The Faction Factory
Sometimes, despite everything, you just have to laugh.
No matter how black and rueful a laugh it might be.
The “faction” drawing the indignation of Cosy Feet Pete at the weekend was one which expressly set out the intention of focusing the SNP on independence. One might, in saner times, have considered that an uncontroversial aim just months before the most crucial Holyrood election in history for the Yes movement.
But the SNP is controlled by its National Executive Committee (NEC), and the NEC is now – by design – comprised almost entirely of factions. Much of the 42-member body is made up, in the name of “diversity and inclusion”, of people with other agendas.
As part of the NEC voting process, each of those designated special-interest groups has just issued an “annual report”, and they make for revealing, and alarming, reading.
Let’s take, for example, that of the SNP’s youth wing, Young Scots for Independence. In almost 600 words, the word “independence” appears only once – in the group’s own name. Its opening boast is of excluding men from its leadership.
But the group sees its main role as providing the “conscious” [sic] of the party.
We’re not even sure the SNP has a policy on sex work. If it does we certainly don’t have a clue what it is, and we suspect that goes for most members. (Wings doesn’t have a policy on it either, btw.) But we do know that the YSI position on the highly contentious subject is that “sex work is work”, (and therefore presumably a valid career choice which should be considered for recommendation by school careers advisors and Job Centre staff) and that it sees it as one of its main jobs to promote that view.
Next up is the party’s LGBTQQIAAP2S+ faction, Out For Independence. Once again, the only occurrence of the word “independence” in their annual report is in their own name. Otherwise the subject doesn’t get the slightest mention. But fear not, readers – they’ve got their priorities in order.
(As alert viewers may already have deduced from that first sentence and YSI’s inability to know what a “conscience” is, the standard of general basic literacy across all of the reports is uniformly awful.)
And we’ll let this paragraph pass without comment.
Still, one mention of independence each was one more than the Equalities Convener could muster in 500 words of waffling, content-free self-aggrandisement.
And the SNP Students group also scored a big fat zero on mentioning independence, although they did find plenty of other causes to champion.
While the Member Support Convener, apparently during an open-mic spot at a comedy club, did passingly mention independence a couple of times, although he was chiefly concerned with making sure that lots of Unionist MSPs got elected next May.
In over 1100 words the BAME Convener mentioned independence an impressive three times, of which the most substantial was including it at the end of a list of subjects the group’s members had spoken on, complete with an exclamation mark to indicate how comical and remarkable it was that they’d remembered to discuss the topic.
Issues deemed of far greater importance were addresssing “Scotland’s slavery legacy” and “decolonising the curriculum” in Glasgow schools, whatever that means.
The report from the Policy Development Convener, of all people, finally remembers to mention independence seven words from the end.
While the Disabled Members Group does even better at the popular NEC game of Indy Chicken, managing to squeeze it in as the very last word.
They listed their main achievements of the seismic last 12 months in Scottish politics as talks on “Dismantling Imposter Syndrome” and “Exploring Equality Mechanisms”.
The party Treasurer scored a joint win at Indy Chicken, also leaving the first mention of independence to the last word in his report.
Although our favourite line by a distance was this one:
Pete “Parliamentary Tweeter Of The Year” Wishart’s own Westminster MP group also tied for Indy Chicken first place with a last-word mention.
We could go on, but you probably get the idea by now. Having every single-interest pressure group represented on the NEC has quite unsurprisingly led to those groups focusing their time and efforts on their own narrow agendas, with barely a detectable thought given to independence.
(The tentative suggestion, even from their own allies, that independence should take a slightly higher priority of course resulted in a furious storm of outrage.)
The result – a party which has done absolutely nothing of any material impact on its supposed primary goal in the last five years despite near-perfect circumstances – is a wholly predictable outcome of that structure. The SNP is no longer in any meaningfully practical sense a party of independence, but a hotchpotch of individual factions who are all piggybacking on its position of government to advance their own causes, with independence relegated to a vague afterthought at best.
(This Twitter thread from last month is a thought-provoking take.)
This site absolutely supports the attempt by the Common Weal Group to get the SNP back on track. Those controlling the direction of the party should have independence as their overriding aim, with everything else a matter of secondary interest.
It’s incredibly disturbing that that should need to be said at this critical point in history. But we very much fear that it does, and next week’s events – perhaps more than those of any other year in the 86 of the Scottish National Party – will determine whether the fight for Scotland’s self-determination as a thing of realistic achievability lives or dies.
We await developments with baited breath. It will be interesting to see how those within the party opposed to the gradualist agenda, so clearly encapsulated above, will react if (when?) they totally fail to bring about any change at the conference or in the run up to HR2021 elections.
Interesting times as the old Chinese curse goes….?
“We await developments with baited breath.”
Don’t you bloody start as well. BATED breath.
Waste your List vote and not elect anyone if you ‘Love Scotland’. What a curious piece of reasoning.
The SNP, under Salmond, won its majority by voters finding a hitherto unsuspectd sweet spot of constituencies and List seats. The next election their vote went UP, they move off the sweet spot and became a minority again (because a coalition deal of any sort with the Greens is unthinkable).
Any majority the SNP get by taking all or almost all of the constituencies will be a very, very narrow one anyway. Meaning it will survive by the good offices of other Yes parties who will also happily support all moves towards Independence because we love Scotland too. Possibly more than the SNP do because we are hot for Indy and the SNP clearly are not.
The Student’s Union has taken over the asylum
What a useless bunch of entryist timewasters
I always find it incredible that people like Humza Yousaf and the Ashraf brothers keep on trying to invoke white liberal guilt in Scotland, as if we all, as some blanket entity, benefitted from historical slavery. And I use the word HISTORICAL.
People of Pakistani heritage trying to piss over Scottish white history might do well to note that, RIGHT NOW, the country of their heritage is rated EIGHTH out of 167 countries in the world for CONTEMPORARY slavery. So before trying to tear down this country, they should try looking to their own old shores and trying to do something aboot slavery RIGHT THERE AND NOW.
This white liberal guilt crap, and these constant attempts at inducing flustered white self-flagellation, only work with certain sniffy, deluded, wannabe-American middle class sections of the Scottish population. Nobody else gives a fuck. Spitting on Scotland seems to be an anthropological and arts and cultural growth industry right now, and I personally am totally fucking sick of it. And I am not the only one, not by a long shot.
https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence
One day the SNP, if it survives post Independence might realise the benefits of coalition govt in a multiparty democracy like, oh, Scotland is. As a Kiwi used to coalitions in the era of PR voting all this just looks weird. Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party (no real relation) won an actual majority last month and despite that it formed a coalition (reformed) with the Greens. Because better tot have them inside the tent pissing out.
But the SNP are such control freaks that that reason for tying parties into coalitions just doesn’t occur to them.
Note coaltions don’t have to be all in with ministerial posts. They can just be confidence and supply: you will support the govt and vote through its budgets and most treasury bills. Greens all over the Western World do deals like that.
I would support such a deal with us in the ISP (with the price being actual moves to Indy) but not a full coalition. The SNP would eat us alive in a full coalition. Be better to have a grand Yes coalition with the Greens in the tent as well. Then we can overawe the rump of the unionists.
Have to give Pete his due; he managed to get you in a tweet, by the side door, without once mentioning ‘demagogue’.
“Where does this nonsense that the membership has dropped by 40,000 come from? Is it perhaps our friends the #SNPbad bloggers?”
He’s currently scouring his dictionary for a new pejorative to describe Joanna Cherry.
All these factions are pure poison and independence is a low priority, if at all; well highlighted Stu.
My thoughts exactly WhoRattledYourCage @10:47am
I’m so grateful for the update on Pete. He blocked me some time ago so it’s not easy to keep track on his words of wisdom. And thanks for the photo of Daddy Bear. Another one for my bedroom wall.
@WhoRattledYourCage
It’s partly our (White people) fault. We lumped anyone without whiter than white skin in the BAME or Ethnic basket. So they is all Black now, geddit?
Your point is a good one nevertheless, the beam in your eye sort of thing. And don’t get me started on generations of cousin marriages. They know about genetics but it still goes on and their kids bear the results as does our NHS.
The world moves on folks, the pork is safe now, so is the seafood, the holy books don’t mention synthetic, breathable, sweat wicking fabrics or breathable waterproofs in their prohibitions. They also didn’t realise about inbreeding despite the bad examples presented by Egyptian royalty.
Time to move with the times, expand the gene pool people. We can measure this stuff now, put numbers on them. Compared to other species us humans are an inbred lot, the genetic bottlenecks of Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not that long ago.
So diversity in procreation is a good thing.
Believe this one fact. I want to vote SNP. I truly do.
The problem I have is that I feel they are becoming as far removed from the fight for Independence as it is possible to be. They are occasionally mentioning it here and there as a prospect rather than a desire. It is becoming a niche reason for joining the party rather than the overwhelming aim.
Oh are of course right Stu. Too many chiefs not enough Indians. Alarmingly the Murrells look on as these factions take over the NEC, and set every personal agenda bar the one the party was set up to achieve. Independence.
Being a good leader is hard. Being a great leader is harder.
We have neither. They have contrived to ensnare us on one road to Independence (section 30),already at enormous cost to our rights and liberties. We have been dragged out of Europe.
We have surrendered our Rights to choose Indepdndence to the whim of another Parliament. We have desjgns on denying our
women their rights and entitlements to suit headdress activists. Yet the SNP press on with this lunacy assuring themselves their factions are all happy and doing the right thing.
Please somebody, tell the Emperor he is naked!!
Pete Wishart is entirely correct. Factionalism is the greatest evil of our time. It must be identified, sought out and expelled from the body politic. Instead, we must build consensus by being nice and kind to each other. Those who are most nice and kind to others who are nice and kind must be rewarded by having the great honour of representing our great sub-nation at the mother of all parliaments, preferably without an election, so as to avoid anyone’s feelings getting hurt. (We do not have to be nice and kind to those underlings who believe in the restoration of Scottish National sovereignty, as they will vote for us anyway. It says so in the Party Constitution.)
It is also entirely correct that we have no meaningful debate about any policies. Policies and politics share a beginning of a word by pure coincidence. They are not in any way related. By having no debate, we cannot disagree with the Party’s direction and it stands to reason that those who have been nice and kind to one another* should be re-elected to the NEC so that we may continue our triumphal March towards the next thing that the nice, kind people believe in.
*Other terms are available, some of which may or may not be banned on this site.
I am conscious of the conscience of this unconscious group- jeezo!
Sandra, I take it you are a consummate darts player.
“Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends”. Gloria Steinem
“One of the great secrets of the day is to know how to take possession of popular prejudices and passions, in such a way as to introduce a confusion of principles which makes impossible all understanding between those who speak the same language and have the same interests”. Machiavelli.
In short, *divide and rule*.
?“Original minds are not distinguished by being the first to see a new thing, but instead seeing the old, familiar thing that is overlooked as something new”. Friedrich Nietzsche.?
‘The #MeToo Truth of Nr5 #RampantSexism’ by #GaslightingGilligan https://wp.me/p94Aj4-1Y2 (*free download*)
#ToryAnalytica militarisation is *inevitable*.
@Rev Stu
I am suitably contrite. Where is automatic spell & grammar checking when you need it most! 🙂
It’s not surprising specific policy groups talk about those specific policies in their reports.
I wouldn’t expect the disability group to focus on section 30.
Bit contrived this.
Whoever wrote the “why do you hate Scotland ” quote needs taken out of the party though.
The SNP does have a policy on sex work, adopted at the spring 2017 conference, and (very) slowly working its way through the parliamentary process. It’s to tackle demand, not supply, by criminalising paying for sex, decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation and to provide support for former prostitutes and people trafficked for prostitution.
They don’t like factionalism ? Hell, they created it , by allowing small self interest groups to control the NEC of the party.
Every single “faction” should be discussing their individual strategy on increasing the Yes vote for their chosen representative group. So for example the YSI should be focused on how they can help the older generation get the information they missed in the first Indy ref. Or by engaging with local youth groups and getting them interested in politics so their turnout at elections is high. Not using that platform to remove the rights of women (all of whom have a mother to thank for their existence). Instead we’ve got the women’s groups having to fight two fronts. For their own rights AND for independence.
As for Pete, he’s someone I’d like to hear most of regarding his strategy for securing a S.30 since he says it’s the only vehicle for independence. Joanna Cherry has the right idea and assumes that WM will be a hostile witness refusing point blank to accept a S.30.
Lets game a scenario… Boris says ok lets have a vote in WM about granting a S.30…EVERY single other party in WM will vote against a S30 and there’s nothing Pete can do about it that’s how democracy works. Slab is effectively lost in Scotland so Keir can make all the noises he wants and still abstain on a S30 vote without losing any more face in Scotland.
Speaking as just a “voter” and not a member, I’d like to see this group (and Cherry and any other like-minded Parliamentarians) break away if they fail to seize control of the NEC.
Some may wonder why it’s “any of my business” and of course in some ways it isn’t but I am entitled to want someone to vote for.
Break away, attack the SNP’s Growth Commission from the left (“they want an austerity indy!”), criticise the general failure to deliver an indyref as promised.
Do it. I’ll vote for you.
Ross @ 12:15am, the Scottish National Party exists to work for the restoration of Scottish national sovereignty and the furtherance of all Scottish interests. That is it. You will find nothing else in the first section of the party constitution. So the job of sub-committees is to look at the fight for independence from each group’s perspective. They have failed to do that. The Scottish National Party is no longer fit for purpose.
I’ve made a list of good candidates who are standing because they want independence that is their priority and they also respect women’s rights. They are all people I know or recommendations from trustworthy sources. IF you are a delegate or you know someone who is, please ask them to vote for these candidates. It is STV so rank them all:
National Treasurer
Douglas Chapman
National Secretary
#1 David Henry
Morgwn Davies
Organisation Convener
Robert Thompson
Local Government Convener
Jonathon McColl
Lynne Anderson
Policy Development Convener
Chris Hanlon
Greame McCormick
Member Support Convener
Michael Blackshaw
Susan Katherine Sanders
Women’s Convener
#1 Caroline McAllistair
Delia Henry
Susan Katherine Sanders
Caroline Keenan
Equalities Convener
Lynne Anderson
Disabled Members Convener
Dylan Roberts
Scott MacFarlane
BAME Convener
Sameeha Rehman
NEC Parliamentarians
Joanna Cherry
Neale Hanvey
Regional NEC Representatives
North East Scotland
Female List
Dorothy Jessiman
Kate Monaghan
Open List
Dorothy Jessiman
Ciaran McRae
Lothians
Female List
Catriona MacDonald
Susan Katherine Sanders
Lothians – Open List
Robert De Bold
Frank Anderson
Andrew Diack
Michael Blackshaw
Brian Lawson
Susan Katherine Sanders
South Scotland
Female List
Amanda Burgauer
Corri Wilson
Open List
Amanda Burgauer
Morgwn Davies
Corri Wilson
Fraser Thompson
Simon Ritchie
William Mills
Mid Scotland and Fife – Female List
Allison Graham
Open List
Roger Mullin
West of Scotland –
Female list
Ellen McMaster
Delia Henry
Open List
Chris McEleny
Chris McClusker
Brian Lawson
Malcolm Kerr
Ian Dickson
Central Scotland –
Female list
Lynne Anderson
Open List
John Allison
John Green
Lynne Anderson
Highlands and Islands
Open Lists
Ian Coburn
James Duncan
Will Mackay
Glasgow
Open List
Malcolm Balfour
Rory Steel
Conference Committee – Female List
Joan Hutcheson
Catriona MacDonald
Corri Wilson
Delia Henry
Conference Committee – Open List
Chris Hanlon
Malcolm Balfour
Munro Ross
Rory Steel
Fraser Thompson
Corri Wilson
Delia Henry
Joan Hutcheson
Policy Development Committee –
Mid Scotland and Fife – Open List
Chris Hanlon
Lothians – Open List
Tim Rideout
South Scotland
Female List
Cynthia Guthrie
Open List
Katie Hagman
West Scotland
Colin Milne
Central Scotland
Margaret Lynch
Glasgow
Rory Steel
Malcolm Balfour
Highlands and Islands
Munro Ross
Outwith Scotland
Gordon Millar
Member Conduct Committee
Chris Hanlon
Neale Hanvey
Cynthia Guthrie
Delia Henry
Caroline McAllistair
Lynne Anderson
Corri Wilson
Sharon Kinning
Kenny MacLaren
Susan Katherine Sanders
Ellen McMaster
Malcolm Balfour
Appeals Committee
Amanda Burgauer
Rod Campbell
Greg Lennon
Margaret Lynch
Lachlan O’Neill
Robert Thompson
Well, if we’re picking fault with the use of language, perhaps “sex work” should be called what it is – prostitution.
Did anyone else jump to the conclusion that last-minute editing slotted in a mention of inde, right at the end of each report? Thus adding consistency and avoiding complaint.
@Ross
Isn’t the problem that there are many of that ilk who are now in positions of influence within the party? Such language is of course unacceptable, but it speaks to the overall problem alluded to in the OP.
Not only in the NEC to big and too unwieldy, but it is full of sophomoric individuals who think thins kind of thing is fine, and know they can bank on no-marks like Wishart, Smythe & their ilk to defend them and tell how stunning, brave and necessary to the movement they are.
Independence isn’t their priority, but it should be. Of course subject specific groups should tell us about their areas of concern, but they don’t exist within a vacuum. There isn’t a single specific area that couldn’t detail how and why they could make more progress if they had all the powers an independent Scotland could give them.
It’s hard not to think that the kind of person who could come out with the “why do you hate Scotland” line is exactly the kind of new-Labour apparatchik who abandoned Labour because the SNP presented itself as the main chance after Scottish Labour self destructed. They appear intent on doing the same thing to the SNP: sadly too many in the party appear content to let them.
“The SNP is no longer in any meaningfully practical sense a party of independence, but a hotchpotch of individual factions all piggybacking on its position of government to advance their own causes”
This perfectly summarises what I wrote to the SNP earlier this year when I cancelled my membership.
Being as successful as the SNP is, it was inevitable that certain groups might try and grab a bit of the action, pushing through narrow agendas on the back of the party. It is inevitable that they will ultimately destroy the SNP.
Either before we get independence – with their batshit ideas and proposals that are often a real turn off to ordinary voters, and a swing away from the SNP
or
After independence is somehow gained – THEN watch the party fight like ferrets in a sack as each faction tries to take the party in its own direction.
The SNP has succumbed to the sad idea that independence is not worth having if a one legged, transexual but gender neutral, 19 year old* isn’t catered for their every whim first.
*no offence to one legged transexual gender neutral 19 year olds everywhere, but you shouldn’t be the reason to hold back the country.
In my mind, overriding all this is EVERYTHING surrounding the Alex Salmond case. Illegality, perjury, corruption.
I would say that it is immoral for any politician to be connected to the SNP, unless they themselves have done their own independent investigation of all the facts and came to the opposite conclusion (but we know the facts are not being provided by the SG).
The missing indy money is surely reason for the party to be suspended by the EC.
I am sorry, but any honest person must turn their back on the SNP. There are far better people outside it anyway, like Craig Murray, Lesley Riddoch, Robin McAlpine, Elaine C. Smith, Tommy Sheridan [I could continue for the next half hour, you get the picture]
That is why I cannot understand the likes of Joanna Cherry, Kenny McAskill, Angus McNeill, etc., staying with the SNP. Would they stay with an independent Scotland if it also set up Alex Salmond?
I have been reading a lot of literature of late regarding the “woke” movement infesting the west’s universities, sadly a bunch of victim culture do nothing’s with useless “made up” degrees, or so it seems.
Seems the SNP and its NEC have joined the list of casualties.
Question is what to do about it?
Others such as China, Russia, South Korea, Vietnam, India etc do not have these difficulties.
I fear for our future.
@Rev Stu
Thanks to my mis-reading of Faction Factory I now have “Feels Like Heaven” as an ear worm.
Interestingly the album it came from is called “Throw the Warped Wheel Out”, which could easily pass as the title of a post of what to do with the SNP after their failure to deliver post HR2021 elections. 🙂
Denise Appeals Commitee possibly Lachlan McNeill not Lachlan O’Neill
How’s the alternative independence party coming along?
I actually thought “LGBTQQIAAP2S+” was a piss-take, i.e. just hit a few random letters on your keyboard after the first 4.
We used to get one period a week of Social & Health when I was at school. **** knows how they cram all that garbage in now.
Sadly, I think Nicola is very keen for the current nonsense to continue. Her own ‘feminist’ ideas, seem to be of greater importance to her than indepoendence.
These self interest groups on the NECD need booted out. They are leeches on the SNP, using the strength from the pro indy vote to prsue their own idealogical notions. They have zero interest in independence. Come to think of it, I am starting to think the same of Nicola Sturgeon.
Open goal after open goal, and still the SNP dither, running out the odd press release talking in very vague terms about indyref to keep folks contented. Either Nicola gets on with it, and start defending Scotland, or she needs booted out. Six years she has wasted. Six FULL years. The woman is a disgrace, and more to the point, CANNOT be trusted on indy.
Unless things change, I see little point in voting SNP at the next election, because even if they win, they still won’t hold indyref, as they falsely claim they need a section 30 (a pathetic excuse for inaction in reality). As they say in the USA, ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’.
@CherryBank
Thanks will change it
It has been said that the SNP is now the party of the establishment pretending to be a party of protest. In trying to cater to every faction and pretending to be speaking for all Scots they are in danger of speaking for the few with the loudest voices.
This article today brought it home for me how the voice of older women is silenced in all of this.
https://archive.is/zCSjw
Wasn’t Mhairi Black supposed to be the voice of WASPI women? Until she got diverted into identity politics and lost her credibility.
This is where being kind and constantly putting the needs of shouty selfish others gets you.
This is where we are now in Scotland where the often transient emotional needs of a tiny minority of damaged adolescents, backed up by aggressive men and compliant women, determine our future policy. In doing so, they threaten to derail the entire Independence movement which is maybe the aim all along.
Denise, you rock!
I was whining about this on Iain Lawson’s blog yesterday. Thanks for taking the trouble of putting this list together and putting some context and backing to it.
I am hoping for a NEC bloodbath. And from all the woke bleating I’m going to get it. Good.
Athanius I hate the term ‘sexwork’ as well, although I prefer to replace it with ‘whoredom’ as this would include prostitutes, pimps and panderers. In my opinion we have a whole lot of pimps and panderers in the NEC at the minute.
Andy Ellis : I know you deliberatelly misspelt a word just so the rev could issue a correction. 🙂 I assume if I keep this up I’ll get bained ( from willie bain : I think its like a lobotomy)
“I actually thought “LGBTQQIAAP2S+” was a piss-take, i.e. just hit a few random letters on your keyboard after the first 4.”
Nope. But the BBC article is SHAMEFULLY TWO-SPIRITPHOBIC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit
ffs i couldn’t even finish reading that one – Our flagship Party needs a metaphorical ‘night of the long knives’
Sorry I haven’t the time or the patience to read the whole article I don’t really need to go into the details presented my only observation is this SNP management have not only lost their way they have lost their bleedn minds and all these out of control factions are running the show ,
Ok carry on but don’t rely on my vote or my support to continue this bloody Circus FFS every day brings another baffling situation that’s difficult to comprehend by ordinary voters
Rev,
There will be more in the Faction Factory, I would say it feels like seven.
@ Denise: good work. Thank you.
The SNP-CWG list has 18 names so we needed to identify quite a few more to get a majority on a 42-member NEC. And if someone is elected to more than one post then the second in the polling needs to be someone suitable as well.
I wonder if the voting figures will be available for all members to see? And third party scrutiny would be good too.
“It’s to tackle demand, not supply, by criminalising paying for sex, decriminalising victims of sexual exploitation and to provide support for former prostitutes and people trafficked for prostitution.”
I’m really not up on this, but isn’t that “the Nordic model”? Aren’t YSI totally opposed to that, and therefore not promoting party policy at all?
“I would say it feels like seven.”
BANNED.
Anybody know anything about the Common Weal Group?
It has a website SNP-cwg.com, a manifesto, a list of signatories and its own National Executive Committee. There’s an invitation to join at various monthly rates. It describes itself as ‘a forum for SNP party members to explore progressive ideas for the future of Scotland.’
S35 of the SNP Constitution covers Members’ Interest Groups (MIG). I’m assuming this covers the Common Weal Group –
Members wishing to cater for a specific interest within the Party may apply to National Conference for recognition as a MIG. Their constitutions must be approved by the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). National Conference on the motion of the NEC may resolve to dissolve any MIG.
Cool! , the SNP is very on message i.e reset, not just global capitalism in a neat corporatist, e-fascist direction, but reprogram citizens to suit. That we can build a better world spiel.
The common good is often the mask of some delusional tyranny.
Behind the mask you can’t see the malign contempt for humanity.
@Dave Beveridge says:
23 November, 2020 at 12:05 pm
“I actually thought “LGBTQQIAAP2S+””
So did I tbh.
Why the hell can they not stick with LGBT? It’s concise and just about everyone understands it. Adding more and more letters / numbers just makes it look stupid. A bit like a small child at a party cramming everything into their mouth so that nothing is missed.
Ha Ha just noticed a totally new Language appearing LBT}#^€>|{} FFS as someone pointed out , I grew up and started work at the age of 15 in 1968 now in 2020 we see useless tossers with way too much time on their hands fn about I believe it’s time for the Adults to step in and slap them about the head , oops you can’t even make a attempt at raising your voice now in case it hurts their feelings , if ever a society was in danger of collapse its allowing these bloody halfwitts anywhere near normal people , people who have to work for a living and pay Taxes to fund these looneys temporary little distractions to keep them amused .
Getting the party to do what it was formed to do is the most infuriating thing.
With an open goal of independence the current leadership are hoping for a Charlie Nicholas moment… (1987 v england).
They are definately not on the side of independence, they are the british govenrnments admninstrators in Scotland!
@Stuart MacKay Thanks
@Sarah
There is no independent oversight of the voting process for internal elections – which is a bit of a worry. But I believe the voting is all electronic via mi vote this year so it would be difficult to fix. So we just have to ‘trust’ the process.
You’d have thought the young SNP wokes would be a wee bit more sophisticated, seeing as Alyn Smith has introduced them to so much eyebrow culture.
This site is becoming a waste of time
“I actually thought “LGBTQQIAAP2S+” was a piss-take”
Me too, I thought the Rev was just randomly hitting the keys.
Anyway is there no one on the NEC who actually wants independence before their own agenda. I recall Sturgeon saying in an interview that she was obsessed with keeping her party in power, looking back on that comment, independence doesn’t seem to be part of that obsession, just remaining in power is the goal.
Imposter syndrome can’t be as big a problem in Scotland as the problem we have of being led by an imposter.
Would have thought The Friction Factory would have been a more apt title for such a bunch of wankers…
@David,
I will be sorry to lose you. Such thought provoking contributions as your own will leave us devoid of hope.
Well that’s being nice really. So long.
These weird and wonderful factions: just time-wasting displacement behaviour; like sitting at a table rocking back and forth; but hardly storming the battlements activism, except in their own minds.
The most simplistic answer is to by pass this deeply degrading new snp woke party altogether,
How does it work if the isp gains way more votes than snp.
Do they become the new leadership?
In other words, things are going along precisely as they should be, should you want to effectively dead stop independence.
I’m beginning to feel that outrage and disgust that I eventually felt towards those blorts in Scottish Labour.
Here’s hoping that we are all quicker studies than last time.
42 seats on the NEC, but 56 genders – how can this be inclusive? And what about the needs of intersectionality – who speaks for the hermaphroditic community?
Identity politics is like divide-and-conquer on steroids – it produces this balkanisation of society; weak, mutually loathing factions which are easy to control and manipulate. Mostly nothing much is ever done, so it supports the status quo. Certainly, concrete goals like “independence” (-or in earlier times, “socialism”) will never get off the ground. Single issue idiots act as a virtual senate to block anything which displeases, or gives them nothing.
LGBTQQIAAP2S+ etc – why not bring back archaisms like “sodomites”; it worked for Oscar Wilde. Or “libertine” – once you are halfway down that list you are basically doing anything, with anyone else – a sexuality of opportunity, really.
The SNP under Sturgeon and Murrell has become like The Beatles’ Apple Corps. Every loony with daft, unworkable ideas being indulged while the finances get into an almighty mess.
“Why the hell can they not stick with LGBT?”
T has no business there and never did. LGB are sexual orientations. T is a mental disorder.
“LGBTQQIAAP2S+ etc – why not bring back archaisms like “sodomites”; it worked for Oscar Wilde.”
This is not helpful on any level. Most obviously because it excludes lesbians, for one thing.
On the SNP NEC ‘BAME’ faction, a glaring omission, i.e. the Scottish people:
– In the UK population context, the Scots are a minority ethnic group, and;
– In the Scottish population context, Scots language speakers are now a minority (1.6 million, according to the last census), due to cultural and linguistic imperialism, and population displacement.
Perhaps the SNP NEC should therefore include the Scots in BAME? Ultimately the pressure for national independence emanates from longstanding oppression of Scots under internal colonialism (Hechter 1998), including displacement of some 4 million Scots and the ongoing imposition of an Anglophone meritocracy.
When we go canvasing etc on cold windy, rainy, dark nights it’s us same, independence-supporting, old duffers knocking the doors, not the trendy, narrow-agenda factions making their way up the party hierarchy.
@ Rev at 1248
Yes, the Nordic model is SNP policy, I’ve no idea what YSI are doing
@WhoRattledYourCage @10:47am
Well put.
“This site is becoming a waste of time”
I don’t see any chains holding you down, sonny.
The SNP should resign as the SG. They’ve been there long enough to be responsible for the edumacation thingy fir these bampots and clearly they huvnae lernt onyhing!
Denise @11.35
I was under the impression that at least one of the females on your list was a supporter of the GRA.
I very nearly cancelled my membership as I watched some the horror unfold. The only reason I stuck with it was to be able to nominate and vote. I did feel some justification when Alyn Smith had a meltdown in the National about Denise’s candidate list (thanks Denise).
I know a lot of members feel the same as I do. I just hope we can get the party back on track at this crucial time.
@wee chid
I don’t think so I’m pretty sure of the females.
Sometimes I have to go for least bad if it’s between a neutral and Gra fanatic
CWG has some very pro GRA folk in their list for example Siobhan Tolland and Emma Rodick
Slightly off-topic, but related to ‘sex work is work’: many young women on Instagram (and probably Facebook too, although I managed to extricate myself from that appalling web-site some time ago, and so don’t have direct evidence) are asking people to subscribe to their accounts on Onlyfans, a pay-to-view site on which they post nude and sexual content. Many of those doing this claim to be pro-feminist and anti-capitalist, and don’t seem to understand that what they are engaging in is simple prostitution, or why that is so wrong. They claim that ‘sex work’, as they like to call it, ’empowers women’. These self-same women then castigate men for looking at porn and viewing women as sex-objects! I find it incredible that a web-site is normalising and promoting prostitution in this way, and that it is considered acceptable or even beneficial to women. It’s capitalist exploitation at its worst.
Well Stu, I am absolutely raging. Hijacked!!
My local MP told me last week he sees no evidence of civil war in the party!!
So they must agree with all the reports. Thanks again for n for an evidenced based piece.
MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN https://twitter.com/SNP_CWG/status/1330456993375641601
Not only must change happen but Scotland still badly needs another pro-indy party. Especially for being involved in all the pre-indy negotiations and setting up of Constitutions etc. And then as an alternative to the snp for elections to our fully indy parly. I for one do not trust the Murrell’s & Co with full control over any of the aforementioned. That must *never* be allowed to happen.
Surely the raison d’être for the SNP is independence? Therefore all other issues which are not directly related to independence must be factional? Focusing on factional issues at such a crucial time in our history can only lead to factionalisation and destabilisation. The SNP is destroying itself from the inside and doing to itself what it is accusing others of doing. And like Brexit, it seems to be a deliberate act of self-harm.
This is surely when a strong leadership steps in to bring all sides together we after all want the same outcome Independence don’t we ? .
I shouldn’t have to make that comment about the SNP , the fact I have had to points to a failure of leadership , either some people have their heads so deeply burned in the sand and don’t see or hear what’s going on , or they don’t care , who knows .
@ Denise: thanks for the heads up re Tolland and Roddick being pro-GRA. My list now amended accordingly.
Spot on Stu @ 1:51pm I think
I cant help but notice that Stu has not been writing as much on the Salmond Inquiry recently.
I guess that ship has sailed, and it is clear that Sturgeon and Murrell will now be 100% safe.
I’m sorry to say that unfortunately all these * groups * that suddenly seem to have so much influence and power within the SNP would all have been in the Labour party if they were still in power in Scotland. They’ve all jumped into the Snp to further their own aims and careers.
Most of the people in these groups and probably their parents as well weren’t even born when the majority of us were supporting independence for Scotland.
As for the LGBTQQIAAP2S++ nonsense , it just reminds me of this , LOL LOL
https://www.heinz.co.uk/pasta/alphabettinumberetti/product/100185200055/alphabetti
SNP still using the offensive ‘BAME’ designation?
Tut tut.
This thread on twitter is worth skimming (won’t take you long as most of the tweets are brief) to highlight the factionalism in the SNP and just how important indy isn’t. https://twitter.com/LadyJinty/status/1330883418066882560?s=20
@Facundo Savala
Probably Stu like everyone else is waiting to see what happens this Wednesday. You can watch unfolding events on Scottish Parliament TV.
@Facundo Savala 3:12pm
Ships are usually at higher risk after they sail and are rarely 100% safe.
Sex workers.
Right or wrong it has been happening for many thousands of years
and there is little sight of it stopping.
In Pompeii you can see a painted menu on the walls of a brothel
that depicted what was on offer to those who couldn’t read or speak Latin.
I always remember a documentary filmed in Thailand were they interviewed
some high class female sex workers.
One suggested that she had to do this to keep her parents and siblings in
A remote village and dreamed of having enough money to buy a small farm
Back home where the family could live and work.
They actually gave her the small farm she spoke of, it didn’t cost a great deal, and seemed
easy for her to finance with what she was charging.
A follow up found she was back doing what she did previously in the big city as farm work was
Hard and dirty work and paid a lot less?
I’d like to see places run by a local council that would help the woman who actually want this work.
It could ensure medical check ups, no pimps, personal protection and generate tax
They would have to pay for these facilities of course but it could be good value.
Places like Amsterdam and Hamburg manage places like this successfully overall.
It won’t go away because some people don’t accept it will happen no matter what.
The current SNP government appears to be home to two main strands of thought: the first is to find the most ridiculous and/or outrageous and/or unscientific nonsense and make it policy; the second is to find the path of last resistance and follow it to oblivion. The first involves a large degree of immaturity/irrationality/delusion/authoritarianism/and attach any or all of these to policy; and the second involves the easiest options that will involve as little actual effort as possible in both in the physical and the mental senses.
For example, if independence means taking the effort to discover the various ways in which it can/must be achieved, then taking the exact opposite path (a S30 Order you are never going to get and which you know perfectly well you are never going to get, but which you can dangle indolently and forever in front of the membership and wider independence movement like a glowing carrot) is very likely to avoid your having to actually make the decisions, take the actions and galvanize the troops that independence will require.
Then, if for example, you champion a movement that is so confused and dishonest in its underlying motives as to be verging on the actionable, and probably will be actionable soon, you can appear to be ‘woke’ and with it when you are actually either a pseudo, delusional manipulator who shouldn’t be allowed within a mile of power or a chancer using a very real condition that makes life very difficult for a very few people and turn it into a cause celebre that can be used to undermine others who stand in your way without actually benefiting the people whose real condition you have hi-jacked.
The success of the SNP has lured entryists, careerists and plain troublemakers who are only happy when they are in destructive mode into the party. Many are on the ultra left, but are manipulated by the ultra right, who, when the destruction is over, will step in to mop up. The SNP pre 2014 was a party of left, right and centre, and, while issues were debated and chewed over, they were never allowed to hi-jack the party, and independence and only independence remained the main focus. It was no co-incidence that the rise of the SNP ran parallel to the collapse of Labour in Scotland, and it should have been anticipated that the rise in membership would lead to extreme factionalism, as had happened in Labour, for, more or less the same reasons. Those who have no or little allegiance to anything or anyone except themselves and their pet issues, or who get a kick of undermining political structures, were always going to become a problem.
That problem is now threatening the very existence of the party, and it has to be rooted out or it will destroy the SNP. It has to start with the biggest existential threat to half the population and to our independence at one and the same time: the trans lobby’s capture of the party. Offer the trans lobby support to set up its own safe spaces, to fight for its own rights with our widespread support, but on condition that women safe spaces and rights are strengthened and protected – and wait and see what happens. Any such offer will be turned down, as will anything other than full access to women’s spaces and rights.
That will prove finally that its agenda is not its own betterment, that it is not its main priority. Access to women’s sex-based spaces and rights is its priority no matter that women rights will be lost. Women do not actually matter at all to these people, and they seem very unwilling to actually do the work necessary to create their own safe spaces, their own rights as TRANS PEOPLE – to be what they purport to be, a group for trans people, yet they receive government funding. For what? Black people campaigned for their rights as black people, women campaigned for their rights as women, but this group seems to want to avoid campaigning as anything other than ‘women’, with the name ‘trans’ anathema, which I, personally, find very suspect, and, frankly, insulting, and which makes me feel exploited by the SNP because, as a woman, I want independence far more than these people appear to want it, yet I, and 51-2% of the population are expendable, to be sacrificed for the trans lobby, less than 1%.
@And Spouse 2.47pm
It occurs to me there must be a market for a list of SNP MPs and SNPs to shed some light on where they stand – or indeed hide – on the whole GRA/TWAW/”there is no debate” thing.
I mean it’s pretty obvious where some stand on the spectrum from Smyth, Nicholson, McDonald and Black on one side to Joanna Cherry, Joan McAlpine on the other. Many of course simply bend over backwards to avoid taking sides, I suspect in most cases because they lack the courage of their convictions and don’t want to be monstered by the woke Stasi.
The thing is I’ve no idea who some of them are, so until and unless you actually see one of them tweet or go on record as supporting one side or the other, it’s hard to know. Given that we might be in for a fairly long campaign post Holyrood 2021, I’d like to know which ones to actively campaign against.
I think Weak Pishart may have missed a typo in there…
“This type of factionalism just does not sit comfortably with the SNP. Members should vote for the people best equipped to make the critical decisions to ruin our party.”
Fixed! You’re welcome…
@crisicult
The responses of all the frothing Woke Stasi on it provide a great list of those who should be expelled from the party forthwith for their rank misogyny tho’.
Pick a side people!
Correction: that should be less than 1% with body/gender dysphoria. The trans umbrella covers other groups of people who want access to women’s spaces.
Each day I receive half-a-dozen messages from passionate indy supporters, intelligent folk telling me the Great Day is ‘just around the corner’, and I should not be ‘divisive’ by expressing dissent over glacial pace or lack of strategy, indeed, I must stop recounting alternatives to the ‘Gold Standard’.
When I look around the corner I see the British state and Tory party methodically removing our institutions and mechanisms to autonomy. I am to keep calm and carry on.
Sigh.
Interestingly these affiliated organisations are entitled to a seat on the NEC AND between 6 and 15 delegates to conference.
The organisations are:
BAME Members Network,
Disabled Members Group,
Federation of Student Nationalists,
Out for Independence,
Scots Asians for Independence,
Trade Union Group
and Young Scots for Independence.
These groups have a disproportionate power and voting rights. A small group of 12 could have 6 delegate passes with the other 6 members with branch delegate passes.
These are the voting rules for next weekend
Some observations:
1) Mr Salmond used to lead a faction, and it turned out to be correct, there was a big need to make the SNP acceptable to left leaning voters.
2) Plooky youths in the young independent groups have always preached idealistic nonsense (in the opinion of their elders). Fortunately they grow up.
3) Nicola may have been compromised but she is absolutely on the hook for next years election.
4) We are where we are. Reflection on when we had 56 MPs and what should have been done then is no longer relevant. We must focus on next year once the farmers and fishermen see they have been shafted.
5) Boris’ position is starting to sound ridiculous
One has to wonder why we haven’t seen Sturgeon reiterate Blackford’s claim that they’ll be an indyref next year, of course it doesn’t cost anything and garners goodwill from the indy faithful to have an independence pledge in next years manifesto, and to have bills passed to pave the way for it.
All very convincing if you ask me, but are the usual suspects Sturgeon, Wishart, Blackford etc just in early campaigning mode to draw voters in with dreams of an independent Scotland, via an indyref next year.
With no Plan B to fall back on, it looks like if there were to be an indyref next year (I think its very unlikely) we’d need to rely on Johnson agreeing to an S30, which he has stated that he will not issue. Martin Keating’s hearing on whether we need an S30 or not will take place on the 21st and 22nd of January next year, despite the Scottish government and the Lord Advocates failed attempts to block Mr Keating from finding out whether we need an S30 or not.
One must surely ask themselves why the Scottish government and the Lord Advocate wanted to block Mr Keating, surely it should’ve been the SNP governments job to find this out, and let to a private citizen to crowd fund it.
Since I now live in France, I only have three votes left and I was determined not to waste them but there is no way on Earth that I can ever vote for the SNP. My “conscious” [sic] simply won’t permit me to do that, so that’s me kind of fucked. There’s nobody else around who’s worthy of my vote so in all seriousness, I’m considering voting Tory because that way, at least I’ll know full well that I’m voting for a party that’s going to fuck people about, with no ifs or buts or hidden agendas.
Whatever I decide, the SNP is definitely not getting my vote and I won’t be recommending them to anyone either.
@Grouse Beater
I am reminded of the cartoon from the 70 of two vultures sitting on a cactus”
“Patience my ass…..” 🙂
Andy Ellis
Such is the role of the woke attack dogs – to keep the faithful in line and remind them of their faith. The various pledges are to get them to reaffirm their faith.
I’m sure a lot have worked hard to get where they are, perhaps taking many years to get there and just want to survive the purges.
Sadly that’s the attitude that has taken many a country to Hell already.
@Alf Baird says:
23 November, 2020 at 1:52 pm
“– In the Scottish population context, Scots language speakers are now a minority (1.6 million, according to the last census), due to cultural and linguistic imperialism, and population displacement.
Perhaps the SNP NEC should therefore include the Scots in BAME?”
Don’t give them ideas. Application forms of all descriptions will end up with options for “dialect”. No doubt that will given them yet another letter to add the rapidly increasing initialism.
Ally says 11.22am.
“Lets game a scenario… Boris says ok lets have a vote in WM about granting a S.30…EVERY single other party in WM will vote against a S30 and there’s nothing Pete can do about it that’s how democracy works.”
Except it’s not how democracy works. How can Westminster be democratic when it has an overwhelming number of English votes against a comparatively small number of Scottish, Welsh, and N. Irish votes? The English designed the Westminster parliament so that it will always work for them. It’s not meant to suit us.
Meanwhile britnat civil servants are still in place in Holyrood. I believe the SNP/SG cannot legally sack these britnat civil servants because they have been appointed by Westminster. [Please correct me if I’m wrong]
But there is nothing wrong [in fact it would be welcomed] in the FM openly criticizing these britnats for what they are: britnat civil servants undermining Holyrood. Unless the FM and her close supporters are implicated in such britnat activities?
Either way we need some concrete action from the SNP/SG to keep morale as high as possible amongst the troops.
I hope the new NEC will show some fight.
Lorna Campbell
Access to women’s sex-based spaces and rights is its priority no matter that women rights will be lost.
They want to be women on their own terms. That’s what gives the game away. There’s no empathy, no solidarity. It’s them first and women take last place.
It’s remarkable that cannot be seen for what it is. A complete hatred of women and a wish to remake them in their own image. No doubt the next wave will be extreme sexualisation and all the baggage and garbage that’s going to come with that. First you’ll lose your safe spaces and then you’ll lose the right to say no.
Whoever came up with this ruse was very clever. You cannot denounce it without being denounced. The left have embraced it, but they cannot control it and will be destroyed by it.
@shug
Some observations:
1) I doubt most of us are prepared to wait the same kind of timescale it took from the expulsion of the 79 Group to Salmond becoming FM. We need action in months, not years. The SNP in power looks nothing like the 79 Group’s vision of a socialist Scottish republic.
2) It is true that sophomoric politics rarely stands the test of time, hence all the embarrassing photies of all those young Labour radicals surfacing when they don the ermine and enter the house of Lords etc. The problem here is that the Twitler Youth in the SNP have the ear of the leadership and apparent carte blanche to do as they will. They may indeed grow up and change, but by that time the damage will be done.
3) Possibly. It’d be good to think Nicola has nowhere to hide post Holyrood 2021, but if she has a majority and survives the current inquiry over the attempted defenestration of Alex Salmond, who is going to remove her? She’s already shown an ability to sit on her hands and do not a lot for several years. Why should the 5 years after 2021 be any different?
4) Sounds like a dialogue of despair. “We are where we are” just isn’t going to cut it. Where’s Plan B? What’s Nicola going to do when Boris just says “now is not the time” again? Wishartesque wishful thinking ISN’T a plan, it’s a cop out. What are the gradualists actually going to DO in concret terms to overcome the britnat veto they have explicitly accepted?
5) So what’s new? Him sounding ridiculous didn’t stop English voters electing him. It won’t stop him exercising a veto on #indyref2 until 2029 and the SNP as currently led have zero credible response. Wishing isn’t going to make it so: if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Strurgeon and Wishart appear to have sold a unicorn to too many credulous Yessers.
I`ve read that there is a growing opinion that see `Drag Queens` as comparable with white men disguising as black men in minstrel shows,
if it`s not alright for white men to disguise as black men for `entertainment` why is it ok for men to disguise as woman for `entertainment`,
one is race the other gender but both have been brutalised by males for millenia,
is there merit in this growing opinion.
Denise 11:35 Thanks for taking the time with the list. Very helpful.
“People of Pakistani heritage trying to piss over Scottish white history might do well to note that, RIGHT NOW, the country of their heritage is rated EIGHTH out of 167 countries in the world for CONTEMPORARY slavery”
and
“Your point is a good one nevertheless, the beam in your eye sort of thing. And don’t get me started on generations of cousin marriages. They know about genetics but it still goes on and their kids bear the results as does our NHS.
The world moves on folks, the pork is safe now, so is the seafood, the holy books don’t mention synthetic, breathable, sweat wicking fabrics or breathable waterproofs in their prohibitions. They also didn’t realise about inbreeding despite the bad examples presented by Egyptian royalty”
i beg your pardon?
Is this let’s bash Pakistan time…?!
Firstly…they grew up in Scotland and have very few links to Pakistan. So they’re a product of YOUR environment.
If Humza had any Pakistani spirit, he wouldn’t be such a wuss in NS cabinet
So keep your nasty insinuations about Pakistan to yourself.
As with regards to your other comments about “inbreeding” …well most small countries are pretty inbred.. And if you knew anything about genetics you’ll know that you can also create geniuses ..assuming you have the right gene pool. A blanket nonsense on eg cousin marriages shows your thinking.
Widen your diversity by all means.
“pork is safe now” – good…eat more then – some of us prefer not to eat it
“our NHS” – well I object to all the drunks that my 40% taxes pay for. I can list a lot of other things that I object paying for.
I think you’re showing your thinking there …and then there’s “bring on diversity” but let’s forget they are supposedly equal citizens who pay taxes for the NHS they use.
Replace Pakistani with Jewish and I think you’d be in uproar. I don’t inflict my religion on you but equally don’t ram your liberalism down my throat.
and lastly…your global slavery index..who was it compiled by?! The idea that india with 80% untouchables scores lower compared to Pakistan is a joke. And quite frankly rubbishes all the data.
It seems that Britain and its inhabitants can’t seem to get over the fact that Pakistan came into being despite all your best efforts to placate Hindustan.
Perhaps you should stick to the issue of Scottish independence. Using a few idiots of Pakistani descent to denigrate an entire country really hacks me off. Bashir Ahmad was Pakistani too.
@Sara,
Most of your post was very good. I think however I would question your assertion Mountbatten was trying to placate Hindustan is off the mark.
Jinnah himself wrote his expectations ultimafely were nothing more than obtaining better rights for Muslims within India.
He never expected to be offered partition and the creation of a new country for Muslims.
Would you rather it didn’t happen?
“Using a few idiots of Pakistani descent to denigrate an entire country really hacks me off. Bashir Ahmad was Pakistani too.”
Yeah. If our position is that Humza Yousaf, born and raised in Scotland, is as Scottish as any of us – and I damn well hope that IS our position – then it’s a bit much to be angry at him for not trying to fix politics in Pakistan or anywhere else. Why should he? It’s not his country. Scotland is, and I’d much rather focus on the idiotic and awful stuff he’s trying to do here.
Where did the Party of Scottish Independence Go?
Oh and Did Pete Wishart understand the lyrics of O Cho Mealt when he was in Run Rig? I doubt it as they are close to the bone. Treachery is thick in the SNP under Sturgeons leadership.
This site’s No1 Fan explains all.
https://petewishart.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/what-happens-if-boris-says-no/
Dan @6.00pm.
Thanks for the link.
This from it.
“But just say those who profoundly believe ‘he will never agree’ are right and we are in a situation where even with a majority a referendum is ‘refused’. What happens next? Well something would have to give. It would be intolerable for any Government to forbid a nation to progress to a new constitutional arrangement if a majority desire it.”
“At this stage we would face two choices. We could either embark on a series of measures to ‘make’ the UK face up to its democratic responsibilities or we determine a process that would no longer involve the UK as a partner and hope that any outcome would be respected by the international community and continue to carry the support of the Scottish people.”
But didn’t the SNP reject any form of Plan B.
How many non-minority faction groups are there, is there a list, and do they outweigh pro-independence groups? How much time and money is getting wasted – sorry, spent, not progressing actual tangible independence matters?
It’s not a good look really, is it? It certainly does not chime with the serious talk needing to motivate all generations.
Wish art is saying we have to go to section 30 to appease the EU, to ensure that Scottish people would accept it, and that Boris would have to agree because of democracy
He mentions then causing problems at Westminster should the Section 30 route fail.
It is drivel. He is basically saying we have too many problems if we use any method bar a Section 30. That’s it
He gives no time scale to await a Section 30 from Westminster. He gives none either about how long constitutional tactics would take. It is pie in the sky.
He then mentions Catalonia. Let’s I’ve got news for you.
Scotland is a Sovereign country. Always was. It isn’t a region. Remarkable from an SNP politician.
Beaker says:
23 November, 2020 at 4:43 pm
@Alf Baird says:23 November, 2020 at 1:52 pm
“– In the Scottish population context, Scots language speakers are now a minority (1.6 million, according to the last census), due to cultural and linguistic imperialism, and population displacement’
Alf Baird is totally correct: the only people not represented on the NEC are white working class Scots..aye them that spiks the mither tung..And guess who despises those of us like that?…bloody cringers and self loathing Jocks like most of the NEC middle class entryists… that want to rid our city names of slave connotations..well why don’t they start with English colonial oppressors’ names like ‘George’ or ‘Queen Elizabeth’?
Which group of people is most likely to be assaulted, verbally or physically in Scotland?..Working class scottish young men.
Which group has almost no direct political or economic representation in our country?..the same group.
The SNP is run by people who do’t like the term ‘Nationalist’. I believe that most of the leadership care nothing for the vast working population of Scotland. What interest have they shown in preserving our culture, our language, our land? Skye has 10% second home ownership, our countryside has inexorably
been emptied of its indigenous youth and replaced by white flight escapees from the RUK. Edinburgh city centre has been ethnically emptied by AirnB Capitalists from outside Scotland.
Our Birth rate is at a standstill..yet our population has continued to grow by nearly 200,000 despite EU population losses with middle class and professional immigration from RUK encouraged by the Scottish Government at every turn.Our young people are being forced to emigrate as cronyism by the colonial occupation by these administrators grows apace.
Until we have a movement emptied of leadership by Woke fanatics and irrational latter day puritans with sexually obsessed agendas on making transvestite men into natal women by law, we are going down a very dark road which is playing into the hands of our deadliest enemy: England and its eternal aim of obliterating our very existence.
@Dan
My response to the arch gradualist on his blog:
“Desperately thin gruel Pete, but no better than we can expect from the arch gradualist I suppose? This is just more wishful thinking, and if wishes were horses beggars would ride. You and those who believe in your magical thinking have been sold a clapped out old nag, but so desperately WANT to believe it’s a unicorn. If it weren’t so tragic it would be funny.
Your is the dialogue of despair: the work of years trying to get a recalcitrant British nationalist regime to see reason, and give you everything you ask if only you abase yourself often enough and low enough. Every dog in the street knows Johnson’s government will refuse #indyref2. Rather than threaten plebiscitary elections, you conjure the ghost of UDI (which nobody sane proposes) on the totally fallacious grounds that ONLY an agreed referendum can achieve independence.
That simply isn’t true, either constitutionally or historically. You MUST know this: there are plenty of experts in constitutional and international law who can advise you, but you just keep flogging the same dead horse don’t you?
Your ardent belief, however earnest and however heartfelt is no substitute for an actual plan. Neither does it replace the need for exhibiting the moral and political courage to simply declare that the Scottish people are sovereign and do not require permission to exercise their self-determination.
The First Minister could ensure a S30 Order for #indyref2 was granted next week if she simply tells Westminster that any veto renders every subsequent election – including Holyrood 2020 – plebiscitary, and that more than 50% for pro-independence parties will be taken as de facto independence. Neither you or any other gradualists have ever adequately explained why you lack the courage to do so.”
Aye, Mist001
We’re aw gutted aboot that,I’m sure.
Dan says:
23 November, 2020 at 6:00 pm
This site’s No1 Fan explains all…
Combination of gullible naivety and gaslighting from Wishart.
Where does it say, anywhere, that Scotland must exhaust every possible avenue and permutation in pursuit of an amicable dissolution of the Union? Where? Hint… IT DOESN’T.
If you don’t start to fight until they’ve broken your last egg, even if you win the fight, you’ve got no eggs. If you fight when they break your first egg, the result will be the same but you’ll also have your eggs intact.
It only takes one breach for the Treaty of Union to be broken. One egg, and that was Brexit. Where is there any logic, merit or wisdom in doing nothing, while they piss all over us breaking all our eggs, asset stripping Scotland, forcing deregulation and divergence upon Scotland so EU membership becomes a pipe dream, and dismantling Scotland’s democracy and Sovereign Constitution so Scotland is imprisoned in this Union without a way out.
Get off your knees Wishart. You’ve wasted so much valuable time and opportunity already. Do what you were put there to do, or get out the fkg way and take your gaslighting horseshit with you.
Wishart also forgets to deal with why he opposes Martin Keatings, and the case that claims the right to a referendum for Scots. Convenient loss of memory Pete.
Bob Mack…I just read Wishart’s latest half witted reflections. It’s obvious that he’s been selected to be the ‘stalking horse’ or in his case the ‘stalking donkey’ to undermine the ‘Real Independence Now’movement i.e us, by the Murrell collective. They’re only talking up Indy now because they sense the growing big threat to their cosy little con-trick they’ve been playing us for the past 6 x years.
Catalonia?…in his case more like Catatonia!
Looked at Mr. Wishart’s offering. He’s proposing a slow process that would take maybe a few years. I note Mr. Wishart is 58. Couple of years and early retirement in place, nice pension eh? Job done.
Scotland can wait.
If nothing else we should show this article to everybody who thinks Nicola and the SNP have a clever ruse up their sleeve ready to deploy should Boris deny their Section 30 request.
They have nothing but actions we have been shouting at them to take for the past nearly three years.
So much wasted time.
God I got about halfway through that Wishart waffle and chucked in the towel. He knows a lot of words and is not afraid to use them but says very little apart from hold hold again. Blocking just about everyone is not a good plan if you are serious about winning hearts and minds so I suspect his blog is for the consumption of the true believers.
For my money, the Mar Vickers thread on twatter made the most sense I’ve read about this whole shitshow, and is well worth a read if you have not already done so.
But really, not why I remain a member of the SNP.
The point is that we have effectively had our answer to the Section 30 question more than once already.
If our politicians are too dim to have managed to impress this upon external parties that they wish to impress it upon in private by now, there’s no hope.
Before anyone says we haven’t had an answer, we have:
Boris has said he won’t grant.
Figures lurking in the shadows like Gove have made it pretty clear they won’t grant.
T May said “now is not the time” which was also the same as saying she wouldn’t grant which was only a spin on “no” with the added assumption that “your wishes always have to adhere to our preferred timeframes” which it is insane that politicians elected to be “independent-minded” then meekly accepted as a truth of the world.
Enough messing about, the answer has been given and the demonstration should already have been made plain to “the EU” or whoever else, but Wishart wants us to waste our votes asking for the same thing again?
Take a hike.
Re, Oxford vaccine.
I fuckin new as soon as the English got hold of a vaccine it would be 1966 and the World Cup all over again.
It doesn’t matter that they can only guarantee 70% success rate (and the others are offering 95% success rate), the English are telling us it’s the best thing since sliced bread and that is the end of that.
Fuck your english vaccine, I’ll wait on the real deal arriving from Pfizer.
Your english vaccine is the Poundland version of World vaccines.
Thanks, but no thanks Bawbag Boris.
Pete Wishful has it all worked out. If Johnson keeps saying no (which Pete thinks is unlikely) then we take our case to…… the international community.
The international community. Never known to fail anyone.
And why are Scotland, Wales and N Ireland
referred to as Devolved Administrations and England comes under the description of “The UK Government”.
The bastards to the south of our border just love demeaning us at every opportunity.
Keep us dumb and Inferior.
That’s always been the plan.
Lochside @ 6.26
Yes, not sure if Beaker @ 4.43 got the point there.
Those within the SNP pushing the BAME agenda in Scotland seek to highlight minority group oppression yet totally don’t get the plight of Scots as a longstanding oppressed ethnic minority people in the UK under the yoke of internal colonialism. Nor do they understand that independence is about ending the ongoing cultural oppression and colonial rule of Scots and Scotland.
The SNP bourgeoisie elite clearly have (too) many other things on their mind, as they reach for an ever more comfortable accommodation with colonialism. As rev Stu highlights, the one thing the SNP elite seem least concerned about is independence and the true purpose of any peoples’ national liberation, which is about ending the oppression of Scots, and especially the cultural oppression of working class Scots language speakers who happen to make up the bulk of the Yes vote.
I reckon minority groups are over-represented on the NEC.
For example, many of the members are unionists.
katherine hamilton @ 7pm
It does not seem unfair to define as a failure a Scottish Nationalist politician who retires on a British State pension, and more especially a Scottish Nationalist politician who has been part of successive Nationalist majorities elected in Scotland and who has done absolutely nothing with these majorities.
You do realise Stanley the Pfizer one doesn’t work if you take the eldorado.
Good luck!
Astrazeneca’s share price movement today will tell you a lot about confidence in their vaccine.
Will struggle to gain approval from US CDC.
All of them could struggle in the real world due to the large “asymptomatic” factor not factored in in the trials.
The Brutish Labour Party motto is,
`For The Many Not The Few`
the SNP motto seems to be,
`For The Few Not The Many`.
The plot thickens for Wednesday’s showdown. If the release of the legal advice is refused to the Harassment Committee a second time after another successful Parliament vote. Then the Conservative opposition are taking legal action. The irony won’t be lost on Alex Salmond. Lesson for everybody here, the will of the Parliament cannot force the Government to do anything. As we suspected all along.
Astra Zeneca produced the vaccine under conditions of price and availability. It is very cheap £3 compared to the others.
Conditions set by Oxford Hniversity. Share price means nothing in this instance.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is a no brainer as long as it works.
Cost $3-4 to produce which we’re getting at cost.So is the developing countries.
Doesn’t require the ultra low temp fridges,which will be massive benefit to logistics and storage,shelf life etc.
We are supposedly assured 300 million doses, we’ll see.
Pfizer costs $40 per unit (cost)
Requires ultra deep freeze-nightmare for logistics and storage etc. No final price for retail lol wonder why?
No final cost price.Not known how many doses we can get?
Good old yanks eh.They know how to milk it.
All about the money to them
There’s no such thing as sex work. It’s prostitution and pornography.
My Old Friend The Blues, by Steve Earl ….Lovers leave and friends will let you down.
How I feel about the SNP, and I’ve been a member for decades. I expect no progress towards independence by the SNP unless there is a management clearout. The persecution of a +60 year old man – Alex Salmond – revealed a coldness of spirit I cannot accept.A calculating coldness that will string along the SNP membership for suckers.
And then, the National, our hope for rebuttals of Media propaganda- an increasingly disappointing publication- I’ve never missed a copy but why oh why give this Paton guy a full-page weekly platform to express his divisive, minority views? Just how does that help develop Indy support across the electorate young and old? Isn’t there a specialist publication for his views.
I’m a keen cross-country motorcyclist competitor, also keen USA folk musician, when do we get a weekly full-page spot?
@ Andy Ellis
FYI it looks like a few quality btl comments have been purged on a certain blog. 🙁
You didn’t happen to copy your follow up response by any chance and could post it here?
dakk says: 23 November, 2020 at 8:33 pm
I’m in no way know anything about viruses but it seems to me that everybody seems to think that once they vaccines come out and everybody is vaccinated, the virus is going to disappear and everything will go back to normal.
Sure, viruses have been eradicated but that has been done through health programs lasting decades and with medicines that have been fully tested and proven to work.
To me, these vaccines sounds like the flu jabs. It is designed to protect vulnerable people from dying and is only given to them. It isn’t given to other members of society because it simply isn’t effective.
Is this idea of having a vaccine for everybody in the UK just panicking and wishful thinking on the part of politicians?
MorvenM says: 23 November, 2020 at 9:03 pm
As long as there those stupid enough to pay for it, there will always be the demand for woman to work in the sex industry.
Shouldn’t we as a a society at least try to make it safe for the most vulnerable woman in this profession?
“…T is a mental disorder.”
I have plenty of reservations with regards to GRA and how out of control the trans debate is, but I don’t think its right to frame it this way. In some people it may well be a mental disorder – there are examples there which definitely point to that. But based on some stuff I have read recently, there appears to be a legitimate difference in brain development in people who identify as trans.
I am not suggesting you can change sex or having someone act like a female and go through the various treatments is the right approach because, I don’t know enough about it to say for sure. It may be what some need but not others. In some it may be a mental disorder but I there does look to be evidence emerging which highlights individuals, whose brain has developed in line with the gender they identify as.
DAN
Did you get my answer to your question?
Left a post on the cartoon thread at 11.21 pm.
Cheers
Scot Finlayson says: 23 November, 2020 at 8:34 pm
The SNP is a party of big government and all these middle class professional types smell all that money and want a piece of it with these diversity and inclusion officers for all these minorities not to mention legal ambulance chasers to enforce it.
And if Nicola eventually is granted a Section 30 referendum it will be on the express condition that if the result is no then there will not be another referendum for 20 years.
Looks like Westminster are sharpening their knives for the feast and that Nicola is setting the table for it.
Pete Wishart is now busily deleting critical comments on his latest jeremiad blog, even those he’s previously replied to like mine. Dear me…..
My response to one of the other posters below:
“Not content with blocking swathes of pro-independence folk on twitter, Pete now proceeds to delete comments he doesn’t like on his blog, even those he’s previously answered.
That hardly suggests someone with a skin thick enough to endure the years of fighting British nationalism his proposed strategy will entail.
Perhaps he didn’t like me quoting Màiri Mhòr nan Oran at him, so I’ll repeat her words for the delectation of others until he deletes this like the petulant child he so obviously is:
Ach cuimhnichibh gur sluagh sibh
Is cumaibh suas ur còir.
(Remember you are a people
Stand up for your rights)”
Asymptomatic was factored in the trials . It became a feature when volunteers were tested for antibodies and found to have had covid prior to receiving vaccine.
No fatalities of serious illness followed from this.
@Dan
He purged it before I had a chance to copy the second response over to here.
You’d think an MP would be a tad less thin skinned. And indeed have better things to do.
Says a whole lot about Mr Wishart’s MO.
PacMan
Mibbie you don’t know how vaccine trials work then? Just leave it there eh!
Trial vaccines are given to healthy individuals. Not vurnable people , sighs
Well this is interesting, Johnson and Gove now blaming Sturgeon for low Brexit deal.
https://order-order.com/2020/11/23/sturgeon-accused-of-sabotaging-brexit-negotiations/
Bob Mack says: 23 November, 2020 at 9:44 pm
Sounds interesting. Hope it does work.
I did a quick google and found this link. It look like othordox is to protect the elderly but the way to defeat this virus is for older groups to partially isolate and vaccinate the young who are ‘super-spreaders’
https://science.thewire.in/health/covid-19-vaccine-asymptomatic-superspreaders/
Given how infectious this virus is, it may be the most sensible solution.
@ Iain Donald at 9:35 pm:
“…T is a mental disorder.”
“there appears to be a legitimate difference in brain development in people who identify as trans … there does look to be evidence emerging which highlights individuals, whose brain has developed in line with the gender they identify as.”
Precisely: a mental disorder. How can a physically-normal person believing they are the opposite sex to that which they actually are be anything but a mental disorder?
AYRSHIRE ROB says: 23 November, 2020 at 9:48 pm
That wasn’t what I was saying.
Maybe you should read comments before replying to them, yes?
A question which has been a plague in my mind for some 4 years or so – What will be Nicola Sturgeon’s reward for neutering Independence & the SNP?
@ Graf
Yeah, I noticed your and lumilumi’s responses and thanks for both your inputs.
Was rather conscious of submitting quite a few posts over the weekend as was drawn into responding to several folk. Thought best not to create more conversations on too many fronts.
Looks like Germany, at least in your area, has a rather better developed system but still room for improvement.
We have local council run recycling centres with the bigger ones having more facilities which to be fair are pretty good, with segregated waste for rubble, wood, metal, gardening, general waste, and lots of other stuff like engine oil, small electricals, fridge, cooker washing machine, even light bulbs!
My gripe is more specifically about the volume of plastic waste at these sites that gets lobbed in with general waste. Think patio chairs and tables, upvc windows and doors, basins, plant pots, car bumpers and other plastic items just go into landfill.
Plastic is arguably the most valuable commodity of all the rubbish we throw out due to the potential energy it contains, and with some thought and investment it could be harvested and significantly reduce the tonnage going to landfill, which iirc cost the local authority about £100 per tonne.
@ Andy
Aye, you clearly landed a couple of impressive hits, which I have to say I liked considerably than some of the Jock Rock hits his band ever put out. More of a Big Country fan myself. 😉
@aulbea1
The answer is her legacy as she sees it. And that could be almost anything. As long as she is remembered. So after Wednesday if the legitimacy of the Scottish Government is questioned in the courts so be it. Alex Salmond has been airbrushed out of SNP history. In 10 years time Salmond will be remembered as a skilled politician that could work a room and nearly achieved Independence. For example doing a deal with Annabel Goldie to get the Scottish budget through. Yes he could work with the Tories and a lot of other people besides. When he took over Indy polls were in the high 20s. He took us to 45. Sturgeon will be remembered as an divisive aberration. In the end justice will prevail. And we will see who is remembered in the fullness of time.
PacMan
Well not everyone gets or takes flu vaccine because it’s not as contagious or as deadly as this..
Everyone will need to take this or there taking a helluva risk and it will continually spread.It will mutate more eventually, then children and healthy people will become more susceptible
You literally just said
“To me these vaccines just sound like flu jabs.”
Aye, they just spent 8 months and millions of pounds to developers a flu vaccines they have billions of doses of already.
See that Peter Wishart, hes that Brit MP that sits in that place over our border called Westminster hundreds of miles away.
” He took us to 45. Sturgeon will be remembered as an divisive aberration.”
So why are the polls at 58% with Sturgeon in charge, did she have anything to do with it?
is Salmond running as an MSP in 2021?
@Papko
Lets wait and see. He led us to 45 in an actual referendum. When is IndyRef2? If it is at 58 what you waiting on?. What she waiting on?. It’s a load of pish and you know it. There will be no IndyRef2. She is being kept in place because everybody knows it’s not going to happen. So you can say anything you want in a poll. As I said let’s wait and see who is remembered the most in terms of Indy. My money is firmly on Salmond. I suppose you think it is ok to deny the will of Parliament? Twice!
RoS @ 9.52, that is interesting. I don’t buy it though.
I think the real story is that Boris’s internal market bill hit a brick wall and he needs someone to blame;
“Brexit: EU thanks Joe Biden for ‘clear support’ amid dispute over UK’s Internal Market Bill” Monday 23 November 2020 21:33, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-eu-thanks-joe-biden-for-clear-support-amid-dispute-over-uks-internal-market-bill-12140557
Note the time stamp above.
AYRSHIRE NOB aka robbo.
I see you are still on here posting about ANYTHING other than “Nicola Bad”
No Trump talk tonight???
Robbo, you are a waste of a good computer.
Get back to the wee Gingerbread Man dick heed.
Come back when you have had your light bulb moment.
But of course you are that thick, you will never have one.
Sturgeon is 100% safe and here to stay.
Best get used to her.
Facundo, I usually ignore the stuff you type here but I believe that’s the second time you’ve said exactly that.
I apologise in advance if you have some sort of mental condition that would explain the above.
Dan
Thanks for the info.
“My gripe is more specifically about the volume of plastic waste at these sites that gets lobbed in with general waste. Think patio chairs and tables, upvc windows and doors, basins, plant pots, car bumpers and other plastic items just go into landfill.
Plastic is arguably the most valuable commodity of all the rubbish we throw out due to the potential energy it contains, and with some thought and investment it could be harvested and significantly reduce the tonnage going to landfill,”
Over here plastic is plastic and collected as such. It’s “forbidden” to dispose of it in landfills. The fines are not cheap..!
The collected plastic is sorted out into the relative sorts of the material. Some is of high quality whilst others are low-grade and end up being used for minder quality products.
@Hatuey
Look him up. He is using reverse psychology. #SNP out 2021, etc etc. Mad Rangers fan etc etc. Mind you they are playing the best football in the SPL so far. At the moment I would say they deserve to win the league. And having said all that I won’t be voting for the SNP in 2021 either but for different reasons.
I think Rangers stand a better chance in winning the league than Sturgeon does in leaving her post.
@Alf Baird says:
23 November, 2020 at 7:56 pm
“Lochside @ 6.26
Yes, not sure if Beaker @ 4.43 got the point there.”
Actually, I did get the point. My post was a little bit of satire aimed at how ridiculous things are getting with initialism when more and more letters / numbers / symbols get added. There seems to be a fear of offending someone by missing them off a list.
@Iain Donald
What is it that you don’t understand about the brain?
It is where your mental capacity comes from and thoughts so to say that trans bipasses that so is not a mental problem is nuts. It is a mental illness and needs treated as such not by politicians denying biological science.
According to Dorothy Jessiman, the NEC has never discussed independence or the strategy for achieving a referendum in all the time she has been on the NEC. Literally not once.
Interestingly, she suggests there are at least 3 possible alternative routes to a referendum, the most promising of which she suggests would hinge on the Treaty of Union rather than the Act or Acts of Union. She hints at the Tories being aware of this possible route and seems concerned that they’re going to block it in some way because they know it’s a vulnerability.
Jessiman’s views on the changes to the rules that effectively blocked the way for Joanna Cherry point to dark forces at work, manipulating agendas and even voting procedures (for some peculiar reason the voting was by secret ballot and STV).
I believe she’s trying to overturn that vote but has hit the familiar SNP brick wall of silence, with her letters being ignored, etc. Reflecting on the odd decision to vote by secret ballot and the use of STV which effectively forced her to vote for an outcome she didn’t support, she says “I am not prepared to accept this or to be seen as a party to it.”
http://www.youtu.be/iafseKc6-WY
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/that-joanna-cherry-nec-vote/
Papko @ 10:31
“So why are the polls at 58% with Sturgeon in charge, did she have anything to do with it?”
Where have you been?
She’s had little if anything to do with it.
Brexit and Boris are responsible for the 58%. Furthermore, if we had a pro-Indy SNP it’d be nearer 68%.
My neighbour’s dog looks more competent compared to Boris – and has tidier hair.
NS can’t take an ounce of credit for appearing to be an improvement on that bumbling buffoon…
Not forgetting that a muzzle being placed on the MSM always helps your polling.
Tannadice, whoever he is, he’s harmless on the basis that most of us couldn’t feel any more violated than we do right now. If his message is “SNP Bad”, he’s preaching to the converted.
Not into football but they do seem to playing better than Celtic right now. Didn’t everybody say that last year too at this stage?
Indi is the SNP’s Clause IV
PacMan at 9.34 pm
Prostitution isn’t a profession. That’s the point.
If you mean we should have legalised brothels, I’d say no. No-one should be allowed to pimp women and girls (or boys) for money.
The myth that “sex work” is liberating is a long-standing one, but now, along with porn for kids, it’s being strongly promoted by TRAs who have their own agenda.
Of course prostitutes should be protected. I wish the police would concentrate on making the streets safer for all of us instead of pursuing “thought crimes”.
Prostitution is dangerous and exploitative and rarely a “lifestyle choice” even for those who are not being trafficked.
I’d like to see a society in which we introduce radical measures, such as a realistic Universal Basic Income, so that people wouldn’t hit rock bottom and resort to petty crime or selling their own bodies to get by. It could be transformative (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Obviously, if we stay in Tory UK, that’s never going to happen!
Papko says:
23 November, 2020 at 10:31 pm
” He took us to 45. Sturgeon will be remembered as an divisive aberration.”
So why are the polls at 58% with Sturgeon in charge, did she have anything to do with it?
is Salmond running as an MSP in 2021?
Sturgeon has done nothing advance Independence. If 58% is where the polls are, then 58% is where the polls would be if we had a crash-test dummy as First Minister.
If on the other hand we’d had some degree of effective leadership which defended Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty and European citizenship, then our morale and popular momentum would be cruising much higher than 58% in the polls. Think back to how our spirits soared when the SNP walked out of Westminster. Think back too to our tyres being deflated when they trooped back in again.
Furthermore, in dawdling and idling waiting for those disillusioned and angry about Brexit to turn to Independence, Sturgeon’s government squandered the open goal of a Constitutional Scottish Backstop. Instead we’re treated to the utter claptrap of a Section 30 approved referendum being our only legal recourse. BULLSHIT.
Northern Ireland had it’s rights defended by an International Treaty which the International Community resolved to defend. The 1707 Treaty of Union is another International Treaty which should have been used to defend Scotland’s sovereignty and defeat Scotland’s colonial subjugation. Where was Scotland’s Backstop? Squandered by Crash-Test Dummy Sturgeon and her pathetic capitulation last January.
If Scotland’s government had defended Scotland’s Constitution and Interests, our poll rating would be irrelevant by now, because the UK Treaty of Union could not have survived the stress of one sovereign entity exiting Europe while the other sovereign entity chose to remain. Westminster’s Brexit would not only have inflated support for Independence, it would have broken the Union Treaty and Scotland would be an Independent Nation by legal default.
Truth be told, if Scotland did have a crash-test dummy in charge, the Independence movement wouldn’t have been split with the SNP’s self-serving factionalism and science denying Wokeratti hijacking Scottish Independence as the means to deliver political success for their toxic and divisive absurdities. Nor would we have the storm brewing of the Scottish Governments hatchet job on Alex Salmond, the layers of corruption which allowed it to happen, and the layers of corruption which are desperately trying to hush it up.
All things considered, a crash-test dummy in charge would have been less of gift for Westminster than the utterly inept and strategically incompetent Sturgeon. It certainly wouldn’t have been our worst case scenario. I’ll save that accolade for Sturgeon and her feckless cabal of useless non-entities.
Breeks is right with his crash-test dummy remark.
If you agonised over your vote in 2014 then eventually chose to vote No, has anything happened in the past six years to make you think that was a good idea? Not at all. Britain today reminds me of the giant car crash on the M42 in the Nineties were like a hundred cars just kept crashing.
Homer Simpson could have got Indy to 58% in these circumstances. Even this boost has only happened quite recently.
“But based on some stuff I have read recently, there appears to be a legitimate difference in brain development in people who identify as trans.”
No there isn’t. Any such suggestion is pure junk science.
Weak Pishart must have a block on any new comments to his blog as I have tried to post this comment on 2 occasions or maybe he sees the WOS gravitar, oh well no loss
———————————
You will have to excuse my pedantry but did Nicola Sturgeon not ask for a sect 30 on at least 2 occasions, once with T may and Once with Johnson both times they were effectively refused by obfuscated wording
If I am correct why is it necessary to continue begging Johnson again ,surely Scotland has asked and been answered , so apart from wishful thinking where does logic come from to consider that Johnson will concede to a sect 30 , when ALL tory ministers that have been interviewed have STATED CATEGORICALLY that Johnson will NOT do so
Nicola Sturgeon has stated on a few occasions that a legal challenge cannot be ruled out , why has Nicola Sturgeon refused to action this to illustrate to the rest of the world and the international community that we the people of Scotland are being denied our democratic right to choose whether to remain within the UK or to dissolve the treaty of union
Why is it acceptable for our countries representatives to be derided , abused and denigrated on a daily basis by a majority of English MP’s none of which have been elected by the Scottish electorate
Your proposed route to independence depends on prostrating our nation to the whims of an amoral shower of carpetbaggers and charlatans who have NO respect for Scotland or Scots but merely depend on our vast natural resources which the SG are wilfully assisting access to by their capitulation
“ Twathater @ 0335 am “ entirely agree . It makes me absolutely sick to see our country humiliated by asking repeatedly ( and being refused). a section 30 agreement . On December 31st is there anyone within the SNP “ leadership” who has the gumption to CONFRONT this arrogant Tory English government and inform them that the deadline for a section 30 is the DATE of The HOLYROOD election , and thereafter without the same this election will be AN INDEPENDENCE referendum vote . It’s time to “bite the bullet” and SHOW SOME BACKBONE !! GET ON WITH IT . No English Tory government is going to GRANT us Independence. We have to TAKE our Independence by a SOVEREIGN VOTE of our people with or without “ a section 30” . We the people of Scotland ARE SOVEREIGN and it’s time our SNP LEADERSHIP rammed that FACT down the English Tory government’s “throat.” . The time for niceties is OVER !
From the business bulletin for tomorrow’s debate ,
Murdo Fraser
Legal Advice
“ That the Parliament recalls the vote on motion S5M-23218 on 4 November 2020, in which it called on the Scottish Government to publish the legal advice it received regarding the judicial review into the handling of harassment complaints against the former First Minister, Alex Salmond; notes that the legal advice sought has not yet been published, despite the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints requesting this by 13 November 2020, and calls on the Scottish Government to respect the will of the Parliament by providing the legal advice without any further delay. “
https://bb.parliament.scot/#collapseItem_5713
No amendments have been submitted against it yet .
As the Harassment and Complaints Committee meeting is in private this morning , I see that the Justice Committee meeting is this morning This could be interesting to watch .
JUSTICE COMMITTEE
29TH MEETING, 2020 the David Livingstone Room (CR6)
The Committee will meet at 10:00 am in the David Livingstone Room (CR6)
1. Decision on taking business in private: The Committee will decide whether to consider all drafts of its report on the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, in private, at future meetings.
2. Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill: The Committee will take evidence on the Bill at Stage 1 from—
Emma Ritch, Executive Director, Engender;
Susan Smith, Director, For Women Scotland;
Dr Marsha Scott, Chief Executive Officer, Scottish Women’s Aid;
and then from—
Humza Yousaf, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Bill Brash, Bill Team Leader, Philip Lamont, Head of Criminal Law, Practice and Licensing Unit, Jo Gillies, Head of Connected Communities Unit, Rachael Wilson, Cohesive Communities Team Leader, Clare McKinlay, Solicitor, Scottish Government Legal Directorate, Criminal Justice, Police and Fire Division, and Patrick Down, Policy Officer, Criminal Law, Practice and Licensing Unit, Scottish Government.
3. Subordinate legislation: The Committee will take evidence on the International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) (Scotland) Revocation Order 2021 [draft] from—
Humza Yousaf, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Susan Black, Senior Policy Officer, and Jo-anne Tinto, Solicitor, Scottish Government Legal Directorate, Scottish Government.
4. Subordinate legislation: Humza Yousaf (Cabinet Secretary for Justice) to move—
S5M-22981—That the Justice Committee recommends that the International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) (Scotland) Revocation Order 2021 [draft] be approved.
5. Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill (in private): The Committee will review the evidence heard earlier in the meeting.
https://bb.parliament.scot/#collapseComItem_8275
Me @ 7.12am
That’s the wrong link I posted then and for some reason that link takes you to “ Friday 1st January 8275 “ LOL
this is the correct link,
https://bb.parliament.scot/#20201124
Twathater
The English government abuse and denigrate Scotland because there is no one else left for them to bully and because we let them as a nation of serfs.
I agree with you regarding the S30 and NS has used this as a delaying tactic to avoid a referendum and hence independence.
What has happened to the SNP and who exactly is Nicola Sturgeon.
Republicofscotland @9:52pm
So I can’t decide whether it’s no deal and they’re going to pin the blame on Sturgeon or it’s a shit deal (at least for fisherman) and they’re going to pin the blame on Sturgeon.
I tend towards the latter since that creates the most discord north of the border but it’s interesting that they choose now to start the negative press on our Dear Leader.
The wording by Gove is particularly slimy as it’s effectively saying she betrayed the UK’s negotiating position. Some good might come out of this if the English can be persuaded that thy got screwed by the Scots and they would be better getting rid of us – politically speaking, of course.
Stu, when you say Scotland is Yousaf’s country – fair enough. I never said it wasn’t, and I utterly resent his censorious, unenforceable Hate Crime Bill crap. But using your own logic, I see above that the BAME SNP delegates debated India oppressing Kashmir. What exactly does this have to do with Scotland, if our government should only be dealing with Scottish issues?
Clearly there are factions,as you yourself said, debating stuff of interest only to themselves. Unless, of course, Scotland gives money to the regions they are debating, which it sometimes does, in which case Scotland should maybe have a say in certain political aspects of those countries, at least in how the money is apportioned.
@Dan 10.08pm & @twathater 3.35am
Mr Wishart has an ego a mile wide and graphene thin, hence his propensity to block people responding on his blog as readily as he does on twitter.
From the conversations last night, he appears to have deleted more comments than there are now comments BTL: it’s not a great look, but entirely unsurprising from one of his limited debating ability.
It is interesting that having had literally months to come up with something better than “we’ll just keep asking”, his new plan is to…….just keep asking. He continues to make the totally false claims that the only alternative to an agreed referendum is UDI and that elections fought on a plebiscitary mandate wouldn’t be recognised internationally.
He does appear to have admitted in his latest blog that he has no idea how long it’s going to take to exhaust his Plan A to just keep asking (2 years, 5 years…25 years?) and that only after that will we finally do something different.
Astonishingly the something different appears to holding an “illegal” referendum and throwing ourselves on the mercy of the international community.
Worked for the Catalans, right…? Oh….no…the other thing.
It shows the shallowness of his (and therefore we must assume the party’s?) planning and strategy that they have the front to propose such an intellectually incoherent and constitutionally ignorant prospectus.
In effect Wishart is telling us to spend years after 2021 elections banging our heads against the wall of British nationalist intransigence, and only then will the SNP finally ramp up the pressure by asserting themselves, withdrawing co-operation, being troublesome at Westminster, before finally – at some undisclosed point in the future – holding the very type of referendum he now assures us is illegitimate, on the spurious grounds that the international community will then be “on our side”.
With strategising like this at the top of the SNP, we should all be very worried.
All this is the entirely predictable end result of the widespread entryism by Rise et al post 2014.Folk for whom Independence is a means not an end.If they could achieve their ends by any other means they would and stuff Independence/SNP.Independence is not,nor ever was,a “Right/Left” issue.It’s about Sovereignty.If the Scots vote for right leaning governments post Independence then that will be them exercising their Sovereignty and getting the Government they want.Unfortunately the factions now controlling the SNP see Indy as a means to fashion the kind of country they want.IMO,They are in for a very rude awakening.I doubt any of this will end well.
@Andy E!lis,
Yes ,Wisharts belief in the International community being inside is somewhat wishful thknking. Someone upthread mentioned Kashmir and why it should interest the Scottish government.
Kashmir was an Independent state under the partition Act. It had a lawful right to decide if it wanted to join India or Pakistan. However circumstances created by India and Pakistan have hobbled Kashmir for the last 60 years with both sides now claiming it.
Their biggest fear is enforced repopulation by India to neuter Muslim interests.
All sounds familiar. The International community can do nothing, and on and on it goes.
Anton @ 8:14pm:
Good points.
Would add Labour infiltration to RISE infiltration.
Agree wholly that Indy is a point of principle about where power resides and who elects it.
I’m towards the left on economic issues in particular but folk have to stop seeing Indy as being like a general election or, as you say, a means to an end. The rest of us need to become sharper at interrogating our “would-be” representatives to learn which camp they fall into, ie “Indy is the goal” or “something else is the goal and I only want indy if I can’t achieve it by other means”.
WhoRattledYourCage
I wouldn’t get distracted by superficial stuff like skin colour or country of origin, the real meat is in the observation that the comfortable, chattering classes like to virtue signal. The real, opposed minorities who are right under their noses only get their contempt which exposes the sham that all these interest groups are just their for grandstanding and patting each other on the back. Last time I looked being disabled, etc, wasn’t a solved problem. However that looks like hard work and so it’s no wonder they jump at the opportunity to posture instead of make a real difference.
I see that “ Call Kaye Adams “ will be discussing the Hate Crime Bill this morning at 9.00 am on Radio Scotland .
A further response to a comment from Christopher Sinclair @8.04 am on Pete Wishart’s blog before he deletes that too!
“Before Mr Wishart deletes this post (as he has all others which disagree with his cunning plan, which hardly denotes a mind open to debate and reason) let’s examine the evidence from his own post.
He falsely states that plebiscitary elections will not be recognised internationally, and that an “agreed” referendum is the sole route to independence. He must know this is false, yet he repeats it at every opportunity. He then compounds his error by making a false equivalence between plebiscitary elections and UDI, while conjuring the ghost of the Catalan vote….which was a referendum, not a general election.
It then transpires that his cunning (timescale free) plan when the British nationalists say “now is not the time again – as they inevitably will – is to spend years (?) doing unofficial things like withdrawing support, forming unofficial Grand Committees and being beastly at Westminster. the language of “grinding them down” hardly suggests this is the work of months or a year or two: Pete is patently preparing to settle down at Westminster for the long haul, not settle up.
To add insult to injury, the cherry on top of this gradualist confection is that after “X” years of achieving precisely nothing, the SNP’s cunning plan is to throw ourselves on the mercy of the international community and to hold – wait for it – our own “Scottish designed” referendum without Westminster’s approval.
This is alarming stuff: after months denigrating any calls for Plan B, caricaturing any alternative as UDI and a sure fire failure and something that would never be recognised internationally, the best the gradualists can come up with is years of futile constitutional fencing with an implacably hostile British nationalist parliament in Westminster which enjoys a crushing majority and considers itself supreme, as we as at liberty to break international law.
The reason Pete is so keen to delete opposing views is the paucity of his own argument.”
https://petewishart.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/what-happens-if-boris-says-no/comment-page-1/#comment-21874
Well said Alf Baird. Also the clear majority of YES voters in 2014 were from the working class and Scots speaking community.
Ironic then that Scots language has such a low priority for a “nationalist” government.
Maybe it’s to do with the false fear of being seen to be too nationalistic.
The Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca proto-vaccine is according to their press release 70.4% effective under normal dosage. Not a good result, >90% ought to be expected. On whom was this drug tested? Were they sick, healthy, any co-morbidity? What is the composition of the vaccine? What would long term effects be? and similar questions come to mind. AstraZeneca is a a big pharma enterprise so much will be classed as trade secret.
This drug is being pushed wrapped in the Union flag by the BritState government. The Brits done it first, ya boo sucks! sort of thing. It is also being fast tracked. Normal trial periods for drugs run in terms of years, not months and even then public release may reveal contra indications not shown during trial.
The likes of the poster AYRSHIRE BOB ought to sit back and think deeply before swallowing a mega dose of Brit nationalist + big pharma hype accompanying this latest drug cocktail.
Sara, your angry reply was interesting, not least for its use of India as a comparison with Pakistan in illustrating the horrendous problem of modern slavery. I would imagine, given your dismissive response, that you are of Pakistani heritage. I know a lot of Pakistani and Indian people do not get along.
In bashing India, you are, ironically, doing what you accuse me of, i.e. bashing another country. I did not bash Pakistan. I merely pointed out the rank hypocrisy of trying to ram historical slavery down our throats in Scotland when the country of your heritage has a severe slavery problem in the modern age. This American-led white slavery guilt tripping is, ironically creating a lot of racial tension and division – and I believe that that is its intended agenda, anyway.
Scotland gives a lot of money to Pakistan, and clearly wants to buy into Pakistani markets. Fair enough.
https://www.gov.scot/policies/international-development/development-assistance-programmes/#Pakistan
I am not a ‘liberal.’ As for your deranged ranting about ‘It seems that Britain and its inhabitants can’t seem to get over the fact that Pakistan came into being despite all your best efforts to placate Hindustan.’ Well, let me tell you something: you are coming off as racist here, and bashing ‘Britain,’ without differentiating between the countries here. As for bizarre conflation of me with my place of birth, as if I have any power or influence here, or, indeed, care less aboot Hindustan, well, it’s just laughable. None of this stuff ever had anything to do with me, and never will. I am not responsible for what others have done in history.
Which will bring us back to DOH! 😉
Brexit deal:
SCOTTISH FISHERMAN SHAFTED TO SAVE LONDON BANKERS BIG BONUSES
Where is Bertie the balloon now?
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/queens-birthday-honours-former-chief-executive-of-scottish-fishermens-federation-bertie-armstrong-awarded-obe/
Stuart MacKay – as I point out in the post above , I believe all this unhelpful revisionist slavery obsession (yes, some Scottish people were involved in slavery and benefitted, many weren’t and didn’t, white Scottish people have been slaves too, nothing we can do aboot it, let’s move on), which is partly down to half-hidden race hate, is merely divide-and-conquer, aided by personal-agenda-pimping middle class useful governmental careerists of all colours. Sick of it all, cos it just creates racial tension and steers debate and attention away from contemporary problems, dragging a disgusting stench of pure stinking hypocrisy in its wake. I couldn’t care less what race somebody is, personally, as long as they’re a good person.
Fuck it.
.
Twathater.
Thanks for making me laugh with…
Weak Pishart.
I know it is wee bit rude to criticise sensitive souls such as Cosy Feet Pete but he is the personification or EVERYTHING that is wrong SNP. The fact he is a self-interested, greedy, deluded narcissist priick that has sold out Scotland for 30 pieces of silver which he kept to himself makes my gut turn.
As Stu., makes the point so well. If Cosy Feet Pete we’re an honest politician and a true Scottish Nationalist he would NOT have gotten married to the Palace of Westminster.
Any SNP politician who wants to suck up to the British State and become Speaker of the House of Commons has lost the plot…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-48118739
He has become crookedly comfortable in London taking money by false pretences to make his Scottish voters think he is an MP that wants Scottish Independence.
Weak Pishart even formed a House of Commons rock band with a British Labour MP and a Tory welfare reform disabled euthanising Tory knight of the shires…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4_(band)
The sooner he is either de-selected or voted out the better. Get a TRUE SNP MP into Perth.
velofella 9.09pm: says –
“The National… why oh why give this Paton guy a full-page weekly platform to express his divisive, minority views?”
Could not agree more and seriously considering my subscription.
MaggieC says:
24 November, 2020 at 7:12 am
As the Harassment and Complaints Committee meeting is in private this morning , I see that the Justice Committee meeting is this morning This could be interesting to watch …
I’m curious that if the Harassment and Complaints Inquiry wasn’t a Parliamentary inquiry, but a legal inquiry instead, whether the Scottish Government, as defendant, would still be dictating which evidence was inadmissible, who did or didn’t have to answer questions, and which revelations might be kept hidden from the public.
Such a disappointment that an SNP Administration has no higher standards for its integrity than simply “what you can get away with”. You’d expect that from the Tories, and I dare say Labour too, but hands up everybody who thought the SNP were better than that….
Away in the land of the vax fairies.
https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-the-oxford-vaccine-is-different/
It’s British, it’s ‘Oxford’ and can be mass produced cheap as chapattis in India.
Get some for Xmas!
Do not ‘get’ The National. An offshoot of a fiercely unionist paper. Rather a wolf with feathery suit playing among the chickens.
Bit like the modern SNP. Spot the join?
@WhoRattledYourCage
Plenty of ordinary people are on board with re-balancing the historical narrative WRT slavery and the involvement & participation of Scots in it. Caricaturing it as middle class may make you feel better, but it’s just not accurate. I’ve spoken to many folk in my family and social circle who are much more radical than the middle-class careerists you so sniffily (and inaccurately) dismiss. Many are quite on board with taking down statues of folk like Melville, re-naming streets and promoting greater understanding of the “hows and whys” of the slave trade, and what contribution it made to our history.
The fact that there were poor Scots, or that Irish immigrants and ordinary Scots endured dreadful conditions during the Scots industrial revolution is in no way comparable to what the slaves themselves suffered, as contemporary campaigners like Frederick Douglass pointed out in the 19th century.
Many of the contemporary problems we face today are grounded in the inequalities and economic system of the centuries long slave trade. Much of the upper class and their entrenched wealth can be traced directly back to the riches they amassed in the slave trade, or when they were compensated by the government for the freeing of the slaves. Bear in mind also that government debt was paid back over decades, only being finally paid off in living memory.
Trying to caricature this as some rebellion against being PC on your part just looks lame.
OT…
Off topic but topical… Social distancing medieval style…
https://twitter.com/history2cool/status/1329747504536104960/photo/1
Rick H Johnston @ 9.05
The scientific evidence I found (in researching for my book ‘Doun-Hauden’) rather confirmed the divide in any self-determination vote to be primarily linguistic, and therefore cultural. Scotland is no different, as you suggest.
Any Yes/No vote decision clearly reflects our national identity and sense of belonging: “Language…is the means by which humans can claim diversity and define their identity” (Shaw 2001).
The Council of Europe has (twice) found the SNP Scottish Government wanting on its unwillingness to adequately teach Scots bairns oor ain Scots mither tung, this despite a Minister for Languages. https://www.coe.int/en/web/european-charter-regional-or-minority-languages
A language that is made subordinate means the people who speak it are considered and kept subordinate (i.e. oppressed), in our case by a privileged Anglophone meritocracy. Independence is therefore primarily about liberation of a people from cultural oppression, which explains why the most ardent advocates of independence are culturally Scots speaking working class, i.e. those who have suffered most from cultural imperialism, and still do.
Andy Ellis, apart this this merely being copying America, what disgusts me aboot the whole thing is that it’s only ever presented as white people having done the enslaving, and it’s done for a specific reason. You never hear aboot, say, the Barbary Slave Trade, because black people enslaving a million white Europeans over three centuries has no racial or political leverage in it on these shores.
Andy Ellis @ 9.54
Have you ever suffered real poverty? Poverty and slavery are two sides of the same coin.
OT but perhaps shades of things to come.
Margaret Beckett has been voted as Chair of Labour’s NEC instead of the expected Ian Murray of FBU. Apparently the Left wing members digitally walked out.
What a surprise, Alf, that poor people are generally keener on change than wealthy people. Who would believe it?
Do you really think poor people sit there thinking “if only they’d stop discriminating against my “mither tung””? I have no experience of that.
You say yes/no voting reflects a sense of national identity. That either means nothing or it doesn’t mean anything, i.e. tautological nonsense.
You’d clearly love this debate to hinge on culture and some imaginary argument about recognition of national identity. There’s just one little problem – it doesn’t.
Nobody anywhere denies that Scotland is a country in its own right. Not only do unionists acknowledge that, it was a central premise of the 2014 referendum.
Anecdotal as it may be, the people I know in the world who claim to love Scottish culture most are unionists and English people.
Alf Baird – anybody working 60+ hours a week in a minimum wage job can tell you what slavery is. Just to a differing degree to using actual physical chains, is all. Cue somebody jmumping and moaning aboot insulting slaves…
Alert.
The boss of the new South of Scotland Enterprise agency has been announced.
In a bold new move, pronouns have leapt from the Twitter bio and attached themselves to the actual name.
“Jane Morrison-Ross (she, hers)@ . . ”
Situation normal. Nae Scotgov money for those deemed wrongthinkers.
Hatuey
A pity then that those whom you say ‘love Scottish culture most’ have the greatest propensity to vote No and to block its full realisation, according to 2014 post referendum research.
Fanon’s take on the importance of national culture linked to decolonisation may be enlightening:
“For culture is the first expression of a nation.. In the colonial situation, culture, which is deprived of the support of the nation and state, falls away and dies. The first necessity is the re-establishment of the nation in order to give life to national culture….(and) the conscious and organized undertaking by a colonial people to re-establish the sovereignty of that nation constitutes the most complete and obvious cultural manifestation that exists. If culture is the expression of national consciousness…it is the national consciousness which is the most elaborate form of culture”.
Fanon also wrote that: “The poverty of the people, national oppression and the inhibition of culture are one and the same thing.”
Perhaps the reason our oppressors ‘love our culture most’ is because, under colonial rule, what we see is merely “the dregs of a national culture, its mineral strata”, where the “withering away of the reality of the nation and the death-pangs of the national culture are linked to each other in mutual dependence”.
Whorattledyourcage, I think we can assume that almost all men and women in the state of nature worked more than 60 hours per week, for the equivalent of less than minimum wage. If they were slaves, I don’t know who the slave master was.
Across time and space, it’s quite easy to find examples of people having a hard time. I know it’s popular these days to blame capitalism for that and much else, but the historical record and anthropologists indicate that hardship existed before and independently of capitalism.
The plantation owners of west indies used white slaves initially , many of them Scots. Their descendants still live there in poverty.
@Alf Baird 10.17am
Thankfully no I haven’t, though I know from ancestry research that many forbears have. I’m not sure what relevance me not having personal experience of poverty has to the issue however, unless you’re saying only those with direct personal experience of any given issue are allowed an opinion, because that would just be, you know…..bonkers.
AH SO!
https://www.globalresearch.ca/chief-science-officer-pfizer-says-second-wave-faked-false-positive-covid-tests-pandemic-over/5724753
Whisper it not within earshot of the court of the ‘Their’ Magnificence.
A year of life wasted..in which great things might have been accomplished.
@WRYC 10.10am / 10.45am & @Alf Baird (again) 10.17am
Poverty =/= slavery. Anyone saying so patently doesn’t understand what chattel slavery is. However dreadful hardship and terrible working conditions were, and however awful the situation of those in abject poverty throughout history – not a few of whom were in Scotland – it simply doesn’t equate to being bought and sold as property, or e.g. the conditions of slaves in plantations in the South before emancipation.
The false equivalences being drawn aren’t just ignorant, they’re insulting.
This is attributed to Reinhard Heinrich, main architect of the Holocaust. Sounds familiar!
“Deprive the people of their national consciousness, treat them as a tribe and not a nation, dilute their national pride, do not teach their history, propagate their language as inferior, imply they have a cultural void, emphasise their customs are primitive and dismiss their independence as a barbaric anomaly “
WhoRattledYourCage
I agree, but don’t get distracted by all that nonsense – there are bigger fish to fry.
Incidentally, https://sceptical.scot/2016/03/the-myth-of-scottish-slaves/ is quite an interesting read. There’s no real outcome other than the reality was a lot more complicated than people make out and surprise, surprise, you can’t fit it into a tweet. The comments are pretty interesting too.
ALF BAIRD 11:10
A social entity without a culture cannot exist. It is an anthropological impossibility. Basic language and gesture constitute ‘culture’. At the higher level it is the mark of ‘civilization’ and community/national identity.
In Scotland the national cultures are considerably eroded by the process of anglicization. There is a ‘folkish’ element in the way what survives is perceived. Kilts, a few words of Burns and a glass of uisge beatha aka whisky goes down a treat with many. But all around the ‘real thing’ is dying from lack of intellectual interest.
As has happened with Gaelic in Ireland it is a virtue signaling party piece before getting down to the reality of anglo-american cultural hegemony.
It is a bind. A great deal of political will and effort, not to mention time, would be required to escape it. Maist cannae be bothert.
Language revival and cultural renewal are not impossible. Finland and a host of east European states engaged in the task during the early 20c. However, intellectuals + political will were germane to the process. Nationalism in the authentic sense.
Do we have those ingredients, are we nationalistic enough?
Alf, I’m really not sure it makes any sense for you to compare the plight of Scottish people today to the plight of native Americans and Africans of the 19th century.
You must, of course, know that many Scottish people played enthusiastic parts in subjugating indigenous people around the world during the colonial era.
I guess you’ll dismiss that and say something along the lines of “what we did back then has no bearing on what we are experiencing today”. But you can’t have it both ways.
The slaves on Scottish sugar plantations typically lasted 2 or 3 years, such was the brutality and exhausting nature of their work. Ordinary Scots in their thousands made a living killing and scalping in North America. Most of the impressive buildings in places like Glasgow and Edinburgh are monuments to the success of Scottish plundering.
If feels like we are exploiting them all over again when we say their suffering then is the same as our suffering now; not only are we trivialising their suffering then, we are forgetting that in many cases we were directly responsible for it.
Scottish people today are free to celebrate their culture however they may choose. There’s nobody scalping us or burning down our villages. There are no ships waiting to take our sons and daughters to die on sugar plantations.
In short, the position Scots find themselves in today could hardly be more different to the position of those who suffered at the sharp end of European colonialism.
@Stuart MacKay 11.43am
Great article: I particularly like this part, which WRYC & Alf might like to commit to memory:
“The ‘white slaves myth’, based upon weak foundations flourishes in the unchecked environment of the Internet.
For those familiar with Hogan’s Law, this is nothing new. Liam Hogan has written articles on the myth of the Irish slaves, a myth which has been hijacked in America by right wing groups and white supremacists to deflect from the legacy of black racialised chattel slavery and the ongoing quest for reparations in America. The Scottish white slaves strand differs from the Irish version in one important way. Whilst the Irish slaves myth has been used to cultivate white victimhood in America, the Scottish version is used mainly to deflect from the wider historical narrative of Scots involvement with British imperialism and specifically Caribbean slavery.
It wisnae us – white Scots were slaves first. It wisnae us – it was the English. It wisnae us – it was the rich landowners. It wisnae us – the working classes weren’t involved. It wisnae us – it happened 200 years ago. Repeat ad nauseum.”
Some FYI
I was asked to help an elderly couple who have an apartment in Tenerife.
The go there every year for December and January.
They will need to break the guidelines as they live in the Council Area
Adjacent to Glasgow Airport.
Technically they are not allowed to travel there but-
The Taxi company are happy to take them there.
The Airline is sending their flight over so they lose their money if they don’t show.
They do need to turn up with a certificate to prove they didn’t have Covid 72 hours ago?
( Doesn’t prove anything if you picked up the virus after the test?)
They don’t have computers or Smart phones but they must fill in forms on line
On calling around the Boots stores that carry out these £120 tests, they want you
to book it on line and scan your passport picture and details across to them.
Next they reveal their soonest appointment is for after they fly away.
There are some private operators who can do the test for £150 each.
As pensioners with no interest in technology, they are being penalised.
They can’t afford to throw away the flight costs not endure our Winter here.
They are going to travel and be ripped off by tests that do very little for anyone.
If there was an organised lockdown, wouldn’t measures be in place to stop taxi drivers going to the airport, would there not be staff at airport parking to check the validity of you travelling,
Would the Commonwealth office not stop flights out,
wouldn’t you set up rapid testing at the Airport with results before you board.
Wouldn’t a government body investigate why Boots testing is so jam packed?
The whole thing is completely disjointed and just doesn’t work.
All this work has been done at great cost to give disabled people access to so many things
and now the government sits on its hands as post offices, banks, insurers etc all close down
the access our pensioners enjoyed by forcing them to go on an internet they do not understand or want.
Also, why are all the banks and building societies I know not paying out any interest on current accounts when they want 3% interest on any loan using their money.
Trades descriptions act should shut down all those we love you, care for you, it’s all about you
adverts. They don’t give a damn about anything other than stuffing their own pockets!
The best way Scotland can atone for its involvement in the british empire is to regain its independence.
Black Africans caught and sold other black Africans into slavery.the other active slavers were the Afro-Arabs who had a flourishing slave market in Zanzibar. Slavery was wrong morally but at the time it WAS legal. The USA was very late to the emancipation game but don’t forget slavery is still strong in the muslim world even today.
Breaks at 1.41 am
I agree with every word. Sadly.
I’m sick of SNP officials comparing my country to regions of other countries and talking about “illegal” and “wildcat” referendums. It’s Unionist propaganda and bare-faced lying.
Ottoman, “Do we have those ingredients, are we nationalistic enough?”
Now we are getting somewhere. It always needs to be stoked and funded. And if that doesn’t work they start burning people at the stake.
One minute you’re washing down a slice of guillemot with a glass of slug’s milk, next minute you’re digging a grave for the postmaster in his garden.
I have noticed hardly a day goes by without seeing some reference to these troubled individuals who imagine they are something other than the generally accepted way of identifying Boy or Girl there is no coin toss involved it’s either one or the other no iffs butts’ ands or maybes attempting to introduce a weird concept of sex assigned at birth and believe it is normal that idea might make sense to some of these people but the majority are completely baffled so obviously it might take some time to process a totally new situation that most of us were unaware of .
Ok growing up feeling and being unable to accept you are possibly not comfortable being either a Man or Woman well that’s really upsetting for the person affected and by all means support and some sympathetic latitude should be offered.
The online venom exhibited and directed to Jakey Rolling and recently John Cleese for supporting women who have been verbally assaulted by some of these individuals is exactly the wrong way of enlisting support and the devious way they have attached themselves to the SNP by the looks of it assisted by the current management won’t end well most people when they see what is going on will drop any kind of sympathy and will actually be their biggest problem because ordinary people will perceive a real threat to Women , their wife’s and daughters they have picked the wrong fight
BJ
Well worth repeating, as it describes any colonial people under imperial/Trans-national nationalist oppression and their resultant ‘colonial mentality’:
“Deprive the people of their national consciousness, treat them as a tribe and not a nation, dilute their national pride, do not teach their history, propagate their language as inferior, imply they have a cultural void, emphasise their customs are primitive and dismiss their independence as a barbaric anomaly “
Ottomanboi
“A social entity without a culture cannot exist.”
And, as Fanon notes, national independence (which is decolonisation) is surely a fight for national culture.
Hatuey & Andy Ellis
Maybe the (Scottish) culture/language imperative, which is well established also in recent post-colonial literature globally, passes you by for reasons to do with your perceptions of your own national identity? Of course, under colonialism the (native) middle classes tend to absorb the ‘superior’ language and culture of the oppressor, and denigrate their own, as this is an institutional condition of social advancement. This is in part what Fanon implies in which native ‘elites’ “seek to make an accommodation with colonialism”. In other words there are different ‘types’ of Scots and motivations for voting aye or naw, or siding with the oppressor, and where language and culture are pivotal.
@ Alf Baird
Ha, after your earlier posts re. culture, I was minded to look back at previous discussion from a few years back around the very text you have just posted, and whether it originated from Heydrich.
Capella was chasing this up but if you scroll down from her comment there’s various comments from others that might interest you.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-two-types-of-oil/#comment-2292731
Andy Ellis,
It’s worth picking through the comments. I found this one pretty interesting, https://sceptical.scot/2016/03/the-myth-of-scottish-slaves/#comment-44945 Not that you can ever believe what some clown writes as a comment but there was quite a lot of useful info on the that page.
I did notice the article itself was careful in the way it expressed things. The mention was always of the Caribbean and I did not see any references to the plantations in southern states of America. The author could have been careful given the whole is an utter minefield for the unwary but I did get the impression there was a bit of cherry-picking going on. I have no knowledge or evidence to know whether that has any basis other than a hunch.
Anyways, the one good thing I got out this whole thread is that there is slavery on many levels from the heinous through the reprehensible, to the merely inconvenient. Any situation where an individual does not have a free course of action by any measure, involves the imposition of some other person’s will upon them. That in itself is a principle worth working against on any level.
Wings! educational? Who’d have thought they’d live to see that day,
Alf, I don’t think speaking and writing in English rather than slang makes me a victim or inferior. I don’t think Americans, Canadians, Australians, or anyone else who speaks English are victims of cultural imperialism either.
Real victims of oppression don’t need to study and recite crude Marxist theories to establish their victimhood.
Reality matters.
I agree with Doug:
“The best way Scotland can atone for its involvement in the British Empire is to regain its independence.”
The first article of the Treaty of Union which was signed allowed Scotland to participate in the slave trade. If we truly want to atone for our participation in the slave trade (and the many, many crimes of imperialism) then the best thing we can do is dissolve the Treaty of Union. I think it is also important to recognise that, in modern times, physical slavery has very much been replaced by economic slavery and slavery, like most things, is a matter of degree.
As regards the discussion around India and Pakistan, the blame for the partition of India lies squarely with the British. The British had past history with the two-nation theory, having already been responsible for the division of Ireland and instrumental in the creation of Israel. They knew that India would be severely weakened and it suited both Jinnah and Nehru because it gave them immediate power over Pakistan and India respectively. Apart from the terrible bloodshed and destruction at the time, two-nation ideology that leads to the creation of mono-religious states lies at the root of modern terrorism. The partition of India was one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. As someone once said, “Partition is as painful a memory to Indians as the holocaust is to Jews.” However, the one thing we need to be aware of is that the British do not give up their “possessions” without causing great, sometimes irreparable, damage. There is no evil to which they will not stoop and we fail to recognise this at our peril.
I have also been following the discussion above regarding culture and colonialism and I thought it was interesting when Hatuey wrote at 11:52am: “Scottish people today are free to celebrate their culture however they may choose.” This is not true. We are unable to celebrate Hogmanay this year for instance. Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday that while restrictions would be relaxed for Christmas, there was no intention to do so for Hogmanay, although the New Year has historically always been a far more important celebration in Scotland than Christmas. So we are forbidden from celebrating a Scottish New Year but are encouraged instead to celebrate a “UK” Christmas? One of the worst aspects of colonialism is the colonisation of the mind, and Nicola Sturgeon is fully ensconced in a Unionist mindset. It is particularly ironic that on the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, and when we should be celebrating our independence in the New Year with the breaking of the Treaty of Union, we are being ordered to keep shtum. Even Shakespeare couldn’t pen a greater tragedy.
Hatuey
That you consider the Scots language as ‘slang’ is unfortunate, though some might say your perspective is much worse, prejudiced even. You are not alone. British ‘educationalists’ used to openly describe Scots (and other minority languages) as being ‘invalid’, which rather implied that those who spoke Scots may also be considered ‘invalid’, subordinate even.
Ye mebbe dinnae ken naethin aboot Scots leid? Mebbe Scots isnae e’en yer ain mither langage? Whit dae ye no lyke aboot Scots wirds? Whit’s wrang wi bunnet, heid, hoose, moose, elbae, lugs, jaiket, claes, an sae mony mair braw Scots wirds aw Scots fowk shuid ken?
Do you really want me to give you Scots language examples of articles, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbal forms, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, prefixes, suffixes, interjections, irregular verbs, apostrophes, negatives or double consonants?
You evidently never learned any of this in a Scottish school; neither did I or any living Scot I suspect – A wis telt hou tae spik Scots fae ma mither an faither, an ma faimly an freends. Yet this is what millions of Scots are deprived of – the richt tae lairn thay’re ain naitural mither langage! And like you, they are made to think the language they naturally speak in the playgrund and in the hoose is slang, the subordinate speech of a subordinate people, which it is emphatically not.
Americans, Canadians, Australians, and the many other ex English colonies with their own indigenous languages no longer have their education and cultural assimilation policies imposed on them from London, unlike Scotland.
Again contrary to what you think, cultural and linguistic imperialism is actually rather well explained by certain ‘Marxist theories’, not least Gramsci’s theory of ‘Cultural Hegemony’.
If I was drowning in a bog, getting worried about “taking a knee” or navel gazing about comparisons between indentured servitude, chattel slavery, or even wage and debt-slavery, would not be high on my agenda.
I DO NOT CARE ABOUT SLAVERY, the descendants of slaves, their struggle, their grifting – fuck them all; Scotland above all else. This country is standing up against a wall, with a blindfold over its eyes and a cigarette hanging limply from its mouth – what happens next is down to us, over the next few years.
This issue of “slavery” is being used to slander the Scots, and that is out of order, an attempt to delegitimise what is our right. And it is being used by – supposed nationalists – to erode our claim. The thing is, if you want to look at slavery historically, it throws up some unfortunate facts, e.g.
– the slave trade was jewish (largely, its financiers and agents; the slave markets shut on Saturday), but FFS – don’t even mention those guys. A black historian called Tony Martin did. Don’t fuck with the tribe – they will destroy your life. Maybe Israel should send some of the Holocaust money to BLM? – aye, right.
– Islam, operates slavery for 14 centuries, and gets a free pass. There are no “problems” with slave descendants in arab and muslim countries as the slavers, cleverly, castrated the men. Just don’t mention islam or anything about it – half of its believers are borderline unhinged and will kill you. We even had one yesterday apparently standing up for “cousin marriage”. Then we had that young jihadist mercenary/asylum seeker, Badradeen, who went on a knife rampage because he was bored and couldn’t get his mobile phone charged. (Islam needs slaves and the aggressive, violent expansion, ultimately because of its polygamy.)
– africans sold other africans into slavery; “white men” did not start it. Are the BLM crowd looking for reparations from the Nigerian upper classes?
– this is a beauty; the freed slaves who went back to Liberia, immediately enslaved the locals, and setup a plantation system! Modern day Liberia is a verifiable Wakanda, see vid
https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/the-cannibal-warlords-of-liberia/560a7cac7676b705187e64f7
The “scottish” part in this seems slight; a few rich guys (the type who sold out their countrymen earlier on and thoroughly committed to the unionist enterprise) and maybe some “ordinary scots” working down the line, but they would have little choice in the matter.
And yet – a significant faction of our chatterers seem to want to shoe-horn Scots into all this as being – essential to the enterprise, hands covered in blood and gaining huge economic benefit (- this is a sub-plot to the “Scots were enthusiastic imperialists”-angle)
– my main point is : it’s alright not to give a shit about things, for you cannot care about everything, and if you are personally facing a great peril, then your own needs come first
“Scotland First” – a good name for a new party.
Hatuey – a bletherer who does not seem to understand the dictionary definition of culture, nor accept its relation to nationalism; see the case of Finland, the Kalevala and Sibelius.
Andy Ellis is here all the time, beating the drum; he is a condescending prick and likes to mention his CV (no one cares, or is impressed – we all went to school.)
“Atone” – we need to atone for nothing; we owe nothing, so we give nothing; the current self flagellation by e.g. Glasgow University, is a disgrace. The middle class dogooding boosterism of e.g. Bella, is pathetic.
@Confused
Nobody sane is going to take a roaster who comes on here spouting about the slave trade being Jewish remotely seriously.
Like caring about “Scotland First” isn’t a huge red flag.
Bolt ya rocket.
Well said Alf.
Andy Ellis and Hatuey
Slavery is much more complex phenomenon that either of you would appear to understand. Slavery happens in many forms and has different contexts, but one thing is clear – slavery happens when they are rich bastards who happen to know where there are communities of people with no wealth and no rights …
It most certainly is not confined to west coast black Africans…. that’s what you may have learned from the Ladybird history collection but the reality is somewhat different.
Modern slavery exists everywhere because we still have a very unequal world full of people with no rights or wealth – just how the capitalists and Imperalists like it.
@Michael Laing
“Precisely: a mental disorder. How can a physically-normal person believing they are the opposite sex to that which they actually are be anything but a mental disorder?”
Firstly, a lot (probably the majority?) of trans people are not arguing or believing that they are of a different sex (although some say this, then behave in contradiction to it). Secondly, if the brain has physically developed differently (specifically in line with the sex/gender the person identifies as), I’m not sure its fair to say that person has a mental disorder.
@cynicalHighlander
“What is it that you don’t understand about the brain?”
Quite a lot actually, it’s a very complex thing and humans don’t fully understand it.
“It is where your mental capacity comes from and thoughts so to say that trans bipasses that so is not a mental problem is nuts. It is a mental illness and needs treated as such not by politicians denying biological science.”
Perhaps you don’t understand it as well as you think you do. The physical development of the brain in part, is related to the amount of hormones a foetus is exposed to in the womb. Scientific studies have shown a consistent difference in the physical shape and characteristics in male and female brains. This has a profound impact on how people act and think. Or to put it in your own words “It is where your mental capacity comes from and thoughts”. It has also been shown in people who identify as trans (not all, as not everyone who claims to be trans truly is) that their brain structure and characteristics exactly match those of the sex/gender they identify with.
As such, their thoughts and feelings are going to be different than they were, had their brains developed the other way. That is not to say they are convinced they are a different sex, many do not make that claim and it is more complicated than that. I just think that it’s unfair to label it universally as a mental disorder.
@Douglas MacMillan
I do know it’s complex Douglas. I used the example of chattel slavery in a historical US/triangular trade context as an example, I didn’t mean (or I think say?) that was the be all and end all of the issue, or restricted to west coast black Africans.
We’d all get along a lot better if you at least try to argue in good faith and interact with what people say, not what you wrongly or mischievously infer. The conversation earlier hadn’t raised the matter of modern slavery, it was discussing whether it was appropriate to equate the situation of Scots (or indeed other disadvantaged or colonised people) to slaves. It simply isn’t.
Insisting otherwise in the face of overwhelming academic weight to make some point about capitalism just makes you look odd.
I refer you to the last paragraph of my response or Stuart MacKay above at 11.56am.
@ Ian Donald
Your comments are interesting.
I suffered for decades from depression – pretty much constantly – only the depth varied.
Did many types of talk therapies. For which I am grateful, but they did not cure anything.
Was finally diagnosed with chronic low levels of Vitamin D…. 3 months after diagnosis and Vit D Supplements – hey presto no more depression – 7 years and counting, and no more chronic fatigue.
I’ve since had my share of ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, including a broken heart, and a major bereavement – but no depression. Interesting to feel and see, the difference between a majorly shit time, and clinical depression. The 2 are not the same.
At no point in the diagnosis of depression did the medical profession do ANY physical blood/hormone tests in any shape or form. The blood test which did show up the Vit D lack was for a separate, unconnected matter.
There are also, stated medical cases where diet, can play a major part in a persons ‘mental health’.
What appears to be lacking is a diagnostic protocol for medical practitioners to do basic medical checks prior to reaching to prescribe the anti- depressants, or talk therapy.
Thanks to the above history, I did mindfulness classes and in addition to finding it very useful – in good times, and bad, found it provides me with life coping tools that I never had before.
I wonder how many mental health issues – caused by brain exposure / or lack thereof, of hormones, vitamins, chemicals, etc, could be treated by reversal of same. And if that is realistic – in what way is it any different to the definition and treatment of a ‘physical’ illness?
Kind regards.
I cannot agree enough with you Stuart. Voting turnout amongst the young in Scotland is woeful. WTF are the YSI doing to improve turnout in the younger age group? All they do is attack the government and jump on woke side issues which just repulse long term members and the electorate. They are all looking to be victims and jumping into every attention seeking bandwagon. If anyone disagrees with them then they are subjected to an online pile on. Take Cllr. Emma Roddick who is now calling herself ‘disabled’ but is not registered disabled. WTF! Also calling for trans rights, women’s rights etc but is best friends with former Cllr Richard Laird who went off work with stress but was actually reported to Highland Council for sending dick pics to young activists. Fact!!
Behind all of this cabal is Tommy Sheppard who does a good job at shepparding the young woke in Edinburgh and getting them to act on his own interested whilst keeping himself out of it. He is placing everyone he can on the NEC so he can control the party. The party rejected him twice for a promoted role so he is trying to gain control by getting the woke of choice on the NEC. In his own bid to go in the NEC he does not even mention independence. NOBODY SHOULD VOTE FOR HIM THIS WEEKEND!
@Daisy Walker,
Thanks for sharing some of your history Daisy. I am glad you are feeling better and are no longer experiencing these issues. I went through a similar thing myself and the first thing the GP did was prescribe anti-depressant. I refused to take them and held out for counselling which was a massive help.
I’m not sure to which degree initial brain development can have on ones mental state. It is a complex thing which I think has varied treatments. With regards to my initial comments, this is one of the articles I read which I find interesting:
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/
One thing is clear, research needs to be allowed to continue and truth allowed to be shared without any political bias.