The tyranny of majorities
The reliably-wise Stephen Bush of The New Statesman said something perceptive yesterday on the subject of an EU referendum, although it applies much more widely.
It’s a view we’ve held for many years, most often in relation to UK governments ruling with huge majorities won on pretty tiddly pluralities of the vote (often in the mid-30%s), where the bulk of the electorate has no defence against a party it didn’t vote for.
Despite an electoral system that makes such events far rarer, the phenomenon crops up a lot in Scotland too, and both sides are guilty, often on the same subject. Scottish employment figures, for example, alternate with almost metronomic regularity between being higher/lower than those in the rest of the UK, and whichever it is in any given month one side or the other will trumpet it as conclusive and permanent proof that Scotland’s governance is better/worse than that of London.
(Even though Holyrood in fact has almost no power over the economy, so deserves little of either the blame or credit, whichever applies that month.)
The most common case, though, is Trident.
Both sides (and backing for the UK’s nuclear weapons correlates closely, though by no means completely, with views on the constitution) are fond of spinning the stats to their advantage by using the trick of viewing the situation from different perspectives.
Opponents will tweet striking maps showing Scotland uniformly opposed based on the votes of MPs, knowingly misrepresenting the reality of split public opinion. Supporters will loudly trumpet polls returning a statistical tie as proof that the whole country is in favour. And of course, Scottish Labour will try to occupy all positions simultaneously, to everyone else’s great merriment.
(The graphic above is correct as far as we know, but goodness knows which parts of it might have changed since the last time we checked.)
And the voters? Well, we’re fairly sure the voters are just messing with us now.
Our latest Panelbase poll shows the biggest majority in favour of retaining the UK’s nuclear weapons that we can recall seeing in a Scottish poll – a still pretty tight 9%. But there’s a twist.
Because a far bigger majority (19%) oppose them being kept in Scotland.
Since there’s currently no other viable location in the UK (or indeed elsewhere) for Trident to be based, in practice taking Trident out of Scotland means giving it up altogether. Voters, then, have in effect voted both for and (more strongly) against it at the same time. Nearly half of Scots say they want to keep the “deterrent”, but barely a quarter back it if it means having it on their own doorstep, which it does.
(The only demographic groups who opposed the UK’s nukes overall were young women, SNP voters, Yes voters and people born in Europe. But the only groups who backed Trident being located in Scotland were No voters, Tory voters and Lib Dems. The only scores over 50% were SNP and Yes voters in the first category, and Tories in the second category.)
None of these findings, of course, will change the behaviour of either the pros or the antis for a moment. Trident fans will loudly and brashly proclaim the results of the first question while pretending the second one never happened. Trident haters will spin the figures – not untruthfully – as proving that Scots want Trident removed from Scotland.
The truth, as so often, is more nuanced than either side wants you to believe. And on this site, the truth is always what we want to get to.
There’s nowt so queer as folk. 🙂
Been against this appalling system of mass murder for as long as I can remember. Never liked them or the idea of them and never will.
Of course, the chances are that some who say to keep them in the first question and to not house them in Scotland in the second, will not have the first idea where they can be viably be placed instead.
Which truth ?
Spinners are the enemy of truth, and they don’t seem to be getting caught out elsewhere.
So Scottish Tories want to kill millions of civilians in some unspecified other country, and want Scotland to be a first takeout target in a nuclear attack, but forget they live here too.
Though a lot of LabLibDems want the same.
“SHOCK POLL REVEALS SCOTS WANT TO HAVE CAKE AND EAT IT”.
Roughly translated as, ” I want the ability to strike back in the event of nuclear war, but I don’t want to live near the base that is going to be hit first”
I think the public have absolutely no idea what two nuclear warheads would do to the whole of the UK never mind Scotland.
Nukes. We elect stupid people to decide/watch over them.
Whats gonna happen eh?
As for the 30’s% majorities, and the fact that economic control in Scotland is a myth. Its why Yes is the only option.
An interesting question would have been should an independent Scotland continue to have nuclear weapons?
Well, writing in from the capital of direct democracy and consensual politics, I can only say that it is good to accommodate opponents as far as possible even if / especially if they were narrowly defeated. It usually works very well and keeps minorities happy. Measured against this practice, May and her band’s attitudes are despicable and democratically questionable.
I wonder how any support trident based on an erroneous belief that it employs 1000’s of people?
The problem with the question is that it fails to distinguish between the nuclear weapons of Trident and nuclear weapons generally. So the views of those who favour the retention of a nuclear capability but despise Trident are not extracted.
any = many
So England have their cake and eat it. Trident but not near them! Im looking forward to the negotiations to remove it after Indy. I think all sorts of offers will be made to keep it there.
schrodingers cat at 11.27
That question is of course the key.
Summed up perfectly by Johnny Cash in The Wanderer
I stopped outside a church house
Where the citizens like to sit
They say they want the kingdom
But they don’t want God in it
As a young man in the Royal Navy I was in favour. However as I grew older and started to see a wider picture of the world I have been against for over ten years. I just think they are a waste of money. The troops on the ground would rather have billions of pounds of standard stuff that they can use.
The WM government wants them to ensure a seat at the UN security council and to be a big wig at NATO meetings. The UK economically is declining in the world rankings and may be replaced by Germany in the UN. This is what WM fears.
The arguments politically to keep them is chaotic and cannot be defended other than by the tweeting yoons. Those with little brains but big ego’s.
The Labour Party have quite subconsciously invented a political form of quantum logic.
They have as many positions on policies as possible, and they seem quite capable about living with this steroidal cognitive dissonance.
Trouble for them is, the voters don’t and can’t.
Darwin will win, in the end.
The first question was not actually about Trident. I oppose Trident but certainly in my case would support retaining a far cheaper nuclear capability, cruise missile or free fall bomb.
So If I was asked those questions I would have answered Yes to the first and removed to the second as Trident is a vastly expensive and indeed technologically probably obsolete weapon that is a danger to the west of Scotland.
I suspect if the question was
Do you want the murderous million killer radiation bomb in your back garden the answer may have been different
But Trident’s a lovely name and all Poseidon Greek God fishy like
The powers that be love naming things that kill you in such a way as to make you feel uplifted at the thought of being killed
So supporters of Trident largely correlate with those who voted No? Pardon my ignorance but was there much correlation between those who voted No and those who identify as British?
link to ro.uow.edu.au
[…] Wings Over Scotland The tyranny of majorities The reliably-wise Stephen Bush of The New Statesman said something perceptive […]
And the only truth I can take from this is once again you cant trust polls to tell you anything conclusive.
I think I’ve said this before in this forum but SNP’s long standing opposition to nukes is one of the reasons I would have voted for them while I still lived in England – if I’d had the chance. Sadly (according to a conversation I had with my MSP during the last election) it is a concern that rarely comes up on the doorstep.
27% don’t knows in the second one. Incredible. Probably in the “shit, I’m missing EastEnders” category.
Yea unfortunately true Rev and you can bet when the renewal is near they will pull out the Russian bogey on the starboard bow.
The USA used it last week in a secret test fire of the mk2 missile,not sure but whispers say it crashed in the sea and they then blamed the Russians in international waters for firing a cruise missile from a ship just in case anybody noticed a ballistic missile screaming out the sky.
Then with these things blackout,and out come the cranks spinning away like mad in the great game of do not get left holding the poop,saturate the story with so much crap nobody knows where it starts or stops or if it is even true.
The Russians were like wtf are you talking about,no we did not have a missile ship sneaking about firing missiles we deny we were even in the ahem area.
But then this is from US youtube and frankly they are totally mental every day a new cataclysm of biblical proportions is predicted,if that is what GM crops do you can keep them and they can take their missiles back as well.
Of course, one has to be informed correctly of your surrounding, in order to develop a sense of connectedness. Either through your direct contact and observation, or through second hand knowledge from external sources.
The Scotch themed press works tirelessly to impair our sense of connectedness. The BBC merely amplifies this, they have admited as much themselves.
yeah but no but
on a purely UK perspective which the question states; then assuming you want to retain WMD then it makes sense to put them in a low population area like Scotland, N Ireland, Wales, or Northern England.
Given that the base is setup already it makes logical sense to keep it there, as the preferred option of building a new site somewhere other than where it is , is not financially sensible.
So given all that I can totally understand the poll results.
Might have got different result if the questions were purely Scotland based
And no, I do not want WMD in our independent Scotland.
I would read the first question as being any nuclear weapons, as
opposed to the closer reading of “continuing” with the existing ones.
It would be possible, although expensive, for the UK to consider
a different delivery system in future.
Q10b: Would you prefer that the Trident nuclear weapons system was scrapped and the money saved spent on hospitals, schools and a enlarged conventional defense?
… would be an interesting question (assuming you’ve not already asked it, Rev). And it would, figuratively (and somewhat ironically), give us more bang for our bucks.
Could be that we acknowledge the ruk can have WMD if they want, but as an independent Scotland we don’t want WMD.
C’mon we have been front line for centuries. Cannon fodder, brave to the end. Brainwashed by the British Establishment. It has to stop!!!
Who in heaven’s name wants this arsenal on their doorstep. Certainly not the English. When the United Kingdom breaks up and the English Kingdom takes their missiles to either Northern Ireland or Wales, then wait to see the fireworks.
Take them (Nuclear Subs and Warheads) up the Thames to the old naval port. Drench the river if you need to!!!
Demolish Westminster rather than spend £7 BN dig in a few silo’s and off you go!! SORTED.
You are the guy’s who want them so ethically and morally you can decide yourselves rather than using them in our nations name.
#bairnsnobombs
I think its partly a generational thing – there’s a lot less people alive who were around when atomic/nuclear weapons were used in 1945.
My generation grew up with the Cold War but weren’t born when these weapons were used on Japan. I grew up within 20 miles of three “first strike” targets, all in Scotland obviously 🙂
As such I think we have a tendency to view them as “safer” in some ways than conventional weapons. By that I mean we don’t think for an instant that we’re going to use them, unlike all the conventional weapons. Those have been used by Brit troops in continuous conflicts since 1945 (yes really) so clearly they get used all the time.
If I had to make a choice between whether Brits spent all their defence budget on nukes I think I’d probably say I’m in favour for the simple reason they’ll do less harm to the rest of the world than they currently do. After indy they can take them back & fuck off 🙂
Its not contradictory at all.
If we’re in the UK then we’re in a state that threatens and bullies world wide.
Best to have a deterrent in that case…
We just think Scotland’s been ‘taking one for the team’ for too long now and maybe the other nations could step up to the plate.
Well I’ve been against them all my life, but nobody has ever asked me!
And BTW, Trident may be touted as a deterrent, but in fact it is a first strike weapon and not, as stated above, a retaliatory weapon, which and I quote, “may be used pre-emptively in the face of an imminent attack”.
Just as I said Rev in 2013 – Trident can’t be moved.
You’re welcome!
You know sometimes you have an idea in your head which you don’t want to talk about, because it’s not fully formed or taken on its rightful final shape?
Well, I kinda feel like that about democracy.
I’m not anti-democracy, far from it, but I have a growing feeling of disquiet about Democracy, and whether we are being blindsided and manipulated, and all manner of grubby and unfortunate “deals” around the world are given airs of legitimacy they do not warrant because they can be tagged as “democratic” results.
Control the media, and you control the narrative, and when you control the narrative you can “herd” people into thinking whatever you want them to think, give them a vote, and suddenly you have a democratic mandate to do whatever you wanted to do; whether that’s going to war, exiting Europe, or subjugating a country’s legitimate rights.
For a people / society which holds up democracy as something sacred we should all venerate, we are peculiarly cavalier about powerful factors, like media, improperly influencing the vote. We seem pretty laid back about irregularities in postal votes, and how results can be known before the ballot boxes are open.
I don’t know. Is our modern democracy genuinely the will of the people? Or is it instead a measure of how successful a marketing campaign strategy has been, even a campaign strategy riddled with improprieties, falsehoods, and propaganda?
I harbour so many doubts similar to these, and yet I fear being burned as a heretic for daring to question the accepted sanctity of democracy.
Here I return, yet again, to the issue of Scotland’s legitimate and inalienable sovereignty. Sovereignty is a binary option; yes or no, black or white, we have it or we don’t; and that binary option CANNOT be altered by an ephemeral democratic opinion. The Law is on our side.
I am afraid see, afraid that democracy in this country of Scotland has been compromised, and compromised for such a very long time. The media manipulates what a large percentage of our countrymen believe, and through its de facto monopoly on broadcasting, it regularly filters the information which we have access to.
How, and why, are we putting all our eggs into the democracy basket, when these malevolent influences are unchecked and all around us? Doesn’t that seem a reckless thing to be doing?
I don’t understand the gamble. Our Scots law has all the potency it needs to deliver Scotland from oppression, and yet here we are, accepting the legitimacy of the UK’s Supreme Court judgement to sideline the will of our people and undermine the supremacy of Scots Law. Yet we will throw all of this history and legal precedence to the four winds, and place our faith in UK democracy?
That idea I mentioned that I’m uncomfortable with? I’m beginning to wonder if “the West” is so very fond of democratic regimes around the world, not because they respect the will of the people, but because they are so easy for Corporate organisations to assimilate and influence by guile, money and rhetoric rather than boots and bullets on the ground. It’s backdoor occupation and subjugation. Own the media, and you own the democracy. Exactly what is sacred about any of that?
I get this sickening feeling we’re not doing this right. It’s the rule of law that is sacred, not the democratic will of people who are under the influence of surreptitious hostile influences in their livingrooms.
This shit’s important. We need to deal with it now.
We can ruminate all we want about Trident , there will only be one issue to solving Trident & thats Independence & a Nuclear free Scotland.
Just watching the wee boay token safe Brit Nat”Marxist Revolutionary” Owen Jones Guardian waffler, waffling EBC two the noo with English talking heids oan the Andrew Kneel Brillo Pad show.
Whaur’s the effin’ remote?
Look, we live in a democracy and England eh Britain democratically decided that Scotland gets to enjoy all the benefits of having big killing bombs that make you a target for any despot on the planet who also has big killing bombs
And that’s as it should be and I do wish Scottish people would stop questioning the will of the Eng eh Brit eh People
Who the hell do you people in Scotland think you are Britain decides and we the people of Eng eh Britain decide because there are more of us in the important part of the real Eng eh Britain
Now would you just be good equal partners sit down and shut the F… up
Bloody Jocks!
That’s is fine then – move the Nuclear Subs out of Scotland and then that keeps both the majorities in Scotland happy.
Not going to happen though – is it?
That is why we need Indy!
“Broadly speaking…”?
Ah, the UK electoral systems, designed to meet Establishment objectives.
The General election: first past the post, liable to boundary changes by the political party in power. We’ve been fed, for generations that the system leads to strong governments. on circa 30% of the popular vote.
Scottish Gov’t election: I’ve raised the flawed D’Hondt method before here. It delivered Murdo Frazer, Adam Tomkins, and several more of Ruthie’s corps, substantially bereft of the popular vote, to our parliament.
Trident? What is the outcome if a nuclear-armed missile skews off course, like the recent reported event off the coast of the USA? Does it self-destruct? Really?
Seems the latest technology is underwater drones, could they track the “secret” paths of the UK nuclear armed submarines? And if development of these drones leads to them being armed, what then the merit of Trident? Are these drones already armed? Limpet drones, who’d have believed?
SNP is the only party that reflects my views on this issue. It’s an important issue for me.
Therefore, I vote SNP.
I expect a lot more people would do the same, including Labour voters, if they understood how much Scotland is paying for these dangerous white elephants.
Breeks – I dont normally read long posts but yours was well worth the effort , I can’t disagree with any of your thoughts , and i get your dilemma about our democracy , if it was that effective it would been abolished years ago .
Trident replacement is obsolete, drones and AI will negate the system just as in the same way main battle tanks are, robots are the future and its coming fast.
Trident is pure and simple a vanity exercise by the same mindset that thought you could use cavalry against machine guns and come to that tanks.
The People of Scotland have had enough of Westminster’s warmongering and spendthrift actions and their repercussions for ordinary folk left to pick up the bill.
I try to understand support for WMD.
A Missile launch will always result in multiple missiles with multi-warheads passing each other at the top of the arc.
Millions will die in the first group of blasts followed by a tenfold increase in deaths over the following weeks.
Is it
a) if we all have them they will never be used and remain confident a nutcase or accident is impossible.
b) I want to spend my last few seconds on Earth knowing I killed my “enemy” – that will teach him.
Why does anyone support this obscene weapon….I remain puzzled by the madness of those in favour.
Breeks 12.30
I find myself wondering about this kind of thing too. ‘Truth – what is truth?’ So much of what we see and hear is bought at a price by the people with the most money, influence and power and that starts right at the bottom eg getting a job – not what you know but who you know.
I don’t think anything is ever completely ‘fair’ and it starts from the moment you are born with the ‘supportive, caring parent’ or the persons with poor parenting skills and other issues the main one being poverty – which I feel is a political issue – no one in this country should have to choose between eating or heating or be unable to give their children the food and clothes they need without worry.
The media, newspapers, TV etc have a great responsibility and culpability and heaven help us but Trump has a point about bias – though he cannot be allowed to use that to cover up what he is doing.
Which brings me back to Trident and the obscene money spent on arms and illegal wars when our disabled and poor are deliberately targeted and given less while the rich get richer and get more tax cuts even down to a cheaper phone call to the tax office while benefits offices are more expensive to call.
Would be interesting to see a similar survey for England: those in favour if it’s based in Scotland and those in favour if it’s based in England.
Further to what Breaks thinks.
PUT THE MASTER”S TOOLS DOWN, peacefully by enforcing the sovereignty of Scottish people and the independence of Scottish law and religion.
So far, the Scottish legal profession has ‘under-performed’, IMHO.
You should have asked “Is it right for the state to use terror?” Then asked “Is it right to have a nuclear deterrent?” It is all in the etymology.
I think there is widespread lack of knowledge and public debate about possessing WMDs.
The high levels of DK, in particular about locating in Scotland, imply folks really don’t know much about it.
If you were to ask people in the street what WMDs does the UK possess, what are they capbable of, and where are they housed …. I would be very surprised if many people could give informed answers.
The first question, for many people, is a bit like ‘should the UK have armed forces’ or ‘should the UK defend itself if attacked’. If the reality was spelt out, then perhaps they would feel differently about WMDs specifically.
Like so many other issues, democracy is supposed to function by having a knowledgeable electorate, instead the UK has a system where keeping the voter uninformed or misinformed as policy.
Ot is anyone going to find out why the police are dragging their heels on the charges of electoral fraud on the38 conservative mps the snp mps should be hammering away at this because if the charges were proved it would make the present uk government illegal
I was having a conversation in the pub with a partisan no voting group of people,family members friends. I think I was outnumbered 10/1 with a shy yes voter in their who was scared to think. The gist of it was that :”Scotland Voted No!” so I should just forget it.
I pointed out that because some of your neighbours don’t believe in something you do , it doesn’t mean you are wrong . I also said that they were telling 45% of Scots to fuck off. In other words only those who agree with them should be listened to. This is the rhetoric of the Yoons. Democracy only exists if they decide it does.
The conversation was last May before the Scottish elections and Brexit. I warned them that should Scotland be taken out of Europe then we would win the next referendum. They scoffed that A- this would never happen and B- another referendum would never happen.
Many of these people were Tartan Army members. 90 minute patriots….very trajic.
Trump, like him or not. Personally I do not. He uses twitter to put out his own fake news, not the fake news put out by the media.
I blame it all on the papers, they started it, take Scotland as an example, Its all to confusing for me, I think I will go and watch EASTENDERS it is just as depressing and fake, or is it ?
O/T i-Scot Magazine
link to indiegogo.com
It’s only at 56% with 19 hours to go.. 🙁
You’ve got a true-blue Scottish independence magazine with more Scottish blood running through it than the whole of the BBC Mafia and every single f****** newspaper in the yooniverse put together.
I just hope we never see another comment from anyone on WOS, moaning and complaining about the lack of a friendly, Indy supporting newspaper or magazine when you’ve got one here right in front of your eyes.
(National and Sundy Herald are still too “maybe” at the moment.)
With all due respect, the Rev’s next fundraiser probably won’t fall short of its target…so why are we taking so long to secure this magnificent publication’s future.
Ultimate pro nuke test is basing them around London, along the M25 for example.
There are perfectly viable Trident nuke base sites along the English southern coast too. l’Ile Longue near Brest, is France’s Trident base and its not any different geography from Devon and Cornwall. Its the site of German U boat sub pens, but like UK gov, the French chose somewhere as far away as possible from their capital too.
Faslane’s probably a harder target to destroy than a English south coast version of l’Ile Longue but not that much.
Breeks, I liked your post very much. It was only yesterday I was thinking that if Scotland is an aqual partner in this union surely Westminster has no right to keep scotlands accounts secret from it. England has a permanent majority and we can never get access therefore. Not what I’d call a union.
During the Cold War, nuclear weapons made some kind of sense. But with the Thatcher induced era of neoliberalism, it is the nuclear defence industry which is of greater interest and importance – at least, it is to those who make fortunes out of it, courtesy of the taxpayer of course.
One single detonation, anywhere in the UK, will resolve all the polling data and all the political arguments once and for all. But it won’t make the neo-liberal elite happy – and that’s why it won’t happen.
The money-making machine MUST go on working.
O/T
Is Newsnet website shutdown ?
I have been bemused by the number of Brexiteers who angrily decry the SNP for pursuing a solution regarding the EU because it ignores the 38% who voted Leave.
If we secure independence and reamin the EU I do not expect the 38% or 35% as per the last poll to change their minds or be quiet. They are free to continue to argue a Scotixt as it would be then and if they won the argument get their way.
What I struggle with is that the 45% should eat their cereal and shut up but we shouldn’t ignore the wishes of the 38%.
Blair @ 1.24 ,This one like the Carmichael case has such wide ranging ramifications for the Establishment they dare not let this proceed ,their legal bods have probably spent all this time trying in some way to fudge this in any way that can be justified to the public , nothing short or maybe including Lies Deception and as a last resort murder with this lot nothing will be off limits .
I agree this is being quietly shoved to the side , out of sight out of mind , and you can bet Channel four who first aired the subject are and will be heavily leaned on by the Security Services. So MayDays lot cause as much confusion with their merry Brexit fiasco that the story is never headlined .Much more important business to be getting on with old chap .
The opposite of Trident hater, would be Trident lover. Some people love Trident. They are absolutely fandabby out of their tiny brainless minds. Sadly, should one of these abominations be launched, accidently or deliberately, the tiny minds would be taking us all with them, into oblivion. Great.
The cost of these wmd’s is colossal, it is immoral, unethical, as well as criminal. What on earth will future generations, if there are any, think when they are forced to expend masses of time and money on these idiotic, basically evil weapons, nevermind nuke power stations.
Why there is no unilateral ban on all nukes is a mystery imo. People are batshit crazy to want to destroy billions of people and the planet. No doubt about that in my mind.
What I struggle with is that the 45% should eat their cereal and shut up but we shouldn’t ignore the wishes of the 38%.
Add to that, all the yoon stuff about once in a generation and you’ve got yourself a very yoon blustery campaign of democracy only works when we say so.
link to kittysjones.wordpress.com
Thank you Stu for another brilliant post. May our collective appreciation of you never diminish. Apologies for this link, which I recommend to be followed later, but it points to another tyranny which is rising fast and which has the potential to overshadow nuclear weapons as an influence on our entire Society. I refer to the Rise of the Right.
Kitty S. Jones’ essay comes with a warning – it is harrowing in the first part and very chilling in the second. DO NOT read this if you are of a nervous disposition, or a worrier.
DO read this piece by Kitty S Jones if you are concerned about the kind of country you, your children and grandchildren, want to live in.
Right now, Scotland is tied to a baby crocodile which we are forced to feed and pay dearly for its upkeep. But that won’t last long.
Always vote for Independence
‘What I struggle with is that the 45% should eat their cereal and shut up but we shouldn’t ignore the wishes of the 38%’
I don’t struggle wi this H&S as it’s a case of crack hypocrisy with a huge dose of cognitive dissonance thrown in for good measure.
Trident has a fairly high risk of being launched by accident. There’s a set of instructions issued should the sub lose contact for a prolonged period of time. Hopefully there’s enough redundancy at either end for that not to happen but it’s not impossible. It’d then be up to the commander to either launch or risk detection by surfacing to assess the situation. That latter being even riskier if the HQ has been captured and the enemy has an idea where to search.
55% Scotland voted NO
Aye, ok, but there’s a wee problem:
62% Scotland voted REMAIN
Ooops, sounds like a full blown constitutional crisis in the making. Only one way to resolve it, and it does not involve boxes or cereal. 🙂
Graf@1.48pm
Just tried to contribute, though stoney broke, it is a very good cause. Only option seems to be tompay via card, putting in card details online. Hmm, prefer paypal, I know thy charge, but most would prefer not to enter card details imo.
Will do that later.
Re WMD’s parked just down the road, and a nuke station just up the road, live each day as if it were your last in bonny Scotland. 🙁
The Hoteliers complaining about rates. Are they just complaining because they want to develop the properties and turn them in to residential flats or businesss premises. Two major company complainers were applying for previous redevelopment permission. It fell through?
IScot should give a bank account details. They would raise more.
gordoz asked at 1:53 pm
O/T
Is Newsnet website shutdown ?
Newsnet Scotland put this up on Twitter on Sunday 19th February:
“Apologies folks. @NewsnetScotland is down tonight as we deal with a hack attack that has hit many sites this weekend. Bear with us please.”
Trident can’t even fly straight or be serviced properly. It is a obsolete, useless complete waste of money and should be scrapped. It is dangerous.
Maybe it just shows that in our heads we’ve already gone. We just don’t have a great need to force the rUK to disarm.
Cheers for Newsnet info Jack Murphy
A further thought on the Tory Election forth coming white wash , I bet most here could write the Judgment almost word for word ” After much deliberation and indeed Police inquiries it is the view of ( insert name here to include the department involved ) that this whole matter falls into a grey area of election expenditure that in future has to be addressed , as such we can find no willful act that breaks electoral Law end of ,mission accomplished .Public f/kd again , move on nothing to see here . .
What people don’t seem to understand about launching a Nuclear Weapon is that wipes out pretty much everyone, innocent men. women, and Children. Not only some crackpot leader and generals.
Think about this: we have UK Soldiers over in Latvia, right on the border with Russia. Lets say Russia invades and the UK decided to launch a Nuk.
It kills just about everything withn a 90 mile radius when it lands. The invasion stops, and UK Gov celebrate?
The wind blows across the Sea to Scotland, just as it did with Chernobyl, the Nuclear Fallout is in the air that we breath, it lands on the crops, it’s on the grass that the livestock eat, it lands on our rivers and reservoirs, it’s on your car door handle, etc.
A few months later, the majority of Scots have developed cancers of every type.
Are you Dumb enough to think that any form of treatment could be given to you with the current state of the UK NHS?
Do you think that the NHS Doctors and Nurses aren’t dying too?
Will they put extra money in for some degree of treatment or will they buy a new replacement missile?
Right now, the Westminster government could decide to eradicate poverty in the UK, or give sufficient funding to the NHS, but they have already decided to spend it on a new generation of nuclear weapons.
Wake up and realise that you do not matter one bit to the UK Government. Never did and you never will.
Take Scotland away from these people or you will die for England, one way or another.
link to caltonjock.com
@ Breeks – I don’t think we do live in a democracy. We live in an oligarchy. Our politicians in Westminster are bought and paid for by corporations run by and for the 1%. Technically, this is the definition of fascism. Mussolini argued that his system of government was corporatism.
The main feature is that there is an overarching authority which has total power over the 3 branches of government – the executive, legislative and the judiciary. It’s often described as an “elective dictatorship”. Once elected, the Prime Minister can basically do whatever they like. Only the supreme Court stepped in to check them in the case of BREXIT – a case brought by a private individual.
The ECHR has power to stop abuses but, through BREXIT, Westminster intends to abandon the UK link to human rights. It’s already bypassed in many ways but our craven media will rarely report it.
You say that the law is sacred. But who makes the law? Politicians in Westminster.
To have democracy you have to have equality. You have to have access to information. You have to stop the wealthy from buying the political class.
It’s true that the media are owned by the 1% and manipulate pubic discourse to suit their ends. The politicians – or “lawmakers” as they call them in the US – ought to stop media concentration in a few wealthy hands. But they won’t. Once their term of office is up they will get jobs in wealthy corporations and rake in millions on the lecture circuits.
What’s the answer? Democracy. Real democracy such as can be developed in an independent Scotland but is doomed within the corrupt and venal Westminster system of the UK.
@gordoz
Newsnet was hacked on the 19th. Not been up since.
will no voters promise their weans they will get trident nuclear radio active sea shores of course no paddling or swimming
Canny mak oot some Scots. Here thir offared sumtin worth billions o’ poonds by yon wasteminster givernmint an thiy dinna want it.
Ma mind boggles.
A letter from above:
Look I don’t think you Scotch are fully understanding this democracy thing
Scotland belongs to England we bought and paid for it, it’s ours, we own it, you cretins just happen to be in it
We threw loads of you out of the place, killed tons of you, made you emigrate to far away places, tried to breed you out, deprived you of human rights, we even deposited our poison bombs there and still you wont go, and what’s worse you never shut up with your incessant moaning
We could have killed the lot of you like we do to the Muslims to keep the peace and still you never learn the UK of England comes first last and always in the fight to preserve our values of decency and the rule of our law
God save the Queen!
manandboy
I think I read something similar thirty years ago. 🙁
As Scots seeking access to our inalienable human rights, we are regularly confronted by varying degrees of cultural prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination, at the individual, group and institutional levels.
link to pdfs.semanticscholar.org
Trident gets you a seat the captains table and that’s much more than a component of a defence strategy. It gets you in the door at the world power level of greatness, from geopolitical non proliferation treaty talks to, who are we going to assault next. Its likely that a nuke weapon free UK would not have been considered as partners, by the US for Iraq invasions.
Imagine how big and important everyone in Whitehall feels, being included. Then all the way down to SLab activist door knockers in Greenock telling everyone Trident keeps us safe.
There seems to be quite a few questions missing from the results, including the one this thread’s about.
link to panelbase.com
Also not 100% sure of the question about voting in the council elections. The part about second votes is wrong. You rank candidates, not parties. So can give a preference to all those candidates of your preferred party before moving on to the next, should you choose.
o/t
Hey guys scam telephone call warning
Received automated message on phone from HMRC stating been trying to get hold of me as they are bringing lawsuit against me…then says press 1.
Please note this is a SCAM ….please warn vulnerable, elderly relatives/neighbours .
#RoguesScumbags.com
How can folk who voted yes in indy ref 1 but voted for brexit square this circle. They voted yes to take Scottish democracy home but would now vote to ignore scotlands decision to stay in the EU and remain governed by a bunch of right wing nut jobs?
Dr Jim well you raised a smile with your entertaining and probably true post Ha Ha
Series 1 Episode 1 of yes Prime Minister ( utube )covers the total futility of nuclear arms , when a eminent Professor tries to make sense of the Pms instance on having Nuclear arms and if and when he would use them .
It’s funny, I thought of the nuclear power poll that you cited in an article a while back.
People are happy supporting nuclear power stations, until you offer them in their back yard; they suddenly (and unsurprisingly) decide that they don’t like them quite so much after all. And while you can outwardly praise the honesty, you secretly despise the craven opportunism of such a stance.
Personally, I think the entire argument around nuclear weapons needs to be wrapped up in proper context before we can draw a full conclusion. Some people simply object to nuclear weapons on a moral basis, and that’s cool – it’s a perfectly valid stance.
But me? I look at it like this:
link to independent.co.uk
Ultimately, the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research concludes that our army would get its arse kicked in an afternoon due to chronic underfunding over the last several years. It’s true that our armed forces no longer live under the threat of conventional warfare and typically work under the auspice of counter-insurgency, but it’s still a sobering thought.
So, a frame for the question should be:
“Do you think funding should be supplied for the rehabilitation of nuclear weapons, or reinvigoration of our conventional military?”
It’s become clear that, like membership of both the EU and UK, it really can’t be both.
Roll the dice, take your chance.
Sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I understand it Trident can’t be used without US permission anyway, which kind of makes the views of those polled irrelevant, but hey nothing new there.
The only poll which counts would be the one in which Scotland finally rediscovers it’s brains and balls and sends them out of an independent Scotland.
A rather disappointing thread, this one so far, apart from Bugger (le Panda) @ 11:41:
Brilliant comment, truly brilliant! My laugh of the day.
All I can add with scarce more insight is that when Scotland becomes independent, we will all have to wake up, shake off our longstanding political infantilisation and take actual hard real-life decisions. Like seeing-off Trident and replacing it with defence assets more commensurate with a nation of our size, just as all countries have to do.
But the indy separation deal will likely require us to harbour the damned nukes for a few years until rUK makes alternative arrangements. Even though the daffy poll result “have nukes but not here” is the exact inverse of that likely immediate outcome!
Maybe that majority in favour want the UK to hold onto them for now so we’ve got them by the bollocks for the duration of the independence process 😉
Robert Graham.
link to youtube.com
Nice one.
Someone somewhere recently summarized SLAB and STORY brilliantly. I paraphrase:
‘Scottish Conservatives are unelectable in Scotland because of what they are, Scottish Labour are unelectable because of what they are not.’
But Capella it wasn’t the MP’S in Westminster who enshrined Scottish sovereignty with the people, it was Scots Law in the 14th Century which was by all the standards of its day, properly recognised and legitimised by God’s man on Earth, the Pope. The Scottish people are sovereign, and sovereign for all time. It was uncontested before God, and a thing was done that cannot now be undone. That might sound a bit hokey, but it’s no less legitimate than ANY nation’s origin of sovereign legitimacy, and indeed remarkable for its uniquely well documented authenticity.
The UK parliament bases it’s credentials for being a sovereign UK parliament upon the United sovereignty of the Scottish and English parliaments. But this is a falsehood. How can you join two diametrically opposed absolute conditions? Agree to shared sovereignty is one thing, agree to joint sovereignty is doable to, but to join the two opposing absolutes to create one single entity is just not possible without one or other absolute condition conceding it’s inferiority to a superior; which in turn means the one which concedes was not an absolute condition to begin with. Yes, that might be pedantic, but it’s equally pedantic whether it applies to English sovereignty or Scots. It’s where matter meets antimatter. It cannot happen.
Sovereignty is an absolute condition. If its not absolute, then its not sovereign. It’s like life and death; you are either alive, or dead. Nevermind nearly dead, in a coma, until you are ACTUALLY dead, you are alive. It’s the absolute term. You are sovereign or you’re not.
Doubt that to whatever extent you will, but the UK Supreme Court did not doubt the issue in its 2011 judgement between AXA and Scotland’s Lord Advocate.
Why aren’t we blowing the Supreme Court out of the water by its own 2011 admission, and crawling all over our Court of Session for a judicial review of Scottish sovereignty as it is alleged to exist in Westminster, where it may be required to aquiese before a “superior” sovereignty, which of course, it cannot properly do.
All Westminster can do to or with Scottish Sovereignty is to respect it or subjugate it. Our sovereignty is NOT Westminster’s to weild or command.
I see 4 possible routes to Independence.
1) We rerun YES 2014 and hope to get the better of the nasty media. Sooner or later we must get lucky. Right???
2) We declare UDI and provoke civil unrest and strife. Let’s not eh? Messy.
3) We impeach the BBC as anti democratic interference, and then follow option 1 with the Scottish media under new management. Not UN Peacekeepers so much as UN Journalists. Fine, except we’d probably need independence to make it happen.
4) We secure judicial review at Court of Session and have Scotland’s inalienable sovereignty recognised as the prevailing (if widely misunderstood) reality, prompting an emergency plebiscite to determine what we should do about it.
Don’t know about you, but I’m liking option 4… a lot.
“The truth, as so often, is more nuanced than either side wants you to believe. And on this site, the truth is always what we want to get to.”
Except when you talk about immigration and label anyone who disagrees with you a “racist”. That’s a weird kind of truth you are searching for.
Using Yoon logic the 38%, of 65% who turned out to vote leave on Brexit. Is a lot less than the 45% of 95% who turned out to vote leave the UK. So who needs to eat their cereal!
I’m with what Breeks said at 12.30. Spot on
I wonder how many actually know what Trident actually is and how deployed on a weekly basis?
The impact of jobs it creates or not?
How many of those workers live locally to Faslane? I know a lot of questions but did the polstrs know answers before answering. I would suggest few of Yes Trident but not in Scotland or at least 50% of Tory voters.
So like many other subjects you raise Stu my conclusion and am sure one of your points is people need to be more educated about how our country is run……or not.
At present it is obvious from information available on Trident subs and Hunter killer subs they are not reliable or value for mone.g..
Seems the value in them is being in a world G club for those in WM Government.
Too big a price for a small country whose so called political elite are stuck in Empire glory days and recrelation of such.
Hopefully Scotland will be leaving that club soon.
Leaves a problem for what rUK does with Trident.
@ BobMACK at 11.14
and galamcennelath at 1.23
I know we are being asked to contribute to a number of deserving fundraisers at present, all some way short of their target and close to ending, but there is also this:
link to socialscreen.co.uk
with a revised target of £5000, hoping to produce a film about the aftermath of a nuclear accident involving Trident – a modern version of The War Game.
Such a film would go some way to addressing the problems you’ve both mentioned, so I’m putting the link here in case anyone would like to help. I don’t know the people concerned; I was sent a link some time ago by Scottish CND.
Breeks
I’d back option 4.
re Tory fraud
The Electoral Commission announcement from a year ago.
link to archive.is
The extensions granted to various police forces allowed for a further year of investigation.
Presumably we plebs will be told something in May this year.
Probably on the lines of its too late to do anything now.
Thank you Rev Stu,
I will very happily quote the statistic that 69% of people in Scotland do not want Trident in Scotland.
Can we please get IndyRef14 clear.
This is what happened.
Cameron told Brown to come on the telly and tell us if we hand over a fiver on polling day and vote No, then we will receive in return, a cheque for £50. Guaranteed. They called it the VOW.
It is bad enough that we have around half our population putting their trust in Tory/Labour mps then to put the same trust in the decision makers of the USA beggars understanding.
Oh stupid me!! Got all excited there! (dodges flying hammer)
69% of SNP supporters do not want Trident in Scotland!
That nearly twice as many people in Scotland do not want Trident in Scotland, than do. ( 46% vs 27%)
Is that a fair way to put it?
re Trident.
Time to revisit this gem from last year.
link to archive.is
The comments were fun – and presumably the ‘live’ page will have received more since then.
On the nuclear stuff, due to nato ever nearer to Russian borders,they have been updating all their military as well as their nuclear capabilities. They will defend Russia with all they have got.
They used to have a missile christened Satan, it was such a horrific weapon the decided to shelf it.
However, now they are considering a Nato attack, as they themselves keep being provoked, they have responded with developing Satan2. This weapon alone they claim, is so powerful that it could destroy a whole country the size of France, or the whole of Texas as a comparison.
Now, France is twice the size of the UK, they would not need to hit faslane, they just as easy could put one on London, and it would still obliterate Scotland and half of France at the same time.
Should we be afraid you think,oh certainly yes. The west is provoking the Russian for ages now and have nuclear almost on their borders.
Some of these are, believe it or not, “adjustable”, in that they can be powerful 2 megaton warheads, but with adjustments the can be upped to 17 Megaton. So not hard to see why they Russians will respond very badly.
On another point, the US is falling out with China, due to this the Chinese have now spread their ballistic nuclear weapons across China, and hardly reported in the west, people have no idea what is going on.
If military people in the West don’t back away from pushing all this. I can’t see how the world would survive. The question is why is this going on, and who really wants us in a war nobody can really win?
I’d be one of the SNP 30% and 69%, but would subsititute rUK for UK.
If the rUK want to have a nuclear deterrent that’s their right, but not in Scotland. We’ve had them long enough.
The question is why is this going on, and who really wants us in a war nobody can really win?
Its essentially an arms race, like before WW1 and post WW2 cold war. Its probably more like WW1 though, with regimes run by all the usual nationalist neo fascist lunatics that think war is the solution. Kaiser Wilhem’s arms race with the British Empire is a pretty good indicator of where Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping commies and now ofcourse Mayhem are all heading, probably triggered either by N. Korea or another middle east invasion.
WOS archive links for the remainder of August 2013 now on O/T.
O/T velofello @ 12:47:
Yes indeed on that latter point, but “sorta” on the former. It’s the apolitical Boundary Commission that proposes the detailed changes, although it was the current UKGov that tasked them to propose the latest ones, after being thwarted while being in coalition with the FibDems. But these recent changes actually make the thing marginally better, in that they diminish the unfair advantage that urban areas previously possessed. (Which was mostly to the advantage of Labour, hence the Tory UKGov’s ulterior motive.)
But those tweaks are still “putting lipstick on a pig”.
Some confusion here. You seem to be wanting to have your cake and eat it. If you (rightly) dislike the evils of “dictatorship of the majority” via FPTP, you have to accept that any fairer proportional-voting system will ensure that people you (and I) don’t like will nevertheless get sufficient support to be elected.
If your dislike is with AV/AMS in particular, though, I have to agree. My reasons including that (a) having two separate votes is confusing for virtually everyone, and (b) closed lists foster shady backroom deals for party apparatchiks. (So, for example, we get Mike Rumbles as MSP instead of the universally well-respected Alison McInnes.)
The real criticism, however, is surely not that people of different political views get elected, but that the current shower of opposition politicians of all parties do not perform their “day jobs” as parliamentarians properly, preferring to whine and complain uncritically on party-political lines about absolutely everything, rather than properly representing their constituents and being prepared to give credit where credit’s due.
Trident can be moved, by the way. BT used that at times to appeal to the UK-minded undecided, who would think it unfair if we deprived the rUK of a deterrent they wanted.
Hammond admitted that when he said that it would take at least 10 years to move, when others (like me) were saying it could be done in 10 years maximum. So 10 years it is then – perhaps a little less now as after the Ref more concrete plans may already have been laid to move it. It;s even possible the move of the SSNs to Faslane is part of that plan, so that Devonport could be redeveloped. That’s purely my “analysis”.
One of the big factors is that the huge Coulport would no longer be needed, as the UK has much less warheads than it used to. In fact someone (forget the name – Tusa?) said the warheads could be moved to Burghfield in a couple of months, all that would be needed then would be Faslane + the floating dock, plus short-term storage prior to loading. And Burghfield / Aldermaston is a lot closer than Coulport.
Milford Haven would be a possible location, and despite what the Unionists say, Devonport would be another, with a bit of Compulsory Purchase of relatively low-value land.
I see hospitality industry in the north east are saying that the rates being charged are too much due to the oil downturn.
Is this the same crowd who charged through the roof when they had a fatted calf. Seems the private sector don’t believe in capitalism when they have to pay!
What’s the excuse now in England? Tories are awfu quiet.Must be ready to hand out our money.
yesindyref2 says:
That was kinna my attitude when I read the poll earlier.
I have reached the stage where I feel the UK can go and do what it wants, just don’t expect Scotland tag along.
Nukes, or Brexit, or deals with US. Aye, if they want them, that’s their choice. Scotland just needs to get its act together and say loudly, “We are taking a different path!”
Andy Anderson at 1140am – are you the Andy Anderson who was in communications, a colleague of Campbell Allan and at BP in the early 60s?
@ Breeks – I agree that option 4 could clarify the sovereignty issue if it needs clarity. But we are still left with the question of how do we put the wishes of the Scottish people into effect?
They voted NO in 2014.
Nicola has stressed time and again that she will follow the wishes of the Scottish people. They have voted to stay in Europe. So the logical step is to put the independence question again.
Craig Murray made some interesting suggestions about involving the OSCE in a future referendum. They monitor elections, the media, whether rules of purdah are observed, fairness of the ballot, etc. It’s at the start of the talk he gave at the Edinburgh SNP club:
link to craigmurray.org.uk
In IndyRef14, 55% voted No, on condition the VOW would be fulfilled. It wasn’t. The VOW was a lie. Indy was a scam. Westminster effectively put a gun to the head of the elderly over pensions, and immigrants, and told them to vote No. They were terrified out of their wits.
Please, can we stop acting as if Indy14 was honest and legitimate.
There was a ballot, no exit polls, there was an announced but un-audited majority, but there was NO DEMOCRACY.
55%No – 45% Yes was the result calculated to obtain public acceptance of the result. Cameron was advised that anything less would mean the issue of Independence would drag on for years. He was advised not to choose a larger majority because it wouldn’t be credible.
Westminster is crooked, they don’t do honesty and legitimately. Ask Carmichael or the parliamentary paedophile club.
O/T
14hrs left and standing at 58%. We need quality publications such as iScot. I know times are difficult and folk are feeling the pinch, but if you can help.
link to indiegogo.com
Oops – The video on Craig’s site seems to have disappeared. But it is on youtube here:
link to youtube.com
Look up the internet for Marcliffe Hotel. There is a Herald article but – there are claims two years ago turn over was up 40% and profits were up. The annual accounts. It is valued at £10Million. There was a Development to change it to Office accommodation. The Development was claimed to be worth £19Million. It fell through. The increase in rates poundage was 50p for 2016.
The Northern Hotel was sold to the University for £1Million a few years ago. It was used for a few years for student accommodation. There were plans to develop it into flats but it did not go ahead. The owner now is Colin Finnie from Helensburgh. They have only recently bought it. Are they planning to develop it?
The rate revaluation is UK wide.
Polls like this are rubbish because you don’t know who was polled or where they were when asked the questions or who they were with all of which do affect people’s answers.
Simple point: if we had voted yes in 2014, we could have removed Trident from our country forever.
And yet CND members of BLiS______d voted No.
And what Ronnie Anderson said: “We can ruminate all we want about Trident , there will only be one issue to solving Trident & thats Independence & a Nuclear free Scotland.”
After all, it’s not rocket science.
😛
I will shed no tears for the majority of the greedy bastards that make up the Aberdeen B&B and Hotel industry. £60 was the absolute minimum you could get a room in a B&B for at the best of times midweek. A hotel couldl cost you from £100-£200 per night, mainly due to the oil companies block booking rooms weeekdays for months on end.
The last place I stayed was a 3 bed flat, owned by the landlady of the B&B next door. £40 per night, per room she was charging. £840 per week, and she had another 3 bed flat on the ground floor as well as a garden flat below.
As to the Marcliffe – £240 a night ? I could get a night at Gleneagles or the Old Course St Andrews for the same, with a days golf thrown in !
@ Les Wilson 5.39pm
“The question is why is this going on, and who really wants us in a war nobody can really win?”
It’s called brinkmanship. The trouble is, people who often become leaders have got there by risk-taking and bluff. During the Cold War it was assumed that leaders were precluded from dangerous behaviour because of awareness of MAD.
However, later it became part of the neocon playbook to upset this precarious equilibrium that had kept war at bay by instead instituting the idea of never allowing your enemy to assume that you would be predictable. Having your enemy think that you might choose to do the unthinkable would destabilize your enemy according to theory, and give you the psychological advantage. So who blinks first is the name of the game.
The theory of unpredictability could have the dangerous effect, however, of causing an unnerved enemy to assume the worst and get their retaliation in first.
With leaders like that, we are back in a very insecure situation of game-playing where the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Hammond’s first claim was Trident could be moved in three years – £9Billion a year – £27Billion. That is less than it costs. He claimed Scotland could pay for it. He smirked at the thought of Scotland having a Navy. An ignorant, arrogant individual. A useless waste of space. £2Billion was spent modifying Army helicopters. Robert Goodwill, Transport minister, would not agree to an Inquiry into 4 NS helicopters falling into the sea within five years. He said there was no need.
A Sherrif Inquiry in Scotland found U.K. health & safety rules were being broken. There is suppose to be a paper trail with every thing recorded and written down. The engineers were not recording and reporting telephone calls. The faulty helicopters were not grounded and people died in 2009. The helicopter firms owners sold up two years later for £250Million.
A Report was made that overweight workers should sit beside larger windows. Blamed the workers. The ex pilot head of the BAA? said there was no problem. Goodwill agreed. The Westminster Transport Committee -Louise ? – stated there should be an Inquiry.
Westminster would not base Trident at Davenport because it would interfere with commercial activities. Dartmouth estuary. The Tories transferred maintenance jobs to Davenport, even though it cost £100Million more. There are massive motorways in the area to Southhampton etc. Unemployment is 3%.
Tinto Chiel
Blis CND members like the position of being against it and keeping it, because they want to remove all weapons all over the world. Cosy, comfortable excuse not to do anything.
@Al Dossary 7:00pm
Don’t know if this will cheer you up or not, Al.
link to thecaterer.com
The British navy collect the missiles from Florida. They are stockpiled there. The submarines go and randomly select their quota. That is why they were firing quint missiles off the coast of Florida.
Imagine is they fired a live missile and it misfired back to the US or UK. Catastrophe. Chernobyl was bad enough. They just spent EU funding putting on a massive cover. With automatic cranes to try to contain the waste. It will not last 100 years. The waste will still be dangerous.
BAA? – CAA.
“Cosy, comfortable excuse not to do anything.”
Sounds like the BLiS______d mission statement, Brian. Multi-lateralism is a very good example, isn’t it?
I’m amazed they bump around at even 15%.
As for Ruthie, I wouldn’t put it past her to do a Dr Strangelove pose on a cruise missile for her “Don’t mention the Tories” election leaflets in May for her Magnificent No Surrender Party.
Trident will never be used. Nor will any nuclear weapons, with the possible exception of North Korea, but I feel that’s unlikely. The Chinese will blooter them when they get close to it.
Accepting that, I don’t mind if england/USA wish to store them in Faslane, if they agree to pay rent!
And, of course, to steer their subs round any future oil rigs we may wish to install.
The Viceroy speaks:
No one is disputing that Scotland couldn’t become an Independent state the question is should it said Viceroy Mundell in an interview
Let’s face it with the act of Union Scotland as a nation was extinguished, and we are now one country, the United Kingdom
The notion that the likes of somewhere like Yorkshire could be Independent is just for the birds, he went on to say
The SNP should give up this obsession with identity politics and get on with fixing the mess they’re making of the country, after all they complained about getting all these new powers and they’re doing nothing with them
That is the standard answer that Viceroy Mundell and his chums bounce out every time they are either asked a question or even if they’re not asked a question
(actually those were his very words)
No matter how many times a representative of the SNP says there was in effect no rise, none whatsoever, not one penny increase to the rate of income tax in Scotland both BBC and STV news persist in giving the impression there was by not reporting accurately that there was in fact a decrease for better off earners in England and omitting the fact that in England some of the council tax rises are positively eye watering and they say it’s to pay for local services, not to even mention the cancellation of surgeries ambulances and closure of Hospitals all over the England region
Now one strangely wonders that the Labour fanatically supporting BBC doesn’t mention that the supposedly despised right wing Tories are yet again doling out tax cuts for the better off while here in Scotland we have a SNP government doing the old fashioned Labour thing, which they used to support btw by using the little extra raised to support the very services which are being slashed all over England and again the BBC having difficulty negotiating their way around not having to mention all the free stuff on offer in Scotland
But no, it would appear the BBC like the actual Labour party in Scotland are backing the Tories once again against a policy they once would have agreed with
Such is the hatred of the SNP and their own country that no matter how good something may be for the people it’s of no importance next to their own desire for power at the cost to the people
I have a policy for the BBC the Labour and Tory parties and they should be grateful I’m not in power to carry it out
But given the chance!
“Theresa May today called on all her ministers to do all they can to prevent the break-up of the United Kingdom amid increasing speculation that another Scottish independence referendum is imminent.”
Well, they are bringing it upon themselves!
link to archive.is
Trident, well I knew what it was and it didn’t bother me one bit. That was in 2012 though and I’ve since changed my mind.
I guess though that as this poll shows there are many like me, in fact the majority are just as I was in 2012.
You see a Nuclear Deterrent sounds like a good thing to many, it’s just a deterrent that says don’t mess with me me, mine is a lot bigger than yours. I think that’s about the sum of the argument.
Solely because of the Independence referendum first time around I learnt more. Then I learnt some more again and finally concluded. How stupid are we?
Nuclear weapons are pointless now, you see I believe that people want to avoid war, especially total or a third world war. We are all interconnected now through the internet. That has never been the case in the past.
That connection will prevent war surely. No more babies on spike pictures from the old days. It won’t wash today.
59% funded. Can we do it?
link to indiegogo.com
galamcennalath @ 19:45,
I think what she means by that is merely “everyone, ignore all the evidence and just keep on telling them that they don’t need it or want it”!
“CameronB Brodie says:
59% funded. Can we do it?”
Yes we can!
C’mon, Wingers.
It’s a Freedom of The Press thing.
Else, don’t complain about The Meeja.
Every little helps, after all.
Every one of us should be concerned about Trident and the huge amount of road traffic that it generates – passing regularly through towns and countryside near to schools, housing estates, cities, nurseries and centres of population.
We saw from the valiant efforts of Brian Quail and a few students from Stirling University that it is incredibly easy to stop a convoy – by the simple method of standing in the road in front of it!
These convoys are sometimes parked up overnight in the army barracks in the centre of Stirling. ( They may be ‘overnighted’ in other places too but I’m not aware of that. )
There are nuclear materials being transported by train the length of Scotland and also by air with all the possibilities of accidents that either of those means of transport bring. On one journey south down the M6, I had the misfortune to get stuck behind a nuclear convoy and despite the police motor-bike outriders blocking each motorway entrance in advance of the convoy to allow uninterrupted passage, it all felt incredibly vulnerable.
Trident is an outdated system , one that the USA will stop servicing from 2025 – so who will service it then?
WM has shown that yet again, our views on Trident have been utterly dismissed.
Mike Cassidy has linked to an interesting article re Trident re-location.
link to archive.is
The idea that to move Trident would risk the lives of 250,000 people in Plymouth, or 26,000 people in Falmouth or 70,000 in Barrow- in-Furness ( tough luck if you live in Miford Haven ‘cos they don’t even mention your statistic or those of you who live near Portland) is to be lauded.
No-one should have their life put at risk by these weapons BUT to have them placed SO near to the most populous Scottish city and within a a very close range of the area where the largest proportion of the Scottish nation lives is totally unacceptable then , now and always.
I guess that in the 60’s Nuclear energy and weapons may have seemed like the way for the future – despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and they provided a source of employment in a relatively under developed part of Scotland, but we were lied to then and we are being lied to now. These weapons are not safe, they are not a deterrent and we owe it you the generations yet to come to get rid of them from the world.
Bairns not Bombs!
Robert J. Sutherland says:
Absolute panic, although they are pretending otherwise.
They know this Brexit fiasco is going to be difficult. Add a crisis threatening to dissolve their UK. They must be having nightmares.
There will be more wars and nukes do not prevent them. Falklands war was a classic example of RN subs off Argentina, waiting to launch Polaris thermo nuclear warheads on Argentine cities, like Buenos Aires, population, 3 million.
Snatcher Thatcher didn’t hit the button but they came really close to losing and she would have had that choice, lose the Falklands war or kill millions of people.
Reagan stepped in with air to air Side Winder guided missiles, saving the Falklands, and ofcourse the deeply unpopular Thatcher government. Could Thatcher have been desperate enough, would the US have let her, and told the tories to accept defeat?
What’s changed? Still a mad tory UK gov, still buying WMD’s that they can never use.
@Tinto Chiel
Agreed, any payment shall help. At least 3 wingers have donated for the Ciara print. You know who you are.
604 backers at the moment. 11 hours left
This appeal really matters.
Word on the street
England not so much set to throw Scotland a bone more of a dog biscuit
Let’s see if the FM bites
Or more to the point, who she bites
Can’t believe iScot are struggling with funds.
It’s a great magazine. I subscribed and get it delivered away doon here every month. I even have my Scottish passport cover ready and waiting. Even the adverts are great and give me ideas for future holidays. Keeps me feeling Scottish!
Will donate again to help though.
(only criticism is I ordered meat from a flyer in it at Christmas…an Aberdeen based company with a Scottish name but when it came and I read the small print the beef came from ‘the UK’ and the pork and veal came from Holland, naively maybe I expected Scotch beef and meats. I guess they need the funds and I should have checked. Tasted grand mind you)
@Heed
I like your alternative history. But you did forget Thatcher’s ultimate deterrent, which was the threat of the SAS dropping off a whole secret shipment of Mundell-clones. Luckily for Argentina she never had to deploy that one.
Apparently, May has just come across the long-hidden plan buried in the 30 year archives, and is thinking of saving the UK a whole load of money – £220 billion in fact. They’ll build statues to her, all over the world. Right next to the ones of Mundell. There will be no more tourism.
I subscribe to I-sCOT – it’s a really good magazine and worth supporting. Just made another donation.. c’mon folks ” mony a mickle maks a muckle”
Every one of us should be concerned about Trident and the huge amount of road traffic that it generates – passing regularly through towns and countryside near to schools, housing estates, cities, nurseries and centres of population.
We saw from the valiant efforts of Brian Quail and a few students from Stirling University that it is incredibly easy to stop a convoy – by the simple method of standing in the road in front of it!
These convoys are sometimes parked up overnight in the army barracks in the centre of Stirling. ( They may be ‘overnighted’ in other places too but I’m not aware of that. )
There are nuclear materials being transported by train the length of Scotland and also by air with all the possibilities of accidents that either of those means of transport bring. On one journey south down the M6, I had the misfortune to get stuck behind a nuclear convoy and despite the police motor-bike outriders blocking each motorway entrance in advance of the convoy to allow uninterrupted passage, it all felt incredibly vulnerable.
Trident is an outdated system , one that the USA will stop servicing from 2025 – so who will service it then?
WM has shown that yet again, our views on Trident have been utterly dismissed.
Mike Cassidy has linked to an interesting article re Trident re-location.
link to archive.is
The idea that to move Trident would risk the lives of 250,000 people in Plymouth, or 26,000 people in Falmouth or 70,000 in Barrow- in-Furness ( tough luck if you live in Miford Haven ‘cos they don’t even mention your statistic or those of you who live near Portland) is to be lauded.
No-one should have their life put at risk by these weapons BUT to have them placed SO near to the most populous Scottish city and within a a very close range of the area where the largest proportion of the Scottish nation lives is totally unacceptable then , now and always.
I guess that in the 60’s Nuclear energy and weapons may have seemed like the way for the future – despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and they provided a source of employment in a relatively under developed part of Scotland, but we were lied to then and we are being lied to now. These weapons are not safe, they are not a deterrent and we owe it you the generations yet to come to get rid of them from the world.
Bairns not Bombs!
yesindyref2 says:
21 February, 2017 at 9:01 pm
@Heed
I like your alternative history.
Its entirely possible that Thatcher told Reagan, give us the Side Winders or we will have no choice but…
They’d had Polaris since the 60’s and it was only scrapped mid 90’s. So in the scale of things, a tory would argue tory England is better off with nukes than without.
Thatcher’s gov was on the way out, in its first term too. So if Polaris subs were sitting under water offshore Buenos Aries they saved the Falklands, and the tory government ofcourse.
You probably had to be there, to have lived through the rather high level loathing of Thatcher for one thing. Then the spectacular war mongering jingoism belching out of the BBC, the SUN reprobates, you name it. Losing the Falklands war would have not only been one of the worst national humiliations for the UK ever but ofcourse, no Snatcher Thatcher UK we all grew up in.
Fluffie would have grown up to be something useful maybe, like a doorstop, in a Dumfries gay bar:D
Maybe the yoons don’t want indi ref 2 because they can’t pull off the same fiddle twice. Postal votes were dodgy. Just enough to make sure there was no recount. Recount would mean found out. Maybe yes actually won?
First thing Cameron said was there would be no remote. He never said that after Brexitt.
Revote…..fecking thought police.
Re Heedtracker@9.29
Fluffie,doorstop,ha ha brilliant.
Links to iScot find thing again anyone? Thanks.
Fund, not find.
Link to i-Scot mag.
link to indiegogo.com
These Sidewinder missiles that you speak of heedtracker? Would these be the AIM-9L Sidewinders which where already in the UK, in the possession of the UK armed forces *before* the Argentinian invasion?
The myth of the US generously supplying AIM-9Ls to the UK during the Falklands is somehow as hard to kill (if one will pardon the phrase) as the myth that HMS Sheffield had an aluminium superstructure. It didn’t, and we already had the AIM-9Ls. The only part where reality approximates to any part of the myth is that the AIM-9Ls where declared NATO stocks, and so only be used in a NATO conflict in Europe … and we took them anyway, and the USA then replenished the UK’s stocks (i.e. the ones in the armouries in the UK).
It’s all pretty irrelevant as no Sidewinder shots where attempted/taken in the Falklands that where not within the engagement envelope of the previous generation AIM-9Gs which we would have gone to war with (indeed did, to some extent) if the USA had put it’s foot down over the AIM-9L issue.
Derek MacKay, oh yeah !
Him n big Mike Russell, we are in good hands.
Had a wee rummage down the back of the sofa for the iScot fund raiser tonight. Nice to see it really pick up over the last couple of days.
It really is an excellent magazine they have done amazing things with a shoestring budget. It puts other Scottish political and arts magazines in the shade.
Not Convinced says:
21 February, 2017 at 10:05 pm
These Sidewinder missiles that you speak of heedtracker?
and we took them anyway, and the USA then replenished the UK’s stocks (i.e. the ones in the armouries in the UK).
Nuff said:D
It depends on how you look at events. What if Reagan had withheld Sidewinders? Its all there was to stop Argentine fast jets virtually destroying the whole Task force. Reagan offered US battleships or aircraft carriers. Exocets were stopped en route to Argentina but despite all that, would Thatcher have pushed the button?
@Breeks 4.14: I wrote something similar but not as good yesterday – perhaps fortunately it disappeared when I pressed “refresh” button and I was too tired to write it again! Option 4 was what I was wondering if it could be done i.e. a legal challenge by Scots Gov to have our powers as stated were preserved in the Acts of Union.
I would like Mr Peffers to give his view on it – I hope he is OK as I haven’t seen any posts from him in the last two days.
Breeks,
“Sovereignty is an absolute condition. If its not absolute, then its not sovereign. It’s like life and death; you are either alive, or dead. Nevermind nearly dead, in a coma, until you are ACTUALLY dead, you are alive. It’s the absolute term. You are sovereign or you’re not.”
The “plebs” of Scotland have never been “sovereign”.
Any alleged “sovereignty” is not worth the paper it was written on.
The “sovereignty” of Scotland as a nation was sold to England by the parcel of rogues.
It can only be reclaimed by a majority voting for independence.
Only then can the “plebs” be given “sovereignty”, for the first time, with a written constitution.
” 4) We secure judicial review at Court of Session and have Scotland’s inalienable sovereignty recognised as the prevailing (if widely misunderstood) reality, prompting an emergency plebiscite to determine what we should do about it.
Don’t know about you, but I’m liking option 4… a lot.”
No one has the guts to do that because the result would bust the myth of “sovereignty” once and for all.
Scotland, the only “sovereign” colony in the world.
Heedtracker,
Whose to say that has not happened already? The difference between a club doorstep and Fluffy? One is regularly pissed on by drunken men with their cocks out on a Saturday night……the other is a club doorstep.
Just 9 hours to go with the iScot fundraiser. As others above point out, it really is a rather classy magazine – especially when you get the print version (also available for iPad and tablets etc in digital form). It reeks quality. Real class.
If possible, take a look at their link, for the fundraiser.
This IS the alternative SCOTTISH media, we all talk about.
LINK: link to indiegogo.com
Graf Midgehunter,
“O/T i-Scot Magazine
I just hope we never see another comment from anyone on WOS, moaning and complaining about the lack of a friendly, Indy supporting newspaper or magazine when you’ve got one here right in front of your eyes.
(National and Sundy Herald are still too “maybe” at the moment.)”
With respect, The National is the “independence supporting” media of choice of the many armchair pundits posting on this website.
bugsbunny says:
21 February, 2017 at 10:51 pm
Heedtracker,
Doorstop Bugs. Fluffie’s tory career path set by a very hot war on the other side of the planet. I guess that could go for millions of us too though.
Excluding Don’t knows, 55% are in favour of nuclear weapons, 45% are against.
Identical to the independence referendum result.
The results are equally mixed.
Educating the general public on the advantages of independence and getting rid of nuclear weapons seems to be an impossible task.
God save us.
Has there ever been a Scottish judicial review of the Acts of Union. If not why not?
It may or may not be a myth Not Convinced, but if it was a myth, it was most definitely reported that way in the mainstream news at the time.
The story I recall was that the Brits didn’t have the capacity to intercept the (as I recall French Super Etendard aircraft) which carried the Exocet missiles which were taking out the ships. The Harriers were equal to the Pucharras and blimey, what was it, Skyhawks??? But the French aircraft were a different class and much too fast. Without the sidewinders, the task force would have had to stay further out of range and be less able to cover the landings and react to problems.
The British ground to air missiles, who’s name I forget, were dud too. Rapier was it? I knew paras who were there that slated it as useless. They also said the Argy aircrews were extraordinarily brave and professional.
Myth or not, the sidewinder was a story that was definitely broadcast on mainstream channels and concurrent with the events. It might well have been a cover story telegraphing to the Argentinians that the US “taking sides”, or a tacit warning to the Argentinians that Britain has a better defence than it did, or perhaps even a story to steady the nerves at home that Britain had a countermeasure to the French ship destroying missiles, I really don’t know. But it was the story which was broadcast consistently at the time.
STV News:
Derek McKay does a good job….Bastirt!
What would you do different Murder Fraser? ..eh Derek McKay Bastirt
Yes you said that Murder Fraser but what would you do?…eh Well I would splorb nhdy dhuns and eh goosh Derek McKay Bastirt
Thank you Murder Fraser of the Conservative and Q11 party
And now 15 minutes on a man who ate a pie
Keep the nation informed that’s what I say!
Weapons of Destruction are bad enough already but ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ are completely crazy and totally in excess to requirements.
«««««
iScot ~ The last call!
Now, the math..
If half of the 650+ current Backers were able to contribute just another £5’er each, the crossing line would be passed.
Do for iScot, do it for Scotland, do it for yersel’ X
Think I’ll stay up all night and watch the meter rise-up.
A wise man once said, “From small beginnings..”
Clock is ticking.. tick tock.
Cheers also for the PP on twitter dude.
Sound.
Breeks
It was much bigger than just air to air missiles though. Reagan’s America was conducting a really dirty anti communist war across south America, and Argentina’s fascists were Reagan’s biggest allies.
Its partly why the fascists were actually in power in Argentina and why they were able to murder thousands of Argentinian people, with little if any Western intervention. It was not by chance ofcourse. Reagan was one of the most war like presidents there has ever been.
Why he suddenly switched from neutral to Thatcher ally, mid conflict, is one of the great mysteries of the special relationship or its not. Even if the US had not intervened on Thatcher’s side as much as they did, the UK could still have won but it would have been a far longer war with many more casualties.
So why the sudden Reagan abandonment of his anti commie allies? If you don’t help us Ronnie, we will have to use nukes, destabilising the whole of south America, old friend?
galamcennalath says:
21 February, 2017 at 8:41 pm
“They know this Brexit fiasco is going to be difficult. Add a crisis threatening to dissolve their UK. They must be having nightmares”.
Just what I was thinking this evening Galamcennalath when I learnt the cabinet had spent the morning discussing how important the Union was!!
link to eurofree3.wordpress.com
The Rapier stuff is propogated by the RN people who were there & are trying to cover their arses.
The truth of the matter is that the RN ships in San Carlos Water refused to shut down their radar & hence “jammed” the Rapier systems – which at the time were both optical/radar but the ships radar meant no optical lock could be achieved.
Rapier units dating from the late 1980s have successfully tracked current US operational “stealth” aircraft at Groom Lake.
Don’t blame the (good) guys at Linlithgow who built the radar receiver/command transmitter for fuckwit RN “leaders” who still lived in the “imperial age”.
Anybuddy want a can?
A can?
Yes WE can, miss daisy knows 🙂
Och Rock… I’ll turn your words right back on you.
“It can only be reclaimed by a majority voting for independence”.
And how does that work?
Suppose that vote was to happen, specifically, why would anybody, anywhere, be obliged to recognise or have any regard for such a vote UNLESS IT WAS EMPOWERED TO MEAN SOMETHING BY SCOTLAND’S SOVEREIGNTY?
Without sovereignty to implement the result, a vote is just an opinion poll of no meaningful consequence to anyone. Sovereignty is power. It is the very Sovereignty you say does not exist which makes that vote a binding result, the expressed will of a sovereign people, a legally competent entity which has to be respected.
We know you have a bee in your bonnet about it, but just desist man. You are barking up the wrong tree Rock.
I’ll repeat my other parallel too… When a man pickpockets your wallet, at what point does the ownership transfer onto the thief rather than you? Answer? It doesn’t. Not ever. Rightfully, it remains yours, even though it’s no longer in your possession. Legally, it still belongs to you because thieving it is not a legitimate transfer of ownership. That’s like our sovereignty. It is ours, it belongs to no other, we just aren’t in outright possession of it. But we can take legitimate possession of it, once we do, and when we do, nobody can interfere.
Many say it needs a majority to take possession of that sovereignty, a referendum, but I disagree. I believe all we need is a legal edict to acknowledge what is ours is properly ours. A legal judgement we can present to the UN and international community, and have the deed recognised.
“Operation Condor”. Latin America: The Thirty Years Dirty War
link to globalresearch.ca
Don’t blame the (good) guys at Linlithgow who built the radar receiver/command transmitter for fuckwit RN “leaders” who still lived in the “imperial age”.
Its not about blame. Its about panning back and trying to understand the how and why history happens. Did Reagan US pile in behind the British right in the Falklands because they the were weighing up Thatcher losing power after the Falklands, of the UK going left again. Did a monster like Thatcher threaten Reagan with nuclear war in the US backyard, already close to communist take over in several south American countries?
Or was it all just that special relationship? Look at how the British right protected a mass murderer like Pinochet, right to the end.
link to telegraph.co.uk
link to independent.co.uk
@ heedtracker 11:52pm
At the time of the Falklands its my understanding that the USA threatened all sorts of stuff relating to “technology sharing” until they basically got told “its happening, regardless”.
Once that was absorbed then the Sidewinders came as its a perfect trial IRL for the manufacturers (embedded again) for 1950-1970s aircraft.
Pinochet was the one who gave Thatcher her “Falklands moment” by offering unconditional access to UK forces. IIRC that drove the USA mental as it meant they effectively had to either support/oppose the UK.
tl;dr – those who serve the state at high levels are usually rewarded (or executed). Not much changes in 1000 years mmm?
Some of you have talked about not being that bothered about still having Trident missiles/subs after indy as long as the rUK pay rent.
If you live in Argyll & Bute or West Dunbartonshire that is the last thing we want. I have had the proximity of nuclear weapons, and its consequences, in the back of my mind for more than 40 years. It scares the hell out of me, especially as Tory Governments aren’t really that interested in Health & Safety.
If you go to the hill over Coulport, beautiful view but underneath is a huge armament of nuclear missiles.
They cross the Erskine Bridge, which I can see from my back windows, even if there is a ‘high wind warning’ according to Scottish CND.
We need to get shot of the nuclear missiles as soon after indy as we can but we could keep the subs, paying rent, until they find/build an alternative. But with a time limit to be negotiated.
The cabinet meeting today indicated Project Fear mark 2 will be on a formal footing soon. SiU has obviously been the reconnaissance mission.First battle will be over the issue of the referendum itself. I suspect they will try to spin this out as long as possible since SiU don’t seem to be too keen to disclose their ‘no more referendum’ petition figures.
With all this Brexit stuff going on maybe our tactics should involve some distraction. I like the idea of judicial reviews of the Acts of Union. How about demands to see the books so that we can’t keep getting palmed of with GERS shit? Legal challenges at every possible opportunity to keep Whitehall busy and distracted attempting to keep a lid on everything. Revisiting the Scotland Act 2016 should provide lots of work for idle hands.
The failure to provide information could be interpreted that there is something to hide which should be exploited as much as possible.
I fell asleep there and had a dream. Russia joined Nato and Dermot Desmond bought Rangers. Or is it true?
tl;dr – those who serve the state at high levels are usually rewarded (or executed). Not much changes in 1000 years mmm?
No. Thatcher was a lucky general though, of the right. Its unlikely Pres Carter would have helped UK tories. Reagan’s crew picked the best outcome available, let the UK keep the Falklands, leave Argentine fascist military in charge. UK stays tory for a long long time, or the UK today we are now on the point of saying goodbye to. The least worst outcome for Reagan’s US and western democracy.
Can’t be used without the “Hell yeah” from Don-Don.
NOT independent.
RN boats effectively USN boats under a white ensign.
Use them and you’ve already lost.
As much use as a carpet fitter’s ladder.
Get rid ASAP!
Sorry – my last post incorrect….
They do have a use:
Uncle Sam lets the faithfull poodle that is the good-ole Yookay have the missiles so as to keep the Yookay’s Permanent Membership of the UNSC, where it can do Uncle Sam’s bidding and help legitimise whatever foreign ambitions Uncle Sam has at any given time, in return for the ability to crow to anyone who will listen that the Yookay can “punch above” its measly weight.
As soon as technology renders the Boomers visible to whoever wants to know their whereabouts, Uncle Sam is going to move on to new technology, leaving the Yookay with a rather expensive but useless appendage swinging in the wind.
Did I miss anything, or is that pretty well it?
Slightly OT.
Remember one of the episodes of “spitting images” where Regan had just finished a conversation with Thatcher. As an aside he says “Fine woman that, pity it’s only her country I’m screwing”.
OT
Done an initial estimate at last of Scotland’s nett annual EU Budget contribution, making estimates to make it on the HIGH side I think. Figure comes to £680 million a year, but is likely to go down. Anyone interested in the calculations, click my moniker and scroll down the page!
Dream. There is another IndyRef and it is won.
Thatcher would not even have done the things May had done, The Tories are crooked, corrupt compulsive liars. Wicked beyond extreme. Twisted Hammond smirking about the thought of. Scottish Navy. They secretly and illegally took the Oil revenues and wasted it. They are killing the elderly off. Why the elderly, or anyone else, vote Tory is a mystery. The Tories couldn’t make a bigger mess, Corbyn/Labour are useless.
Scotland could be a much more equal prosperous country. The way the Tories carry on is malicious, spiteful and vindictive. The EU do more for Scotland. The Grants and investment are more than any imports/exports. In renewables etc.
Fishing/farming. A red herring. The fishermen overfished the sea. Conservation and using bigger nets were needed. Any Gov would have had to comply. BSC destroyed farming. It took £Billions to bail them out. Exports of beef products were banned for ten years. Longer to Russia, BSC came from the US. Alabama. The US does not compulsory record cases or data.
The US did not want nuclear weapons in Britain. They did not want the expense. It was McMillian who insisted and secretly placed them at Faslane. 30 mins from Glasgow. McMillian wanted the base at Fort William. Kennedy. So much for the hypocrites. ‘Think not what your country can do for you. Think what you can do for your country’ Independence. Self determination. This time it will be won.
Now England/Wales are out of the EU, Trident will be going. No longer necessary in the UK as part of NATO. There are too many nuclear warheads in Europe, especially aimed at Russia. The US and Russia can’t afford another Arms race. It will bankrupt both countries.
Value of UK Exports to EU
link to archive.is
How much of this is from Scotland?
The US -Reagan did not support the British claim to the Falklands. They support getting it sorted by UN talks. The Americans wanted a diplomatic solution. Give the Falklanders a settlement to go to Scotland (Wales). It costs £Billions to support the Falklands. 3000 people. The population are elderly and falling. The US/UN favours some kind of joint administration/agreement.
The Argentina claim to the Falklands comes from Spanish control, when Argentina became Independent from Spain. 1800’s. Oil and Gas is a myth. Oil companies looking for investment. Investors losing their money when the shares go down. It would need the aid of the nearest land mass, Argentina for any cooperation. If there is no new blood the population will fall and become non existent. Giving the islanders £millions and re-settlement would be much more economical and feasible for those who want it. New people from Argentina would keep the community going for those who want to stay. It is just a matter of time. The British claim to the Falklands is not supported by many of the UN members.
Links
link to commonspace.scot
link to petewishart.wordpress.com
link to progressivescotland.wordpress.com
Glasgow Labour councillors on taxpayer-funded junkets to France and the United States as the axe falls
link to archive.is
link to alexsalmond.scot
link to arcofprosperity.org
link to thecanary.co
link to businessforscotland.com
@Nana
Timing perfect. 🙂
link to rbs.postach.io
Norway-Scotland cable owner to apply for licence this year
link to montel.no
Exposed: Alliance plot to hijack BBC NI Talkback show with fake callers
link to archive.is
Top lawyers warn of human rights crisis after Brexit
link to archive.is
link to politico.eu
Baltic politicians lobbied by David Davis: we will only negotiate as one
link to archive.is
Tens of thousands of British pensioners in EU countries ‘face healthcare limbo after Brexit’
link to archive.is
link to rt.com
@Nana
Thanks
link to arcofprosperity.org
I agree with this. Why the assumption it will take a couple of years to declare Independence? It can happen in short months, weeks even, and the long-winded negotiations carry on regardless. Or up the jungle.
Nana: Good Morning,
More lovely links 🙂 Thank You. Kettle’s on!
Peace Always
Anent the Falklands. I worked with a guy in th late 1990s – Glenalmond, Dartmouth, commission in the Royal Navy. He claimed to have been with the Special Boat Service during the Falklands, and was actually in Port Stanley counting Argies.
He also says they were deployed on the Argentinian mainland, lying at the end of the runway, counting out the Argentinian air force planes going off to attack the Task Force.
Good story, but, if the SBS and the SAS were as good as we are always being told they were, why weren’t they going into the airfields and blowing-up the Argentinian air force aircraft on the ground. I mean, it’s only a small step from being at the end of the runway to see them flying out.
Re whether or not Thatcher would have used nukes on Argentina: I always understood the rules of engagement were, our nukes could only be used as a retaliatory strike against another nuclear power, which Argentine clearly was not.
I don’t think Maggie would have been so stupid as to have broken these rules of engagement, and I would like to think, had she been prepared to, her cabinet would have grown a collective pair and stopped her.
It’s one thing to fire back at the USSR as it then was, quite another to fire first on a people being oppressed by a bunch of fascist generals.
…and anticipating your next question Rock, why don’t we do It?
I don’t know. Maybe all Scotland needs is a Gina Millar to up and do it. Maybe you or I could do it. Maybe the Scottish legal fraternity could do it, or maybe our elected leadership should do it. Personally, I haven’t the money to pay for a judicial review. Maybe you are spot on, we should crowd fund such a thing.
See, for me, the beauty of the thing is that such a review doesn’t by itself need to be the actual event of Independence. It isn’t a provocative decree from the SNP headquarters, it is actually dispassionate and apolitical. If folks don’t agree with it, let them challenge the legality … and lose.
We could as a nation hold that judicial review as our own article 50, which puts Scotland into a “neutral” state of transitional limbo. We are neither legally independent, nor legally joined with the UK, but in a holding pen status of our own making, neither one nor the other, pending the result of a constitutional plebiscite to determine what the country actually wants to be.
I firmly believe this half way house status is perhaps the only way to, I hope, diffuse Unionist hostility towards Independence, and take away the divisive and potentially inflammatory binary option which entails a massive loss of face for some of the most entrenched beliefs.
The bitter pill for the Unionist will be that our judicial review will take abdication of our sovereignty off the agenda. It would simply be unlawful, unenactable in law, so not an option that could be given. The best option in the plebiscite from the Unionist perspective would be a close resemblance to the UK as is, but a consensual Union with rUK, but one which does not encroach upon Scotland’s sovereignty.
I honestly CAN see that working. It also puts Scotland in he immediate position of staying in the EU without having to exit. Our self declared holding Pen status is only a slight derivation of the holding Pen status they have suggested to us, pending the same clarification of our sovereign intent.
For me, this is the way forward. If I was SNP, it’s what I would do, calmly, and professionally, but with resolute intent. If the ardent Unionists cannot accept it, then let their protests fall upon the Court of Session and their judicial review which does nothing beyond establish the legal precedence. Unionists then have option of forlorn protests falling on deaf ears, or to get busy backing the plebiscite option of getting get a “soft” Independence. Yes, the law requires the inevitable sovereign “separation” but there must be one plebiscite option which seeks to maintain the benefits of the Union… whatever those bizarre and elusive benefits are.
We are thus have Scotland’s sovereignty redifined, protected and enacted, and a democratic decision about what happens next. Now tell me what is faulty about that logic?
Socrates MacSporran:
The SAS AND SBS did great work on Pebble Island, unfortunately, most of the guys involved were killed in a helicopter crash shortly after.
Peace Always
Link to action on Pebble Island.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Peace Always
O/T Upcoming EU Negotiations
I listened to a German politician (Stephan Maier I think) on the Today program on my drive to work. Well worth a listen.
In essence, what we heard is a somewhat different view on Brexit than those coming from Junckers/Barnier and the like. He spoke reasonably and realistically I thought on the issues and nature of the future negotiations. Importantly though, he was, in effect, critical of the line being expounded by the Barnier/Junckers type threats and pronouncements. He made the point that that over 500,000 cars (I thought I read somewhere that it is over 800k) are exported from Germany for instance and that Germany’s interests need to be understood and accepted by other leaders in Europe.
He went on to say that the current talk about the 30/40/50/60 Billion the UK will have to pay to exit the EU is not appropriate or helpful in the context of an overall agreement that needs to be reached.
Interesting stuff.
Any judicial review carries the risk that a contrived excuse might be made to refer the result to the Supreme Court. There’s already sufficient precedent that says Parliamentary Sovereignty is a concept unique to English Law, or at least foreign to Scots Law. The last thing we need is an re-examination of that.
As to May’s cabinet meeting. If that’s so then the question as to whether she will outright refuse a Section 30 transfer of power is pretty much answered. Either it’s irrelevant as the SNP will proceed without it or given the rumours a month so back she’s been told to take her conditions and stuff them up her arse.
The questions not Could or Should their be a second referendum. It’s obvious their could be. The question is can and will the Government of the UK do anything to prevent one.
sensibledave says:
22 February, 2017 at 8:59 am
O/T Upcoming EU Negotiations
I listened to a German politician (Stephan Maier I think) on the Today program on my drive to work.
Where do you work sensible, local circus?
@ Nana 7:34am and 7:35am
Thank you for the links. I’ve never gotten round to thanking you before so…
@Nana
A few interesting reads there Nana.
I’d say Pete Wishart’s, the Wolfgang Schauble piece on Politico and arcofprosperity are standout. Mind you the Independent article on pensioners should raise an eyebrow or two.
Pete Wishart from Nana’s link ….
“ To be a ‘No’ voter next time round you will, therefore, have to be at least willing to accommodate Conservatism as an almost permanent feature of government in the UK. To be a ‘No’ voter next time also means that you have to at least be prepared to accept a Brexitised Tory UK, economically isolated with social policy crafted by the ideological victors of the Brexit solution. ”
Put is those terms, that is going to be a hard sell for the Yoonanistas!
Last time they attacked Indy, next time they will be on the back foot defending their Brexitised Union.
sensibledave says:
22 February, 2017 at 8:59 am
O/T Upcoming EU Negotiations
I listened to a German politician (Stephan Maier I think) on the Today program on my drive to work.
BBC r4 are ferocious tory nutters sensibledave, they also had a thing about BBC no go on Scotland NOT getting its own BBC teatime tv news, and ofcourse hustled the SNP guy very quickly through their usual fact free, hustled and rushed, anything at all Scotland slot.
Then same gimps chatted away for ages about dog poop, catching dog’s pooping, with just another sleazy Daily Heil gimp, what went on for ages and BBC r4 ages. How they honk like frightfully posh tories on BBC r4, with more listeners than there are Scots in teamGB, the greatest team ever in the whole wide tory world.
Just in case no-one’s seen this yet:
link to thenational.scot
link to randompublicjournal.com
Apologies to anyone I haven’t replied to but I was gathering information chatting with the postie, he tells me he is hearing more and more folks talking about a new referendum and intentions to vote yes next time.
He mentioned one old fellow who he remembers voted no in 2018 and was very vocal about it. Postie asked him why the change, main reason the NHS. His niece is a nurse in England and has told him what is happening down there.
A lady he knows took her computer into work and at lunchtime played London calling for some colleagues. A few were already yes voters but those who voted no were disgusted by the bias from the bbc. It’s a powerful tool so lets all use it.
The EU is going to protect Scotland in the Brexit talks. The wishes and vote of the people in Scotland are going to be respected and taken into account. The Tories and May can go their own way. Destroy the economy. The Tory Unionists always muck up.
Kathleen Nutt in an article in The National today about the FM Nicola Sturgeon wishing a new name for the new Independence Referendum, refers to the FM near the article’s end as “the Sturgeon”.
I’ll be looking out for ‘the Dugdale’, ‘the Davidson’ and ‘the Rennie’ from now on. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be seeing any of them from Kathleen Nutt – or is that now ‘the Nutt’.
@sensibledave
Stephen Maier. Never heard of him. Who is he? No sign of him anywhere.
The only thing I can find is Stephen Meyer who is CDU but not in Berlin. Elected in Saxony. Not a big hitter then.
Socrates MacSporran
Re whether or not Thatcher would have used nukes on Argentina: I always understood the rules of engagement were, our nukes could only be used as a retaliatory strike against another nuclear power, which Argentine clearly was not.
There are no rules in war. Ofcourse Thatcher had Polaris nukes in the south Atlantic, and was ready to launch them. Ofcourse Reagan’s crew knew this. Propaganda at the time and in the aftermath completely blacked out the UK nuke threat to Argentina, let alone vital US involvement.
All that they really fixated on was Thatcher and the Belgrano. Why they thought that torpedoing a big enemy battleship capable of sinking RN battleships was such a big deal back then, who knows. Saying it was sailing away from battle, so it was a war crime, was as mad then as it is now. Such is UK politics, then and now, its all in the telling/propaganda.
Nana said;
He mentioned one old fellow who he remembers voted no in 2018. I hope not…. 🙂
I’m still working on the pensioners at my local centre. Dropping a few hints here and there seems to work better than lecturing them on their 2014 stupidity.
@Orri
Yes, but the Supreme Court established precedence in the 2011 AXA vs Lord Advocate case. By its own unforced admission, it acknowledged it hasn’t got the jusidiction to overrule the sovereign will of the Scottish people.
If that cut no ice, there is also the UK’s respect for Scotland’s separate legal system with regards to the Megrahi trial to reconcile. Not one of the finer moments of Scottish Legal History, but the principle of independence from UK law was acknowledged.
Furthermore, If it comes to battle between the UK Supreme Court, and the Scottish Court of Session, of the two, I would suggest the Court of Session is built upon much the more solid foundation, and would also be required to make the case for its own very existence. I feel reasonably sure the Scottish legal fraternity would be quite animated in their defence if their right to exist was threatened and at stake. …Why they have slept through 300 years of Scottish subjugation and oppression is a question we can ask later.
But Yes, there is the bizarre “what if” the establishment’s Judicial review did not call for Scottish sovereignty to be respected. Disaster. Well, frankly I don’t expect that to happen, but even if it did, then we might only lose the power to rekindle and embrace our ancient sovereignty. We would still be able to make our case for “new” Independence based upon our rights of self determination as recognised by the UN.
You see, my problem with a referendum is that I lived through the last one and I remain immensely troubled by how compromised any democratic referendum is going to be when our broadcast airwaves are awash with pro-Brexit delusion and anti Independence propaganda and rhetoric. We’re not going to defeat the BBC any time soon, because frankly, we don’t even seem to be trying very hard. We seem to be drifting towards a referendum, and seem resigned or blind to the sharp rocks and rapids which are waiting for us.
The media won YES in 2014, certainly not Better Together. The media also got UKIP Coburn as seat in the Europe representing Scotland. The media won Brexit for the Xenophobes. The media is redefining Marine Le Pen as a National Front politician who isn’t really so bad because she wants France to join Britain in the stupid club. The media is already setting down the parameters of how Indyref2 is going to be played and we are lining up to take our seats… Are we really so dull and unimaginative as to let them do this to us all over again??? Really???
We are kidding, right? We do have a better plan, don’t we?
@Marcia eagle eyes
haha got that wrong, didn’t I?
Postie is always rushing but he said he would tell me more another day.
Keep on dropping hints Marcia, my friend is doing the same with her elderly pals.
bjsalba 9:37 am
You wrote: “The only thing I can find is Stephen Meyer who is CDU but not in Berlin. Elected in Saxony. Not a big hitter then.”
… not sure of spelling of the either of his names so that could be the issue. I think he was visiting Westminster for some reason.
I note your keenness to to dismiss his sentiments. Is that because you actually think his views are irrelevant – or is it because you want/need them to be irrelevant because you want the negotiations to not end well because you think that will aid the cause of Scottish Independence?
I think you really need to think about what you are saying. You are taking the stance, I believe, that you are wishing ill will on all the people of the UK, including everyone in Scotland – in order to aid your personal political cause. Is that a fair reflection?
…. found him
link to en.wikipedia.org
and
link to csu.de (you can use Google “translate”.
….. A bit “bigger hitter” than you hoped I think.
I think you really need to think about what you are saying. You are taking the stance, I believe, that you are wishing ill will on all the people of the UK, including everyone in Scotland – in order to aid your personal political cause. Is that a fair reflection?
If mental as anything tory UK gets to keep say single market access to the EU 27 countries, like now sensible, but they also get to end freedom of movement, what’s the point of the EU then?
All kinds of UKIPers are waiting for mass deportations to begin sensible. So lets all be part of that UK, eh Scotland region of greater tory England?
UKIPers get about 1% Scots vote sensible, Tory creeps 20%.
The Tories are killing the elderly off in England. 300,000 unexpected, higher than average expected death in the elderly. Due to cuts in social funding. According to a report by a Oxford Professor. The Tories could be intending to cut pensioners remuneration. Fuel allowance etc. Scottish taxpayers pay the (UK ) Gov pensions and benefits. £16Billion. £6Billion for (UK) pensions. Less pro rata because people on average die earlier in Scotland. Pension payments come from general taxation. There is no pension fund.
Heedy 10.11
Heedy, we have been through this a number of times – we just disagree because you are unable to think about things in any way other than your absolute desire for Scottish Indepence (which I admire and applaud i.e. your wish for Scottish Independence).
However, if you are completely unable to view matters such as our upcoming negotiations with the EU without wishing/needing/wanting them to not end well – then your views are likely to be somewhat tainted aren’t they. As a result of that, you will almost certainly end up being disappointed one way or another because your views are not based upon the actual issues that need to be resolved.
Lord Hall comes to Scotland with some sweeties, no thanks I’m on a bbc diet
link to archive.is
link to twitter.com
bbc free diet!
sensibledave says:
22 February, 2017 at 10:24 am
Heedy 10.11
Sensible you are an arse, but this is how it goes in tory teamGB. Brexit is a disaster unfolding, yet somehow a tory arse like you is inexorably drawn to a blog like WoS, to then tell YES voters in Scotland how bad we are, for wishing Brexit disaster on Leave England, for pointing stuff out, like what a unfolding disaster Brexit actually is.
Classic tory bullshit sensible. God help tory England.
“As a result of that, you will almost certainly end up being disappointed one way or another because your views are not based upon the actual issues that need to be resolved.”
You’ll always have Trident sensible, that’ll teach em.
Socrates Re blowing up Aircraft on runways, their was a plan!!
link to en.m.wikipedia.org
If some Sas/Sbs got to the airfield ,maybe better to keep a watching brief on movements than compromise your position , the LRDG in the Sahara during the 2nd World War used to monitor troop movements rather than attack them as a little Ontelligence is better than none at all.
Heedy 10.32
QED!
Your last comment seeks to project and represent me (and over 60 odd million people in the UK that didn’t vote Yes in the indyref1) as BritNAT Tories hell bent on the oppression of Scotland, desire a nuclear holocaust and voted for Brexit.
Hopefully you will understand (although I am pretty sure that you wont) therefore that your thoughts can be dismissed as completely irrelevant.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, but apparently the SNP/Greens don’t want to refer to the next referendum as ‘IndyRef2’ but prefer ‘New IndyRef’ for various reason that I won’t go into.
I know everyone will have their own view, but given the thinking for changing it, I personally see it as a positive change.
Senseless Dave , early shift today?
Did all you Tories take delusional pills? your little Engerland is irrelevant out of Europe, you were only use to the Yanks as a big aircraft carrier, however the Donald has made it clear that the USA will be reducing its commitment to NATO, therefore even that role is being reconsidered and you will become a gigantic rust belt.
You (the British Establishment) have made enemies for centuries with your arrogance , you will see how many friends you really have, I’ll give you a clue, Nil, Zero, Nada , Zilch. I feel sorry for all my English chums who will suffer as a consequence of the Brit arrogance , but hey their welcome to come here and contribute to the journey we are on.
sensibledave says:
22 February, 2017 at 10:37 am
Heedy 10.32
QED!
Why or what is wrong with going wtf is Leave England up to now sensible?
It does not mean,
“However, if you are completely unable to view matters such as our upcoming negotiations with the EU without wishing/needing/wanting them to not end well ”
It does mean stuff like, holy fudge, my shopping just jumped in price. Or wtf, my holiday money just lost a third of its value, or wtf, UKIPers may be about to take over Labour heartlands in northern England, or wtf, I just had my EU citizenship ripped up under my nose, by a whole range of rich tory goons, starting with neo fascists like Farage, BoJO, May, sliding into Murdoch and his jolly band of henchman and bootboys, in the BBC etc.
Are you getting it now sensible? You’re not wearing tory rose tinted specs sensible. You’re just another rule britannia, my tories right or wrong, tory twat.
Anyway we get your Leave is wonderful, EU will now implode without England, youre out too so shut it sweaties, planet toryboy stuff relentlessly dumped on us by the ton every day, from all tory BBC led meeja sensible, so get back to work slacker.
Heedy 10.52
You wrote “I just had my EU citizenship ripped up under my nose, by a whole range of rich tory goons, starting with neo fascists like Farage, BoJO, May, sliding into Murdoch and his jolly band of henchman and bootboys, in the BBC etc.”
No Heedy. Both you and I voted one way in a referendum – but more other ordinary folk voted the other way – including around 40% of Scots (similar % to the outcome of the vote in London and the South East (the Tory Heartlands?)).
Are you suggesting that 40ish% of the Scottish electorate are Tories?
O/T
New BBC TV Channel for Scotland announced. £30m annual budget.
@ Rev
I have my doubts that yoon spook troll Milo has been genuinely kicked off Rev i suspect he has been told to take a low profile this is just a save face tactic.
Nah they would not try and use him as a blaster for a tory cry of defenders of free speech would they?
Hmmm they are daft enough to try lol
Are you suggesting 40% of the Scottish electorate are Tories? asks sensible.
Well, if you lump in the ‘New Labour’ anti Corbyn supporters(whom I view as Tories), I think that might well be about correct.
Are you suggesting that 40ish% of the Scottish electorate are Tories?
No sensible, I’m not suggesting anything sensible. Your strange brand of tory Brexit is great isn’t it buffoonery is all we get poured over our us by our chums of the UKOK hackdom industry.
Saying wtf is Brexit England doing now, holy fudge its awful already, is not,
“I believe, that you are wishing ill will on all the people of the UK, including everyone in Scotland – in order to aid your personal political cause.”
OK sensible. Unless you can give any Brexit upsides so far. English tories are way ahead of Labour now, that’s a massive tory Brexit bonus isnt it sensible? Scots will love that too.
High Court just ruled for the immigrant salary level rules to stay. So am really looking forward to hear you and your Daily Heil led freak show, all howling “hang the judges now,” sensibledave, in the lunatic asylum that is Brexit tory England.
Proud Cybernat @ 11.05
Aye Proud Cybernat as am reading it we get a whole FOUR hour’s of TV…And…AND…..A prominent place on the Electronic listings.
So that it then I can see no more reason for Scotland’s Independence, I mean wit mair dae we need.
Four Hours,……… It will be like Christmas every day, wonder if they will play GSTQ at the midnight close,rember that …..When the telly telt us tae go tae bed….Oh happy days, mibbi we should offer tae pay more????
Right ok I just wrote rubbish….But it’s a better class of rubbish than the senseless conversation we are being treated to this morning!
O/T
Mundell in parliament
link to scottishparliament.tv
Every time you look sensible?
link to archive.is
Boris Johnson has been taken to task by a Swedish MEP who accused the UK foreign secretary of “bad taste” and political insensitivity after he repeatedly referred to Brexit as “a liberation”, in a spat caught on camera at the recent Munich security conference.
@Sensibledave,
I think Heedtracker is suggesting that 38% of the Scottish electorate are just as gullible to media as 52% of the English population. Hence the forthcoming mess.
Bill Hume says:
I was thinking along those lines. As far as I can see, you couldn’t get a fag paper into the gap between Tories, rLab, and LibDems when it comes to every important issue. Tories all. Well, the LibDems do seem to have the wit to oppose Brexit perhaps distinguishing themselves there.
During the American Revolution they used the term Tory to signify anyone who was loyal to the UK as opposed to the new United States. I think Scotland has reached the same stage of revolution, peacefully I might add, where all Unionists can safely be described at Tory.
@ Nana
So we are still to be ripped off by the BBC. No Scottish Six and funding to be returned to 2015 level – about 63% of licence fee raised from current 55%.
Lower than Wales (95% of licence fee raised) and NI (75% of licence fee raised). That means that England spends well over 100% of licence fee raised. No doubt because England is UK BBC.
No indication if the programmes made in Scotland will continue to be irrelevant to Scotland – Under the Hammer, Question Time etc.
” In 2015/16, 55% of licence fee funds raised in Scotland was spent on local and Scottish network content.
The BBC’s 2015/16 accounts showed £320m was raised from the licence fee in Scotland. Of that, £176.5m was spent on local content and Scottish-made BBC network output.
This was a sharp decline from the £203m spend the previous year, which was 63% of the £323m collected. The funds not spent locally go towards BBC programmes developed elsewhere and aired across the UK.
In comparison, 95% of licence fee funds raised in Wales in 2015/16 were spent in Wales – including on network-wide programmes like Doctor Who, Sherlock, Casualty and Crimewatch – with the figure for Northern Ireland standing at 74%.”
link to archive.is
Of course, none of this largesse will be forthcoming until well after any potential Indyref might be planned.
@sensibledave
Stephan Mayer is not a Minister in the Government.
He is, as far as I can ascertain, equivalent to a backbencher who is on a few committees. Oh and he is Chairman of the German-British parliamentary group for what that is worth.
Marginally more than a politician in one of the Lander parliaments but still not by any means a big hitter.
Bob MACK says:
22 February, 2017 at 11:27 am
@Sensibledave,
You cant rerun referendum results either. Its highly likely that the spectacular tory BBC led Brexit media campaign did drag down Remain Scotland by at least 5%, maybe even more.
Creepiest thing about planet toryboy’s Leave triumph is that no one seems to know what they voted Leave for, no one seems to know what the EU actually is, and no one seems to have any idea what we have all lost, in any detail. And we have to now sit and watch tory BBC gimps, national and local, all hoping and praying for the EU to collapse. Deranged planet toryboy is putting it mildly. And they still have WMD’s next to Glasgow.
All we get is sensibledave scale bollox about nothing really, or rather that Scots should belt up and let the biggies get on with whatever they’re going to decide is the greatest UKOK triumph of our toryboy times.
Meanwhile, shopping leaps up in price because a neo fascist like Nigel Farage decided that England has got to, “take back control.”
heedtracker says:
They are going to be really glad to get shot of Johnson and some of the other pompous idiots they have had to deal with through the years.
The EU and ourselves, both!
Hmm.. could be a confluence of events with the new BBC channel, scheduled to launch in Autumn 2018. if indyref 2 comes at that point, what odds on the new BBC channel being called ‘Vow TV’? ‘Let’s call it Devo Max’ will be the channel’s opening words enunciated by Jackie Bird..
heedtracker says:
Wiki
“ Neo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, populism, anti-immigration policies or, where relevant, nativism, anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-Marxism, anti-anarchism and opposition to the parliamentary system and liberal democracy. ”
TICK
New BBC SCOTLAND channe.
That right aye?…zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
An hour long BBC News nonsense. 1/2hour is bad enough. STV is slightly better to get viewers.
galamcennalath says:
22 February, 2017 at 11:44 am
heedtracker says:
Its even more tory mental considering the whole Brexit thing stems from toryboy’s infighting over the EU, then all of them running from the UKIPers.
Can you invent a bigger tory catastrofuck? Iraq war. But it is interesting watching a tory like sensible, slithering around WoS btl trying to smear anyone even remotely critical, not just of planet toryboy Brexit farce but Leave voters in general. Why not criticise those who voted Leave, have no idea what it means and haven’t got the balls to say out loud, we dont like foreigners in our England.
O/T ‘Ken500 – you were asking for an iscot bank a/c to donate to…Ken McDonald says he’s still accepting donations thro’ Paypal – ken@iscot.scot.
Just give a bank a/c details. There will be more donations. Will make a donation today. Hope it gets there in time.
Proposed New BBC NEWS CHANNEL:
As Doug Daniel pointed out on Twitter,this is just a half-hearted attempt to fob off the demands for a Scottish Six in the full knowledge that placing it opposite prime time programmes at 9.00pm will ensure its short lifespan.There is no way Auntie will take Misreporting Scotland off the air in the run up to an expected Indyref.It is after all,their prime time propaganda outlet.
New BBC JockTV. I’m not interested in football myself, but from a political aspect I am aware that English matches are more likely to be shown than Scottish ones. Which is simply not right. The same applies to other sports coverage.
I assume this will be remedied are the new channel will show important Scottish home and international matches?
Craig Murray is right about the new bbc channel
link to craigmurray.org.uk
Aye indeed.
With the introduction of this new Brigadoon Channel (which only the BBC yoons seem to be excited about), the dark forces of the empire are getting their tanks into position in time for IndyRef.
As implied, it will be stuffed full of yoons, ex-Labour types looking for cushy jobs, after the mauling they expect to get in May. BREXIT GOOD and SNP BAD will be the order of the day.
Scottish affairs will be covered, from a London-centric perspective – it’s the BBC way.
Be prepared.
Ah i see the BBC are launching their new Ruth channel where the glorious buffalo whisperer can show us footage of her straddling things while shouting SNP bad.
Oh delightful who was it that said you can put lipstick on a pig but it is still a pig?
was that our Dave?
O/T the following is a sorry tale of casino banking and regulatory capture
link to nakedcapitalism.com
We cannot be independent unless we have monetary sovereignty and we will not be able to maintain that independence unless the Scottish state issues the currency.
@Nana says: 22 February, 2017 at 10:31 am:
“Lord Hall comes to Scotland with some sweeties, no thanks I’m on a bbc diet
link to archive.is
link to twitter.com“
Caught a wee bit of Hall on Radio Jockland earlier today.
I had to laugh when he claimed of the new TV channel idea, ” … like we do on Radio Scotland … “
Which confirmed wxactly what I had already concluded. It’s going to be the usual Radio Scotland, Westminster Establishment propaganda with video as well as audio.
As for the cultural stuff we already have just about every, “culture”, organisation on Scotland run by someone from England. So I expect that to be reflected by the new channel.
As far as the BBC in Scotland is concerned – it is all far to little and far to late. If they hope to survive their only hope was to abolish the whole administration, including those on the other side of the cameras and microphones, and employ a complete and fresh bunch of people.
The majority of Scots no longer trust the BBC on anything. not even sport, where Scottish football on the BBC consists of a league of two clubs and that other game they play with a strange shaped ball seems to get better coverage.
Fair bit of ranting about the Scottish 9 over on Speak Your Branes. The Yoons see it as capitulation to the dreaded SNPbaaaaad.
In fact I prefer 9 to 6 for my evening news. I never see the 6 O’clock news so I might actually look at this. However, if it just more of the BBC’s rannygazoo I will not be watching for long.
Does this mean Misreporting Scotland is ditched or is this as well as?
O/T
A complaint was made against misreporting Scotland advan
Read about it here..
link to informscotland.com
Rpbert Peffers @ 1:25pm:
Indeed. Maybe some will disagree but I could care less about this new TV channel. Sarah Smith has a blog trumpeting how are are getting a ‘Scottish 9’. If she’s pleased about it, that tells me all I need to know about its likely slant.
I get the feeling we are supposed to be pathetically grateful and ‘come back to our natural TV home, the Beeb’.
Well, I’m not. It’s likely to be a load of biased twaddle and programmes with low budgets, designed to look bad.
You can keep it.
@Socrates MacSporran “…why weren’t they going into the airfields and blowing-up the Argentinian air force aircraft on the ground.”
Because that would have been an act of war. During the Falklands conflict, the UK and Argentina weren’t actually formally at war. No country had declared war on the other.
The SAS were also reportedly in Chile. Probably.
Heedy, numerous
In what of your idiot comments you wrote “No sensible, I’m not suggesting anything sensible. Your strange brand of tory Brexit is great isn’t it buffoonery is all we get poured over our us by our chums of the UKOK hackdom industry.”
There is none so blind as a completely dumb Heedy!
Listen to yourself Heedy! To communicate, you have to write stuff that people can understand. You have to use words that have an “accepted” meaning (rather than your own made up definitions) and you have to aim your insults at a person who feels that they should be the target of your insults.
In attempting to piece together your various outpourings, would I be right in thinking that you are of the the opinion that everyone in the UK, other than 1.5 million indyref Yes voters, are Tory, Britnat, Brexit loving, immigrant hating, bas****s.
Would that be a correct summation of your position?
@Heed
If this is the source of that rumour about Polaris, a book written about Mitterand which is quite possibly as accurate as the one written by Torrance about Salmond, then that’s one reason it’s hooey:
(Mitterand to Ali Magoudi according to Magoudi after Mitterand’s death) ““Excuse me. I had a difference to settle with the Iron Lady. That Thatcher, what an impossible woman!” the president said as he arrived, more than 45 minutes late, on May 7 1982. “With her four nuclear submarines in the south Atlantic, she’s threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don’t provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind.””
The other is that there would categorically not have been all four nuclear submarines at sea at the same time, in the south Atlantic. Some people will say anything to sell a book.
There may have been nuclear depth charges still aboard the RN warships.
Whoopydoo.
Nana
The first SNP minority Government began negotiations with Norway for a sub-sea power cable 10 years ago.
Westminster stopped the talks, threatening Norway with an official diplomatic incident if they did not comply.
@ Nana 1.29 any corporate business given that level of accusation , would resort to a Court Injunction to protect they’re business , not so Bbc they know they wouldn’t stand a chance in a Scottish Court giver the amount of Bias evidence available .
Dont pay the Bias Licence Fee.
I spoke with Ciera’s mum this morning , she is getting a visit from the Goon squad on the 27th Feb, seems we,re aw getting special visits ( dont be breakin oot the HobNobs ) lol.
@Chic
I did not know that Chic, but doesn’t come as any surprise. Westminster out to cripple Scotland at every turn.
@Ronnie,
I’ve had my visit Ronnie, chap was very pleasant. Said he’d be back next year, hubby said “Aye right you are” lol
If i remember correctly she sent out 3 hunter killer subs and made sure they were on the surface leading and flanking the two carriers with the destroyer escort behind so the Argentine Navy could see she was sending the deadliest attack sub of its day,it was a clear belligerent threat.
Rumour was they picked up a fourth at Ascension but no nuke missile subs sailed to Argentina no need those things can hit you where ever they are.
And Reagan would not allow his CIA backed dictatorship money laundering lets screw the Argentine people plan get nuked anyway.
yesindyref2 says:
22 February, 2017 at 2:00 pm
@Heed
Is it likely that even one RN Polaris sub was not ready to launch from somewhere in the south Atlantic or Pacific though?
Nuke weapons like Trident are for strategic warfare. In the Falklands war, it has to be assumed that Argentine cities were targets but strategically, it was effectively the Reagan administration being influenced and ultimately involved directly in, the hot war itself. As previously mentioned, the US were in extremely dirty anti communist wars across south America and Fascist Argentina was one of the US’s strongest allies.
So its likely the Argentine invasion of the Falklands was also a strategic gamble by the dictatorship, in that Reagan would not intervene against his allies. The invasion itself was extremely popular in Argentina at the time. So with a populist fascist regime, gambling wrongly that the US would not help the British, Thatcher had the strategic capability to destabilise much of the continent, triggering all kinds of revolution, communist and fascist, right in the US back yard, from one submarine, and no one knew from where. If you were Reagan, who’s side would you have chosen?
All of the above is why Trident is here to stay. Well not here, they may have to stash it in Portsmouth.
@yesindyref2
there were 5 Nuclear Submarines used by UK Navy during Falklands war,
Conqueror,Courageous,Valiant,Spartan,Splendid,
whether they carried Polaris Nukes nobody from UK has admitted,
the UK forces did have Nuclear depth charges in contravention of the Treaty of Tlatelolco,
was Thatcher was bluffing about using Nukes on the city on Buenos Aires to get the codes for French maid Exocet?
@Heed
If the UK had launched a nuclear strike on Argentina, the USA would not have been too pleased. The US was doing a lot to try to improve relations with latin America, which is why their help for the UK was fairly minimal, and mostly unofficial.
The UK would categorically NOT have launched a Polaris missile at Argentina, under any circumstances, even if the Argentinans had managed to sink the whole fleet themselves – which to be blunt, was a possibility. They had the capability.
@Scot Finlayson
Conqueror, Courageous, Valiant, Spartan and Splendid were all nuclear-POWERED submarines, not nuclear missile boats. They were absolutely 100% totally incapble of carrying or firing Polaris missiles. They were SSNs, not SSBNs.
And the thing with Thatcher wasn’t a bluff – it just didn’t happen.
There was a joke at the time that if she nuked Buenos Aires the entire CIA would be wiped out.
This Falklands “stuff” wouldn’t happen to come from alternathistory would it? Oh dear.
Breeks,
“Without sovereignty to implement the result, a vote is just an opinion poll of no meaningful consequence to anyone. Sovereignty is power. It is the very Sovereignty you say does not exist which makes that vote a binding result, the expressed will of a sovereign people, a legally competent entity which has to be respected.”
The people of England voted to leave the EU.
It was not a binding result, because the people of England are not “sovereign”.
Otherwise they would not be waiting for ten months for the process to begin.
Who will any referendum on Scottish independence bind?
Breeks,
“You are barking up the wrong tree Rock.”
It is you and Robert Peffers who are barking up the wrong tree.
If not, put your money where your mouths are and go for a judicial review. What are you waiting for? You will be crowdfunded all the way.
Breeks,
” 4) We secure judicial review at Court of Session and have Scotland’s inalienable sovereignty recognised as the prevailing (if widely misunderstood) reality, prompting an emergency plebiscite to determine what we should do about it.
Don’t know about you, but I’m liking option 4… a lot.”
orri,
“Any judicial review carries the risk that a contrived excuse might be made to refer the result to the Supreme Court. There’s already sufficient precedent that says Parliamentary Sovereignty is a concept unique to English Law, or at least foreign to Scots Law. The last thing we need is an re-examination of that.”
In other words, we are afraid that our myth of “sovereignty” will be busted once and for all if we dare seek to get it properly defined.
Much safer to shout from the rooftops about our pretendy “sovereignty” than to get it properly defined under present day circumstances.
The “plebs” were little more than slaves in 1320 and being called “sovereign” was nothing more than a sick joke on them.
Breeks,
“I don’t know. Maybe all Scotland needs is a Gina Millar to up and do it.”
Unfortunately, we do not have any “ordinary” investment bankers or “ordinary” hairdressers who could do it.
The burden falls upon you and Robert Peffers. You will be crowdfunded all the way.
You could always seek advice from those nice “Lawyers for Yes”, all two of them.
yesindyref2 says:
22 February, 2017 at 6:07 pm
@Heed
If the UK had launched a nuclear strike on Argentina, the USA would not have been too pleased
But the whole is, Polaris and Trident gave and gives the UK geopolitical influence. You say,
The UK would categorically NOT have launched a Polaris missile at Argentina, under any circumstances, even if the Argentinans had managed to sink the whole fleet themselves – which to be blunt, was a possibility.
Perhaps but dropping the bomb, early 80’s was and still is a clear viable option. Ofcourse it would have changed south America completely and ofcourse not for the better. Nuke war planning probably has not changed since WW2. Nuke small targets, force surrender.
I think its naive to think that Thatcher sat in No.10 watching RN ships being bombed and sunk but then did not consider or even consult the US on nuke war. And the US provided much more than just side winders. Whole supply chains opened up, intelligence, a US naval base was given over, cant mind which island. There is now all kinds of released intelligence showing Russia was planning giving the Argentine’s military aid. A quick end was the best option chosen but probably not by the British.
Anyway, we all have our theories:D
24 June 2014: “More than 100 Scottish lawyers and academics have signed up to a pro-independence declaration as part of a ‘Lawyers for Yes’ Group launched in Edinburgh yesterday.”
Now why would someone try to pretend there were only 2?
link to lawgazette.co.uk
The naivety of Wings and its readers on all things Trident never fail to astonish me.
What if you could ask someone who served on Submarines including Trident?
@Bill
I’d be delighted to hear what you have to say.
yesindyref2,
“More than 100 Scottish lawyers and academics”
And academics.
How many were actually verified lawyers? Name them.
@Rock
Here you go:
link to gallery.mailchimp.com
More are joining becaue of Brexit. Check out their twitter feed.
yesindyref2,
“More are joining becaue of Brexit. Check out their twitter feed.”
They must be operating from a secret bunker.
Getting ready to fill their trousers.
They are the lowest of the low.
Where are they when they are wanted to get the “sovereignty” of Scots settled once and for all?
Breeks,
” 4) We secure judicial review at Court of Session and have Scotland’s inalienable sovereignty recognised as the prevailing (if widely misunderstood) reality, prompting an emergency plebiscite to determine what we should do about it.
Don’t know about you, but I’m liking option 4… a lot.”
“There are some applicants to join out Scalextric Club.”
“Have they always been Scalextric fans?”
“Well, no. They used to be Hot Wheels supporters but they now think that Hot Wheels is old hat.”
“C’mon, we don’t want members who change their mind. They must be operating from a secret pit lane. Tell them they’re filling their pants coz Scalextric is the way to go. They are the lowest of the low. We don’t need new members like that! Tell them to go back to Hot Wheels coz we certainly don’t want them!”
“Do we not want new members then?”
That spat on Twitter with Adrian Yalland arguing with James Dornan of RT… Yalland claims Scotland’s GDP is 64th in the World or something.
I don’t do Twitter, but perhaps somebody should ask Mr Yalland whether the GDP he is quoting is still based upon Scotland only getting a proportionate share of UK oil, when of course 96% of the oil will be Scotland’s, as indeed will all the Whisky currently exported from England.
Then too of course, it might be worth a question about how the UK’s GDP relates to the eye watering amount of debts that it’s in, where the UKs Debt equates to 90% of its GDP before Scotland leaves the U.K., and Scotland’s debt equates to 0% of its GDP because an iScotland won’t have any debt. Added to that of course, since the UK has plumped for Brexit, the £ is tanking and will tank again when Brexit happens, raising the price of imported goods, worsening an already ugly balance of trade, raising prices which raises inflation which will raise interest rates, which means even more of your GDP goes in servicing your debt mountain, Interest rates being at at around their lowest ever, but not for long eh? What you got left to sell off after the NHS?
Then of course we come to the issue of balance of trade, where Scotland is in a healthier state than England, Wales, or Northern Ireland despite being run by muppets who make a 1.7 trillion deficit while squandering a resource which Norway has turned into 600 billion capital fund which now pays out more in interest than the oil itself.
Over to you Mr Yalland….and by the way the UK is defined by the UK and the UN as comprised of two countries, Scotland and England, a Principality, Wales, and a Province Northern Ireland. Scotland is a country, which is kinda the diametric opposite of not being a country.
Tell me again how skint we’re going to be. Maybe it will help us revise the prices of the electricity we export to England, and all that surplus farm produce that England eats. Oh jings, yes, then there’s those nasty WTO tariffs to worry about too… but not so bad for us as nett exporters eh?
Still, look on the bright side. England will have taken back control. There’ll be nobody else to blame.