hereditary and nicola sturgeon

so horsemouth  did two things last night (ok no really he did three things).

first off he watched hereditary - spoiler alerts. 

artist and family fall into the hands of crazed cultist nutters/ have been in their hands all their lives - carnage ensues. horsemouth doesn't know if he likes it. he generally just feels sorry for the people in these movies. once again it is a movie with mourning and the need to do the work of mourning at its heart, or at least a movie about the dangers of that work.  (at least it should put people off the table-knocking).

the youngest daughter is not the right vessel for lord paimon (the cultist nutters' object).. she must be killed and gotten out of the way for the eldest boy to become the vessel. 

spoilers end. 

second off he was vaguely aware of the resignation of nicola sturgeon. 

nicola sturgeon has gone down to defeat (so end all political lives). this horsemouth thinks is because the way towards independence is blocked by an intransigent westminster rather than trans rights issues - the 'using the next election as a referendum' strategy is risky, there may be an upcoming funding scandal. nicola has jumped ship.

it would be a brave SNP leader who can establish their authority and connection with the electorate quickly and deeply enough to risk the mortal leap of 'election as referendum'. the SNP will have to regroup and reform (and in a hurry).

beyond this the clear damage done by brexit undermines all retro-nationalist arguments (including the SNP one), but (conversely) the clear damage to greece/ portugal etc. undermines  'the EU/ globalisation is wonderful' argument (at least for some countries). 

so what happens instead? 

arguably we are heading towards a new labour government in the south and the 'independence short of independence' the scots can gain from this. horsemouth says that even with britain's wonderfully amplifying first-passed-the-post electoral system he doesn't see new labour  winning a sufficient landslide majority to do what it likes without SNP assistance (but it is not impossible). 

beneath the political arrangements of representative democracies are patterns of trade and the needs and wants of a globalised capitalist system. and yet there are gains to be made from reformism and the need to manage economic disparities within and between regions. 

thirdly horsemouth received the phone call (family stuff). 

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in the day he went for a few wanders and read the world shuffler by keith laumer (powerscroft road book box). today horsemouth has stuff he doesn't want to do (but that he should get on with).