MARK FRANKLAND

I wear two hats when I write this blog of mine. First and foremost, I manage a small charity in a small Scottish town called Dumfries. Ours is a front door that opens onto the darker corners of the crumbling world that is Britain 2015. We hand out 5000 emergency food parcels a year in a town that is home to 50,000 souls. Then, as you can see from all of the book covers above, I am also a thriller writer. If you enjoy the blog, you might just enjoy the books. The link below takes you to the whole library in the Kindle store. They can be had for a couple of quid each.

Monday, April 20, 2015

COME ON NICOLA, DON'T LET THESE DREADFUL BETTER TOGETHER PEOPLE BACK YOU UP. WILL THERE BE ANOTHER REFERENDUM? OF COURSE THERE WILL. AND ONE DAY WE'LL WIN.



Am I enjoying watching the election play out? Of course I am. How could I not? What's there not to like. I guess every man and dog who did their bit for the ‘Yes’ campaign must feel exactly the same way. It now seems nailed on that just about every single person who voted ‘Yes’ on September 18th will be voting SNP on May 7th.
It’s a bit like hoping the weather forecast is true when you have a day off. On the night before, the weather man shows off a map of Britain where your neck of the woods has a big yellow sun sitting right on top of it. The weatherman's pearly white TV smile exudes total a confidence. I know you don’t always believe what I say, but I promise you that on this occasion I am totally, 100% confident. Trust me! Tomorrow the flags are going to get well and truly cracked.
But still…
And the next morning you look out of the window with trepidation, half expecting to see the trees bent double with a rain laden gale straight out of the heart of the Atlantic.
For the last fortnight the daily polls have painted extraordinary pictures as the SNP have soared all the way up to 53%
53%! 
Christ.
And surely I am not alone in just wishing the election could be tomorrow leaving no time for something to go wrong. Surely this time they will not once again be able to pull a new collection of lies from the Better Together hat to make everyone scared of things that go bump in the night.
But then I look at what a depleted, pathetic rabble those who lied their way to the ‘No’ vote have become and I feel better. 
The degree to which they just don’t get it beggars belief. They have chosen to believe their own publicity: their own propaganda. The likes of Jim Murphy and Willie Rennie and Ruth Davidson genuinely see themselves as the great heroes of the campaign who saved the Union. They are desperate to take the chance to wrap themselves in the Union Jack and accept the tearful acclaim of a grateful nation.
There was a key moment in the Scottish leaders debate where all three of them gleefully turned on Nicola Sturgeon and almost danced around like playground bullies as they crowed about winning the Referendum.
We won, you lost, Na na na na na na.....
When Nicola semi stumbled in answering the question about if and when there might be another Referendum, they all bore the beaming expressions of cream gotten cats. And when a a portion of the studio audience booed Nicola, they bore the look of people mainlining of 100% pure heroin.
Their moment had arrived. Here was the adulation they so deserved for saving the Realm from a fate worse that death.
And at that very moment it was crystal clear in their jubilantly smug faces that they had no conception of what they were doing. Never have turkeys voted for Christmas with such smug delight.
They just don’t understand that the 45% of us who voted ‘Yes’ did so with absolute enthusiasm whilst most of the 55% who voted ‘No’ did so out of deluded fear. The young chose hope whilst the old panicked and chose to secure the most miserly pensions in Europe.
By taunting us so gleefully, they ensured that hell has to freeze over before any single one of us will ever vote for them ever again.
A couple of nights ago I channel hopped my way to the BBC News 24 Parliament channel which was playing a re-run of the Daily Politics. It was the night of the day when Scottish Labour had released their manifesto and Andrew Neil had summoned shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran to give her view of the campaign. I have never met Margaret Curran and to be honest I have no wish to. Maybe she is a thoroughly nice lady who doesn’t come across all that well on the TV. Somehow I doubt it. For ten minutes she did little more than screech at the camera. As a demonstration of prolonged spitting bile, it was a truly bravura performance. The sheer depth of her spite and nastiness was actually quiet awe inspiring.
Every time Andrew Neil mentioned anything about the SNP lead in the polls, she almost spat at the screen. Any director looking to cast one of the witches for an upcoming performance of Macbeth must have been scrambling to track down her number. She seemed convinced that if she claimed the SNP were worse than Hitler’s Nazis, then the electorate would suddenly see the error of our ways and flock back into the tent of her party. Her clear sense of entitlement was staggering. How dare the people of Scotland not vote for her party. How dare they! How dare we?
As a shadow minister, she is theoretically one of the top executives of Scottish Labour. Experienced. A safe pair of hands. Able to show a bit of class when the going gets tough. Imagine if something similar happened in the business world. Say Morrisons suddenly surged way ahead of Tesco. One company’s car parks are filled to over flowing whilst the other company’s car parks carry the eerie emptiness of a Detroit suburb. Morrisons sales 40% up. Tesco sales 40% down. How can such a thing have happened? Only a few years ago Tesco seemed set to rule the world for ever and ever. Who could ever have believed that an upstart company from Yorkshire could steal all their customers in a few short months?
Imagine after a particularly catastrophic set of collapsed sales figures that a Tesco board member is put forward to toe the company line on the news. And just imagine if that board member were to spend ten whole minutes screaming at the camera about how appalling and despicable Morrisons are.
Ooft.
How completely and utterly fired would they be! Their P45 would be winging its way within about 30 seconds of the news moving along to the next item.
The same rules apply for sport, religion, the workplace and general life. If you slag off your opponent like an uncontrolled harridan, then people will shake their heads and put as much distance between you and them as they can.
And yet Margaret Curran seemed to think it was OK. It just goes to show the degree to which these dreadful people inhabit cloud cuckoo land. Here’s how it works Margaret. Take a lesson from someone who once upon a time sold double glazing on the knocker.
If a pollster asks someone which way they intend to vote and they say ‘SNP’, it is because there is something about the SNP that they like. They have been attracted to their way of thinking. The odds are that they voted ‘Yes’. The odds are that they like the cut of Nicola’s jib. So is screaming at the camera about how they are the worst people in the world the best way to change minds and re-win support? Or will that kind of appalling, ill mannered behaviour make your target audience hate you all the more?
I know what I think.
That said, I do have one or two issues with the way Nicola dealt with being harangued about whether or not there will be another Referendum. In my book, she was far too much on the back foot and there was no need.
In fact, I think she is duty bound to give a much louder and prouder voice to the army of ‘Yes’. Had the country voted for Independence on September 18th, would the SNP have seen tens of thousands of new members flocking into their fold? I very much doubt it. The reason why over 100,000 Scots have hitched their wagons to the SNP train is to make sure the dream will not die.
So when the twisted monkeys of Better Together pop the question, why not give then the answer with both barrels?
Of course we want another Referendum.
Why the hell would anyone expect otherwise?
It took many years after Martin Luther King lead the march from Selma to Montgomery before black Americans were finally granted the Civil Rights they demanded. Over a decade passed between Ghandi making salt on a Gujarati beach and Lord Mountbatten handing over the keys to Indian Independence. William Wilberforce lost vote after vote after vote before slavery was finally abolished.
Check out Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. The clue is in the title.
‘The LONG Walk to Freedom.’
I don’t remember Ho Chi Minh telling his lads to pack up and go home after they got a hiding in the Tet Offensive.
Rule number one for any campaign trying to overthrow the might of the Esrtablishment.
You don’t give up.
When you get knocked down, you get straight back up and you keep on getting up until you finally wear the other guy out.
There’s nothing wrong in that.
Especially when people voted ‘Yes’ all the way to the age of 55.
Especially now all of the lies and propaganda have been exposed and unpacked.
So get them told Nicola. Loud and clear.
No. We’re not about to go back into our box like well behaved peasants.
We’re all still here and in the end you lot are going to have to send a fleet of helicopters to evacuate the embassy roof.
We’re not about to sit quietly and doff our caps with the required deference.
Of course there will be another Referendum.
And maybe another one after that.
And in the end we are going to win. There is no need to make like the sad cardboard cut-outs of the Westminster bubble, Nicola.
The army of ‘Yes’ wants you to make like a Ghandi. Fight their nastiness and spite with a smooth smile. Smile and assure them that they will lose in the end.
There is however one thing that really needs saying that it really isn’t possible for Nicola to say. And that is that the vote on May 7th is all about self preservation. Look into the eyes of the likes of Margaret Curran and imagine how they yearn to punish the upstart people of Scotland for daring to challenge their position of power and privilege. All being well, 50 SNP MP’s will be enough to ensure the Better Together people never get the chance to dine out on some cold revenge.
It is frighteningly clear that the Westminster parties cannot stand the fact that the people of Scotland have learned not to dance to their tune. Check out the waves of anti-Scottish loathing that are now flowing north across the border. The Romanians and the Muslims must think all their Christmases have come early! All of a sudden there is a new bogeyman in town and that bogeyman is us.
Give them half a chance, and they will follow the Farage line and attack the Barnett Formula with a lump hammer. Let those SNP swine try to govern their hideous realm for a while on fresh air and see how they look then. Starve the bastards. It is what the London Establishment does best. Ask the people of India and Ireland and Kenya. Their instincts for revenge are relentless when the natives have the audacity to get uppity. 50 MPs should be enough to keep them at bay for the time it takes to be free of them once and for all. 
Let's make sure the weather forecast is proved right and that on the morning of May 8th Scotland can be a Better Together free zone.     

1 comment:

  1. It's not just everyone who voted yes, it's those SNP members that voted no, who will now be voting, er well, SNP.

    ReplyDelete