The Cesspit And The Sweetie Shop
1
The government was run
by one who had made his
career in Public Relations,
and Public Relations was the
ever-there, the oil and glue
of what had been, and
Public Relations maintained
was still, representative
parliamentary democracy.
But representative of what,
and whom, and which?
Of Public Relations itself
it seemed, a not-quite empty
set of had-to-be recorded
signs and actions, running
parallel but contrary to what
people knew and experienced.
A ritual: the acquired signs
of meaning and personal
sincerity outwardly shown
by rote: a ritualisation of the
concept of democracy and
dialogue, masquerading as
dialogue and democracy itself.
People outside the lateral
inter-relationship of Press
and politics felt somehow
the world they knew had
nothing to do with the world
they saw and heard reported.
Endless the flip-chart mentality
about nought point five or was it
eight of “growth”; “experts”
from thinktanks were the norm,
never the ordinary daily rising
cost of food seen in the shops,
the gas, the electric bills long
since gone crazily upward.
Historic societal conflict
was redefined, no longer
rich versus poor, worker
against employer, capital
versus labour. The culture
and its language had been
systematically changed.
Granted, historic injustices
of men over women, white
over black, straight over
gay were taken up and
countermanded in part
by law; but never in such
a way as to question the
new ubiquitious orthodoxy,
the daily myth proposed
of central societal struggle:
“the taxpayer” versus the
drain on the taxpayer’s tax.
2
A clear majority won
its first re-branding was
the name “government”
itself; decreed and taken up
forthwith by public media
as if the undisputed
and indisputably apposite
title for what had been
till then not government
at all but simply “executive”
with ten percent of power.
For selfstyled government,
the question now
became, as time went by
—How come our government
has only ten percent?
Not nationalisation was
the answer, but a corporate
nationalism, whose logos
over an upbeat language
of business-diploma jargon
sprinkled with mission-statement
bullet-points, pervaded the
public bumf and websites
of this now-government’s
areas of funded operation.
A sleekit mantra of jaunty
national pride became
de trop in public titles,
unnoticed largely, and
uncommented on, by
those who spread the word.
The word was “Scotland”.
Titles across the range
of public life were binned
in root-and-branch reshaping
to present a consciousness
of stand-alone nationhood,
the nation’s name declared
over and again in endstop
affirmation: Sport Scotland,
Education Scotland; while
“Strathclyde Police” like other
regional departments, its
headed paper, its public signs,
all that which gave it separate
identity, now was removed,
subsumed under the one
Police Scotland – albeit, creepily,
“police” be a transitive verb. What
do you do for a living, Sir Constable?
“I police Scotland,” he said.
Artists became “creatives”,
a bright and cheery term,
Creative Scotland sounded
nothing of grump or ivory tower;
amang its website bullet-points
and paths to artistic outcomes,
came news that one in four awards
would now be for work in Scots:
in case some glaikit southron chiel
had nay notion, links in English
were given to sites explaining
this “national language” that
folk were supposed to scrieve in.
Across the travelling country
carriages brandished the
upbeat logo “Scotland’s Railways”;
even Jock Tamson’s abused
had public institutional help renamed
Survivor Scotland. The pensioner’s
bus pass no longer named a region
but bore One Scotland over
the national flag. Each time the pass
was daily used, the message, time
and again and again: One Scotland,
over the national flag.