alanc51 says:
I’d love to see an independent stand in every constituency. Independents 4 Independence is the way forward now. Kick out the career ‘politicians’,
GM says:
On the bright side the Hate Crime Act comes in on April the first….
It should assist our political class greatly in quietening dissent while trying to force their Globalist/Colonial pish on us. They’ll quite enjoy it too I imagine getting the police to run about after them harassing the odd unfortunate punter picked out of the crowd.
Well done to the Irish at the weekend though, pleased for them. Keep fighting.
Anonymous says:
There may be an announcement from ISP about a candidate in Dundee soon. I’m close to that decision is all I can say now. Stay tuned.
Muscleguy
I think Craig is correct when he says that the Gaza genocide has shifted Overton’s window amongst the western public. The notion that liberal democracy had some innate immunity to the repressive methods more associated with governments of the extreme right or left has been shredded. The louder the ruling elite proclaim our shared values and communities, the more nervously we await the midnight knock on the door.
The ruling class in any system will ruthlessly defend itself against the greatest threat of all: the people. The gap between rich and poor in any country can be seen in how militarised is the uniform of the police. Look at footage of policing even as late as during the Miners’ strike of 1984, and the difference is stark.
Yip those that support the genocide in Gaza want to shut us up, and if they can’t do that initially via the police then they create laws to make sure that we are shut up, but even then they can’t really shut us up, we won’t shut up on the ongoing genocide in Gaza by the Zionists and their backers such as the US/UK governments.
As for Galloway I admire his stance of Gaza, as I admired his stance on Iraq, and his masterpiece when he took on the Americans in a hearing and left them looking stupid, however Galloway advocates independence for every bloody group of people he sees as oppressed around the globe, but he staunchly opposes Scotland dissolving the union, Galloway is indeed British.
I can’t believe you would commit this to print, ‘I have to confess I have never shared the romantic view of the working classes, and have always found them in reality more likely to follow the doctrines of Nigel Farage than those of John MacLean.’ What a disappointment.
Craig wrote:
– The political Establishment, having established support for Israel as the fundamental measure of political respectability which could neatly be used to exclude radicals from political discourse, have been unable to shift ground and drop it.
– They are clinging to Israel, not because they have a genuine belief Israel is a force for good, not because they believe in religious Zionism, not even because they believe it is a necessary colonialist project in the Middle East, but because it has been for decades their totem, the very badge of political respectability, the membership card for the political country club.
Yes, this explains a lot. Unconditional support for Israel has been the Establishment’s shibboleth, the key attitude that when expressed assures the Powers That Be that whatever else that person may have said about any other matter, conscience had nothing to do with it. The supporter of Israel can be trusted to support any oppression, exploitation and subjugation, up to and including that inflicted for decades upon the people of Gaza. They thereby advertise their conviction that wealth makes might and might makes right, thus marking themselves out as suitable for membership of the Establishment club.
The actions of the Zionist State terrorists are indeed terrorism. Zionist State invented modern Terrorism.
Read their words for your self
https://merip.org/1988/05/shamir-on-terrorism-1943/
or perhaps Mi5’s assessment “The Security Service’s main concern in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War was not, as often supposed, the looming Cold War with the Soviet Union but the threat from Middle Eastern terrorism during the final years of the Palestine mandate, which had been conferred on Britain by the League of Nations in 1922. The terrorists came not, as later in the twentieth century, from Palestinian or Islamist groups but from the Zionist extremists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, who believed that the creation of an independent Jewish state required and legitimated the use of terror against the British administration.
MI5 reported to Attlee that Irgun and the Stern Gang were planning a series of attacks in Britain, including a plot to assassinate the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. Most of the plots failed as a result of successful MI5 surveillance and the lack of support for terrorism among the great majority of British Zionists. MI5 failed, however, to prevent a bomb being planted by the Stern Gang in the Colonial Office building (now used by the Foreign Office) on Whitehall in 1947. The bomb, however, did not detonate because of the failure of the timer. ”
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/the-british-empire-and-commonwealth
Galloway it seems was denied the opportunity to make a maiden speech in the HoC on the grounds he had been an MP before. Instead he had to tack it on to a question. Very disappointing.
I suspect we will see more of the same and there is going to be a concerted effort to freeze him out at every opportunity. He made a couple of comments to the speaker about if he ‘caught his eye’ in the future…
First time I have watched parliament live in a long time. Reminded me of an Ian Blackford speech on loop. What a waste of space and time. Total gob shittery.
Seeing all the SNP MPs one after the other asking their banal questions and making their banal speeches was nauseating… what the fuck are they even doing there?
I wonder if Galloway will come to the realization that he has a far better platform already and the HoC is a waste of his time. Because it is.
As far as I can see the only remaining purpose of parliaments and similar bodies in Western nations is to conceal the fact that the executive branch is now the only part of government that has real power – and uses it.
We have most of the drawbacks of dictatorship, plus the additional serious problems that derive from changing governments periodically in order to allow politicians to blame one another for all their mistakes and negligence.
For which party should I vote at the next general election to get a government that would restore friendly relations with Russia and China, rid us of thermonuclear weapons and imperial pretensions, admit the Covid hoax and hold a proper inquiry into its causes and effects, cancel Net Zero entirely, and take active measures to end the genocide in Palestine?
Tom, I suspect that perhaps we share the same boat, in that we find ourselves in a Country where there isn’t actually anyone to vote for, who represents our common beliefs and values with respect to human rights, decency, the rule of Law and fair play. In fact, a mere boat, i suspect would barely suffice, and a Bulk Carrier might be more accommodating for the great many others sharing the same situation, no doubt in the US too, where the choices are equally stark, if not more so. The selections that are available being just a masquerade, or, as GG eloquently put it; “both cheeks of the same ar&e”. Oh, and to add, a piece of comedy gold from some time ago now, although yourself and others may recall it too, was when the Smarmy Swami Rishi the Rich, in a momentary fit of exuberance, claimed to have worked with the “Working Class”, only to be followed within a microsecond with him stating: Well, not actually “Working Class”. I remember a commenter at the time saying that Sunak probably considers Barristers to being members of the dirty fingernails Brigade. It was like he’d claimed to have once worked in a Leper Colony, but not with actual Lepers. Kind regards.
‘So far as I can see, only active supporters of genocide are not in the official view “extremists”.’
This is no exaggeration. Nor is it only the Uniparty Friends of Apartheid/ Genocide who are trying to establish that view. To my knowledge nobody in the English media queried Starmer for condemning the SNP ceasefire motion for stating that collective punishment is happening in Gaza.
Then there are the holy men of England, moral backbone and conscience of the nation. A couple of weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to meet with a Palestinian Christian bishop because that bishop had shared a platform with .. Jeremy Corbyn. The royals and other celebrities have contributed by suggesting the biggest outrage since October 7th has been criticism of what Israel is doing. Or ‘antisemitism’ as they prefer to call it.
Aaron Bushnell, the young American airforce man, stated on the eve of his martyrdom that if you want to know what you would have done if you had known about the Holocaust while it was happening .. you are doing it right now. The holocaust in Palestine could not be more obvious and the entire world can see what England’s political and media class (both liberal and conservative wings) and its holy men, royals and celebrities are doing.
Thank you Craig for daring to point out that our noble elites stand naked as depraved monsters.
I was delighted to find that George Galloway was the new MP for Rochdale which is about 2 miles from where I was born and went to school.
I have particularly liked George Galloway for over 20 years, when he was summoned to Washington, accused of corruption re the war in Iraq. The Americans had never seen anything like it, as George stood on the witness stand, as he not only defended himself with facts he could substantiate, but tore into them, about the facts he knew the Americans were doing in Iraq – leaving their mouths wide open – speechless.
His acceptance speech in Rochdale is well worth watching. “This is for Gaza”
The fact that the result sent all the political class and all the mainstream media into a panic reflects their total immorality in supporting mass genocide from wherever it originates. It merely confirmed to me how evil, corrupt or totally brainwashed they are.
The speech by Sunak on extremism was because of the gift Lindsay Hoyle gave them (indirectly) By scuppering the SNP opposition motion and then blaming ‘intimidation of MPs’ he ensured that Tories could jump on that as their reason for more security and tighter laws against protest. They wheeled out mention of Jo Cox and David Amiss as the reasoning but neither were killed by protestors and even these new laws on protests would not have prevented their deaths.
Deliberately heightening tensions and by putting forward the ‘extremism’ laws they are race baiting the votes lent to them in the Red Wall.
Israel, however, has spent many years cultivating politicians here and helping them via the ‘Friends of Israel’ groups but I think the difficulty in speaking out is even more severe both in and because of the US. Their superpacs funding both FOR and AGAINST certain candidates reinforces the idea that the US must both fund and back Israel without question. In an election year, despite even Biden’s statement of support for Zionism, he has reached the end of his tether, apparently. But is even more toothless due to the support he’ll lose in November.
Had the events of October 7th been planned with this in mind? It would make a good conspiracy theory. Provoke Israel into an action SO abhorrent that world opinion turns against them but do it at such a time where it will not be stopped. A sacrifice of tens of thousands of innocents for a long term plan? Undoubtedly this is the kind of thing a politician would do but I think it requires more intelligence than some of them have to offer although they DO have the heartlessness for it.
I’m afraid that having watched Galloway over several decades of political action, he remains in my mind somewhat of a self-publicist. Having said that I have never met him in person, and defer to Craig’s personal knowledge as to his sociability.
However, there remains one fatal flaw in his political lexicon and that is his continuing resistance to even the idea of Scottish Independence. Aparently every other country in the world should have self-idenitification EXCEPT Scotland.
Sorry Craig, While I admire his standing up to the war mongers in Congress, his blind loyalty to the British State means I’ll never trust him as an ally.
I wrote this is response to what I consider not only ” defeatist ” but ” strategically ” bananas views expressed by some commentators on WOS recently ……
” To those talking about ” another generation ” before , well , anything , worthwhile re Independence will/can happen , I commend your optimism in imagining we have the luxury to wait that long – do you think our enemies will be passive in that time ? – but am utterly dumbfounded at the naivety to think this is the case . ”
I also said I while back – in agreement with yourself , P – that the forthcoming G.E. will see two main legacy Parties , having barely a fag-paper’s width between them will almost certainly use the SNP as their whipping boy : as you say , flamboyantly , stridently , proclaiming their ” Greatest Political/National Union Of All Time ” credentials.
Agree with you 100%… as I do most of the people who post in reply to the common sense statements from Peter Bell… BUT.. what more can we do? as the SNP Indy Lite brigade do not take any steps at all to rid the colonial straightjacket that has shackled Scotland and left us with is basically a small step above third world ranking… Yes… the SNP have dickied about with social issues that have improved our living standards but they have missed the bigger picture of what Scotland and Scots could do if we retained ALL the financial sources that now gallop towards England.
I have sent Emails galore to the SNP nobs at westminster… not one reply… not one… yet what alternative have I when it comes to voting in the 20 seconds of ‘democracy’ I’m allowed. Take part in walks?.. that are dutifully ignored by the foreign owned media… who continually put out pro union SNP bad is every chance they have with zero rebuttal from the SNP.
I am surrounded at work with unionists… and it doesn’t matter what evidence I put before them… they turn a deaf ear…. even when the financial stupidity is presented face on… they still adhere to the football allegiance over what could be achieved if the SNP political class stood up for Scotland rather than their own bank accounts.
Unfortunately… I live in D & G… and my vote or absence of it will not make any difference as the amount of colonial settlers in this area is frightening…. and some obviously earn so much that they can afford to leave their holiday/second homes unoccupied for months at a time… and again… the SNP political class do nothing… they do not make the financial penalties that clearly need to be imposed anywhere near severe enough.
I had the luck to have lived & worked in Holland for a number of years where second home ownership is made financially difficult with real penalties if caught letting out. I have suggested that the SNP crew in Holyrood look into this … but I must be on some blacklist as I have never received any reply given that I do not openly insult the political class of SNP career politicians..
But my main task now as we approach this GE is to check via the Electoral Register if any of these owners have registered to vote … and i am compiling with others a list of same properties.
I live in Edinburgh Morningside & Grange i.e. Edinburgh South so I am in the same position of having nobody to vote for and being swamped by British unionists and nationalists.
So I consider it even more important that I #RepurposeMyVote in order to indicate my preference and instruct my political representative to:
#EndTheUnion
Its appalling how the SNP believe they actually own the word Independence. The leadership of this party is so desperate that they’ll say and do just about anything just to get your vote on election day. Its now dawning on the SNP who’s become the Evil Dead for the Independence movement, that no one is going to donate to a party who’s just a liar and has been lying for ten years about achieving Independence and have actively been blocking any route to Independence. The leadership promised a referendum no if or buts and set up a fundraising only to squander the money deliberately on anything other than a referendum.
Now they want to rebrand themselves, believing it’ll wipe the slate clean and everyone will believe all is forgiven, lets see how that works for them, because I honestly believe time is running out for the SNP and I feel sure the greens will want to occupy that void.
For me the SNP has cried wolf far to many times and come election night election night, I’m going to use my voting that benefits Scotland not the SNP.
No surprises here as a known SNP MP Westminster puppet says that Scottish MPs should not practice abstentionism at Westminster.
“Writing in The Scotsman, SNP MP for Glasgow South Stewart McDonald said: “His (Brown’s) comments last week – that the SNP should ‘re-examine its participation in the proceedings of the UK Parliament’ – were not only wrong and unhelpful but, if fulfilled, would be a total abdication of our party’s responsibility to Scotland.””
McDonald is a known British deep state actor and Russophobe, who received one of highest medal awards from YouCraine behind closed doors in London for his efforts in aiding the country via the MoD.
McDonald is warning us that abstentionism isn’t right, because the Westminster establishment is afraid of it, they know fine well that if we stop participating in their game that eventually they’ll have no power over Scotland.
Republicofscotland @ 10.28.
And of course, those two stalwarts of Scottish Independence, Mr “The Man who would be Squeaker” Wishart and The Humble Crofter would appear to believe that the best way for them to demonstrate abstentionism from the HoC would be to go to the House of Lords.
Republicofscotland
Abstentionism begins at home. After all Belgium survived two years without a government. I’d imagine a holiday from pointless virtue signalling and half-baked legislation would do everyone a power of good.
Ruby…
I’m afraid that as an unreconstructed, middle-aged white male I simply can’t get my head around the Greens’ take on 21st Century living.
I recall with some pangs of emotion the days when everyone was either straight, gay, lesbian or bi-sexual…
When guys who dressed up in women’s clothes were either Transvestites or Drag Queens…
When “inclusion” was inviting your sister’s kid to your own child’s birthday party, even though they couldn’t stand each other…
When “diversity” was only ever used with the prefix “bio” and in the context of plants and animals…
When only high school English Language teachers knew what the hell a “pronoun” was…
When women fought hard and won their rights to live their lives how they and not men, and especially not men pretending to be women, dictated…
And when we could rest assured that “women” did NOT have a penis.
I don’t feel I belong in this world anymore – I doubt I’ll be sorry to leave it.
PS Nice one Chris
careful blimp, or you and your kind might receive a fatwa
I had hoped we could reach indy by humza declaring the union to be “absolutely haram” and the indy movement recharged as being a jihad
in other news I see the scottish arts council are funding the “sort of things” which would have got a decent sentence under obscenity laws not that long ago.
– this is progress and something we should all support.
I expect to see soon, within the chamber of holyrood itself, the open use while in session of – arse dildos, clit fiddlers, penis pumps, and a daily prize for anyone who can “go past the elbow”. This is what democracy is all about and all youse bigots need to STFU. Does Douglas Ross have a cum-face, and is it any different from his normal one?
I profoundly and fundamentally disagree… But do so respectfully, and hopefully constructively.
I agree 100% the SNP has betrayed us, whether hapless, corrupt, or infiltrated from the beginning, it makes no difference at the end of the day. The net result is the same.
But I have always been a passionate advocate of Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty, the popular sovereignty of the Community of the Realm, and my faith in that legitimacy has never wavered. It is woven through everywhere in Westminster pseudo-constitutional legislation. Do you suppose they make voluntary concessions to the Claim of Right?
Now is not the time to abandon SALVO and leave the Liberation initiative isolated and ostensibly ostrasiced by the Scottish political Establishment. It is a measure of the incompetence of our dysfunctional political “elite” (don’t laugh), that Scotland’s Constitutional Rights have been so badly eroded to begin with, and so many unholy and darkly unconstitutional precedents have been allowed to pass and embed themselves unchallanged. Scotland’s “Defence” has been Absent Without Leave for decades, while these puppets have led us on a bonnie dance.
Even Devolution itself, the principle I mean, not the ludicrous Scotland Act, is an outrage before the Constitutional Sovereignty of the people.
Yes, I too have a complete contempt for the circus freakshow masquerading as a Scottish “Government” of Independence, but that very t(reachery), the flagrant betrayal of mandate after mandate, and their gutless complicity with Scotland’s unlawful sujugation and profound economic disadvantage, presents us, the people of Scotland, the Community of the Realm, with an unparalleled opportunity to haul down this whole rotten charade being lorded over us.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, resurrect a modern equivalent of the Scottish phenomenon known as a Convention of the Estates, initiate a “new” Claim of Right, and use it to dethrone both Holyrood and Westminster just as the 1689 Claim of Right sacked Scotland’s sitting Monarch. IMPREACH this rancid shithouse and present Scotland to the International Community as Auld Scotland resurrected, “Free” after disposing of our Vichy Assembly and Colonial style subjugation, exploitation, impoverishment, and cynical manipulation and displacement of our population.
Do NOT capitulate over our Sovereign Constitution and serve yet another victory to London’s cynical manipulation and perfidious interference in Scotland’s affairs. How many more decades would you squander until the time felt right?
Make peace with the infection which paralyses your central nervous system, and you betray the very function and purpose of having a central nervous system. You are already dead and merely twitching.
For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
It’s time the SNP, and Holyrood, and any other servant of London Rule, understood what this actually means. Neither London, Westminster, or Monarch, is sovereign in Scotland. End this masquerade and ditch the Vichy Assembly doing London’s bidding with Scotland’s resource, – while it can be ended peacefully.
Does anybody have Dr Ralph Wilde’s phone number? I want somebody like Dr Wilde standing before the ICJ making the case for Scotland’s Constitutional integrity and the injustice of the “Union”, the way Dr Wilde presented the case of the Arab League defending the people of Gaza.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRn4qYAORAE
When the road gets tough, you don’t stop, you dig deeper and you keep going.
“more people should read Robin Mcalpines blog as it’s very well written and incisive about the mechanics of politics”
Couldn’t agree more, but the silly big twat limits his reach massively by refusing to be on social media, even just with an account that tweets new articles and nothing else.
“For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English.”
I have bad news: we are. And there is no way out of that that isn’t founded on SOME sort of clear democratic mandate of over 50% of the vote. We could declare it until we were blue in the face, but the rest of the world won’t take a blind bit of notice until we’re demonstrably speaking for a majority of the people.
Well said Stu. On the subject of diversity of opinion in the independence media, I think a reputable centre-right pro Indy source could be beneficial for getting us above 50, as well as a Eurosceptic indy source to reach the Yes leavers as well as brexiteers.
A genuinely diverse range of opinions on the independence movement is the best way to build popular support across all levels of our society.
That Wings is pro-indy is a given! Another given is that in some regions of the movement people are also investigating alternative approaches to securing independence, wherein the idea of another referendum is an unwinnable and time-wasting distraction, particularly so under the rubric of a local-authority franchise.
That Iain Lawson’s Yours for Scotland, which discusses many other issues apart from flat-out independence, is ahead of older, more established blogs in terms of readership, whilst remaining avowedly anti-colonialist can, at least, tell us one thing: framing Scotland’s position as being that of a colony of England, with the quality of research and evidence now available to that effect, has a potentially much wider audience; for few Scots would ever knowingly wish to remain as a colonised people under the authority of a foreign oppressor with no more right to govern Scotland than any other sovereign nation. It is the Scottish people who are sovereign, despite three-hundred-years of lies to the contrary.
Since the reason for wanting independence is because there is a strong argument to be made that Scotland has and continues to be held back economically and socially by being part of the UK, then maybe a significant focus needs to be on just why that is so. There’s a huge amount of information that in various ways highlights just how badly the ‘UK’ is and has been run for a very long time (squandering North Sea oil or PFI as a means of funding public expenditure to name just two). Remaining part of a badly managed UK is the flipside of independence and one that has very real and serious consequences.
So if in the meantime the case for an independent Scotland is seriously weakened by not, unlike before 2015, having a clearly competent Scottish government, until that changes, maybe the best that can be done to progress the case for independence is to highlight the vast amount of damage that has and will almost certainly continue to be done by successive UK governments, with Scotland suffering the consequences as long as it remains part of the UK. Independence poses two inter-related questions – why leave the UK and why become independent. As I see it, not enough has been done to systematically and comprehensively answer the first part.
Ian @ 12:13 pm
“the reason for wanting independence”
…has always been the same – liberation from oppression, hence decolonization.
The most pampered native groups/bourgeoisie are usually the last to figure this out, because they are ‘part of the racket’, which also explains the lack of urgency by elites including the national party:
https://salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
Good article and one I agree with in principle. One area where the SNP (deliberately?) missed a trick was to ignore the fact around 40% of their voters backed Leave in 2016, despite a huge push from Sturgeon and Murrell for the party faithful to get behind Remain. Two of their former Depute Leaders (Jim’s Fairlie and Sillars) also backed Leave, as did high-profile YES campaigners like Commie Sheridan, people on both the left and the right, most motivated by a preference for EFTA/EEA over EU, rather than being bampots like Farage, Gove and Johnson.
With the above in mind, it was always going to be a poor strategic move by the SNP, to tie independence directly to EU membership, but it’s a perfect example of how they have narrowed the broad church over the last decade. When broken down to its most fundamental argument, independence is not about what policies Scotland would take, rather about who decides those policies. Do we stick with a broken Westminster system of a two-party FPTP circus, with less difference between the big two than most people would like – and where the Tories are in power around 70% of the time, against our express wishes since the late 1950’s – or take the leap to deciding our own affairs? On that ground alone, our case is strong.
meta
scot pop says wings readership is inflated due to the commenters hitting refresh to see if – “that cunt who slagged me off has responded to my slagging off of him, the cunt … ” – which is all we live for …
– most analytics packages can give you “unique views”.
a statistical analysis of the commenters might be interesting – frequency, length, timing; writing style, and textual signatures,,, punctuation, identifying people using different handles. The bad actors are obvious, after a while, for they never have any new arguments, nor do they respond to new information. Then people who post a lot, then disappear, why, it all looks like a shift change, but no one has updated the briefing notes.
Actual bots? Bard/chat/claude have a style, like clever teenagers, a bit too literal minded. These technologies will only worry me if they ever manage to display boredom, or start to just take the piss. That shows sentience.
Rev: yes, I can see where you are coming from, and I agree, broadly. However, I also agree with Breeks that in dependence cannot be lost sight of and we all have to keep it in our minds at all times, even when we are engrossed in other topics. We really so need to be ready to go when the opportunity arises so that will take, at the very least, a constitutional convention where all kinds of ideas can be played off each other.
Personally, I think that the biggest threat to independence is not Westminster but the ‘trans’ issue. It overarches every policy, every law, every institution, every aspect of government of this country of ours – and even the UK – and it has to be stopped because it is a massive threat to women and children, but also to our ‘democracy, such as it is. It is yet another hard left, misogynistic movement that is trying to divide us in its complete insanity. Why is the hard left so insane always? Why does it play into the hands of the right every time? Its stupidity is beyond human comprehension.
Ruby: you are quite right – it is, as is the rest of the ‘trans’ movement, a fetishists’ and paraphiliacs’ paradise. We are living in an age of sadism, narcissism and psychopathy. These things are indicative of a breakdown in civic/economic/political society. By the way, it is not a crime to state that biology is real, and, if they bring in the aggravated part of a ‘hate crime’, they will have to prove the crime part of it. Telling a man he’s a man is not a crime – yet, anyway. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s Party of Women is off the ground. People can join and can stand as Councillors and/or MPs and MSPs/Independents (in full time). The main aim is repeal of the GRA 2004.
When independence isn’t a meaningfully live political issue – which it currently isn’t, with no referendum or plebiscitary election on the horizon, however much WE might wish otherwise – banging on about it simply irritates the general public, who have other priorities and just think you’re a fundamentalist obsessive, like a Jehovah’s Witness who knocks their door every week and never takes the hint.
People have other priorities right now like eating, heating their homes, paying rent/mortgage and generally just surviving. The Scottish Government have mainly given up trying to mitigate seemingly endless Tory cruelty in order to pander to the SNP’s core base. Frankly, right now, independence feels like a middle class luxury policy, especially now the SNP have no interest in any other demographic.
It still hurts that Sturgeon had the best chance we’re likely to have for a second referendum possibly in many people’s lifetimes with Brexit and utterly squandered chance after chance to boost her party, her mates and of course, herself. I think now independence is dead for a generation at least. It may still simmer in the background but until people’s standard of living improves they’re not going to be willing to dive into something that will hurt for a period of time. Then again, I assume at some point we’ll get competent politicians governing but there’s no sign of that at a UK or Scottish level.
And the sole upside of being in the UK over that period – the fact that the Tories are broadly sane on the gender issue and, to put it baldly, saved Scotland from the SNP – will dissolve the moment Labour take power later this year.
The Tories need to go. They’ve caused so much damage in the last 14 years that I can’t see us recovering from it in decades. Austerity has been a terrifyingly bad policy made worse by Brexit which has returned the UK into the broken country it was before it joined Europe politically.
But, and this is a massive but, their policies on gender and Queer Theory have generally been very good. Of course there’s exceptions within the Tory ranks who have been pushing Queer Theory quite strongly. If Penny Mordaunt had become PM things would be very, very different right now and I’m not sure the victories we’ve had in restoring some sanity in the last few years would have happened. The Tories also brought in equal marriage when Labour were doing everything they could to avoid it, though LGB people’s two or three years of people treated as normal, equal human beings were wrecked in 2016.
I now approach a general election wanting the Tories gone and destroyed but also fearing what Labour will bring with their soft neoliberalism and pandering to gender which will give us Trans MPs who won’t do anything but push the gender issue. I fear people are so wanting the Tories to go that they’re prepared to see what happens or, as I think is the case, most people are still unaware of what the facts are.
Then you’ve got the SNP who gave up on independence for a form of corrupt, incompetent governing that’s seeing the poor and working class suffer. People are starving but there’s always money for gender ideology. The feelings and desires of pornsick, mentally ill men and a few women, not to mention children who’ve been groomed by adults, comes before feeding kids.
Your weans might be starving but here’s some puberty blockers for them.
The joyful innocence and camaraderie of the 2011-14 campaign isn’t coming back. Those days, to coin a phrase, are past now, and in the past they must remain. To be prepared for what may come in the future you need to have the broadest possible view of the terrain, and the best way to do that is to have Wings.
The Indyref campaign isn’t ever going to be replicated. The political engagement that happened a decade ago is over. There’s no referendum going to happen in a generation at least & many of us will be dead by the time that happens, if it ever does.
There are sadly, bigger fights to be had. The fight for a better standard of living for everyone struggling right now and of course, the gender debate, not to mention the ‘Queering’ of everything from politics to art and beyond is a threat to democracy and reality itself. There’s glimmers of hope. The referendum result in Ireland yesterday should send a serious warning to politicians that once people are fully informed of what Queering means, and how that affects women, children and the disabled then it’ll be firmly rejected. There’s also people trying their best from all political points of view, and of course, there’s increasing numbers of ordinary people becoming tired of being poor, while at the same time fighting against what all of this is doing to them, their peers and the most vulnerable.
But I also think we’re on a verge of a collapse like no other in living memory, so I agree. We’ve got to break out of echo chambers, avoid falling into conspiracy theory and try to prepare ourselves for what is going to be a hard fight on a number of fronts over the coming years.
As a philosopher once said “If we could see politics what would it look like? a cube but with all it’s corners on the inside.”
“The idea that “the people of Scotland” might rise up, either by popular vote or by attempting to reconvene the Convention, is the stuff of fantasy.”
The real stuff of fantasy is the illusion that we are in a fair and just union with England when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Such as the stealing of our assets the denying Scots the democratic right to choose when to vote on to leave this union or not (NI can vote every seven years) the lies and deceit from Westminster, the installing of their place men and women in our politics, the interfering of the English security services in our politics (Mi5 created a fake Salvo homepage to con folk into signing up on it), the moving of marine borders to steal Scottish assets. The gradual erasing of our languages and culture, the placing of nuclear weapons on our soil.
There are far too many discrepancies to list in here of abuse of trust from Westminster against Scotland that isn’t fantasy
The fantasy is that the union is beneficial to Scotland IT ISN’T the union is holding us back.
When its shown that Westminster HAS broken the rules of the Treaty of Union and it has on many occasions, I’d imagine if enough folk are informed of this, that dissolving the treaty will be easier to achieve.
Good to see the Irish people stick it to their Government yesterday regarding changing the constitution to fit the Globalist model.
Gives us all hope that elite censoring of majority opinion from being heard isn’t working.
The common folk understand what’s going on.
Big thanks to Rev Stu for amending the market-share chart to show our presence in 10th place.
A mountain to climb sure enough but we’re chuffed to be making an appearance.
Thanks!
It is not that I have lost faith in Scottish Independence, I have lost faith in Western Independence.
By Independence I mean the idea that we as the population of anywhere in the West will be allowed a true and fair government to represent ‘us’ and what ‘we’ actually want in the land we originate from.
There is no country in the West that is currently independent by that definition.
Biden is not America.
Trudeau is not Canada
Sunak is not the UK
Yousless is not Scotland.
repeat for every western country…
A cascade of cunts, swindled into position by enormous amounts of money. The donor class. All actually trying to ‘finish us off’ like they tried to do Russia (circa 1990). History does not repeat… but it rhymes.
Elephants.
Dead ones in the road and sleeping with them in bed (for 300 years no less!). Hmmm…. I like both of these metaphors of giant lumbering shibboleths, the SNP and Westminster. However, maybe the use of ‘dinosaurs’ would be more considerate to elephants (who havent really done anything to merit being associated with such foul calumny and who also never forget anything…). Just saying. Wouldn’t quibble about anything else. Keep on truckin’ Rev.
George Ferguson @ 8:33 pm
“The first duty of a State is to protect it’s citizens. We would be enslaved.”
Scots were sold by State elites over three hundred years ago and been enslaved ever since. And the cost of this? Well, the loss of 3-4 million people for a start, plus resources and social and economic under-development ever since.
Perhaps we should consider also the opportunity cost of 300+ years of colonial under-development? By all accounts our population today should be similar to that of Sweden and our economy stronger than Norway. Instead, today at best we are on a par with weaker eastern European states.
That gap between developed and underdeveloped state is the cost of colonialism, which in GDP terms will be in the region of £200+bn per annum today.
George Ferguson @ 10:39 pm
“Trillions not billions”
You are right, England’s colonialism which is now costing Scotland over £200 billion+ every year means Scotland is certainly owed £trillions over the past 300+ years. Few if any other peoples have been colonised for longer than the Scots.
Not to add fuel to any fire, but there is another matter to consider.
If, supposing, the SNP emerges from this past decade disgraced, shamed and discredited, with it’s senior echelons facing jail time and civil actions, and the whole of Scotland’s political landscape tainted by crank and oppressive legislation which may take decades to purge, then you have to ask yourself one question.
What has the Independence Movement actually done to divorce the disingenuous SNP from the rightful cause of Scottish Independence? Where is the dissent? Where is the rebellion?
No matter what the outrage, the flagrant dishonesty, the squandering of mandate after mandate, the hijacking of the Independence cause to further Transgender destabilisation of society; bar a few grumbles along the way the Independence Movement might have talked the talk, but on the whole, have acted with supine complicity. (Rare exceptions duly noted, and saluted).
It churns my stomach to think of the damage these twisted bastards have done to Scotland’s cause, and our Nation’s sense of self interest. They have suffocated Scotland, and not a single one of them has faced as much as deselection for their outright t(reachery).
Worse than that, even what passes itself as opposition to the SNP is still waiting for leadership and initiative to come from the corrupt and dysfunctional SNP, presumably once it finds the time in between wrecking Scotland’s societal infrastructure.
Hope you’re proud of yourself Scotland. Maybe we should invite our Scottish diaspora home to vote for us the way we get foreigners to play our sports for us. Maybe we might “win” then.
Twathater @ 2.42
Inclined to agree with your assessment , T . Not sure what the point of this oddly muted ( despite Alex’s habitual air of cheerful bonhomie ) interview was .
Not disagreeing with Stu’s comments re the becalmed state of Independence as an issue ( though that is a kinda self-fulfilling state ) but the sense of resignation was palpable .
Seems like after waiting – fruitlessly – for the SNP to leave the * Prog * creche and re-enter the scary world of political adulthood , we’re now expected to wait for ALBA to replace them , with a winning smile & a slightly better formula .Because …that’s right …..NOTHING IS HAPPENING . All other routes , ideas , possibilities have been declared ” NOT VALID ” . HA !
Can’t wait for all the galleons to assemble at our ALBA-approved * Green * Freeports ; loading even more of Scotland’s wealth onboard , bound for foreign shores .
Taking our gold in exchange for NeoLib wumpum .
To those talking about ” another generation ” before , well , anything , worthwhile re Independence will/can happen , I commend your optimism in imagining we have the luxury to wait that long – do you think our enemies will be passive in that time ? – but am utterly dumbfounded at the naivety to think this is the case .
Craig Murray should be on the list but I understand it would be impossible to separate out his Scottish politics content versus everything else he writes about.
Stuart Campbell and Craig Murray are the only two Scottish bloggers I read. I will read Robin McAlpine if people post links on here but I am not seeking him out.
I also like Gordon Dangerfield but he writes fairly infrequently.
It all seems (outside of Wings and CM) just incredibly ineffectual. Lots of empty rhetoric. WGD is by far the worst. I was really glad when his gaggle of supporters stopped posting comments on here…
This site and CM) breaks real news. I also know that if they state a fact I can pretty much rely it is true (no one is infallible but they are close).
The reporting around the Salmond stitch-up was vitally important and continues to be so. Both of you deserve medals for that alone (amongst a few others).
George Galloway is also the same. You may not agree with his views but he does not lie. Pretty meticulous in his fact checking as well. I guess with all these guys and gals (who talk about things the MSM want to hide) you have to be like that or you won’t survive.
Or you can sell your soul for thirty pieces of silver, dress up like a ponce, scrounge a house, and produce arse gravy for the National.
Reading between the lines I think what AS is saying here is the site is talking about trannies and self ID etc too much.
Craig Murray also made some barbed tweet along the same lines after the last Scottish elections I think it was. I think he suggested it played a part in ALBA’s poor showing or something like that… it pissed me off at the time, that I am sure about.
Well I confess I have wondered myself at times why Wings focused on it so much… especially during that period.
But not anymore. Whatever the reason was/is it, it turns he had very good instincts indeed.
For this reason… a must watch.
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1762249935116963993
Might be just a fluke but it does not matter, a bullseye is still a bullseye.
It is time to meet the woke madness head-on and stop tolerating any of it. Because it is extremely dangerous and a massive threat to us all.
And it not just in Scotland as we can see.
This is the battle right now. If we lose this one we won’t have to worry about our ‘independence’ anymore.
And in this regard Wings has been at the forefront of the battle for years now.
Effigy @ 8:51am,
Agreed.
It’s the same as it ever was; bread and circuses.
I disagree completely with the Rev’s take on waiting for the perfect negotiation team being in place before we can even think about independence.
Even if it’s at the other end of the scale where we were advocating waiting for a party which is less incompetent, the reality of an independent Scotland negotiationing with the rUK would have to entail all parties, including the ones that would cease to be British parties after a vote for self determination.
Few of the negotiations will be quick and many of them will be prolonged beyond the life of the SNP as we know it.
It’s for this reason there would have to be, an across the political landscape, negotiations team that will endure the life of any one political party.
Every political party (even the ones people don’t like) would have to concentrate their thoughts on the future of their Scotland.
holymacmoses @ 12:15 pm
“I think Mr McAlpine is often an interesting read”
I agree. However, postcolonial theory tells us that the main problem with native intellectuals is they are slow to recognise the colonial condition of the people and their nation. This is because they have never undertaken a reasoned analysis of colonial society.
https://salvo-cor.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/THEORETICAL+CASE+FOR+SCOTTISH+INDEPENDENCE.pdf
Hatuey @ at 3:15 pm
“In the context of Scotland today, those extremes are completely inappropriate”
You ignore the fact that colonialism is ‘a disease of the mind’ as much as anything else, which helps facilitate the plunder and exploitation of ‘a people’, as well as their confused identity. Inventive Scots even gave the ‘condition’ a name, the Scottish Cultural Cringe’:
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/the-colonial-mindset/
Mac @ 9.34 am
“Ahh!! I see I missed the point of the article… after the interview there is quite a bit of bumpf but then AS starts talking about Wings again at the 31.45 mark.”
————————————-
Thanks for highlighting that – I’d missed that bit at the end of the show. And very much agree with your next post at 10.01 am.
Is this perhaps AS’s response to what happened last week with Eva Comrie and Yvonne Ridley? If so, I’d agree that AS “seems to be asleep at the wheel over all this woke stuff and what is really going on”.
As are others (apparently), including for example Craig Murray and Robin McAlpine. It seems like they don’t want to engage with the issue in any real way, or address the wider effect it’s having (ie beyond the damage to women’s rights and child safeguarding). I don’t understand their thinking on this at all, but maybe that’s because they’re not really thinking about it.
I’m now even more worried about AS and Alba’s position on this issue. It may have seemed that having a (slightly vague) policy and then to largely ignore the issue and try to play things down would be enough, but already that hasn’t worked and they’ve lost good people over it (although I’m still not quite sure exactly what happened there, and have been left with more questions than answers). Not sure what to make of it all really.
given the damage done to our landscape via e.g. the grouse moor, I would naturally be inclined to “put it back, right” – and so you hear about these “rewilding schemes”. Then I see where they come from and I think :
I smell -shite-
it looks to be a stealth version of GET ORFF MOI LAND
from the billionaire class. Well, fuck them, but fuck them double, with a razor blade encrusted dildo for good measure; these wankers are always on the grift and there is always a shekel in play
rewilding schemes are to get a break on inheritance tax. Nice. Don’t these wankers get enough already? Do any of them, pay any tax at all? Not many reports of this in the UK press. Poulsen, Rausing and Buccleuch, why oh why won’t the govmint remove the boot from their necks?
In other news, an ex world bank economist and professor at ed uni has written a paper basically saying “net zero is a fucking scam and a bag of shite” (to eschew the technical and dry academic boring talk)
BlackRock is set for a trillion dollar rebuild scythia bonanza, which is all it’s about; all those little old ladies getting their pensions off blackrock.
Foreign Affairs is now saying scythia is fucked. NB here is how your news propaganda goes – private thinktanks/elite networks -> Foreign Affairs -> New York Times -> BBC / Telegraph -> Mail/Sun -> MAN IN THE STREET (HE’S A CUNT)
People should go over to kelly pop and hit refresh 10 times or so to get his traffic up. Just to be nice.
My own rewilding scheme? – a herd of wild african dogs for the holyrood chamber, sharks for st marys loch and the balmoral hotel would look good with a troop of capuchin monkeys on the roof throwing shit at tourists and stealing their cameras.
nice joab – doesn’t say whether it is keeping them out or bringing them in
https://archive.is/NZu6F
a decent opening for our very good friend, anthony modest
https://www.myjobscotland.gov.uk/councils/south-lanarkshire/jobs/sla12469-refugee-support-officer-369479
– heard anything about that lad who got plugged?
George Galloway is brilliant in this monologue. Apart form several genuine laugh out loud moments he makes some really hard hitting points, especially about the de-industrialization of Britain and now Germany. Highly recommend it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QCGRe8fO4&ab_channel=GeorgeGallowayMP
Galloway is giving his maiden speech in the HoC today.
I think it is going to be an absolute belter.
Anton is our Repo(rting)-Man
WOS BTL is like the tortured voices of the damned, howling in torment, much of the time – then it all went dead last night. How queer, as it were.
Innuendo – another old delight stripped from us; Chuck Berry and his ding a ling, the large black lady going on about her toot toot. I think the carry on films died out due to their innate pointlessness – what is the purpose of an expertly delivered double entendre by a comic titan like kenneth williams or frankie howerd, if people in other places are just going on explicitly – “big dick up the arse”. Carry on up the Khyber (a subtle denunciation of anglo imperialism IMO) got a whole film out of one simple joke.
I rewatched True Detective series 1 the other week (brilliant) – the macguffin of the story was a videotape which showed horrific child abuse; then I thought – aren’t creative scotland handing out grants to produce this kind of thing? Rust Cohle should have been ashamed of his bigotry.
now check out this creepy little bastard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlFlFcTiCh0
– makes me think bullying in schools had a positive social outcome. Want to piss in the girls loos – we wouldn’t kill you – the girls would do that, on their own.
Of course the most reprehensible thing about creative scotland is they are dishing out money to people to do “this kind of thing”; word up – everyone is doing it everywhere, for free – try the pornhub, or find out where the local dogging scene is, and take your smartphone; the gays will be in any public lav, drilling their glory holes between the cubicles.
Maybe I have missed something but is Gaza and the Israeli onslaught being ‘downgraded’ in the media?
We seem to be getting silly tales of editing by Catherine and ‘ooh! ain’t he racist ‘ tales about another – though 10 million quid given to the Tory party should be a very BIG story.
Has pressure from the government been dumped on broadcast / print media, so keen are they to stop demonstrations of any kind but especially those involving Israel?
I never would have predicted what we are seeing in the middle east right now because I never would have foreseen that a country itself can go insane.
It is like we (the nations of the world) all live on the same street and we are witnessing one of our neighbours systematically beat and murder another one of our neighbours and the neighbourhood cop (the US) is not just standing by doing nothing, they are passing the attacker a steady stream of bats, knives and guns.
We are all in our houses looking out the windows watching it unfold, aghast, but essentially powerless to stop what we are witnessing…
So let’s fast forward here and assume Isr@el is successful and either kills or ethnically cleanses the remaining P@lestinians in P@lestine and the Holy Lands..
Does Isr@el think it just goes back into its house, and then we all carry on as neighbours, as we did before? BBQ’s and chats over the fence? Can I borrow a cup of sugar?
Are they really that insane that they think they can do this, in front of the whole world, watching it like no other genocide / ethnic cleansing has ever been watched before…and then it is back to business as usual?
This is how insane they are.
I am not sure Ham@s knew this would happen but irrespective this is a massive strategic victory for them.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Something is going to give.
Does anyone happen to know if any journalist (Scottish or not) has ever asked Murray Foote for an explanation/apology for ‘The Vow’?
Has the whole shameful episode been memory-holed?
https://www.offtopicscotland.com/post/stirring-it
got time for a good read? –
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/03/michael-hudson-marxism-economic-parasites-and-debt-cancellation.html
most important sentence
” the Greeks realized was you have to have some way of canceling the debts, but that requires a political system that does not let an oligarchy develop.”
all progressive politics is working backwards from this.
Also, a lot of info about agriculture in antiquity, for people who like that sort of thing.
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