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The Scotch - a verminous race, published by Boris Johnson |
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At long last, in July 2022, Lying Boris Johnson has been defenestrated by his own. I am still unable to comprehend why the Tories should have thought that he was suitable to be Prime Minister of the UK in the first place. I originally created this web-page to highlight Johnson's disgusting 2004 diatribe against "The Scotch", but added to it when he became Prime Minister in 2019. Now that he has gone I intend to leave the page online as it continues to receive steady hits. Well, he has almost gone, as I edit this, the English National Party (aka the Tories) are in process of selecting a new leader and Johnson will hang on as PM until September. I'm curious to know whether his successor intends to redecorate the PM's Downing Street flat which, it appears, cost around £200,000 to decorate in 2019 with wallpaper at £800 a roll.. Although I have been a supporter of an Independent Scotland for more than fifty years, I usually try to refrain from commenting on contemporary politics through my website. However, the following lines, originally written by James Michie (1927-2007) a staff writer for the Spectator, were published in a 2004 edition of the Spectator by Boris Johnson. Some English Tories may find these words amusing and not to be taken seriously. I do not find them in the least bit amusing. They tell us a great deal about the character of Boris Johnson and his suitability to lead the so-called United Kingdom. The attitude of the English elite towards Scotland over the centuries has usually been patronising if not derogatory. Their belief in their supposed superiority over the Jocks created an environment in which talented Scots seeking to advance their careers in the South often found it necessary to become more English than the English. The leaders of Scottish society therefore were encouraged to send their sons to Eton and Oxbridge and ape the attitudes of their "betters". Indeed, the author's name - Michie - indicates that he was of Scots descent. The Scotch – what a verminous race! In 2019, I wrote this page - In the light of Johnson's becoming Tory Party leader and Prime Minister, his attitude to Scotland, as exemplified by the publication of this disgusting diatribe, needs to be more widely known. I am not aware of when these hateful lines were penned, but it was very likely to have been encouraged by Johnson at the time of publication in 2004. I have received some comments from a gentleman in Bath on this page on Johnson's verses. He wrote - "You say you are not sure when 'Friendly Fire' was penned - It was August 2004 when every senior position at Westminster was occupied by a Scot except for the Tory PM Michael Howard, who was a Welsh Jew. I expect Boris and his chums were seething over this, so he called for ethnic cleansing at Westminster to rid it of Scots and their polluting blood. Scots marked down for "death" in the Michie / Boris 'fatwa' include PM Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Lord Chancellor Irvine, John Reid, Robin Cook, Charles Kennedy, Ming Campbell, Norman Lamont, Jewish Scot Malcolm Rifkind, and Alastair Campbell, the current Editor at the New European. Boris was also calling for the lynching of Glaswegian Speaker Michael Martin, the Tory Chief Whip, and the Tory Party Chairman, Dr Liam Fox, all regarded as 'verminous' and Scottish. My correspondent went on: "How many leading London Journalists are Scottish? Fiona Bruce - 'Question Time' presenter; Kirsty Wark; Andrew Marr;, Andrew Neil; Andrew Fleming; Sarah Smith; Alistair Campbell; Katy Balls; Alex Salmond; Ruth Davidson; Fraser Nelson (ed Spectator moved to Scotland aged one); and Laura Kunessberg. How many of these journalists have asked Boris why he wanted their carcasses skewered on a gibbet? I don't think one of them has mentioned it. All have gone native in Westminster and London." (Except, of course, Alex Salmond). "Boris also wanted to loose the blood from the veins of every Scottish Judge, serviceman, and Police Officer. Strangely nothing here crosses the threshold of inappropriate behaviour by a Cabinet Minister!" "Several writers, including Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian, claimed Michie's "Friendly Fire" verses were so toxic that they had to be removed from the Spectator's Archives but this was incorrect. I checked almost a dozen times while Boris was PM and it was always being displayed." "Boris insists that his family life must be kept out of politics but this did not stop him inviting Spectator friends and readers to hunt down and destroy his divorced first wife - Scottish lass Allegra Johnson." "Welsh Tory leader Michael Howard was the only person to stand up to Boris and sack him for lying. But soon back in the fold with fellow Etonian PM David Cameron." |
The Scotch – what a verminous race! Canny, pushy, chippy, they’re all over the place, Battening off us with false bonhomie, Polluting our stock, undermining our economy. Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees! Suppress the tartan dwarves and the Wee Frees! Ban the kilt, the skean-dhu and the sporran As provocatively, offensively foreign! It’s time Hadrian’s Wall was refortified To pen them in a ghetto on the other side. I would go further. The nation Deserves not merely isolation But comprehensive extermination. We must not flinch from a solution. (I await legal prosecution.) |
When originally published in 2004, the Director of the Commission for Racial Equality in Scotland, Maureen Fraser, said: ”We find this poem very offensive and the language is deeply inflammatory. It does nothing to promote race relations and undermines relations between Scotland and the rest of Britain, and our relationship with other countries.”. Ms Fraser continued, ”Some of the language, such as ‘comprehensive extermination’ and ‘polluting our stock’, is completely and utterly unacceptable. It cannot be tolerated.” In my view, the final line "I await legal prosecution" makes it clear that Michie knew that his words could result in criminal prosecution. Had the target of his venom been the Jews or Muslims rather than the Scots, they most certainly would. But Johnson as publisher, and still living, is also criminally liable. "The double standards of British nationalism" Paul Kavanagh (Wee Ginger Dug) wrote about Johnson's ditty in his February 2020 blogpost entitled "The double standards of British nationalism" "This poem was an overt call for the cultural and physical genocide of Scottish people. Apparently it was satire. Who knew? Johnson has never apologised for this, because when English people are racist about the Scots it’s just a bit of banter, and the real offensiveness is when a dour Jock with no sense of humour and a chip on their shoulder has the temerity to complain about it. But can you imagine the outrage if an SNP politician had allowed the publication of a ditty calling for the extermination of the English? There would be a special show on BBC Scotland devoted to the evil cancer that lurks at the very heart of Scottish nationalism. Newspapers would constantly drag up the incident every time someone expressed support for Scottish independence. We’d never hear the end of it." Johnson's view of himself, in his own words, in May 2015 |
I have to be honest here, I was born in the wrong time, I'd be much happier living in the Middle Ages, Lopping the heads off smelly peasants, and then giving the stable boy a good buggering |
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To be honest, I could not find the original source of the above lines credited to Boris Johnson. They seem to be exactly the sort of thing he might say, but hey, why can't we all follow Boris's example and perpetrate untruths when we feel like it?. Boris, the congenital Liar Peter Oborne, in his 2021 book "The Assault on Truth", wrote of Johnson on page 47: "Boris Johnson has never needed a justification for lying. He lies habitually, with inpunity and without conscience. Although far below Trump's lies in their scale and stridency, it is epic by British standards." Boris Johnson's Tories in Scotland have made much of an error by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in telling the Scottish Parliament that she first heard of the case against Alec Salmond when he visited her at home on the 2nd of April 2018, when it turned out that she had been told something of it in a brief meeting with Alex's Chief of Staff at the Parliament on the previous Friday 29th March 2018. This trivial mis-step led to calls from the Tories, in March 2021, for a Vote of No confidence for an egregious breach of the ministerial code. Yet Johnson and his ministers, almost without exception are guilty of a series of far worse breaches of the ministerial code. With Johnson himself lying to the Westminster parliament every week. It is a sad state of affairs when lying has become the norm. Johnson's obvious dislike of the Scottish people: Johnson’s dislike of the Scottish people appears to be entirely mutual, with just one in ten Scots believing he would make a good PM and a staggering 70% saying he would be bad. Johnson is also considered so toxic in Scotland that he was barred from appearing at his own party’s 2019 Scottish Conference, and Scottish Tory MPs even launched a bid, ironically code-named “Operation Arse”, to stop him from becoming Prime Minister. But, of course, when he succeeded in becoming Prime Minister, (having been elected by a tiny franchise of geriatrics in the South of England), apart from the resignation of Ruth Davidson, the rest of the Scottish Tories just rolled over, frantic to have their tummies tickled by Johnson. Then, true to herself but nobody in Scotland, Davidson accepted an ermine robe from Johnson with a well-paid, unelected position for the rest of her life in the Lords. A pound spent in Croydon Boris Johnson is on record as stating that: “A pound spent in Croydon is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde.” Johnson told the Huffington Post in an interview which was then published by Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian on Monday 30 April 2012. And in what was evidently an off-day for his internal censor, he went on: "You will generate jobs in Strathclyde far more effectively if you invest in parts of London". Chakrabortty went on to say "The argument runs roughly thus: London and the south-east are the only seriously productive parts of deindustrialised Britain left, and the income they bring in keeps the rest of the country afloat. And so the logic goes, what's good for the investment banks and the consultancies and the capital must be good for the rest of the country. "Far from being the cash cow the rest of the country suckles on, London scoops the pool when it comes to public spending. As the Treasury's own analysis shows, the capital receives more taxpayer money per head on the vast majority of government services. Londoners receive more taxpayer money on health, housing and culture – and they get more than double the national average on transport." Max Hasting's opinion of Johnson: Let's not just consider the low opinion of Boris held, justifiably, by people in Scotland. What did Max Hastings, Boris's former employer at the Daily Telegraph have to say about the man in October 2012? - long before a tiny number of Tories mostly resident in the South of England elected him as leader of their party. " Boris is a gold-medal egomaniac. I would not trust him with my wife - nor, from painful experience, with my wallet. His chaotic public persona is not an act. He is, indeed, manically disorganised about everything except his own image management. He is also a far more ruthless, and frankly, nastier figure than the public appreciates. I would not take Boris's word about whether it is Monday or Tuesday. He is not a man to believe in, to trust or respect, save as a superlative exhibitionist. He is bereft of judgement, loyalty and discretion. Only in the star-crazed, frivolous Britain of the 21st century could such a man have risen so high, and he is utterly unfit to go higher still." As Newsnet.scot put it when Boris became leader in 2019 - What of the many faces of Boris Johnson? He is amusing according to some. He is totally ruthless in political and personal relationships. Gordon Brown But there's even more evidence of Johnson's ant-Scottish opinions: Writing in the Spectator in 2005, Johnson said the prospect of former Fife MP Gordon Brown becoming prime minister one day was “outrageous”. He wrote: The Labour machine will try, at some point in the next few years, to insert Gordon Brown. That would be utterly outrageous, not just because he is a gloomadon-popping, interfering, high-taxing complicator of life, but mainly because he is a Scot, and government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context. Johnson claimed that Brown was "not really interested in British values" but instead in "his personal political disability as a Scottish MP". Johnson's opinion on Devolution In 2001, concerning the limited Devolution of health and education to a Scottish Parliament, which had come into effect two years earlier, Johnson wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "There will come a time when the Scots will discover that personal care for the elderly is too expensive. And they will come, cap in hand to Uncle Sugar in London. And when they do, I propose that we tell them to hop it." - "Hop it? " he said. What a great idea, I say. Can we have our full independence then? Ant-Scottishness among other Tories: To be fair, among the Tories, it is not only Johnson who expresses similar Scotophobia. During a debate on Brexit last year, when Ian Blackford was speaking, Sir Nicholas Soames, shouted at him go back to Skye. Tory James Heappey, contesting the seat of Wells in the 2017 election, asked the children of the £12,000-a-year Millfield School in Somerset for their views on the topic of Scottish independence. When one girl said she'd vote to leave the UK, Heappey replied: "Why don't you f*** off back to Scotland?" Rory Stewart These are the words of Rory Stewart, Johnson's rival for the Tory Party leadership in 2019 "Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life — perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent — but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie — which may inadvertently be true". https://unherd.com/thepost/flashback-rory-stewart-really-doesnt-like-boris-johnson/?utm_content=buffercfb9e&& Rachel Johnson: Johnson's own sister Rachel has talked of her brother’s ‘very Sicilian’ attitude to anyone who crosses him. Others have found the manner of their discarding a testimonial to his ruthless uncaring. Amusing, ruthless, careless, vindictive, spoilt child, given to uncontrollable anger outbursts, untrustworthy – these are the characteristics of the UK’s Prime Minister which we would sum up as the face of an extremely nasty scoundrel. Or to paraphrase Burns, Sic a Parcel o’ a Rogue. The resources of Scotland Johnson cares not one jot for the people of Scotland, but he cares a great deal about the resources of Scotland. What do I mean? 1, Scotland possesses two fifths of the British land mass; and two thirds of UK offshore territory, as defined in International law, with abundant wind and tidal power potential (and fish stocks!); 2. England has succeeded in squandering Scotland's oil bonanza since the 1970s (Just look at Norway's trillion dollar Sovereign wealth fund). 3, England decided that Scotland would be a convenient place to base its nuclear weapons within just a short distance of our biggest city in spite of the frequently expressed opposition of our people; 4. Scotland could also be an ideal place to dump England's nuclear waste, if they thought they could get away with it. We already have their rotting nuclear subs stored at Rosyth. We also remember how Nirex tried very hard to select a nuclear dump site in Scotland and when solicitor Willie MacRae discovered and publicised Nirex's plans, he died in very mysterious circumstances! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_McRae The Annual GERS fantasy It is worth considering what has been and continues to be done to keep the Scots people - who Johnson so obviously despises - within the Union. In the early 1990s, Ian Lang, then Tory secretary of State for Scotland, published the first GERS report designed to convince the people of Scotland that they were too poor to consider being independent and that England was keeping the peripheral regions of the UK afloat out of kindness. The GERS report has been produced every year since and now includes Wales and Northern Ireland. In the latest GERS we are expected to believe that the three devolved administrations, with less than a sixth of the total population, are collectively responsible for up to three quarters of the total UK deficit. One might think, (and this is beginning to happen as some people in England also read the GERS report) that the put-upon people of England might wish to abandon these leaching peripheral zones. GERS is chock full of false accounting. It only records tax revenues in Scotland but records expenditure for Scotland. The latter need never have been incurred in Scotland, and what is more the tax paid on it is not attributed to Scotland. In addition, tax paid by English and overseas residents on rents and interest paid by Scottish people is not attributed to Scotland either. It shows a serious Scottish deficit, which it was designed to do. GERS actually consists almost entirely of guesstimates as the true figures are quite deliberately not collected. GERS includes estimates of the value to the devolved administrations of the work of civil-servants living, working and spending their pay in the London area. GERS also includes proportional shares of the UK defence budget which (especially the equipment budget) is very largely spent in the South of England. GERS includes population-proportional shares of "National Infrastructure projects" - including the £100 billion++ HS2 rail and the multi-billion London crossrail project, or perhaps the recently approved multi-billion £ expansion of Heathrow airport which, we are told, will be of benefit to Scotland in some way or other. The GERS figures also include around £4.5 billion attributed to Scotland's as a share of the interest on debt incurred by the UK Government, irrespective of whether it was for Scotland's benefit. Indeed some of that debt was incurred for recent illegal wars, strongly opposed by people in Scotland, but entered into by the UK Government to please the USA. All of these are claimed to benefit Scotland to the extent of its population share of the UK total. But when the Scottish Government had to pay for a new Forth bridge a few years ago, that bridge, unlike a projected new bridge over the Thames could NOT be defined as a National Infrastructure project and therefore had to be paid for out of Scotland's own budget. More details of the trickery behind GERS can be found on this website. https://www.businessforscotland.com/revealed-the-accounting-trick-that-hides-scotlands-wealth/ IN truth, as has been found by a number of independent studies, such as businessforscotland above, Scotland pays more than its population share of taxation into the UK treasury and exports more per capita than any other part of the UK. Another "Benefit" of the Union to Scotland. I sometimes muse on the fact that at the time of the Union treaty of 1707, the Scottish population was estimated to be about 20% of the population of England. Today Scotland has around 8% of the population of England. At that time, the beginning of the 18th century, Scotland's population exceeded that of a number of small European states such as Denmark or the Netherlands, but now it is considerably less than those comparable states. Perhaps this should be considered as a measure of the "benefit" of the Union to Scotland. |