Empty Space
Posted on
March 25, 2023 by
Chris Cairns
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
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Wings Over ScotlandA tall tale
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Probably a robbery
Transphobia
Great take on Indy getting left up Shit Creek without a paddle.
How on earth did we end up here?
Oh dear. So true. Well chosen theme, Chris. After all that is going on I thought the cartoon would be on the leadership election but this gets to the heart of the matter.
Sturgeon has left us all gutted. We are the ones who suffer, and continue to suffer, because she and her merry band haven’t the sense or the guts to restore Scotland’s independence.
“Always leave ’em wanting more”.
A saying attributed to P T Barnum.
So very appropriate. Sturgeon’s eight and a half years in office has been nothing but a circus, and a ruinously expensive one for Scotland. A circus with a surfeit of clowns.
She would have to now live with her conscience, but she has amply demonstrated that she completely lacks one and Chris has perfectly captured that in his depiction of her here.
Oooft…
THOMAS POTTER
Answer. Politicians were trusted and allowed to just get on with it.
That is plainly not the way to do it.
Elected politicians require 24/7 oversight, in very bright light.
Their tenure of office ought also to have a use by date. No nice little earning jobs for life.
In other words the politician ought to realize who’s boss.
THE PEOPLE. Truly a novelty under the British system.
Spot on Chris. After eight years of promises she has left her mark and her job.
Prior to going she has hollowed out the party top to bottom and left it in charge of complete imbeciles like Roddick,Somerville and Yousaf et al.
Her legacy is one for which every Scot should hold disdain. It is one of capitulation to Westminster at every turn re Indy.i remember all her “fans”, because that it what they are, insisting she was treading the path of a secret masterplan which would take Westminster by surprise.
It was her fans who got the surprise and they cannot stand the pain to their ego to openly criticise her for that failure.
One day the enormity of her failure will hit home to them, but until then they have to create her image into something that never really existed in the first place.
I believe the SNP has been ,indeed is still being, neutered as a force for independence. We must find a lifeboat for the Indy movement and fortunately one is available. We just need to board it.
This eulogy for Nicola, https://www.voices.scot/article/fE9AU/, is actually worth a read, though you might have to hold your nose here and there. It’s a great example on how media spin is effective for those who have no desire to look closely at what’s going on – a great warm blanket of comforting lies instead of uncomfortable truths.
No doubt there’s a significant percentage of people who think like this – the extremists over at WGD are not alone. That’s going to limit the amount of cleanup that can be done in public, if it happens at all, without creating domestic tensions for the new leader. It also means that Nicla can just give her blessing to Humza and a lot of people will be happy. She knows full well that he’s the anchor tied to the feet of the independence movement and she’ll merrily chuck him over the side, knowing that he’ll drag everything to the bottom.
That’s the reality but in the happy, clappy world of authoritative covid briefings in which she kept the nation safe, the baby boxes, and the push to create a fairer equal Scotland there are a lot of people who will keep a light on for Nicola.
Unpalatable, but it’s worth recognising the difference between simply cleaning the stables and tastefully, refurbishing them.
Sturgeon basically wrote her own eulogy the day she resigned. She knew the ones that followed would not be favourable.
She convinces herself that she left a legacy behind her, and she was a really important person in Scotland’s history.
The truth is. Her 8 years will be known as the wilderness years. The wasted opportunity , the capitulation, and a civil war in the Yes movement.
She is exactly like Tony Blair. From hero to zero.
When the truth comes out, she will be seen as a megalomaniac control freak.
You’ve done it again Chris. Nail head firmly struck. Perfect list of achievements.
How very apt, Chris.
That empty box resumes Sturgeon’s legacy. 8 years of nothing. Never a Scottish politician had so much at their disposal and used it to produce so very little. She certainly deserves her place in the history books as the most inefficient, useless and wasteful FM Scotland has ever seen.
Great cartoon – Sadly.
P.T. Barnum also said :
“Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.”.
Sturgeon has betrayed the YES movement. She has never wanted independence. In time, that will become abundantly clear.
Big Jock
The devastation, that controlling nature of Sturgeon and the rest of the SNP leadership created, has yet to be fully understood. I was going through a list of Yes groups on Facebook and it’s pretty obvious covid was a mass extinction event. Out of 120 groups looked at, only 24 have had any kind of event in the past 12 months. Sure most are still posting but a lot of it is just reposts from The National and the like. Indeed there are even a few ghost groups which appear to be run by Business for Scotland and The National for self-promotion purposes. The Yes movement could have been kept alive or maybe even strengthened as a way of getting people through a very difficult time, but instead, the lockdown was just the event needed to kill it off.
I have not given any recent updates as I am down under and out of the time zone/out of the loop/tired of it all.
It will be Forbes but by a tighter margin than expected. She gave up on the campaign 1 week ago. No idea why.
Have a look at the Sundays – the house of cards is being propped up with more to fall. Not all at once but one by one.
Scotland would never have been an independent country under Humza Yousaf. There is still a chance.
My final comment on this chapter.
Al Jezeera run a good line on the exposure of corruption in failed states and banana-republics, dissidents with a credible dossier on what’s been allowed to happen here during Sturgeon’s reign might get a hearing in oil-rich wee Qatar, they certainly won’t get one here.
Another cracker, Chris! But where’s the baby? Thrown out with the bath water? LOL!
I detest Sturgeon & Murrell and their “Scottish Green” bedfellows for what they’ve done to the whole indy movement and our right of self-determination.
Patrick Harvey, the paedo’s friend, now being promoted in the Unionist media squeeming ‘n’ stamping his feet about the new SNP leader and First Minister not ripping up the St Andrew’s House Agreement.” Don’t worry, Mr PIE, Hoozat Useless will see to it Skanky Sturgeon’s mission will be completed for you.
Thanks for the toon, Chris. Another direct hit. Now back to my break away from the stress-inducing treachery that is Holyrood & Co.
“She would have to now live with her conscience”
Sorry to say, that will not trouble her.
Narcissistic psychopaths can only function because they are devoid of conscience.
All is secondary to the big ME!
Remember that horrible story about the airline pilot who when the captain went to the toilet locked him out the cabin and then deliberately flew the plane load of people and himself into the side of a mountain.
The captain eventually realized what the co-pilot was doing was trying to break into the cabin with an emergency axe but it was too little too late…
So think of it this way, that plane was the SNP / Independence movement, Sturgeon was the co-pilot, Salmond was the captain, and we were all passengers.
That sums up what Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘reign’ and what she is as a human being.
What she did was beyond despicable.
Brilliant !
As she sold off Scotland to the rent seekers.
“What do you mean I’m not left wing, look here’s a baby box”
Sums up her deceit perfectly.
It’s now just a matter of Geology. Pressure and time and how long it takes Scottish voters to realise the only way to save Scotland from Forbes fiscal conservatism and Yousaf’s neoliberalism is the Alba party.
How long it takes for independence voters to move to Alba as the truth reveals itself and how much more is sold off in the mean time. My view is it has to happen very quickly to stop Capital and the rent seekers from taking over the country.
Ash needs to leave the SNP and become the leader of Alba. Alex has to step down and take a back seat and have an advisory role. Build it and they will come and move over to Alba quite quickly.
Sorry for posting this here but twitter wouldn’t let me direct message you:
@Rev you need to be purging the varnish cache when somebody posts comment. That way they’ll see what the wrote then the page is re-displayed. Comments come in burst so that will cause performance spikes, which you may or may not be able to live with depending on the server performance. Overall though with 300-500 comments that’s not too big a load increase unless you really do want to keep server costs down. Another thing you might try is to reduce the number of comments per page – slightly more annoying for readers wanting to skim through everything but it would offset things a little.
The damage this woman and her husband has done to Scotland is huge, even if we had independence tomorrow it would take time to resolve all the shit she’s done.
With the LA being a die-hard unionist and no new Police Scotland chief in charge, (if Yousaf or Forbes wins, the chief will be another puppet) its unlikely that Sturgeon the betrayer or her husband will see the inside of of a prison cell.
It is funny though as much as I find Sturgeon and Murrell to be despicable to a level I never knew existed, I think I am coming to despise the wee-ginger-clapping-seals of the independence movement more, if that is even possible.
They enabled NS long after it was obvious she was real bad news. They just closed their eyes to it. Total rubes, mugs or worse, complicit.
Even now despite standing in the smoking ruin of what was the independence movement and SNP many of them still think the sun shines out Sturgeon’s arse. It is truly beyond belief.
I have never seen stupider smart people in my life (they are not low IQ, just willfully stupid). Doe eyed chattering class idiots who float through life in their little bubble of circular blah blah bullshit. Smug and clueless they were the unwitting and very often vicious foot soldiers of a colossal betrayer. And so what does that make them… (So many of them seemed to appear after 2014 as well.)
Personally I cannot f**king stand them. With ‘friends’ like these you do not need enemies as we have seen, the damage is done.
They seem to float from one political movement to another wrecking them, like a parasite.
Stuart MacKay @ 8:51
She not the only one, he/she at it as well Muguin new republic. Sturgeon hasn’t delivered on a single thing she’s promised while being FM. At the end of 2014 the SNP had 126,000 members today no one knows other than Humza Yousaf what the membership is. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t even advanced the cause of Independence, she actively set it back decades. This Sue and Muguin say they want Independence but it obviously isn’t their 1st, 2nd or even 3rd priorities if it was, they’d have at least something bad to say about the direction Nicola Sturgeon took the SNP and Independence, but they don’t. I’m surprised the Voices.scot post articles from WGD or this Sue and Muguin when our aim is Independence but it isn’t theirs.
On the spectrum from narcissism to sociopath to psychopath she is well in there. Just a pity it took this length of time for a helluva lot of us to come to that diagnosis. As for the machinery that upheld her, and still does, there’s only one thing to say – CORRUPT AS FUCK.
Betrayal and anger.
Sturgeon’s legacy in years to come will be seen in two different ways.
One will be bitter words on the lips of independence supporters and very vague remembrance by everybody else.
Mac,
You have just described lovers of the EU perfectly.
Brexit was the best thing to happen to this country for 70 years. If Corbyn had been in charge and done this.
https://new-wayland.com/blog/running-a-modern-money-economy/
The SNP would have tried to stop all of it. Tells you everything you need to know. The complete opposite of how Forbes ( run by Brussels) thinks.
The people you describe moved to the SNP because of Brexit and thus destroyed the independence movement.
Apt but it needs a Indy carrot enticing the mugs in the background to the baby box and a second frame where they then all go and vote for her anyway.
At least unionist Sturgeon is no longer the supposed leader of the independence movement. Her contempt for independence will be her legacy. I’m sure she’ll enjoy her retirement amongst close british nationalist chums like Leslie Evans unless, of course, the law catches up with her.
100%Yes
Voices.scot tries to offend everybody equally. Even the clapping seals need a little lee-way, otherwise you’ll never get anywhere – the goal is to “refurbish” not “tear down” the stables.
Voices doesn’t publish everything. Only about half of what Bella Caledonia publishes gets added. Nothing on pro gender identity ever sees the light of day, unless I make a mistake or I have some ulterior motive. Anything well-being related gets the same treatment – when a government shows concern for your physical and mental state, then it’s probably time to start browsing the dark web for assault rifles.
Munguin’s is one of the truly great blogs. I have no interest in his position on anything SNP related. For “new media” it is unsurpassed.
Antoine Roquentin says:
25 March, 2023 at 9:26 am
Al Jezeera run a good line on the exposure of corruption in failed states and banana-republics, dissidents with a credible dossier on what’s been allowed to happen here during Sturgeon’s reign might get a hearing in oil-rich wee Qatar, they certainly won’t get one here.
The same Al-Jazeera which employed Osama Saeed after he fled the country over questions as to the thousands of pounds the Holyrood government gave his Scottish-Islamic Foundation for zero return (it rented an office in Nelson Mandela Square which lay empty for most of its lease)?
The same Osama Saeed allowed back into Scotland no questions asked, and parachuted into a winnable seat in Ayrshire for the SNP come the next GE?
The same Osama Saeed who tried to bully with his SIF cronies Glasgow CC into turning a failing Catholic school St Albert’s into a Muslim one, against the wishes of local parents (most of them Muslim)?
The same Osama Saeed whose remarkable ability to get away with it for so long is in no way connected to him being the cousin of Humza Yousaf …
Forbes won’t comment on what’s happening in France. France is on fire.
What the growth commission would have produced in Scotland because of the EU treaties and debt rules. Forbes is that stupid she believes pensions are all about money scarcity and if we can afford them or not.
We have been potty trained for 50 years to believe the myths.
” Government Debt is not financially sustainable, crowding out effect, deficit spending is inflationary, more debt now means more taxes or less spending later because the debt needs to be repaid. ”
ALL THE THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR THESE ARE WEAK. Japan has destroyed every one of them for decades. What with their 270% debt to GDP, Quadrillion Yen deficits combined with ultra low inflation rates and low unemployment rates that other countries can only dream of.
Pensions are NEVER about it we can find the money or not. A spending bill passed in parliament finds the money created from thin air. As a sovereign nation state you are the monopoly issuer of the currency. Something Forbes with her art degree and Yousaf do not understand. They think an independent Scotland would need to find the money like France who were stupid enough to give up their sovereignty and use the Euro.
Pensions are like EVERYTHING else – it’s all about skills and real resources. What you can run out of.
1. Are those people working productive enough to provide all of the goods and services everybody needs. Can they provide the workers what they need and the retired what they need.
2. So depending on how many goods and services you can produce as a nation, determines how much spending power the workers get and the retired get.
3. You don’t want to be in a situation where workers and the retired are fighting over a limited amount of goods and services.
4. Give workers too much spending power the retired lose out and give the retired too much spending power and the workers lose out. Which causes inflation as they fight with each other and push up the prices of the goods and services on offer.
So the key is productivity and produce more goods and services with less workers. This keeps both workers and the retired happy.
As the virus showed clearly that an awful lot of private sector activity adds about as much real value to the economy as a government furlough payment. With thousands being paid to sit at home on furlough and produce nothing. That there is plenty of room for some serious productivity gains.
In which we can
a) Reduce the retirement age to 60
Or
b) Increase pension payments considerably giving the retired more spending power.
Or
c) A mixture of a) and b)
If Forbes or Yousef get their way they will act as if we use the Euro instead of being sovereign. Macron the life out of Scotland. Treat the EU treaties like a sacred religious text.
All I see for Sturgeons legacy is Failure, Incompetence, Betrayal & Heartbreak
Great cartoon.
The hi Viz guy looks like Craig Murray..lol
Fk knows what Sturgeon will write in her book. It won’t be any achievements unless it’s the big reveal she’s a closet unionist. Then this would all make sense.
Scotland, Catalunya and Québec have a significant common factor.
A majority of those identifying as Scots, Catalans and Québecois would elect for political independence. Those with other identities would not. Research into modern independence movements, available online, indicates that.
Identity, whether based on, birth, culture, blood and soil or simply prejudice, matters.
With low birth rates the matter becomes acutely one of ethno-cultural survival.
Scots, Catalans, Québecois etc have a «right» to exist in an environment that fosters, just like any other «species» on the planet. The protection of independence alone offers the means to enable that.
Self-interest is not a crime.
I’ve just seen the videos in New Zealand of Posie Parker where Self ID was passed.
Thank goodness it hasn’t been passed where.
They seem like savages down there!
The baby box in another form but the exact same deceit.
Why does the UK import Labour ?
With x number of people unemployed, y number of people inactive but want a job, and z number of part timers wanting full time why do we need any more? Never mind the number of people underemployed.
It’s relatively straightforward. The British Labour market suffers from the ‘British disease’?—?a vestige of Imperialism. We find it easier to steal resources from other countries than to create our own.
It’s about time we realised most brexit solutions involve import substitution.
Because the supply side approach to creating jobs is seriously flawed. We end up with a % of the working population unutilised in the workforce one way or another. And that’s before we get onto people over 65, who are automatically excluded despite the state pension age creeping ever higher.
None of these ever match the vacancies on offer.They don’t match for several reasons:The job role demands a skill set that is not available at the price offered. The job is in the wrong geographical location from the people who could do it.The job has physical requirements that are not available at the price offered.
So the process of filling a job the SNP way goes something like this:
Business advertises for a person to work very long hours for a pittance, often somewhere ridiculous like London nobody appropriate applies for it.
Business goes running to nanny shouting ‘skill shortage’ and demands visas.
Government gives in to business because businesses are treated like pets, not cattle.
The job is advertised abroad foreign nations, exporting their people like cargo, welcome the visas and encourage people to leave rather than sort the social problems out at home.
So the elite class in both countries get what they want.
The poor country gets rid of their peasants that are competing for what little resources there are and who may send some foreign currency back which the elites can appropriate through taxes, financial discounting or even occasionally producing goods for people.
The rich country gets cheap labour that will stack high in tenement blocks and work all hours for a lower wage. The elite cream off the surplus and socialise the losses onto the school system, the health system and the social services who then advertise for people to expand and find that there aren’t any skilled staff to work in those areas. The public sector then asks for visas, advertises abroad…
What you get, in effect, is the same process at a country level that we had initially in the industrial revolution at a city level. 1840s Manchester followed the same process, but with the surrounding rural areas rather than areas thousands of miles away in a different country. Birmingham, Glasgow and others followed the same process.
It will end up in the same way it always does?—?the rich living in gated wonderlands while the poor live in slums squashed in like sardines.
Shanty towns are what happen when you allow market forces free rein. The UK had the first shanty towns, and the way it is run at the moment it will be the first shanty country.
It’s not just at the low level this process happens. Agriculture is notorious for it, but it also happens in IT. The larger firms put pressure on the government to let them import ‘skilled staff’ just as soon as the local workers develop any pricing power.
In reality they just want to pay less, and the prevailing economic orthodoxy uses a ‘reserve army of the unemployed’ to keep wages under control. In their belief system, inflation control has to be done on the labour side of the equation, never on the capital side. That why we have concepts like NAIRU, but never a NAIRC (non-accelerating inflation rate of competition).
When you look at a country with a different approach?—?Japan?—?you find, that even with a declining population and GDP relatively static overall, the GDP per capita is rising. That’s because they are automating and treating their elderly with respect. Fast food places are closing because they can’t get the staff. People get their cars washed by machines and their coffee from machines. All that drives forward productivity which then maintains and improves the standard of living?—?because they have to.
It’s not all perfect. The Japanese elite are gripped with neoliberalism like everywhere else. There is unnecessary unemployment and unhappiness. There are strong pushes for more ‘guest workers’. But the language, writing barrier and general culture stops them throwing open the doors. They have developed a different way for an island nation to bumble along relatively happily but with a net migration rate of about zero.
When you read any of the immigration literature put out by economists have a look and see if you can find Japan mentioned. You won’t find them in there?—?because it doesn’t fit the prevailing narrative.
So there is another way to improve standard of living rather than going around nicking resources from other nations. But it means treating business like cattle rather than pets. It means elites having to address local problems and innovate rather than sweeping them under the carpet.
Most importantly, it means having a political party that puts the poorer majority in the nation first and we don’t have one of those at the moment. Who are willing to increase our productivity by introducing a skills based immigration system.
Voters are stupid enough to believe free movement of people will increase productivity.
It upsets me seeing images of Posie Parker being terrified. The worst thing I’ve seen on the Internet today.
She’s incredibly brave. She went to New Zealand to give women a voice that they don’t want chicks with dicks in their changing rooms. And her life was put at risk.
They are Fucking nutters the woke left. Intolerant of everyone and everything. The most priveleged, victim group on earth. The the trans lobby. Get them tae fuck.
What is common to Catalunya, Québec and Scotland is that the Governments they are under have colluded (yes they have) on a new approach to the potential secession of these territories.
They are claiming that the right to self determination of those territories has been signed away ‘by agreement’ and that therefore they cannot leave without the agreement of the rest of the country.
This flies in the face of the basic principle of self determination under international law as enshrined in various UN treaties (e.g. ICCPR) to which they are signatories. Those laws are based on the principle that the right to self determination is inalienable i.e. it is impossible to sign that right away and that any ‘people’ who demonstrate that they wish to excercise that right can do so.
‘People’, the UN term, means a population within a defined geographical area.
This ‘by agreement’ claim has never been tested with the UN yet because none of the territories have up till now been able to demonstrate a democratic majority for secession.
Canada has had two referendums just falling short of a majority.
Spain and the UK are avoiding that test by other means.
I do not believe that when the time comes and Scotland has demonstrated a majority for self determination that the UN/ICJ will
accept that the right to self determination has been signed away by agreement. I think Spain and the UK know that as well so the ongoing strategy is to try to prevent the democratic expression of that will.
@doug
Excusing the crimes of Nicola Sturgeon is not a good look.
Lesley Evans is married to a SNP activist.
No wonder she did people like you over when you still can’t see what really happened.
I’m sorry but I can’t stand to look at her , even in cartoon form. Phuckin imposter.
Ottomanboi @ 12:05 pm
“A majority of those identifying as Scots, Catalans and Québecois would elect for political independence.”
Yes, independence is ‘a cultural emotion’ in which indigenous language is a key factor. Hence Scots are deprived o oor ain mither tongue Scots langage
A pity the national parties advocating independence have yet to figure this out.
https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2022/05/The-Socio-Political-Determinants-of-Scottish-Independence.pdf
David Hannah
The trans mob are savages.
They’re fascists masquerading as the left with thier *be kind & inclusive* bullshit. Left leaning lingo the Trojan horse.
They’re anything but. They’re deranged fking nutters who’d glady burn history & erect the gallows for terfs or anyone else who question them.
Women have been warning for yrs but the public sleepwalked in response ‘live & let live’ attitude which only emboldened them & now it’s completely out of hand.
This is who Humza & Kate plan on pacifying with taxpayers money.
This is who Ash declared she will be uncompromising in telling them to get tae fk..
We’ll see which one the membership fix vote for..
Gordon Gecko
You certainly talk the talk, I’ll give you that.
What you wrote about Japan jarred a recollection in me:
they are automating and treating their elderly with respect
Here’s a wee link to help you sort out your ideas:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/10/17/business/senior-employment-japan/
And a wee quote:
Work forever: Japan’s seniors brace for life without retirement
Is your response going to be that the writers for the Japan Times have also been potty trained?
Myself, I think it obvious enough that one worker, however skilled she may be, together with her equally skilled partner, are not going to earn enough to keep their family plus a multiple of elderly, retired people, all of whom are likely to have expensive health and care issues.
Sure, you can upskill the working age population to the max, raise taxes to the max, squeeze “unearned” income and assets to the max, but ultimately, there will be a limit to the number of unproductive mouths that each productive worker can support. The only way to increase that limit will be by reducing the quality of life and standard of living of all; the workers and the retired.
I can see that without having to go sit on a potty.
I think you have it wrong about Japan.
Stuart
Somebody you probably know, Mike Dailly, has joined the SNP.
A game changer? 😉
Alf
Scots is Anglo Saxon in origin, it is derived from old angle or Inglis and is essentially north Northumbrian and id a dialect that is part of the Northumbrian language group along with Northumbrian and Cumbrian. Doric and Shetlandic are dialects of the Scot’s dialect and are also descended from Inglis. Scots was spoken by people of anglo saxon origin in Scotland long before the Scotti invaded from Ireland and brought Gaelic with them. That’s the reason why Scots speakers come from the south, east and north east of Scotland and Gaels from the west.
So the SNP forcing Gaelic on areas with no Gaelic heritage is erasing the true history of our country.
My source is the Scot’s language dictionary written by Rev Alexander Warrack if you want to disagree.
Re NS pulling women up with her, did you know that her surgery in Govanhill was held in the mosque in Butterbiggens Road which has a separate entrance for women? I saw a poster for it in the waiting area of the health centre next door to the mosque.
Re the post above re fascists masquerading as the Left, I suggest that people look up the actual bodycounts under Communism. For some reason these are not taught in Western schools nor are there calls for monuments to the victims in every Western city.
Re a peoples right to their land and culture, I suggest that people look up Operation Lentil.
Pity unionist Sturgeon didn’t take with her all those british nationalist civil servants still ensconced in Holyrood and in major positions throughout Scotland.
@Chic McGregor says:25 March, 2023 at 12:53 pm
Beats me why Indy supporters constantly bring up Québec as some kind of example to follow.
It’s a fucking nerve for the French-speaking colonists of the geographical area they call Québec to claim they have any right of self determination.
The only people with a right to self determination in that land are the indigenous inhabitants. The ones from whose ancestors the land was stolen at gunpoint.
What do they want? Does anybody ask them? Is anybody interested? Are any of the colonists, whether French or English speaking, prepared to live in a Cree nation with Algonquian as its first language?
Are you going to tell me I am wrong about this? I’m not, so in what way is Québec relevant to the discussion of Scots Indy?
A minor «chef d’oeuvre» of English spin, hypocrisy, «merde»?
https://archive.ph/ExWFi
The «roi» some would like to decapitate is Macron not Charlot d’Angleterre.
Treason can only prosper when none dare call it treason, there goes your Sturgeon apologists right there
@Chic Mac Gregor,
I think you will find Mike Daily has just re joined Labour not the SNP.
Goodbye and good riddance.
What an abject failure of a woman.
Humza the only one of the 3 candidates at her leaving do, Kate made excuses, seems to be her trait, Ash not invited.
Vindictive, spiteful, small minded and nasty to the end.
@john main
Similarly indigenous people of Scotland are the ancient Britons, Picts and Anglo Saxons who were all resident in Scotland before the Irish Scotti invaded and slaughtered and enslaved them…. Then bragged to the pope about this genocide in the declaration of Arbroath.
”The only people with a right to self determination in that land are the indigenous inhabitants. The ones from whose ancestors the land was stolen at gunpoint.”
John There’s little I agree with you on but I’ll give you that one 100%
Etticus is peddling, via peripheral arguments on language relationships the notion that the Scots are Anglo Saxons.
– they aren’t, it is a complete lie. The genetic maps from the Oxford study prove this.
“The most striking observation is the extraordinary correspondence between the genetic clusters and geographical location.”
The only history that matters comes from the double helix – that is who you are, where you came from, where your ancestors have been.
The anglo saxon cluster only just gets into northumbria – even northumbria is not anglo saxon. Better to say northumbria is really southern Scottish, and this does come from the Gaelic cluster. I would draw a picture, but the “people of the isles” folks have already done so.
The modern Scots are 3 clusters – gaels (west and south), picts (north and east) and nordics (far north and isles; orcadians and shetlanders their own thing) – we are as distinct from the English as Norwegian, Irish or Icelanders. They don’t like this.
The Scots are a people, with a land. This big oxford study does not get much promotion – I reckon it is because it is embarrassing to the english; consider if the situation was reversed – suppose the entire Anglo Saxon cluster extended all the way across the UK, with a trace element of isolated Britons/Picts here and there, what do you think would happen? I know – we would be getting told “the science” proves
“Scots are really just Englishmen with funny accents and nationalists are pretending to be some aboriginal people who no longer exist”.
– but it proves the opposite; so -silence-
There was a strange unease when these studies came out – turns out the “English” are still 60:40 “Celt-Anglo”, which seems to bother them. Scots, expressed similarly, are 90:10
Scots and English, being a similar shade of pink, makes it easy, via cultural oppression to perform this “erasure”. No Scot should stand for this.
John
During the discussions for the patriation of Canada in the 80s, Canadian and UK civil service mandarins came up with the ruse of empowering the Supreme Court to facilitate things. A bill of rights was passed to provide the basis.
As a side benefit they note that the SC could rule on whether Quebec could unilaterally leave.
The UK did not have a Supreme Court at that time but the UK mandarins noted that if a similar court were set up in the UK that it could prove useful for ‘managing’ a future potential problem with Scotland wanting independence.
Regarding the indigenous people of Quebec. The First Nations. There is a heavy irony. They unanimously wanted to remain with Canada The bigger ones held their own referendums on this where well over 90% voted to to leave Quebec and join the rest of Canada. The Quebec Government refused to allow that and stated that Quebec would retain its existing borders after independence. If the quebec Government had agreed to let them go beforee holding the Quebec referendum Then Yes/Oui would probably have won because the First Nation population of Quebec is a little more than 1% of the population and NO won by less than 1%.
Well team sturgeon might think they are safe but you know neither Humza, Forbes, or Regan can do anything but have a clear out when they get started. If they don’t they will not last 6 months. The system is designed to assimilate the new start and thereby implicate them in everything that has gone before.
If Humza wins he will be blackmailed just like Nicola into their bidding unless he truly clears the stable. Same for the others.
It is funny to think the continuity fans think they can survive.
With unionist Sturgeon gone and our best hope Regan unlikely to replace her the SNP will continue to follow british nationalist procedure by meekly sending their elected representatives down to the Westminster cesspit where they will be insulted or ignored, again as part of british nationalist procedure.
The best and obvious thing to do in the future is for all pro independence MPs to copy Sinn Fein policy and abstain from taking their seats in said cesspit.
Under a unionist Yousaf SNP leadership this won’t happen. Doubtful under Forbes.
Alba is our only hope for this in the future.
To continue to send supposedly pro independence politicians to the Westminster cesspit only lends legitimacy to the discredited, dysfunctional and undemocratic so-called united kingdom.
Bob
The double L was not a typo. I’m talking about the well known (in the video games World) gaming guru.
Grand Theft Auto an a that.
This says it all about the perverted degenerates at the Greens, who don’t support Scottish independence. Never ever vote for the Greens again.
“Patrick Harvie confirms that his Green Party will only maintain a pro independence majority government if humza Yousaf is SNP leader.
So they’ll sit and vote with the unionists to try block an SNP First Minister if it’s not Humza”
https://twitter.com/ChrisMcEleny/status/1639584420838494209?cxt=HHwWgsC-9YDW_MAtAAAA
John Main,
You are just using mainstream groupthink talking points as per usual. A perfect example of someone who has been potty trained to walk like capital, talk like capital and act like capital. Fall for all of their myths without actually looking at the government accounts once in your life.
What is the problem with rising dependency ratios in Japan – Part 1
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=43495
What is the problem with rising dependency ratios in Japan – Part 2
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=43512
If you really want to learn about Japan. Then listen to Bill who has been working for the government there for many years. Here’s dozens of articles to get you started.
https://billmitchell.org/blog/?s=Japan
@Confused 2:04pm
Well said.
But if anyone questions perceived English superiority in language, heredity, history or socio-political theory they must be, can only be, in accordance with English superior belief, racist.
Such is the actual inferiority of English superiority.
Confused
*applause emojis*
Did you all know the kilt & bagpipes were also English? Lolz.
The lengths these eejits will go to try erase a nation & it’s people.
The Cbebbies Neil Oliver story hour for feckwits..lol
“Patrick Harvie confirms that his Green Party will only maintain a pro independence majority government if humza Yousaf is SNP leader”
Surely this is an oxymoron, is it not?
An SNP (in its current configuration) + Green Party majority is not a pro independence majority. It is a pro-perverts majority. It is not the same thing. Scotland’s autonomy hasn’t moved an inch under these disgusting liars.
Humza Yousaf is not a leader. The riggers within the establishment may succeed in catapulting him to the post of FM and “leader” of the SNP, but that does not make him a leader. It makes him a puppet. He would never achieve the post should he have been forced to compete on his own merit alone.
Yousaf and Forbes saying that when one of them is elected FM they’ll turn to Sturgeon for as much help as possible, these two Sturgeon/Murrell puppets are the continuity candidates, when the rigged vote is over and one of these two puppets is elected, Murrell, Sturgeon and Westminster will breathe a sigh of relief.
For the job will have been done, Ash Regan will have lost, and face deselection and Scotland will continue to be a prisoner in this vile union and robbed blind on a daily basis, absolutely f*ck all will change as Cardinal Richelieu (Sturgeon) will still be calling the shots.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/yousaf-jokes-sturgeon-will-be-on-speed-dial-if-he-is-elected-snp-leader/ar-AA193TTc?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1cc9550f86c545ea9ffccdf7ee827082&ei=6
Still no reason yet why Sturgeon resigned so suddenly.
It was obviously a deliberate act, but why?
Etticus @ 1:24 pm
“My source is the Scot’s language dictionary written by Rev Alexander Warrack if you want to disagree.”
If you want to know about the Scots language I would suggest Billy Kay’s excellent book: ‘Scots: The Mither Tongue’. In postcolonial theory, language figures very highly in Memmi’s and Fanon’s works, not surprising given that peoples in self-determination conflict are linguistically (and hence culturally) divided.
As for our origins, during the Roman period most of Scotland was occupied by Pictish tribes, whose ‘traditional foe was the Britonni’ according to Roman records. In the 800’s of course the Picts and the Dalriada Gaels formed what we know as Scotland.
@confused
I’ve read that study and it doesn’t show what you claim. What it does show is that west of Scotland is closer genetically to Northern Ireland and the south, east and north east of Scotland are closer genetically to England. The picts are not Scots, the scots are in fact Irish in origin and the picts ancient Britons and anglo Saxons were as I said in Scotland before the Irish scotti.
It is no coincidence that the genetic map produced in the study matches up quite nicely with Rev Warracks dialect map of Scotland and shows the same boundary between the scotti (Gael) incomers and the people who were here before them that runs in a north westerly direction roughly though the middle of Scotland.
If Humza or Kate wins it’ll only last until an election where they’ll be punted by the wider electorate.
Especially by the female vote. The absolute stupidity of placating sexual deviants & queers will cost them at the ballot box.
You simply DON’T go after peoples kids to brainwash & indoctrinate.
& Something those two eejits haven’t distanced themselves from. Next up for wasting copious amounts of money on is the non binary & conversion therapy pish.. they simply won’t stop until pedophilia is the new norm & weans are consenting & enthusiastic participants.
Harvie & Greens are sexual deviants. Fk them & thier threats. No one voted for PIE & that’s who they are. They’re no more environmental than an inanimate object.
In Chris’depiction of Sturgeon she looks like she’s morphing into Arlene Foster.
Ron Clark
My own guess is her time is coming. Far too many loose ends & they’re all going to come home to roost in quick succession.
The Murrell investigation (I’m lead to believe) is only put on hold until after this election.
They’ve all been quick to issue resignations. My money is on Swinney being the weakest link. Angst has clearly chewed him up. He’ll be the first to crack…I suspect that’s why Sturgeon is fawning over him with fake platitudes to keep him onside from cracking.
The cop shop will won’t be as forgiving. He withheld vital info from the committee. It’ll all spill one day.
Anyhoo, Sturgeon has resigned cause the push is coming.
Left with two choices really..
Go out the front door with an adoring press conference?
Or hockled oot the back under a coat & into a paddy wagon lol!
It’ll be delicious. I canny wait..
GERI. 2:36
Bagpipes are found in many countries of Europe, North Africa, MidEast and East Asia.
The Scottish piop mòr, and the pentatonic scale music written for it, is unique.
The kilt is another matter. The word is probably Lancs/Yorks dialect after the inventor, Thomas Rawlinson who originated in Lancashire. Prior to 1700 it is unknown as a noun in Scots.
The prototype garment was possibly a long piece of cloth resembling a toga worn over a tunic resembling the Greek khiton.
The kilt, along with «plaid», was created as a military uniform for so-called Highland regiments. It is paradoxically a symbol of Unionist, colonialist militarism.
Like the piop mòr, the feileadh mòr needs detaching from the use the British imperialists made of it and the faux history peddled by the shortbread tin «Scottish» tourist industry.
As we are mentioning genetics I have an inherited condition that is only found in people who’s ancestors came to the British Isles along the Atlantic seaboard and settled in the Western Isles – most of you lot came through Turkey and over the North Sea land bridge.
Know anything about this?
One ticking time bomb in the Salmond case was reported by Conor Matchett in the Scotsman on 15 March 2023. Responding to a Freedom of Information request, the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) has ruled that the Scottish government had claimed ‘incorrectly’ (nice euphemism) that information of a kind significant to the Salmond inquiry had been held not by the Scottish Government but by James Hamilton, the special adjudicator brought in to decide whether Ms Sturgeon had breached the ministerial code in the Salmond case. Matchett reports that the information included ‘highly controversial and legally challenging claims and detail’. The Scottish government is set to appeal the SIC’s ruling against it to the Court of Session. If the judgment goes against them, evidence withheld in the Salmond case may be published. This has the potential of dynamite.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-ministers-set-for-court-battle-over-hamilton-report-evidence-on-nicola-sturgeons-conduct-4065338
I find DNA-dredging (see some posts above) in the politico-cultural context entirely unhelpful and indeed queasily reprehensible. Who cares where people have come so long as they support Scottish independence and Scottish language? And even if they don’t, we really need to muster enough magnanimity to thole that depressing reality. There are no other good options.
As for Gaelic’s historic credentials we need only ponder the two maps of Scotland on the following linked webpage. The top map shows the comprehensive distribution of the Gaelic placename element “BAILE” (“Steading/Farm/Township”).The lower map shows that of “ACHADH” (“Field”) —
https://scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/medieval-atlas/81.jpg
“The absolute stupidity of placating sexual deviants & queers”
I was struggling to discern a difference between these two categories!
But I guess that whilst not all sexual deviants are queers, all queers are sexual deviants.
How on earth any of these came to be driving the direction of social policy in a country that (at least among its working class) is so determinedly normal, I’ll never understand.
I guess part of the problem is having the Parliament in Edinburgh with its massive presence of effete incomers (not all of them English) and semi-native ponses from ts private schools, the ‘arts’ and the higher reaches of the Law.
ETTICUS
It is highly probable that the «Picts» were another type of ancient Briton. Place names suggest the P Celtic language akin to Modern Welsh e.g Aber old Welsh Ober.
The Britons of South Scotland inspired «Y Gododdin» the medieval poem composed in a mix of old and middle Welsh.
The Irish Scotti arrive at the same time as the Angles into the territory of modern Scotland. The poem above refers to the struggle against the latter’s invasion.
A people’s origins/history are more likely to be revealed through language than through the pseudo science of race genetics peddled by ancestry merchants. Place names are more convincing of the who, where and when.
In Scotland’s case it is necessary to cut through a dense jungle of Unionist fiction.
Ruby @ 3.37pm
You could be on to something there – it is often the cover-up, rather than the actual crime, that proves costly.
@geri 3.04
Labour and Lib Dems also supported this, the Conservatives being the only major party which did not is an indication of how batsheet mental things are where the Tories are the only party saying gtf albeit it also has people within the party who support it.
Seeing as it is being targeted at a country which is not breeding enough, same with the environment being used as a reason to tell our young not to breed, perhaps we should look at who is actually leading all of these parties, SNP if Humza wins, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems in Scotland in their current forms.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh 3:48
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-online-dna-tests/
The ancestry business, is a snake oil business.
Ruby @ 3:37
The whole Sturgeon thing, as was the case with Murrell, has the whiff of ‘jumping before being pushed’.
Given she’s the darling of the BritNat Establishment for having placed Indy on life-support, there’s every chance she’s been tipped off as to the shit storm on the horizon.
Doug says:
25 March, 2023 at 2:16 pm
“by meekly sending their elected representatives down to the Westminster cesspit where they will be insulted or ignored”
They are very comfortable that way, don’t you worry.
Smitty says:
25 March, 2023 at 9:17 am
“It will be Forbes but by a tighter margin than expected.”
“Scotland would never have been an independent country under Humza Yousaf. There is still a chance.”
There is FAT chance to become independent under Forbes.
Everything stopping independence resides at Holyrood.
The denial of Democracy resides at Holyrood. The First Minister of Scotland, hiding behind opinion poll figures and bogus pursuit of referenda from Westminster.
Westminster is protecting the Union, as would be entirely expected of any British government. That alleged denial of democracy, by London, is fakery. Self-determination is self explanatory, it should not require any permission, nor should it be expected.
The international community looking on, fully aware of Holyrood’s pretence of self-determination.
To suggest that polling figures of about 50/50 is too low to propose independence as the default election promise by SNP, is hypocritical nonsense.
There’s no risk attached to the above manifesto promise, unless of course, over 50% vote for independence! That is the exact situation we are in, Holyrood has no real ambition to step up to the plate.
Holyrood is the enemy. Those in power are perpetuating their own situation, as are those who withhold criticism of that parliament.
@ Robert knight 4.32pm irrespective of whether she was forewarned or jumped before she was pushed WE the great unwashed have to pursue criminal charges against the whole rancid putrid cabal, even if that means taking out private prosecutions against them
Alex Salmond indicated at his trial that he had enough DIRT on them to bring them down and that would be utilised at the proper time , I have always been extremely disappointed that Alex seeing what was going on AGAINST Scotland did not see fit to produce that dirt , he also said that many would feel the hand of the law on their collar and that he would be pursuing Evans and lloyd through the courts and THAT still hasn’t happened
I always felt that Lloyd was the weak link especially with her admitted limited involvement in the stitch up (albeit under duress) and her dalliance (ahem) with the clegg leaker
Ottomanboi You may think its a snake oil business , others including myself have had their lifes transformed by doing an ancestry test. Nobody expects 100% results from a £50 test but i have found scores of cousins i did not know I had thanks to Ancestry. On my mothers side we found a first cousin, on my fathers side, i discovered I was not a Hartley but A Keane from County Mayo, Ireland. Through my new cousins brought together by DNA i was shown proof that My Grandmother was married to a Keane and had three Children my father being youngest before that marriage dissolved and she married a Hartley and my father took on that name.(he never knew about his father as he was a baby when his father left the marriage)
It explains why we could never find a birth certificate for him as he was not born a Hartley.
So you are wrong in saying its a snake oil business and btw DNA has possibly solved the question who are the Picts, i have not concluded my research as yet but its looking like the Picts are descended from the original Neolithic farmers who came from Anatolia (Greater Scythia) And travelled via the Med, and iberia to what is now Gt Britain and Ireland and rest of Europe), sound familiar, read the Irish Book of Invasions , the Declaration of Arbroath and Bede says the Picts had same creation myth.)
they were small , ave size 5’ 3” and dark skinned and they brought the blue eyed gene , contemporary sources described the Picts as small in stature and dark skinned.
About five thousand years ago there was another invasion into Europe this time from the Stepps via the Danube and Rhine, the Beaker People, they had metalworking skills so had superior weapons and also were the first to use Horses, they replaced many of the Neolithic farmers , but in what is Now Gt Britain and Ireland they dont appear to have brought women with them, from that time, most Neolithic males disappeared, today in Scotland the mix for males is around 90% beaker people and females 90% Neolithic, in Scotland it is also thought that 10% of males are descended from Picts .
Is that the same 10% that are Neolithic farmer well i need to do a bit of research to match them up but historical descriptions would appearto say they are one and the same.
Incidently the other month the Rev said in an article about biological males in Womans Sports that the Average hight of a “British” female was 5” 3”
If you want to know what a Pict looked like, go to Sardinia, the Beaker People bypassed them and they are 90% Neolithic farmer.
KT Lorimer says:
25 March, 2023 at 3:23 pm
As we are mentioning genetics I have an inherited condition that is only found in people who’s ancestors came to the British Isles along the Atlantic seaboard and settled in the Western Isles – most of you lot came through Turkey and over the North Sea land bridge.
would that be the claw hand from the Norse men by any chance, I know quite a few folks who have it, almost everyone of them male and again almost every one of them worked at sea most of their lives, only people from the Wwest Highlands & Islands, Northern Isles and the North East of Scotland tend to develop it and as you say, anyone who is not of Norse descent wont get it, am shitouttaluck, even my close ancestors were Norwegian and Icelandic in nationality
Ottomanboi says:
25 March, 2023 at 4:12 pm
The ancestry business, is a snake oil business.
In fairness, that’s a criticism of online DNA tests and databases… emphasis on online.
I think DNA analysis done “properly” is pretty interesting for what it can reveal.
Being able to trace your lineage would be quite interesting, with certain caveats. There’s nothing special about someone who can trace their ancestoral lineage back 2000 years, or 20,000 years. We, that is all of us, have the same chronological lineage too, it just isn’t as traceable.
I watched a program about the immigration into Europe of Homoerectus, and the anaylists believed the early migrations actually failed, because DNA recovered from remains has no discernable lineage in subsequent generations. So these populations essentially died out. “Perhaps” because they clashed with Neanderthals, or perhaps starvation or disease.
If memory serves, I think the same thing happened with neolithic settlements and early bronze age, posing conundrums about why some populations died out to an extinction extent.
The online DNA stuff is the equivalent of cheap tat and souvenirs designed for tourists, but the proper stuff is going to tell us a lot about our roots and history.
Scotland only became habitable when the glaciers of the last Ice Age, the Younger Dryas, retreated 12,800 years ago, when nature, and people, moved in to the land the ice vacated. Those people are probably the origins of the Picts, who were obviously descendents of “somebody”, and it might be interesting to know who.
I need to watch it again if I can find it, because they reckoned ginger hair might have evolved from mineral deficiencies created by less sunlight. That bit stuck in my mind because we ought to have blonde or ginger Inuit then shouldn’t we? Depends on the mutation I suppose.
Then along comes Graham Hancock with his Ancient Apocalypse theories, and all bets are off again.
Since we’ve drifted off to genetic testing and bagpipes I consider the following fair game, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/03/gender-reveal-its-brands.html
You’ll to persist with it and it’s possibly a bit too subtle for it’s own good but this whole gender identity thing is being rapidly taken over corporate interests and not just ones in the removal of body parts you don’t like business.
tl;dr; the gender thing is all about branding – the sex part is just for the perverts who are jumping on the bandwagon.
So when will Patrick Harvie drop that bisexual, linux-user nonsense and embrace his true Volvo, Yves Saint Laurent, Body Shop, Victoria’s Secret identity for the world to see.
@David Hannah,
I live in NZ and I’m horrified and ashamed by what happened to Posie Parker. Labour and Green politicians, along with most of NZ’s media deliberately whipped up a frenzy over her arrival. Their aim was to demonise her by linking her to neo nazis and far right extremists, and it worked. I reckon NZ is at least a year behind Scotland in terms of the public waking up to the insanity of gender ideology. There’s a media blackout of gender critical voices here, which means it’s going to take a wee longer before that happens. On a positive note, I do believe the events over the last few days peaked more than a few people 🙂
Wullie B
No it is a rare form of thalassemia – though I do have the condition you mention so yes I have Scandinavian origins as well.
youtube.com/watch?v=puQ-nGDkc08
Luke Warm Dave is clearly going somewhere with this. It’s not just rehashing the story. Any thoughts?
@Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh 3.43: thanks for posting that diagram which gives some idea of the extent of Gaelic in Scotland so I didn’t have to.
Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway have hundreds of Gaelic place-names and the woman usually regarded as the last speaker of Carrick Gaelic (Margaret MacMurray) died near Maybole at the time of Robert Burns’ birth.
As for the savant up thread who thinks people in the Northern Isles spoke Anglo-Saxon, I fear he is ill-informed. Norn was spoken there (once the Picts were assimilated) until it was gradually replaced by Scots some time in the 19th century.
Even the idea that Gaelic arrived from Ireland has been seriously questioned by Dr Ewan Campbell of Glasgow University.
The paper by Dr Ewan Campbell which I referred to above: https://electricscotland.com/history/articles/scotsirish.htm
@Wullie B,
Dupytrens contracture Willie. Very common among as you say Viking descendents. I have it in both hands but cope pretty well.
Red hair is thought of as particularly Scottish/Irish. I can assure anybody that cares to read this that vivid red hair types exists in the MiddleEast. The Nazi race theorists considered red hair as Jewish ie Semitic. Whether that is so is a very open question.
The similarities between certain structural aspects of Celtic and Semitic languages opens the doors to much imaginative thinking, for those prone.
As a Syriac «Iraqi», a rather ancient genetic soup, I prefer not to speculate too much.
The plain chant used in Gaelic churches has similarities to Ethiopian Orthodox psalmody.
Gaelic psalm singing may well have impacted on Black American singing styles.
Fascinating place your Scotland!
OT but has anyone else seen this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/25/anti-trans-activist-posie-parker-ends-new-zealand-tour-after-violent-protests-erupt
Seems the woke crowd are really going in for being organised (world-wide?)
In reply to Bob Mac –
My mother had Dupytrens Contracture and she was Welsh! (No knowledge of Viking ancestors on her side.)
Stuart MacKay at 6.15pm
I’ve been watching Luke Warm Daves short videos – there’s a focus on the Lord Advocate, but apart from that I’m like you wondering where he’s going with it. Or maybe it’s just a series showing how each part of the collusion against Alex Salmond did involve all the same circle of players, in the snp and police and crown office? I dunno.
Anton Decadent says:
25 March, 2023 at 4:10 pm
I’ve always assumed that genital mutilation and steriliztion via transitioning was the Green party’s great plan to reduce world population.
“About five thousand years ago there was another invasion into Europe this time from the Stepps via the Danube and Rhine, the Beaker People, they had metalworking skills so had superior weapons and also were the first to use Horses, ..”
Thanks, Lenny Hartley for that.
80% of Irish males have the same genetic component of that found in the Rathlin farmer.
@ Stuart MacKay
Direct link to the LWD 6 min vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puQ-nGDkc08
Is there maybe something brewing from down south? EG. England / UK coming to the rescue in matters legal seeing as Scotland is showing itself to be so corrupt.
In a similar fashion to the Tories giving themselves the appearance of being the sane saviors in all this genderwoowoo nonsense.
What I want to know is why Miss H ain’t banged up for her part. Or is it that her time will come as at the moment the net is still being cast to take down far more of the folk involved in the conspiracy?
I said years ago, there is just no way Miss H could send that text to the group stating along the lines of “I think I know how we can proceed and remain anonymous” if she hadn’t already run that past some very powerful and influential people in positions that could ensure that status would be granted, and the protection maintained.
Any smart person just wouldn’t have had the confidence to press send on that text without prior checking, as what they were embarking on could bring down the entire wider cabal involved in the conspiracy.
Mind you, that same person was dense enough to accuse Alex of something on a date and time she wasn’t even in the same building, so there’s maybe that to counter my point…
Archived link to Guardian article posted by Peter C at 6:50 pm
https://archive.is/ENTmO
Tinto Chiel says:
25 March, 2023 at 6:17 pm
As for the savant up thread who thinks people in the Northern Isles spoke Anglo-Saxon, I fear he is ill-informed. Norn was spoken there (once the Picts were assimilated) until it was gradually replaced by Scots some time in the 19th
Obviously never been to Whalsa, they folks are very hard to understand, and I have been among Shetlanders since birth, my own family moved from Crovie to Lerrick in the 19th century and helped modernise the fishing industry, in fact a lot of Shetlanders at least know of the Watts, so I would say it was Doric rather than Scots that watered down the Norn speakers, and again, someone thinking that Doric is from Inglis is wrong on, Doric has more in common with old Norse, and Flemish rather than Anglo Saxon,and like other languages of Northern Sscotland, only got watered down to what we see spoken today in the North East but I am learning my mormors and morfars language and some of the similarities are astounding, Kvinne is woman, quine is young woman or girl in Doric, Barn is child, where bairn is child in doric/Scots, and the alto well known one kirsch and kirk if you spoke to someone from Gamrie, you would struggle to understand their old tongue, and reading it is just as hard. I read something last week that the English language was derived from Scots, but I cannot for the life of me remember where I read the article, but it gave a bloody good argument for it to be true
Bob Mack says:
25 March, 2023 at 6:24 pm
@Wullie B,
Dupytrens contracture Willie. Very common among as you say Viking descendents. I have it in both hands but cope pretty well.
Thats the one Bob, viking claw, reckoned its now Genetic after years of rowing around the Atlantic ocean was the explanation I was given, you can see short term similarities of the greenhorns at the Alaskan crab fishing when their hand goes into the claw, and it takes a while for everything to slacken off, I sailed with a skipper form Shetland, and he had to retire from the sea such was the seriousness of his condition
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-scotsman/20230316/281685439077092/textview
This is a link to The Scotsman article on press reader:
‘SNP ministers set for court battle over Hamilton Report evidence on Nicola Sturgeon’s conduct’
Not sure if you need to be logged into Press reader or not.
Give it a try.
And the mention of Lenny Hartley above reminds me that Gaelic only died out finally in Arran in the 1930s.
@Ottomanboi: I’ve always thought Gaelic psalm-singing sounds ancient and almost unearthly myself. Think you may be on to something.
Ottomanboi @6:34pm
There is this from The Guardian (sorry it was the clearest link I found):
Irish DNA originated in Middle East and eastern Europe
Genome analysis shows mass migration of Stone Age farmers from Fertile Crescent and Bronze Age settlers from eastern Europe was foundation of Celtic population
https://archive.ph/y1YtB
TINTO CHIEL
Place names are informative. In Scotland they suggest considerable mixing ie diversity.
And all is not what it appears to be at first sight. Sadly, a certain prejudice in favour of either Gaels or Northumbrians may skew the narrative.
Glasgow, Linlithgow, Bathgate, Penicuik, Carluke, Aberdour, Tranent etc are names from Scotland’s origin inhabitants.
Unionist history is altogether too monochromatic.
Seeing through the «colonial» narrative is important.
@Ruby (7.14) –
Worked for me, thanks. Interesting stuff.
😉
@Ottomanboi: yes, I am fully aware that most of those names you mention are of Cumbric/Welsh origin but our Anglo-Saxon addict up above was trying to deny any distinctly Celtic language presence in Scotland and suggested we were all Anglo-Saxon speakers.
Once the Vilking siege of Dumbarton Rock in 870 disposed of the Cumbric-speaking British nobility in Strathclyde, the vacuum allowed Gaelic to spread there, but not the language of Northumbria, that’s for sure.
Thanks for THE CAPs, btw.
@Wullie B 7.08: interesting stuff but Doric is a dialect of Scots.
“I read something last week that the English language was derived from Scots.” That would be a hell of an argument!
Tinto Chiel says:
25 March, 2023 at 7:38 pm
@Wullie B 7.08: interesting stuff but Doric is a dialect of Scots.
“I read something last week that the English language was derived from Scots.” That would be a hell of an argument!
Did you realise Doric has now been given language status rather than being a dialect of Scots/English delete as applicable 😀
I wish I could remember where I saw that article, and as I use a variety of devices to go online, checking the history isn’t easy
TINTO CHIEL
When i first heard the chant i was struck by how un European it sounded.
The rise, the fall, the melismata, the voice ofthe cantor, the full emotive power of the sound is astoundingly familiar. In the presence of something very ancient? And fragile?
Scotland is second only to Ireland in the natural red hair stakes.
Strangely enough. I was born with bright ginger hair. But in my early 20s it went brown with a mere hint of ginger. Now it’s brown with a hint of grey. I still have red sideburns though.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/percentage-of-redheads-by-country
Well, the thread has wandered off-topic again but it happens to be an interest of mine so that’s ok. However, I’m a generalist rather than a specialist so my knowledge is a ragbag. (A specialist could put me right on areas that are still a puzzle to me.)The landscape of an area that encompasses genetics and archaeology is huge and often like a minefield with new discoveries exploding previous ideas.( Like the Yamnaya replacement theory.)
It’s not really possible to trace your family lineage as far back as 200.000 years. All that can be traced is to the human groups that existed then and what else can be said is that you have very many ancestors. It’s like rivers of water molecules disappearing into an ocean.
When people want to trace what is more recent family history they hope to find (perhaps) descent from a royal lineage. An anecdote might help to explain; a Cambridge mathematician was talking about his wife becoming a volunteer in a genetic investigation at her college who, in due time, came back with the exciting news that she was descended from Edward III and he had to douse her excitement by explaining to her that everybody in England could claim the same descent.
This seems counter-intuitive until you do the maths( something I did for fun with my sons when they were children to help explain the same point.) Steve Jones the geneticist used to explain it this way, by asking the question, that if you could time travel back to the Roman forum at the time of the Empire and could observe the people there, ‘How many people there would be the ancestors of everyone in Europe?’ The answer he gave was that roughly half the people there would be everyone’s ancestor and the other half would be no one’s ancestor.
The explanation is founded on the reality of evolution that if you go back in time to a period when you have a good idea of the size of the population and recognise the attrition and winnowing that occurs because of war, pestilence and famine then we, the descendants of survivors of that attrition, are more closely related than we might think. ( The example also sometimes used is Charlemagne. Go far enough back in time to a person whose history is known and recorded who was a prolific producer of offspring and you get the same answer – everyone in Europe must be a descendant.)
The game I played with my sons when they were children was to ask them to count backwards through the centuries until about the 14th century, round about the Battle of Bannockburn say.
Starting with 2 parents, 4 grandparents and so, on allowing for 4 generations each century you end up with a large number of possible ancestors which, if I remember correctly, gave a number of ancestors which exceeded the possible size of the population at that time. That means obviously you couldn’t have that many discrete ancestors so you must share ancestors – probably several times over with everyone else who lives in Scotland (and as, I think John Main mentioned in another post, might even mean a royal connection, if that matters.) You don’t even have to go back that far, actually, before you realise that you are going to end up with an impossible number of ancestors for the size of population.
And that’s before we get started on the Yamnaya (people from the Pontic Steppes) DNA contribution or even their replacement of Neolithic population in the British Isles.. But that’s another minefield. (It did result in the ludicrous headline in the Daily Mail, that No One in Britain is British.)
Willie B Flit and flyte, braw and braw.
Somebody posted a link to a video of the Turkish version of ‘BBC Worldwide’ (or whatever) in the past 2 or 3 days. I saved it in a new tab and finally got round to watching it tonight.
It’s rather good. Being produced by a non-UK entity, it is free from the British media’s preconceptions and bias.
It’s worth a watch while you’re having your evening snacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeWolFdjw-U
Tinto Chiel @ 7.14pm
Yes the lang sang is eerily atavistic and hypnotic. I remember it being used to great effect in the TV series ‘Crowdie and Cream’ about the boyhood of Findlay J MacDonald in Harris.
There was a scene where the men were going off on the boat to the war and the islanders gathered on the pier head at night to bid them farewell and they sang a Gaelic hymn and it was beautiful and heart-breaking causing the hair to stand up on the neck. There is something visceral and mysterious about the sound that was so fitting it was as if the whole island was wailing in sorrow. Still makes me greet to remember it.
re Gaelic psalm singing or presenting as its commonly called,it always reminds me of the chants of the Gregorian monks.
Something else I read totally off topic here was that Icelandic language is similar to Irish Gaelic, in a new book by an Icelander, now stories I have heard from my cousins in Darvik was that Irish/Scottish monks traveled to Iceland pre 700AD with their families, but when the Norsemen settled on Iceland they killed the monks but kept their women, so now a sizeable amount of Icelanders have celtic genes
Karen says:
25 March, 2023 at 8:11 pm
Willie B Flit and flyte, braw and braw
There are loads of words I have come across and I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to class myself anywhere over basic learner, I can read it a lot better than speak it but the same can be said for Gaelic also
@Wullie B: “I wish I could remember where I saw that article, and as I use a variety of devices to go online, checking the history isn’t easy.”
Your damned right. Still trying to pin down the black, shiny, engraved Stone of Destiny reference 😉 .
Tinto Chiel says:
25 March, 2023 at 7:38 pm
@Wullie B 7.08: interesting stuff but Doric is a dialect of Scots.
“I read something last week that the English language was derived from Scots.” That would be a hell of an argument!
As it seems to me the tenor of this site (through no fault of the Editor) is becoming increasingly centred on ‘original’ race-in a way that the authors would deny; does anyone really think that invaders-from north or south, east or west-stopped at what is- now- the border of Scotland ?
Utterly ludicrous
‘English’ may have been formed from (and was) all sorts of languages- as was ‘Scots’; the ‘Celtic'(So-called) languages were pushed to the margins of the UK where they flourish; sadly no bugger on here seems to appreciate that- or possibly even be aware of it-as it doesn’t suit their victimhood obsession
Twathater 5:15pm
It was my understanding he was gagged & unable to do that without serious consequences to himself?
Maybe moves behind the scenes is what’s lead to the stampede of rats jumping ship & why the Murrells desperately need a puppet who can pull a few strings?
Posie Parker – what a mess. That’s those poor maligned fluffy kitten sorts in action, showing thier brand of being kind & progressive.
Imagine telling one of those tossers to put thier d*ck away in the ladies loos when exposing themselves. They’d end up seeing stars.
Wullie @ 8.27pm
Yes, the precentor leads the singing, singing the first line pf the psalm and the congregation joins in at will, drifting in and out as the spirit moves them. There is no attempt at harmony and each individual decorates the line to their own choosing. The result is not chaos or caterwauling but is strangely evocative and haunting.
Another video-link that somebody posted in the past 2 or 3 days, that I saved in a new tab, and have got round to watching tonight.
A lot of Allan Bissett in it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgONEcyB0Ic
@OTTOMANBOI and JGedd: as you both say, Gaelic psalm-singing sounds very ancient, fragile and “atavistic” indeed to my ears. I have no musical knowledge and can only respond emotionally to it but it all sounds almost unearthly to me: a huge upsurge of repressed but powerful, shared experience.
There used to be YT footage of a congregation (Back Free Church on Lewis?) singing with Margaret Bennett, mother of Martyn, in the front row or so. Spookily beautiful imo.
@ Tinto Chiel: the Scone Palace website refers to “some contemporary accounts…” talk of it being “chair-shaped”, or “blackish”, or “sculpted” or “carved”.
So perhaps the National Library or St Andrews have these documents?
Sturgeon represented the pavement scrapings of political integrity, she was devoid of honesty and decency and her legacy is that of a betrayer of her country. My earnest hope is that she will one day end up behind bars.
Archive footage of Achiltibuie school kids singing a Gaelic psalm (1955) —
https://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/42564?l=en
Tinto Chiel says:
25 March, 2023 at 7:34 pm
Once the Viking siege of Dumbarton Rock in 870 disposed of the Cumbric-speaking British nobility in Strathclyde, the vacuum allowed Gaelic to spread there, but not the language of Northumbria, that’s for sure.
I’m sorry, but as a volunteer at the Govan Stones I’m not letting that utter pish pass.
When Alt Clut (Dumbarton Rock) was sacked by the Dublin based Vikings of Olaf The White, King Arthgal may have been captured but his son Rhun took over, with the seat of the Kingdom of Strathclyde moving to Govan and Partick. There is nothing to suggest there was any such Hastings 1066 moment occured conveniently wiping out the Cumbric speaking nobility allowing Gaelic to take over.
Looks like a hybrid of Arlene Foster and oor Nicla. Well caught!
Briandoonthetoon..
Great link from phantom.
Jim Sillars had it right even tho he’s been vilified. The SNP should never have backed a devolved parliament. It was always going to serve as an obstacle to independence.
Now that there’s a pretendy parliament with powers over a few things then you can’t be considered a colony.
@Sarah: thanks! Worth a try. State Archivist Dan will probs come up with something 🙂 .
I see the TRAs and handmaidens have driven Posie Parker out of NZ with their violence. So much for this “most marginalized” community. I hope they enjoy the backlash that must be due them.
There is a reason the Scots language is not taught and is given no statutory authority in Scotland, which is a violation o a fowk’s richt tae thair ain langage, also referred to as ‘Linguistic Imperialism’:
https://grousebeater.wordpress.com/2021/07/04/scotland-in-the-21st-century-2/
Regards the chanting.
My last post must’ve gone because of a bad link ..
But just to say it reminds me of Latin. The Litany of the Saints for example sung at the Vatican..strangely hypnotic & haunting.
Susan AHF says ”I see the TRAs and handmaidens have driven Posie Parker out of NZ “
The brown shirts are out and about with their misogyny. Very SNP.
The talk about Gaelic psalms made me think of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K62sxZw-Qes
I hope I don’t get banned for posting Runrig.
Yes a warning for here, when you allow “stunning and brave” deviants to run amok
Etticus.
Producing magic out of theory.
There is no DNA of pictish people to say where they actually came from,
There is also very little language writ or left by the old picts to relate them to britons,
The Picti were not Scots, but were in Scotland before the Irish/Scot.
Unlike many who suggest that Doric is the native tongue of the North East of Scotland, I view this as the Anglo/ English version contribution of North East language.
There are many words in the Doric Language that must derive from a older more Ancient language of the north East Scotland,
My other half was born there and being of the older generation belonging to the countryside he has hung onto a language that does not fit into the Anglo slang interpretation of North East language He comes up with some blinders sometimes that absolute stun me and I have no Idea what they are, unless he explains in the context of a sentence.
And yet they are not Gaelic either.
In my view, the modern Doric is Slang english with a mixture of older Pict/Scots words thrown in, left over from when England made it compulsory for the people’s of Scotland to speak the foreign tongue of their neighbours down south.
There is a list I have started of these old words that my spouse says, they are not english nor do they appear to be modern Gaelic,
In fact my spouse nor many others whom converse in the words donot even know how they are spelt,
So I am presuming they are from before a written Language as we would know it today, but was always a ancient oral language.
It’s the handmaidens like Nicola Sturgeon & Jacinda Ardern that I hate the most.
It’s no wonder the pair of them have run off.
What day next week will an interdict be issued to stop the election of the new leader.
So many rules have been broken a coach and horses springs to mind.
Ah well!!!
Incomers use doric,
Native people to the area when forced long ago to use a incoming new language in their early attempts produce anglo words with their own dialect while holding on to some of their older language, produced a slang version of english, Doric,
But in the older spoken generation of Doric there are some real gems that do not appear to derived from the older Britonic languages.
It is sad to see that some people have the need, to pretend they know everything they need to know from learned fabled history of the conquerers, about Scotland and its people.
If I cannot afford to publish this collection,
Maybe when I have finished I will list these words on here with Stu’s permission.
I am a native of the North East, and understand what you are saying, I have always said modern doric has been anglicised, much like the Gaels and Gaelic, in fact modern Gaelic is what I call Can Seo gaelic after the 1980s TV show that used to be on Grampian TV.
WHen I moved to Skye, we were taught gaelic in the Skye dialect, and all of the islands had their own versions but back in the 90s Gaelic became standardised so that there wasn’t any more than one version and my kids have asked me words when doing homework and they have been marked wrong.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-65075733
The next First Minister must have ‘progressive values.’ according to Harvie and Slater.
I don’t know what they mean about progressive values?
What they are effectively saying is the next First Minister must be an anti Christian bigot. Must also believe in the loss of 230,000 oil worker jobs. And the chemical castration of children with scant regard for the dignity and privacy of women’s sex based rights.
I have a bible in my house. I’ve never read it. But I think I will. Because of scumbags like Harvie and Slater in solidarity with Kate Forbes and every other faith group in society, with solid family structure.
SusanAHF @ 10.32pm
I don’t know much about Australia or NZ as countries but had the impression vaguely that NZ at least was a quiet, progressive and liberal society.
What has happened in Australia and NZ is shocking to behold. The vicious aggression demonstrated by these hate-filled trans-activists was frightening. I dread to think what would have happened to Poise Parker if these violent thugs had actually got near her.
It isn’t just the behaviour of those transactivists which is horrifying though but the media and politicians who seem to be crowing at the fact that they denied women a voice. With the support of these politicians for this anti-democratic movement then I dread to think of life for women in those countries unless they learn the lesson they were being taught which is to shut up and know their place. Who would have thought there were so many men in those countries who are afraid to let women speak?
Before these latest incidents in the Antipodes I had already been thinking that there is a great well of hidden misogyny behind all this that is now being revealed by this regressive belief system. We can see it throughout the so-called liberal west previously concealed behind a veil of political correctness and now is able to drop the mask.
We have judges insisting for no good reason that victims of male violence are obliged to use female pronouns, yet there is no law that says they must. Journalists, particularly the hypocritical Guardian, seem to glory in calling a rapist or a murderer a ‘woman’. Again there is no legal obligation to do this.
Who would have thought that in macho Glasgow, Posie Parker was able to speak and exercise her democratic rights while protected by the police when in Australia and NZ there was delight at the shutting down of women’s free speech. Thank goodness we do have men in Scotland willing to support women’s rights.
We already know that misogyny exists in the Met and other police forces in England. I’m sure that happens too in Police Scotland but perhaps not to the same extent?
Ireland, too, has a deep well of misogyny which now seems to have found its place in the rabid culture of transgenderism. Women should be asking why does this misogyny exist in what are supposed to be liberal societies/
Sorry if this is a bit garbled but I was supposed to be in bed. However, I read about the disgraceful scenes in NZ and that Posie Parker had been run out of the country. Thank goodness there are men on this site and others who are on the side of women.
Thank goodness self ID wasn’t passed here in Scotland like it was in New Zealand. Otherwise we would have seen the violent scenes that posie Parker would have been subjected to play out in George Square.
That’s the toxic environment Jacinda Arden has left behind. She’s gone now. And the whole world watches on in horror and disgust.
I’ll not be visiting New Zealand. That’s for sure. A woke hell hole. By all accounts.
David. What Harvie et.al actually mean by progressive. Is identifying with their views. I call it Illiberal Liberalism.
The whole Trans debate is basically this personified. Or Cancel Culture is another term. They want free speech , but only if it aligns with their values. Which isn’t free speech at all.
For example. I think Brexit was about narrow minded little Englanders saying feck off to Europe. But that doesn’t mean I want to shut the debate down. They are entitled to have that view, even if I think it’s ill informed.
Harvie and his crew want to stand as the judges of what opinions are acceptable. If you criticise the Gender reforms. You get shut down and abused.
Kate Forbes is a nightmare for Harvie. Because she has beliefs that are poles apart from his. She doesn’t have bad beliefs, just different to his. He can’t handle that. Because he is intolerant. He is not a Liberal in any sense of the word.
I suppose we are all descended somewhere along the line from kings, emperors, mad axemen and the like, for these guys got to put it about a bit (- the yamnaya invasion from the steppes); simpler times, you might not see 30, but you will have fun.
There is a big difference between 23andMe and Oxford’s studies; the “retail products” vary, some say ancestry.com is better, and some claim to discriminate your ancient ancestors to really specific areas. Not that I would recommend handing over DNA to complete strangers, the potential for misuse is incredible.
– the annoying/funny shit you get online – dumb yanks with a test essentially thinking they are “Conor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod” and think they are “going home” when they take the “Harry Potter train”, but done right DNA trumps “culture” – if I learn French I do not become a Frenchman
you would think all this amazing science and computational power would be driving us towards a real history that does not descend into dubious mythology, but woke forces are trying to put the brakes on it
https://unherd.com/2022/12/the-rise-of-archaeologists-anonymous/
modern love of multiculturalism and diversity, which solves all ills and is always peaceful, stands in stark contrast to the archaeological record which shows – peoples massacred each other, killed all the men and took all the women (the kids and old people got slaughtered too) but in particular 2 things will kill a career in modern academia – using the word “race” and studying intelligence.
I think “phylogenetic cluster” is a technically-approved proxy for race but there is no proxy for the latter – you should just never study intelligence or say things even known to be true (Jim Watson!); some bodies in the US have restricted access to their databases in case of “misuse” – it’s a shame, there is no moral component here, the truth is just the truth, which is important, for when the powerful get to “make stuff up”, it is never good, e.g. try dipping into British Israelism, which is a pseudo religious justification for imperialism, the Anglo Saxon being (one of) the Lost Tribes of Israel, and as such the master race, destined to rule the Earth.
– good link, worth a full read.
James Che , yes their is Pictish DNA, there is a distinct Pictish Y chromosome Halotype.
All indigenous Europeans are descended from either the Neolithic Farmers or later “Beaker ” People.
The only peoples who were in Europe before the Neolithic Farmers were a relatively small number of Hunter Gatherers who have left little DNA record.
It is even possible to identify the people who lived in Doggerland before the North Sea Breech made the Geographical Island called Briton.
Many Scots have already 2% Doggerland DNA.
Individual Races and Clans can be Identified by Occasional mutations (changes) which occur infrequently but, when they do, they help to distinguish one line of Y-DNA from another, for example the Borders Clan Armstrong are of the Pictish Halotype, which confirms Clan Mythology that they were Lowland Picts, ie the ones in close contact with the Roman’s around 2 millennia ago.
JGedd, off course your correct you cannot trace your family history back 20,000 years using sutosomal DNA as used by the likes of Ancestry , it can take you back a few generation’s on both sides of your family. However mitochondrial DNA testing can trace the female line back into prehistory as can Y-DNA testing for Males.
If the Picts are descended from the Neolithic Farmers that could explain why they are claims they were a matrilineal society , as I said earlier, up to 90% of the Woman in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain and Ireland are descended from the Neolithic Farmers, there was a later influx of “Beaker” people who apparently replaced the Neolithic Men in what is now Britain and Ireland , did a Matrilineal society develop to keep the original bloodline pure?
It should be noted that the latest Archaeological research suggests that the Celtic Culture and Langusge developed along the Atlantic Seaboard between Iberia and Scotland and spread eastwords into Europe and the La Tenne and Halzbug were not where the zcelts Originated.
Back to mythology, the Irish Book of Invasions, the Declaration of Arbroath and the creation myth of Picts say that they left Greater Scythiana , travelled west , spent 500:years in Iberia.
Btw some Skeletons found in Rathlin island Ireland dating back several thousand years had a close y-Dna match with modern day Iberian Fishermen in the Bay of Biscay.
Some of the quotes attributed to Watson do sound straight out racist, based not on any scientific study but on his own anecdote, so I’m not sure why you would use the words “say things known to be true”. Your casual invocation of truth as something self-evident looks like the most trivial form of the logic of identity. The truth used in a meaningful sense, rather than in a trivial sense, is rarely just the truth as you put it.
Even in these brief few sentences, you come across as one of those right-wing types who seem to wallow in assumed victimhood – like the All Lives Matter brigade – so what exactly are you saying Confused? You make little hints such as the one on intelligence and then scuttle away onto another topic, so why not give it to us straight because it’s clear to me what you’re saying. You’ve completely hidden your identity by your choice of username, so why not say exactly what you mean?
Wullie B, there is a woman in Brodick who hails from Crovie, might be related, married a Raeburn here.
Tinto Chiel The last person who spoke Arran Gaelic aside from. People who have learnt it from books Mrs Mcalpine died around 20 years ago, in fact there were three Arran Gaelic Dialects, The North End, the West Coast and the South End and if i remember correctly all three closer to Ukster Gaelic than Islay for example. Which is strange as i would imagine those on West Coast of Arran with connections to Argyll would be more like them.
Even today we laugh and say those on the West Coast of Arran get a nose bleed when they come over the hill to the East Coast, my friends from over that side are more likely to jump in a boat and go to Campbelltown than Brodick.
Lorna Slater received 1727 votes at the last election.
1727!!!!!
This radical unhinged clownshoe gets to shape government policy.
As for Nicola Koresh and her cult? 15 years of appalling failure as a ruling government (8 years with her at the helm). 15 years as our education system fails, 15 years as the Scottish NHS fails, 15 years of posturing when what was required was the raising of our standards to be the absolute best we can be as a nation. The better we are the better the chances of the doubters and “don’t knows” being in favour of a strong stable independent nation. There would be no gnashing of nails over a close run 50+1 vote. It would be a landslide.
I wouldn’t trust any of them to fetch me a coffee. The greens should be nowhere near ministerial posts. These zealots should have their say in the chamber, not on the cabinet.
Someone mentioned above the the SNP MPs should refuse to take their seats at Westminster like the Sinn Fein MPs do. Correct! I think I can perhaps name three of the no marks on the gravy train. The rest are more than delighted to pick up their wage and expenses. In a rather perverse way Scotland gets exactly the government they voted for by returning 48 SNP representatives to Westminster. They are a waste of space and time.
Alba is the route forward for independence coupled with proper government policies aimed at raising the standards across the board in this country. Not pursuing “right on” policies to placate a few thousand of the populace that already have the same rights as the rest of us. What more do they want? Women have had to fight from the dawn of evolution to have equal rights with men, but now men can decide when they want to be women too? A sinister twist for women’s rights! Men just won’t give up!
We also need to hear a clear coherent plan. Westminster bad, Scotland good is not a plan!
How much will income tax rise to pay for our independent country? DVLA, border controls, trade agreements with our biggest customer (England), infrastructure, logistics, power? To name but a few crucial cogs in the wheel. I’ve never heard a single public utterance from any of them when it comes to the actual things that matter when planning for independence.
We had Swinney predicating the budget for Scotland on $113 per barrel of oil 8/9 years ago, but oil is a bad word now, so what is the plan? What are the numbers?
When we know how it is going to be mapped out we can set about convincing the switherers and the doubters. Painting our faces and shouting freedom like that prick Gibson did in a movie won’t cut it when it comes to the crunch.
I want a resounding landslide when it comes to independence on a solid foundation of facts and being the strongest and well prepared we can be. Pointing the finger of blame and tub thumping amounts to nothing more than playground politics.
A strong Scotland with a proper government pursuing real policies will achieve independence with the backing of a large majority of the electorate and will never look back.
The current shower of political plasticine figures are a hinderance to Scotland achieving its right and goal. The talent and character we have at our disposal should be utilised instead of the career seeking box ticking self preservation artists that currently occupy the grossly over budget seats at Wacorood.
I suggest you read the article Phil, you can’t be that fast.
The remark on intelligence was en-passant, the main point was identity and the misuse of archaeology for those who would -erase- us with false narratives.
But I’ll discuss it. When they still did research on intelligence, it kept getting embarrassing results for sub-saharan africans even when every measure to remove cultural bias is made (progressive matrices etc), so they chose to just stop doing it, out of cowardice and lynch culture.
Watson’s remarks were based on this; but then he takes the more controversial position that, to paraphrase, trying to develop Africa on western models was thus, pointless. I think there is more blame there on colonialism and neo-colonialism; at least give the africans a fair chance, which they never had – the good guys get done badly, e.g. Patrice Lumumba.
People don’t realise the evil that goes on there – Africa is not meant to feed itself, for example; the world bank sets rules to prevent this – it is meant to absorb US agro surpluses. The model is perkins “economic hitman” – allow kleptocrats to load up on western loans for “development”, steal the money, then turn the country over, e.g. growing cash crops to service the debt.
Uganda has reputedly discovered gold reserves worth 12trillion USD – they also don’t like the rainbow crowd, so god help them, a “color revolution” will be on its way.
Maybe africans are dumb, but they have not had a fair shout IMO – you can’t criticise a man for being a poor swimmer when he has someone’s foot on his back.
The countries are also a mess – boundaries which don’t respect the natural nations, the tribes; africa is thus too multicultural.
The perversion of language by the wokists means words have beoome meaningless – I mean, you are “far right” if you don’t believe women can have penises. People should not worry about being called racists, by racial grifters, or middle class curtain twitchers, I don’t.
https://twitter.com/Antifa_Otautahi/status/1639413322348101632
Wow. Get a load of this one. A woke high priestess of New Zealand. Marama Davidson. Leader of their Green party. High on her own self importance.
Walking away from the attack of Posie Parker she says all white cis men are the source of evil world.
Then pretends to be hit by a motorbike. Sounds like bullshit to me.
These people are bat shit crazy. They really are.
https://twitter.com/NZGreens/status/1639465963925155841?s=20
The leader of the gang now playing victim with some made up story about being hit by a motorbike and needing space and time to heal. Classic, haha. These people are so transparent they are see through.
Confused says:
26 March, 2023 at 2:26 am
…Maybe africans are dumb, but they have not had a fair shout IMO – you can’t criticise a man for being a poor swimmer when he has someone’s foot on his back.
The countries are also a mess – boundaries which don’t respect the natural nations, the tribes; africa is thus too multicultural.
Africans are not dumb.
You’re not wrong in some of what you’re saying, but I think you’re condescending to describe colonialism as denying Africa a fair shout. Africa had been robbed blind by colonialism for centuries, subjugated, denied access to education, medicine, and frequently food. Diseases too have kept Africa in check malaria, blindness, AIDS, etc have been a blight on Africa since pretty well forever.
I can only imagine how those generations of brutal colonialism and oppression plays with your head and cultural self esteem, but as one comment I recall made by an African about the “stupidity” of the African slaves was that they were invariably multilingual, frequently speaking 2 or 3 languages more than their “educated” masters who acted like barbarians..
As you say, the boundaries don’t respect the natural nations, but that’s because the boundaries were imposed upon them by their colonial masters who drew the boundaries with a ruler and a rifle.
The whole of “modernity” in this world we live in deceptive. It has all happened in the blink of an eye. I grew up in rural cottage in Scotland a mere 50 miles from Scotland’s capital city which only got electricity 3 years before I was born, and it’s water supply came from a spring in a nearby field. All the “remote” parts of Scotland are only remote because we use metalled roads and vehicles as our yardstick when for centuries the journeys were made by horseback or on foot, or by boat.
The component of modernity we miss is how it accelerates a country, as can be seen China, where an essentially pastoral / peasant society is already on course to overtake the developed West on several fronts, and yet there still huge areas of China with the most primitive and rudimentary infrastructure.
The world is changing, and this BRICS phenomenon is just getting started… Brazil, Ruskia, India, China, South Africa.. The tectonic plates are moving, and Western Society is bloated, dysfunctional and increasingly self destructive. Yet Britain’s brilliant idea is Brexit and picking a fight with Ruskia and China, because you know, Britain has 3 ageing nuclear submarines and 2 aircraft carriers with design flaws which require fleet support from the US.
Remind me again how smart and intellectual us European white folks are meant to be…
If we don’t change our ways and attitudes, and in Scotland’s case get the fk out the UK, then there is a Tsunami of chickens coming home to roost which in the not too distant future will be heading our direction.
There are lots of things going on in the west right now, but two stand out for me.
Both are religious (I.e. faith-based) movements. Both are actively hostile to the concept that women should have equal rights. Both are growing in numbers, control and influence. Both have the almost magical ability to make their opponents shut up and look the other way, because both see violence as an acceptable means of silencing dissent.
Both continue to grow because there is an entrenched desire by ordinary, decent people to see the best in these religion’s adherents. Just be kind, none of our business what people do in their private lives, etc. Etc. Plus, because many ordinary, decent people have given up their own faith-based beliefs, they are no longer familiar with what people holding strong faith-based beliefs can achieve.
Is there a connection between these two belief-based systems? At first sight, no. But then, politics makes strange bed fellows. My enemy’s enemy is my friend and all that.
For now, they are content to work together in pursuit of their common objective – the pushing back of the rights and freedoms of women. Once that is achieved, they will diverge in their aims and be more clearly seen to be opposed to each other. But for now, softly, softly is the pragmatic, realpolitik policy.
Both faith-based belief systems have hijacked what used to be called progressive politics. Progressive used to mean better wages, benefits, services, housing, education, etc. Now it means the rearrangement of the rights-based hierarchy to ensure their rights group is on top. And women’s rights are somewhere further down the pile.
Great BRICS list, Breeks.
Tell me true. For all Scotland’s faults, is there any country on your list where you believe your average Scot would want to settle, have kids, start a wee business, maybes get involved in local issues in pursuit of wee improvements to her neighbour’s lives?
Naw.
OK, I will give you Brazil. For the weather and the samba.
But the rest of them are shit holes. And getting worse.
Haud oan though. You will try to tell me it’s all “our” fault.
Naw again.
@Lenny Hartley 12.43: thanks for that info re the last speaker of Arran Gaelic. So the lady died about the millennium then?
Confused, Breeks
You can argue all you like as to whether or not Africans are dumb. There can be no argument, a lot of Scots are dumb, and prove it by backing the “Scottish” arm of English political parties whose leaders don’t like us, have never understood us and want to keep us subservient to benefit from our riches.
Let’s sort them out first and get back to running our own affairs. Mind you, while the current lot, running what little home rule we do have, are maybe doing better than their English betters – they could and should be doing better still.
I am probably not the first to state this but I suspect that the 600K matter is a sacrifical story to conceal much murkier goings-on.
There is something else lurking.
Possibly concerning the stitch-up of AS. AS knows how to play the game. He has a few cards up his sleeve.
Ann Gloag?
Big Jock, I agree very firmly with your explanation of liberalism and “liberalism”, the complete antithesis of any sort of personal freedom, anti democratic in the extreme and a very dangerous precedent for the future.
However your views on EU membership trouble me, as we in Scotland have never experienced immigration rates like those in place before the ending of free movement, but mostly confined to the South of England.
My experiences of “Free movement” involved gangs of so called building workers from Eastern Europe, recruited by what would now be called “people traffickers”, to carry out building work in Scotland. I am a Slater/Mason to trade , and have been involved in repairing much of the work attempted by these gangs, most of it of such poor quality that a child could have done a better job. The local area became swamped by Polish, Rumanian and Bulgarian families, putting extreme strain on local services and a virtual end to building apprenticeships in the West of Scotland
“Free movement” was a disaster and we only experienced a small dose, but a doze with extreme effects.
My biggest worry is that an “Independent” Scotland of the future accepts the pieces of silver and re-joins the EU, with it’s gravy train which makes Holyrood’s look minimal and its military ambitions threatening the future wellbeing of our children.
Re ARRAN GAELIC:
In the book ‘Gaelic and Scotland / Alba agus a’ Ghàidhlig’ (Edited by William Gillies, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1989), the late great scholar John MacInnes, in his essay ‘The Gaelic perception of the Lowlands’, wrote:
“Some years ago I heard Gaelic speakers in Arran describe the entire stretch of coastland from Galloway to Ayrshire as part of the Gàidhealtachd. They knew some of the place-names of that region in their Gaelic form; it was traditional knowledge among them that the Gaelic language had been spoken there in the past; and they assumed that, just as in Arran, it had survived to the present day.” (p90)
Regarding the Lowlands more generally, MacInnes remarks:
“To sum up, the Gaelic perception of the Lowlands is in essential agreement with that of the medieval Scots writers who regard the Gaels of their time as ‘contemporary ancestors’, people who preserve the language and culture which were once shared by all. But from the Gaelic point of view, we the Gaels are the disinherited, the dispossessed.” (p99)
Lenny Hartley says:
26 March, 2023 at 12:43 am
Even today we laugh and say those on the West Coast of Arran get a nose bleed when they come over the hill to the East Coast…
Not being patronising, but it’s wee things like that which I love to hear, and which “make” Scotland, and typify the kind of place it once was.
I’m a lowlander by birth, but I have the story about the lass who skidded on ice and stuck the nose of her van in a ditch. No drama, damage or injuries, just stuck. I happened to be in a Land Rover with a bit chain in the back (as you do), so I gave her a wee tug out the ditch.
As I was gathering up the chain, she said thanks, and said I was the first one of about a dozen vehicles to stop and see she was ok. I truthfully said that once upon a time, each and every one of those vehicles heading up the wee valley I grew up in would have stopped.
All those types of farmers, (collectively let’s call them Scottish), are no longer there anymore, and attitudes are not the same.
I don’t object to English people choosing to make Scotland their home, but it grieves me greatly that it’s happening to such an extent that Scotland’s society is being shifted to make way and destroyed.
Scotland must shrink so that England might grow. Forgive the tasteless comparison, but wasn’t that how a certain Mr Hitler once viewed Poland?
I don’t want hostility creeping into the scene, but by literal use of the word, this IS immigration, but immigration where Scotland has no capacity whatsovever to regulate the entitlement, nor the numbers of immigrants moving here.
Is there a hypocrisy in that? Maybe so, because I’m staunchly pro Europe and Europe’s Four Freedoms.
I don’t believe it is hypocrisy however, because Freedom of Movement isn’t the problem, it’s the steep gradient created between the rich South and impoverished North which creates such a great imbalance in prosperity, and quite simply, I want rid of the senseless London Government responsible for depositing this problem upon Scotland’s most vulnerable communities.
Indeed, I doubly want rid of the London Government not just for the stupid and dysfunctional ponzi style economy they’ve created, but because they seem so thoroughly wilful in creating it, as if the gradient in wealth they’ve created was actually designed to spawn an influx of immigration from the South and thus dissipate support for Independence by replacing Scottish communities with English ones.
I wish no harm to any English community, may they thrive in joyful prosperity. I simply want to protect Scottish communities, and extend them the same opportunies and cultural security they are entitled to.
I lament the passing of a kind and considerate rural Scottish community which would stop to assist somebody in trouble, to be replaced with an alien community which would drive on past without caring if anyone was hurt, and look down their nose at a van because it wasn’t a top of the range Range Rover.
I’ve seen those attitudes in London. I zipped about London on a motorbike for a couple of years, and one day I was tottling along down the gap in a massive tailback. When I got to the front, I saw the cause of the delay was just a fella with broken down Volvo trying to push it off the road. It was a Volvo, they’re heavy to push by yourself.
So I stopped the bike, helped give him a wee shove into a parking space right beside him, which took all of a minute. And I looked back at the massive tailback of Londoners, as far as the eye could see, who would rather sit and stew in a traffic jam for hours than get off their arse and help a fella push his car out the way.
I guess it’s a cultural thing, init? Coming to a rural community near you.
Alex Salmond cleared at the High Court … three years ago this week.
The article that follows comes from Iain Macwhirter on Substack. It’s worth subscribing for regular free articles (not all of which you’ll agree with), interspersed with teasers for others only available in full form to paid subscribers (for example, this one; but you’re welcome). Anyway ..
“It was three years ago this week that Alex Salmond bumped elbows with his council, Gordon Jackson QC, as he walked from Edinburgh’s High Court a free man. He had just beaten thirteen criminal charges including attempted rape and sexual assault – charges levelled by senior female members of the Scottish National Party and the Scottish government. His acquittal infuriated Nicola Sturgeon and her aides, split the SNP and began the internal civil war that ultimately ended only with her resignation last month.
“For the former First Minister of Scotland it was the end of a struggle that began in October 2017 when Nicola Sturgeon, inspired by the online #metoo movement, ordered her staff to create a new and retrospective investigation into allegations of sexual impropriety by government ministers. Her predecessor as FM, Alex Salmond, was the first target of this new inquisition. Complaints made years previously, that had apparently been resolved to the satisfaction of the complainants, were reopened. Later, as his conduct became a police matter, the party hierarchy was trawled for complaints against the former FM no matter how trivial.
“Salmond’s original criminal charge sheet, presented to him on January 23, 2019, at Dalkeith police station, included “culpable and reckless conduct” for opening a bottle of sparkling water in his ministerial car. Other charges involved “touching while clothed” and what would be regarded by many people as social kissing. But he also faced two charges of attempted rape and other more serious accusations of sexual assault.
“At 66 years of age, Alex Salmond could have gone to prison for the rest of his life. But all 13 charges were thrown out by a female-dominated jury under the guidance of a female judge, Lady Dorrian, to the evident dismay of Salmond’s detractors in the SNP and the media who thought they had seen the end of him.
“So had Nicola Sturgeon his protege and the politician who had succeeded him as First Minister in 2014. It remains a mystery to many in the SNP just why Nicola Sturgeon, who had always insisted before 2017 that Salmond “hadn’t a sexist bone in his body”, condoned this extraordinary and ultimately disastrous campaign to imprison the man she had worked with closely for over a decade. She later claimed that the allegations once revealed to her made her feel “physically sick”.
“Many of her closest advisers at the time including her aide of over a decade, Noel Dolan, thought the exercise was a miscarriage of justice and called for the resignation of the Permanent Secretary, Leslie Evans, who had been responsible for the star chamber that initially accused Salmond. The affair consumed the energies the Scottish government, Police Scotland and any number of Party luminaries and legal advisers for years. It led to the longest parliamentary inquiry in Holyrood’s history.
“But they never got their man. As Nicola Sturgeon and her allies fade into history Alex Salmond is sensing that his moment may have come again. In last week’s clear out of SNP HQ, many of the people Salmond claims organised his persecution have left the party in disgrace including the man he accused of orchestrating the “conspiracy”: Chief Executive Peter Murrell.
“As Murrell’s wife Nicola Sturgeon bade parliament a fond farewell on Thursday you could almost hear Alex Salmond’s famous belly laugh echoing around Holyrood. For as I will explain, he is now the last man standing.
“It is hard to pinpoint precisely the moment when things started to go wrong for the Scottish National Party, but as good a place as any is 24th August 2018. That was when someone in Nicola Sturgeon‘s inner circle leaked to the Daily Record the extraordinary intelligence that the former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, had been accused of sexually assaulting two female civil servants.
“The SNP and the independence movement was shocked to the core. There was no greater hero in the Nationalist pantheon than the leader who had taken the party to its first election victory in 2007, then its first landslide in 2011 and finally to a strong showing in the 2014 referendum. Salmond took the SNP from obscurity to the pinnacle of politics. Now he was effectively being accused of being a sex criminal by very people he had led to the top.
“The Salmond psychodrama took place in the backwash from the #metoo storm when the sexual conduct of public men was under unprecedented scrutiny. An off key remark could end a political career overnight. The SNP children’s minister, Mark McDonald, had been forced to resign in 2017 over a couple of risqué texts sent to a woman MSP. Salmond had been eyeing up McDonald’s parliamentary seat with a view to returning to active politics. In Spring 2018, he was bluntly advised by someone very close to Nicola Sturgeon that his return might not be welcomed, and that he had baggage. The baggage contained the allegations of sexual misconduct by civil servants. He didn’t back down.
“In January 2019 Salmond won a ruling from the Court of Session that the Scottish Government had acted “unlawfully” in accusing him of sexual misconduct and awarded him £512,000 in costs. But that was only the start of Salmond’s legal odyssey. Almost as he left the Court of Session he was arrested and charged with a catalogue of new sexual crimes.
“It seemed likely that Salmond would go to prison for many years. How could anyone in the post #metoo climate, with the mantra “#believeher reverberating across social media, possibly rebut so many charges from so many women?
“Yet one year later Salmond was acquitted by a High Court jury on all 13 charges of attempted rape and sexual assault after a sensational 11 day trial. His accusers included senior figures in the SNP and civil servants close Nicola Sturgeon herself. The identities of these accusers are well known in the party, and among journalists, but cannot be named for legal reasons. Indeed, even hinting at their identities led to the jailing of the nationalist blogger and former diplomat, Craig Murray, last year. None have been charged with perjury even though the evidence of some came spectacularly apart in the course of the trial. They remain under a cloak of anonymity. Salmond remained exposed to the glare of a relentlessly hostile media.
“As far as many journalists and politicians were concerned, Salmond was still guilty as charged. How could all these women be lying? Despite his acquittal he was still a “sex pest” in the eyes of many. Some suspected an establishment cover up even though it was clearly members of the Scottish establishment that had accused and pursued Salmond. It seemed as if his reputation could never recover after he admitted that he was “no saint” and his legal counsel, Gordon Jackson was overhead on a train calling him an “objectionable bully”.
“In the subsequent parliamentary inquiry into the affair, Salmond in turn accused Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, the party CEO Peter Murrell, of personally organising a criminal “conspiracy” including Chief of Staff, Liz Lloyd, and others a “deliberate, prolonged, malicious and concerted effort” to damage his reputation and remove him from public life to the extent of having him imprisoned. Sturgeon said the claims were “absurd”.
“Salmond will no doubt be experiencing some Schadenfreude now Perer Murrell has himself been driven from public life after accepting responsibility for the press being given false information about the party membership. Other members of Salmond’s alleged conspiracy are also history, including the permanent secretary at the time Leslie Evans. The Chief Constable who was in charge of the failed Salmond prosecution, which involved over 400 interviews, was Sir Iain Livingstone. He announced his retirement a week after Sturgeon’s resignation.
“Nicola Sturgeon weathered the parliamentary inquiry into the Salmond affair but it was not without cost to her integrity – and her recollection of events. She became an embattled figure increasingly reliant on the close circle of mainly female advisers who had seen her through the legal and political traumas.
“It was sometime between #metoo and the turmoil of the Salmond affair that Sturgeon decided to dedicate herself to the cause of Self-ID. This is the shorthand for the LGBT lobby group. Stonewall’s campaign to make it easer for transgender people to change their legal sex without medical intervention and without having to live in their chosen gender for 2 years. It was a cause which, she hoped, would show that she and Scotland were in the vanguard of progressive reform. It didn’t.
“Self-ID became a legislative and public relations disaster after it was discovered that the Scottish Prison Service had been anticipating the new law by placing male-bodied trans sex offenders in women’s prisons on rhe basis of their declared gender. Alex Salmond was a fierce critic of this “nonsense ideology” which he claimed had set back the independence cause.
“The party she led was now fatally divided and in 2021 Salmond led a block of SNP members, including, the SNP’s Women’s Convener, Caroline McAllister, and the Equalities Convener, Lynne Anderson, out of the SNP altogether and into his new Alba party. Many of those who joined his Alba party were feminists incensed at Self-ID which, they had long argued, placed women and girls at risk by allowing predatory men to invade women’s spaces. It was ironic that these women invested more confidence in a leader who had been charged with sexual offences than the self-described “life-long feminist” Nicola Sturgeon.
“It was after the split, and during the controversy over the Gender Recognition Reform Bill that the membership of the SNP started to go into precipitate decline. It has since lost over 30,000 members getting on for a third of its 2021 membership – a fact that party officials tried unwisely to conceal from the press, and more importantly from contenders in the SNP leadership campaign: Ash Regan and Kate Forbes. They called for an independent auditor to oversee the count.
“It is not entirely clear what precipitated Nicola Sturgeon’s abrupt resignation last month, but what is not in doubt is that her troubled Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Act was a large part of it. She insists she was unaware of the collapse in the party membership. But it seems inconceivable that her husband, rhe Party Chief Executive Peter Murrell could have missed it since the loss of 30,000 subscriptions was wreaking havoc with party finances.
“For their part, SNP members would have preferred their leader to concentrate less on trans rights and more on Scotland’s right to leave the United Kingdom. Since Salmond’s departure from the party on 2019, SNP members had on become increaingly disillusioned with Sturgeon’s repeated promises to secure a referendum on independence that never materialised. This frustration reached critical mass last year after Sturgeon’s failure to win the support of the UK Supreme Court to hold her “advisory” referendum on independence. Sturgeon then called for the 2024 general election to be turned into a “defacto” referendum on independence. The idea was widely criticised as undemocratic and a reckless gamble. What if the SNP failed to win a majority of votes, something it has never achieved in any general election? Would that be the end of the independence dream?
“Well, it ended the dream of Nicola Sturgeon leading her country to independence. In early February she decided enough was enough and, effectively, cancelled the SNP by resigning without warning.
“Only six weeks ago the Scottish National Party seemed unchallengeable. Its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, dominated Scottish politics at every level, was feted by the metropolitan liberal elite, feared by Tory ministers in WhatsApp messages. Now she’s history, her party is in chaos and her key lieutenants including her husband, Chief Executive Peter Murrell, have fallen on their swords. One of Europe’s most successful political parties, which until recently threatened to break up Britain has now broken itself in the most spectacular fashion. It’s hard to think of anything outside political fiction that equates to the self-inflicted misfortune that has engulfed the SNP since Sturgeon resigned, out of the blue, on February 15th.
“Her Deputy, John Swinney followed her out the door. Then her closest adviser, Liz Lloyd, resigned last week after being criticised for assisting the waning campaign of the leadership favourite, Humza Yousaf. The SNP head of communications, the respected former newspaper editor Murray Foote departed after he had quoted membership figures, supplied by party officials, which turned out to be untrue. Finally, the SNP Chief Executive, Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband and a towering figure in the party for over 20 years, threw in the towel at the weekend rather than face an expected confidence vote from the party NEC.
“It has been as comprehensive a clear out as in any political coup. The party is traumatised. Allegations of vote rigging and jiggery pokery by SNP HQ are rife. Leadership candidates have been at each others throats in a contest to replace Sturgeon the very credibility of which is now in serious doubt. There has been widespread dismay amongst SNP members at Nicola Sturgeon’s cavalier behaviour. Her decision to leave the party in the lurch, with no transition planning, a collapsing membership, shrinking financial resources and a legislative agenda dominated by the abortive Gender Reform Bill.
“What is not doubt that the ultimate beneficiary of the chaos, or at least the figure quietly gloating on the sidelines, is the former First Minister and Sturgeon’s bete noir, one Alexander Elliot Salmond. He no doubt hopes that he can help fill the vacuum at the top of the independence movement.
“Alex Salmond has plenty left in the tank and at 68 is still relatively young by the standards of US politics. He has spent the past two years touring Scotland in a kind of shadow campaign. He has been highly influential in the leadership campaign of Ash Regan, as evidenced by her call for a new independence convention to be set up involving all the independence parties. That would be the vehicle for Alex Salmond’s final return to leadership.
“It is assumed by many that his return to the SNP is only a matter of time. He has now finally seen off, one by one, the very people who he believes tried to drive him from public life in a criminal conspiracy straight out of House of Cards. Revenge is indeed a dish best served cold.”
Africans are generally speaking not dumb, though there will be some who are . Just as some Scots are dumb as we keep proving. One year ago I was very ill in hospital with pneumonia and pleurisy . The nurses and doctors who saved my life were African, white, and asian. There was even a Nepalese nurse. Forth valley hospital is like the UN with people there coming from all parts of the world. I owe a huge debt to all of them. When you’re very ill racism is the last thing on your mind, believe me.
@james che
Yes the picts were essentially ancient Britons and as you say they left no evidence written or otherwise of their language and we don’t even know what they called themselves as “picts” was a label the Romans gave them as it means painted people, whether that refers to body paint or tattoos I’m not sure.
Yes the picts were in Scotland before the Irish (scots or scotti) as were the angles and Saxons (they arrived about 5th century ad) who brought inglis or old angle with them that went onto become scots. The scotti claimed to have slaughtered and genocided the picts and whoever else they found in Scotland and I suspect that there would also be a bit of intermingling going on so that’s why some pict DNA is still found as well as Norse from further north and west, as they were of course here as well. The south and east of Scotland has no Gaelic heritage, indeed the south east up to the forth was part of northumbria for centuries and has been part of Northumbria or the UK for longer than it’s been part of Scotland. That’s why I object to Gaelic being forced on people, even though as I’ve said elsewhere I have quite strong Gael heritage from the islands, though that being said I suspect I’ve got a bit of Norse in me as well as I’m 6’4”, fair haired and always get mistaken for a Scandinavian or Dutch when I’m on holiday. I’ve had people come and start speaking Swedish or Norwegian to me before I have to explain I’m a scot.
Doric is a dialect of Scots as is shetlandic and scots or north northumbrian is a dialect of old angle or inglis together with other northumbrian languages, northumbrian and Cumbrian.
Someone above mentioned Billy Kay but my view is he talks nonsense as demonstrated by his occasional Scots word of the day or whatever he calls it which one time was a word I’d heard Yorkshire farmers use regularly. I pointed this out to him and said it demonstrated strong linguistic ties with northern England down to Yorkshire rather than what he claimed that it was differences with England and he blocked me on Twitter.
A good source is the highly respected and oft quoted Rev Alexander Warracks scots language dictionary. The first chapter or so talks about where Scot’s comes from and demonstrates the links between it and old inglis and why it was diverging from northumbrian etc and then stopped. It cuts through a lot of the politicised SNP nonsense we get today. I believe there is a copy scanned into the Stanford university online library.
@Tom (10.20) –
Thanks for posting that.
😉
Many economists have been coming round to the conclusion that Africa’s problems are caused by well meaning foreign aid from non-African governments that only encourages corruption and bad governance. Corruption and bad governance eh? Things we’ve become all too familiar with in Scotland.
Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has been influential in this trend of thinking through her published work.
On the Gaelic of Arran
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Holmer
https://dalriada.scot/nils_m_holmer/
He was interested, when many Scots weren’t.
Then there’s the guy from Twickenham, Edward Dwelly.
Very typical situation in the colonialized psychological context.
Without the European Union this would not exist either.
http://surayt.com/
Thank God for the curiosity of foreigners!
Sad news, via Twitter, that Wings regular ‘Bugger le Panda’ has passed away.
🙁
When I refer to indigenous Scots. I mean Scots who were actually born here. James Kelly is arguing that all Scots came from Ireland.
So when I talk about the voting franchise, that’s what I mean by native Scots. People born and raised here, and still loving here.
He would give ths vote to every tax payer. It’s a ridiculous franchise.
I read on twitter that BuggerLePanda a poster on here has died. Hope it’s not true
I hope someone’s checking that items at Bute House that are supposed to be there permanently are not finding their way into Sturgeon’s removal vans.
Far fetched you say? Of course not far fetched. We know her.
Hell mend the SNP. I thought someone would have put a stop to the election of Humza by now.
The corruption will bring the entire Scottish Government down.
Unfortunately Independence will take a bit longer. But it won’t be the SNP leading us there.
Only Ash Regan can unite the movement. That’s the way I feel. If not then politically the Alba Party will need to become the dominant national party.
Amongst other things. I have no hope for tomorrow. No faith. Independence hangs in the balance.
I’ll be furious is Humza gets the job as false First Minister. And I’ll look to the Alba Party for answers.
BEAUVAIS
The well intentioned, the well meaning, the «improving» hand…
Just another form of colonialism in its superior outlook.
Change comes from within it cannot be imposed. The latter from the outset assumes the locals have got their way of life all wrong.
Sit down and be lectured by the WHO, WEF, Gates, UN agencies, USA, UK etc….
Colonialists drew lines on maps. Where the malaise began.
Tom , a second thanks for posting that.
tinto cheil yes she passed away about 20 years ago, she opened the Brodick millennium celebrations and was in her 90’s then.
Ottomanboi Yes I had the book by Holmer book, i lent it to a mate who was a neighbour of lady mentioned , who thinks he lent it to her and it disappeared after she died.
socratesmacsporran @ 8:47 am
“There can be no argument, a lot of Scots are dumb, and prove it by backing the “Scottish” arm of English political parties whose leaders don’t like us, have never understood us and want to keep us subservient to benefit from our riches.”
The ‘colonial mindset’ is considered a psychological condition caused mainly through ‘cultural assimilation’ for which the only cure is independence/liberation and ‘self-recovery’ (Albert Memmi).
O ETTICUS, O ETTICUS
You do protest too much. South East Scotland does have Anglian ie Northumbrian place names but it also has Celtic ones of the P Celtic type, you may check that by doing a little original research.
https://www.heroicage.org/issues/10/fox.html
Celtic, is linguistic/cultural term there was no such thing a Celtic «race» per se.
Celtic culture is found from Ireland to Spain to Central Europe to Central Turkey.
Re the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatian_language
This may be of interest to you.
http://nornlanguage.x10.mx/
LENNY HARTLEY
Sadly, it is the sort of book modern librarians throw on the dumpster.
It’s old stuff, no one would want to read that nowadays…eeeekk!
This has survived online however.
https://archive.org/details/TheIrishLanguageInRathlinIslandCo.Antrim/mode/2up
The dialect has marked Scottish features.
Ottomanboi @ 12:08 pm
“You do protest too much. South East Scotland does have Anglian ie Northumbrian place names”
Yes, postcolonial theory tells us that an oppressor asserts cultural dominance also through his street names and touns, parks, revising native heritage and history in his image, and of course his many statues erected to the glorious conqueror, maybe with a few also to compliant native elites. Edinburgh’s New Town for example reflects a veritable who’s who of British colonial oppression of the Scots and Scottish culture, from ‘Cumberland Street’ to Lord Melville’s monument and many more.
Ian Brotherhood 11.25 .
Sorry to hear about BuggerLePanda Ian one of the auld brigade of WoS .
@ Breeks 10.13
I moved to live and work in North Aberdeenshire in 1982. I rode a Triumph Motorcycle at the time. I lived in a cottage which had formerly been an agricultural worker’s and I could not see another building from anywhere in my home.
One day when I got home from work, my phone rang and it was my mother who lived in Edinburgh. She said “I heard you had trouble starting your bike this morning”. Bad news travels fast.
The farming community was very friendly and willing to help out in a crisis, although unfounded rumours about me and my lifestyle did circulate alarmingly!
ALF BAIRD
In the colonized context it is what «they» don’t tell you or deny you access to that is the important matter. What «they» distort, edit, redact, rewrite etc.
Not all from the «they» side were bad. Some had a genuine interest. That was the case with the Spanish in the Americas, the French in North Africa, the British in India and both in the MidEast for example.
In Scotland’s case the cooperation of the natives in the covering up process has been rather typical of the psychological impact of long term subordination to an external cultural force.
LOTHIAN P-CELTIC & GAELIC PLACENAMES:
A longish excerpt from W.J. Watson’s ‘History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland’, 1926 (reprinted 1993 by Birlinn, Edinburgh). Still authoritative if almost a century old now and no doubt further research has ensued. Helpful link-jumps to short sections on Roxburgh, Selkirk, Berwick, Peebles, Haddington, Midlothian, and Linlithgow —
https://spns.org.uk/resources/history-of-the-celtic-placenames-of-scotland/general-survey-of-lothian
Bewilderment.
Fearghas Mac Fhionnlaigh 2:00pm
Fascinating. Further research in the field could only be done perched on the shoulders of such «giants».
A nation that disdains its past effectively cuts its wrists, bleeds to death in self inflicted ignorance.
One small consolation for Bugger le panda – he did see the end of Sturgeon, Murrell, Foote, which he must have enjoyed.
R.I.P BuggerLePanda
Tom – cheers for the article.
David Hannah – I agree. If Ash doesn’t win this then the SNP minions & it’s membership will have voted for it to no longer be a pro Independence party & they can stop the pretence. They’ll be toast at the next election – they serve no purpose.
The Greens will be out too. WTH do they think they are with thier demands on who better become leader, who better take forward GRR, who they will or won’t work with..gytf!
Don’t get down. The yes movement isn’t going anywhere but it needs to wise up & ditch the stragglers clinging on to a dead party that will clearly declare tomorrow at Murrayfield if they’re in or they’re out.
We need a competent government (Alba/supermajority) in Holyrood AND a permanent working convention, working 24/7 on policy & Independence, to work in tandem with each other.
The WM election is up first & the clear out of SNP Devo troughers starts there – they serve absolutely zero purpose for Scotland & have proven they’re not Independence supporters by backing the donkeys who don’t even have it on the table.
They had thier chance – other than Cherry, they blew it.
Alf Baird.
Ottomanboi.
Fearghas MacFionnlaigh
Breeks.
It cannot be denied that the long imposition of Colonialism has had a massive impact on language and culture in Scotland with the attempt to make Scotland and its people in their image,
To assimulate the native with new a history and background until they think it is true a few generations on,
And with this we see “Doric” being claimed as the ancient language of the North east.
As recently as Five years ago two people came around to our neighbourhood with pen and clip board asking if we could add to or contribute to the knowledge and words of the Doric language.
They were either from the borders or from down south by accent and pronounciations of their english.
We were not able to help them I am afraid,
As we assumed if the Coloniser identified the North East language as old or ancient British root language then they (should) already have that knowledge as it has been studied for a long time.
Here we are being told that the old Pictish language is root Briton slang Doric/ english, but we have people coming to our door asking us to add words we know that they don’t.
I started my interest with language due to Living in Wales for a few years in my teens, then moving back to Scotland.
And later when I married, I being from one side of Scotland, and my Spouse from the other,
As my interest grew, I was giving ” J. W Watsons”book on, “Celtic place names” for a present, and took it with me around Scotland in my car to study if the place names were appropriate to the landscape or history.
A good majority were, however some, had no compatibility and were discovered to be later rewrote invasion history from around 1500-1900s,
I went back for a holiday once to the west coast of Scotland with a head full of memories of a peaceful, clean water and clear sky’s isolated and pristine, no next door neighbours for miles, and remembering the Doctor rowing his boat up the loch to see us when we all came down with mumps and measles at the same time,
We used to walk freely through forest land and pasture.
No road to our home, no electric, no disputes, no noise,
Wow, how I wished I had remembered it as it used to be, and not gone back home at all,
It was covered in trash, holiday homes by the dozen every few miles, busy tarmac’ed roads and private no entry signs up everywhere, local businesses and cottage shops gone, and local village amenities torn down to be replace with modern flats and monsterous buildings that no longer blended into the back ground landscape. Crisp packets and polystyrene cups floating in the harbours where fishermen used to be busy.
And not a local person to be found,
It was disgusting to witness “paradise” turned into a horror movie.
It was sad, so so sad, I have never been back since to the place I was raised and had such found memories of.
The whole think stinks at rotten corruption and at so many levels that the mind boggles.
The former Lord Advocate James Wolffe and the Solicitor General Alison Di Rollo conveniently resigned in May 2021. Despite clear irregularities in Mr Salmond’s case, none of them was subjected to a formal investigation for misconduct. Why?
Barbara Allison, conveniently retired at the end of 2020.
John Sommers, the civil servant previously First Minister Principal Private Secretary, of whom it has been published in the press he had two meetings with one of the complainants in November 2017 before the actual complaints procedure had even been launched, conveniently moved jobs in August 2021. Interestingly, he became Deputy Director in the Police Division.
The Crown Agent Harvie, moved jobs too. He stepped down from his role as crown agent around September 2022. He is now a Sherif in Inverness. Interestingly, the article I read about it says “A NEW sheriff has been introduced at Inverness Justice Centre” and “Sheriff Harvie was the first Crown agent to become a sheriff in 20 years” According to the Judicial Appointments Board of Scotland “Sheriffs are appointed by Her Majesty The Queen on the recommendation of the First Minister” I am not a law professional, but from the CEO of the COPFS to sheriff seems one hell of a step down, albeit convenient if you wish to be out of public scrutiny.
We all know Evans also conveniently retired recently at the end of 2022. This woman was responsible for the loss of a significant amount of taxpayer’s money in a unlawful case tainted by bias. She was also the incompetent under which confidential information was leaked to a newspaper and the incompetent who, despite being anything but impartial, could not find who the culprit who leaked the info to the newspaper was.
When memogate happened, the top UK civil servant took charge of the investigation and the culprit civil servant was quickly found. Why in the case of this leak from the SGov civil service didn’t the highest civil servant in the UK took control of the case as it was obvious even to a child that Evans could never be seen as impartial to the matter?
Clearly, the higher ranking UK civil servant had no interest whatsoever in finding out who leaked the information and seemingly more interest in covering it up, hence leaving Evans, who was responsible for the unlawful complaints procedure tainted by bias in charge of the investigation.
They do indeed take the public in Scotland for absolute fools.
The subject of the article above also conveniently retired, without even answering who authorised the wastage of so many taxpayers’ funds and resources in a investigation who had all the appearance of being instructed and designed to legitimise bringing forward a malicious prosecution against Mr Salmond which had already been decided before the investigation even took place.
I have not been able to find much about McKinnon. She seems to have been diappeared from the face of the earth. Interestingly, this is a civil servant who was let to get away during the inquiry with simply speaking by phone with no camera. In other words, anybody could be making that call and she could have a whole team of advisors with placcards in front of her to read the answers. Yet, we are expected to accept this crap at face value.
The only one of the civil servants linked directly or indirectly with the complaints procedure who appears to remain in the same post is Ms Russell.
Lloyd was also conveniently moved sideways to another postion which seemed to be specifically created for her.
Yet, despite considerable wastage of taxpayers’ funds and clear signs of criminality, none of the many actors from the COPFS, civil service, Sgov or indeed the SNP and involved in this saga, including Sturgeon herself, seemed to receive as much as a slap in the wrist.
Why? Who is protecting them?
We have five different structures here: police, COPFS, Sgov, civil service and SNP executive which should be perfectly separate. However, in this case, they all appeared to work in collusion. It is my suspicion that those Whatsapp messages which were hiden from public view were so because if exposed they would reveal the links between those structures which should have been kept separate and independent.
The most strange character of the lot, in my view, is Lloyd. Somehow, this lady, despite being in the thick of it, was allowed to get away with simply submitting a statement to the Holyrood Inquiry rather than being exposed to formal interrogation like all the others. Why? Why did this person have to be protected and be surrounded by cotton wool? Why the special treatment?
When you look at the press articles regarding the case of Mark Macdonald, back in 2017, there are claims Lloyd was right in the middle of it too, allegedly being the one who told Mr MacDonald that there were complaints against him. Where did she got her intel from?
Interestingly, and related to this, Murrell allegedly claimed the party was “in charge of policing SNP complaints” and would not share details about these complaints about Mr Macdonald with another organisation, and would not inform government civil servants or special advisers about specific cases.
If that is the case, then where did Lloyd got her intel about Mr MacDonald from and, even more importantly, in what capacity was she approaching him to talk about thoise complaints? Was she representing the FM in those talks? Mr MacDonald was an elected member of parliament and a minister. She was an unelected SPAD.
In an article published in the Daily Record in 2019, it is claimed Lloyd called Aberdein for a meeting where she informed him that he suspected there were complaints against Mr Salmond. Allegedly, she claimed she had not informed Nicola Sturgeon of it at the time.
Let’s remember that by that time, Mr Salmond was neither a government minister nor an MP, therefore not submitted to the ministerial code, therefore it was no place for Lloyd, as a SPAD to the FM, to stick her nose into what was at all effects political and confidential party business.
Needless to say that at the time, Mr Aberdein was also a third party who had nothing to do with government anymore, so one wonders until what point, disclosure of information about complaints received by government to a third party outwith government is lawful or at least gross misconduct for which she should have been immediately sacked. Disclosing to Mr Aberdein confidential information regarding complaints against Mr Salmond, even before Mr Salmond was made aware of it and considering this information was being held by the Scottish Gov, comes across as a gargantuan breach of GDPR, so again, why wasn’t this woman sacked on the spot for gross misconduct and instead allowed to continue in her role?
But there is more. If Lloyd did not receive information regarding the complainants herself, she must have received the information from somebody else. In other words, somebody else in the SGov civil service ALSO breached GDPR by passing this confidential information to Lloyd, who had no business knowing about it, as Mr Salmond was no longer a minister nor an MP. So where did Lloyd got this intel from and what was the real motive behind the meeting with Aberdein?
Now The Times has just published an article with the headline: “Sturgeon aide ‘told Forbes to ditch leadership bid’
The article refers to Lloyd. My immediate question is: if this article is telling the truth, who the hell is a mere SPAD to ask a Minister to ditch her leadership bid for a political party? In what capacity was Lloyd taking that liberty of interfering in political party matters when she is not hired by a political party? Was she going ultravires and completely overstepping her SPAD role, or was she doing it on behalf of somebody else? If the latter, on behalf of whom? Taxpayers are not paying this civil servant a seriously overinflated salary to stick her nose in political party matters. It that is what she wants to do, then she should go and work for the SNP and be paid by the SNP, not continue sucking money from taxpayers pretending to act as a civil servant.
Then we have the information that this woman has also crossed the line to political party matters by stucking her finger and nose in to the Yousaf leadership Campaign. Again, in what capacity? Who was paying her while she was working for Yousaf? Becasue even if she was in Annual leave, who was paying for that annual leave, was that the SNP, was that Yousaf or were we the taxpayers for her role as special adviser? And under whose instructions did she enter Yousaf’s campaign? Was the FM aware of it? And if she was, how the hell did she think it was appropriate for her to do so?
For everybody else, even Murrell, if you trust what he says, there is a clear boundary between SNP party matters and government. Yet, this Lloyd character appears to be hoovering over those borders as if they never existed for her. How is that acceptable and not a blatant breach of the civil service code of conduct? How did she manage to do that, are everybody in the Sgov and civil service working with their eyes closed or the corruption within the civil service is so astronomical that they were all more happy for her to just cross over those boundaries?
The stench of corruption and collusion here is simply overpowering. Yet, classic coward Sturgeon, and actually this Lloyd character, they simply strut into the sunset leaving a huge mess behind for the poor idiot who will become leader tomorrow, to deal with. How is this even allowed? Why aren’t these two characters dragged back to the middle of the mess they cause and made drop on their knees and clean it?
One has to ask who is really this Lloyd person? Where does she get so much power, so little accountability, so much protection and so much access to information from? Why the boundaries that apply to everybody else do not seem to apply to her?
Between Nicola Sturgeon and Liz Lloyd, who is the handler and who is the asset?
Liz Lloyd is a British agent.
She gets where shit wouldn’t & obviously has a free pass to follow Sturgeons every shit move & report back to her bosses in Whitehall.
JAMES CHE 3:53
I know exactly what you mean. My own culture just about clings to life. In its homeland it is not honored by the «occupiers». However, it is not dead as long as people know of its existence. It may be restored to life.
Modernity offers many material benefits, culturally it may not be so kind.
Spirit of place is significant. To understand that is essentially a «human» even «humanistic» faculty.
We disregard that sensibility at great cost to our well being, our integrity, our humanity.
All too «airy fairy» for those who discard plastic bottles.
Very sorry to hear about Bugger le Panda: another true Scot who didn’t live to see us free again, like Smallaxe and Liz g.
@Lenny Hartley 12.01: thanks again for all that re Mrs MacAlpine. Inspiring and sad at the same time. I have many happy Arran memories of caravan holidays at Sandbraes and childhood walks up the wee road to Knockankelly with fuschias in the hedgerows.
@Ottomanboi 12.26: how true. I also have Holmer’s book on the Gaelic of Kintyre and Nancy Dorian’s on East Sutherland Gaelic. Got them all in the wee Gairm shop in Waterloo Street many moons ago. She was an American who, like Holmer, had more regard for our languages than many Scots.
You and Lenny can fight over those tomes when I peg out 🙂 . No-one else seems to care a flying fruit-bat, that’s for sure.
“If I was a Messiah
I would raise Scotland even from the dead;
but the wind and the sea do not obey me
and were I to stand before the grave of my country
she wouldn’t stir
though it were in Gaelic itself that I spoke to her.
For I am in her embrace, warm or cold,
and her shroud will smother me.”
(From ‘The Midge’)
“Nam b’ e Meisias a bh’ annam
thogainn Alba eadhon o na mairbh;
ach chan eil a’ ghaoth no an fhairge umhail dhòmhsa;
is nan seasainn air beulaibh uaigh mo dhùthcha
cha bhiodh i a’ carachadh
ged a bhruidhninn rithe sa Ghàidhlig fhèin.
Oir tha mi na glacan, blàtha no fuara,
agus thèid mo mhùchadh le a marbhphaisg.”
(Às A’ Mheanbhchuileag)
https://gobha-uisge.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-midge-1.html
Mia says:
“Between Nicola Sturgeon and Liz Lloyd, who is the handler and who is the asset?”
I think they take it in turns, Mia!
From what we know about the Alex Salmond persecution, it looks like Liz Lloyd was a ‘mover and shaker’, in there, right from the beginning.
https://archive.is/oTUpT
Thanks for posts, Tom, Mia.
RIP BLP
I now truly believe Sturgeon has been working for the establishment. As soon as she came to power she went after AS and then it was Manny Singh, Mark Hirst and Craig Murray all strong supporters of independence and AS. No unionists/journalist supporters touched, ( as far as i know) is that not just a tad odd.
So perjurers and journalists are protected when all under the umbrella of sturgeon`s judiciary.
You don`t have to be a farmer to smell manure.
Aquarius, back in 73 i crashed a suzuki bike and broke my wrist, by the time I got to hospital it was that badly swollen thry said come back tomorrow and we will put a cast on it, we went out celebrating me getting signed off work for two weeks and a corner jumped out at our Mini Van, result one written off mini and i went through the windscreen, we were in the South of Arran so we slept in a barn for the night, next morning got a lift from a council lorry yo the hospital for my appointment, he waited outside and took me home, my father already knew about car accident and went ballistic , i had not been in any communication with anybody , still trying to figure out how he knew, and no phone involved!
Tinto Chiel , its incredible what Y-Dna is telling us about the past, its not that clever though,it cant tell if the loon was a wifie lol.
Glad you enjoyed Arran, one of my pet hates is how the tourist agencies will not mention Arran’s Mythological past , we were the Scots Avalon, mention it to them and they are not interested, the new Distillery at Lagg were planning on planting an Orchard as they were also going to produce an Arran Calvados , i said to the Manager, brilliant Arran was the physical manifestation of the spiritual realm the Island of Apple Trees, you can use a name steeped in Mythology , the Arran Avalon.
They just looked at me like my dug does when he catches me having a Wa#k (Copywrite Kevin Bridges lol)
@Lenny: my first reply to you seems to have disappeared so apologies if I repeat myself.
Yes, I’m not surprised that your comments were received with incomprehension: after all, we don’t teach our children much about their own history, languages or culture. A sense of the past is very strong in Arran, and not just the stones at Machrie: everywhere you look you can find cairns, stones and other objects from pre-history, like Kilmartin on the mainland or Glen Lyon, as you will know more than most.
Yes, Mr Bridges: EK scruff like myself but he can be brutally funny.
On holidays, that first view of “Arran of the many stags” as we crested the hill at Hansel Village was always wonderful.
Re DNA, I remember a study from a few years back in the NE looking at the question of “What happened to the Picts?” The analysis showed they were still there 🙂