BY EFFIE DEANS The language of race has become very strange indeed. Take the following statements: Black Lives Matter Is not racist but praiseworthy White Lives Matter Is racist, far right and gets you sacked All Lives matter Is likewise racist White Lives Don’t matter Is not racist and gets you promoted This is to put language through the looking glass. Words mean what we … Continue reading No Equality From Inequality
BY EFFIE DEANS There were no black children in either my primary or secondary schools. Racist words were commonplace. When I moved to Edinburgh middle class students used racist words to describe shops run by people of Pakistani origin and takeaways run by people of Chinese origin. We didn’t do this in a hostile fashion. It was simply the language of the time. A form … Continue reading Britain Is Being Trolled
BY EFFIE DEANS My mother was born in 1933. She grew up in a Britain without racism. The police did not beat up black people. There was no discrimination against black people. We didn’t have any laws regarding racial discrimination. Sporting events were completely free from any ugly racist chants and no one thought about black lives mattering or not mattering. The only black people … Continue reading Chasing Ghosts
BY EFFIE DEANS Where I come from in Aberdeenshire there was no such thing as sectarianism. No one in school ever asked me about religion. I neither knew nor cared which church if any anyone else went to. There were no marches here until very recently. We were able to “stand free” from all of that or so we rather smugly thought. Christianity is becoming … Continue reading Sectarianism on the Rise
BY EFFIE DEANS I think I am beginning to see a new variant of Covid or perhaps it is just a function of the lockdown. It is causing otherwise rational people to lose all perspective and behave in ways that their Pre-Covidian selves would have considered bizarre. I’ve always found Britain to be relaxed sort of a place. If you don’t do anything wrong, you … Continue reading Pot Kettle Blackford
BY EFFIE DEANS Scotland entered lockdown at exactly the same time as the other parts of Britain. We did so because we were following the advice that had been given to the British Government by the SAGE committee of scientific experts. Boris Johnson announced a very cautious easing of this lockdown some time ago, but Nicola Sturgeon decided that nothing would change in Scotland. Why? … Continue reading Jockdown
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP has been demanding a second referendum on Scottish independence from the moment it lost the first one. We never get a break. I began writing about Scottish politics in 2012. I was willing to be magnanimous when we won in 2014. I advised people not to gloat or rub it in. That we were all Scots together and now was … Continue reading Scotching the SNP
BY EFFIE DEANS Scottish nationalists like to think of Britain as a mini European Union made up of four members and four different peoples. But their hatred of Britain is blinding them to what is happening, and I think this is why they are beginning to make a series of misjudgements. We all have different ideas about how well or how badly the Government is … Continue reading Lady MacSturgeon
BY EFFIE DEANS We are in the midst of one of the greatest disasters of modern times. It may be a natural disaster, or it may have been caused by human error. It is crucial that we learn from previous disasters. It is partly for this reason that I began watching the 2019 TV series on Chernobyl. I accept that it is drama and that … Continue reading From Chernobyl to Covid
BY EFFIE DEANS Twenty or thirty years after the invention of the printing press most people still couldn’t read and few books were printed anyway. So too while the Internet has changed life considerably in the past decades it hasn’t really changed how most of us have worked. We still got up early in the morning and got into cars, trains or buses and travelled … Continue reading The Covidian Revolution
BY EFFIE DEANS There are essentially three positions on the lock-down: 1. We should get out sooner (Hawks). 2. We should get out later (Doves). 3. There should not be a lock down at all (Enzas). Which is correct? We just don’t know. The correct decision depends on knowing how many people have been infected with Covid 19 around the world and what percentage have … Continue reading Enza?
BY EFFIE DEANS It is clear now that Covid 19 originated in Wuhan China sometime in November or early December 2019. It might have been stopped if the Chinese Government had taken the necessary steps early enough. Instead they tried to prevent Chinese doctors from telling the truth about the illness and repeatedly lied to the rest of the world about its nature, the danger … Continue reading Lies Now Costing Lives
