The Anti Arty Farty Party

27Feb/100

Worst Scottish Winter since the Sixties

I “lost” three days at work last week due to the vicious weather here in Scotland. I volunteered to have these three days as holiday as I believe it’s important that I have control of the decision to travel or not. I don’t really see why my employer should cover the cost of this — I looked at the situation and made the judgement that it would be foolish to travel.

Scottish Winter

Wednesday — I managed to get about 10 miles from home only to find the motorway closed ahead of me by a major road accident. Back home.

Thursday — I remember the winter of 1963, I was 9, and I can safely say that the snow on Thursday was the heaviest I’ve seen since then. I only made it 3 miles from home before being turned back by the Police. Not quite home however as I had to abandon the car and trudge the last mile back. I went and recovered the car some hours later after the gritters had done their work. Some colleagues had to suffer 8 hours trapped on the blocked motorway — it’s not always smart to try to get to work whatever the conditions. Being stuck in a car for that length of time in a sub-zero blizzard is not only uncomfortable…it’s life-threatening!

Friday — Some thawing so I thought it might be OK I got to the next village only to be told the road ahead was blocked by fallen trees and flooding.

So it’s been fun (not) …stuck at home is not a holiday!

Tagged as: Driving, Scotland, Scottish, weather No Comments

22Dec/081

Happy Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Here we are again celebrating Christmas, Xmas, Winterval — whatever, let’s go with the Yankees and call it “Holiday Season”.

Millions of people worshipping Mammon in the name of Jesus using an honest Pagan festival in temples of commerce built especially for this purpose.

At least the Pagans were just having a good old piss-up to celebrate the coming of the lighter days and easier times. I could imagine that winter in a fucking yurt probably warrants a couple of parties!

Now; it’s all just a huge commercial exercise where people are conned into buying tons of plastic shite for their kids and unneeded boxes of crap for people who don’t want, need or deserve any of it.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

The current frenzy in our High Streets is a sad sight to behold. Shops are desperate, “We have lots of shite that we can’t sell, here, have it for 95% off” — and the sheep react as expected and buy all the shite thinking they’ve scored. But shite is shite whatever the price.

Sorry, it’s not “bah humbug” on my part — I’m advocating a return to a simpler more basic celebration. This should be a time for mending fences and strengthening friendships. We need to get back to an appreciation of the simple good things of life. So, count me in on the piss up just leave me out of the hypocrisy.

I remember when New Year and Hogmanay were much more important in Scotland. I miss the thrill of New Year (and the extended festivities!). Even that’s become a commercialised “event”.

Who would want to be in Edinburgh at New Year FFS!? Surrounded by hoorays up from The Smoke to “do” Edinburgh at New Year. Fuck that.

Possibly the only up-side of the current economic chaos is that many of the City types have had the arse burned out of their breeks! With any luck they’ll stay at home — if they still have one, that is.

Anyway fuck them all and I wish you a very happy whatever-it-is-you-celebrate and all the very best for 2009.

Happy New Year!
(Ever The Optimist)

Tagged as: Booze, Ceremonies, Christmas, drinks, Family, Fun!, Hogmanay, New Year, Scotland, Scottish, Xmas 1 Comment

9Nov/080

WTF Glenrothes" href="http://www.antiartyfartyparty.co.uk/2008/11/wtf-glenrothes/" rel="bookmark">WTF Glenrothes

It’s taken me a couple of days to calm down after the result in the Glenrothes by-election!

What were you thinking of people of Glenrothes? Not only have you voted for the most disreputable, lying, cheating and dangerous party to have taken power in this country, you voted for the most useless, idiotic candidate I’ve ever seen standing in an election — nothing more than lobby-fodder for the New Labour project. After Margaret Curran in Glasgow East that takes some doing.

Fife, Scotland

Of course, the stinking pile of shite that purports to be the “Scottish” press didn’t help by issuing Labour propaganda as “news” on a daily basis with video headers to boot. The Glasgow Herald is probably the worst for this but the Scotsman and the BBC are little better. As for the red-tops in Scotland they just are not interested unless there’s a football angle to the story!

The Labour candidate, Lindsay Roy, spend the whole campaign wittering on about reserved issues that he will NEVER have any influence over and I sincerely hope he lives to regret it — even now his website has a banner declaring “Stop SNP charges & cuts”. FFS the only reason for charges was because the Labour Party brought them in and the SNP/LibDem council had no alternative as the previous Labour council had left things in a desperate state.

I also heard nothing about the Labour councils that have also had to levy charges or the fact that they applied to a tiny minority who can well afford to pay them or that 1000 more of the poorest benefit from free services as a result.

If Mr Roy is the best that Scottish education has to offer then God help us all. Inarticulate, lying, bumbling and by his own admission “not a politician” — why the fuck was he standing for election then?

I feel very sorry for the population of this constituency who have suffered under Labour councils since the Second World War. They fell for the lies, deceit and scaremongering fed them by the scum that pretends to be the party of the working man aided and abetted by the corrupt press and media in Scotland.

Roll on the next General Election. With any luck Labour will be deep in the shite by then as their idiotic, self-interested “policies” finally collapse around them. England will vote Tory in their millions and Scotland will suffer once again…

…UNLESS we take the initiative ourselves and vote for the only party that has the interests of Scotland at heart, the SNP.

I will concede that Alex Salmond should have kept his council before the election. His pronouncements that the election was won probably did appear to be arrogant by some — I’m sure he will learn from this as he is obviously the only competent party leader in the whole Scottish Parliament.

SAOR ALBA