Brace yourself, this may take me some time. I’ll break it up a bit so it doesn’t bore you too much, then I think I’m giving up trying to write my way out of it, to reconcile all the difference with words.
Four times I’ve revised writing this since Thursday last; the post Brexit vote fallout continues apace and I’ve wondered whether to continue writing it at all. Media narratives reassert themselves unashamedly, brooking virtually no notion of complicity in the manufacturing of consent for an inevitable further brutalising of those least able to take the strain whilst the Great British Fake Off garners its forces in both of Westminster’s two ‘main’ political parties. There have been screeds of analysis written in the week (and a half now) since the vote and I have no wish to contribute further to the klaxon calls, the hand wringing or told you so’s.
Mostly I’ve been seeing a landscape of fear. It’s a fairly well established term in looking at the various ways in which eco-systems work. The landscape of fear looks at how the flora and fauna of a given locale interact, in particular at how apex predators often not only determine that environment but how it comes to rely on them.
In 2015, with the support of the John Muir Trust, landowner Paul Lister announced plans to reintroduce the wolf back into the Scottish highlands, admittedly with some resistance from other landowners, even if Springwatch’s Chris Packham added whatever weight his support brings to the case ‘for’ too. Perhaps you see where this is going; the whole neoliberal project reintroduced the wolf, long before it was a glint in Mr Lister's eye, first set free coincidentally with the power transferred to the barons by King John’s signing of the Magna Carta, the closest England has ever had to a written constitution, some 801 years ago.
Revisionist historian’s eyes tend to look upon ‘the noble document’ and its intent of curbing the absolute power of monarchy, ruling by divine right, favourably. Rightly so. It should also be noted though that when the words were written upon it which are often seen as the root of Great British democracy, saying ‘No free man shall be taken or imprisoned, or dispossessed or outlawed or in any way ruined’, a ‘free man’ in England, as it was in much of medieval Europe, meant little to the peasantry or ‘ordinary, hard working people’. This was still very much the age of feudalism, having developed since around 700 and only officially ending in the United Kingdoms of England and Scotland with the Tenures Abolition Act (1660).
In undermining the monarch’s power, the Magna Carta gave more power to the barons, it was the beginning of a system of legal entrenchment of power and wealth in land, which we still see the vestiges of today. This was what the landed gentry and nobility were celebrating at all of the events last year, what about you? What were you celebrating, British libertarianism?
So the wolves have skulked and hunted, barely concealed, but now they want the landscape of fear back.
Before the EU referendum vote I published a few pieces here, written in hope, focusing on positive aspects of European solidarity, now however there is a desperate need in me to write myself out of fear. Yes, there are the inevitable and almost all pervasive worries with regard to an emboldened hard right Conservative government (and any of the prospective candidates for its recently vacated seat at the head of the table are, despite any of their claims to be the moderate choice, further to the right than Cameron by varying degrees); that’s a Government aiming to, regarudless of the Brexit settlement as regards a trade deal or free movement of labour and people, circumvent the protective legislation, the checks and balances the EU has given workers, unions, gender equality, disabilities, human rights, the list goes on. No, my biggest fear is that behind it all is a grinding inanity, an acceptance of inevitability, a Kafkaesque trajectory beyond the rifts of social division, beyond working class anger and frustrations or left wing and liberal cries of despair, where the inevitable and only refuge is the ultimate collective passive acceptance of ‘oh dearism’.
Whilst the room slows from its spin and balms are applied to soothe away the murmurs of ‘r’ words used both about the vote and reactions to it and the settlements to come, my most worrying thoughts bleed out from dark visions of a city state led corporatocracy, a tax haven Britain further transferring wealth from even more to even less of the population. The narrative of othering so firmly embedded in the social consciousness, individual xenophobic actions enabled by systemic institutionalisation in our failing political systems and their media cheerleaders, will swivel like a spotlight outside a grim prison wall, ready to fall on the next easy scapegoat as soon as expediency requires, political or journalistic prestidigitation slickly (or not so) diverting gazes from the real action. Do we believe the initial stories that those who bankrolled the Leave campaign made a killing on expecting a fall in the markets and the pound or subsequent stories that they lost their investments in the campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions but don’t regret a thing?
As the man who called the referendum (which Scottish people had shown no desire for in the first place), his arch nemesis in the public schoolboy bunfight, which the blue on blue bloodletting grew out of, as well now as the bulldog for the British establishment’s clearly manipulated and desired veer rightwards, all drift off into the privilege of the good night, what now for the disaffected whose frustrated act of misplaced defiance enabled the entrenching of their misery even further. In places where it seemed there was nothing left to lose there may still be more yet. What now for the Independence Day declared by two of the three, the one for a country, which John Oliver so rightly points out, was independent all along and is the one other countries around the post imperial world feel the need to declare independence from
Meanwhile, back at the Westminster ranch, George Osborne ostensibly withdraws his failed and failing austerity driven targets and looks to calm investors and flight in the markets by further reducing corporation tax. Of what relevance will that be to those most affected by his failures, what of those who have borne the brunt of that failed project, many of them the same voters promised ‘control’ by the swashbuckling Brexiteers? What of the more than one in five of the population who have borne 39% of all cuts, including to social care and community services. Or most worryingly for me, given the easy target painted on all our backs, what of the 1 in 13 people of the population who are disabled and who have borne a heavily disproportionate 29% of the burden, making them nine times more likely than the average person to have been affected by them? And this beyond the burning issues of enabled xenophobia and hate crime.
Marked by its absence from front pages in a UK media which reaches ever further rightwards in a continuum which begins just right of the new centre, which is far further right than it has ever been, has been the Old Bailey’s decision to try Jo Cox’s killer Thomas Mair as a terrorist. Of course it should never have been in doubt but there is a predominant, prevailing narrative, which now sees terrorism as overwhelmingly something it isn’t, somehow accepted at an international, societal, cultural, governmental level with barely lip service paid to its endemic racism. Beyond what we all thought was a turning point in a nasty xenophobic campaign, but which was still to see ‘that’ poster, the expediency with which tragedy has served its purpose becomes clear. Wider repercussions other than holding the very public cipher to account seem unlikely, they wouldn’t serve the underlying narrative, as cynical as that sounds and as utterly sad as it makes me. In the UK, terrorism is defined, under section one of the Terrorism Act 2000, as an action, threat, or violent act ‘made for the purpose of advancing political, religious or ideological cause.’. For most, for the media and the right wing demagogues and those led by them, caught in their narrative, that means only one thing.
So, of course, barely a whisper passes in the UK media, which would run contrary to the right wing enabling narrative pursued by almost all of its outlets for more than a decade, linking back from this decision to the Dec 2015 Royal United Services Report indicating the greater threat to the UK, and its communities’, security from right wing, ‘lone actors’ than from that which so predicates worries over terrorism. It seems a journalistic simplicity to me in cross referencing also to the New America Foundation report which found that, post 9/11, of the 26 attacks defined as terror on US soil 19 were perpetrated by non Muslim extremists, by far the majority of which were right wing, anti government organisations and white supremacist groups. Terror has a legal definition and should, within the law always be called out as such. Likewise, so does hate crime. The links between the two are often clear and there are legal frameworks for dealing with them too. We have just witnessed an enabling of radicalisation which needs to be checked and rowed back, for the sake of our communities and for the next easy targets before more tragedy ensues.
Yet when even the Prime Minister uses the enabling language, othering ‘swarms’ and ‘hordes’, at the dispatch box and warnings from the UN Human Rights Commissioner, calling on the UK to curb tabloid hate speech against migrants and refugees, are wilfully ignored, in fact are seemingly reacted against, what hope is there of any decisive action being taken any time soon? It has become an inherent threat to the precariat in all its guises that any and all of its constituent members can and will be used as an easy other to serve the nefarious ends of lining shareholders pockets. It is no coincidence that the same arms companies responsible for selling arms to all sides in the Middle East conflicts, helping fuel the refugee crisis, are the same companies selling arms to increasingly right wing governments closing their countries’ borders across Europe.
This is some of the backdrop, my wholly subjective eye view on a landscape of fear where the demagogues, the investors, those motivated wholly by profit beyond borders, are the apex predators, with scavengers now baying around them to savage the remains of anything they deem rightful prey. And I feel like a wildebeest desperately trying not only to outrun them, dodge them, but attempting also, in what may be increasingly vain attempts, to usher at least a small herd away with me, all the while fearing most for the stragglers, the most vulnerable.
Of course, for us in Scotland there is some hope. The competence and determination of a First Minister acting upon the expressed will of the people, bringing perhaps more than welcome change. And to come also, perhaps respite in a compassionate, more dignified Scottish Social Security provision, but whilst we wait, whilst Westminster plays its internal power games, our lives, our communities remain under constant threat from the project already well under way. Somewhere near you, maybe next door, maybe in that dishevelled figure you cast a glance at in passing on the street, there are ethnographies of fear, of lives governed by it.
I realise now perhaps there were other places to look, to highlight where and how those fears can manifest, but my tendency is always to look for hope first. Right now it feels like it will be a long time in the waiting for hope to materialise. A relative thing, of course, but in a landscape of fear, hope on the horizon, two, three years away, seems as distant as the view from the Juno probe.
Amidst my fevered surveying of the backdrops, the landscape, I was given pause to reconsider those other places and my perspectives on them. They were also thrown into further sharp relief by Scotland’s particular weaknesses when it comes to the tribalism of identity politics in a post truth context.
Given what I’d written for this, given events my personal views were based in, it seemed wholly surreal to read descriptions of a march by an overtly sectarian organisation, held against those same backdrops, in which the crowds attending were outnumbered by those marching, was both allowed to bring areas of our largest city to a standstill on a busy summer Saturday and could be described as passing with no ‘major issues’ and only ‘minor offences’ committed, by both police and the media. In what other context could 13 people arrested for breach of the peace, sectarian offences, the carrying of an offensive weapon and assault during a daytime march through the city streets, be described in such a way? When an organisation exists, at best in part, as an opposition to another religious faith and its demonstration, its celebration of what it is, its march, leads to those occurrences, are we to see them as minor, give them no other context?
That’s not to say this is a contribution to that debate either. My own, nuanced position should become clearer as I continue. I’ve written the foregoing with a degree of removal and hindsight, what follows, given that context, was a little more personal, ethnographical than that.
I often write these pieces drawing on personal experience in attempts to illustrate wider ideas. This isn’t done due to any misguided belief in the anecdotal as universal but rather draws on two strands of thinking. The first is the simpler of the two, drawing on the so often fruitful advice which should remain extended to all writers and not merely aspiring ones, to write from the perspective of what you know. Its not really as simplistic as writing ‘what you know’ or all writing would become autobiography, its more like an exhortation to remember all things are focused through the lens of your own experience, tacitly acknowledging there is no objective standpoint and the best you can muster is knowing your own subjectivity, and owning it too.
So, of course, barely a whisper passes in the UK media, which would run contrary to the right wing enabling narrative pursued by almost all of its outlets for more than a decade, linking back from this decision to the Dec 2015 Royal United Services Report indicating the greater threat to the UK, and its communities’, security from right wing, ‘lone actors’ than from that which so predicates worries over terrorism. It seems a journalistic simplicity to me in cross referencing also to the New America Foundation report which found that, post 9/11, of the 26 attacks defined as terror on US soil 19 were perpetrated by non Muslim extremists, by far the majority of which were right wing, anti government organisations and white supremacist groups. Terror has a legal definition and should, within the law always be called out as such. Likewise, so does hate crime. The links between the two are often clear and there are legal frameworks for dealing with them too. We have just witnessed an enabling of radicalisation which needs to be checked and rowed back, for the sake of our communities and for the next easy targets before more tragedy ensues.
Yet when even the Prime Minister uses the enabling language, othering ‘swarms’ and ‘hordes’, at the dispatch box and warnings from the UN Human Rights Commissioner, calling on the UK to curb tabloid hate speech against migrants and refugees, are wilfully ignored, in fact are seemingly reacted against, what hope is there of any decisive action being taken any time soon? It has become an inherent threat to the precariat in all its guises that any and all of its constituent members can and will be used as an easy other to serve the nefarious ends of lining shareholders pockets. It is no coincidence that the same arms companies responsible for selling arms to all sides in the Middle East conflicts, helping fuel the refugee crisis, are the same companies selling arms to increasingly right wing governments closing their countries’ borders across Europe.
This is some of the backdrop, my wholly subjective eye view on a landscape of fear where the demagogues, the investors, those motivated wholly by profit beyond borders, are the apex predators, with scavengers now baying around them to savage the remains of anything they deem rightful prey. And I feel like a wildebeest desperately trying not only to outrun them, dodge them, but attempting also, in what may be increasingly vain attempts, to usher at least a small herd away with me, all the while fearing most for the stragglers, the most vulnerable.
Of course, for us in Scotland there is some hope. The competence and determination of a First Minister acting upon the expressed will of the people, bringing perhaps more than welcome change. And to come also, perhaps respite in a compassionate, more dignified Scottish Social Security provision, but whilst we wait, whilst Westminster plays its internal power games, our lives, our communities remain under constant threat from the project already well under way. Somewhere near you, maybe next door, maybe in that dishevelled figure you cast a glance at in passing on the street, there are ethnographies of fear, of lives governed by it.
I realise now perhaps there were other places to look, to highlight where and how those fears can manifest, but my tendency is always to look for hope first. Right now it feels like it will be a long time in the waiting for hope to materialise. A relative thing, of course, but in a landscape of fear, hope on the horizon, two, three years away, seems as distant as the view from the Juno probe.
Amidst my fevered surveying of the backdrops, the landscape, I was given pause to reconsider those other places and my perspectives on them. They were also thrown into further sharp relief by Scotland’s particular weaknesses when it comes to the tribalism of identity politics in a post truth context.
Given what I’d written for this, given events my personal views were based in, it seemed wholly surreal to read descriptions of a march by an overtly sectarian organisation, held against those same backdrops, in which the crowds attending were outnumbered by those marching, was both allowed to bring areas of our largest city to a standstill on a busy summer Saturday and could be described as passing with no ‘major issues’ and only ‘minor offences’ committed, by both police and the media. In what other context could 13 people arrested for breach of the peace, sectarian offences, the carrying of an offensive weapon and assault during a daytime march through the city streets, be described in such a way? When an organisation exists, at best in part, as an opposition to another religious faith and its demonstration, its celebration of what it is, its march, leads to those occurrences, are we to see them as minor, give them no other context?
That’s not to say this is a contribution to that debate either. My own, nuanced position should become clearer as I continue. I’ve written the foregoing with a degree of removal and hindsight, what follows, given that context, was a little more personal, ethnographical than that.
I often write these pieces drawing on personal experience in attempts to illustrate wider ideas. This isn’t done due to any misguided belief in the anecdotal as universal but rather draws on two strands of thinking. The first is the simpler of the two, drawing on the so often fruitful advice which should remain extended to all writers and not merely aspiring ones, to write from the perspective of what you know. Its not really as simplistic as writing ‘what you know’ or all writing would become autobiography, its more like an exhortation to remember all things are focused through the lens of your own experience, tacitly acknowledging there is no objective standpoint and the best you can muster is knowing your own subjectivity, and owning it too.
The second, slightly more complex, reasoning behind the drives, the framing of what I write is in a commitment to a cultural anthropological approach to modes of inquiry which is markedly less well known beyond the fields which gave rise to it. It is one which, given the widespread adoption and rise in uses and applications of one of its most basic but powerful research and archiving tools, the ethnography, is likely to become far more widespread as the limitations of that tool are questioned or stretched beyond the field which devised it; try not to smirk when I say I’m talking about ‘kinky empiricism’.
I intend to write more on just what that term means in a Scottish ethnological and general cultural context, aside from how it informs my academic work, but for now find it incumbent upon me, not least of all because it has informed virtually everything I’ve written here but also because I realise I cant just throw it out there without at least a basic attempt, to give the term a little further definition or explanation.
Coined by Danilyn Rutherford in a 2012 paper for the University of California, to take account of the adaptation of anthropological techniques for ever expanding fields, ‘kinky empiricism’ was an attempt to reframe contemporary cultural anthropology. It acknowledged that ‘the new kinds of interchanges in which anthropologists are now engaged create obligations of a particularly pressing sort.’, whilst also noting that in the ‘increasingly politically fraught arenas…anthropologists are entering…all too often (it) has appeared to outsiders as having a tangential relationship to the empirical.’. Rutherford’s appeal is for a revision of what empirical means, drawing on the epistemologies of Hume and ‘the long shadow cast by the 1980s, a time when anthropologists developed new allegiances in the humanities’, but not restricted by either, acknowledging their limitations amidst the need for ethnographical immersion, subjectivised by its very nature.
‘Kinky empiricism’ speaks to truisms but acknowledges an absence of absolute, empirical truth and in so doing attempts to reclaim a redefined empirical nature of inquiry. Somewhere it owes a debt to Lyotard. It is ‘always off kilter, always aware of the slipperiness of its grounds and of the ethical demands spawned by its methods.’. In further acknowledging the inherent weaknesses of the wholly empirical approach and of the wholly subjective, Rutherford makes a compelling case for a redefined empiricism, a kinky one, because ‘being off kilter is a strength, not a weakness. For anthropology, it is what comes with getting real.’.
I intend to write more on just what that term means in a Scottish ethnological and general cultural context, aside from how it informs my academic work, but for now find it incumbent upon me, not least of all because it has informed virtually everything I’ve written here but also because I realise I cant just throw it out there without at least a basic attempt, to give the term a little further definition or explanation.
Coined by Danilyn Rutherford in a 2012 paper for the University of California, to take account of the adaptation of anthropological techniques for ever expanding fields, ‘kinky empiricism’ was an attempt to reframe contemporary cultural anthropology. It acknowledged that ‘the new kinds of interchanges in which anthropologists are now engaged create obligations of a particularly pressing sort.’, whilst also noting that in the ‘increasingly politically fraught arenas…anthropologists are entering…all too often (it) has appeared to outsiders as having a tangential relationship to the empirical.’. Rutherford’s appeal is for a revision of what empirical means, drawing on the epistemologies of Hume and ‘the long shadow cast by the 1980s, a time when anthropologists developed new allegiances in the humanities’, but not restricted by either, acknowledging their limitations amidst the need for ethnographical immersion, subjectivised by its very nature.
‘Kinky empiricism’ speaks to truisms but acknowledges an absence of absolute, empirical truth and in so doing attempts to reclaim a redefined empirical nature of inquiry. Somewhere it owes a debt to Lyotard. It is ‘always off kilter, always aware of the slipperiness of its grounds and of the ethical demands spawned by its methods.’. In further acknowledging the inherent weaknesses of the wholly empirical approach and of the wholly subjective, Rutherford makes a compelling case for a redefined empiricism, a kinky one, because ‘being off kilter is a strength, not a weakness. For anthropology, it is what comes with getting real.’.
Amidst a landscape of fear, all of our lives are off kilter, every story, every ethnography has equal validity, it always did, it is what comes with getting real. This one begins last Thursday, a week out from the Brexit vote…
...I ventured out on my own yesterday for the first time in a few days. That’s just one of the small indignities I regularly face with my condition. (newcomers chez tumshie may benefit from a perusal of https://www.kiltr.com/tumshie-heid/1782916141-the-politics-of-sleeping-part-1-just-the-fact ) I spent some time, in the first year or two post diagnosis and whilst still struggling with the notion of the restrictions it placed upon me, railing against it but all too often found myself in dangerous, unsafe situations which, if they didn’t impact on my threshold or seizure frequency directly, certainly took their toll later.
So a fiercely independent man had to resign himself, eventually after some inevitable kicking and scratching, to a more prudent management of matters, trying to find a balance between just being able to move around, go about my daily business, freely, acting of my own free will and volition, whilst maintaining, managing situations in such a way as to do so safely and with a minimalised impact on my condition. I still, more frequently than I should, trade off what I know will inevitably impact thresholds later just so as not to feel caged in by the condition, to feel free of it, even if briefly and with consequences which will only give the lie to its fleeting sensations later and with a vengeance.
It struck me, whilst foraying out, that whilst I have adjusted to this constant trade off and management as stark necessity (just an increase from 40 to 60 partial seizures in a day is brutalising, the difference between functioning and being debilitated, the likelihood of clustering into secondary generalised seizures so much higher and more frequent, sometimes just one lack of understanding, one person being a dick, can be the catalyst for that difference; I cant explain that to everyone all the time, so stay at home when my threshold is low and my frequency higher, its safer that way!), that same balance, the same choices, for entirely different reasons, around immediate or deferred and lasting gratification, will be facing many in the sharpest relief they have ever witnessed it, as the UK’s (lack of) social contract takes shape. In my new place of residence, taken up largely to assist with the management of my condition, among the gentle folk and rolling hills of Perthshire, as I stepped warily blinking through the brief sunlight, I saw little direct evidence of it around me.
I was thankful for it, of course, for a brief respite from the emerging scabrous sores of social division writ clear across even the most facile analysis of the EU referendum results, frothed to the surface amidst the tumult of deeper political and social malaise, like even the best, or indeed the worst, home made broths, apparently in need of some skimming, but its bursting bubbles not so visible here. Thankful but still wary of a world which felt changed, less safe, I continued on to the corner shop.
Whilst housebound for a few days and against better judgement in terms of best avoided emotional impacts, when I have had longer, in fuller cognition, inter ictal periods, I have, like so many others, been unable to tear myself away from newfeeds and commentaries as the post Brexit vote week unfolded. Whilst I’ve been proud of the way most Scots voted, I have been under no illusion that the working class dissatisfaction with financial and political elites is not present in the same way it has been clearly articulated across England and Wales and the emboldening that has given to right wing movements across Europe since
In the EU Referendum Result debate in Holyrood this week, Kezia Dugdale, having one of her few fine moments in the chamber, was right to point out that although Edinburgh, where her constituency is, voted so resoundingly to Remain at 75%, whole areas, like Niddrie, when viewed at the count, clearly expressed a desire to Leave. Those areas have the same vulnerabilities as their counterparts in the NE of England or Wales, which have seen them exposed to the right wing demagoguery, to the smoke and mirrors of being led to point the finger in the wrong direction. Those same weaknesses exist in the mining communities I grew up in, the ravages of neo liberalism disaffecting their denizens further almost by the day.
So a fiercely independent man had to resign himself, eventually after some inevitable kicking and scratching, to a more prudent management of matters, trying to find a balance between just being able to move around, go about my daily business, freely, acting of my own free will and volition, whilst maintaining, managing situations in such a way as to do so safely and with a minimalised impact on my condition. I still, more frequently than I should, trade off what I know will inevitably impact thresholds later just so as not to feel caged in by the condition, to feel free of it, even if briefly and with consequences which will only give the lie to its fleeting sensations later and with a vengeance.
It struck me, whilst foraying out, that whilst I have adjusted to this constant trade off and management as stark necessity (just an increase from 40 to 60 partial seizures in a day is brutalising, the difference between functioning and being debilitated, the likelihood of clustering into secondary generalised seizures so much higher and more frequent, sometimes just one lack of understanding, one person being a dick, can be the catalyst for that difference; I cant explain that to everyone all the time, so stay at home when my threshold is low and my frequency higher, its safer that way!), that same balance, the same choices, for entirely different reasons, around immediate or deferred and lasting gratification, will be facing many in the sharpest relief they have ever witnessed it, as the UK’s (lack of) social contract takes shape. In my new place of residence, taken up largely to assist with the management of my condition, among the gentle folk and rolling hills of Perthshire, as I stepped warily blinking through the brief sunlight, I saw little direct evidence of it around me.
I was thankful for it, of course, for a brief respite from the emerging scabrous sores of social division writ clear across even the most facile analysis of the EU referendum results, frothed to the surface amidst the tumult of deeper political and social malaise, like even the best, or indeed the worst, home made broths, apparently in need of some skimming, but its bursting bubbles not so visible here. Thankful but still wary of a world which felt changed, less safe, I continued on to the corner shop.
Whilst housebound for a few days and against better judgement in terms of best avoided emotional impacts, when I have had longer, in fuller cognition, inter ictal periods, I have, like so many others, been unable to tear myself away from newfeeds and commentaries as the post Brexit vote week unfolded. Whilst I’ve been proud of the way most Scots voted, I have been under no illusion that the working class dissatisfaction with financial and political elites is not present in the same way it has been clearly articulated across England and Wales and the emboldening that has given to right wing movements across Europe since
In the EU Referendum Result debate in Holyrood this week, Kezia Dugdale, having one of her few fine moments in the chamber, was right to point out that although Edinburgh, where her constituency is, voted so resoundingly to Remain at 75%, whole areas, like Niddrie, when viewed at the count, clearly expressed a desire to Leave. Those areas have the same vulnerabilities as their counterparts in the NE of England or Wales, which have seen them exposed to the right wing demagoguery, to the smoke and mirrors of being led to point the finger in the wrong direction. Those same weaknesses exist in the mining communities I grew up in, the ravages of neo liberalism disaffecting their denizens further almost by the day.
We are fortunate in Scotland to have developed something of a layer of first defence against the easy insidiousness in mass take up of those arguments but we should not consider ourselves immune, whilst those who have been sold a pup, the length and breadth of the UK, should never be criticised for seeking answers, for wishing to be heard, even if they have been to given reason to understand they would find whatever they sought in all the wrong places. A brief survey of the newsstand, replete with headlines proclaiming, from Scottish versions of London based newspapers, that apparently the warm reception given to Nicola Sturgeon’s diplomatic mission to the EU, enacting a distinct Scottish foreign policy, and the standing ovation given to Alyn Smith, amounted to ‘No European Friends for Scotland’, gave rise only to a rueful shake of the head. I was here for a notebook, I had instead thoughts on Slovakia, free festivals and unabashed sectarianism to record, first for me but also for this. Beyond these, I have little else to offer of personal perspective on the EU vote farrago. They are thoughts on roots of things, consequences and continuums too, all of which, by their very nature, have already begun.
(Pt 2 Left, Right, Left, Right? Coming in short measure...)
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