Gesture Politician

I had thought about venting about this yesterday, when I first heard about it, then calmed down and got on with some proper work. Then I read Sam's brief dit on the subject and have come crawling back to my virtual vomit.

Last time I mentioned Christine Grahame, spawn of all that is grotesque and evil in the pustulent boil that is the Scottish body politic, on this blog, I believe I was calling her a cunt. And, guess what, she still is. Spectacularly and publicly so.

So, she wants Mary, Queen of Scots body to be returned from Westminster Abbey to, well, somewhere in Scotland:

She was an iconic historical Scots figure and ultimately the victim of English plotting.

Given the House of Stuart's association with Falkland Palace, a place where Mary is believed to have spent her happiest days, that would appear to be an appropriate place to inter her remains.

Mary is, I am forced to agree, an iconic figure in Scottish history. A pathetic figure - affianced at six months to the child who would be Edward VI and then to the Dauphin, Francis, at 5, she was shabbily mistreated by the vermin that, even then, were flocking to the reeking cess-pit now sited at Holyrood.

Never mind that her happiest days were probably, when not seen through the yellow-tinted spectacles of the SNP, those she spent at the French Court between 1548 and 1561.

Never mind that her friend (and possibly lover but, frankly, who cares) was slaughtered, then her husband was strangled, then she was raped and imprisoned and forced to abdicate - all in Scotland and all by Scottish politicians (even though Darnley was born near Leeds and considered an English subject - albeit the son of a Scottish Duke) - before fleeing to England.

Never mind that England was just recovering from the slaughter and misery of the Counter-Reformation and Mary was seen by many as the Catholic pretender to the English throne (as Elizabeth herself recognised when she suggested Mary marry Robert Dudley and be acknowledged as Elizabeth's heir.) Although the facts of her, direct or otherwise, personal involvement in any of the plots^* is lost to history, she was certainly a focal point for these and one of the purposes of a figurehead is to be separated from it.

Never mind that her grave in Westminster Abbey was built by her son, James VI & I, and placed near to Elizabeth's to show that she was as great a Queen as her cousin (although, being honest and despite acknowledging Elizabeth's many faults that tend to be glossed over, Mary was nowhere near as capable).

But, hey, if it gets a couple of the sheeple voting for them rather than Gordo, who cares about history, respect or dignity? Certainly not oor Chrissy.

See what we have to contend with up here? The only realistic alternative to the nu-Labour farce in most of this benighted land, from blasted heath to sixty's slums, are a bunch of dribbling bigots who make DK's 'Barbary Apes' look like statesmen of stature.

* Yes, Walsingham did probably invent or at least provoke the Babington Plot. But even though Mary might not have been eligible to be tried for treason (she wasn't English but the Treason Act 1351 does not specifically require you to be a Crown subject), a case under the Bond of Association could have been made and the prescribed penalty was still death.