Perhaps one of the most respected intellectuals of the day appears to have changed his mind about independence for Scotland.
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Anyway, I fell about laughing last night at Michael Fallon, the Secretay of State for Nuclear Bomb Faux Pas.
You’ll remember his last visit to Scotland? Mr Fallon, although I should rightly refer to him as Sir Fallon, or something, given that he was one of the suck-ups (no, Conan, that is supposed to be an “S”) to which Cameron gave a gong for…well, for being a suck-up, when he (Cameron) fled in the aftermath of the disaster he led the UK into.
Anyway, I degress… The last time that Mr Fallon, sorry SIR Fallon, appeared in Scotland he gave an excruciating interview to Bernard Ponsonby (which Stuart Campbell captured for posterity here) in which he ended up being rescued from his ineptitude by a sour-faced lassie (presumably some sort of spad) young enough to be his granddaughter.
Most statesmanlike Mr, erm, SIR Fallon, er, sort of.
Anyway, with considerably less wit and political nous than a hibernating tortoise, the seriously plummy SIR (for services to licking, just in case you forgot) Fallon chose to tell the Herald that the UK government could refuse to allow a second referendum on independence. Y’know, never mind the manifestos of the Greens and SNP in the last elections… Mr SIR Fallon has spoken.
OK. Even for someone as spectacularly unspectacular as the good Knight Commander of the Order of the Bathtub, it was a bloody stupid thing to say. Of course they could; we all know that. Duh! The power is reserved to Westminster. So why would he say it, unless he meant they would refuse?
And if they did? Well, I can only imagine that a load of Scots would cross the floor from No to YES. Nothing like being told what we can’t do to ensure that we do it.
Way to go, Good Knight…well, Knight anyway.
Presumably someone with a slightly wiser head, maybe his granddaughter-type spad, or maybe his pet cat, pointed this out to him and in a Good Morning Scotland interview, he appeared to soften his stance. He said instead that Edinburgh should “forget all that stuff and get on with the day job”. ‘All that stuff’ being independence… and ‘the day job’, trying to keep Scotland afloat in the sinking ship that will be the UK after the Orange One gets his little hands on our trade?
“We didn’t see the need for a second referendum,” he said. Oh well. If a Knight of the Bathroom doesn’t see the need for it, we’d best just knuckle under to what he says… he’s a Knight, after all. “Know your place, Scotland”.
On yer bike, ye big muffin.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
He is Scottish you know. Scottish as in ‘Proud Scottish But’
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Yes, I saw that. His plummy southern counties accent belies it though.
I think he was schooled in England as befits a Knight of The Toilet or whatever tra la la he is.
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Epistemologist versus piss talker. I just wonder how many Scots Tories face palmed themselves when he came out with that one? How many phone calls did it take to get him on camera to refute it as soon as possible?
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If you do a Google search on Fallon, you get a lot of references to “stupid”, possibly, in fairness, because their presiding officer called him that.
He seems to be a man well out of his depth. I find it hard to imagine what he got his honour for. I suspect he knows where some bodies are buried!
Hee’s one of these people that you welcome to Scotland because you just know for sure he will say something stupid and make an ass of himself and his party.
And him born in Perth! The shame.
I image the cast iron lady had one of her flunkies phone his spad and she told him to get on air and try to claw back something from the disaster.
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Must have had a crash course in U-turns from what’s her name,the branch manager.
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Few people more equipped to do that than Line in the Sand Davidson.
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Fallon is only one buffoon of what must be the most inept Westminster Government ever to rule over us, and I have been voting for nearly sixty years.
I was one of the fortunate, well I say fortunate, to be at the count on September, 18/19th, 2014, and I could have wept when the results started to come in, and we realised that the people of Scotland had consigned us to Westminster rule for years to come.
When will the majority of us realise that not only do they do not have our best interests at heart, they have been robbing us blind for centuries? I quite realise that about one fifth of the electorate will never support an independent Scotland, but surely the penny must drop for some of the former No voters, when they see the contempt in which our M.Ps are held at Westminster, when their every effort to minimise the destruction that is Brexit, is ignored.
Hopefully the next time around we will be successful, and while we will still be affected by decisions taken down south, at least we will be able to decide our own destiny.
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My mum says the same thing, Alex.
And she’s lived through some shocking incompetence.
I agree. Actually, I think Hunt is more incompetent than Fallon and his bendy rockets.
Imagine saying that you’d get rid of the foreign doctors and nurses as soon as you had some of your own… especially when there is suck a shortage of doctors and nurses. What did the idiot think they would do? Hang around till Hunt sacked them for being foreign?
May herself is a ridiculously inept prime minister, stumbling from blunder to blunder, associating herself with some of the nastier leaders in the world. How she could rush off to America a week after he was inaugurated and offer him a state visit when it took Obama and Bush YEARS to get one, is beyond my comprehension.
I struggle to find a competent minister in their ranks, or a competent person in the Labour shadow cabinet, what’s left of it. Everyone has now had a turn. They look like they’ll be asking the doorman to serve shortly.
If Scotland doesn’t take this chance now, then maybe it deserves to be a region of England, have its parliament shut down and live under Tory rule for the next 20 years. Maybe when they start sending out 6-year-olds up chimneys they will get it.
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Actually tris, there is more than a ring of truth to your last sentence. If the tories thought they could get away with it, they would do it in an instant. Having recently watched several Dispatches programmes, and seen people desperate for employment being made to work for £3ph by unscrupulous employers who were making goods for major fashion chains, that type of behaviour would become the norm, in fact it may be well under way.
The sheer arrogance of the tories, and I believe she is in Malta today to tell the 27 what she wants, is astounding, but of course they know that no matter how big a disaster Brexit turns out to be, they, and their acolytes, will be cocooned from the effects, unlike the rest of us mere mortals.
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Can I give you an upvote for a dystopian post?
Well, it gave me a shudder.
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You can always upvote Munguin, Douglas. Don’t shiver too much. I’m sure we shall escape.
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I’ve no doubt that some of them would be happy to have people work for £3. You’ll remember that Mrs Thatcher did away with wages councils and the minimum wages that existed at that time. I think it’s fair to say that not all Tories are like that.
Yes, she’s apparently going to report to the EU on her business in Washington. Her hand holding and sooking and squirmy supplication… doubtless with “and I said to Donald” and “Donald said to me… what lovely hands you have Theresa my darling” thrown in for good measure.
She will also say she wants a good relationship with Europe, but then lay out all the things that she, Donald’s friend, won’t tolerate.
How they must laugh at her.
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Sir Martin Farron has done us all a favour but letting us know where we stand vis-à-vis the mother of the happy family of nations. Rosemary West was a mother too.
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I wonder how long it will be before he is promoted to Lord of this happy realm.
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I hope Sir Fallon does not go licking round Theresa – the poor soul had enough with Trump groping her bum… I’m sorry your Mum has to put up with your ‘shocking incompetence’? Send her my love to cheer her up!
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Who said it was my shocking incompetence. Let me assure you there is NOTHIHNG shocking about my incompetencies. All of them are anticipated.
As for the licking, you have no idea. Maybe Mayhem liked it…
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“As for the licking, you have no idea. Maybe Mayhem liked it…”
Aaaargh!
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I wonder how many of the slebs who signed the anti-indy letter to the Times will have changed their mind about an independent Scotland. Dan Snow? I doubt that, given that his family own quite a bit of the country. Mary Beard? Hmm, maybe. Sara Cox? Nobody cares. Might make a good game of bingo one day.
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Erm, Sarah Cox? Who she… Nah, it’s OK I looked her up. Nonentity. I’m not very radio one.
I’m more yer Mary Beard kinda person.
Sad that she was against.
Dan Snow. Hummmm… no, what would the English aristocracy do without Scottish animals to kill? And they don’t want to do it in a foreign country.
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