Gail Macfarlane

@DrGrumpy @afneil @AllisonPearson Just to be clear that 'largesse' has nothing to do with improving the quality of life for those populations. That's all about soft power, buying influence. so should be scrapped. Plenty room for improvement at home. Foreign aid to countries like India running space programmes 🤦

Gail Macfarlane @GailMac27

8 days ago

@afneil I don't agree with much you say but on this I agree entirely. Plenty pots to raid before hospitals and schools. How about starting with the billions funnelled to Ukraine, the Lords tax free appearance money, MPs' expenses & subsidised hospitality, net zero scam, soft power aid £

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GailMac27 retweeted

James Campbell @J4m35c4mpb3ll

8 days ago

Excellent post. 👏👏

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GailMac27 retweeted

Liberation Scotland Committee

@LiberationScot

8 days ago

Watchdogs of Colonialism: Corporate Extraction and the Limits of Scottish Devolution Occasionally, as we see another loss to Scotland's economy or yet more resources handed out to neo-extractive globalists, our minds turn to Scotland's economic history: its heavy industrial enclaves (Michael Hechter) the older among us remember, wiped out when no longer needed for Empire; the closure of 'new' substitute industries like British Leyland, IBM, Singer, Motorola, NEC, Timex, Digital and the once-vaunted Silcon Glen's dwindled export output value down 80%; brutal removal of our oil refining capacity to an England without oil; the ethylene plant at Mossmorran shut. Yet in the meantime we see imposed huge private autonomous tax-avoidance zones in the shape of 'freeports' ("Scotland needs a piece of the pie" - a future SNP leader), the land covered in sky-scraping pylons to export energy in a way and at a speed reminiscent of plunder-purpose Indian railroads; our ports closed down and the common good assets on which they sat sold off to international 'operators'; our very stock exchange closed in the teeth of an oncoming oil boom and the forced removal of all financial activity to London; implantation without consultation or consideration of the benefit or disbenefit to Scots of colossal energy-eating data centres. What we are seeing is the ongoing plunder of 'corporate colonialism' applied to England's Scottish colony, with the 'Scottish Government' and its agencies providing, as Professor Alf Baird has explained, the role of Aimé Césaire's 'watchdogs of colonialism'. The term refers to Césaire's conceptual framework in Discourse on Colonialism (1950), applied as a political critique of Scotland's relationship with corporate power. Césaire argued that colonialism is not simply political and cultural domination, but is fundamentally an economic system of extraction and plunder - its true purpose. The colonising power installs local institutions that appear to serve the colonised population while in reality function to protect and facilitate the extraction of wealth by outside interests. He called those who administer this system on behalf of capital the coloniser's watchdogs (Scottish Government), local enforcers of external power. Corporate colonialism is where a foreign state - the colonising force - is corporate capital (energy companies, landowners, developers, financiers) which extract value from Scottish resources, land, and labour, with profits flowing elsewhere. Scotland's natural resources (oil, wind, water, land) generate enormous wealth, but this wealth is not retained by Scottish communities; it is extracted by corporations, often with public subsidy. There is a reality to be seen when it comes to how Scotland is governed. The Scottish Parliament is an institution which owes its existence to nothing more than an ordinary Anglo-British law; one which, despite the finest of 'straight-bat' British assurances, is as impermanent as Prof. Mark Elliot identified in his 2020 article, "The United Kingdom’s Constitution and Brexit: A ‘Constitutional Moment’?" (available online). The Scotland Act is the product of a Westminster parliament which had the shocking arrogance to subordinate the Treaty of Union to this run-of-the-mill Westminster statute (hint: not possible; it makes of the Scotland Act a legal absurdity). Yet - and this is extremely important - Scottish ministers and every member of that parliament only enter its portals by swearing allegiance to an English monarch. All this to say, what hope for the interests of the people of Scotland - the Scottish Crown - when members of the Scottish Parliament have sworn fealty not to them, but to another, English, Crown - of which the English monarch is the embodiment. His (and his Westminster parliament's) interests are sworn to come first. From this flows that fact that the Scottish Government, and thence Scottish agencies and institutions, extending to law, senior civil service, academia and press, are watchdogs of the colonial state. While the Scottish Government and its regulatory bodies (enterprise agencies, planning authorities) appear to represent Scottish interests, in practice they facilitate and legitimise corporate extraction rather than question it. They are administrators of the system, not challengers of it. Regional political autonomy, in Scotland referred to as devolution, has by design no more produced economic prosperity than it confers economic sovereignty. The structures of extraction remain fully operational - and expanding. The Scottish Government manages the conditions under which plunder proceeds, facilitating it, regulating it with indulgence and lending it democratic legitimacy, all of which makes it functionally equivalent to Césaire's colonial administrator class.

LiberationScot's tweet photo. Watchdogs of Colonialism: Corporate Extraction and the Limits of Scottish Devolution

Occasionally, as we see another loss to Scotland's economy or yet more resources handed out to neo-extractive globalists, our minds turn to Scotland's economic history: its heavy industrial enclaves (Michael Hechter) the older among us remember, wiped out when no longer needed for Empire; the closure of 'new' substitute industries like British Leyland, IBM, Singer, Motorola, NEC, Timex, Digital and the once-vaunted Silcon Glen's dwindled export output value down 80%; brutal removal of our oil refining capacity to an England without oil; the ethylene plant at Mossmorran shut. Yet in the meantime we see imposed huge private autonomous tax-avoidance zones in the shape of 'freeports' ("Scotland needs a piece of the pie" - a future SNP leader), the land covered in sky-scraping pylons to export energy in a way and at a speed reminiscent of plunder-purpose Indian railroads; our ports closed down and the common good assets on which they sat sold off to international 'operators'; our very stock exchange closed in the teeth of an oncoming oil boom and the forced removal of all financial activity to London; implantation without consultation or consideration of the benefit or disbenefit to Scots of colossal energy-eating data centres.

What we are seeing is the ongoing plunder of 'corporate colonialism' applied to England's Scottish colony, with the 'Scottish Government' and its agencies providing, as Professor Alf Baird has explained, the role of Aimé Césaire's 'watchdogs of colonialism'.

The term refers to Césaire's conceptual framework in Discourse on Colonialism (1950), applied as a political critique of Scotland's relationship with corporate power.

Césaire argued that colonialism is not simply political and cultural domination, but is fundamentally an economic system of extraction and plunder - its true purpose. The colonising power installs local institutions that appear to serve the colonised population while in reality function to protect and facilitate the extraction of wealth by outside interests. He called those who administer this system on behalf of capital the coloniser's watchdogs (Scottish Government), local enforcers of external power.

Corporate colonialism is where a foreign state - the colonising force - is corporate capital (energy companies, landowners, developers, financiers) which extract value from Scottish resources, land, and labour, with profits flowing elsewhere.

Scotland's natural resources (oil, wind, water, land) generate enormous wealth, but this wealth is not retained by Scottish communities; it is extracted by corporations, often with public subsidy.

There is a reality to be seen when it comes to how Scotland is governed. The Scottish Parliament is an institution which owes its existence to nothing more than an ordinary Anglo-British law; one which, despite the finest of 'straight-bat' British assurances, is as impermanent as Prof. Mark Elliot identified in his 2020 article, "The United Kingdom’s Constitution and Brexit: A ‘Constitutional Moment’?" (available online). The Scotland Act is the product of a Westminster parliament which had the shocking arrogance to subordinate the Treaty of Union to this run-of-the-mill Westminster statute (hint: not possible; it makes of the Scotland Act a legal absurdity). Yet - and this is extremely important - Scottish ministers and every member of that parliament only enter its portals by swearing allegiance to an English monarch. All this to say, what hope for the interests of the people of Scotland - the Scottish Crown - when members of the Scottish Parliament have sworn fealty not to them, but to another, English, Crown - of which the English monarch is the embodiment. His (and his Westminster parliament's) interests are sworn to come first.

From this flows that fact that the Scottish Government, and thence Scottish agencies and institutions, extending to law, senior civil service, academia and press, are watchdogs of the colonial state. While the Scottish Government and its regulatory bodies (enterprise agencies, planning authorities) appear to represent Scottish interests, in practice they facilitate and legitimise corporate extraction rather than question it. They are administrators of the system, not challengers of it.

Regional political autonomy, in Scotland referred to as devolution, has by design no more produced economic prosperity than it confers economic sovereignty. The structures of extraction remain fully operational - and expanding. The Scottish Government manages the conditions under which plunder proceeds, facilitating it, regulating it with indulgence and lending it democratic legitimacy, all of which makes it functionally equivalent to Césaire's colonial administrator class.

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Gail Macfarlane @GailMac27

8 days ago

@Macapella I don't care how worthy the cause, this is not why I'm paying tax. My tax receipts are not John Swinney's to donate to his pet projects on the off chance of a favourable photo op!

Gail Macfarlane @GailMac27

8 days ago

@Macapella Exactly!!!!

Gail Macfarlane @GailMac27

8 days ago

@Earcom2 @Haggis_UK Yeh and unfortunately we in Scotland get the government England votes for.

Gail Macfarlane @GailMac27

10 days ago

@coccinellanovem @Glinner @BBCNews I cannot believe the terminology - leaned over and asked for a kiss implies reciprocative behaviour. Grabbed by the hair screams assault.