No change then! Most of the failed nonentities still in post. As a former Secondary DHT and local authority Quality Improvement Officer, I’m particularly ouraged to see Jenny Gilruth continuing in post. A former PT Modern Studies with little experience in leadership (possibly managing 1-2 people and an annual budget of around £1500 and no idea how to reform Scottish education, the SQA and the dead handof Education Scotland. With Jenny’s leadership, the only way is down!! I despair!!!!
It will however allow Forbes to oversee the creation of the unpopular, undemocratic “Green Freeports”, which were no part of the SNP’s 2021 manifesto
I find it bleakly amusing The Greens are raging at Forbes while she’s in charge of the most capitalist, neoliberal policy ever to be championed by The Greens outwith of treating human beings are things that can be changed like Transformers. This was classed as a ‘win’ by Slater, etc even though it puts jobs, workers rights and the environment at risk.
get ready for two incredibly boring years of nothing much happening
Swinney is there to make sure things don’t get worse before the general election, so really, he’s got 8 months tops before we find out for sure if the SNP are suffering at the polls as badly as many suggest they will. After the GE, it’ll either be ‘well, Swinney was a smart move’ or ‘OMFG!!! WE NEED A NEW LEADER!’. For now though, Sunak’s cowardice in not holding an election is benefitting the SNP.
A lot of course could also change from now til the GE. The fallout of the Cass Report not to mention the Gaza War is going to win and lose all parties votes but I suspect the cost of living crisis will (and should) dominate.
I should be celebrating: lots of women in Cabinet. However, to merely swap sycophantic, slavering men with not a scoobie for the same number of sycophantic, slavering women with not a scoobie is hardly progress as we know it, John. We want people with a back-bone, maybe a brain wave or two about how to escape the Union. We want people with vision, John. We want people with knowledge of the constitution and people with knowledge of the law – the real law, not Stonewall Law. The ultra loyalists will be clapping like seals at the steady ship as she ploughs towards No Man’s Land (or, almost no man’s land). Oh, look a seal as opposed to, oh, look a squirrel. I believe they were also spotted on the ice floes just before the Titanic hit the iceberg. To the lifeboats and every man (and women) for him/her self. Don’t worry about the children; the Sandyford’s looking after them.
As a wee aside I’m just catching up with PMQs and noted that yet again there’s no sign of Mhairi Black in the Commons during PMQs. It’s extraordinary that the SNP’s deputy leader in Westminster only seems to be there when she really has to be, and these days, barely speaks of Scotland at all.
I’ve also caught up with Patrick Harvie’s speech today. The man is unhinged.
New boss same as the old boss. Continuity indeed.
Aye Rev: “So all we learned today is that Kate Forbes was pretty cheaply bought”.
And very notably the Gaelic lobby now has a cabinet post an nae doot a pile mair public siller on the wey tae add tae the £50m+ a year for the circa 50,000 Gaelic speakers. Meantime the two million+ Scots speakers – who comprise the vast majority of the Yes vote – get hee haw; oor ain langage aye left tae wither awa, an oor cultur an identity deein wi hit, intentionally so.
Pro-rata funding per head giving Scots language speakers equality with Gaelic would require a government spend of well over £1 billion annually on Scots language medium; much as the Council of Europe repeatedly advises our Scots language should be taught tae bairns in schuils if we are respecting indigenous languages as a human right. In Scotland Scots fowk hae nae sic richts, no tae oor langage nor oor ain land an resources.
Such Divide and Rule policies is always the way of the colonizer with one tribe favoured over another, language discrimination being a classic example, and the colonial administration doing what it is tasked to do, i.e. tae haud-doun the fowk.
I just can’t understand why Sweatpants Swinney is giving out the most junior of joke roles to the woman who officially came a narrow second to Yousless in the supposedly honest-john most recent SNP leadership election.
Instead we get a guy who never even ran and who was the worst SNP leader EVER.. twenty frickin years ago.
I lived through it – Sweatpants 1.0 – and can remember Swinney’s truly dreadful tenure. It was the so shit it is hard to describe properly. He nearly destroyed the SNP.
And it has been well documented, it was Sturgeon pulling his strings at the time. I think Salmond must have been in on this… the second time he did it post 2014 they double crossed him.
It was this first Swinney nadir that brought back Salmond… and the rest as they say is history.
What will the second Swinney nadir bring…
“…the colonial administration doing what it is tasked to do, i.e. tae haud-doun the fowk.”
Aye, Alf. Aince thon colonial hoax clicks in yer heid aw ther tricks an trapps are made clear tae the ee.
And since learning of Scotland’s true relationship wi oor partner in union all I see in the behaviour of the SNP and Scotland’s devolved government is the hand of Westminster at work.
It amazes me that I didn’t see it before coming across your papers and book, Doun-Hauden – it’s so obvious once it’s pointed out.
Dan
Ignored says:
8 May, 2024 at 9:35 pm
Will someone being seeing red that The New Scottish Cabinet is aw WHITE!
First Minister – WHITE!
Deputy First Minister – WHITE!…
The irony for me isn’t in the racism of that, but my own long held observations of Holyrood, where I posed the question relating to the “colour” of sovereignty.
I postulated that Scottish popular sovereignty should adopt red, since it’s essence was the flesh and blood of the people, while English / Westminster sovereignty should be white, reflecting the clouds and heavenly backdrop of a divine sovereignty from God. The two extremes of course being binary conditions and fundamentally incompatible.
What colour of sovereignty ran in Holyrood’s veins? Red Scottish sovereignty? White Westminster sovereignty? A shared pink sovereignty? Or a raspberry ripple type sovereignty?
https://www.barrheadboy.com/which-ever-flag-they-offer-a-guest-post-by-breeks/
Hence, uttered without even a vestige of racist overtone, but considered by sovereign pigmentation;
Holyrood Assembly – White.
Scotland Act – White.
First Minister- White.
Scottish Government- White.
The entire realm of Holyrood has been bleached whiter than white in its deference to Westminster sovereignty, with every vestige of red Scottish sovereignty purged and removed.
Sturgeon did this. Scotland held every trump card it needed for Holyrood to be redder than red, but Sturgeon threw them all away.
Sturgeon could have defended the Claim of Right, and “won” the ambiguous constitutional argument confirming the foundations of Holyrood as ultimately red; the Scottish people, the Community of the Realm, are sovereign in Scotland.
Adopting an obdurate defence of the Claim of Right would have defeated Scotland’s Brexit, demolished Tony Blair’s Supreme Court, burned Westminster’s fingers for daring to interfere with Scotland’s democracy and access to a referendum. And that’s just for starters…
Sturgeon didn’t stand in defence of any of it. She abdicated Scotland’s constitutional rights without so much as an argument. Sturgeon, and indeed her rancid cabal of fruit loops and nasties, should go down in history and be known forever as Scotland’s greatest imbeciles; the laughable parade of Westminster’s most useful idiots, the Toast of Whitehall.
Yousaf? Swinney? Forbes? Just the latest dunces following on from Sturgeon’s cringeworthy debacle.
This video link was posted on Twitter yesterday.
“The Great Debate” took place in February 1995, and was a head-to-head between Alex Salmond and Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary of the time George Robertson (hosted by an unfamiliar raven-haired Lesley Riddoch) at the Royal High School in Edinburgh, which was then favourite to be the home of the still-notional Assembly.
Young Nicola appears in the audience at 6m 19secs.
Can you remember what you were doing away back then? That’s at least how long they’ve known each other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-2A47U5PQ
“Can you remember what you were doing away back then?”
Ian Brotherhood.
Aye…pounding pavements in Inverness to leaflet for the upcoming April elections to the new Highland Council.
I was introduced to a certain Ms Sturgeon at the Eden Court conference 6th months previous – the impression I got wasn’t a good one and it deteriorated over time.
Conference highlight for me, (other than being on the telly for my speech), was having a drink and a chat with both Mrs Ewings… Winnie and Maggie (2xRIP) who were on top form.
I wonder what they’d have made of the current Sturgeon led omnishambles to which they gave so much. Sad to see how things have turned out.
Anyways… mustn’t dwell…
Indy for Scotland!
SNP Out!
Bizarre new YouGov, Westminster poll (no detailed data set as yet). Tories reduced to 13 seats, SNP on 19 seats, Labour occupying 85% of total HoC seats. This must surely be an outlier and fundamentally unreliable. An elected dictatorship with a titular PM taking orders from a foreign state. Be very careful what you wish for.
“BBC news just announced that SNP have dropped the role of Minister for Independence.”
Effigy.
I’m pretty sure the minster was Jamie Hepburn, (another useless b*stard) Swinney has been going on about attaining indy over the last week, he then drops the indy minister.
Watch what Swinney does not what he says.
Here’s a list of Swinney’s ministers, and cabinet many of same old tired faces still hold positions, the old guard blocking independence.
“Minister for Parliamentary Business – Jamie Hepburn
Minister for Business – Richard Lochhead
Minister for Employment and Investment – Tom Arthur
Minister for Public Finance – Ivan McKee
Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise – Natalie Don
Minister for Higher and Further Education and Minister for Veterans – Graeme Dey
Minister for Victims and Community Safety – Siobhian Brown
Minister for Climate Action – Gillian Martin
Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity – Jim Fairlie
Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health – Jenni Minto
Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport – Maree Todd
Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy – Christina McKelvie
Minister for Equalities – Kaukab Stewart
Minister for Housing – Paul McLennan”
“The minister for culture, Europe and international development role has also been axed, with Kaukab Stewart taking on a new role.”
“There were also some departures as part of the reshuffle. These include:
George Adam stepped down as minister for parliamentary business
Emma Roddick stepped down as minister for equalities, migration and refugees
Joe FitzPatrick stepped down as minister for local government empowerment and planning”
And her is his cabinet.
“Kate Forbes, the youngest-ever Deputy First Minister, will take on the economy portfolio and responsibility for Gaelic
Shona Robison remains in Cabinet with responsibility for finance and local government
Jenny Gilruth remains Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
Angela Constance remains Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs
Mairi McAllan remains in Cabinet with responsibility for Net Zero and Energy portfolio
Fiona Hyslop remains Cabinet Secretary for Transport
Neil Gray remains Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
Shirley-Anne Somerville remains Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice
Angus Robertson remains Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture
Mairi Gougeon remains Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands
Mairi McAllan will remain as Energy Secretary but the “Wellbeing Economy” brief has been stripped of its first word and handed to Forbes.”
On the matter of ‘continuity’ and protecting the status quo (i.e. devolution), Swinney, like Yousaf and probably Sturgeon before him, has made eradicating poverty in Scotland his top priority; as did Forbes in her leadership bid last year. Easy to say, but why are they all doomed to fail on this important aspect?
Postcolonial theory tells us that the poverty of the people, their deprivation and lack of opportunity in a colonial environment is broadly equivalent to the value of the economic plunder going on. This confirms that, as long as colonial plunder is permitted to continue, so will poverty and widening inequalities, as well as related adverse health and societal impacts.
Which means THE ONLY WAY TO ERADICATE POVERTY is to remove colonialism. Somebody ought to tell the new FM because he clearly disnae ken this; if he did, he would make independence his top and most urgent priority.
Here’s a wee clue as to the ‘price of colonialism’ (aka the UK Union), by comparing Scotland’s uniquely low GDP-per-capita relative to all other much ‘richer’ countries nearby, most of which don’t even have our extensive resources, making Scotland into the poorest nation in north-west Europe:
I rarely get bored – but today…I’m bored.
I followed the link posted by Mac @9:05am and watched the video interview with the American scholar, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs.
It’s an interesting watch that temporarily allayed my boredom, thanks Mac.
Unfortunately for those who read btl on Wings; having now watched the video, and because I’m bored, I’m going to share my thoughts.
The age of empires is coming to an end. And it looks like the short-lived American empire is nearing the end of its brief imperial swagger across planet Earth, too. Although its inevitable demise might take another half century yet.
Changes in the thinking of humanity as a whole occur over a longer timescale than our short individual spans can grasp.
But all the signs are with us now that a major change in the evolution of the human species to a higher plane of thought is beginning to take shape; although it might not seem that way to us who are caught up in the turbulent rapids of those early changes right now.
The end of empires and great social change is invariably accompanied by madness, chaos and confusion, and of course that most evil of evils, stupidity. And that’s what we see around us now .
Humanity is particularly prone to bouts of irrational stupidity. I think of them as the ‘growing pains’ of a continually evolving species as it advances towards a more rational state.
The growing pains will eventually pass. And after much sorrow and blame and recrimination and regret and remorse and hand wringing and wailing, humanity will take another step towards the summit on its climb up the harsh mountain of learning that leads to enlightenment.
There’s no doubt humanity has stumbled a few times on it’s arduous journey and slipped a step or two. A mere several thousand years ago the ‘ancients’ were half a step ahead of where we are now.
But that’s mountain climbing for you. Sometimes you have to take a step back and find a different route to the top.
What the next step, the next age of humankind, after this one will entail is impossible to fathom from our current vantage point. But humanity is still growing and will no doubt suffer more growing pains before it reaches maturity.
Meanwhile, here in Scotland and now, independence will almost certainly assist the Scots in riding the rapids of humanity’s current bout of stupidity.
“the Scottish Government/Parliament has, by the express and deliberate nature of its design, basically zero control over the economy.”
You’ve just described a colonial economy, Rev. For 300+ years Scotland has been controlled and plundered by another country and another culture, our nation left to wither. Which is why half our people were either removed or left, and half of those remaining live in or close to poverty, whilst our infrastructure and public services look more like eastern Europe than our nearest nordic neighbours.
But at least we can estimate the value of that plunder, which is at least £150 billion per year today based on GDP-per-capita analyses; and its good to know this for whenever the matter of imperial plunder ‘reparations’ comes up, which it will, as soon as we reclaim oor soveranety:
It’s not a shock and although the SNP needs to focus hard on improving people’s lives within the restrictions of devolution, it wouldn’t have hurt to even have some token mention of independence in there.
One of the things Swinney could do is review everything the Greens did & see if there’s a way out, or any ability to claw back the damage they did. Certainly the £200m taken out the housing budget for cycling paths needs to be overturned. The more he distances himself from the Greens the better as I suspect there’s going to be a lot of dirt and scandals regarding the Greens to come, especially in the light of Cass and their reaction to that.
Abstain at the next Westminster election – unless Alba adopts abstentionism. Get an extremely low turnout in Scotland. Make the Westminster exercise a world-wide laughing stock.
It’s nonsense to say Holyrood has little control over its economy. Energy, transport and low external costs are the lifeblood of economies
They are managing to regulate it out of existence.
Fracking banned, nuclear banned, oil and gas subject to as much delay and obstruction as possible, offshore wind to endless environmental and regulatory checks and review that add next to nothing but at cost, delay, and massive civil service/ngo overheads.
Shipbuilding mismanagement, ferry mismangement, airport mismanagement, plans for additional carbon charges. Anti car policies – road building delays, ULEZ, lane closures for unproductive cycle lanes.
Needless but botched schemes cancelled or delayed at the last momment – bottle recycling, fire alarms.
Increased income tax burden making the country unattractive.
It’s no coincidence that the large jump in support under Salmond coincided with basic competence.
Christ knows what this lot would do with more control.
The post was window dressing in any case, and a big salary for doing sweet fanny adams. Devolution can only do so much with the economy. You need all the levers of power to make difference – and, even then, you can still blow it, like Westminster.
On top of all the levers, you need the brains and acumen to make the very best of what you have. The calibre of the people we elect after independence will decide whether we are to flounder or to thrive. Without those levers, we are going to sink.
Politicians with certain skills and talents need to be deployed to departments that can utilize those skills and talents the right way and to have skilled and talented civil servants, too. Useless tools who think more about the gender woo and impossible climate targets are a waste of space.
We have wasted ten years on useless and pointless delusions. You don’t save a threatened ship by sending out your own subs to torpedo it. Roadmap to independence, start getting everything we need for independence in place as far as possible, campaign for and achieve independence, declare it, start to rebuild our country. No other way. Confrontation is inevitable. Embrace it or stay at home and gies peace, SNP.
Ian Smith @ 4:31 pm
“It’s nonsense to say Holyrood has little control over its economy. Energy, transport and low external costs are the lifeblood of economies”
No its not nonsense. Most of Scotland’s utilities in energy, ports and airports etc have been sold off by Westminster. Electricity prices in Scotland, despite being the offshore renewables energy capital of Europe, are 4 times higher than in Norway, and much higher than all other oil rich nations.
Westminster dictates Scotland’s energy costs, which clearly makes Scotland less competitive internationally, leading to a higher cost of living and fuel poverty for many. Imagine what a sovereign Scotland might do with £100 billion a year income (2030) from offshore renewable energy via a state-owned energy company like in Norway, i.e. double the current Holyrood budget?
“I doubt it was intentional, but Swinney is correct. Stop banging on about independence, and concentrate instead on creating a stable, competent economic platform.”
But you can’t, because HOLYROOD HAS NO POWERS OVER THE ECONOMY.
It is a typical SNP ploy to put the cart before the horse and make independence conditional. To create a condition – something unachievable, highly improbable or deliberately vague – which must be met prior to independence, in this instance a “vibrant economy”. However, not only do the SNP have practically no control over the economy, but the Union is designed to keep Scotland’s economy subject to England’s economy and, as such, only independence can ever bring about a “vibrant economy”. Just another example of the SNP continually kicking independence into the long grass and never-never land.
In fact, we can demonstrate the fallacious thinking of the SNP logically:
Their argument is as follows:
If A (where A = the condition to be met), then X (where X = independence).
However, we can see from the above that X is dependent on A, which is an inherent contradiction since X is defined as “independence”, that is, independent of any condition.
Pat Blake
You ask a reasonable question in a reasonable manner and so I will respond in the same vein.
You are right. Captain Caveman is right. You are both right. I can’t argue against the truth and expect to win that argument – no-one can.
Independence might be held back for a decade because of the SNP, but I wouldn’t bet on it just yet.
The SNP and the Scottish Greens are as deplorable as they are ineffectual and useless, or worse. I would posit that Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservatives, and the Scottish Lib Dems also fit those same labels.
Alex Salmond is right when he says SNP incompetence has hindered the independence movement.
Alf Baird, among others, is right when he describes the SNP as being a party whose leadership, at least, is filled with Unionists.
And Kate Forbes is absolutely definitely not ‘the one’.
You ask “where will the competent independence movement come from?”.
I answer by saying it will come from the Scots and those supporting them who are the Independence movement. Where else?
The problem for Scotland in her current state is that no Scot with any competence or intelligence or nous is allowed anywhere near the decision making bodies and institutions in Scotland. They have been blocked from having any influence whatsoever on the way Scotland, their own country, is run civically, economically, and in every other way.
But the woeful incompetence of Scotland’s compromised government and public institutions is not the root of the problem. I would argue that the incompetence, corruption and mediocrity we see in Scotland’s elite and her governing ‘elected’ representatives isn’t the problem at all.
The incompetence, an incompetence praised far beyond its worth by describing it as mediocre, of Scotland’s government is merely a symptom of a far greater problem facing Scotland and the Scots.
I have been swayed by the logic and the supporting evidence underpinning Alf Baird’s assertion that Scotland is effectively, if not actually, a colony of England.
Postcolonial theory describes exactly how the machinations of a coloniser operate on the colonised and we see it in action each and every day right here in Scotland.
And once the premise that Scotland is a colony is accepted it’s clear to see that everything, and I mean everything, wrong with Scotland stems from that one truth.
Oh My Goodness surely Ms Roddick will be slightly displeased at the tone YOUNG Dovydas appears to be using towards elderly over 30s
I assume young Dovydas will be making his views vehemently and vociferously known at any cross party group on islands because there is an unacceptable number of AULD people on that committee
It is somewhat confusing that young Dovydas appears to revile the decrepit elderly over 30s when so many of his heroes and heroines (am I allowed to say that now) like Nicoliar,Alyn and others are in a state of advanced decomposition
Can we be assured young Dovydas and young CaMORON Greer will be fully supportive and highly promoting the Assisted Dying Bill lodged at HR
It is really reassuring that young people like Dovydas are Scotland’s future, they will be a beacon of hope to other countries who also have decrepit auld arseholes in charge
I think their parents (if they are still alive at their ripe old age) should be really proud that they have instilled such progressiveness and civic enlightenment in their children
I remember fondly the days of the young gangs of Easterhouse,Castlemilk,Drumchapel,Bridgeton,Oxgangs, their harmony and inclusivity for other young people was legendary
Scotland for the YOUNG TEAM
I can’t forgive myself for not only voting for Alyn Smith but campaigning to get him elected, so I don’t expect anyone else to. It didn’t take long (his first attendance at an SNP branch zoom meeting during Covid) for me to realise that he his interest in promoting independence was zilch.
Not long afterwards I and every other woman on the branch exec. left the SNP because (a) it had abandoned independence in favour of identity politics, particularly harmful ‘gender’ ideology) (b) there was no hope of reforming it due to the ‘ownership’ of its processes and positions by Team Sturgeon. When reformers were voted by the membership onto national committees the latter weren’t allowed to meet. I say this as someone who was voted onto such a committee. Alyn Smith memorably said “They (the reformers) have position but no power.” Damn straight, Alyn. Oops, could that fragment be construed as a hate crime? Honestly, as a mature person I meant it in a bland (‘un-reconstructed’ or ‘sane’, take your pick) sense.
Talking about ‘age’ — I’ve got news for Mr Dovydas and co. Far from blaming me, my teenage grandsons look to me to help them survive the injustice never mind insanity of what’s happening at their school. The boys have raised these issues with me as they feel confused and let down by the teachers who are supposed to protect children and young people, not collude with harmful and unsound propaganda. I did not initiate discussion as I’m mindful of the appalling treatment of pupils who challenge the overt promotion of propaganda by ‘Trans’-activist staff. Pupils have been shouted at and suspended from school for stating that it’s not possible for humans to change sex. Furthermore, children experiencing various of unresolved (by staff) problems (e.g. being bullied due to being overweight) are deciding that they’re not boys but girls or vice versa. And why wouldn’t they? There are exclusive clubs set up in the school to make them feel not only ‘safe’ but special. There aren’t coffee and cake events for ‘ordinary’ teenagers with or without problems. These fundraising events for LBGT (with posters all over the school saying NO LBG without T) are the ONLY such events.
Reminds me of Logan’s Run. A popular TV series back in the 1970s. Everybody under the age of 30 was OK until their 30th Birthday. Then rather dramatically they had to be vaporised for the greater cause of the general population. The only solution was to run to the free hinterland and hope a Sandman didn’t catch you. Old people survived out in the hinterland. I always knew one day I would return to the Highlands!
One thing that annoys me about stupid cunts is how they can’t accept when they “got a really good deal out of it”; Harvie retains incredible de-facto influence, whereas the toxic midget should by rights be cast beyond the doors of night … has Kate Forbes been calling for “corrective r4pe”? Is there no religious tolerance for presbyterians? Harvie, shiting it, never mentioned anything about islam, a very “socially conservative” ideology. But Harvie, and it must be the gay in him, just won’t let it rest – the wide eyed outrage never dims.
– then this guy .. that’s a colossal effort-post from the lad; impressive in a way, it’s so bad, it defies being picked apart, like it should be a re-write. The badness, the long winded sanctimony reminds me of … bella … and there it is! He learned his bullshit from the masters, Hassan and Small will be glowing.
But in the normal world, he … “writes like a pouf”. This is why we need to bring back bullying in schools. And the belt.
– the lithuanian angle is interesting – around the turn of last century some lithuanians turned up, most were catholics but some were jews; the catholics went to lanarkshire, the jews to the south side. The catholics were proper, hard-core catholics, so either he’s drifted a long way, or he is a tribal member. Normally I would against abortion, but this was a big miss for the hot needle and the dustbuster, shame his parents never believed in it. Maybe he exists because of a religion and values he hates.
There is certainly a bit of age-ist hate criminality going on there; no tolerance for bigots, mind, and he should be cancelled.
Part of me hopes for global war (just watched Fallout), and I think this fella should be drafted, to fight for trans rights in the yoo_kraine.
“In a decade we’ve went from a civic nationalism where anyone of any race, sexuality, religion or politics would be included in an independent Scotland, to ‘our way or else’.”
Very few countries give universal enfranchisement on constitutional matter in 2014 the SNP under Salmond did in the indyref vote and it cost us dearly with 72.1% of people from South of the border who live/lived in Scotland voting no to independence, whilst the majority of Scots did vote yes, that is a bit galling if you ask me.
Since then the incomers population has increased greatly and the hidden census that was a year late and cost millions more hasn’t been revealed to show us just exactly how many folk from South of the border have arrived in Scotland, the attitude towards who can and can’t vote in Scotland especially on constitutional matter has arisen and rightly so if you ask.
“Conversely, we gather that it’s already been reported as a hate crime by some concerned citizens, given that it fairly clearly appears to incite hatred on the basis of age, one of the protected characteristics of the new Hate Crime Act”
and religion:
“Your grandchild does think you are a terrible person for believing “normal Christian teaching” on abortion
Religions other than Christianity may have similar teachings.
and potential mis-gendering:
“Your grandchild does think…… . And she does think….”
How that this young man know if the grandchild is a he, a she or a “they”?
and political beliefs:
this individual falsely accuses people of being “actual murderers” for the mere reason of being part of a political party.
and race:
“people like you cannot be listened to”
“or any of its fellow travellers”
White Christians are not the only ones who may have objections to abortion. Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jewish, Sikhs, may too.
Transgender identity, sexual orientation and disability:
“a social democratic welfare state where they (young scots) and their friends are accepted for who they fucking are”
In line with the above, it seems like in the disturbed mind of this young individual, those who are no longer young don’t longer have to be “accepted for who they fucking are”, and that includes those with transgender identity, disabled and gay people because they become old too.
So it seems the young Dovydas has pissed on each and every one of the five protected characteristics included in the Hate Crime bill.
I find this individual’s ramblings disturbing. They are not even funny. They are irrational, delusional, ridiculous. They give the impression of a very confused, troubled and dangerous mind that is completely detached from reality, social norm, morality, empathy or respect for others. These ramblings come across as those of a sociopath. I think this person needs help.
But what I find even more disturbing is that ANYBODY in the SNP could have ever displayed the unprecedented level of idiocy and negligence of validating such irrational nonsense and allowed disturbed individuals like this to hold them and the party to ransom. This is negligence on steroids. People who are so embarrassingly weak that bent to sociopaths demonstrate they do not have the presence of mind to distinguish what is right from what is wrong, what is real from what is not, what is respectful from what is not, what is acceptable and what is not, and what is reasonable and what is not. Such people are not fit to hold office and therefore should have never been allowed anywhere near the levers of power. What the hell were they thinking? What the hell those around them were thinking? How could they possibly allow our government to be held to ransom by completely delusional extremists like this?
How could they have been so stupid?
That was the most utterly unhinged load of stinking bilge I’ve read in a long time. Totally off the planet. The likes of this Dovydas Kuliešas character haven’t the remotest clue how alienating and irrelevant their wacky obsessions are to the general public.
Incidentally, I’m wondering what on earth all this identity politics and ‘women have penises’ garbage has got to do with independence. We voted SNP because we want Scotland to be independent. They have totally failed to deliver and they deserve nothing but contempt.
Worm complains tearfully when his host goes to the surgery for treatment for a nasty intestinal parasite.
“I was peacefully sitting here in his gut sucking his lifeblood when the old bastard decided to throw me out. How dare he!’ screeched the young bloodsucker.
Ebok
Ignored says:
9 May, 2024 at 10:05 pm
….The weakness of gaming can be shown by considering the outcome of a (highly unlikely) case where a Holyrood election was called tomorrow, and SNPs estimated half million remaining voters all voted SNP1/green2. This would result in SNP getting between 2 and 10 constituency seats – which would be fantastic – but greens would win 20-25 list seats.
The weakness in your argument is a disingenuous fraud like Sturgeon, not the “List Party” strategy which you describe as gaming the system.
The whole point was to have a List Party, ALBA, picking up those 20-25 List seats, and thus augmenting an SNP Constituency majority with an ALBA List Seat majority, and thereby have pro Independence supermajority which could power towards Indyrf2 without seeking Westminster’s “permission”.
The strategy was sound. ALBA were sincere, and Salmond’s timely initiative was inspired. The tre@chery lay in Sturgeon, subverting any prospect of a pro-Independence supermajority through her fear of Alex Salmond, the man she’d freshly conspired to destroy.
Don’t blame the strategy. In it lay victory for Scotland. Sturgeon was its undoing, and may she rot in hell for wrecking Independence for a third time, the nasty little wretch.
The photographs of gender mutilation are legion. Those who carry out and authorise these legalised acts of butchery are no less than those ideologues who did so at the extermination camps in the 40’s
I do hope and pray that one enlightened day all of those cheerleaders are held responsible and will pay for their crimes against humanity.
There has to be justice for their rank abuse of the vulnerable.
The John Smith Centre has announced that Eddie Barnes is to be its new Director. Barnes is presently Director at Gordon Brown’s, Our Scottish Future, a devolutionist pressure group. Our Scottish Future is curiously a Private Company rather than a Charity.
Our Scottish Future lists its Advisory Board. These are predominantly Labour Party functionaries with a few LibDems thrown in. First on the untitled, non-alphabetical list is Andrew Hilland.
From the site bio.: “Andrew is an executive at the strategic advisory firm Hakluyt. Born and raised in Lanark, he graduated from Oxford University in law and has worked subsequently as a lawyer and a human rights activist. His work has taken him to the US, where he helped represent prisoners on death row, and to the UN, where he presented a report on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
Hakluyt is a private intelligence outfit set up and staffed by former Officers of MI5 & MI6. Andrew is to put no fine point on it, a Spook.
Hilland will not have to follow his boss over to the John Smith Centre, they already have their resident spook in the shape of former Hakluyt Director, Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill.
The SNP must be destroyed if independence is to be achieved. The pro-indy movement needs a radical alternative. If Alba was to adopt abstentionism they’d be independence leaders overnight and the independence movement in general would get a tremendous boost. And britnats would self-combust in rabid rage…
religion?
– all the major religions – catholicism, islam, judaism (maybe also buddhism and hindus) are against, in broad terms “degeneracy”
– protestants, generally try to be “progressive” which means not actually believing in anything, and just “trying to get along”; most of them, that is, though the extremists still do have firm beliefs, e.g. presbyterians, southern baptists.
– the most ironic thing about “woke-ism” is that it is, in essence, a new global religion being imposed, top-down, by elites. Operationally it is a form of neo-puritanism, which needs to be understood.
In puritanism/presbyterianism/extreme proddyism – there is no salvation, no free will, no “doing good works to buy yourself a place in heaven”, it is all predetermined, ye are of the elect or ye be damned. Since we all start at zero, or rather are in original sin, and there is nothing which can aid your situation, it is very much a game you can only lose. Winning thus becomes a matter of “going backwards slower than the next guy” – to protect yourself, get your accusations in first – mistress martha she be cavorting with satan in the graveyard … and she has a black cat …
Witch Hunts! – a prod phenomenon, not the inquisition. Get on that fucking twitter and hunt down the racists and the transphobes, virtue signal along the purity spiral into madness!
Satanism seems to be the most “progressive” of the religions and the incarnation Baphomet, had a dick AND a pair of tits. Which is probably a coincidence.
As for the modern fetish “access to healthcare” (abortion), this seems to mirror the hebrews period when they sacrificed their children to Moloch, by throwing them into a fiery furnace underneath the idol; maybe jehovah wasn’t working out, so they decided to hedge their bets.
Destroying your children via drugs and genital mutilation is another form of sacrifice.
GIVE US YOUR KIDS SO WE CAN SLICE THEIR JIMMIES AND HACK THEIR TITTIES !!!!
The Scots are in the process of being extinguished as a people and as a nation. Not the English, the Scots.
Clunky cliches and language like ‘blood and soil nationalism’ are often deployed by oppressors in their attempts to discredit a people’s legitimate right to exist.
None but the Scots should have a say in their own future as a people and as a nation.
None but the Scots should get to decide whether they continue to exist as a unique people or be assimilated by a foreign, an alien, culture.
None but the Scots have any legitimate right whatsoever to participate in what are entirely Scottish affairs.
It really isn’t the business of foreign nations and their peoples to dictate what the Scots do with their own lives and in their own country.
It puzzles me that so many folk are willing to take the World Economic Forum at face value. Take a sceptical perspective and concentrate on their rather ostentatious presentation. It’s a clear psyop.
Klaus Schwab looks like a Bond villain, dresses like a Bond villain, acts like a Bond villain and talks like a Bond villain. It’s all too obvious.
Their events are geared to maximise exposure. Controversial issues such as the infamous talk on genetic engineering humans to make them allergic to consuming meat, are slickly filmed and distributed. They know this will cause outrage yet they actively seek out publicity. Everything is geared to distraction, camouflage and subterfuge.
Running the WEF psyop is of course not cheap, so why is it necessary and what does it achieve?
The WEF are running cover for nameless, faceless bureaucratic drones in Foggy Bottom who plot and conspire to manipulate Western society to a create a passive populace under a technocratic, dictatorial, Permanent State.
“Alba’s share would have been unaffected because there wasn’t enough time to make the case for Alba.”
Ebok, I don’t think it was that. Alba’s message got through well enough, but because of Nicola’s Fatwa on Alex, the SNP loyalists who understood the second vote gave it to the Greens rather than Alba.
SNP leadership and a very sizable number of their membership would rather cut off their own heads than rub shoulders with Alba.
Alba needs to accept that now and stop being the wee, slightly better SNP.
They should make their pitch on sovereignty and the Claim of Right, and stop saying people should give their first vote to the SNP. The SNP back in the day had to listen to Labour hold that gun to people’s heads ‘vote for them and you are letting in the Tories’. But eventually people ignored it and the SNP started climbing the rungs of the ladder to power.
Same thing needs to happen now to the SNP.
It’s been a while but John C picks up and runs with the #FranchiseKlaxon
Aye, lets just give everyone that rocks up a vote on Scotland’s constitutional future, even though they may have only just arrived, may have no intention or long term commitment to staying here long, and have a get out of the shit card to play if they don’t like it here because they have the ability to escape and return to their homeland if they choose.
It’s sooo progressive to dilute democracy and deny a peoples their right to self-determination.
And for clarity, calling to restrict aspects of the franchise like voting eligibility through duration of residence is not necessarily blood and soil ethnic nationalism.
Another side to immigration is that by folk making the choice to leave their homeland because it is more advantageous to go elsewhere, it means that their homeland loses citizens that could have stayed and voted to better influence and steer the course their homeland takes to better suit there ideals.
You can throw in that all we need to do is better convince folk, but you handily omit to acknowledge the massive influencing power of the Unionist controlled media that Scots are up against, and good luck trying to explain the complexities of Scotland’s political predicament and voting systems to folk with little if any knowledge of the subject and limited comprehension of the English language.
I know quite a few EU nationals that just rock up here for summer, pay little if any taxes but use our health services, then go home to avoid our harsh winters. Even after informative conversations with them they remain utterly clueless on the intricacies and nuances of Scottish politics.
I have an English neighbour who has lived here for decades but she didn’t vote in the 2014 Indyref because she felt it was for Scots to decide, which I felt was a very principled position to take. I’d certainly not feel I had any right to move to another country and have an instant right to vote on its future without meeting at least some basic enfranchisement criteria.
I have mentioned before that england is destined to fall beneath the waves and some people might have thought I was joking, well …
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/05/uk-banks-will-go-bust-because-of-climate-change.html
– and what happens will be either a massively expensive program of coastal flood defences, or mass migration to “higher lying lands” … either way, we are on the hook for this, yet again.
The grand infrastructure programs are not going well – the nuclear power is already well behind, and for a shocking read, check out the telegraph of yesterday which gives a detailed and incredibly frank account of the new nuke underground dump (a cavern twice the volume of wembley stadium) which will take generations to build and will cost a fortune. Revealed in the article is how we already have, literally, a million tons of radioactive shit, and it was recommended to stop making it, way back, because we produced too much … they did not.
– the “good news” is, amazingly, it is NOT in Scotland (the 2 proposed sites are off cumbria, or the yorkshire coast), but I wouldn’t count on that because – english political opposition will be fierce and they can always hurt their politicians at the ballot box, whereas Scots are outvoted 10 to 1, and have no political power whatsoever, and “representation” that is irrelevant.
Remember watch what Swinney and his party does not what they say.
“John Swinney has claimed independence can be delivered within five years as the arguments are “compelling”.
The First Minister said ending the Union was the “answer” to the cost-of-living crisis and Brexit which he said were the result of decisions taken in Westminster.
The new SNP leader is facing claims of going soft on his party’s key aim after he scrapped the post of independence minister in his reshuffle
But he offered hope to independence supporters on the timescale of a new Scottish state.
When asked whether independence could happen in five years, Swinney told Sky News: “I think independence can be delivered in that timescale because the arguments for it are compelling.”
Swinney and the SNP Clique (Old Guard) chomping at the bit to introduce the GRRB back into the Holyrood chamber even though the public like the Hate Crime Laws don’t want it.
Like I said watch what Swinney and Clique do not what they say, next up juryless trials forget cheap energy or good housing and education or the NHS.
“THE Scottish Government has issued a statement on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill following an interview with John Swinney on Sky News on Friday morning.
The bill, which makes it easier for trans people to get a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) was passed in Holyrood in 2022 but was later blocked from becoming law by a section 35 order from the UK Government.
When asked by Sky News presenter Wilfred Frost whether the Scottish Government was going to “abandon” the policy, the First Minister (below) said: “We quite simply can’t proceed with it. It’s legislation that can’t be implemented, so we cannot take that forward.””
However, the Scottish Government has since issued a statement after Swinney’s response was interpreted as confirmation that the legislation would be abandoned.”
“Following the interview, a Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The GRR Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament. If the UK Government lifted its legal block – the section 35 order – it would become law.“The problem is that the current UK government has said they will not.
“The Scottish Government’s position is simple – UK Government should lift their section 35 order.
“They have made it clear however that they will not, and until they do, it is simply not legal to implement the legislation.””
The EU is over.
Von Der liar was sent in to crash it’s economy to make America great again & she’s doing a fantastic job. The whole world knows this apart from the SNP it seems LOL
The SNP have been too busy fannying around with the yoof wing to notice the meter ran out on their light.
Swinney & 5 yrs eh? How convenient to be the same time as an election term. If the arguments are compelling for indy then why isn’t he telling everyone else what they are? There is zero point to those losers otherwise.
@ Geri
Aye, Scots jist need to try harder to convince folk is bullshit when the goalposts can be so easily moved by those that hold real power and influence.
For examples of that power and influence being applied see how Corbyn was dealt with.
And see how well these endured when the real power was exerted to see them off.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/flying-with-wings/
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-cat-and-all-the-pigeons/
FFS even some of our “politicians” don’t even know how the voting systems work.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/dawn-of-the-imbeciles/
But I should be able to just rock up to the local electoral office in France with my B pass French O Grade, kenning next to heehaw about le politics de Francaise, but having once built a really competitive regulation compliant Peugeot 205 challenge rally car engine for a pal, drank plenty appellation controllée red wine during the couple of summers I spent as a watersports instructor sur leur lacs et mer, and state je m’appelle Dan ya bass, donner moi une vote on votre future s’il vous plait.
It’s amazing that so many Scots??? who profess to be independence supporters are quite willing to be held captive for another 300+ years by people who have no cultural attachment to being Scottish yet they insist their progressive and inclusive attitude will win independence support
BREAKING NEWS, Alex Salmond gave the new people all sorts of progressiveness and inclusion AND the VOTE and they still told him AND us to Fuck Off
What the progressives fail to realise is that the majority of people voting from the ROuk are quite happy to remain in the UK, they have attachments to the UK which supercede loyalty to their new home Scotland,as long as they can get cheaper bigger, better housing,pension stability in the UK, free and better NHS care, free dental care,free bus passes,fuck independence, they have the best of both worlds, they DON’T NEED independence to thrive WE DO,how many English, Welsh, NI,or other nation new people give a shit about being Scottish, they ALL have their own nationality but by coming here they PROVE it’s NOT about nationhood it’s about personal gain,people thinking that blood and soil nationalism is an insult or something to be ashamed of GO and ask some Pakistani, Indian , Thai or many other nationalities what they feel about their nationality
I am sick of politicians and others giving our nationhood away like some cheap suit
There is a perfectly good case to be made *FOR* the introduction of some form of restrictions on who has eligibility to vote in another indy referendum. In 2014, for example, there were thousands of folk given a vote who no longer live in Scotland and who, at that time, never had any intentions of living in Scotland long-term. Thousands of folk who got to dictate what we in Scotland would be subjected to long after they had f@cked off. That should never be allowed to happen again.
Also in 2014 hundreds of thousands, if not millions, got to help the ‘No’ side promote a ‘No’ vote from other parts of the “UK” and abroad. Some of them were even bussed up to Scotland to walk our streets and gatherings promoting their “Don’t go, we love you” shite etc. The conditions attached to the 2014 vote were a nice fairyland idea but in reality was the basis for our defeat, along with a massive media campaign against ‘Yes’. A UK media campaign responsible for echoing every sinew of “Project Fear” 24/7 right into our homes.
Only with hindsight can we now see just how badly the deck was stacked against us. Still, with all of that said, we managed to achieve a remarkable final effort from a 27% starting point. The reason the BritNats absolutely fear another indyref is they know they will lose it. All their lies and manipulations have now been well-and-truly exposed. And their response? Cover everything in The Butchers Apron. LOL!
Campbell Clansman @ 9:35 pm
“Who decides what an “ethnic Scot” is?”
Ethnicity is an important feature in terms of the struggle for liberation of an oppressed ‘people’.
As Northcode implies, ethnic Scots ken wha they are. However, in a colonial society the more assimilated native has a intentionally confused identity, and hence a strong desire or ‘craving’ to be like the colonizer, resulting in a ‘false persona’ (Purves), or ‘cultural illusion’ (Gaughan).
In the colonial situation, perhaps the main point, as Albert Memmi wrote, is that:
“Being oppressed as a group, the colonized must necessarily adopt a national and ethnic form of liberation from which he (i.e. the colonizer) cannot but be excluded”.
In other words, the liberation (i.e. independence) of a colonized ‘people’ is a matter only for the oppressed ethnic group; the colonizer (and assimilated elites, albeit to a lesser degree) is ‘a more privileged being, an usurper’, and hence has more interest in maintaining the status quo and an oppressive exploitative system.
And, as Professor Michael Hechter noted in the context of the ‘UK Internal Colonialism Model’, the development of independence movements throughout the Celtic Periphery “reflects the ethnic solidarity of the oppressed groups”.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/08/15/determinants-of-independence-ethnicity/
Edinburgh and it’s cultural appropriation and even the very accent. Is an example to the rest of Scotland, of what happens when it’s native population is pushed out.
They used to call it the Athens of the North. Culturally it is the Cambridge of the north. It didn’t help that the natives bought into the anglicisation of the culture and spoken word. Accent is important. Because it defines thd history of a land. That’s why you cross the border and you know right away, you are in another country. You just have to speak with the locals.
In Edinburgh they look down on Glasgow because they speak with their native tongue. They are in fact cultural snobs. That’s not to say there aren’t pockets of Edinburgh where you still hear Ken and Aye. But the middle classes have an Anglo accent.
I love Rugby but you never sea a stadium covered in Saltires. Yet Hampden is a sea of white and blue. Why is that? It can only be that they view their country differently and are unionist in the main.
At moment there is a mass exodus of middle class Angles coming to Scotland. Ironically they will homogenise Scotland into the very thing they left England for. That’s just what the English do, they have done it everywhere in the world. We are their last colony, their last hope and their easiest exit from a toxic culture in England.
We might be the last generation of Scots. In 50 years without independence the migration will explode. And native Scots pushed out, much like the city of Edinburgh.
Big Jock @ 9:27 am
“We might be the last generation of Scots. In 50 years without independence the migration will explode. And native Scots pushed out, much like the city of Edinburgh.”
Demographics are a key factor in any colonial situation and used by imperial powers as a method of divide and rule. Scotland has been subject to numerous imperial population management policies since the violated Union treaty began, starting with clearances, evictions and transportations, followed by Empire Resettlement programs and other incentives amidst enforced economic decline and mass unemployment resulting in removal of between 3-4 million Scots; this was combined with in-migration of a meritocracy from rest-UK, mostly from England. Historic early census data tells us there were already some 30,000 people from England living in Edinburgh during the late Victorian period, and mostly oriented towards professional and managerial jobs.
Based on available and historic census data we don’t have 50 years, or perhaps even half that; this is because independence obviously becomes more difficult when an indigenous people who comprise the bulk of the anti-colonial movement falls close to or below 50% of the population (as in New Caledonia). Scotland appears to be very rapidly headed in that direction, if not there already:
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/10/26/determinants-of-independence-demographics-2/
@Andy Ellis 11 May, 2024 at 8:09 pm;
Stuff your bigoted nationalism accusations! Your allegation that a sovereignty-based franchise in Scotland would be based on bigotry is unwarranted, scurrilous, and vexatious.
Our sovereignty is formally stated in Scotland’s own constitution, and there is no evidence that it was ever intended to apply more widely than just to Scotland’s own people. Given its antiquity, that’s a highly unlikely interpretation.
A sovereignty-based franchise is a natural and legitimate outcome of the sovereignty of Scotland formally belonging to its people, a constitutional tradition that can be traced back many centuries, and ‘people’ in this context essentially must mean native-born Scots.
That alone makes it clear that any formal plebiscite of the Scottish electorate can engage that sovereignty when it becomes relevant, and an independence referendum is unequivocally a major constitutional decision that clearly belongs to the sovereign owners of our country on both constitutional and democratic grounds.
But that doesn’t have to mean that non-sovereigns can’t ever participate, but it does mean that it MUST be up to the sovereign Scots themselves to decide whether non-sovereigns may acquire the privilege of participating in a Scottish constitutional plebiscite, and how that acquisition can happen.
In Scotland it’s not up to anyone else.
As for the Edinburgh study, it says what it says, and nothing else is currently available to contradict it. Your pretence that bigotry would have played a significant part if the ‘nativists’ had their way, and that such a franchise should therefore be disallowed because of it, is based on nothing more than dishonest and wishful speculation by worried unionists.
Scotland is the sovereign Scots’ country and no-one else’s, and they alone have the right to determine who else gets the privilege of taking part in any constitutional plebiscite regarding their own country. If you don’t like that, tough!
Indigenous (or autochthonous) is the correct term. Native, as Northcode points out, is an applied term, used to paint indigenous people in a poor light, with negative connotations of primitivism, and therefore implying that the “natives” are somehow subordinate (to the coloniser). When actually, the opposite is true.
As regards the franchise, an unrestricted or “civic” franchise obviously favours non-Scots (and those who want to keep Scotland subjugated). Similarly, the Democratic Party in the US is attempting to give illegal immigrants the vote in order to boost their voter base before the election since their policies are essentially un-American (or at least put the American people last). Unfortunately it is part of Agenda 2030 to destroy individual liberty and national sovereignty. Just as the Covid bioweapon and plandemic were designed to destroy bodily autonomy, so Western nations are being flooded with immigrants to weaken national identity (“confuse the nations”), thereby creating internal instability and reducing the threat of organised opposition. Both individual liberty and national sovereignty are impediments in the way of total global control of the population by the elites and their organisations.
I was thinking when I heard the earnest speech by Kate Forbes that the SNP are very desperate and must keep the Greens on side.
I didn’t vote for the Harvie/Slater party and never will.
I don’t want children taught dangerous, unscientific crap in schools.
Window dressing, that is exactly what Kate Forbes is being used as here.
Shorn of any real power she is just plastered over the face of the rancid old Sturgeon regime that refuses to die or relinquish power.
I don’t why she is doing this, she is being used, and by the time it is over she will be despised same as them. She will have squandered her political capital on John Swinney.
Kate Forbes seems a bit dumb, bland, a team player when the team is rotten. She seems to lack courage just goes along with everything. As I heard it described recently she is a ‘go along, get along’ type of gal.
I can already sense the beginnings of me not liking her… it really did not take long. Every time I see he propping up Sweatpants Swinney it grows a little more…
Ash Regan much more reminds me of Salmond. She is much braver than Forbes, and IMHO much more principled and strategically minded.
Sigh. Trapped. Muzzled. Does Kate Forbes realise that sneaky Swinney has now got her exactly where he wants her? Effectively neutralised and forced to toe the party line. Did she walk blindfolded into this obvious set-up or is she a lot smarter than we thought?
Breeks @ 10.35
Whilst Ms Forbes has little appeal to me, friends and relatives who do like her seem to find her appealing because they view her as one of the few SNP politicians with “conviction politics”. Many of them also admiring Ms Regan for the same reasons.
Many of these folk aren’t particularly politically or independence minded, nor do they share her religious views.
Perhaps it’s just that she presents as someone who has some absolutes in her political life and this novelty makes a pleasant change from so many career politicians whose theme song could well be, “Any way the wind blows”.
I’ll never vote SNP again. It’s dawning on me that we’re going to enter a period of 10 years unionist control.
But our identity never changes. I’m a proud Scottish man. A patriot that loves my country.
I despise the globalists. If I had my way. We’d be talking about the demographics of English settlers coming north. To steal our land and our resources.
We need liberation and freedom.
I guess the green dress is to signal that she is there only to deliver the unpopular “green” free ports.
You cannot support independence and at the same time facilitate the chopping off of your country in bits so it can be sold off to external interests while at the same time killing the entry of revenue from those areas in the form of tax.
I would not be surprised to see Forbes, once she chops Scotland to bits with her “green” freeports, defecting to the tories, which seems to be her natural political home.
Those “green” freeports come across as the SNP’s response to the burden placed on generations of Scots with labour’s PFI con: “I see your PFI con and raise you to the even bigger con of tax-free ports”.
The more I see Forbes prancing around with Mr Black Pen helping him to hold onto the handbrake of independence, the more I am convinced her candidacy to the leadership election was only to divide the fundamentalist pro-independence vote naturally going to Ms Regan.
In my eyes, her pro-independence credibility is completely over. At least we know and do not waste any more time wondering how things would be if she had won that leadership contest.
In the dirty record today Swinney wants to wipe out child poverty in Scotland. Am I wrong in thinking that the SNP have been in power now for many years? This shite is fucking embarrassing and takes a brass neck like sturgeon has to come out with this. Peas in a pod.
I have met Forbes a couple of times and my impression was that she’s not very bright.
Every so often some tit comes in about fracking : it makes no sense (but it does)
– it is net energy negative
– it is an environmental disaster as you pump hydrofluoric acid and other shite into the groundwater
– it is insane to go fracking when you have tons of the highest quality crude to access
– the wells drop off sharply in production
– it is capital intensive, i.e. the industry is designed to allow the bankers to make lots of loans, make lots of fees
– if you think fracking will lead to any “low prices”, then you are the biggest fucking idiot and should be made a ward of state
Scotland has cheap energy, but we are in this defective political union which robs us. Robs us blind. We have loads of untouched oil and gas fields and far more electricity than we can use. We have no control over this, none.
As for freeports; let’s call them what they are – pirate havens, outside the law designed to suck revenue out of their host, which they leech upon.
Imagine a Scots billionaire buying up an old oil tanker to turn it into a shopping mall where you could buy anything at all, tax and duty free; he then parks it just outside english territorial waters, but easy access to all the lovely english people; how do you think the english govt would react to this MASSIVE DRAIN OF TAX REVENUE flowing out of the economy? They would go nuts, and be right to.
The biggest freeport of all is the city, which is a true pirate haven – the anglos began as pirates and remain so – an external sovereign state, which writes it own laws. It is the ultimate parasite and leech, and now wants to extend the model. All that freeport revenue will have to be processed through the city, mind.
I wrote a bit about the disaster in the waiting, nuclear plans of the UK; none of this will result in “cheap energy” because the pricing will be structured to lock in a guaranteed profit to the operators.
Any more bright ideas? – I suggest you fuck off to the comment section of the daily telegraph and take twatty macmainface, cavemen, etc with you.
If you are thinking of that great retort : what about GERS??
GER is that thing where :
the PEOPLE WHO ROBBED YOU tell you HOW POOR YOU ARE …
average GDP per capita of EFTA countries is at least twice that of the UK; raw GDP of Ireland (no oil), Norway (tons of oil), Switzerland (no oil, no seas) all about 3 times what ours is …
– we need to call in the fraud investigators, let’s phone Kroll Associates, get them on the case – look into 300 years of pillage. And maybe they will find the 600K indyref money for an hors d’oeuvre.
DO YOU WANT TO BE RICH or kept POOR by the most narcissistic, bad mannered, entitled, loud and arrogant people on earth? They aren’t even grateful, patronising at best.
Robin McAlpine’s latest, change in the Greens..hmm, all very Pollyannaish from McAlpine if you ask me.
“The SNP has now structured itself in a way in which bluntly only a leader can change the party. The membership can’t cast any other vote that will lead to reform (they tried, it was ignored) which is why they were so keen to make sure the membership didn’t get to vote for the leader either.
Where I have some hope that major and significant change might be possible is in the Greens. It seems that more and more people are now highly aware that Patrick Harvie has been leading the party further and further up a rather niche cul-de-sac. No-one now seems to link the Greens to environmental issues except those who hate climate change action.
Changing the SNP doesn’t seem possible now, at least in any acceptable timeframe, but changing the Greens may be. And this reality means that an awful lot of things outside the party which weren’t possible may be possible now.”
https://robinmcalpine.org/what-is-possible-and-what-isnt/
In Lochgelly?
That conference should be a belt
If ideas were commodities then that is all the SNP have left to punt – cheap tat and useless baubles, no matter how they try to dress it up. But like most other Western politicians, they are merely the props of a more sinister agenda.
There are several references to Dr Johnson further up this thread. Perhaps this one is equally, or even more, apposite.
James Boswell,who was considering remarriage, following an acrimonious and disadvantageous divorce some time before, asked counsel of his friend regarding his opinion of the likelihood of success of the proposed Union.
Johnson replied thus.
“Sir, I can conceive of nothing which better represents the triumph of hope over experience”
And that, my friends, is exactly where we are today, defined by a philosopher from 250 years ago.
an article on bloomberg, this caught the eye :
“Despite being Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria imports most of its gasoline needs because it lacks the refining capacity to meet domestic demand.”
– but at least the nigerians subsidise fuel prices so the people can live (fuck you, Scots!), though they have currency problems and it looks like their reserves are going to be wiped out. Forex speculators and hedge funds, circling.
Point is : should be a rich country, isn’t. Wetin be dey implications?
Once we start IMPORTING “ENGLISH” OIL then we really will look like an economic basket case. GERS will reflect this.
I haven’t read too much on it, but the phenomenon of being an oil producer and yet having to devalue your currency is either – spectacular incompetence, or a lot of evil fuckery going on.
Likewise Zimbabwe, literally, a gold mine. Should have a very strong currency, but you need to have some sober person to monitor the money supply and exchange rates.
Having said that, the USA should have seen the dollar tank a long time ago, but it exports its economic sicknesses to other countries (forced to use the dollar), the inflation it should suffer. This is the imperial privilege of big fucking guns, carrier battle groups, nuke subs – a cheque kiting / extortion with menaces operation. Print up dollars, get people to hand you over real wealth for them; don’t try this scam yourself mind, even as colour printers are scary good these days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuceecQ-7Gk
-it’s all about the paper. The interviewer was a notorious mortgage fraudster, but his crimes were amateur hour compared to wall st; he went to jail though, this is why you go to harvard/yale. First 20 minutes is his sad childhood.
Scotland had its own counterfeit genius – “hologram sam” – owned a printing business, of working class, socialist background; partly saw his enterprise as a method to destabilise the british state; fight the man, and make a profit on it.
I read police scotland have announced a report will be issued shortly!!
My god after all this time!!!
What a useless bunch the senior ranks must be right enough.
I have all the time in the world for the policemen in the beat. The senior ranks however need a clear out in a big way.
A small organisation with a turn over of a few million and they are incapable of reporting after all this time.
Forbes and Yousef are both trained puppet actors of the anglo-american establishment:
Why would someone dedicated to Scottish independence ever join a group like this?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British-American_Project
And that’s some company Yousef keeps having participated in this Rockefeller creation (scroll to bottom of Europe table):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Visitor_Leadership_Program
The SNP have just been a time wasting project for the past 10 years, if the green ports come to pass we’ll probably be given ‘independence’ in the 2030s because by that time there will be nothing of value outside of these ‘ports’ and we’ll all be digital serfs stuck in our 20 minute neighbourhood prisons anyway…
You tell it like it is – and this is exactly like it is. I agree, too, about, Forbes and Cherry. Neither is willing to face down the wokerati, and so, are useless to independence or for protecting children’s and women’s rights. Our sole hope is that they are ousted completely in 2026, but what will take their place? I am not as pessimistic about the future as you, Rev, because I believe that the culmination of events will lead to a huge shift in Scottish politics. What I am pessimistic about is what will happen after that. I think we are headed for a revolution in Scotland. That is what these people have consigned us to because of their own self-interest and their lack of any real commitment to Scotland. Not sure whether a third world war will come first or an uprising in Scotland, but both are on the cards. Stupid, self-interested people really are more dangerous than anything else.
Swinney on BBC Radio Shortbread this morning.
“When asked what he would say to those who believe that Scottish Government policies threaten the rights of women and girls, he said: “I want to do nothing that threatens the safety of women and girls, and I will do nothing to threaten the safety of women and girls.””
But remember Swinney commented a few days back that his party and the Greens and BLiS are still chomping at the bit to implement the GRRB, the SNP government appealed against a Westminster decision to block the GRRB spending thousands of pounds of taxpayers cash in the process.
The SNP government would NEVER take the English government to court with Scottish independence in mind.
Listen to what Swinney says then watch what he does.
I agree that there is no one within the SNP who is capable of getting Scotland out of the situation it is in now. So what if we look outside the SNP?
I am taking the following gentleman’s name in vain here, but I think, e.g. Tommy Sheridan standing against Humza Yousaf as an Independence supporting independent candidate would stand a very good chance of taking the constituency. Humza Yousaf doesn’t live in the constituency any more so why would I vote for him? (That is leaving aside all the other reasons I would not vote for him). Sheridan is well known in the constuency for historical reasons and he is a very good speaker. I know he has had some run-ins with the law but, maybe I am being paranoid, could the hand of the British Establishment been involved?
My point is, there must be some scunnered individuals in Scotland who would make good local candidates for the Scottish Government. I would love to have someone on a ballot paper that I could vote for.
The SNP’s allegiance is not to the Scots. It lies elsewhere – a good deal of it only to itself and those who lead it.
I’ve been reading btl comments for a wee while now and I know many on here have been reading, and posting, comments far longer than I have.
But I have yet to see a single idea, just one, here or anywhere else, that presents the union between Scotland and England in a favourable light – favourable to the Scots anyway. We all know it favours England very well indeed.
Are there any benefits to Scotland’s participation in in such a one-sided ‘union’? Any at all?
If there are, why haven’t those who favour such a union set them down clearly and called them out so those who are sceptical might be swayed to support their view?
Genuine question, Stu: if everything is now so hopeless, why keep the site going? Seriously.
For the sake of my mental health, I’m going to stop reading WOS.
Rev, thank you so much for what you have done since 2012, your articles, analysis and the wonderful Wee Blue Book (and the black one).
It’s no wonder that you are still the highest viewed blog, you’ve proved the others wrong and predicted this sithole that Nicola’s NuSNP was heading and people refused to listen.
Independence is dead for me, I know now, I will never get another chance to vote YES, I will never forget, the teardrops spilling on my ballot paper that asked “Should Scotland be an independent Nation”?.
To mark that box YES…What a fuckin feeling it was and now it’s a memory that is gathering dust, the whole YES movement is no more but a lingering memory, kept alive by the determined few who keep it in the public counciouness.
The Scotland of today is a dystopian nightmare and the wrong people are the politicians, even with the ones, you think have integrity let you down even more, Joanne Cherry for one.
As I say Rev, THANK YOU SO MUCH for being a true voice for Scotland and I wish you all the very best for the future.
Campbell Clansman said;
“Correction: There is not, and never was, a “Scottish constitution.”
And since it doesn’t exist and never existed (except in your imagination), the rest of your post is meaningless garbage.”
Correcting your ignorant correction: Scotland’s constitution is perfectly real and under a formal guarantee of its continued authority in Scotland as an unyielding condition of ratification of the Treaty of Union. You know, the one that founded the Union and its parliament at Westminster. You must have heard of it, surely!
And since both parliaments did ratify that Treaty along with that condition, the obligation is binding on Westminster and on the Union.
It appears at the end of Article XXV as an addendum, known as the Tenor, which means an exact legal copy, and cites Scotland’s famous 1689 Claim of Right, passed by Scotland’s Convention of the Estates, which itemised several aspects of Scotland’s constitution, presenting formal justification for firing King James VIIth for breaching that very constitution. And he wasn’t the first or the last to feel its legal teeth chomping on his arse!
And just for your delectation, CC, there is no such Treaty-based guarantee for England’s non-existent constitution.
Robert Louis
Ignored
says:
14 May, 2024 at 7:12 am
Don’t engage trolls – because that is exactly what they feed on.
Ordinarily I’d agree 100%, but when it comes to Scotland’s sovereignty, it is Scotland’s indoctrinated ignorance which greatly empowers Westinster and routinely invites Scotland’s unconstitutional subjugation. It’s not accidental.
There’s no harm in repeating the truth whenever a troll tries to assert the false UK narrative as legitimate. Ignorance help them, but damages us.
We’ll never convince the mankey jaiket types anyway, but the more often the truth is presented, documented, and the links and sources repeated, the easier it is for “little people” to learn, grow in confidence and ultimately put these bores in their place.
Never forget, it’s vital for the enemies of Scotland to undermine the credibility of Scotland’s Constitution, because acknowledging that Constitution it would require them to concede unequivocally that Scotland was, and remains, a sovereign Nation, and their Act of Union beachball is burst immediately.
Every so often I start to backslide and go easy on the english (- just like us really, my aunty is english, the working class of liverpool and the working class of glasgow …), then I see things like this –
and it all comes back to me what an absolute shower of cunts they all are, especially those from the south east, the pure anglos, and the desperate need we have to be rid of them, forever. Also makes me think, did they ever do a previous story in 2014 “hey nigel – how to get yourself a snide vote to stop the smelly socks pissing off with all the oil and crashing england back to 3rd world status”?
The recent indy marches have been underwhelming, “believe in scotland” (to do what – shite its pants and cringe in the corner?) a sad joke; you call that a protest??
a contrast …
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1888856/canary-islands-anti-tourism-protests-supported-london-demo-weekend
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/12518578/tourist-protest-tenerife-canary-islands-brit-holiday/
anglos nowhere thinking – “are we the bad guys?” Reportage, as you expect, a bit sneaky – “anti tourist” protests; grudgingly, references to “brits”, but – it’s all really about the english, the english people, not stroppy germans, or loud italians, the anglo, the rosbifs – “them”, the people who turn it all to shit wherever they go. NB they had a protest in London as well.
any yoon-troll who pops up to tell you “spain will veto Scotland joining the EU because of catalonia”, save these articles to your hard drive, and we’ve not even mentioned Gibraltar.
note how the economics arguments become secondary to ones about respect, culture and identity; arguably tourism keeps the canaries afloat and the scarlet skinned brutes DO “pay you peoples wages” – but that’s a shallow analysis – the domination of tourism has led to a rotten economic development model; for a start, the power lies with land owners, property developers and behind them banks (plus a huge amount of dirty money needing laundry), what gets “allowed” for the ordinary tenerifean is a job as a waiter, cleaner or barman, plus you can likely only afford to rent in your hometown, and thus youngsters with any kind of sellable talent in the mainland will head off there. The locals become helots in their own land, ruled over by brutish ingrates.
The tenerifeans still have a chance as they retain political power; too often economic power easily translates itself into political, but the “expats” have not done this properly as it would involve learning spanish, and english don’t speak foreign. In Scotland you will find most quangoes headed up by delightfully middle class and sharp elbowed english folks, let’s call them the “artisanal cheese on orkney”-Landward crowd – we got taken over, long ago, and these wankers exist at all levels.
Remember the unearned jackpot of the southern englander via the property market was a deliberate policy by the conservative party, a sop, a bribe to their voters – vote for us and your house goes up in price; the creation of these asset bubbles is a deliberate policy of the tories/bank of england, but at the bottom of it all, it is collateralised by the scottish oil and gas. We get robbed once (the revenue), twice (the infrastructure of the south east), three (rising house prices, in the south east) and four times (the little englanders sell up and move up here). And most Scots don’t even realise it.
– it is fucking clever, and pretty impressive – world class cuntery I would call it.
We are destined to become Willy MacWonka’s Highland Brigadoon Golf Resort Executive Community, the Scots the oompah macloompahs. And I doubt we will have the balls to do what the canaries islanders are doing – the scottish cringe does its job – “thats anti english” – don’t want to be racist, lads, better we live in poverty and extinct ourselves than a middle class english is displeased.
This is like the warmup for a pogrom. All it needs is some violent incident and some fire raising and it will all kick off.
– worth reading these articles in full, the individual grievances are described; note how it all starts with economic exploitation, is irritated by a lack of respect, infuriated by indifference, but then the locals realise what a threat to their culture and existence the invaders are. Scots have been robbed, are being robbed every day, and will be robbed in the future in ways unimaginable, for it is to get so much worse – then there is the insult of “why are you not grateful?”
Who would put up with that?
“Genuine question, Stu: if everything is now so hopeless, why keep the site going? Seriously.”
Because the fight’s been going on for over 300 years, and we don’t just quit when it gets tough. We tried that once and people wanted us back.
Ruby Tuesday
“Nearly everyone I know remembers the last referendum and the aggro it caused and don’t want a repeat”
The only permanent solution for the colonial ‘condition’ is independence and hence liberation. Once a people are liberated they will no longer seek dependence or to be dominated by another ‘superior’ people/group. So long as colonialism continues the oppressed group ‘will never be at peace’ (Memmi); or until they no longer exist, which tends to be the ultimate aim of colonialism.
Within a ‘dependency’ the oppressed people have to figure out what they want, i.e. continued domination or liberation. This is complicated mainly for the more assimilated and hence privileged native groups, but for the rest of us who have already ‘decolonized our minds'(50%+) its a straightforward decision:
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/the-colonial-mindset/
Geri, you put in a turn but while you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink (plus this place is never short of the bad faith argument, is it?)
– anyone can just google for “freeports richard murphy” and read the first two articles.
Then if you want you can say :
whit diz he know – he disnay know whit hes talkin aboot …
and there you have it. But who do you want to believe? The tories?? the people who told you brexit britain would be booming with trade deals …
– except there are none forthcoming; this was reported on bloomberg, but not the UK press. With tragic irony, the same day bloomberg reported the EFTA countries (our dudes) had signed a 100B trade deal with India.
The tories always claimed – “you might hate us, but we can RUN THE SHOP”; well, they can’t and they never could (- they even started the great war since they got overtaken by german industry)
Corporations are there to make profits for their shareholders only, with no wider societal common good; to get any mutual benefit out of it, you need to regulate the markets and make people pay their taxes. Freeports piss all over this.
There are two word/phrases people really need to start using about our political leaders “satrap” and “comprador elite” – their job is to see the wealth extracted at minimum cost.
Credit to Police Scotland. That was definitely a “don’t blame us, we’re doing the best we can” type apology.
It’s all just window dressing an virtue signalling though. Apart from identifying “key offender characteristics” which, given the material produced, looks and sounds a lot like racial profiling, the “informed by rigorous research and insight process” was likely intended to send a political message on behalf of the government and keep a bunch of NGOs paid or placated. If they were really serious about tackling hate crime, whatever that is, they should be talking to the various football associations about how to create a general climate, rather than setting themselves up as a figure of fun for a few weeks.
Still, if you wanted to undermine the authority of the police then £50K was probably a bargain.
“In terms of Section 17 of the Act, I can confirm that the information you have requested is not held by Police Scotland”
Excellent. So who is currently holding that information then?
“Those at risk of offending”
Who are those and on the basis of what were they considered “at risk of offending” while individuals like Sarwar and Yousaf were not targeted by the hate monster campaign despite offending millions with their anti-white speeches?
What about all those in the SNP, labour and Green parties who daily offend millions of women by patronising us and demanding from us to close our eyes, put fingers in our ears and shut down our brains so we can indulge them in their stupidity and delusion and pretend that some men are women?
How about individuals like the young Dovydas who deeply offend older people by openly discriminating them for having the audacity of exercising their freedom of thought?
Why weren’t they targeted by the hate monster campaign as being “at risk of offending”?
How would they know that (apparently) more than 13,000 guys from their target audience watched more than 30 seconds of the follow-up? What info do they have that reveals the age and sex of 13,000 supposed viewers of half a minute of stupid video? Do they think our heads zip up the back? Or are they in total cahoots with every single ISP in the world and have harvested all that extremely sensitive material? I think the words “We have no idea how effective this nonsense has been, and no idea who watched a meaningless,very brief section of a video. This whole thing is pointless,but we have to try and feed you some vacuous campaign-cheerleading dross to justify its expense, the furor over it, and our jobs in general.” Shaking my head here sadly. This country is utterly lost.
Lorna Campbell
Ignored says:
14 May, 2024 at 8:36 pm
Is this insanity never going to end?
It often takes a long time to reach breaking point, but we are getting there IMO. There’s a lot of inertia and disbelief at the start, and ordinary folks put up with a heck of a lot, for the sake of peace. But everyone has a limit, everyone has a red line. And when that line is crossed, the blow back can be spectacular. Think of a hydrogen cannister being slowly but increasingly heated in a fire. It won’t blow right away. Critical pressure has to be reached. Sometimes a minor, apparently insignificant event can be the final trigger that sets it all off. BOOM!
Republicofscotland
Same old, same old record from the colonisers handbook.
Smear & demonise an entire population because they’re really ungrateful barstewards for not agreeing to their continued plunder. We should all be thankful instead.
We’ve already had the terrorist tag. Mayhem introduced the separatist tag in parliament. Next move was removing freedoms with the police bill. Up next will be demonising until we’re described as no longer human & ("Tractor" - Ed)s that need sorting out & as an urgent matter for national security an urgent bill will pass through parliament to end any notions of ever leaving.
All permitted under Sturgeons watch. The loyal servant.
Scotland should run the unionists out of town. All of them.
Labour= Scotland is getting fck all.
Tories= Scots are terrorists.
Lib Dumbs = Scotland should never be allowed to exist ever again.
SNP = Scotland do as yer told. We want to keep our job. Fck mandates.
Will Scots rise to the challenge or are these arse wipes going to keep getting votes?
On a par with “let them eat cake” in terms of sheer cognitive dissonance. How does a country that has historically produced such a disproportionate number of great and influential people manage to provide to the body politic complete fkn dunces, or venal self interested rodents? Mebbe 300+ years of cultural and existential colonization?
Alf?
This is the culmination of SNP HQ taking over the selection of candidates from the SNP branches. You get to promote people who will never threaten your power.
The fact they make useless legislators and are incapable of representing the interests of their constituents isn’t important.
In the name of the wee man, where the hell do they get these numpties.
If that is her sincerely held view, I think that she is most definitely in the wrong party. Oh haud oan mibbie naw as the current SNP have morphed into the Labour party.
Ach well the sooner we get rid of theses eejits the better and hell mend the lot o them.
“Genius has its limitations, stupidity is not thus encumbered.”
MI5 has an annual budget of £4 billion. It exists to protect the British state.
The British Broadcasting Corporation had its charter altered by David Cameron to include promotion of the British state. The portion of its budget that is committed to that purpose is unknowable and inconsequential. Editorial bias comes without a price tag.
Other British agencies such as Special Branch will be actively engaged in thwarting Scottish independence.
Then there’s the plethora of think-tanks such as the John Smith Centre and Gordon Brown’s Our Scottish Future. These have undisclosed funding and proven links to the British Security Services.
And yet, the imbecilic brain farts of Emma Roddick are acceptable parlance within NuSNP.
The SNP is the Irish Parliamentary Party of the 21st century. Progress can only be made when the SNP shares the fate of the IPP.
I,m in Swinney has changed his lapel badge to a Saltire . I change my mind several times a day but my mind is firm on Swinney A useless piece of shite .
Those who continue to insist that the SNP remain a viable route to independence exist on a spectrum that runs from clinically naïve through ignorant and uninformed to disingenuous. The naïveté rests on an assumption that the British, Permanent State would stand impartially aside and observe as the institution it exists to conserve is disarticulated by peaceful, democratic means.
It would not be constructive to personally insult those who hold to this Panglossian perspective, but MI5 alone has an annual budget of £4 billion.
Universally, the moment of triumph in decolonisation struggle results from a “perfect storm”, the convergence of disparate influences and temporary events.
The present, Republic of Ireland originated at a point in time where a minor political party (Sinn Féin) allied with a covert insurgent movement (Irish Republican Brotherhood) were able to harness an existential threat to the colonial state (World War One) to blindside both the British Permanent State and its local surrogate (Irish Parliamentary Party).
Decolonisation of Vietnam and Algeria benefited from the psychological damage rendered the French state by defeat and four years of occupation in WW2 (Morocco and Tunisia were liberated without a fight).
Similarly, the dissolving of the British Empire post WW2 was at least accelerated by the privations inflicted on the British domestic economy by the Atlantic blockade and the Lüftwaffe bombing campaign.
The disparate elements of the “perfect storm” can be divided into those that can be internally influenced and those that lie beyond our control. In the case studies briefly touched on, the insurgent parties took advantage of geopolitical events.
In terms of what can be achieved in the absence of external trauma inflicted on the colonising state, the circumstances which prevailed in 2014 were perhaps fortuitously favourable to the insurgent, Yes movement. The apparatus of the British state (MI5, etc.) were caught off guard by the uprising of a spontaneous, decentralised, grassroots nebula of Yes groups possessing geographical and societal diversity that the bureaucratic, hierarchical and unimaginative arms of the Permanent State were ill equipped to combat.
The 10% margin of victory for No, incorporating the perfidious Local Government franchise and the now infamously fraudulent, The Vow, was too close for comfort for the British Permanent State.
The SNP have been incorporated into the fabric of the British state through application of tried and tested tricks. The acronym employed by the Security Services is MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise & Ego.
Also for consideration should be COINTELPRO, the manual for infiltrating and neutralising a target, revolutionary entity.
In any case, the SNP has been rendered an obstacle to its stated prime directive; Scottish independence.
Humza Yousaf, Jenny Gilruth, Patrick Grady, Angela Crawley, Stewart McDonald and Kate Forbes have been touched by the Machiavellian hand of the covert, American Permanent State.
Ian Blackford and Angus Robertson as members of the British American Parliamentary Group may also fall into this category (BAPG members are exempt for declaring US State Department gratuities in their HoC Register of Interests).
Ian Blackford and Pete Wishart vie with one another to become the first SNP MP to take the ermine.
The Party would be insolvent but for the £1.3m pa it receives in Short money from the British state and the c. £800k pa it extracts in tithes from its elected representatives in Westminster and Holyrood.
The SNP is as integral to the British state as the Irish Parliamentary Party was before it.
Jeezo!
Surely Emma Roddick only exists to show there’s something even less useful in the whole world than a hotel toaster.
The Scandi countries once had relationships close to ours in the UK, but managed to break free and are now all independent states in their own right. They co-operate on a wide range of issues of mutual benefit but never compromise their own, or each other’s independence. We could have a similar relationship with out former UK inmates, but not if England was to be the big wheel. Just wouldn’t work. Sweden is the biggest of the Scandi states, although Finland might be the biggest by area, not sure, but Norway is the richest and Denmark the happiest socially, with Iceland n to far behind. Intermarriage is fairly common and their nationals do work in each other’s countries. However, international relations and politics are not something that they swap and deal on, and neither would we. Sorry, Emma, you are speaking through a hole in your nethers.
Geri
Ignored says:
15 May, 2024 at 10:10 pm
Ian Smith
“We need to get a functional working and contributing society.”
No. What we need is work that pays a real living wage. Not slaves working for nothing while tax dodgers dodge.
Capitalism strangles the life out of everything to enrich the few.
There’s a saying, when playing Monopoly, if nobody builds houses / hotels, nobody loses and everybody gets richer.
Neoliberalism is not about a better life for everybody, it’s about harvesting the wealth of ordinary people to create obscene wealth for the greedy few.
Thing is, once you begin to think about it, it has a lot on common with the Treaty of Union; not just the plunder and intrinsic exploitation, but the vital necessity / dependence upon profound indoctrination of those to be harvested.
Auld Scots Law was rooted in the common good philosophy, and declared it illegal to profit from somebody’s misfortune. Just imagine how many corporate bodies, insatiable shareholders and greedy utility companies would be in the dock if that was still the case. All these fkrs profiteering from Air BnB short term lets while new wannabe families can’t get a basic place to live; – and literally fleeced of their wages if they can.
The system is BROKEN.
Here, today, Scotland has just declared a housing emergency, which will likely see the very same profiteering housing developers / financiers who maintain extortionate house prices by orchestrating artificially high demand and under supply, given licence to tear up more of our countryside, and make obscene profits derived from a housing strategy which extorts the maximum amount of money out for the absolute minimum of money in.
Big bucks for the developers and mortgage brokers who created this mess, but more trash-built, overvalued wooden sheds for people to live in, and spend their entire lives paying for.
The whole system is a racket from cover to cover. Most people know it’s a racket too, yet where, anywhere, do you see criticism of the rotten illusion? Where, anywhere, do people have a choice?
How I ache to witness a new era of Scottish Enlightenment which again, has the common good at the heart of it, yet “somehow” we get served up thunder-dunces like Roddick, Swinney, Sturgeon and all the other flops in our Vichy Holyrood.
We urgently need rid of these brainless bastards, prioritising My-Little-Pony politics over defending Scotland’s rights and interests as a Nation, while the odious Westminster “decides” we are generous allies to the genocidal murderers in Tel Aviv. It’s sickening. It’s criminal.
With Auld Scots Law back in command it actually would be criminal.
Speaking at Nigg Energy Park in July 2013, Alex Salmond referred to the six unions which bind Scotland to the rest of the UK – the EU, a currency union, the Union of the Crowns, a defence union through membership of Nato, a social union among the people of the four nations and the political. Of these, he identified the political union (the Union) as the one which was a serious problem for Scotland.
He said,
“The political union does not work for Scotland any more. It holds Scotland back and imperils our future. It will not bend and it will not change of its own accord. So we will, we must, change it.
“We must address and fundamentally change the political and economic union as a matter of urgency. This political union is only one of six unions that govern our lives today in Scotland, and the case for independence is fundamentally a democratic one.
“A vote for independence next year will address the democratic deficit which sees policies like the punitive bedroom tax, the renewal of Trident or Royal Mail privatisation imposed on Scotland against the wishes of Scotland’s democratically elected representatives.
“But that will still leave five other unions intact. We will embrace those other unions while using the powers of independence to renew and improve them.”
Viewed in the context of the time when it was made, it is a perfectly reasonable perspective. Maybe a bit too ‘reasonable’ for some. But bear in mind that Salmond was seeking to counter a relentless British propaganda campaign portraying Scotland’s independence as the total estrangement of the nation and its people. If the Better Together mob were to be believed, independent Scotland would resemble North Korea. But not nearly as welcoming.
Two thoughts struck me as I read Emma Roddick’s ‘thinking’ on the constitutional issue. The first was how much better Alex Salmond was at untangling the political union from the others and making it the villain of the piece. The second was how differently broadly similar ideas were received now as compared with eleven years ago.
Alex Salmond’s ‘six unions’ speech in 2013 prompted considerable discussion. But not, as I recall, serious controversy. Obviously, republicans and the anti-NATO / anti-EU contingent(s) were not pleased. Likewise, the currency obsessives. But, on the whole, the Yes movement understood why he said what he did and didn’t get too worked up about it.
The fact that Emma Roddick’s remarks along similar lines has provoked so much hostility speaks to the way general perceptions of the constitutional issue have changed in the intervening decade and more. This hostility is not, I think, wholly explaind by the clumsiness with which she expressed her views. Certainly, no allowances are now being made for and perceived need to calm fears of Scotland becoming and isolated pariah state, with razor-wire and guard-towers all along the border.
Even to hint at any kind of continuing formal union with rump-UK is enough to loose a torrent of angry objection.
With the usual caveats regarding generalisation, in 2013 we supposed that an amicable (to some degree) divorce from the UK was possible. Who outside SNP leadership still believes this now? Even within The Clique, who genuinely believes it?
Alex Salmond’s speech was, for the most part, received as the leader of the independence movement playing the political game within the context of the referendum campaign and the fight to restore Scotland’s independence. Emma Roddick’s remarks are immediately seized upon as the voice of those who have failed Scotland’s cause preparing the ground for further betrayal.
The entire tenor of discourse on the constitutional issue has changed dramatically since 2013. But you wouldn’t think so listening to John Swinney or his colleagues. Their whole demeanour suggests that they haven’t had a single fresh thought since maybe 2011. They really are clueless.
Peter A Bell @ 7:42 am
“The entire tenor of discourse on the constitutional issue has changed dramatically since 2013. But you wouldn’t think so listening to John Swinney or his colleagues. Their whole demeanour suggests that they haven’t had a single fresh thought since maybe 2011. They really are clueless.”
Insightful analysis, Peter.
By their deceit, the SNP elite has put themselves in a kind of ‘revolutionary’ limbo, or perhaps ‘bunker’ is an apt term; meantime the people see through them and have moved on to the next stage of decolonization, in their minds as much as anything else. We are starting to smell freedom, ‘the fear of the oppressor’.
Instead of declaring independence, as the SNP should have done, with its nationalist majorities, the dominant national party has ‘opted for neutrality’ (Fanon), and hence for a co-operation with the colonial regime. It has decided to become what is known in postcolonial theory as part of ‘the legal tendency’ in what is a contested territory.
This ‘legal tendency’ serves as a major impediment to independence whilst the imperial power, its imperial parliament and its imperial laws and agencies regard independence as unlawful; which implies that the SNP is now effectively one of the main barriers to independence.
There was no union of the crowns all that happened was a Scottish king took the throne of England, the Scottish crown and the English crown are utterly incompatible, in England the monarch is sovereign in Scotland its the people.
England’s current king did not swear to uphold the Scottish Claim of Right, (If he did England wouldn’t be able to rob Scotland blind) so he is not the king of Scots. There is a English Crown Office and a Scottish Crown Office, both are separate, there is no British Crown Office.
Ashcroft poll, field work 9 – 13 May. Westminster voting intention, Scottish sub-sample (477) half population of regular, full poll. (Change from 2019 GE)
Con 13% seats 7 (+1)
Lab 29% seats 31 (+30)
LibDem 13% seats 5 (+3)
SNP 24% seats 14 (-34)
Green 13%
RefUK 7%
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