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Nationalism is instrument often used as means to gaining power and taking control of a nation. In history this has happened time and time again and sometimes with explosive results which has led to conflicts and wars in the last few hundred years. You would have thought by now we would have learned the lesson of the past but so powerful is that tool that politicians carry on using it all around the world.
The catalyst for the rise of support of nationalism is often some kind of injustice as can be seen by looking at world history, and it sometimes accompanied by world economic crisis such as in 1930's Germany which saw the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Over the years we have seen similar parties in other counties such as Italy, Spain and Portugal all using nationalism as away of gaining and keeping power. In fact the the tactic has been used throughout the world by states and terrorists and the practice is use today.
Although sometimes the idea of nationalism is well intended and has mass appeal the reality is different as we have seen recently in our own history in Northern Ireland and before that in Central Europe. There is always something that makes it turn sour and nasty. Maybe it something to do with the idea "that power corrupts" but it something more than that which in the case of nationalism. It is common that every nationalist party is on the far left or the far right of politics and may be that is the problem the movement naturally attracts extremists.
Using the socialist tag is often a good way of getting into power used by Nationalist the other one is the republican tag, all of which have been used to good effect, although the gives you more scope for taking control through forced nationalisation of industry and control of government institutions. Whatever means are used to win power the results are often the same as are the methods of control, if you don't like something you either threaten it to it does what you want or destroy it or take it over.
Nationalism is often confused with national pride by many and that used Nationalists to good effect making it seem unpatriotic not to support the movement. As soon as you oppose them you become outsider from the nation you live in and a second class citizen. In the worse cases this can lead you to be bullied and to be victimised by the state. This occurs when national pride becomes almost fanatical in nature as occurred in countries like Germany.
The use of social injustice as trigger and as a device used by Nationalist is interesting and at the same time contradictory. Since nationalistic policies are often divisive creating more injustice rather than doing anything to solve the problem of injustice in society. This occurs because of the polarisation that it causes in society which is combined with black and white political thinking where often the people in power think they know better than the people what might be good for them. This interestingly results in leadership that believes in complete control of the political strings of power.
Over the next few years we are going to see a rise in nationalism throughout Europe and some of it isn't going to be nice. This will be caused from pressures within individual nations as well as pressures from outside nations. What ever the reason the only real way to tackle injustice in society comes as whole and can only be done from the centre of the political movement and not from the nationalistic extremes. As in the past nationalism is as big a threat to society as it has always been.
The people of Scotland go to the polls to decide their fate in the coming few days and the fate of the United Kingdom as a whole. Of course the rest of us in the United Kingdom just get to stand by and watch as Nationalist fever takes over in Scotland that will divide Scotland for generations to come. Our opinion counts for nothing that on the whole we don't want to see the end a union that has served us all so well.
I guess being English by birth Alex Salmond is a name that hit the headlines in the main stream press when the Scottish Nationalist Party took control of the Scottish Parliament. Before that he had been there in the news but under the radar of conciseness for most people here. Events of the last few weeks have led to me to learn a little more about the man with the spell binding voice that is promising the world to the Scottish people.
Alex Salmond was born on 31 December 1954 in Linlithgow, West Lothian too his parents Robert Salmond and Mary Salmond both of whom where civil servants. He attended school at the Linlithgow Academy and went on to study at Edinburgh College of Commerce where he gained an HNC in Business Studies. Finally he attended University of St Andrews, where he studied Economics and Medieval History and finally got a 2:2 degree. it was while he was there that he took his first steps into politics when he was elected Vice-President (Education) of the Students' Representative Council.
After leaving University he followed the family tradition and went into the civil service as an Assistant Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. After two years he left civil service and became a banker at the Royal Bank of Scotland where he eventually became an Oil Economist and as well as a bank economist. He remained in this position until 1984 when juggling banking and politics became too much and he decided to concentrate on a political career.
Alex Salmond became a member of Scottish Nationalist Party while he was a student at University. Within the party he was considered left of the party and in 1979 he famously became one of the "79 Group" of Scottish Nationalist that advocated the creation of an socialist republican independent Scotland. He, together with other members of the group, began producing campaign material in support of their policies, and started stand for internal SNP posts. This was opposed by the main stream members of the party and in 1981 the group that had recently been joined by Jim Sillars was thrown out of the party for there political views.
He and the other members of the group remained in the political wideness until 1985 when they were allowed to join the party again. Eventually in 1988 he joined his ally Jim Sillars when he won a seat in Westminster Parliament during a by-election. At the time both were considered as being firmly on the left of the Scottish Nationalist Party In 1990 he stood for the leadership of the party and won, after Gordon Wilson who was on the right of the party and opposed the "79 Group" stood down as leader. He remained in this role until 2000 after a series of high-profile fallouts with party members made his position untenable. The fallouts according to the press at the time where to do with the mess of the parties finances and accusations of suppressing democracy within party .
After giving up the leadership he remained in the Scottish Nationalist Party and gave up his seat that he won in 1999 in the Scottish Parliament and returned to Westminster in 2001. It was while he was there that in 2003 he famously tried to impeach Tony Blair over the Iraq War. He claimed that Tony Blair had made a pact with George W. Bush "to go to war come what may". he said that Blair's statements on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were consciously intended to deceive the public. This was a view that was taken by many at the time and after war when no evidence of such weapons was found in Iraq.
In 2004 he once again stood for the leadership of the Scottish Nationalist Party and won to enter his second term as leader of the party. In 2007 he returned to the Scottish Parliament winning the Gordon constituency after a absence of six years. Being leader of the party and with the Scottish Nationalist Party winning the most seats in the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary election and having made a pact with Scottish Green Party he became First Minister for Scotland. At the time Alex Salmond said that believed Scotland would be independent within "the next decade".
In 2009 a newspaper report revealed Alex Salmond had claimed as expenses from the UK parliament "up to £400 per month in food without producing receipts, even after becoming First Minister and spending little time at Westminster". This was first the first of many such claims over the next few years about his expenses that didn't seem to go away. The biggest was in 2012 he stayed with his wife at a five-star hotel in Chicago while attending a golf tournament; the £3,000 for four nights was paid for by the taxpayer. Alex Salmond refused for six months to respond to a freedom of information request for information on his spending, and referred to it as "ridiculous frippery".
In 2011 the Scottish national Party won a landslide victory in the Scottish Parliamentary elections and this gave he the ability to call for a referendum on Scottish Independence and in January 2011 he announced that a referendum would be held in autumn 2014. An agreement was signed in October 2012 by David Cameron and Alex Salmond which provided a legal framework for the referendum to be held and March 2013 the Scottish government announced that the referendum would be held on 18 September 2014. That refrendum is now just five days away.
Summarising, Alex Salmond is a man with a passion to see and independent Scotland come what may. He has made it his life ambition and he comes alive when he is on the Nationalist stage preaching to the Scottish people. Politically he is a socialist republican on the left wing of the Scottish Nationalist Party with strong views on the so called evils of Westminster and on issues like nuclear disarmament. He appears to be someone that likes to control much like other famous nationalists of the past. He is certainly a great public speaker despite having an initial flaky start in Westminster.
Personally I think there is something slippery about Alex Salmond but then I think that about a lot of politicians but something tells me not to trust him or all that he says. I feel he will do anything to see Scotland as an independent state including lying to its people.
Well that is it for the summer session of Big Brother with the winner of the Celebrity show being selected tonight. Thankfully now we have entered the autumn schedules there will be plenty to entertain us the show returns at the start of the new year.
After three weeks American actor Gary Busey was crowned the winner of
the show after some amazing twists and turns that we have come to expect
from the show since its move from Channel 4. Other than being in the house this summer Gary is best known for his roles in Point Break and The Buddy Holly Story, and his reputation for bizarre behaviour which we certainly saw this summer. The purists of the show might not like the changes to the show but it has brought it back to its peek around the time of Big Brother 5 when Big Brother turned nasty.
Well it has certainly been an eye opener of a show, showing the effects of what a massive ego can do. Lesley Jordan, the excessive name dropper of the first night turned into a real queen bee in the house with everyone feeding his ego which was bigger than the empire state building. He was so self centred that the whole house had to revolve around him and he made sure he did this by being the biggest drama queen I have ever seen in the house. Thankfully he didn't stay long.
Then there was Frenchie and her horrific tempter and fake boobs, James the patronising coward who some how made it through to the final 6. Of course we had a fake romance all for the sake of the press. And who can forget Kiellie who spent a week wanting to get out of the house, not understanding that is the best way of making sure the public keep you. Then finally there was the house bloke George, a man that spends his time watching TV while being on TV for a living.
One final thing I have noticed in this summers celebrity house is the intolerance, bullying and a lot more game playing than any of the recent celebrity shows. Over it has been a classic as far as conflict goes and a good way to end the summer series.
Yesterday saw the announcement of the release of a new product line to the Apple family, the Apple watch. It is hailed as the most personal item that Apple has ever designed, by Apple themselves. The question is, is this device a gadget or gimmick that really going to go no where for the majority of us.
As always it forthcoming launch onto the market in 2015 was greeted in wonder and feverish delight by the almost religious audience of the Apple faithful. Features the new watch includes are:
- The ability to be actuate to within 50 milliseconds of world time standards and to automatically change time zones as you travel.
- Calender based notification system telling you important schedule information, appointments and life events.
- Personal messaging features that will allow you to send and receive messages from collogues, friends and family.
- In built fitness features that monitor you physical activity to encourage the wearer to become more active.
- A inbuilt workout application for dedicated cardiovascular sessions, which adapts to your own bodies needs.
- Seamless intergeneration with you iPhone and applications.
In true with Apples style of marketing it is being sold to the public, as device that everyone needs and should own, and that there is a Apple watch for everyone.
The problem I see is it doesn't have anything about that makes you think I really want one of those. All the things the watch can do my phone can do already and a lot more. In fact all I could see it doing is adding to the stress levels of the constant would of communication we already live in. Even the fitness apps are already available on the most, if not all, smart phones. As for time keeping a lot of people have already ditched their watches and use their phones to tell the time and if they wanted a watch they could pick one up for a tenner at Argos rather than spend hundreds of pounds.
Having asked about 80 technophiles today if they were interested in a Apple watch only two of them said they would and then not until the technology had matured. Both as it happened were members of the Apple sect who already have Apple everything and hate anything non Apple. This leads me to believe that what we are looking at, at least in its current form something that has at best limited appeal to mass market that Apple is trying to capture. So to answer the question "Gadget or Gimmick?" at the moment it nothing more than a Gimmick and at best a boys toy.
During all the hype of the launch of the new iPhone and the Apple watch, the death of a classic was quietly going on in the background as iPod Classic was killed off by Apple. As the main show was going on behind the scenes the someone at Apple was removing all traces of the device from their online store. No longer will you be able to buy a device to store your top 40,000 tunes you brought from Apples iTunes.
The first generation iPod Classic was first released on the 23rd October 2001. At its core was a 5GB hard drive that could hold around a 1,000 songs that was accessed by a mechanical scroll wheel and a centre button and other buttons around the wheel. Battery life back then was around 10 hours, which would have been long enough for most people.This lasted just a year before the second version came out with a touch sensitive wheel and larger hard drives.In 2005 video was added to the iPod Classic abilities for the first time.
The final version that was discontinued on the 9th September 2014 was the 6th generation of the iPod Classic and it first hit the shops some 7 years ago. Initially the 6 generation devices where released with 80GB hard drives and these were increased to 160GB drives in the final production models. By now the battery life had increased to 36 hours for music and 6 hours for video. Many people thought it sales would stop in 2013 but the iPod Classic refused to die until today.
Many fans of the old iPod Classic took to social media sites to morn its passing what it did for the fortunes of Apple during its period of rebirth at the start of the century. With some saying it was still the Apple device to own out of all the range. Thankfully you can still buy one new form Argos and alike but if you want one you will have to be quick.
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