7 January 2024 at 10:17 am
There has never been a time in my life, and I’m 53 that Labour or the SNP MPS from Scotland has managed to win anything meaningful for Scotland out of Westminster, Yes the Labour Party gave Scotland a parliament and look how it’s been abused by trapping Scotland into the Union, and it’s been abused by the SNP for the last ten years.
All my years as an SNP member and supporter (33yrs) I’ve argued that 1 we had to remove the monarchy from Scotland before we became Independent or how could you say you’re Independent.
I 100% believe the real force holding Scotland in this union is entirely down to the SNP and its MPs, MSPs and councillors putting their own interest before that of the people who gave them a job in the first place. I would prefer it if the Indy movement started using its brain rather than its heart, because if Alba, ISP stood in ever seat and for every vote they took off the SNP and allowed the Labour Party to wipe the board and remove every single SNP MP from Westminster I believe then we’d see a change in attitude from the SNP.
It isn’t hard to see that the next Westminster election is going to be a complete waste of time for the Indy movement, and it’ll entirely be down to Flynn and Humza - let’s get rid of the SNP for good and look to the next Holyrood election with Ash Regan as leader of the Alba party working with ISP and Salvo.
While the SNP is active as a party, Scotland will always be tied to this union, so the SNP collapsing as a party is the best way forward for us and the movement. Hannah Bardell is my MP and in this household we have every intention of voting against her to stop her being re-elected, she’s done nothing for Scotland or the Indy movement she’s a carer politician and is happy to remain at Westminster and do nothing for Scotland as long as we are daft enough to keep sending her there, well she finished in this household we want her gone and gone for good.
I agree with BB and the above comments. It really is time to assert our sovereignty which is totally subsumed in the Westminster sewer. We must explain to those who do not understand this and recall our MPs, pointing pout that when that happens, according to the terms of the 1707 treaty, the ‘UK’ Parliament has no power or legitimacy over Scotland.
This snub and that delivered to Kenny Mcaskill on his plea to allow the Grangemouth refinery to continue to process Scottish oil are enough to show that scotland is regarded as an english colony for London to treat with disdain, while plundering our resources to shore up their rotting economy.
Spot-on , Roddy .THIS is the Spirit . No more passivity in the face of Brit State assumed superiority .
Like any bully , they’ll wilt in the face of unflinching resistance . Look at the state of them currently , flexing their atrophied muscles attacking a much less well-armed , easy target , this time the Houthies in Yemen – as it their want .
Things not going well for the governing Brit party domestically ? Solution/distraction …..bomb some poor/brown people way over yonder where the * squirrels * roam , get the entire MSM to pump-out garbage about * defending Democracy * or some such bollocks , and some chinless wonder to spout totally lies to a nice , well-paid compliant BBC * reporter * . Job done . Same as always .
Let’s GTF out of this shit as soon as possible .
1st out of Westminster .
2nd out of Union.
Watershed moment? What, yet another.
Just how many of these have to happen before Scotland doesn’t just get serious but equally important, grows up.
Some examples –1979 – accepting the massive corruption pass rate for the 1979 Devolution vote that turned the outcome to be the opposite of what had been voted for.
1974 – 2005 – The McCrone report remained hidden for 30 years, but even when it was published in 2005 due to the recently passed Freedom of Information Act (that Blair regretted having happened), the exposure of the fact that successive UK governments blatantly lied about North Sea oil revenues for 30 years has had minimal impact on the push for independence.
The sheer scale of the demolition of trust and exposure of financial fraud that McCrone represented, and still does, should have blown the delusion of a ‘united’ kingdom into it’s rightful place of a union that is based solely on what the powers that be in England want it to be, regardless of how disunited and economically repressive it is in reality.
2016 – England’s Brexit result overriding Scotland’s.These are just three clear watershed moments that you’d have thought would have, as the saying goes, changed everything. But they didn’t. Just what will it take for people in Scotland to stop accepting being used and take responsibility for their own future? I’ve no idea, but watershed issues don’t have a great track record. They should have but don’t.
I agree with everything you wrote Roddy BUT who is going to DO IT and who is going to ARRANGE IT , Alex Salmond the leader of ALBA only has 2 MP’s so it would be simple for him to instruct Kenny and Neale to leave WM which I presume they would do , BUT humza the useless (not my FM) has 40 + and hell would freeze over before he would instruct those troughing clowns to walk out , and TBH even if he did I believe more than half of them would refuse because they know he is so inept and ball less that he wouldn’t and couldn’t do anything to penalise them.
The Scottish Nonce Party is dead to any REAL independence supporter and TBQH anyone who would vote for them deserves all they will get , and ANY female who votes for them deserves the deviants and perverts revenge.
In reality when you stop to look at the betrayal of Scotland and Scots that has taken place over the last 10 years WE are ALL to blame to some extent , politicians are only doing what they have always done , looking after themselves first and ALWAYS , OUR problem is that we fell for their LIES and some people are still believing their lies.
I believe that we have lost the battle but not the WAR , I believe that the current snp and the liars within it has to be destroyed before any headway can be made on independence and sadly at 73 YOA I will not see it, WE have to prepare a MASS voting opposition to show politicians that WE have had enough of their lies and failed promises and they WILL answer to the voters.
I regularly argued, sometimes vehemently with Peter A Bell on his blog as I do with Roddy on his blog but I have never questioned their dedication to the independence cause only their partisan approach to political parties or leaders , but I agree with Peter that we have to vote en mass to REJECT and DESTROY the current political setup and that can only be done collectively and towards that end I will be adopting and voting his #EndTheUnion on my voting slip and my family will do the same.
The fact is that we are an equal union; it’s just that neither the Scots nor the English populations acknowledge the fact.
Many Scots behave like downtrodden, beholden idiots. Many English behave as if they are our masters. The thing is: those rUK migrants up here can have a good life and their offspring will be Scots by birth, while retaining their English ties and heritage. They have much to gain and a huge amount to lose if they try to stymie our independence again.
We are going. Nothing is going to stop us so they should reconcile themselves, with their Scottish Unionist counterparts, that independence will happen. How it happens and how they will fare afterwards, it up to them. We are going regardless of them. They should look to their own best interests, and they do not lie with England.
When you consider how much Scotland has given to the world in inventions and discoveries in so many fields, this is a disgraceful state of affairs. But is it surprising? Scots have been ‘gas lighted’ for a very long time.
If you tell a child it is stupid and isn’t clever enough to do this, that or the other, it grows up believing it is inferior. The ‘establishment’ has been doing this to Scotland for the last 100 or more years in all walks of life, from treating Scots soldiers as ‘cannon fodder’ in WW1 to the fact that ENGLISH recruitment companies recruit and select the people for the top jobs in Scotland. Whether it be Health Board CEOs, High officials in banking, even local council CEOs. Nearly all of these are dealt with by these companies. I only know this because I know someone – of Scottish parentage – who runs one of these companies from his London office.
It saddens, but also disgusts me, that so many Scots have become craven cowards who will lie down and be trampled on by the bullies in the playground. Historically, the Scots were proud, strong and brave, with REAL leaders, who were not afraid to stand up and be counted. What are we now? Certainly not that…apathetic, downtrodden, a pathetic apologies that our ancestors would disown.Is the spirit of Wallace really dead? It looks like it and it breaks this old heart of mine.
Anyone who has been through the Scottish university system will immediately recognise the situation that Alf Baird describes above as being the factually unembellished case. To my knowledge, no Scottish government has ever sought to redress this by, for example, the relatively straightforward initiative of awarding grants to indigenous, working-class Phd students, many of whom,along with their families, will never be in a position to personally finance a further four years of study.
Without decisive political action, Scottish universities run the real danger of becoming “Scottish” in geographical terms only.
An excellent analysis of how the university landscape has developed across Scotland.
And yes, despite their charitable status and receipt of public funding, too many universities are ipso facto businesses. Reading the statistic that in some institutions only 10% of the senior staff are Scottish is a horrifying statistic. Does this mean that Scots are too wee, too stupid to do any better. Or is it a reflection of the number of indigenous Scots who are allowed places in some of our top universities.
Attracting talent from around the world is of course not to be dismissed but looking at Glasgow University and its hinterland in the West End one could be forgiven for thinking one was in Asia.
So how can Scots develop, grow the skills, the excellence of top tier performance when neither the undergraduates or the teaching staff are not Scots but rather folks from everywhere else but Scotland.
Many of our universities could in fact be elsewhere in the world. And in fact maybe they will be in due course as they franchise the brand in other areas of the world.
A timely and informative piece Mr Baird as the SNP government debate reducing Scots access below what it is just now.
Puir us.
I am Scorrish, and enslaved by my inferiority complex; my Colonial Masters are enslaved by their superiority complex and their desire to keep me under their heel (which is hard work, really – no quite awbody is a gutless wonder
)I am Scorrish and understand that I will never elevate myself to the level of my Colonial Masters; just as they lost the struggle to elevate themselves to the level of human being)Inferiority disnae just happen, y’ken: it requires constant cultivation – something my Colonial Masters excel at through centuries of practice – and ‘an ineducable hotch and rabble… who deem their ignorance their glory’
Under-development is good enough for Africa and it’s good enough for Dundee, is it. And Greenock. And Alloa. And the gowstie de-peopled wilderness of the Highlands. And we’re behauden to get even thatI am Scorrish, and proud of it – take me to a major sports venue and I will give it laldy when Flower of Scorland is played on the bag of pipes.
I am Scorrish – and it is not a curse!
The burden of freedom would bemuch worse!
This is an important piece, one that requires greater dissemination (no offence Iain). The kind of article that would once have graced the (Glasgow) Herald or Scotsman with a front-page lead.
What impact does this situation have on the diaspora? As senior academic positions are hoarded by a self-sustaining immigrant Mafia, what options are left for promising autochthonous faculty members? Clearly, migration works both ways albeit Scots being a minority (in all ways) will be subsumed into a transnational, nebulous collective.
This may work to the individual benefit of the mainly middle-class academic community in terms of personal development, but for greater society this is disastrous. As Alf points out, these institutions are not stand-alone, laissez-faire businesses (although some would have them follow this trajectory). They are in receipt of substantial taxpayer subsidies and as such should be held to performing a “social function”.
Alf states “… within Scotland’s universities today it can be a challenge to find any senior Scots academic at professorial level.” There is a very specific and curious exception to this.
At the point at which Scotland’s ancient Universities intersect the British Security State, Professorships are handed out like medals at a modern, Primary School sports-day.
In chronological order, the cases I am aware of are:
Senior MI6 Officer, Andrew Fulton granted the status of Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow from 1999 to 2000. This was an entirely synthetic episode intended to give Fulton academic and authoritative cover to spin the proceedings of the Lockerbie trial to the international press. Fulton’s tenure was terminated when his true status was revealed by the Herald (presumably as a result of leaks from an extremely pissed-off academic faculty). Fulton may or may not have been in receipt of a salary from the University (in additional to his MI6 salary). Fulton studied Law at the University of Glasgow in the 1950’s but being recruited by the Security Services while still a student, he was clearly entirely unqualified for such a title. Fulton went on to be Chair of the Scotland Conservative & Unionist Party.
Mike Russell was briefly a Professor of Culture & Governance (2015 – 2016) at the University of Glasgow. In common with the rest of our slippery candidates, Russell clearly lacked the PhD and teaching experience normally required for such a role.
Stephen Gethins is a Professor of Practice in International Relations at the School of International Relations, the University of St Andrews. Gethins joined this institute a matter of weeks after losing his Westminster seat at the crash GE of 2019. The website of the University is worded such that it suggests Gethins walked straight into the Professorship from “civvy street”, if so, this is another outrage against meritocracy. Gethins was (prior to his career in remunerated politics) employed by the US State Department front, NGO LINKS to run covert political influencing operations in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Kezia Dugdale was elevated to the role of Professor of Practice in Public Service at the University of Glasgow in August 2022. Following the pattern, Dugdale has no PhD and has no verifiable teaching experience. This appears not to be an honorific position and presumably carries with it a minimum starting salary (2022 figures) of £61.4k. This would be in addition to the salary Dugdale receives as Director of the John Smith Centre (at the University of Glasgow) and her weekly column in the (formerly Dundee) Courier and monthly column in the Times (Scottish edition). We can only marvel that Dugdale finds the time to fulfil the functions of a full-time University Professor. Curiously, the John Smith Centre (“Promoting Trust in Politics & Public Service”) is a registered charity that hides its sources of funding behind an umbrella of respectability offered by the University. Now why would a political influencing operation with such laudable aims apply obfuscation to disguise its patrons?
As someone who went as a mature student to Edinburgh University to study Scottish History, this is depressingly true.
THERE IS NO SCOTTISH HISTORY DEPARTMENT IN EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The individual academics are excellent, but the entire set-up is wrong. While there, they took the opportunity to remove the Scottish Sociology module my colleague had hoped to study at Junior Honours level, and at one point the Scottish Literature course was under threat. The excuse given, of course, was covid. The fact is, the people running the University use “Edinburgh” as a marketing tool, but would be a lot happier if it was a lot closer to the M25. The disgraceful shenanigans over David Hume is proof enough of that.
As a side note, our Universities are no longer seats of learning, they’re factories churning out degrees to privileged foreign students, and they’re terrified of doing anything to offend them. This is why they don’t defend freedom of speech.
I’ll take the opportunity to quote a bit more of general interest from Broadie’s book:
« As regards the Scottish philosophical tradition the first major thinker was John Duns Scotus [1266-1308]. Across Europe he was known by his nationality; he was Scotus, the Scot. His work evidently had an especial appeal for Scots. His political philosophy almost certainly had an impact on two of the great documents of early Scotland, the ‘Declaration of the Clergy’ (1310) and the ‘Declaration of Arbroath’ (1320), and his philosophical successors of the Pre-Reformation period, perhaps especially John Mair [Gleghornie,1467-1550], were philosophically very close to him.
Mair accepts Scotus’s doctrine that it is not up to the king and the king alone whether he remains on the throne. If the king demonstrates his unfitness to rule then, as Scotus holds, he can be deposed by others. Who are these others? Mair is as explicit as Scotus:
‘A free people confers authority upon its first king, and his power is dependent upon the whole people.’
Mair’s argument, like Scotus’s, is in effect an argument from elimination, for there is no plausible candidate, apart from the people, for the role of bestower of authority:
‘And it is impossible to deny that a king held from his people his right to rule, inasmuch as you can give him none other; but just so it was that the whole people united in their choice of Robert Bruce, as of one who had deserved well of the realm of Scotland.’
The implications of the act by the people go beyond the king to those who would otherwise be his natural heirs to the throne:
‘A people may deprive their king and his posterity of all authority, when the king’s worthlessness calls for such a course, just as at first it had the power to appoint him king.’
It might seem that the only matter on which Mair does not pronounce in harmony with Scotus concerns Scotus’s doctrine that the people can choose as their ruler a community of persons, but neither does he explicitly reject the idea. He is simply silent on it. The overall picture concerning Mair’s teaching on the just establishment of a ruler is therefore that he is very close indeed to Scotus’s position and may in fact agree with the whole position, whose overarching consideration is that the king has a job to do, it is the people’s right to decide who should do that job, and it is the people’s right to retain him if he does it well and to depose him if he does it badly.
The king’s possession of his kingdom is conditional on the people’s judgement. As Mair says:
‘For a king has not the same unconditional possession of his kingdom that you have of your coat’
(Alexander Broadie, A History of Scottish Philosophy: Edinburgh University Press, 2009 cloth and 2010 paper)
GROUPTHINK !You’ve done very well at secondary school and then go to university and shine through and achieve academic progress. The selction process as you go through university is that by the time your at the end of your undergraduate years. The bright sparks go through their post graduate studies and a PHD and they get an academic job the creme da le creme.
So you’ve invested a lot of your early years to get this PHD to get into the academy. With economics you end up with a very defined set of work tools and foregone a lot of income to get to this stage.
Not many academics become top line researchers most of them become text book pushers. So by the age of 45 you’ve risen to a certain rank in the academy and normally that’s the end of your progression. Good researchers can move up further and get a chair and get to be called a professor. Where a lot of people have reached their ceiling and pump out stuff from a textbook that the publishers brings around every year. Fill up your time as an administrator or a teacher.
The end of life syndrome approaches and all you are waiting for then is to retire on your pension and live the life and hope your health holds. So why on earth at that point would these people abandon their life’s work and admit that large parts of it are wrong. What’s the motivation for that. Particulary when you are in a group that have incredibly rigid rules with respect to promotion, with respect to asigning status, with respect to getting any publications or research money. In a very disciplined community in economics.
You’ve learned to play the game and jump through hoops along the way. You’ve learned not to rock the boat. You’ve reached your career progression and waiting for your retirement. To come out then and say a lot of the textbook pushing has been wrong is to defy your scholastic community.
Stop the brightest when they are young from getting promotion, publications and research money. The group membership becomes your priority and when new empirical evidence presents itself to show the textbook pushing has been nonsensical. They’ll forego the oppertunity of a revision of their ideas as maintaining membership and status within the group is more important.
Groups work out all sort of ways to behave like that. When anomalies come in from the real world they revise history. They rewrite history to reflect the group, it’s foundational and social psychology of group behaviour. Eventually when some rebels do come along the Paradigm collapses.
Students get educated in GROUPTHINK and the advisory boards are the real gatekeepers. Always looking for funding from the private sector never helps.
Why focus on Westminster? – Peter A Bell
“Denial of democracy”.
As if the UK government cared about democracy! Parliaments don’t do democracy! It’s a word you can hear every day of the week both in and out of parliaments but what does it really mean?
The Greek derivative ‘rule by the people’, or similar, is a joke when our parliaments allow us a vote every 5 years and forget any pre-election promises made to the electorate, or introduce legislation that the ruling political party of the day knows very well is not supported by the vast majority of people, but the people can do nothing until they get to exercise their ‘democratic’ view.
There is no greater example than the current SNP/Green coalition government at Holyrood.
The UK government laughs at Scotland and its elected representatives because they know that there is no possible way that they will ever allow another independence referendum but yet our MPs bleat on and on about this being undemocratic. The English Parliament and by association Scotland is a pariah as far as international law and human rights is concerned but that too does not bother them one bit.
It will make no difference whatsoever, if Scotland elects all 57 MPs from parties supposedly seeking independence at this year’s general election because Westminster does not do democracy.
@ Robert McAllan
There was never a cats chance in hell of Neale’s bill passing, HE knew that we ALL knew that. But it was NOT a waste of time…As it has done something, it has opened many eyes some tightly closed for many years now, to the fact that Scotland will never have anything passed in that English Parliament, and that I am sure was what was intended by presenting this Bill..I think what Neale’s Bill has done has shone that light on the very fact that around 30 MPs from the SNP Party also for the first time backed his bill as opposed to walking out when he stood up.
The people that matter the most to Sturgeon & her puppet Yuseless are the leader & deputy leader at WM who did NOT back Neale’s Bill.. Shining another light on THEIR worth as Indy fighters…But knowing 30 of them did will be an eye opener for those still voting SNP.
Hopefully they will be open now to SPOILING their Ballot paper instead of just voting SNP..ALLAN PETRIE has come out with the same thing Peter has been suggesting for some time now, Whatever wording is used it must be something ALL Independentistas do.
Forget staying at home that is what WM want you to do. Do NOT use a postal vote, which will be sent to London to be counted there. If you can’t get to the polling station yourself use a Proxy vote (select someone you trust to vote for you) but whatever way you choose to vote ALL Independentistas have to SPOIL our Ballot paper this time around, I still favour #ENDTHEUNION, But #NOTMYPARLIAMENT works also.. I am sure a phrase can be agreed on by heads coming together.W
Wings Over Scotland | First Do No Harm
15 January, 2024 at 3:49 pm
Oh Fuck.I have no idea how you can do this Stu week in week out. Its the faux committee assimilated bureaucratic pseudo legal language that kills me. Frankensteins monster. If you put the sheer horror of all this aside for just a moment, i think this is akin to you trying to have a dialogue with a plate of jelly, except that the jelly is more sentient than this 26 year old and the revolutionary Shitfornoncesparty . Oh fur fucks sake! This out kafkas kafka by a country mile. Holy fuck. Danton, Robespierre, Molliere! Have they never read anything by SARAMAGO these fucking people! Diagrams! Bar charts! have they never read any structuralist critique from the 60s 70s like Barthes and see how it all COLLAPSED under its own FUCKING WEIGHT! But then again,Jelly has no history, jelly cant read. jelly knows nothing.Jelly opens its mouth and goes ladi dahdi dadi dah.balah blah blah i salute anyone who tries to have a rational dialogue with these delusional monsters.I can only pray for you all.
This is like getting involved in an argument about how many angels fit on a pinhead.
First you have to accept there are angels.
Then you have to accept these invisible entities can have substance.
Then you go screaming mad trying to reconcile all the obvious conflicts of truth.
Meanwhile, the ‘enlightened’ speak in incomprehensible NewSpeak, and the credulous swoon at their erudition.
I think this is a two-pronged measure to: 1. force the UK government into bringing out another S35 Order so that the SNP/Green coalition can claim that Westminster is interfering without warrant in Scottish democracy, blah, blah, blah; 2. if the Westminster government does not intervene, they know that the public will. It’s a scam.
They know they cannot bring in the kind of mad-dog bst that Stonewall and its evil-intended arms in Scotland, advocate, so they are looking for a way out that lets them off the hook. Humza, a practising Muslim, does not believe flor one split second this absolute ordure, but neither can he back off from it, given the promises he has made to this insane lobby and its corporate, global backers, not to mention Sturgeon.
Like all other addictions, p*n addiction is extremely potent and widespread, and very difficult to combat. The front-line ‘soldiers’ of this movement are so pn addled that they need the fix regularly, and a fresh, never-ending supply of gullible marks, enabled by the state (in its turn, enabled by the corporate, global backers of all the industries, including the multi billion dollar pn industry, that will benefit from the use of these gullibles) is just the ticket.
The middle layer, like the jam and cream in a sponge are the autogynephiles, fetishists, psychopaths, sociopaths, sadists and narcissists who are the sergeants and non commissioned officers who are creating the smokescreen of women and children to hide themselves from view. Who? Us, sir? No, sir. Not us, sir. The Scottish government, Westminster, us, the public, are all being played.
f they cannot get their own way, they can still get enormous fun out of making our lives hell, especially if we are parents, and there’s the added bonus of an endless stream of mutilated and puberty-stalled youngsters to savour.
As for the political Gauleiters, the hard left/the post modernists/queer theorists, they dream of a utopia where we are all absolutely free, but, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, some will be more free than others, while some, women and children, mainly, will be sent to the glue factory if they renege.
From Glinner with regard to this.
“The maximum prison sentence for those found guilty of a criminal offence would be seven years and those prosecuted could also incur an unlimited fine. Alongside these new criminal sanctions are pre-emptive civil orders which could be issued by social workers or even activist groups on behalf of alleged victims. A trans lobby group, for example, could obtain a civil order against a parent on behalf of a confused trans-identified teenager. If the parent then breached this order, by refusing to affirm the teen’s ‘gender identity’ and/or standing in their way of seeking medical intervention, they could face a lengthy prison sentence.”
I agree it won’t become law, but there’s still a chance that some sort of Frankenstein Monster of a bill is forced into law which then falls apart come the first few people charged under it.
If however a law cannot define what a thing is, how can one know when the law is broken?
And that’s the entire gender issue summed up to a tee. There’s no firm, consistent explanation of gender that you need when drawing up laws because there isn’t one as gender is regressive bullshit based upon stereotypes. Roddick as pointed out by Stu admits to her own regressive beliefs in the Tweets he’s posted. Not that she’d realise she’s internalising her sexism and processing it as a ‘progressive’ thought.
My other concern here is this is a further attempt to not just weaponise the legal system on behalf of TRAs as after all, the punishment for TRAs is the process at the moment but if they can criminalise thought itself then we’ve got new blasphemy laws in the 21st century. I also worry that this is part of making same-sex definitions a thing of the past therefore making homosexuality illegal. Gender Ideology is riddled with self-hating homophobia after all and this is already creeping in via organisations adopting Stonewall law & why many are getting themselves into legal issues.
It’s just another example of someone (Roddick in this case) being elected when they’re completely unprepared, unable and incapable of doing the job they were elected for & most certainly shouldn’t be a minister. There’s a number of people who entered politics off the back of the Indyref who really have done their best to ensure we’re never going to get independence in most people’s lifetimes.
“Which raises the question, why are they doing this when they know they will be stopped from introducing it?”
Precisely.
Possibilities:
To ensure a backlash from voters at the upcoming GE to ensure a pro-colonial MP majority representing Scotland in Westminster
To gain sufficient support from the public for this utter garbage via deception and by the back door (by appealing to the pro-indy sentiment through disguising it behind a deliberately provoked and engineered “encroachment of Westminster on Holyrood ‘legislation’ “)
To fabricate acceptance of the final draft by presenting first something so utterly ridiculous and so utterly unacceptable that anything they (or Labour) produce in the near future will be perceived to be better and perhaps more acceptable. In other words, the usual deception strategy of making something look good and acceptably by putting it side by side with something horrendous.
They have put an inexperienced, still wet behind the ears, in charge of this bill. This either means that no senior party MSP wanted anywhere near this vomit-inducing garbage because they knew it was toxic, or because they knew from day 1 this crap was going to fail, so rather this lady lose her seat than another more “valuable” MSP.
In other words, they set this lady to fail and to take the rap for it.
I am convinced this garbage, just like the GRR, is being deployed to distract from and prevent progress of independence, and also to make the SNP and the Greens unelectable.
It stands to the obvious they are purposely running away from a repeat of 2015, with 56 pro-indy seats and over 50% of the vote for pro-indy parties. It is obvious they are helping the British establishment to hide support for Scotland’s independence.
I have been wondering for quite some time now what could these SNP betrayers have negotiated with the tories and labour behind our backs in late 2014 for them to be so, so utterly desperate now to see Starmer in n10 that they are even committing political harakiri to helping him out.
Immediately after the political fraud Sturgeon took control of the SNP, she transformed it into a devolutionist party to render the 56 majority useless. How obliging. Every effort she and Yousaf have made has been to prevent progress of independence.
This to me suggests these political frauds have already negotiated something with the colonial parties behind closed doors and behind our backs. In other words, they sold us.
This would explain why no SNP MP or MSP other than a handful have lifted their arses, heads and voices to challenge the political fraud and we have been fed absolute garbage policies and bills for the best part of 9 years.
This also would explain why so many elements of STurgeon’s praetorian guard at Westminster are not seeking re-election. I guess they have done the job they were tasked with: to help stall independence until the powers that be found a way to ensure a majority of colonial MPs will be sent to Westminster on behalf of Scotland.
Shame on the sickening betrayers. May they all burn in hell.
TURABDIN @ at 9:58 am
“speaking of Danes etc”
That’s an excellent article by David Gunnlaugsson, former prime minister of Iceland, explaining the woke threat to all national cultures and their way of life.
Speaking of Danes, nobody seems to have noticed that the soon to be Queen of Denmark Mary Donaldson is a Scottish lassie, her faither fae Cockenzie:https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/01/15/letter-from-denmark-three-quarters-of-an-auld-alliance/
snatches of bbc politics while having coffee …some woman in red is saying, did I catch it right –
“we need a deterrent to stop them coming over the border …”
and then some tory cunt, a smug dude (why oh why can’t all these layabouts just become management consultants?) I think he is head of UKIP, but everyone knows that is really Farage, so what he is really is is some Poundshop-Fake-Farage-B1tch, so PSFFB says :
“… send them back … ”and I think : Yes, these notions have merit, one cannot be failed to be impressed by their intellectual rigour
THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO DEAL WITH THE -ANGLO- MENACE
I agree.
I hope I read that right. I was more concentrating on an iced ginger square.
Richard Tice is the poundshop Farage; he is quite a creature, nasty. Thing is, south east England is full of these nasty, entitled, smug, vicious wee wankers, with their repellent, offensive views about how much they “subsidise” the rest of us (I hope the tax people look into him); I would consider his views as being “average”, which is useful, for sometimes I start going quite soft on the anglo and forget what they are … like you see the mogwai … and forget about the gremlin.
What the f*ck did Hanvey think was going to happen did he think it would actually pass in a foreign country’s parliament (England) a parliament that MUST hold onto Scotland to keep its own head above water. Hanvey by this action (asking) only gave this foreign country’s parliament credibility, we don’t need to ask a foreign country’s parliament to dissolve a treaty.
If we want our independence we’ll need TO TAKE IT, for it won’t be given, power isn’t given ITS TAKEN.
Also Tory, Labour and Lib/Dem MPs from Scotland are not members of Scottish political parties those parties don’t exist, there is no Scottish Labour/Lib/Dems/Tory parties registered with the Electoral Commission.
You shouldn’t be able to vote for what doesn’t exist.” WESTMINSTER bid to give Holyrood the power to legislate for a Scottish independence referendum has failed.
Alba’s Neale Hanvey, the party’s group leader at Westminster, had proposed a Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill, which looked to amend the Scotland Act 1998 to transfer the power to hold an independence vote to the Scottish Parliament.
Hanvey used the London parliament’s 10-minute rule – which allows a backbench MP to make the case for a new bill in a speech lasting up to 10 minutes – to argue for his proposition on Tuesday.
He was opposed by LibDem MP Christine Jardine.
The House divided after the two MPs’ speeches and went to a vote. Deputy speaker Rosie Winterton announced that the bill would not move forward after the proposal was defeated by 228 votes to 48.
The division list showed 38 SNP MPs and Conservative Philip Hollobone, the MP for Kettering, were among the MPs to support Hanvey’s bid.
But 57 Tory MPs, 147 Labour and 13 Lib Dems were among those to oppose it.
Ahead of the vote, Alba said the bill was being backed by SNP MPs Joanna Cherry, Douglas Chapman, and Carol Monaghan, independent MPs Angus MacNeil and Jonathan Edwards, and Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts.
Speaking in Parliament, Hanvey pointed to pledges made in the aftermath of the 2014 independence referendum, saying:
“The all-party Smith Commission agreement was signed by all of Scotland’s main political parties: SNP, Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrats.“It stated: ‘It is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.’ “While each have failed to deliver on that commitment, this bill provides a necessarily equitable and democratic mechanism for the people of Scotland.”
Hanvey added: “Should members of this chamber deny Scotland her legitimate claim on self-determination then it will have put beyond doubt that the voice of the people of Scotland is not welcome in this place and a new approach must be considered.””
Latest tranche of 13 Holyrood interns fae the John Smith Centre.
Nine are on courses with Politics in the title.
Not the worst batch from the JSC to be fair.
Several claim to be from “working-class backgrounds”. Whether this means they are “working-class” or “Sir Keir Starmer working-class” is impossible to say.
None put their sexuality or gender identity to the front and centre of their biographies. Not the usual grossly disproportional representation from non-Caucasians.
Two could probably even open a new jar of pickles if requested (a 1st for the JSC).
Interests include; gender-based violence & climate change. Wot no industrial policy?
One lets the cat oot the bag in her bio.; “internship will equip me with … connections necessary for a successful career in Scottish politics”. Someone at the JSC (Promoting Trust in Politics & Public Service) really should be paying more attention with the editing.
Infuriatingly, from hints in their biographies, the more sensible ones are probably being farmed out to Tory MSPs.
MSPs have voted to give themselves a 6.7% pay rise, taking their basic pay up by approximately £5,000 to £72,000. This follows an increase last year, 2023, of 1.5% and just over 3% in 2022. The new increase will come in to play from 1st April 2024.Seems to be a final raid on the tax loot before being sent back unemployed and disgraced to whatever rock they crawled out from. Money for auld rope if you ask me.
Can’t think of one MSP who has earned it. Murdo Fraser must be thanking his lucky stars. Over 20-years of sitting on his arse doing nothing. And getting handsomely rewarded for doing so. He’ll be in good company with Sturgeon & Co.
“Hanvey by this action (asking) only gave this foreign country’s parliament credibility”
I agree.
I do not understand at all why Alba had to give England MPs the right to veto this transference of powers and I am not happy about this move. In fact, I am disappointed, to be frank.
To me, this comes across as yet another maneuver to add yet another unnecessary obstacle to the progress of Scotland towards independence. Another totally unnecessary move to legitimise the myth that Scotland is a region of this Great Britain rather than one of its founding members that can end it tomorrow if its MPs ever find the backbone they lost 300 years ago.
As if we did not have enough fabricated obstacles in the mountain already piled up by Sturgeon and Yousaf, now we have been handed another one, courtesy of our own MPs.
I do not understand why pro-independence parties insist in handing over to England MPs the power to decide when Scotland can become independent at every opportunity, knowing full well that, if given a right to veto, England MPs will exercise it every time.
So what is the effing point? It is a waste of Scotland’s time which only makes sense when what you are after is procrastinating.
Scotland’s power to unilaterally end the Treaty of Union lies with Scotland’s MPs, not England’s. England’s MPs hold the power to unilaterally end the treaty on behalf of England, but not Scotland. So what was the point of this move? Was this to reinforce the myth that we need permission from Westminter to even breath?
Oh come on. Enough already. We know our MPs can end the union tomorrow if they so wish. The power to call a referendum on Scotland’s independence does not lie with England’s MPs. It is none of their effing business. It lies with Scotland’s MPs, so why the hell were England MPs invited to this vote? Who do England Mps represent in Scotland? When did Scotland become the property of England?
This vote should have taken place only among Scotland’s MPs and then, if passed, our MPs should have simply advised the monarch that the powers go to Holyrood. That vote should have passed because we have a pro-indy majority. The only reason I can think of for handing the veto to England MPs is to use them as the safeguard to ensure the SNP troughers could safely vote for the transfer of powers knowing it would never happen. I wouldn’t be surprised that if the vote was hold only among Scotland’s MPs, the troughers in the SNP would have voted against.I am seriously losing my patience now. I am sick and fed up of this constant undermining of Scotland’s sovereignty by our own MPs. I am now at the point that I do not see any reason whatsover for Scotland to waste its time sending MPs to WEstminster.
What is the effing point in sending them there, when the only thing they are doing is procrastinating in the ending of the effing treaty and making us watch in disgust how they hand over Scotland’s sovereignty to England MPs and how they validate Scotland’s abuse by that parliament?
Enough already. It is starting to look like ISP might be the only political party who is serious about independence and the only one who is willing to stop the pointless charade of sending MPs to Westminter, the only one willing to stop handing over Scotland’s sovereignty to England MPs.
Handing over Scotland’s sovereignty to England MPs and inviting them to veto Scotland’s right to exercise self-determination only makes sense if what our own Mps are after is to deflect from the fact it has been them who have been stopping Scotland’s independence since 2015 by refusing to terminate the effing treaty once and for all.
Viscount Ennui @ 6:54 pm
“Would you, or should we, entrust independence to the current SNP?”
That is a hypothetical question.
“what is the route to independence under the current electoral system?”
Withdrawal of a majority of Scotland’s MP’s from Westminster would mean the UK parliament cannot lawfully legislate for Scotland because representation of Scotland’s MPs is a condition of the Articles of Union.
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