Ian Hamilton QC

by Ian Hamilton

There can be no stranger bed-fellows than Alan Cochrane of The Daily Telegraph and the SNP. These four bare legs are producing a constant attack on devolution. This isn’t surprising. No one likes devolution except the LibLabs, and they are in it for a back seat in a big car.

I have sympathy for Alan Cochrane. His real job is to support the Scottish Tories, but he would need a jelly mould to do that. Recently I wrote to Bill Aitken MSP. I asked him about opposition to devolution and the increasing support for independence in his party. This is what he said.

YOU POSE THE QUESTION AS TO WHO REPRESENTS THE VIEW OF THOSE OF A CONSERVATIVE INCLINATION WHO OPPOSE DEVOLUTION OR WHO WOULD PREFER TO SEE SCOTLAND AS BEING INDEPENDENT. THAT IS NOT REALLY FOR ME TO ANSWER. THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IS A UNIONIST PARTY AND TO MY MIND WILL ALWAYS REMAIN SO.

Aye right! Michael Fry asks for the Tory hand in marriage. Tongue-tied Bill Aitken looks at his boots and says, That is not really for me to answer. With leadership like that no wonder Alan Cochrane prefers to attack devolution.
 
Alan Cochrane isn’t daft. He knows there are Nationalist Tories galore in Scotland. I’ve mentioned Michael Fry. Peter Fraser’s toe is now sticking through the hole in his sock, trying to test the water. My spy in the Eastwood Tories says Jackson Carlaw, their prospective candidate, talks openly about modernising the Party including a pledge to independence. Such a change would win him Eastwood for either Parliament. No one likes being in permanent opposition.

And in permanent opposition they will be with Archie Stirling and his Auld Lang Syne Party splitting the Tory vote. Worse! Now David Cameron is trying to help. Floreat Etona! To bring the shadow cabinet to Scotland would be patronising if they weren’t the best comic turn in town. They’re a different civilisation trying to be Scotch. Pity Rikki Fulton’s deid. He would have them a’ in kilts, cleeking an linking to a bagpipe in George Square. Maybe they’d find some Tory lasses, plump and strapping in their teens, for a wee bit houghmagandy behind the statues. Can me and Tam come and watch, David? If I telt the polis who ye are ye’ll maybe no’ get lifted.

Chuck it, Cameron. You’re making the cat laugh. The Scottish Tories are embarrassment enough without you helping. You should give them up. They don’t provide you with lobby fodder. They have made no inroads into the Scottish Labour vote. The Tories only way forward in Scotland is in independence. This already commends itself to a majority in both countries. England no more wants the Scottish Raj than we want the old days of Rule Britania.

Independence will change everything. The Labour Party will collapse. Its Oban conference was a sham. They couldn’t fill the Corran Hall which is too small even for a Temperance meeting. There were more cats and polismen outside than audience inside. The Liberals will run with the pack hoping for scraps. The Tories must be represented, and by vital young people, not by the present crew. Being hostile to them is like kicking a kitten but they must go. This is where Alan Cochrane comes in.

In 2007 the Times is to become an ‘indigenous’ Scottish newspaper, made, printed and published in Scotland. I do not know what its policy is to be, but it is inconceivable that Rupert Murdoch’s lieutenant Colin McClatchie hasn’t noticed the need for a right wing independence aligned newspaper. We would all buy it, even non Tories like me. We would buy it for its Scottish and international content. Murdoch tried once before to ride the nationalist horse, but it was with the Sun. Wrong paper. Wrong time. The space for a Scottish Tory paper leaning towards independence is wide open. Newspapers are now international but need a national loyalty. I buy the two Scottish broadsheets from loyalty, but I buy the English broadsheets for content. We must wait and see but The Times may combine both.

I return to Alan Cochrane.

Who is the highest paid journalist in Scotland? Who is the most experienced Tory journalist in Scotland? If the choice is between devolution and independence which will Alan Cochrane choose? Who will edit the new Scottish Times?

Does the road to Damascus start in an Angus glen? 

 

FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND CONSIDERATION WE PRESENT THE NEWS OF THE PROMULGATION OF THIS BILL.
 
“On 9th January 2007 the ‘Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Bill 2007′ was launched inside the Scottish Parliament by its parliamentary sponsor Michael Matheson MSP and its author John Mayer, Advocate. Both men said it felt like a good start to the year. The Bill attracted a great deal of media attention.

 John Mayer said “This Bill does exactly what it says in the title. It is aimed squarely at a Scottish issue but with global dimensions - i.e. crime prevention. That is absolutely within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. Which crimes? Well, the big ones - Crimes Against Humanity. The Scottish Parliament now has the weapon which trumps the London notion that it is all right to threaten the use or actually use nuclear weapons. That weapon is this Bill. I am very proud to have written it.”
 

Mr Matheson said “There is a definite feeling of getting the ball rolling. John and I are next week meeting Greenpeace in London. Also many civic organisations have already pledged support. These include all three big churches in Scotland, the Quakers, the Trade Unions representing the workers at Faslane whose jobs we protect, many school and university teachers, a growing number of nuclear-free Local Authorities, Foreign Governments and the personal support of Cardinal O’Brien who has kindly allowed the Catholic Church’s database to be utilised in order to get the message of the Bill out to as many people in Scotland as possible.”
 
More details will shortly be on John’s website www.nuclearpeace.co.uk. The Consultation Paper is on www.banthebomb.org and www.snp.org where readers can comment.”
 

In 1576 the English Privy Council established a grand commission to enquire into, …’all, singular, heretical, erroneous and offensive opinions.’

I read this on the day that I read that Donald Findlay was again under inquisition by the Faculty of Advocates for his singular, heretical, erroneous and offensive opinions. I do not agree with Donald. These words describe his opinions, but I defend his right to hold them. To continue to pursue this lonely man for his singular opinions is a witch-hunt. In its haste to be politically correct the Faculty of Advocates forgets its duty to be detached.

The Faculty lives in a self-created elitist glass-house, from which I and many others have escaped. The greatest hope of distinction many of its members aspire to is membership of the New Club, an interior decorator’s nightmare of pink and plush bad taste. Then there is Muirfield Golf Club, where membership is prohibited until you prove you have common ancestry with a green-keeper. The members of Muirfield hold opinions that are singular, heretical, erroneous and offensive to me and to everyone who has escaped down the years from the Faculty glasshouse. Maybe everyone should take a mental purgative so that I, Donald Findlay, members of the New Club and of Muirfield Golf Club and the Dean of Faculty all think the same. God forbid!

The Dean of Faculty also holds opinions which are singular, heretical, erroneous and offensive to someone or other. He should hesitate to throw stones at Donald Findlay. He condemned Mr Mugabe, the black dictator, for the treatment of Zimbabwe’s judges. I print below what the white Lord Chief Justice of England is reported as stating. The Dean refuses to comment. The Dean remains silent.

‘THE CLASSIC ANSWER IS THAT THE LAW CAN NEVER JUSTIFY THE USE OF TORTURE, BUT IN A SITUATION SUCH AS THAT THE EXECUTIVE MIGHT BE FORGIVEN FOR ACTING IN A MANNER THAT WAS UNLAWFUL.’

Is it politically correct to pursue a QC and a black dictator, but politically incorrect to condemn the white Lord Chief Justice of England for saying that state torture is forgivable?

The Dean’s silence is no doubt because he holds opinions which are singular, heretical, erroneous and offensive to everyone who believes that state torture is never forgivable.

I suspect Donald Findlay agrees, or disagrees. We are all free to comment on our neighbours’ opinions. We are not free to punish them for holding them.

 

By Dougie Lockart

The antipathy of the Scottish National Party to NATO membership may, for some members, have been founded on a desire to avoid nuclear weapons or any alliance with possessors of such weapons but, aside from the admittedly important issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction, there are persuasive legal, moral and political reasons why Scotland should remain outside NATO: the necessity and validity of the SNP position is vindicated by international events on an almost daily basis.

NATO was conceived as a military counterthreat to the Soviet Union and its allies after the Second World War, and hence much doubt was expressed as to its continued relevance with the end of the cold war.  NATO, however, has sprung lightly to a new role in the world.  The predominant partner in NATO is of course the United States of America, and it seems appallingly clear that NATO exists to serve the US interest - specifically, the US corporate interest. 
Here’s an interesting quotation:

NATO is now a device to exert control and extract cash. Those who resist, like Belarus, are punished… All eastern European states are required to sell off their national economic assets to foreigners, and close down their agriculture by accepting the dumping of subsidised EU food imports. This creates massive social disruption and unemployment. In addition, they must spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence, preferably on arms made in the US.   Consequently, a small country like Lithuania, whose economy has collapsed so catastrophically, has just announced the purchase of $34 million worth of Stinger missiles, made by the Raytheon Corporation of Tucson, Arizona. When Tanzania announced it was spending $40 million on a new civilian air traffic control system, there was an outcry; but Lithuania, whose official GDP is not much larger than Tanzania’s, will have to spend $240m on arms every year as the price for NATO membership. And Lithuania is just one of seven new member states, all of which are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on arms.

Some crazed leftie talking?  No, Spectator journalist John Laughland.  So do you want Scotland to spend 2% of GDP on American arms?   Who will hate us so much in independence that we will need $34 million worth of missiles?   If Lithuania has to pay $240 million on arms, what would wealthy Scotland’s membership fee be? 

The SNP stood alone in condemning the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.   “Misguided, legally dubious and an act of unpardonable folly”, said Alex Salmond at the time.   For that characteristically crisp observation poor Alex took quite a savaging from the Unionists, and their media poodles had a hissy fit.  But he was right, and perhaps more right than he knew, as the evidence now mounts steadily of United States subversion and provocation in the Balkans throughout the 1990s.  The account now emerging finds that the United States armed, financed and directed the Kosovo Liberation Army, deliberately precipitating the crisis which they then pleaded NATO must intervene to resolve.  Under a NATO facade they waged a 78-day air bombardment of Serbia, causing many civilian deaths and damage to the Serbian infrastructure estimated as high as $40bn.   But there is now peace in the Balkans?  Well, no.  But Western companies now own the immensely valuable Trepka mining complex and America has a 1,000-acre military base in Kosovo (the largest built since the Vietnam War) controlling access to the $4 trillion Caspian oil resource: mission accomplished.

Former Nuremberg War Crimes prosecutor Walter J. Rockler argued that in Yugoslavia NATO committed “the supreme international crime”  - the sort of crime for which he had tried German leaders after the second World War.  He stated that NATO had in addition violated the United Nations Charter sections 2(4) and 2(7), and UN resolution 2131, which declared that “forceful military intervention in any country is aggression and a crime without justification.”  NATO conducted 38,000 bombing sorties, killing hundreds or perhaps even thousands of civilians: Amnesty International has declared these attacks illegal.

One of the promises of independence is that Defence in Scotland will mean just that - defence – not large-scale re-arming, complicity in illegal aggression, and the spending of grotesque sums of money on nuclear ‘deterrence’.  NATO membership cannot be part of such an aspiration.

———————————-
Read:
Brock, Peter, “Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting – Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia”, G.M. Books (Los Angeles)
Parenti, Michael, “The Media and their Atrocities,” Michael Parenti Political Archive, May 2000, http://www.michaelparenti.org/MediaAtrocities.html

by Professor Sparelock Jones

I had concealed my insincerity when I joined the Labour Party as all I wanted was a job. Imagine my surprise at my first New Labour Party meeting to discover the only reason the others were there was occupational. You join something to get something. Since I was with the two pretty little things from the Rape Crisis Unit it was natural that we should be voted the Labour Party’s representatives on that body, particularly as it didn’t pay. No amount of protest from me and my two girls could stop it. When I disclosed that I was out on bail for rape this only firmed their resolve.

‘At least you know something about your subject’ said one amid much laughter, ‘which is more than most of us can say about ours.’

‘Besides,’ said another. ‘You have to be with us for a while before it’s Buggins turn.’ If this fellow Buggins really existed he would be in every job in the country.

Thus it was that my two girls and I went along to the next meeting of the Rape Crisis Unit. I had the best of the bunch. The other young ones had a sort of fierce attraction as if they would bite in bed, and they all carried that “Look/don’t touch” message across their attractive bosoms. Time had consumed the older ones. They reminded me of Councillor Morag, the old boot I had great difficulty in getting off my foot. All of them were very earnest.

Because they were so earnest it seemed proper that I should give them a few words from the classics. ‘Ecce, duas uno tempore turpis amo,’ I said brightly, but none could translate so I wasn’t thrown out. (Roughly it means, ‘There’s nothing like a threesome for a scoundrel such as me’.) They smiled thinly and invited us to join the topic for discussion. It was The New Sex Crimes (Invention) Bill and because of my experience I was asked to suggest a new crime.

The only new crime I could think of was premature coitus interruptus, and this was immediately seized upon as something only men could commit. The Rape Crisis Unit was divided on the subject. Some said it was rape by fraudulent misrepresentation of intent to have full intercourse. The more moderate said it was merely a cruel frustration. At last it was remitted to a sub committee of us three to hold discussions and report.

At the next meeting our report began with the words, ‘Your committee thinks it would be inappropriate to go into details on this delicate matter…’ At this there was a great outcry. The ladies present wanted to know all our experimental details. However we three were resolute. It was therefore unanimously agreed that premature coitus interruptus was worse than rape. The meeting resolved,

‘Since it achieves intercourse by fraudulent deprivation of due process it is first degree rape and should have a mandatory punishment of ten years imprisonment’.

The Rape Crisis Unit passed a further motion that all discussion of Trident2 and weapons of mass destruction should be banned so long as women suffer the monstrous injustice of premature coitus interruptus. This was carried nem con.

They may belong to the weaker sex, but these Rape Crisis women are a tough bunch.

NEXT ISSUE: HOW THE PROFESSOR UNDER ‘FORGIVABLE’ TORTURE CONFESSES TO RAPING THE WOMAN MINISTER WHO CAME NAKED TO HIS BED AND CALLS ON THE DEAN OF FACULTY TO DEFEND HIM.

……………………………………………………………

Editor’s note.

I was suspicious of the Professor’s credentials. His translation of the tag from Ovid seemed too apt. I Googled for help and found a new vision, a whole new universe in one man. The website at www.tonykline.co.uk would light a fire in the heart of a stone, so it would. Try Original Poems No. 5 for a start. Try anything by Tony Kline. A. S. Kline.

With his permission I print his email. It is in reply to the question does Ecce, duas uno tempore turpis amo contain a double entendre, and can it bear the meaning the Professor puts on it? I think Sparelock may just pass in a swashbuckling sort of way.
Here is Tony Kline’s reply with Ian’s heading. Read it, unless you prefer the silence of the nettle in the hedge.

……………………………………………………………

England, you can keep our oil but give us A. S. Kline.

Hi Ian,

Now, you tell me…did he or didn’t he want to suggest it?

Firstly the translation of turpis. Subtler turpis connotations in Ovid’s day are disgraceful or shameful, with maybe the idea of humiliation, and a degree of ugliness about the situation….so I think he’s saying tongue in cheek that it’s a disgrace, it’s shameful…rather than that he’s a scoundrel exactly…but it’s often translated that way. Is a Scottish scoundrel wicked or just cheeky?

I’d just about accept the double entendre for amo myself although I think in context his poetic interest is really in the complications that the situation causes in the first part (up to duae!), while the finale is a simpler and less subtle bit of conventional bragging about performance. All good fun.

He’s playing with the concept though, isn’t he, and he gets fairly close to the threesome with ‘nullo prohibente’, and  ’si satis una potest, si minus una, duae!’ I think he’s hinting, and I think he meant the thought to be there, but not explicit…still…..an argument worth a pint or two down the pub…..

Amare covers the whole range, and half the fun of Ovid and Propertius is the play on words and images, saying it but not quite saying it. Ovid wouldn’t have used soldier’s slang, no fun in that, and anyway it wasn’t acceptable in genuine high-class literature by Ovid’s day….he’s no Catullus and wouldn’t use words like moechatur or pedicabo/irrumabo which Catullus did, for their shock value…remember Rome was a lot less free and easy under Augustus than under Julius. Ovid no doubt thought his subtlety and humour would get him past the censors and Augustus, but as later events showed, maybe not….Augustus was no fool, and while he’d have thought soldier’s slang ok in its place, in camp, since after all he was a soldier, Ovid’s and Propertius’s deliberate use of double entendre in literature for the upper classes was in his view much more corrupting (especially of matrons and young girls, an avid reading audience!). It wasn’t the words, it was the behaviour the poets appeared to condone that was the problem! And sexual morality was a State issue in those days. Hence Ovid’s later excuses that his own life was not like his works!

I’ll leave you to pursue the soldier’s slang!! And the beer…

Wherever you come from Tony, come home. We will make you brooches and toys for your delight. The new Scotland is a natural for such as you.

 

by Mike Mackenzie

No man is an island and where else to learn this truth but living on an island. Some islands are vast. Mull is a continent. Skye is no longer an island. Easdale is a tiny rock. The sense of being on an island is with you always. You can always hear the sea. It is never out of mind and it is often in our dreams.

In winter we cling like limpets to our rock. We are tough and tenacious. The taste of salt is always on our tongues. The roar of the sea is in our ears. Life is hard and full of practical difficulty and yet we persist. There is always the fear that nature will overwhelm us. We are battered and storm swept and each day unscathed is a cause for celebration and the celebrations are all the sweeter for it.

We are each of us linked together in our adversity on this wee rock. It is a growing community; Scotland’s fastest growing island community. We mourn and grieve our losses together. We share our difficulties. Sooner or later we all need the help of a neighbour, even one we dislike. Your septic tank is blocked and you are literally in the shit. Your boat has broken loose or sunk, your roof has blown off in a gale. You need help. I need help. We all need help. Co-operation is the basis of the success of our species and we are reminded of this daily.

Yet even in adversity there is fun. Power cuts are cues for candlelight ceilidhs with time for poetry. Storm bound days give rise to fireside blethers and drams and hours with family and friends. Twenty first century technology fails and briefly we live as we did of old. We socialise together young and old. We are comfortable in each others company.

We help each other and form the bond of community. It is an extended family. Like all families we have disputes but we are mainly friends and over the years deep bonds develop. We get to know each other very well. Sometimes too well! In time all pretensions are lost and we know each other for who we really are. This is deeply liberating. The freedom to be yourself without affectation, without role playing, without pretence is one of life’s luxuries.

In summer we bask in nature’s benevolence. The calm is all the more welcome after the storm and hard headed realists turn into romantics. Warm waters lap gently at our shores. Hot days are never too hot with a sea breeze in your face. We swim and sail and it is full daylight when summer parties end. Many a glorious dawn have I been privileged to admire as I have wound my way home still savouring the last dram for the road.

They are practical people those who live on islands. They have the curious  combination of the qualities of the poet and the pragmatist. Mainlanders can never understand the attraction. They call our island Alcatraz. From an islanders perspective the mainland is the triumph of pragmatism over poetry but what is life without poetry. We are happy in our self imposed exile. Each day is different. Each tide brings its challenges. You are truly alive when you live on an island.

 

by Terry Martin

Humanism is not a religion. It is not a Celestial Intelligence Agency. It is a way of thinking and living that aims to bring out the best in people.

We humanists take responsibility for our own lives. We are rational beings. We try to make sense of the world without bringing in God or the God concept. We are not fatalists.  Woody Alan: ‘Not only is there no God but try finding a plumber at weekends’.

Humanists do not pray, worship, sing hymns, instead we talk a lot, we debate the big issues and ideas, we have a body of beliefs that are undogmatic, liberal and evidence-based.

Humanists believe that humanity is a product of natural and social evolution, which is why we don’t accept the biblical stories of creation nor contemporary so-called ‘intelligent design theory’. We try to build a picture of human nature based on biology and psychology.

We make judgements on life and death issues such as: contraception, abortion and euthanasia.  Our thinking is guided by broad ethical principles including dignity of the person, the quality of life and the right to choose. Humanists feel strongly about human rights, equality, racism, homophobia and freedom of speech, especially in the performing arts when religious groups attempt to apply narrow-minded and intolerant censorship and sometimes violence towards those artists and writers with whom they disagree.

Humanists are not comfortable with notions of predestination, chosen people, messiahs or prophets. The Humanist Society of Scotland is a non-prophet organisation.  Doubt is at the heart of humanist thinking: we are sceptical concerning the occult and paranormal, faith healing, out-of-body experiences, snake oil salesmen and some areas of alternative and complementary medicine.  Humanists go for positive science and medicine.

Nothing defines humanism more clearly than truth. For us truth matters. The enemy of truth is blind faith, especially of the religious variety.  Faith can be and is murderous, intolerant and nearly always based on absurdities.  Truth is about what is real; because things are real there’s a truth about them, which is why humanists go for scientific explanations of phenomena.

We don’t have ‘faith’ in humanity because essentially we’re non-religious. Instead we face up to the biological reality of a godless world.  That does not mean that we humanists are somehow empty or unspiritual. Spirituality is a key component of humanist beliefs, but it is a spirituality that entails notions of the ‘spirit of humankind’, from the inner self to horizons and the big picture. Compassion for others we share with all right thinkers, and find spirituality in the arts and in everyday human existence free of superstition and religious dogma.

The Humanist Society of Scotland trains volunteers to become officiants at non-religious naming ceremonies, marriages and funerals, and we receive many enquiries about humanism from people who have attended these occasions, in particular with funerals, when we celebrate the life of the deceased. The HSS also produces a quarterly magazine of humanist affairs and debate, Humanism Scotland, as well as a web site www.humanism-scotland.org.uk

Membership of the Humanist Society of Scotland is small but vigorous and we have humanist groups in the major cities of Scotland. The HSS is affiliated to the International Humanist and Ethical Union and has links with the British Humanist Association.  The HSS is non-political but members as individuals campaign on various social and political issues.  Some humanist sponsored campaigns support the drive to a secular Scotland free from faith schooling, and we support humanist activities in the NHS, in particular with the chaplaincy service.  Other campaigns and interests can be found on the HSS website.

Terry Martin, Perth Humanists

The Humanist Society of Scotland provides trained and experienced Celebrants for those who want non-religious funerals, marriages, commitment ceremonies and baby namings/welcoming ceremonies.  To opt for a Humanist ceremony is to choose an entirely secular, non-religious ceremony - that is, one without hymns, prayers or other religious content.
 
Please contact:    Humanist Society of Scotland,
                         272 Bath Street
                         Glasgow
                         G2 4JR

                         Tel No. 0870 874 9002  

(Ian Hamilton can thoroughly recommend the selection process undergone by Celebrants. They are all of the very highest moral probity. Ian knows. He applied and failed.)

 

On 29 January 2007 Mr John Mayer, Advocate will address the Scottish Parliament’s International Cross Party Group at the invitation of the United Nations Association. Mr Mayer is the author of the ‘Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Bill 2007′ which was launched in the Scottish Parliament on 9th January. The other speaker is Lord Hannay, formerly UK Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mr Mayer’s theme is ‘A Vision Shared’. The vision is to see Trident sail out of Scottish waters for the last time. His address will cover his personal commitment to nuclear disarmament since 1964 when, as a boy of 12, he combed his hair forward like the Beatles and hand-painted a CND badge for his school blazer, up through his ‘proudest moment’ in becoming the first lawyer in the world to have nuclear weapons ruled illegal by a court (By Sheriff Gimblett in the case of The Trident Three) and now to the recent launch of this Bill.

The event will be enhanced by the attendance of various European parliamentarians with an interest in a safer world.