MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

I do not wish to give the impression that I have gone mad and taken up religion but like every other human being I am a creature of my environment and my socialisation. When I was but a callow youth I was a member of the Boys Brigade, and still have the King James Bible that I was presented with for perfect attendance at Bible classes every Sunday. Many things impressed on me from my experience and I was ruminating on the state of British politics the other day when I remembered a passage from my religious indoctrination that very neatly and prophetically sums up the situation that Westminster finds itself in today. It is from the Bible that we get the saying that the writing is on the wall. This comes from the Ch. 5 of the Book of Daniel when the King of Babylon, Belshazzar, is having a good old swally with his mates and a hand appears out of nowhere and the fingers write on the wall of his palace, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN which the prophet Daniel tells  the king means, in essence, that his days were numbered, he had been weighed in the balances and found wanting and his kingdom would be divided and given to others. You see Belshazzar and his mates, the Babylonian elite, were drinking out of cups and vessels that had been looted from the Hebrew people and from their temple in Jerusalem, and they were praising the gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood and stone (sound familiar? and I bet you didn't know that the Babylonians had branches of RBS and Lloyds banks)

I find this a very apt metaphor for the Westminster parliament and the present government. The writing is indeed on the wall for this mendacious and dysfunctional institution and the appalling personnel who inhabit its nooks and crannies. The Westminster elite have been feasting and dining off the backs of the British people for centuries, feasting and dining from the produce of working people and desecrating their culture and their heritage, but today it is getting truly obscene. As a result, many people have decided that enough is enough and their days are numbered, particularly in Scotland. The Scots came to this conclusion about the Tories in the 1980's, they weighed them in the balances and found them wanting and, in effect chased them out of town. Despite all the evidence that Labour were just as bad, they stuck with them and gave them the benefit of the doubt; this was a result of the collective cultural socialisation of the Scots who have always been steeped in Labour politics. However, Labour's conduct during its 13 years in government under Mad Tony and Daphne Broon sowed the seeds of a genuine disillusionment with them, and their conduct during and after the referendum was the last straw, as Abraham Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. The Scots have seen through Labour and, as The Who sing, we wont get fooled again. The result of this will inevitably be a divided kingdom and it will be the result of Westminster's own behaviour, they are indeed reaping what they have sown.

What convinces me of the stupidity of Westminster politicians is their quite spectacular inability to learn from mistakes. In addition, they simply cannot understand how any of this can be their own fault. The Tories fall from grace in Scotland was both inevitable and obvious as the Scots are too intelligent to tolerate such people. However, future historians will ponder the spectacular fall from grace of Labour in Scotland and their blind refusal to sit down and analyse the cause and will inevitably question the sanity of their behaviour. The decline of the Westminster system and the two major parties is the result of hubris, self destruction driven by an overweening arrogance. The only thing that can save the British system is to reform the electoral system and introduce a meaningful system of proportional representation. This has been the saviour of the Tories in Holyrood and will be the only thing that will revive Scottish Labour fortunes next May, but don't hold your breath waiting for Tweedledum and Tweedledee realising this, they are not bright enough. Remember, tomorrow you have a choice between decency, dignity, and a civilised society, or greed, lies, legalised theft and gangsterism, and continued poverty, foodbanks and the slow destruction of society. You have been warned, do not be weighed in the balances and be found wanting.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat