is much more very fine writing in the book, but what prevents it from working as a whole is that there is just too much variation in styles for no apparent purpose, other than to show off.  There is for example the intermittent use of an even then, old fashioned, upper class English of the stiff upper lip kind.  It even appears when the narrator is caught in the midst of a skirmish in the Sino-Japanese War.  Trying to comfort a terrified young Chinese girl, our narrator comes up with this drivel – Look here…. All of this… I gestured at the carnage, of which she seemed completely oblivious… it’s awfully bad luck.  But look, you’ve survived, and really, you’ll see, you’ll make a pretty decent show of it if you just…… if you just keep up your courage…(p271)

My main complaint about the book is that it just does not ring true.  Most of the story develops at a very leisurely pace, even though our narrator constantly reminds us that he still wants to solve the mystery of what happened to his parents in Shanghai all those years ago.  And yet he does absolutely nothing about it for decades.  When he does return to Shanghai in 1937, just as the Japanese invasion grows in ferocity, he also does nothing of substance.  Finally, almost out of the blue he decides to leave Shanghai with the married woman he has fancied since 1923.  Then, even more improbably, on the very night of his planned elopement, just hours before the rendezvous with his paramour, he goes off on the spur of the moment on a wild goose chase to discover the building where he believes his parents have been kept in captivity for 40 years or so.  30 odd years of doing nothing much and suddenly wham bam off he goes on a double whammy.  Unbelievable!

There is much that is good and enjoyable in the novel, but it does not add up to a satisfying whole.  I remain with the feeling that Ishiguro is just playing around with his undoubted talent and with us.

Barça Transfer Rumours – Nothing but Hot Air?

The close season is only two weeks old and already it looks like another vintage summer for lovers of transfer gossip surrounding FC Barcelona.  This is hardly surprising given that there are two daily sports paper published in Barcelona and another two published in Madrid.  And with very few football matches to report on, they have to fill their pages somehow.  It is just amazing how often they carry diamentrally opposed „exclusives“.  So far the speculation about Barça has centred on three players – Giuseppe Rossi, Cesc Fàbregas and Thiago Alcántara, featured in the photo below.

 With Rossi, Italian international striker, currently with Villareal, we had the great pleasure of one paper headlining that the deal to sign Rossi for Barça was pretty much done and dusted, while another paper had for its headline that Barça were no longer interested in signing Rossi at all.  All good fun.

As regards Fàbregas, there has been no shortage of stories about this hardy annual.  This must be at least the third summer in a row in which Cesc is the priority signing for the club.  Or not.  While most reports/speculations continue to claim that Fàbregas is the pet project of Pep Guardiola himself, at least some reports suggest otherwise.  This is where Thiago Alcántara gets involved.  Everyone takes it as gospel that Barça cannot afford to sign all the players they appear to be interested in.  So, in order to sign even two quality re-inforcements, the club would have to sell some of their current squad.  And Thiago is the squad player most likely to fetch a good price.

What makes this particular story really interesting is that not everyone within Can Barça thinks this is a good idea.  Not by a long way.  For Thiago Alcántara is widely regarded as the next superstar to emerge from the fabled Barça youth system.  Opinion is thus sharply divided as regards the signing of Fàbregas.  Some reports take it as granted that Barça are still desperate to sign the player, while others say no.

This lack of reliable information about likely signings is amazing, though understandable.  None of the sports dailies have the resources nor probably the inclination to indulge in a bit of real investigative journalism.  Traditionally they rely on match reports and interviews with players and staff as their staple fare.  Nowadays not much gets out of the club.  If anything, the club are probably quite happy to feed the pack of journalists with stories to keep them at bay and off the scent of any real negotiations.  The key decsions regarding players at Barça are taken by the triumvirate of Guadiola, Andoni Zubizarreta and Sandro Rosell, the club President.  All of them pretty mute when necessary.

However a quick look at the past season and who played most of the time and even more important, which players did not play, gives us a pretty good idea of where Barça need to strengthen the squad.  The two key areas are up front and the defence.  Barça rely on three goalscoring strikers and last season only had three.  They badly need at least one other reliable goalscorer.  Hence the talk of signing Rossi.  To complicate matters though the club do have a goalscorer in the squad, Bojan Krekić.  Still only 20 years old (he will turn 21 in August), Bojan has been a first team player for the last four seasons.  Though he has never quite managed to become an established first choice his goalscoring record is pretty good.  Unfortunately for him last season was his worst season at the club.  Injuries and loss of form kept him out of the team for most of the season.  Guadiola and his staff will know enough about Bojan and his potential to have worked out whether it is worth while to persevere with the youngster or to take the plunge and sign a more experienced player.

The defence, especially the centre of the defence is the area of the team that has suffered most from injuries and the obvious lack of trust in squad players such as Milito and Fontàs.  While Eric Abidal seems to have made a good recovery from his operation, there must be a doubt regarding the future of Puyol who has himself had to undergo an operation on his knee.  Which probably means that Guardiola will not know until the new season is well underway just how quickly and satisfactorily Puyol has recovered.  This would all seem to indicate that at least one experienced cental defender and probably a good left back are needed to re-establish the balance of the squad.

All of which of course would lead one to think that spending €40+ million on a midfielder is a bit of a luxury.  Especially when the club already has the two best attacking midfielders in the world in Xavi and Iniesta and one of the most promising ones in Thiago.  But you never know.  Which of course is precisely where all the gossip and speculation comes in.  For nobody really knows or at least nobody is willing to tell, what Guardiola has in mind for the coming season.  One way or another all will be revealed.  But we face another couple of months of intense speculation and imaginative (and some not so imaginative) headlines to keep us occupied while we patiently wait for the football to start again.

War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy’s War and Peace is widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of literature in the world.  It feels a bit sacreligious to write about such an icon in the world of literature.  So I won’t.  It would take too long to even begin to do justice to the complexity of the novel and besides, many people, much better qualified than I have already covered just about everything in and about the book.  What follows then is just a few brief comments about my experience of reading the novel.

This is the second time I have read War and Peace.  The first was almost 30 years ago.  I don’t remember much about it, other than I enjoyed it.  This time I came across the book quite by chance while wandering about the central library in Dundee.  The book stood out from the shelves of a new section promoting classics of world literature.  It also features a new and relatively recent translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.  As I am trying to read lots of books from Eastern Europe as part of a new Reading Challenge, I felt I could not resist this opportunity to re-acquaint myself with this classic.

I had forgottoen just how long a novel War and Peace is.  This version comes in at over 1200 pages.  As each page is slightly bigger than the normal paperback, that is a lot of words.  I reckon that reading War and Peace is easily the equivalent of reading four regular novels.  As this version also kept in French the passages in the novel that were originally written in that language, it feels like I have also read a short novella in French.

War and Peace is not simply a novel.  Tolstoy had very clear ideas that he wanted to convey to the reader.  And this he did by including whole sections and chapters devoted to his views on history, the role of so-called „important people“ etc.  I once attended a course on becoming a writer, and one piece of advice I remember from this course is that an author should „show, not tell“.  It seems  a bit presumptuous to suggest that Tolstoy was less than perfect in how he wrote.  But, I did find these philosophyzing sections over-long and decidedly boring.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the main story I remembered from that first reading all those years ago.  The love stories, the travails of great families as they seek to survive, the power struggles within the court and within the army, and of course, the horrors and unpredictability of warfare.  All this and much more make up the bulk of the novel.  And it is all gripping and fascinating stuff.  Even more so, the characters, not just the main ones, but the minor ones as well, all come to life as real, living and breathing human beings.  On the whole Tolstoy is reluctant to judge his characters.  They, just like the rest of us, have their strengths and weaknesses.

All in all I enjoyed War and Peace, second time around.  It is a very long read and some parts, especially towards the end are, to my mind, superfluous, but neverthelss the good far outweighs any longueurs.  If you can find the time, then War and Peace is a must read.  The Pevear and Volokhonsky translation is very readable, and comes with some brief notes about the political background and some of the real life figures mentioned in the text.

Netanyahu Kills off the Two State Option

Well, the cat is well and trully out of the bag now.  After Netanyahu’s little tantrum there can be no doubt about it.  The two state solution to the Israeli/Palestine conflict is dead as a dodo.  And all because the Israelis refuse to even contemplate any kind of negotiations.  Just why Netanyahu decided to come clean so vociferously and so explicitly is a bit of a mystery.  After all President Obama merely reiterated the long standing US position that a Palestinian state has to be based on the 1967 borders.  This leaves plenty of wriggle room for the Israelis to claim many, if not all, the illegal settlements.  However it is clear that even this is not enough for Israel.  Note that it is not just Netanyahu and his right wing bloc that opposes any kind of deal that leaves any settlement out of Israel.  As the leaked Palestinian Papers show even the so-called moderates like Tzipi Livni refused to accept a deal from Fatah which would have left most of the settlement blocs inside Israel.

The reason for this obduracy can only be that Israel does not feel itself to be under any pressure to reach a negotiated settlement.  Israel wants all the settlements and the right to build new ones.  Israel wants to control the Jordan river.  Israel wants all of Jerusalem.  Clearly Israel does not give a XXXX about the Palestinians.  For even the most reactionary Zionist knows that there will never be a majority of Palestinians who could agree to this kind of offer.  At least Netanyahu has done us the favour of clearing away any remaining doubts.  There is no Israeli partner for a peace deal and once again Israel has shown its unfailing instinct for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Though in the short run Israel will manage to get away with this defiance of international law, thanks to its blank cheque from the USA, it is still amazing that Israel and all its Zionist supporters have conspicuously failed to come up with a plan that would secure Israel’s future not just for the next decade or so, but forever.  To place all your eggs in the one, US basket is a bit short-sighted, to say the least.  For how long will the USA remain the world’s sole superpower?  Perhaps more pertinently for how long will the USA, even its elites, remain so much in thrall to Israel and Zionism?  Given that the Zionist project is based on memories of a past that goes back thousands of years, you would think that Zionists would want some kind of assurance that their project has a chance of surving for more than a few decades.

If Israel is to survive permanently as a enclave in an Arab and Muslim world, it can only do so by reaching a long term agreement with the people who live on the land Israel wants, and an agreement with its neighbours.  And to date there has been no sign that Israel wants to know anything about this.  It has repeatedly dismissed out of hand any and every proposal from the Palestinians and from the wider Arab world.  Not only that, Israel has already lost any support it had in Latin America, Africa and most of Asia.  Even in Europe, the tide has turned against Israel.  It is only a matter of time before European governments adopt a much more forceful stand against Israeli intransigence.

With luck Netanyahu’s recent outburst will hasten the day when more governments accept the reality that Israel does not and never has wanted a Palestinian state, no matter how restricted this state was.  Israel has always and usually violently, said no to the Palestinians.  It is time for the rest of the world to say no to Israel.

Stitching Update - May 2011

I have completed three stitching pieces over the past month or so.  The first was the my variation of Florentine Signets which I had already started.  This is based on a design from Bargello Magic, by Pauline Fischer and Anabel Lasker.  This is a wonderful treasure trove of a book for anyone interested in Bargello needlepoint.   The framework pattern was stitched in different shades of green - medium yellow green, ultra dark pistachio and bright chartreuse.  For this I used two strands of DMC cotton threads.  The centres of each signet was filled with silk threads in blue and purple.  I used three threads as I find stitching with silk quite difficult.  It doesn’t seem to lie as smoothly as cotton thread.  I then cut out a rectangle from the middle which I’ve filled with a torn piece from a some paintwork by my grandson Jamie.   

Following my course in mounting and framing I decided to finish this piece off myself.  I already had a cast off mounting frame in blue.  I only had to trim this to the right size.  The frame is a second-hand frame from IKEA, which I picked up very cheaply in Germany I think.  To make the frame a bit more attractive I added some liming wax to the wood.  This has been the most time consuming piece of work I have so far undertaken - about 48 hours in all.

Next up was another Bargello piece, but this time in wool.  I am trying to use up my stash of Anchor tapestry wool as in future I want to try out Persian wool.  This is supposed to be better for needlework.  Anyway I don’t like to waste anything, so I’m trying to use up the threads I have left.  I discovered that this stash included lots of yellows and oranges.  Hence the predominant colours of the piece as you can see below.

The background is a simple Hungarian stitch repeated in orange and yellow.  The central diamond is a pattern known as Ripples in white, green and brown.  Not sure how to finish this piece off.  So it is just lying about at the moment.  Still got some more Anchor threads to use up.  I will probably just use them for a sampler piece.

My most recent work was the lavender cube above.  I love making these little cubes and filling them with lavender, mixed in with the hollow fibre.  The designs as usual come from Louison’s blog on Biscornus.  These were from Series No 9 positif which has six patterns each for a 30 pt square.  I use all six to make a cube.  The fabric is a very pale green 18pt Aida and the threads various shades of green in DMC cotton. 

Scotland - Independence Lite Anyone?

The shockwaves from the SNP’s recent electoral tsunami continues to reverberate around the media.  The latest wheeze is that an independent Scotland will not actually really be fully independent.  Why, Scotland might continue to share lots of things with England and whatever remains of the UK.  This notion has so excited some Unionists and most journalists that it does make you wonder about the sanity and intellectual competence of some of these highly paid and supposedly well- educated people.  We have even had the spectacle of that old warhorse, Jim Sillars, riding forth to give his imprimatur to all this nonsense.   Alex Salmond and his gang must be delighted with all these Unionists running around like headless chickens.

What seems to have confused all our oh so bright journalists is that the establishment of independence necessarily involves two distinct negotiating strands.  The first strand will deal with what I term the Independence Settlement - basically what assets and liabilities Scotland will have at the moment of independence.  The second strand will deal with all those matters that have to do with the post independence situation.   For most of these matters there will be no change at all.  Under devolution the Scottish parliament and government already have responsibility for most matters - education, health, social services, police, the law, local government etc.  Independence in itself will make no difference to these areas.  Where it will make a difference is in the other areas of government which are currently known as reserved matters and as such, dealt with by Westminster and the UK government.  These areas, such as economic and fiscal policy, foreign and defence policy will, on independence become the responsibility of the Scottish parliament and government.  

This is where the confusion seems to lie.  As there can be no hiatus before independence, this second strand needs to be sorted out before independence becomes reality.  Hence the fact that this second strand of negotiations will need to take place in parallel to the first set of negotiations.  In addition the two strands will be intimately linked.  Nevertheless they will be distinct negotiations.  Let us take a brief look at a couple of the issues that this second strand will have to look at.

An independent Scotland will need to have a currency in place at the moment of independence.  There would seem to be three options - 1. set up our own Scottish currency; 2. use sterling;  or, 3. use the euro.  From all the indications given by the SNP, they favour option 2, at least in the medium term.  Scotland would then continue to use the pound sterling as its currency for the payment of salaries and all other financial exchanges.  In this case, there would of course need to be extensive negotiations between the Scottish government and the Bank of England and the UK Treasury.  These negotiations may well result in some formal arrangements or even a treaty between Scotland and England, or whatever the rest of the UK is to be called.  Now clearly this would mean that Scotland would not have full control over an important part of its economy.  Just as is the case with all those countries, such as France, Germany, Italy etc who are part of the Eurozone.  Whether this would be a good decision is not relevant to this post.  What is relevant is that it would be a decision by the government of an independent country.  And as such could only be taken once the decision to become independent had been taken and agreed.  Though this decision would come into force at the same time as independence, it would not be part of the independence settlement, but rather an arrangement entered into post independence.  And unlike the independence settlement arrangements, this one can change.  At some point in the future a Scottish government may decide to issue its own currency or to join the euro.  The kind of decision that all independent countries can make.

Another area where some kind of sharing arrangement may be put in place is defence, and in particular the various military bases in Scotland.  The government of England may want to use one or more of these bases and the Scottish government may agree to this.  In which case, to ensure continuity of use, there would again need be parallel negotiations on this matter, alongside the negotiations on the independence settlement.  As with the currency issue, this arrangement can change in the future.  Other countries may want to use bases in Scotland and it would be up to the Scottish government to decide whether to agree to such a request or not.  Once again the power to decide would rest with Scotland.

Now some people may want to call all this independence lite, in which case virtually all countries are only “litely” independent.  Last I knew for example the USA continues to have the use of bases in the UK.  Does this mean that the UK is not fully independent?  Or what about Germany, which also has US bases in its country and shares a currency with 20 or so other countries.  I am not sure what independence lite really means, but I am more than happy for Scotland to have the same kind of independence that Germany or the current UK has.  Unionists can call it what they like.