Smith - The Ritual Burning

So, Lord Smith of Kelvin has, at last, published his report. The much-vaunted Vow has produced results. By my reading and by all accounts (with the exception of NO-facing commentators), it’s a shameful non-event, no less than I expected either.

Opinion divides along predictable lines. From the Westminsterites, Scotland’s promise is delivered, now shut up, Scotland. From Scotland, we’re being offered nothing. Where’s the Home Rule, Devo Max and all that stuff?

Then in the midst of this, a storm: councillors set fire to the document because they don’t like it. Outrage follows. It's the same old smoke and mirrors, the stuff of politics-as-usual.

Now I agree, the fire-raising (into a bin no less) was a bit naff, obvious even. It walked, as some say, into the waiting arms of the voracious Main-Stream-Media. A silly prank. Though hardly worse, as others have posted, than Iain Gray a while ago, publicly ripping up an SNP manifesto for effect. Isn’t that what we've come to expect, the cut and thrust of the 21st Century's sub-standard rhetoric? Aren’t these its props and rituals?

Get over it. We’re back in the days of faux indignation and puff. Truth is, we never left them.

It was Smith himself raised the notion of compost, for environmental reasons (his Green Bank chairmanship) and, setting aside his considerable interests in fracking, let’s credit it as an interesting riposte.

Still, I agree with the arsonists critique of Smith. His proposals aren’t worth a candle. His published report is Brown’s pig in a poke shown up as a slimy reduction of inferior pork. There’s nothing in it for Scotland except pretexts, backdoor cuts, and powers trumpeted but stripped away in acres of small print.

So, composting seems a positively useful fate. Mind you, I’d not be averse to this also being a public ritual not unlike its conflagrating. I’d have a full media circus where the shredded remains of the Commission’s meanderings are layered with rotten veg and dung. Post-watershed, we might even see, from a discrete distance, some anonymous political gardener doing a Bob Flowerdew on it.

Everything changes, everything remains the same…

How can we take any promises seriously when we're still saddled with black-is-white, white-is-black politics? From the mainstream parties and its media, current pronouncements bear little relation to those of three months ago. It's as if none of them concocted a froth of lies about independence. Project Fear was a bad dream and is now forgotten. The Labour Party now appear to have Scotland’s best interests at heart.

Chin music. 

We're still thirled to a Union of chicanery, deceit and backstabbing behind the scenes. Westminster rules. OK? That’s their message to Scotland. We’ll give you a laughable set of new powers, crow about the groundbreaking generosity of it, then do everything possible to screw you.

To demonstrate: no sooner had Smith reported, with the Scottish pittance there for us all to see and lament over, we learn the DWP is extending Work Programme contracts despite this being one area to come under Holyrood control. At the last moment, we're saddled with future obligations to an unfair and untenable scheme. No discussion, no co-operation. A decision made in Westminster remoteness.

And don’t forget, this tinkering is with Smith’s recommendations. Nothing is agreed yet nor in statute. How many more instances of attrition will we see in the coming months? Believe me, the Smith proposals are destined to be ratted on not ratified. Scotland’s punishment has begun.

In these circumstances, I ask myself, what’s worse, an ill-judged stunt or cynical duplicity? The smoke I see isn’t from a few pages going up in flames, it’s billowing from the collective political pants of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, Cable, Miliband, Balls, the whole lot of them, incinerated by their pathological lies.