The Galloway Green Energy Conundrum

There has been an uproar in the region I live in because of proposals to build monstrous wind turbines close to the vicinity of Newton Stewart; with these mega-turbines expected to be seen from as far away as the Machars and Wigtown (that's many miles for those not familiar with this region). Some are even suggesting the effects of infrasound waves will have detrimental effects on the health of people, while natural habitats and protected species would ultimately suffer or be killed off. There are two campaigns in full swing in this corner of South West Scotland - one is to prevent the influx of huge green energy providers, while the other is to stop the Galloway Forest Park from becoming a fully fledged National Park.

Now, is this nymbyism or is there a legitimate argument against both these massive green energy providers and those who want to force Galloway into a National Park bubble, with all its apparent problems? Let's examine this and see...

If you do the research, you will find that at least three independent sources tell you that infrasound waves are not good for humans; however there are twice as many places that say the effects on people is negligible. Who do you believe and would you change your minds if it goes against what you already believe? Confirmation bias is rife in all walks of life, not just politics.

Were you aware that if the UK transitions to Net Zero by 2050 - that will mean nothing apart from a handful of petrol stations servicing the remaining 15+ year old petrol/diesel cars not running on electricity. Many people believe the transition is stupid, various reasons are given from: what's the point of the UK doing this when other countries aren't going to? How will we be able to afford switching everything from what we have to what we're expected to have? Who's going to pay for it and if it's me, why?

To be fair, in the current climate (if you'll pardon the pun) there is a lot of scepticism about how the UK can afford this and this was reinforced by comments made by a Green activist on a LBC radio phone-in back in September 2023, when then Tory PM Rishi Sunak abandoned/postponed the UK's green targets while declaring ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zones), as 'against British values' - which makes little or no sense; suggesting that British values are to pollute the planet as much as possible while making it increasingly difficult for children in major cities to be able to breathe properly. The activist mentioned something that no one was talking about then or now - how is the UK going to provide almost four times the electricity it produced in 2023 without serious investment in green energy - be that wind turbines, tidal energy, hydro, solar farms, or even nuclear? 

Amazingly, the UK has struggled a couple of times since 2016 to guarantee there will be enough energy for everyone at peak times. In 2021, the newspapers had stories suggesting we might have to have power cuts to keep reserves within workable levels; so why aren't there any discussions about where all this extra electricity needed is going to come from? The UK has been notoriously slow in the roll out of green energy; there was even a ban for on-shore windfarms in England until recently and licences for them were, allegedly, more difficult than getting blood from a stone. With this new UK government that hasn't really changed even if the ban has been rescinded - they're spending more time deciding whether to open gas fields in the North Sea than actually tackle the issues facing us in the future.

The Green activist, mentioned earlier, suggested that we need a minimum of FOUR times the amount of energy production we have at the moment, with ALL of that new energy production being green or possibly nuclear; therefore where are all these wind and solar farms, tidal technology and hydro-electricity generators going to come from and where will they be put? If it's atomic energy, where are the reactors going to be sited?

It's worth noting that of the 200 wind farm applications made in between 2021 and 2023, fewer than 10% were granted licences and those that were given the go ahead met with hostility and protests from people either living in these areas or conservationists protesting. If we want a safer world for our children and grandchildren then a better dialogue is needed and compromises that err both on the side of residents and wildlife might not be achievable. The main concern in this part of Scotland is there is no flexibility and many people's arguments are personal or of aesthetic concerns and not about the need for more cheaper energy; therefore it is nymbyism, whether protestors like it or not. 

However, there are as many people pointing out how wind farms in Galloway will affect wildlife, protected land which is a UNESCO biosphere site and one of the few recognised dark sky parks in the UK. These concerns also include worries about flood risks from the rivers, driving protected species away or into extinction and spoiling natural beauty spots. There is evidence to suggest that both parties have good arguments for their sides. However, as many of the proposed wind farms in this region will be generating electricity for the foreign markets, whatever the argument it will not quell unrest and anger from British people if its countryside is being blotted for someone else to heat their houses in the winter for less money.

Another dilemma with both sides is the people telling loaded sides of their own stories - the wind farm company in this part of Galloway is suggesting there will be barely any impact on the surrounding area and pooh-pooh the idea of harmful side effects from infrasound, general noise and damage by the creation of a 'green energy' infrastructure (ie: more roads and in intrusive areas). While those against the new wind farms are using language like 'desert', 'wasteland' and 'no future' - there isn't a compromise to be found because people don't want it and the people who want it are inflexible and don't want to be honest with us. Whatever happens, someone isn't going to be happy and usually that's people rather than companies.

If we need to produce four times the amount of green energy and storage, it is literally going to mean a change in the landscape of Britain. Energy companies will tell you it isn't cost-efficient to build wind farms in remote, inhospitable places and conservationists will tell you they can't be built in remote, inhospitable places because of the damage to wildlife, the ecology and every other aesthetic reason being used. The problem is where these things need to go locals don't want them. A compromise is needed because if we can't stop our dependency on fossil fuels we won't have a planet worth living on to worry about alternatives. What kind of compromises are we prepared to make? I don't want the area to have new monstrous wind turbines, but do we just abandon the idea of renewable energy and burn fossil fuels all the time or do we bite the bullet and become the first generation to try and change our world and give children and grandchildren a better world to live in?

Then there's the dilemma of having an electricity network that works 100% efficiently. I live in an area of the country where power cuts tend to be a relatively common occurrence. Usually because of extreme weather rather than any economic reasons, but if you have a population 100% dependent on electricity by 2060, how are you going to guarantee that at some point, especially during the worst weather, that the elderly and vulnerable aren't going to suffer if the network goes down? We're on the cusp of the remainder of analogue telecommunication being phased out; for digital to replace it fully not only have telecom companies got to guarantee businesses and homes will remain on the alarm network, but also how businesses, the vulnerable and disabled are going to be able to remain in contact in the event of a power cut or the digital network going down or being hacked? 

The Blair Labour government were responsible for the switching off of analogue TV, forcing hostels, hotels, businesses, disenfranchised individuals and people in remote areas of the UK into an unwanted bill for the sake of technology and more importantly extra profit for the companies that run them. Electric cars and converting your home to all electric is going to need to be extremely cheap and easy to do otherwise people in remote areas of the UK are going to become even more remote and will be reluctant to accept any changes.

Four times the amount of electricity is a minimum. Some estimations suggest five to six times the amount will be needed by 2060; that is a substation at the end of just about every other street. Every petrol station replaced by electricity recharge stations and the provision of amenities - affordable ones at that - because unless we can develop a way to recharge a car as quickly as we can fill up with petrol then recharging vehicles is still going to be a slow and laborious job, especially if you have a car full of young children or pets. The amount of electricity needed could theoretically amount to every house in the UK having a small efficient wind turbine in their back garden. 

We need more provision, but as a result we need for infrastructure and compatible businesses - it should, technically, provide more jobs, more places to go and more variety, but there's no guarantee it will happen. We might need all these electricity hubs and we might get them, but is that going to encourage more of everything else? This is essentially one of the main dilemmas with both the green energy and National Park arguments. 

There is little or no incentive for companies to invest in tidal energy - the UK has two tides every day, that's over 700 every year and the force these generate at times is enormous, but we'd rather grant licences to drill in the North Sea than encourage this, or build new hydro-electric plants, or spend the money to ensure that every roof in the UK has solar panels on them. It might cost billions but it would also save twice that amount within 20 years of it being done. Of course, the problem with free energy is no one is making shed loads of profit from it. There is no way to profiteer from earth's natural green resources that will wash with the public. Once people realise their energy is free they won't want to pay an energy supplier huge amounts of money.

So, we have to understand that if (and when) we get a proper roll out of green energy hardware, it will fill up the countryside and change the way our towns and cities look. If providers can't afford to buy property in places like London then other methods of storage will be needed and probably far away from the capital, therefore that will impact on other communities. The country (and the world) will become a huge generator of power - everything from houses to cars with solar panels to waste land will be stuffed to the gills with storage facilities, power generation modules and the infrastructure is going to have to work 100% because most people will no longer have an alternative to turn to. 

As far as Galloway is concerned, we're a low population area of the UK. We have lots of empty space and we get a lot of wind (and also a fair bit of sun), so having green energy areas here makes sense. The companies that want to change our landscape want to keep it local; they don't want to have to build a new infrastructure because it will cut their profits for years to come. As far as they're concerned people and environment are secondary, at best, but there is some salvation on the horizon for the people who would have to face these changes. Galloway is currently being considered as the UK's next National Park. If green energy is a divisive subject, then becoming a National Park is even worse; even more fractious. However, there are issues that people who are dead against the National Park idea don't have answers for...

The main thing is there is no guarantee that becoming a National Park will prevent wind and solar farms being established here. The people who belong to the No National Park social media groups are quick to point this out, yet they don't seem to understand that if Galloway doesn't become a National Park there will be NOTHING to stop developers and energy firms from gaining licences to set up new sites. I get that being a National Park doesn't guarantee anything, I really do, but I also fully understand that NOT becoming a National Park pretty much guarantees us becoming the green energy hub of Scotland and still doesn't guarantee any future investment in the people and places.

Another argument is that a National Park will not bring jobs to the area. This is a multi-pronged statement in many ways because none of the energy companies vying for wind farms here are offering any long term jobs for locals either - there might be labouring jobs for limited contracts, but nothing permanent; so whether we get green energy hubs here or not it isn't going to help the local economy. Furthermore, if the area did get National Park status it would eventually benefit from this by creating more jobs and being able to attract businesses to the area or investment in existing - for sale - businesses. If we were a wind energy hub you're not going to attract that many folk here on holiday, therefore there is no incentive for new businesses, no infrastructure investment and we remain pretty low down on the Scottish government's development list. Galloway needs better roads and public transport - not having a National Park isn't going to change that.

I hear the argument about the damage a National Park will bring in terms of litter, more people, disruption to farming, restrictions and an increase in house prices, making it difficult for locals to afford to live in the area they work. I get this, I understand fear of the threat to the quiet idyll that Galloway offers; the problem is travel to Newton Stewart or Castle Douglas or Stranraer and see the paucity of new businesses and the amount of shops and businesses up for sale or worse, going out of business; a National Park would potentially bring buyers, new owners, people investing in the area where they wouldn't otherwise. I accept there's no guarantee, but the reality is if it doesn't embrace the National Park idea, then there is no hope of preventing the area from becoming miles and miles of wind farms and solar panels and streets full of empty stores. I actually know people who don't want a National Park and don't want wind farms either; just to emphasise the point, no protection at all means we're nailed on to become a region blighted by green energy producers...

But... we need more green energy production if we're going to meet our challenges. Arguing that climate change is a made up idea perpetrated by woke lefties might be your position; you might not want to believe the planet is beginning to overheat, but most of you people won't be alive when the worst of it starts happening. Unfortunately, people don't want to change their lives; they don't want to be the first to change, to accept that the ease of fossil fuels needs to end. It's what drives the far right's anti green politics - why should you be the first to have to make sacrifices? Maybe it's because someone has to do it before it's too late?

I think an increase in green energy is something that most people are aware of that needs to happen, but they're also putting it to the backs of their minds. It is something that will need to be dealt with when the time comes; the problem is the time has come and, for many it has, gone. People need to compromise not fight battles that divide local populations. Galloway isn't going to get the right kind of investment unless compromises are met; it won't benefit from wind farms but we're not going to have a choice if there's nothing standing in the way of it. 

People can talk about development funds and money earmarked for local developments and projects; but in nearly eight years of living here I've not seen any money put into the area. We've seen bus services hacked to pieces; we've had our local cottage hospital close for almost everything apart from vaccinations and we play dodge the pothole whenever we go out in our cars. We walk down high streets and see empty shops and everywhere is a litter bin. Whatever happens to Galloway over the next ten years these are the issues that need to be addressed and arguing about whether there should be wind farms or a National Park is going to put these issues on a back burner.

The bottom line is if you live in Galloway you are faced with two choices - the guaranteed continued decline of the area or the chance that it might get better if we stop being nimbys. The National Park is now at a consultation stage; it could well happen even if there are thousands who oppose it. If you accept it and treat the negative things as surmountable problems, we can unite to fight to prevent Galloway becoming a green energy hub with all the insurmountable problems that brings. If you don't want a National Park you will get a landscape blighted by wind turbines - the choice is simple, it just depends on what you want for this region over the coming years.

Why? (We're Going to Crash & Burn)

We live in a Blame Society now. Except there's a caveat, the blame has to be aimed at anyone but those who deserve it. We live in a world where, for the sake of an argument, a government can take credit for bringing inflation down, but is somehow exempt from scrutiny if inflation sky rockets. We should be asking the question - if a government can bring inflation down, is it responsible for it going up? But we don't, because the narrative we're fed from right wing media - whether that is the press, social media or any of the 'entertainment' mediums - is that there's always someone else who is responsible before those who are actually responsible.

The world is going to crash and burn; if you're not aligned to populist bullshit, you can see it thundering towards us like an express train out of control. The problem the planet has is 25 years ago there were enough conscientious people, governments and media mouthpieces for us to care. However the 21st century has seen the rise of disinformation and belief politics to the point where countries will elect political parties that don't necessarily sit naturally with their political beliefs but are absolutely all over their emotional beliefs like a rash. It's why we're seeing a massive push back against climate change, but actually now it's not just our emotional beliefs that drive this, it's something altogether more selfish...

People are voting for and electing populist governments because the things they believe and disbelieve in are mirrored by that political party, but it's not just that. After many years of struggling, the average person looks at climate change, public services and, sadly in many cases, those who are worse off than themselves as something that is going to cost them. Climate change means making sacrifices and paying more for things like new heating or vehicles and to make it worse they're expected to have wind turbines or pylons in or near their land. The cost of saving the planet is too much for people who see their fuel bills rising all the time and money they believe should be going to them going to asylum seekers, or that well know misnomer 'illegal immigrants'. It was something Margaret Thatcher started, but it has been turned into an art form in the 21st century - hate they neighbour because they might have something you deserve more. 

Things are not helped by people seeing renewable energy as something that should be cheaper than existing energy sources, but bills continue to go up and to make matters worse, people see massive dividends being paid to shareholders then energy companies saying they have to raise bills to pay for the new green infrastructure that is needed. No one ever tells Mr Averagely Ignorant that his bills are coming down, always that they need to go up. Why else would people be resistant to change?

The same applies to public services. people don't want to pay higher taxes for things they might not use themselves. Why should they pay for education when they have no children? Why should they pay for social services when they don't use them? Why should they pay for 'illegal immigrants' and asylum seekers when these people should be where they belong, sorting out their own problems? Why pay more for public services if they don't use libraries or go out at night or use buses or want access to a hospital or break the law? The list is probably endless, because if it means someone is not getting what they think they deserve then it's easier to blame others and remarkably these same people never blame a right wing government, but, as we have discovered since Labour was elected, they can blame them and that's largely down to the fact they are trying to fix a broken country, that isn't broken enough in the eyes of many people. These people know what the problem is, it's just all these woke lefties with their aspirations for fixing things that are only broken because of someone else. It is the wanker paradox.

We learned with Brexit, the first coming of Trump and various other things in the last 10 years that people no longer give a flying fuck about the kind of world their children are going to inherit. For a number of generations who really never had it so good, they seem intent on insuring that today's children are metaphorically butt-fucked as hard as possible to make sure they understand that no one else is entitled to an easy ride because no one now wants to pay for what they have done, or more tragically, what they've ignored because... selfishness. The second coming of Trump might look like some existential nightmare, but really all that is going to happen is loads of federal money will not be spent where it should be and lots of rich people will get richer. people don't want to believe that Trump is likely to be worse than all the evil Democrats, so when he is it will just be left wing press bullshit and yes they might be getting poorer and their health is suffering, but it will probably be the Mexicans' fault.

We're seeing how crazy the world is and how much of its population view things this week with the farmer protests over the inheritance tax. I have a number of friends who are siding with the farmers, but they don't realise what they're doing is siding with millionaires over the good of the economy. I realise this is a contentious issue but if people rooting for the farmers were to actually look at the logistics behind this they would see that out of 108,300 farmers in the UK, this inheritance tax business will only apply to about 500 of them and that will only happen when the head of the farm household dies, and even then it will be only at a rate of 20% not the 40% that will be applied to other very rich people. 107,800 farmers will not be affected by this and if they get close to the threshold then they have other things they can fall back on such as whether they're married and how much money they have in the bank - many farms that fall close to the £1million level would need to be worth in excess of £2.5million for the owners to pay this tax and only if they die. I'm seeing poor people backing the farmers without knowing the actual facts - this is how we've got to where we are.

For every person you know that really knows whose fault everything is, there will be ten others that don't. It really is that skewed. So why were Labour elected then? Because regardless of what the press told you, the Tories became so toxic reasonable Tories voted Reform or not at all. It's why the Tories could become Britain's third or even fourth party in 2029, because Reform will replace them. Maybe not enough to have or win power, but enough to ensure that the UK and it's blame culture - the fastest growing in the western world - will move so far off topic that we will come up with newer and more inventive ways to blame others. As climate change destroys the planet, there will be more and more 'illegal migrations' and there will be more attributing blame because there will be less money to solve problems so more things will have to be blamed. The Labour Party could quite easily solve 95% of the 'Small Boats' problem, but it's actually a politically useful excuse to have out there. as long as they can continue to blame the people and not the causes then they'll fuel the ignorant beliefs that make it such a contentious (and useful) thing.

As long as change is going to cost money and as long as ignorant people think they're going to miss out then there will be no change for the good. What will happen is we will start to see, especially in the USA, people blaming the disabled, the severely disabled and the people incapable of looking after themselves. If someone is not contributing to society they become a burden; if someone is removed from contributing to society because of someone else who can't help themselves then they too will become the target of peoples' ire. The old will become fearful - not of freezing or starving to death, but of becoming a burden to society and before long you'll get some populist wag suggesting that there should be a compulsory death age if people haven't got the money or the whereabouts to look after themselves. It sounds crazy, but so have other 'normal' things we have now - that's essentially what 'cancel culture' means. The USA is a country that values life above everything else, but the basis for that life is that an unwanted embryo or foetus is more valuable than a person who can't fend for themselves and the people taken out of the works market because they have to care for someone else.

We're now seeing more and more countries pulling away from doing what is necessary to stave off the impending end of the world as we know it. The current COP29 assembly in Azerbaijan has been written off by many, especially as one of the organisers has been promoting his country as a great place for carbon fuel job creation. It's that stupid. But what else is stupid is populist governments don't solve problems because invariably  they address the things that 'the people' want and then the profits from it go into the wrong peoples' pockets. The young are aware of this; many of them are fearful for their own futures or any future their children might have and while the people who run the world give one concession to climate change by saying if there is a problem the younger generation will come up with a way of solving it, they don't care about the damage being done now or the lives that will be lost because of it. I mean, you can just blame the weather. 

I wish I had a solution, but I haven't. I'm 62 and don't work, but I live in a country that is better than the UK despite being part of it. I will probably only see the beginning of the end - if I'm not already - by the time the end comes in earnest there's going to be nothing you can do to stop it, so stock up on toilet paper, toothpaste and anything else you think you'll never see again; knit some jumpers and start growing your own food and hope that you don't have to blame the weather when it fails. 

Hate!

Do you know what's wrong with the media at the moment? It's this pathetic stance they take where everything that happens has to have two sides. I half expect them, at some point in the future, to allow paedophiles the right to reply. We first saw this kind of bullshit during the pandemic, when the BBC allowed people to question everything about Covid - from the existence of the virus to the vaccinations. We've had it with climate change and on the other side of the coin we see less scrutiny of politicians - specifically right wing politicians. News dissemination isn't part of the entertainment industry but it often feels like it is.

In the last week, we've seen people being given air time on TV and radio expressing reasons and excuses as to why we're having riots across England and in parts of Northern Ireland and the argument seems to be that people are angry and they're looking for someone or something to take it out on. Is this one of the more pathetic excuses for rioting and looting that has ever been used or have I missed something?  I mean, these rioters are threatening the lives of not just non-white people but anyone who lives in the communities. They are destroying the infrastructure they are supposed to be protesting about. They are looting shops because, somehow, this is making the country better for their kids. 

These people are torching communities and it reminds me of the time when I used to work in Youth Justice. I'd work with car thieves and one of the first questions I'd ask them was why they did it. Usually I'd get some mealy response such as 'they have more than me' or a variation of. When I pointed out to 99% of these kids that actually the only cars they could steal were old models, usually driven by poor people who probably had fewer things than the thief, there was this weird thing going on behind their eyes; like the penny was dropping but they didn't dare acknowledge it. These arseholes trashing communities are trashing the places where they live. They are literally shitting in their beds and stamping in it.

When right wing wankers like Farage, Anderson, Tice and Tommy 'Ten Names' Robinson spout nonsense like the rioters have legitimate concerns, they are doing nothing but inciting more violence. These people do not have legitimate concerns and if you have to give them one iota of an excuse then that is what we're going to be looking at in the coming paragraphs. How these wankers became wankers because of people with privilege...

We've all seen the headlines of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, the Sun, the Telegraph and we've heard the shite that pours out of GB News - anti immigration headlines, anti-Muslim, anti-hope; headlines that pour petrol on the frustration of people who want something to blame for their shit lives. The drip drip drip tactics of white privileged right wing arseholes who do propaganda so well Goebbels would be proud. What about the BBC, or ITV or other media outlets that give voices to the likes of Farage or 30p Lee Anderson; why is that? Why, in a febrile volatile landscape, are media outlets giving voices to the people who are indirectly responsible for the problems that are happening at the moment? Why is that?

What about the 14 years of Tory rule we've suffered and are probably more responsible for this than anyone else? They brought us Brexit, which exposed the huge divides in the country that might not have dominated the landscape of the UK for the last eight years. They called migrants 'swarms', they harped on about 'the boats', they brought us the 'hostile environment'. They stopped processing immigrant applications so that instead of sorting these problems out they allowed backlogs of migrants needing to be housed somewhere therefore causing stress to the people with little brains. They stoked the fires of racism and then wandered around saying 'it wasn't me.'

There's this thing called cognitive dissonance - defined as: a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. This means, in layman's terms, as: if you believe something and it is proved that what you believe is not true, you refuse to accept the facts and continue to believe what you believe. If you've read my political blogs over the last eight years you will have seen a common theme throughout many of them - belief politics. That's not actual politics, it's essentially people who believe things that they've been told and therefore this is what they believe so it must be correct even if they're given proof that what they believe in is wrong. 

Brexit was a belief politics. Trump is belief politics. Illegal immigrants are belief politics. If you believe something then you cannot be swayed to believe in the facts. It is like some aspects of religion, usually, in my experience, Born Again Christians. Their belief is so strong they almost get emotionally unstable when someone questions their beliefs. The humorous but quite disturbing thing is the White Anglo Saxon Person's belief of what a Muslim is while simultaneously questioning the alleged extreme beliefs of a Muslim. 

The problem with cognitive dissonance is even if someone you trust and respect tells you that you're wrong, these people suddenly become the enemy and are believing the propaganda that's being fed to us by the establishment. Remember when people believed vaccines were full of things that they shouldn't be - microchips, animal or human foetuses, all kinds of stuff that would control you? Rather than listen to 100% of doctors and nurses, these people suggested that 100% of doctors and nurses were all being controlled by the establishment; the same doctors and nurses that we applauded during the pandemic and then condemned for wanting more money. people are simply fucking stupid and that is down to the governments we've had since the 1970s.

"We're losing control of our country. There's too many foreigners. There's not enough services because migrants are using them all the time." ... Let's look at that last sentence for a start; the one about there not being enough services due to people who aren't white. The reason there isn't enough public services - for everybody - has ZERO to do with migration and everything to do about governments cutting public sector funding. The reason you can't get a doctor is because the governments have run the NHS into the ground and people don't want to work there any more. Because there's no money for them. There are no buses because if bus routes don't make money they get cut. Trains are shit and expensive because private train operators are more interested in their profit than providing a service. Our bins don't get collected weekly because it's cost effective to do it every other week. We have no public services, especially in 2024, because of the Tories not because of an asylum seeker who is fleeing war or oppression. The reason you see so many brown people in A&E is because so many white people beat them up.

As for there being too many foreigners and we're 'sinking like the Titanic because there's too many of them.' 82% of the UK's population is white. If you include 3rd and 4th generation non-white people that figure goes up to 96%. That's NINETY-SIX PERCENT of the population who call themselves British, that's whether they're Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Greek Orthodox, Jedi or even - god forbid - atheists. So, the problem these rioters have isn't the 'illegal immigrants' - a term which is actually a misnomer because we don't give illegal immigrants anything because they're illegal. Illegal immigrants tend to be unknown to the authorities, because they're illegal. Look at it this way; we don't have a registry of burglars in this country, like we have a register of lawyers or even sex offenders.

So what we're dealing with is racists and dog whistling far right politicians using this racism to incite violence which bleeds [if you'll excuse the term] into ignorant peoples beliefs. The fact we have white Muslims gets forgotten about because what these wankers are looking at is the colour of your skin. Look at the riots in South Belfast; a protestant area - ie: Loyalists not republicans. These people doing the damage are targeting only non-white businesses; one of the businesses is run by Hindus, another is a Christian African; so this really has nothing to do with Islamophobia - which is a major problem - but to do with not liking brown people...

Consider this: when we had weekly rallies in London supporting Palestine, the Tory government called the protestors all manner of horrible things, from terrorist sympathisers to hate pushers. The Tory MPs who were making these colourful metaphors are absent in their condemnation of what has happened in the last week. Why is that?

Oh and while we're talking about it, let's not disregard Confirmation Bias, which is described as: "the tendency to search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs." This is important. Possibly more important than cognitive dissonance because confirmation bias appeals to emotions whereas cognitive dissonance is about facts. This is what the internet and social media targets in people; people have been drip fed nasty propaganda for so long, they're looking for the one thing that confirms their beliefs - it doesn't matter if there are 99 things that don't confirm it, these people are looking for the one thing, from wherever or whoever it comes from, that makes their belief right. 

The other major problem with this kind of racist is there are no circumstances where a foreign person is entitled to anything, not tolerance, nothing, not a single penny, because the gammons will argue that any money an asylum seeker gets should have gone to pensioners or homeless veterans. This is a difficult thing to argue against, especially when you're dealing with confirmation bias. How do you argue against this? If you argued that literally ALL homeless veterans are homeless through choice and have mental health problems that aren't dealt with because we have piss poor mental health provision and that is because of public sector cutbacks and nothing to do with immigrants, your average gammon simply wouldn't believe you. They can moan about the government on a Monday and be cheerleaders for them on a Tuesday. We're dealing with fickle contrary arseholes.

So... how do we solve this problem? We'd need 50 years, because it's something that needs to be slowly taught and we need for kids to get it and these kids to gently re-educate their parents, to challenge their parents. Except that probably won't work, all you'll do there is cause more divisions in families.

The irony is if we got rid of every non-white person in the country, then it would become people who aren't Christians or Catholics; then it would become Christians only and then when everyone the gammons hate are driven out of the country (to who knows where) who would they start blaming then? The disabled? The unemployed (except there shouldn't be any because, you know, we've taken back control all of our jobs)? Single parents? Gays? Lesbians? Trans people? Short people? Really tall people? People with brown eyes? Where does it end for these people if their lives don't get better because of all the eradication of things they hate?

Maybe we need to have a kind of neo-authoritarian government who clamp down on the sources rather than the people who react? Maybe we need to slap gagging orders on the right wing newspapers; charge them with hate crimes if they target an individual or a religion? Maybe the BBC needs to stop door stepping Farage or 30p Lee? Maybe Farage needs to be NOT invited on Question Time? Maybe we need to stop giving this utter shit stick air? Maybe he needs to be investigated by the House of Commons for not being a proper representative MP? Maybe next time he goes to the USA to try and cosy up to his mad friend Trump we need to tell him he can't come back into the country because he's a terrorist? Maybe the likes of Yaxley-Lennon and Andrew Tate need stopping - full stop. But to do this we need wankers like Elon Musk to shut them down, not give them more space and endorse them by suggesting the UK is heading towards a civil war. We know governments are powerless to shut down the likes of Facebook or Xitter by legal means, so maybe it's time to shut these things down and stop people from getting them. Ban these kinds of social media from the UK... Except, we know that isn't going to happen, so we're not going to come up with methods to stop this shit from happening. 

Hate has its natural home on social media and social media isn't going to clamp down on it because the people who run them are above the law and are fucking barking mad mega-powerful nihilists. Maybe we need to boycott social media and go back to using the telephone and actually visiting friends; maybe we need to lose the FOMO feeling that made social media such an important part of peoples' lives. However, we won't do that, so we have to accept that we are, quite simply, doomed. 

Fright Wig Night

So... That's that then. A massive Labour majority and I should be cock-a-hoop. Today should be a fabulous day, full of joy and optimism. The problem is I stopped supporting Labour when it lurched to the right. I'm not a moderate. I'm not a centrist. I'm barely a centre leftist and like the 40.4% of eligible voters who didn't vote, I have no enthusiasm for any of the political parties based in England. I have some enthusiasm for the Scottish National Party, but I'm in the minority there as well. 

Labour needs to do an awful lot over the next five years to instil me with any sense of optimism and if what Obi Wan Kier has been saying for the last year or so is anything to go by or is what we're going to get then I can't see people being happy. 

Sunak was a defiant twat to the end, but at least he was magnanimous. Good riddance to him and the shite that got beaten; especially Liz Triss, Grant Shapps and fucking Jacob Rees Mogg. They won't suffer for losing, but I wish they would.

At least we've seen the last of the scumbags who have destroyed this country and kingdom. We just need the people who have replaced them to restore us to some level of competence. I'm not optimistic but I won't be dismissive.

Let the rebuild begin. 

Why?

Why would anyone want to vote Tory at the General Election?

It's an easy question to answer; there are people out there who don't feel they've done a bad job. For all the scandals, corruption, waste and contempt they have shown the rest of the country, there are people who will think that Labour will do worse. Quite what they're definition of worse is can't really be quantified, but there are people out there who are lifelong Tory voters and they simply cannot see themselves wanting to vote for anyone else; not even Reform.

I was the same. Not about the Tories but about Labour. I've voted Labour at every election bar one since my first vote was cast; 1981 to 2017 equals nearly 40 years of support and very little to be happy about. I couldn't imagine voting for anyone else and then I moved to Scotland and realised that there was an alternative. Maybe not the ideal one, but as Labour has lurched to the right since 2019, the SNP represents the closest I can hope for that align with my own politics.

What puzzles me about Tory voters is like Labour they're almost unrecognisable to the party I grew up with. Margaret Thatcher would probably be spinning in her grave at this bunch of corrupt chancers and you don't realise how much that pains me to say. So why do ordinary Tory voters think that sticking with this shower of shit is the only option for them? Do they really think that anyone else is going to be worse than the last eight years?

You could argue that the core Tory vote are people who are well off; who don't really worry about the cost of living crisis and view anyone who doesn't live in suburbia as oiks. I watched a video about voters in a town I lived next to in the 1980s - Radlett, in Herts - and the arguments coming out of the Tory voters mouths ranged from "But Angela Rayner is so awful" to "We need stability" - this says to me that it's a mixture of snobbery and ignorance. Snobbery because Rayner is from Manchester and ignorance because the last decade has been anything but stable.

The thing is everyone is worse off because of the Tories; even Tories are. Yes, they might not even notice the way food and energy prices or the general cost of living has escalated, but unless they only use helicopters to travel by (and aviation fuel has doubled in price), they still have to use the roads, which are now more dangerous than an oik with a machete. They still have to exist and even if private schools have been exempt from the decay, their children are growing up in a world that is so divided and unhappy they can't avoid it. Everything is worse than it was 10 years ago. Nothing is better. There's no sign that anything is going to improve. We're living in a country that is isolated, unhappy, fearful and angry about almost everything.

So why would these people who vote Tory want to keep this mob of shysters in power? Do they think they're going to benefit from it? Is it all about greed or is it more about conditioning? I know people who really believe that all the other parties are going to make things worse. Worse than what? I want these people to tell me what is good about living in the UK at the moment. Just one thing.

I do agree with the Tories on one thing, but not for the same reasons. I do think a Labour massive majority would be a bad thing. Not for democratic reasons, but because we really need more representation in parliament and this General Election is fast becoming the perfect place to elect one of the minorities parties. I'm not saying it will or even can happen, just that it's the best time for it to happen. It would be great if we had 50+ Liberal Democrats; 10 Green; 20 independent MPs; 40 SNP MPs and much fewer right wing parties. It would be a very positive move by the electorate if - like a couple of European countries recently - they told the far right to fuck off; that they only represent the most ignorant and dangerous people and these people should have an appropriate voice - a small one that is largely ignored by decent people.

We're never going to get Proportional Representation in my life time, so we need today's young and disaffected voters to look at alternatives and give them a chance. If Labour really can win by 200+ seats, then the best advice I can give you is Vote Tactically, especially if a minority party has a chance and if they do have a chance try and persuade others to vote the same as you. There are at least four seats in the UK at the moment that could return a Green MP, it just needs voters of the other minority candidates to hold their nose and elect something or someone different. The same applies to Plaid, to the SNP, to progressive Independents and even the LibDems. Having a multicoloured parliament might be good for the country. Maybe ten years down the line we might be ready to have a Rainbow Coalition in charge who will do things for the many and not the few? Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Diversity Gone Wrong

The main problem I'm always going to have when I touch on a delicate subject is my age. Being 62 apparently now makes me a Boomer, despite the fact the goalposts have moved. When I was growing up it was always people born between 1945 and 1960, but it seems it's now 1945 to 1965 and I'm sure at some point in the next few years that will move to 1970. It seems Baby Boomers are people who moan about things Gen Z and Millennials don't have a specific opinion about. I'm saying this because Boomers tend to be picked out for their 'out of touch' opinions, so the following opinion might be out of touch...

Something that bothers me greatly is the depiction of race in the UK. With immigration hatred and racism flourishing here, thanks to the likes of Nigel Farage and right wing Tory rhetoric, even talking about the minorities make up of the UK is to walk on dodgy ground. You can't have a view about ethnicity or sexual orientation now, unless it's positive. You will get people crawling out of the woodwork to call people racists, homophobes and any other derogatory name; but equally you'll get a proportionate amount of people doing to the same to call people woke, lefties or virtue signallers. You can't win with opinions and therefore moderate people are almost actively encouraged to remain silent about anything that might end up having a label pinned on them.

I'm one of the most left wing people I've ever met. My contempt for right wing politics, fascism and people with extreme views is well documented and therefore when I have something that bothers me - something controversial - I tend to remain silent, or talk about it with someone I know isn't going to be judgemental. Last year, I admitted to being something of a TERF - trans-exclusionary radical feminist - when I admitted this to at least two 'right-on' friends you'd have thought I was saying kiddie fiddling is okay in its place. The thing is I support the TERF movement because I believe that the entire trans debate has ignored the concerns of biological women and as someone who is also well documented as being a huge supporter of the feminist movement, ignoring the feelings and beliefs of biological women is tantamount to allowing Victorian principals back into sexual politics. When the SNP passed its controversial gender rights bill in 2023, what I heard from almost every single woman I know is it seemed to ignore what they felt and what their concerns were. The trans community is ridiculously small in the grand scheme of diversity, while women make up about 50% of the population and if my female friends were angry and concerned about their voices not being heard then I'm on the side of my female friends. It has nothing to do with my feelings about trans people - I know several, I'm friends with a few and I have respect for all human beings, except right wing wankers and advocates of exclusionism. 

I have a mate, he's married to a 'brown' woman and he like me has a problem with the disproportionate amount of certain ethnic minorities in television and film (and he's a Gen Z-er). He also feels the same as me; certain subjects can't be discussed openly for fear of alienating people we know or care about. It seems we can have all kinds of hatred for our own demographic, but if we venture into an area we are not a 'member' of, then we have no right to comment and our opinions are classed as extreme. So when both of us have noticed that there seems to be a disproportionate amount of Afro-Caribbean people in TV, advertising and film, it's something we can't discuss in an open forum. The problem is it's not like I have a problem with the number of black people in the entertainment industry, it's the fact we seem to have far more of them than say Asians, Chinese, Turkish, Middle Eastern, South Americans, Native Indigenous peoples. If you look at the non-white British demographic you will see that there are more Indian and Pakistani Asians in this country than Afro-Caribbeans; by quite a wide margin. 

Now, while that gap has been addressed in recent years, we're getting ethnic minorities in films and TV shows where they simply don't exist or in more prominent roles than they would have been. It's like the entertainment industry doesn't want to depict history like it was for fear of being called racist. So when a film like Wicked Little Letters is released and 30% of the major roles have been recast with black or Asian characters in 1920s England, it might not 'spoil' the entertainment, but in a historical drama it does devalue it because someone doesn't want to offend. But surely having a woman of Indian origin in the police force in 1920 - is incongruous; the first serving Asian police woman didn't happen until 1971- over 50 years later. Would this film have been ruined if it had been historically accurate? This film also had the female protagonist having a relationship with an Afro-Caribbean man when the actual woman was married to a white Irish man.

Take a number of historical dramas in recent years, having black or Asian characters in them, but not having Chinese characters, who were actually far more prevalent, especially in cities in the UK before the First World War. You were far more likely to see someone of Chinese origin in London in Victorian times than you were an Afro-Caribbean or Indian Asian, yet we never ever see correct historical depictions. There would never have been black people mingling with the upper classes of UK society and when Pocahontas and eleven of her Native American tribe came to the UK in 1616, they were treated with "scorn and fury" even though the aim was to convert them to Christianity and for them to become part of the United Kingdom. Britain might be a mongrel race, but the entitled, titled and upper classes would not entertain them in 'polite society' and if they were it was on display like some circus freak. Now this is indeed distasteful and probably shouldn't be something you see in, say, Doctor Who, but by placing black and Asian people in societal environments at a time when they would never have been there isn't diversity, it's [ahem] whitewashing a past that probably needs to be emphasised a lot more in these increasingly xenophobic times - if only as a warning.

The same applies to homosexuality; this is something that has never been the norm in society before the 1970s. There are examples of the establishment shutting down homosexual acts, passing laws and alienating those believed to be practicing it. It is probably something that has attracted far more bigotry than race, if such a thing were possible. Yes, it has always existed but it was also something that literally spent centuries in the closet. In the 21st century about 8% of the UK population sees itself as falling into the LGBT+ community, but there is a disproportionate amount of radio, TV and film coverage for this particular demographic. Let's put some perspective on this, however facile one might think the comparison is: the number of vegetarians and vegans in the UK, at the 2021 census, was approx 12%; that's a third more people are practicing vegetarians than the total LGBT+ community, but there is literally tokenism coverage of people who don't eat meat; almost every food show on all channels focuses on the 88% of people who have meat in their diets. I suppose vegetarians and their beliefs are not classed as contentious enough to be at least a tenth of the food show coverage?

So, there you have it. I'm obviously a racist and a homophobe because I want a fairer distribution of coverage and a closer - truer - historical depiction. We are seeing more disabled people in TV and films, but nowhere near the actual % of people who suffer from a disability; isn't that discriminatory towards the disabled? There are certain parts of the UK where Turkish, Greek, Eastern Europeans, or any other ethnic group that is comparable to Afro-Caribbean's, yet for fear of seeming to be over-egging the pudding; you don't see these people in television adverts, but almost every television advert will have someone of Afro-Caribbean origin in them and they represent about 4% of the total population of the UK. It's almost as if the entertainment and PR sectors are deliberately stoking racist fires by not giving a fair distribution of ethnicity in their products. 

Yawn...

The General Election preamble is only two days old and already I'm bored shitless by it. That's what being politically bereft does for you. I mean, I know who I'm voting for on July 4, all I hope is that other people in D&G realise there's only one political party that can unseat Alistair Jack and a vote for Labour or the Liberals will probably mean the Tory gets back in. If just one of these two 'making up the numbers' parties had pulled out of the last election and told their voters to vote SNP we would have had one less Tory seat in Scotland...

So, why am I politically bereft if I'm voting for the SNP. Well, because I'm fed up with politics and the mainstream press's relentless attacks on the SNP (and Corbyn's Labour and the Liberals) might not have made me change my mind about them, but they have worn me down to the point where I'd like to have a General Election with genuine candidates with coverage that is not weighted in some way towards the Establishment in England. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to politicising, but when you get Scottish Tories moaning about the SNP's handling of the NHS or education and you only have to look south of the border to see the chaos rained down on England by 14 years of Tory strip mining, it seems a bit rich when Scottish Tories complain about how the SNP are doing when we all know the country would almost be as bad as England if these narcissistic wankers were in charge up here.

As a 'life long' Labour supporter (or at least that's what I believed I was until Kid Starver started ripping up the Labour handbook), I am not tempted back to this once great political party, at least not while they run around acting like not-so-bad Conservatives, because they think that 20% of swing voters mean more than anything else, especially at a time when a fucking bath sponge could stand against most of the Tories and win by a country mile. 

A dear friend of mine once said to me, "All that happens is we just get the government back in, doesn't matter what colour flag they wave, they only care about us when we have to vote, after that we just become collateral damage." I've looked at politics for best part of the last two decades and felt we need something new, something honest with some integrity that puts the people first and worries about everything else second. A politics that explains to the idiots, wankers and ignorant about the real benefits of all the things they've been taught to hate - why immigration is a good thing; why disabled people need looking after; why it isn't everyone else's fault the country is in a mess; why it's the lack of investment in people and services that has made it difficult to see a doctor or go for a swim without someone's shit floating past your head; why the roads are more like the Somme than tarmac. Yet we live in a land where it must surely be single mothers' fault that everything has gone to the dogs.

This is a country that froths at the mouth when someone receiving benefits gets a fiver more than YOU think they deserve, but shrugs its shoulders and ignores it when millionaires get tax breaks or avoid paying their fair share or that shareholders get all the money that should be used to fix the public services they've destroyed. This is a country where attacking the innocent is far more fun than complaining about the fact everything is broken and no one wants to fix it.

So, here we are, in a General Election that I'm totally ambivalent about because none of the likely winners are saying anything that I want to hear and aren't really saying anything any other ordinary people wants to hear either. We're going to get useless soundbites about GDP and not being enough money and austerity 2.0 and any other meaningless bullshit that means they can avoid answering the questions that need to be answered. Oh and while we have pointless journalists who won't or don't ask the right questions, we're still going to wait until the end of time for the answers we want.

My best advice? You have to vote tactically. If you want the Tories out, then find out which party came second last time and whether there's the support for them this time around. Don't think about voting Labour if the Libdems or SNP or Plaid or Independent can win; sometimes a vote for Labour allows the Tories to win and sometimes allowing Labour to win a seat that a Libdem, SNP or some other could win is absolutely just as bad.

If you don't like politics, or football, or sports in general and the weather continues to remain shit, all you have is my deepest sympathy for the coming three months. It might be time to find a new hobby.