Sensible Negotiations

One of the more disturbing reasons I’ve seen for voting NO is that the post-YES negotiations would be carried out by – you’ve guessed it – that Wee Fat Eck and the SNP.

So let’s think about this. Scotland votes YES to independence. Negotiations with Westminster begin. Do you want the Scottish negotiators to be the people who said we can’t do it, who said we’re too wee, who said we are ‘not genetically programmed to make political decisions’, who said we are Better Together?

What kind of negotiators would those people be? Would they have an independent Scotland’s interest at heart? I fail to see how, but I’m happy to be enlightened.

However much you hate the SNP and their leader, you have to give them this: They have Scotland’s best interests at heart. They have fought for, and won, the chance to have this referendum, to give you the chance to make this decision. They’re all about Scotland and what is best for Scotland and what they believe Scotland can become with independence.

And the negotiating committee would not just be SNP - it would be made up of representatives from other parties and Scottish civic societies. Would it be majority SNP? Very probably, but that’s just logical, when you think about it (please think about it) since they hold the majority of MPs and MSPs who fought for independence and are the only party in no way beholden to Westminster i.e. no one is going to lose their job if they don’t do as they’re told. I would be seriously suspicious of e.g. Johann Lamont negotiating my country’s independence, given her stance.

I appreciate that this may be unpalatable for those who, for whatever reasons, hate the SNP, but it would be just plain daft to give up the chance of independence – if you genuinely want independence – just because you don’t like the guy/party doing some of the negotiating.

As has been said many, many times – this is a means to an end. In 2016 there would be the first Independent Scottish elections and that’s when you get to decide who runs your country. And your vote would actually matter.

Please don’t give up that opportunity based on a dislike of one person or because you’d rather the people who don’t believe in independence negotiate the terms for that independence. If you stop and think about it, it really doesn’t make sense, does it?

I'm sorry? What? Could You Say That Again?

Sometimes you have to step away from the screen, rub your eyes, look back and check that you really read what you just read.

I saw a NO voter today, a life-long Labour supporter, say that, in the event of Westminster reneging on its vague promise of more powers or, worse, actually reducing powers and/or funding in Scotland, that it would be Alex Salmond’s fault and he hoped that Salmond would be able to live with himself.

I’ll just type that out again for you: any negative consequences of a NO vote would be Alex Salmond’s fault.

His logic – and I use that term loosely – being that, had that wee, fat Eck (height and weight v important in politicians) just left things alone, not bothered everyone with his pesky desire to give us the opportunity to see our nation free from Westminster rule, everything could have stayed the same. ‘Cause, you know, it’s all perfect at the moment.

Again, you’ll note the personal touch here with all blame being attributed to one man – not a party or a campaign or YES voters – just this one man, Alex the Merciless. You’ll also note that any ill-effects after a NO vote would not be the fault of NO voters. Nope. Nor would they be the fault of the Westminster parties lying. Nope.

And this life-long Labour supporter is perfectly happy for his party to link arms with his life-long enemy – the one he never votes for, but frequently gets stuck with – the good old Tory party. He doesn’t blink an eye. It gives him no pause for thought that his party is in cahoots with the Tory party and the Lib-Dem party in their attempts to convince people that Scotland is incapable of being a successful independent nation. If he did stop and think about that, he’d probably find someone else to blame anyway. Any guesses who that someone would be?

Has anyone got a pair of ruby slippers I can borrow? This can't be real.

What It's Really About (for me)

What It’s Really About

Well, it’s all about Salmond, isn’t it? The question on the ballot paper is: Do you want Alex Salmond to be the king of Scotland. Forever.

Except it’s not. It absolutely is not. The question is simple: Should Scotland be an independent country?

In the event of a YES vote, would that make Alex Salmond happy? Yes, of course – it’s what he’s campaigned for all his life. Would it make him the leader of Scotland, in any capacity, after 2016? Only if enough people voted for him. In other words, it would be up to you, the Scottish voters.

Is your hatred of one man, and the fact that something you do could result in him getting something he wants, worth giving up the chance of taking control of our own finances, making our decisions for our own people, having a vote that actually matters rather than one that only gets us the government we vote for if it just so happens that enough people in England want the same as us?

That’s for your conscience. If personality is more important to you than policy, then you’ll stick to your guns and be very pleased at having thwarted one man, ignoring the fact that you have also thwarted a nation’s chance at self-determination and self-rule. But so long as that wee fat Alex isn’t smiling, eh?

Lots of people talk of the uncertainty, not knowing what Scotland would be like if they vote YES, exactly which currency, exactly who’d end up as the leader. And so, they reason, it’s safer to stay with what they know, with certainties.

But there are no certainties. No one can tell you who will be in charge of the main UK political parties in 2015, which of those parties will win the election, which of the policies in their manifestos they will actually keep. We’ve been promised more powers if we vote NO (by parties who vetoed devo-max on the ballot paper), but we’re not to be told what those powers are, just as we’re not allowed to negotiate any details of an independent Scotland before the referendum. We are expected to just wait and see. Uncertainty is rife no matter which way you vote.

And please remember that voting NO isn’t just voting against something – it’s also voting for something. It’s voting for Westminster to continue its control over these aspects of our lives:

benefits and social security

immigration

defence

foreign policy

employment

broadcasting

trade and industry

nuclear energy, oil, coal, gas and electricity

consumer rights

data protection

the Constitution (the UK doesn’t actually have one of these, so I’ve never quite understood that, but it’s what’s on the government’s website, so I included it here)

I see those as quite important. All the more so since the recent attacks on the poor and disabled through ‘restructuring’ of benefits. All the more so since the slide to the right that’s taking place in the UK at the moment. All the more so since more and more information comes to light about how much we’ve been lied to, and are still being lied to, about oil and gas.

No one can force people to look at issues rather than people. I could just be petty and say, ‘Oh, well, if a YES vote is a vote for Alex Salmond, then a NO vote is a vote for David Cameron.’ But that would be silly. This is not about either of them – it’s not about Lamont or Darling or Davidson or Miliband or Clegg either

A YES vote is to give Scotland complete control over its own finances and its own affairs. A NO vote is to leave some of that control in the hands of whichever Westminster party the majority of English people vote for.

For me, it’s that simple.

My Journey to YES

In a break from writing stuff and cruise stuff, a wee bit of political stuff. Fell free to ignore and wait for the more light hearted stuff to return.

A Journey to YES

It’s 4^th May 1979. I’m 16. My mum is calling me to come downstairs and watch this historic event. She’s never voted Tory, and never would, but she can’t help being impressed that a woman has finally become Prime Minister, albeit this woman, from this party. She wants me to watch, to share in this moment.

Reluctantly, I relent and join her in front of the TV. I’m not madly political at this age, but I know enough to know that I don’t like right wing policies, and I don’t care if this is the first woman PM – she’s from the wrong party, and policies and party are far more important than gender or personality or being ‘first’ at something.

That voice, the one most of us will grow to hate, already makes my skin crawl as it says: Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Well, we were soon to learn, had we ever doubted it, that that was complete bollocks.

I couldn’t vote until after October 1980, so I had no influence. It didn’t take me long to learn that I would never have any real influence. By the next general election, in 1983, I had already decided that I would never vote Tory because they didn’t care about Scotland (or, as it often seemed, basic human decency). Quite right, to be fair – from a political point of view, why waste your time on a place where you will never win votes? I had also decided there wasn’t much point to voting Labour – they didn’t seem to be that bothered about us either. Again, quite right – why waste time and energy on a place where your vote is pretty much guaranteed? Far better to start changing your party, to slide further towards right, in the hope of gaining new support or regaining old support. Don’t blame them in the slightest – it was what they felt was politically sound.

That left me, as far as I recall, with the Liberals, the SDP and the SNP. In the end I decided that, since my vote had little or no influence in Westminster, that I’d opt for the SNP and hope that one day we would achieve independence. No one else had any particular cause to care much about us; surely we’d be better off taking care of ourselves?

That doesn’t mean that I loved all SNP policies, or that I was convinced they had the best leader – to be honest, I don’t even remember who that was. I know I could google this stuff, but I’m trying to give you it from memory, to take you through my thought processes as I remember them. I opted for the SNP because I wanted my vote to count. I understood – still understand – that I wouldn’t necessarily get the government I voted for in an independent Scotland, but at least a greater percentage of my countrymen would get what they had voted for.

Oddly, I’m in agreement with some of my NO voting friends on this point. I agree that Scotland gets exactly the representation it should in Westminster. We are a tiny nation. Why should a nation of 5 million dictate to a nation of 55 million? That would not only be wrong, it would be ridiculous. But while my NO friends see this as a reason to stay, that we have the correct level of representation, I see it as a reason to go. My country will only ever get the UK government it votes for by chance, if it just so happens to tally with the desire of the country with the larger population. While that is, technically, fair, it’s not good enough for me. I don’t believe it’s good enough for my country.

That was how I came to support independence. I’ll blog again about more specific points (unless the comments on this get too ugly, of course) but I just wanted to share, as others have, my journey to YES, which started long before YES was even a real option.

It's A Reciprocal Thing

Many years ago I declared myself a no review zone. I had a lot of friends – from various writing sites and spoken word nights – who were prose writers and poets, many of whom went on to to be published or to self-publish novels, short story collections and poetry collections. Obviously, the quality varied and there was - sorry, really, really sorry – a tendency towards angsty, awful poetry that even the Vogons would have refused to read. Poets who had clearly never read any poetry, ever, were putting out collections that amounted to nothing more than opening a vein and bleeding onto the page and asking to be praised for their bravery.

I bought them. I bought them all. I supported them all. They were nice people. They may not have been hugely talented poets, but they were lovely and I wanted to support them in the only way I could – financially. But I couldn’t, in all conscience, write glowing reviews. Hence the no review zone.

Later, several friends released excellent short story collections, poetry collections and novels – but I couldn’t review them. I was the non reviewer. The no review zone. I was stuck. While I had lost touch with the majority of the really not very good poets, I had made this declaration and felt I had to stand by it. It was a blessing in some ways, but when I read something wonderful I really wanted to say so, to shout out to everyone: BUY THIS! IT’S AMAZING! AND I KNOW THE AUTHOR!

But I couldn’t. I didn’t do reviews.

And then I brought out my own collection and things got a bit more difficult.

When you buy a book, do reviews matter to you? They matter to me. I find myself looking at reviews on Amazon and I’ll read a 5 star review, then I’ll look at a 1 star review, then I’ll look at those reviewers’ other reviews. If the 5 star person is giving great reviews to everyone, I ignore their opinion. If the 1 star person is just a nippy wee git sniping at everyone, I ignore their review. But if those people give a variety of reviews over several books, I’ll take their opinions a bit more seriously and they may influence my decision to buy or not.

I wanted reviews for my book. But how could I ask for reviews? I’m the non reviewer – how cheeky would it be to ask other people to do what I was unwilling to do?

But I asked, and they did, and they were lovely. But now I know I have to do the reciprocal review, and what if I read their book and I don’t like it/think it’s badly written/come face to face with Vogon poetry? Do I have the courage to be honest if they’ve given me a 5 star gushing review? What’s the protocol here?

Well, we know, don’t we? We see it every year in those ‘authors pick each other’s books as book of the year’ in various newspapers.

But if I do the obligatory, you gave me 5, I'll give you 5, my credibility is shot.

And it sucks. But it’s what we do.

There is no such thing as an honest reciprocal review. Is there?

P.S. Here are some wonderful things I would have reviewed had I not been the non reviewer (seriously - buy all of these): A Man's Hands, A Documentary About Sharks, Somewhere to Start From, Spit, Melons and Memory, Ordinary Domestic, Dot,Dash

and loads more. TUT.

A Review That Made Me Smile

Reviews of The Upside-down Jesus and other stories are beginning to trickle in. I thought I'd share this one from Kevin Cadwallender.

The Upside Down Jesus and other stories  by Karen Jones.

ISBN 978 1 291 77155 8

Sometimes wonderful things happen when you read a new book, which makes reading seem worthwhile. Karen Jones’ book is one of those wonderful things.

Populated by the bizarre characters of her imagination but fuelled by the real characters or close relations of people we recognise in our own lives. The book steps easily between the profound and the surreal with a deft writing style that flows gently

through obsession; disconnection, askew observations and a yearning for lost things, disappeared things, which float in and out of life.  Never over written or hurried the stories move slowly through life’s idiosyncrasies, not pointing and shouting but showing and observing. Often darkly comic, often deeply moving they resonate and offer a sometimes disturbing, sometimes tender view from the rooms we inhabit with the shadows we try not to think about in peripheral vision.

Kevin Cadwallender May 2014

The book is available here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Upside-Down-Jesus-other-stories/dp/1291771557

And here: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/karen-jones/the-upside-down-jesus-and-other-stories/paperback/product-21501492.html

Oh, I Forgot I had a Blog

Yes, well, what can I say? I'm old. I had forgotten about this and I had to follow a link from Teresa Stenson's blog to find the place. Oh dear. I am a failed blogger.

So why am I back? Well, obviously, I have something to sell!

I've put together an anthology of some of my published stuff. The book is called The Upside-Down Jesus and other stories. Here's a wee bit about it:

The Upside-Down Jesus and other stories is a collection of published and prize-winning short stories, flash fiction and micro-fiction giving voice to a variety of different characters.

A child struggles to overcome her fear of the upside-down Jesus, a man dons his ‘egg-stealing coat’ once a week, a teenager becomes obsessed with the colour purple, an old man keeps his wife closer than others would like, a psychiatrist considers the folly of his patients, and a little girl watches her neighbour slowly disappear.

Tracy Chevalier, judge of the 2010 Mslexia Short Story Competition, on “The Upside-Down Jesus”:

“ … a heartbreaker leavened by a gorgeous young Scottish narrator … the girl’s voice is beautifully sustained and so we feel we really know her by the end.”

Annemarie Neary, judge of the first quarter 2013 Flash 500 Competition, on “When No One Is Looking”:

“… close to perfect … expert writing – tight and rhythmical … deft evocation of the childish sense of impotence, of no one listening … excellent work.”

Purchasing info for anyone who wants to buy a book. Unfortunately, the postage is a bit of a bugger, but I don’t control the Post office (yet!) so there’s not a lot I can do about it – sorry.

To buy from Lulu costs £6.99 + p&p, follow this link:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/karen-jones/the-upside-down-jesus-and-other-stories/paperback/product-21501492.html

To buy a signed copy direct from me costs £6.00 + p&p:

UK total cost = £7.30

Europe total cost = £9.50

USA total cost = £10.50 ($17.50 at current exchange rate)

The Post Office is putting up its prices on 1^st April, so these prices are fairly accurate for the next week.

If you want to buy direct from me, drop me a pm with your address, I’ll give you the PayPal address, once the money is in the account, I’ll get your book sent out to you asap.

The book will be available from Amazon at £6.99 + p&p in a couple of weeks from now if you’d prefer to wait until then.

If you’re going to see me in person e.g. at Rio Café next Monday, at salsa, at zumba or because you live in my street, just let me know if you want a copy and I’ll bring it to wherever we’ll next meet – cost remains £6.00.

I'll be visiting some other bloggers in the next few weeks to chat about the book, so I'll try to remember my blog exists and keep you up to date on what's happening.