Go Everton! - The People's Club

................................"Chelsea won the match, but the extremes of joy and sadness, hope and despair, were all wearing an Everton shirt – losers yet unvanquishable."

The Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2009

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Barca! Barca! Barca!

................Why Barcelona are More Than a Club, and this is more than a song. Find out here

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The World's Best Dieting Aid

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Something Better Lyrics

Gordon Brown, ain't got a clue
Washed up, dull and never true
So right wing he’s turning blue
There’s something better

Murphy’s Law's to make us scared
Major Joyce who paid his fares?
Wendy, Dougie whit a pair!
There’s something better

Chorus

Something better, its hard to find
But Something better’s, still on my mind
When we make our stand, and reclaim our land
And build a brand new country of our own

I’m no saying it would all be fine
Building nations, it takes some time
But we’ve brave hearts and we’ve sharp minds
For something better

Glasgow, Reekie, Aberdeen
Lerwick, Lewis, Ayr, Coldstream
And a’ the places in between
Build something better

Chorus

Scots-Italians, Irish too
Folks from England, Chad, Peru
Muslims, Christians, Bhuddists, you!
Build something better

Mods or Rockers, we dinna care
Raving queens and down right squares
Neds, and even millionaires
Build something better

Chorus x2

(c) Words and music by Alan Smart, May 2009

Guitar Chords:
Verse: C, F, C , G, Am , F, G, F, C
Chorus: F, C, Am, G, F, G, C, Am, F, G, C

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The First Ever !

"The first Speaker to be ousted since 1695".

But in 1695 Scotland was an independent country, had its own Parliament. Even in disgrace, the self-styled mother of parliaments canny get its history right.

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My Message to Tom Harris

The doyen of nulab bloggers, Tom Harris MP, has been at sixes and seven over the past month or so as the reality of the regime he serves has been laid bare. Tom, as MPs go is pretty honest and, from his perspective, his blog is honest, insightful. Do read his most recent post on Michael Martin's resignation speech for a well written ringside seat account. Below though is my response to it, no doubt lost amongst the dozens of comments Tom's blog deservedly gets.

Tom, this is a nice post, insightful and human. But in it you highlight the problem. You have "huge affection" for Michael Martin and were disappointed you could not all make "tributes". But why on earth should you? I am sure quite a few folks in RBS had "huge affection" for Sir Fred Goodwin.

Like Sir Fred, Michael Martin is the CEO of once proud but now almost bankrupt institution, and will get a nice big taxpayer funded pension. But - as opposed to Sir Fred, who your lot are trying to "de-knight" - Michael Martin will become a Lord, and with this gain all the associated status and perks.

Why should this measurable failure of a Speaker - the first to be ousted for over 300 years, indeed the first ever UK Parliament Speaker to be booted, be feted, ennobled, paid, etc?

Because you all - indeed,you Tom - live in a bubble, and as MPs act in ways the real world does not, could not, would not be allowed to.

Despite your blog, your attempts to reach out, engage, you still don't get it. Your constituents -and I know Glasgow South well - will just see a way over-promoted career politician who has milked the system for years ( even before he became Speaker), getting found out. Found out by the truth, events, and his inability to deal with them. Not one thing "honourable" about it.

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In Defence of The Working Class - John Wheatley

Today is the 160th birthday of Red Clydesider and affordable housing pioneer John Wheatley. For those unfamiliar with his fantastic life story here it is in summary:

Born into absolute poverty in rural Ireland in 1869, his family moved to Scotland a few years after his birth, regarding scraping a living in the Lanarkshire coalfields and being treated as third class immigrants, as a step up. John Wheatley received only an elementary eduction and by the age of 12 he was working down the mines. Aged 23, and still living with his family of 13 in a two roomed house, he moved to Glasgow to become a publican and eventually a campaigning journalist and publisher, educating himself along the way. He joined the infant Independent Labour Party in 1907 and in it developed his own unique brand of Catholic socialism which saw him take on not just the establishment of his day but also a local catholic hierarchy inclined to advise Irish immigrants to keep a low profile and wait for the afterlife.

Elected to Glasgow City Council, Wheatley was a tireless campaigner against injustice , the appalling housing conditions in his adopted city in particular. An opponent of World War 1 , Wheatley was the leading light in the 1915 Glasgow rent strike, started by the impoverished and doubly exploited wives of on duty servicemen, - a strike so solid and successful it forced Lloyd George to come to Glasgow and cut a deal in which rents were controlled and wages guaranteed.

Wheatley was not done. Elected MP for Glasgow Shettleston in 1922, he became UK Housing Minister in the first ever Labour Government two years later. A minority administration, it did not last long. But long enough for Wheatley to near single handedly pioneer the 1924 Housing Act through Westminster. And the Act was so good it was the basis upon which almost 500,000 council houses were built across the UK over the next 15 years. And good quality homes for rent, "workers cottages", with gardens and front and back doors, with local shops and facilities that built communities: Knightswood, Carantyne, Bellahouston, Lochfield, Gallowhill - places where my own parents were born and brought up. Good places.

And every city and town across the UK has its Wheatley homes - so fine that sadly they were amongst the first to go under Tory right to buy policy in the 1980s....... Land that is lost now.

But Wheatley delivered - and he never sold out. Spurned by Labour leader Ramsey MacDonald because of his opposition to Labour's move to the centre, Wheatley never regained office and died suddenly in 1930. His funeral was one of the largest Glasgow had ever seen. In a deeply divided city, Catholics, Protestants, Rangers and Celtic supporters, even Tories turned out in their tens of thousand to pay respects to a man who had not only offered hope but had delivered homes.

John Wheatley, for his people, in his time - Martin Luther King. And his promised land was for everyone, not just the chosen few. So let's all celebrate his birthday today.

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