A journey to parliament, a picture story

[sweetheart]

This past monday, November 20th, i undertook a journey from this northern
part of scotland to the Parliament in Westminster. The journey is documented
below: (all photos from the journey)


This is the parliament's visitor sticker from that evening.


This is a church that was converted to a museum in Farr Bay, near Bettyhill, Sutherland.
The museum talks of the scottish clearances, and within a mile of the museum are
viking settlement ruins that this place has been inhabited for many centuries by
people surviving off the north atlantic.

Those people were conquored over centuries by the populations from the south
as the UK population grew, the scotland was conquored and annexed that within
50 miles of this church was headquartered the UK navy during world wars at scapa flow,
and the bombing range at cape wrath.

That is to say, the highlands today, is a playground for the politics down south,
with the remaining residents largely calvanist and either isolated or distrustful of
the goings on down south and the metaphorical 'english'... or they are other UK
citizens not from that area who are those 'incomers', who are just as local as
the locals paying taxes and all.


These 2 dear are waiting in an estate by Alltnaharra for rich men from down south
to come shoot them.


Leaving the far north. 6 'mackay stones' were put up just a coupla years
back to mark the boundaries of the old clan. The poltical side effects of elevating
some metaphysical property right to a family name that is about 30% of the population
has created fights in schools and a subtle struggle that is rife across the north
between the 'locals' and the 'incomers'... and these' mackay stones haven't helped
one lick, however historic. The sign should say, "Welcome to the flow country,
the largest peat wetland in europe."


The war memorial at Bonar Bridge. The memorial is for Scots killed in WW1 & 2 from this town.
Scotland has long provided its kids to the imperial wars of Britain, in olden times, as cannon
fodder, troops that were less valuable to the empire because they were scottish and not english.
That was long ago, but this cultural thinking of scottish as lower, is rife across the island.


A wind farm still to recieve its turbines. The concrete bases are being prepared for
a massive wind farm on this hilltop that will bugger up the landscape for miles. The
power lines are already in to take the power down south to the populated areas, and what's
a few 300 meter turbines that are taller than the local maxima in the background.


Its a freezing rain morning, and 2 climbers are freezing to death about 40 miles away
in the cairngorms, that i will sadly learn about tomorrow.


Inverness football stadium is visible as one passes south across the Kessock bridge. Football is
a huge thing in scotland, like american football in the US, a thing every person either knows
about or despises, a perpetual distraction for the masses from their lives.


This is in contrast to the calvanist church at the first photo; this church is attended by just
about everybody, the one religion is called 'Tesco', the worship places are everywhere, and the
vicars are very helpful.

There you have it, the north of scotland is a place mined for energy, military, hunting and recreation,
and it is colonized by the church of tesco and football religion to keep the masses from being upset
about this exploitation without representation.


Luton Airport, in the islamic city of luton, north of london is a famous cheap-flight orange airline. ;-)


The hotel concierge advised me to get to parliament by 'walk to Buckingham Palace and turn left.',
whether he was aware of the profound political double entendre of his suggestion, i was not sure. :-)


The houses of parliament! .. finally!


The first gate i tried was the wrong one, by the sign 'sovereigns entrance',
but that said, it is the sovereign's gate, where the queen has taken the
mandate of the parliament to wealth and fame.


This map is painted on the wall just to the left of the parliament entrance.
All the walls are very fancy decorated, except for..:


This big room that looks like straight out of a harry potter book.


This is the entrance to the 'no camera' part of the essay.

Inside here, the party included about 200 americans from democrats abroad, and
a coupla members of parliament and some suprises. It was a very happy party
of relieved and spirited Democrats.

I got to shake the hand and say my respect to a backbench Labour MP who voted
against tony bliar's war in iraq. He told me that he was indebted to Mr. Blair
for his seat, but that the war had crossed the line, and that even his father had
supported him in opposing that, something i was really touched by. He is
concerned that the conservatives, for all their vapourous policy, are appealing
to women more than browniite labour, and that there is serious concern in labour
camps that brown may not be able to hold the english middle.

He even told me about a campaign where a Labour MP won by subtly suggesting that
he was 'local' in south yorkshire, against an opponent who last ran in glasgow.

He ignorantly suggested to me that 'scotland has its own government now' and that
in so saying, its outside the realm of concern; and that that government has no
serious powers, and is run by a nounce, is just something to smile about as a
labour MP from England, the Scots labour votes are needed to keep tony's train
on the rails, as with the education vote.

I learned that Halliburton is spinning off KBR to get rid of all the bad publicity
and go back to its core business of upstream recovery and downstream engineering (oil).

Amongst the democratic crowd, i was very impressed by the 50+ aged persons i met, ALL,
in this event, a savvy crowd of elites (this being a fundraiser costing 140£)
who are very aware of the neorot. The 20-40 crowd of americans i met were corporate
persons who were shifted over to london by their corporate business, and by their
discussions on 'democrats must support free trade and free markets' i was wondering
what party they were in... and in attempting to explain how concentration of wealth
and markets deny those without economic means of a fair choice, or a democratic choice
in things, i was accused of being a communist. ha! :-) A fundraiser is not a
protest, however, and the popular wing, the 'democratic' wing of the democratic party
was not much in attendence... few were much aware of the 'netroots' and how it is
moving the tetonic plates of politics and and informed public.

A final treat, was to meet of the leader of the irish senate, (that is not called
'senate'), and shake the hand of some irish parliamentarians that congratulated,
after being introduced by an MP, the few democrats standing there, and i was one
of those who felt that bolt of goodwill, what a beautiful vibe i got from them.

After meeting and feeling the vibes of all the European politicians there, i believe
there is the common sense intelligence to finally recognize that the drugs war is
a failure, and to break entirely with the wars of washington. I am happy to meet
a progressive labour MP and to discover and dig the whipped frustration about
not being progressive, and to feel that angst of being overridden when you know
that the majority people's voice is in your throat.


Bong Bong Bong, Big Ben cries out to cannabis smokers everywhere to light up
and celibrate dems taking the congress.

[mia]

1. Thanks for your photo essay!

Looks and sounds like a fascinating trip. I was not aware of the "exploitation without representation" going on in Scotland.

[sweetheart]

2. exploitation without representation

It has to do with the structure of the scottish devolution. Though education and spending
are generally devolved to scotland, the devolved parliament does not have control over its
own economic policies, including immigration and law and order approaches that are entirely
controlled from westminster. The scottish parliament is the, effectively designed to be
a weak rubber stamp that legitimizes the current status quo of a weak failing government
north of the border that is not empowered with the devolved powers to sort out its people's
issues. In that sense, it is "exploitation without representation".

If you saw the windfarm application process in northern areas, it is laughable. Every land
owner is being approached by greedy wind farm developers who don't give a fuck about the
highlands, but rather want to get the big public subsidies for siting industrial power
stations in a high-wind nature preserve area. When a local planning or referendum process
is undertaken about the installations, the vote is always predicatable... those without any
economic benefit vote against the imposing installation, and those who get money vote for it.

Then the windfarm companies re-apply and re-apply on different areas of ground with different
configurations of turbines until they override the local people... The largest local income
is from tourism, so why would a serioes of communities that make their livings from tourism
vote to destroy their own wilderness areas with noisy large industrial installations, and
all the while power prices are exhorbitant and a local windfarm is not for local power, but
for power hundreds of miles south. So the rubber stamp scottish executive is employed to
override local democracy and force planning permission through for important corporate projects
from the corporatists.

Walmart even got a local town in caithness to override its town plan and to destroy its greenbelt
all to serve the god of cheap petrol... The corporate planners sit in london and plan, then get
on a plane and come push it down the local's throats... hence a common piece of highland scots
wisdom, "Beware of englishmen in suits."

[sweetheart]

3. A postscript

This is the outtake essay.


I like to pretend the journey begins here in the open commons, in land
that is common to all free people and animals. Sheep are grazing about,
but none in this photo, if that be a sign of economic activity.
The church in the first photo of the main post, is down the hill to the right
in this photo.. not visible, but that villiage of about 500 persons is on the
seacoast to the right.


I left this one out as it was just asthetic, and not economic.


This photo, in the center, is a little fenced off weather station,
for the weather records of britain, and you can see its anemometer
and other instrumentation in distance.
This weather station has recorded the coldest temperature in britain,
as north mythology believes, but that i've not checked.

"Hope" is up in the air off to the write'r off the photo. ;-)


This economic photo, shows the wet peat bog in the foreground, and the
villiage in the center, where the soil has been drained and treated with
fertilizer and lime to kill the peat and make it arable. You can also see
the monoculture human-planted forestry done in decades past, that destroys
more carbon-sink than it creates, for the softwood timber value, and in
such a location, why is commercial forestry being done? The brown clusters
of trees are larch, and the pine/spruce evergreens dominate. The environmental
damage was incomers (big estate owners) from down south who did not respect
the peatlands, and set up tax incentives to colonize the bogs with evergreen
timbers. Why wetland conservation is being done so incompetently in such a
'green' country, god only knows.


These freshly-cut christmas trees are awaiting a net and a lorry to a living room down south.


A newbuild construction going in Alness. You can see the construction standard, the walls are done
with 2x6 timbers, and covered with a breathable membrane, internally packed with insulation
and covered with plasterboard. The exterior has a 1 inch airgap and a concrete block
wall being set around the whole structure to the eves.


This is a photo of a well-planted tree copse. It is not enough to damage the peatland,
yet has an almost japanese-garden prettyness to it. Surely whomever planted those is
long dead, but gotta congratulate 'em. The copse on the right could do with some thinning,
but as is so often the impulse in such matters, the planter is seldomly around 20 years later
to thin out the work.


Multiple religions are permitted in the EU. Tesco dominates, but these other religions are holding strong too.


Florence Nightengale haunts London with her ghost.


I thought a catherine wheel was a licorice wrapped in a spiral, wikipedia says its a rockband.