ONE hopes that the “nationalist” (I hate that label) community does not allow the Sunday editor’s heartfelt plea for some return in the solidarity bank to slip under the radar. We have seen how vulnerable food banks and other whimsical handouts have become, in a world of celebrity careerism charity, tax avoidance and guilt-tripping charity.

Charity as opposed to rights has always been the middle-class answer to poverty. Even during the Clearances minsters handed out certificates of “good character”, deciding who would receive the alms. Needless to say, “agitators” and their families against the landlords starved. The pre and post-Victorian values of Thatcher governments of all shades smacked of the “deserving gratitude” of poorhooses, singing hymns, and hard labour for punitive handouts and dying in the street have returned with a vengeance. The DWP has killed more poor than corona murders ever will.

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The National is in the difficult position of sharing a building with the once fair Herald. They do not have separate funding and could be at risk in these acute times. Noo that HQ staff and journos are working from their hooses, we need to help assure that the MacElvises are no’ leaving the building. A glimpse of the future? The £2 for a two-month subscription should be taken up, if only for the duration of the wee corona buggers. The ginger canine blog explains this, as he heads for the poorhouse, along with some fellow zero contractees.

We did not have The National in the 2014 rigarendum – and it showed, leaving us to the not-so-tender mercies of the 100% Unionist mainstream media. We started off low in the polls and ended nearly there, giving the Brits a bigger fright than any other bug. The two-faced Lab-Con Brit Nats would be laughing at the different sides of their multi faces had we a National paper then.

We may be temporarily confined to barracks, but the troops have a cushy chance of regrouping our strategy for the immediate and long-term war. Yes, secure our home bases with neglected hoosework at the home fires and the political war front. This means putting aside the media and well-funded agents provocateurs cashing in on a potential, fanned, uncivil war in the SNP, whom we need as an instrumental and professional force to deliver us from the Eval Empah.

Other effects of the current virus are peppered throughout the paper; not least the sad news that the Cheapside fire fechter mourners cannot meet for the anniversary. I personally suffered that, at the time, along with other relatives who could not get to the front of, or near, the funeral ceremony in the cathedral for cooncillors and other dignitaries getting their photies took.

I lost my own uncle Eddie Murray, Superintendent of the Salvage Corps, and was wakened that dark night in Maryhill by my cousin Eddie’s dochter, Catriona frae Toonheid. His two tradesmen sons joined fire brigades in England efter.

The Corps was based in Albion Street and like the Glesga Herald later was based in McIntee Brother’s Express Bar, later changed to Press Bar after the Glesga Daily News occupation. My good surviving friend, Des McIntee, pointed me to a bell in the raised back lounge, where my uncle Eddie used to get his off-duty crew scrambling from the pub, along with investigative reporters amazingly quickly to the scene.

I suppose a whisky bond ending is a fitting epitaph, though it still hurts for these dedicated essential workers who daily risk all for us, without a thought or moment’s hesitation. I still see their laughing faces like flashbacks in a black-and-white movie, or of being bought over like a Black & Whyte whisky bond takeover.

Donald Anderson
Glasgow

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