BY EFFIE DEANS I have finally come to my senses. I repent. If only I had a time machine I would go back to June 2016 and vote to Remain. I began to realise what an awful rotter I was when a mysterious new virus began to emerge from China. It was obviously caused by Brexit. If only I’d not voted to Leave then Prince … Continue reading Is Brexit to Blame for Everything?
BY EFFIE DEANS If there is a terrorist attack committed by a British Muslim, we are not allowed to make generalisations about Muslims. For instance, if I wrote a sign saying “End Muslim violence” this would be considered to be Islamophobic and racist. If there were a murder committed by someone who had arrived in Britain from Turkey, it would likewise be considered xenophobic and … Continue reading Misandry & Murder
BY EFFIE DEANS I used to write something on the anniversary of the independence referendum as a sort of parody of Scott’s “Waverley; or, ‘tis sixty years since”. Indyref; or, ‘tis seven years since. The idea was to compare grieving Jacobites toasting their lost cause and their king oer the water with the Scottish nationalists celebrating the fact that they got 45 (actually 44.7) and … Continue reading Tis Seven Years Since
BY EFFIE DEANS Until relatively recently the UK Government was planning similar changes to the Gender Recognition Act that are now being proposed by the SNP. But after listening to the concerns of women it decided to reverse course. At present it is necessary to obtain a medical diagnosis and to wait at least two years before being allowed to legally change gender. That situation … Continue reading Shame on You
BY EFFIE DEANS A Conservative MSP got into trouble this week for suggesting that Nicola Sturgeon might be anti-English. Sturgeon was pointing out that everyone who lived in Scotland was at home here, to which Tess White replied “except the English”. For this White was forced to apologise or else be suspended from Holyrood. Woe betide anyone who suggests Popes are Catholic or that bears … Continue reading Doth Protest Too Much
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP are going to encourage Scottish teachers to take a white privilege test. It will no doubt be a rather odd sort of test, because no matter what you answer it will turn out that you do indeed have white privilege. There will be no set of answers that you can give that demonstrate that you don’t. It therefore won’t be … Continue reading The Test that Undermines the SNP
BY EFFIE DEANS What’s the worst thing the SNP could do to you personally? Many Pro UK people would assume that it would be if Sturgeon achieved her goal of Scottish independence. But this is not true. Whatever we might think about the economic consequences of the breakup of the UK these would not necessarily affect us personally. We would still have choices. We could … Continue reading The Worst Thing the SNP Can Do to You
BY EFFIE DEANS They joy of being a civil servant in Scotland has just increased. The Scottish Government is backing proposals to encourage eight thousand of them to take a pronoun pledge. Fortunately, this will not involve abstaining from alcohol as previous pledges once did, nor will it involve polishing wooden furniture. Rather it will merely involve adding a few lines to the end of … Continue reading Pick Your Pronouns Wisely
BY EFFIE DEANS About a year ago I described a trip to the Highlands and my difficulties with Gaelic road signs. Faced with a roundabout with multiple place names in a language I could neither understand nor pronounce I unjustly blamed my getting lost on the signs rather than on my own poor ability at navigation. I received some sympathetic responses from other road users, … Continue reading Gaelic Road Signs: Atonement
BY EFFIE DEANS While support for the SNP remains high and while many Scots support independence at least in theory, there is no question now that both face an intellectual challenge over EU membership. For this reason, the independence movement has become divided over how to overcome the challenges caused by Brexit. While the UK was an EU member it was possible to argue that … Continue reading The Hard Border Checkmate
BY EFFIE DEANS The racist abuse suffered by the English football players who missed penalties was peculiarly stupid. The English football team is picked on merit. It so happens that a large number of those players are black. The manager’s judgement must be that these players deserve to be in the squad. If they underperformed other players would be picked in their place. It follows … Continue reading Anti-English Hatred not Racism?
BY EFFIE DEANS I have been writing less since the Scottish Parliament election. The mood has changed. It is partly because it is summer. I have been more interested in using the sunshine to travel around Scotland than write about Scottish politics. But it’s not just me. Both sides of the constitutional divide spent the year or so before the election building up to the … Continue reading Summer Stasis
BY EFFIE DEANS Last week there was a minor incident in the Black Sea when a Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender sailed close to the Crimean shoreline and was warned by the Russian coastguard to keep away. Some shots were fired, but no one was hurt and it is likely that no one was in danger of being hurt. The waters around Crimea and Crimea … Continue reading Crimea & Scotland
BY EFFIE DEANS An acquaintance of mine called John Bull moved to Scotland as a student from Bulford in Wiltshire. He loved Scotland so much he decided to stay. He met a Scottish woman and because she was an SNP supporter, he began to move in Scottish nationalist circles. He campaigned for Scottish independence in 2014 and has voted SNP since. Like many English people … Continue reading Scots’ Anglophobia Stirred by SNP
BY EFFIE DEANS France is a rather odd place. It is not merely the chunk of the European continent across the Channel. It also includes two islands in the Caribbean, Guadeloupe and Martinique, a little bit of South America, French Guiana, and two islands in the Indian Ocean, Réunion and Mayotte. These are part of France in just the same way as Picardy and Normandy. … Continue reading Macron’s Geography Lesson
BY EFFIE DEANS An organisation called The Social Justice and Fairness Commission recently published a report dated March 2021. We didn’t see it in March however, but rather it was only revealed after the Scottish Parliament Election. Of course, the organisation is another of the SNP’s front organisations. The authors of the report are SNP politicians and supporters. Like every other SNP report, it concludes that independence kills … Continue reading Brits, Move to Scotland
BY EFFIE DEANS The current Pro UK electoral strategy amounts to the Scottish Conservatives continually banging on about independence to scare the Pro UK vote into voting for them. Labour meanwhile tries to ignore independence in the hope that former Labour voters forget that it is still officially a Pro UK party. The Lib Dems hang on in the North, but are now a dismal … Continue reading A Common Strategy
BY EFFIE DEANS A woman studying at Abertay University has been disciplined for saying that women were born with female genitals and that it was a fact that women were generally less strong than men. This means that she has been disciplined for telling the truth. It would be interesting to find out about the political views of those who complained and those who judged … Continue reading Punished For Truth Telling
BY EFFIE DEANS I have been asked to help decolonise the curriculum where I work. I take this to mean I must remove all subjects that benefitted from colonisers or colonialism, all writers who were involved in or benefited from the slave trade or indeed all books that nice people in 2021 should disapprove of. My first task is to remove all books in Latin, … Continue reading Decolonising the Curriculum
BY EFFIE DEANS I have no interest in going abroad so long as I might have to follow Covid regulations in a language I understand poorly if at all. I don’t see the point in going to a Spanish café while I have to wear a face mask. I don’t want to have to find whoever might give me a Covid test before I fly … Continue reading Dependent Independence
