Say What You See
Don’t say we don’t tell you, readers.
Because we do tell you.
We told you a year and a quarter ago.
(Remember that time when Humza Yousaf was First Minister? It happened, honestly.)
We told you again seven months ago.
And we mentioned it again seven weeks ago.
And, y’know, we’re always pleased when the mainstream press finally catches up with us. The Times had a comment on the matter from Prof. James Mitchell.
And gee, if only there was some evidence indicating the SNP had indeed accepted that “independence was off the agenda for the foreseeable future”.
The story came in the wake of an opinion poll suggesting that the winter fuel allowance cut had severely damaged Scottish Labour and put the SNP back ahead in the polls.
But the figures didn’t actually change the arithmetic in any significant way from our original post last June. They still show a Labour-SNP alliance as the only way to a viable government. The only remotely plausible other options would all fail to get across the line of 65 that lets an administration pass any bills:
LABOUR+LIB DEM+GREEN: 50 seats (15 short of majority)
LABOUR+LIB DEM+TORIES: 57 seats (8 short)
SNP+GREEN: 56 seats (9 short)
(We think it’s safe to discount any coalition that included both the Greens and the Tories – which in any event would still only command 59 seats – and teaming up with Reform would probably be too much for even Scottish Labour to contemplate. Similarly, even if the SNP could rope in both the Greens and the Lib Dems – a wildly unlikely proposition in all sorts of ways – they’d still only be on 64.)
So while Humza Yousaf has been booted out, everything we told you a year and a quarter ago still holds true, and is likely to still hold true whatever fluctuations there might be in the polls in the next 18 months. In the absence of spectacular unforeseen developments, neither of the two big parties have any credible prospect of being able to form a majority coalition with anyone but each other.
As Wings has painstakingly documented, the SNP have been doing the groundwork to prepare their supporters for this final betrayal for some considerable time, and they clearly now feel ready to send a canary into the coalmine to see how it goes down.
McDonald – someone absolutely no serious person believes has any true commitment to Scottish independence, and who has nothing to lose since being unceremoniously ejected by voters in July – was the ideal candidate, and he didn’t hold back, making clear that the proposal was to dump the idea for at least the next 10 years.
(He couldn’t stop himself saying “decade” over and over for emphasis.)
Frankly we’d still have a few quid on McDonald just outright jumping ship to Labour if he doesn’t manage to wangle himself an SNP list seat in 2026. But one way or another he’s absolutely desperate to be on their team.
We’d love to believe that view wasn’t reflective of the Parliamentary SNP as a whole. But the evidence has been building up and building up for a long time now, getting steadily more and more blatant.
And sometimes things are just what they look like.
What I see is a load of ‘Bisto Kids’ who are only interested in the gravy.
They would sell their souls for the gravy or a ‘kid on’ job as a professor at Glasgow University.
It would be great if we could all start identifying as politicians.
Want to be ‘Starmer’ or ‘John Swinney’?
The Holyrood colonial assembly has no direct relationship with Scotland’s constitution. Only a recall of our (1706) Parliament can get us out of the cul-de-sac. If you want to see independence on your 2026 ballot paper then write it for yourself. If you use big print then the candidates may learn something, when they are shown your de-faced ballot.
It’s probably time for the SNP to just do the honest thing and admit to itself that it’s really just a devolutionist party.
Most of the the usual suspects identified by Rev Stu would quite happily spend the rest of their gravy fuelled careers working on devo-max, or seeing what more powers they could prise from the controlling hand of Westminster.
A party which has now explicitly accepted the unionist veto on our self determination as the SNP did 2 days ago when it disgracefully voted against Ash Regan, is not a pr independence party in any meaningful sense.
Enough and more than enough of these milquetoast nationalists. We have to consign the SNP to the dustbin of history just as the Irish did with the IPP in 1918: nothing less will do.
We can’t afford a rump of slavish SNP loyalists warming their well padded arses in Holyrood or Westminster. For progress to be made we need to root them out and destroy them utterly as an electoral force.
and they clearly now feel ready to send a canary into the coalmine to see how it goes down.
Lead balloon?
But the question is what can we do about it?
Difficult question?
Any chance you can give us tomorrow’s lottery numbers Stu!!
We have to consign the SNP to the dustbin of history
How can we do that?
Well a coalition with a party who embrace genocide and neoliberal values should gut the party of all but its most blinkered voters. Reckon the tories will do well in 2026, unless they put forward Annie wells of course.
It remains to be seen if the remaining indy parties can attract enough votes to make a difference.
Andy Ellis 1.20
I agree with you 100% Andy. Sadly as you know if they only get a few constituency seats they will get list seats.
Ahem Mr C , people like myself , Mia & others have been mooting the prospect of * some kind * of alliance between the SNP and * Scottishishish * Labour for a few years now .
It increasingly seems like the only option left to them ( SNP ) to hold on to at least a modicum of power and as they’re virtually indistinguishable ideologically there would be nothing much for either Party to have to compromise on : except in the SNP’s case that bothersome identification with Independence . I am sure that little matter could be resolved without too much trouble , eg by saying Independence has not been abandoned , only suspended until …….rocks melt with the sun & every child in Scotland has been granted the right to free puberty blockers ( that part is already in bag ) and can change the parents they were assigned at birth .
Talking of slavish loyalists, I wonder what the eternal optimists in the WGD bunker are making of these recent clarifications of the SNP’s position? I mean if this doesn’t hit home with them then what will? I’ve tried to point this out to them but, alas, it seems that any message which is critical of the SNP in any way is simply swept into the bit bucket. Ach well…there’s none so blind and all that… 😐
If this does happen, and I believe you are right, Rev., it is the end of the velvet glove politics. I fear what might happen in the longer term. Independence is not going anywhere, but the SNP and Greens have, effectively, boxed it into a corner in the vain hope that they can contain it. In that, they are at one with the British State, except that the British State is a hundred times smarter than they are – and a thousand times more ruthless. Except against female humans, of course – the SG, that is – where it is the very vanguard of ruthlessness.
In any case, if Putin carried out his threat to launch a limited nuclear strike against Europe – and it would be Europe, not America, because America can wipe out Russia – and even though we are no longer part of Europe, we are resplendent with a crumbling nuclear weapons stock, and we would almost certainly be a target. If we could remove ourselves from the American anus for just a millisecond, we would realize that. Our subs are useless without American permissions. Any strike would be retrospective, anyway, with the Central Belt, our most populated area, gone in a vaporizing cloud and the rest of us chocking on the fallout, eventually with tumours the size of neeps.
This very scenario, folks, is the final price of the Union and all the ‘transwomen’ force-teamed with the real McCoy (MacKay, the Americans change everyone’s language), or, at least, any that are left from both sets, will be keeping the home fires burning, or, rather, the reverse, trying to put them out this time.
SNP have been a devolutionist party for several years.
Many of its members jumped ship from Labour when Labour were in meltdown.
Labour are the same disaster that they were when they were kicked out.
Smelling strongly of sulphur they are incompetent and corrupt.
SNP and Labour together in charge dear god save us all.
I could careless what the SNP is doing, SNP is dead and buried. When ever I get a chance to vote against the SNP I’ll do it.
Andy Ellis
I disagree I believe the New SNP would rather give powers back to Westminster. This lot would rather just sit in Holyrood talking to each other and leave Westminster making all the decisions but keep all the fringe benefits that come with the job. If you don’t have the power that no one can criticize you on your failings.
The Alba party is a busted flush and its leader would run back to the SNP if they asked, but they won’t.
?This was prepared as an addendum to my previous post, but it does touch on the odious Stewart McDonald and the reasons why he is front and foremost in this latest episode of “expectation management”. I also conclude that McDonald is not necessarily destined to warm a seat in oor jumped up local cooncil.
My previous post was a synopsis of my overarching thesis. For this reason I try to avoid being bogged down in detail. Nonetheless, evidence of Security Services malfeasance is available. When dealing with that which is by design, intended to remain covert, certain allowances must be permitted. This is explained better than I ever could by Simon Matthews in the preamble to his essay; The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolph Hess, 1941 (Lobster 81).
What for example is remotely nefarious about the US State Department educating young UK politicians and those operating in political circles on the workings of the US Government? Nothing really, until you examine the details.
All four SNP elected representatives known to have been inducted into the State Department’s, International Visitors Leadership Program have a whiff of subterfuge about them. The IVLP proclaims that it seeks out “future opinion leaders”.
Well, Humza Yousaf was inducted into the IVLP in his second year as a humble parliamentary aide to his MSP uncle. I guess he must have impressed someone with his photocopying and coffee making skills. Former school teacher, Jenny Gilruth was in Washington on a IVLP field trip, 35 working days after being sworn in as a rookie MSP. Given that we are discussing the present Education Minister and a former First Minister, the prescience of the State Department is uncanny, one might almost say spooky .
Patrick Grady and Angela Crawley were on the same visit as Gilruth (and Kezia Dugdale). While Gilruth and Dugdale declared the exercise in their Holyrood register of interests, Grady and Crawley did not do likewise on their Westminster register of interests. This is doubly curious as the trip took place while Holyrood was in recess, but Westminster was still in session. Apparently Grady and Crawley’s plebeian constituents didn’t need to know what they were up to while they were “on the clock”. We only know about Grady and Crawley’s participation due to an indiscrete social media post from Gilruth and some admirable research from Calton Jock. In the song, Love Detective, the bard of Falkirk, Aidan Moffat poses the question; “If you’ve nothing tae hide, why hide it?”.
In total seven elected Scottish politicians are known to have been inducted into the IVLP *. To the SNP four, we can add, Patrick Harvey MSP (Green), Kezia Dugdale MSP (Labour) and Ross Thompson MSP & MP (Tory). Of the seven only Yousaf is heterosexual. Coincidence or targeting? I leave to your opinion.
* We must say “known” as Grady and Crawley presumably escaped the requirement to report on their register of interests due to their membership of the British American Parliamentary Group. Other former members of the BAPG include Angus Robertson and Ian Blackford. Why the BAPG is exempt for declaring gratuities from the Sate Department remains a mystery. This is gross exceptionalism redolent of AIPAC not being required to register as a foreign lobbying group in the US.
Stewart McDonald’s ten day sojourn to the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars certainly paid dividends for those footing the bill (the WWCfIS is a de facto annex of the State Department). On his return, McDonald was reliably in lockstep with Anglo/American geopolitical doctrine. Analysed as a matter of pure self interest, this could be seen as an insurance policy. The position of an elected politician is a precarious one, and having becomes accustomed to £90k pa, our onetime holiday rep probably didn’t look forward to resuming his former career. Expect McDonald to appear at some third sector think-tank before too long.
At this point, the infiltration is so pronounced that maintenance of the project at Foggy Bottom is probably entrusted to junior officers as a training exercise.
This said, you have to admire the thoroughness of their approach. In November last year, Finance Minister, Kate Forbes attended the Liverpool conference of the British American Project. Attendees at the BAP’s 2022 conference in Minnesota were advised they should “… not post any photos of BAP conference’s on your personal social media.”. I am reminded of the question put earlier by Aidan Moffat. With Gilruth and Forbes under their influence, the State Department has pretty much all the bases covered.
Prior to being recruited as a SPAD for Alex Salmond, Stephen Gethins was employed by an outfit called NGO Links, “specialising in peace-building, arms control and democracy in the Caucuses and Balkans”. NGO Links was based out of the University of Arizona and was substantially funded by the US Government’s, National Science Foundation. Now why would a body tasked with furthering scientific endeavour within the territorial boundaries of the US be financing political influencing activities in countries of the former Soviet Union? Gethins held the SNP, Foreign Affairs, Spokesperson remit at Westminster from 2015 to 2019. Gethins’ contributions to Hansard in this period were multitudinous but the range of topics wasn’t as varied.
It is said that Cato the Elder in his monomaniacal obsession with the Phoenicians, couldn’t end a speech to the Senate without stating, “Carthago delenda est (“Carthage must be destroyed”) “.
Gethins’ equivalent was “Russia bad!”.
At the end of August, Catherine Smith was elevated to the post of Advocate General for Scotland (and life Peer to be confirmed). This being the position tasked with advising the UK Government on the Scots law. In truth, this has always been a political appointment and the office holders have not necessarily been top tier legal authorities to the same degree as is required to become Lord Advocate. The issue here is that Catherine Smith is / was a spook (like mother like daughter). In her site biography for the John Smith Centre (for which she is Chair) she describes herself as having worked “… internationally on conflict resolution and democracy building in the NGO sector, working particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.”. This is an amended blurb of the original which specifically made reference to working for “London based NGO Links”. As we’ve already established, NGO Links wasn’t “London based”. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. They most certainly look efter their ain. A Spookocracy indeed.
I don’t care how many Bloggers or Indy supporters like someone if the general public don’t like you your never going to be elected. Eva got Double Alba’s votes in falkirk in 2024, if Salmond thinks he’s going to be the next messiah keep dreaming if the Alba party was going to do it it would have done it. Reform had a better performance than the Alba party and none of them even came to Scotland.
If we want the best for Scotland its time to move on from 1 the SNP 2 Alex Salmond who’s more interested in joking and 2 Sturgeon.
I couldn’t careless what the SNP is doing, SNP is dead and buried. When ever I get a chance to vote against the SNP I’ll do it.
It goes without saying – (though I’m saying it) – that we should not vote for the SNP, Greens, or unionist party at Holyrood – that leaves the ISP and Alba party – where you find their candidates – for me where you don’t find and ISP or Alba candidate in your constituency – it should be a case of spoiling your ballot paper.
The SNP has sold us out – lets return the favour coming voting day.
What are ISP’s position on trans rights?
The SNP not interested in independence for at least a decade..
Very depressing.
At least that will see the qwerties effing off back to Labour now there is no imminent SNP drive to enable the qwerties to form independent Scotland in their mould.
Alba needs to up the ante and give independence supporters the viable political party to vote for that’s badly needed.
Maybe the couple of potential court cases will rehabilitate Alex Salmonds reputation as tarnished in public opinion.
Impeach the tr@itors.
That is all.
What is the ISP’s position on trans rights?
Would it be more important to ‘consign the SNP to the dustbin of history’ or get Alba & ISP voted into Holyrood.
What would you advise in Central Edinburgh? Should I vote (tactically) to consign Angus Robertson to ‘the dustbin of history’ or vote for ISP who may or may not support women’s rights and who possibly haven’t a snowballs chance of getting a seat?
What about Farage’s party they seem to be gaining ground in Scotland.
Fortunately the London Labour Party would never countenance a deal with SNP.
The right wing media would make mincemeat of them and lose English votes and donors.
Do we want Scotland associated with a party who rejects democracy for our country, a party who fought against equal pay for women, who took the country into an illegal war and who today still supports the daily murder of Palestinians by the invading Israeli government.
A coalition of self serving incompetents would offer nothing to the people of Scotland.
I campaigned with friends who were also snp members in the late 80s and 90s. Never ever, would I have thought that they would choose party over country!
They no lonmger are friends!
and THE SIR KEIR STARMER* BOT SAYS NO, NO, NEVER,
•assuming he survives the gathering local storm.
What is needed is a very big constitutional crisis where nats get really nasty and stop being kind to old relics.
The UK is, according to the vox pop, fucked anyway so what’s to loose by helping things along?
Opportunity in glitzy signage.
Btw. who owns the UK at the moment, India maybe?
Hate saying it but the Alba party will not break through as the public are just not going to vote for them.
Both Salmond and Sturgeon are toxic to the general public.
Who gets to be the canary?
Genuine question. Those who seem to think that ‘the public’ will not vote for Alba, ever. Why not?
The priority
https://x.com/IndyLassie/status/1837137097846558923
@ Muscleguy 9.24pm Re SALVO ,SSRG & Liberation.Scot I too have raised the attention deficit from Stu and WOS on what IMO constitutes a very important educational and illuminating asset towards Scottish independence, his deliberate ignoring of anything to do with these people’s organisations almost makes me believe that in the words of his numero uno sycophant he thinks that it is cloud coo coo land
When we are informed and educated sometimes on a daily basis of the deliberate and blatant undermining and sabotage of the former independence party and its leadership towards independence it would be refreshing and uplifting to read articles about peoples organisations that are filled with real people with integrity and honesty fighting to educate and encourage people to assert their Scots SOVEREIGNTY
I watched 10 mins of debate night (it was all I could stomach) with Jackie Baillie, Alex Salmond, Kate Forbes, Jackson Carsales, they were discussing Grangemouth and the commonwealth games
Salmond was talking about the need to keep Grangemouth open Forbes sided with Baillie insisting that it was all about the site being cost effective and they were looking at ways to redeploy or retrain the workforce IMO Salmond was weak in responses
Baillie, Forbes and Carsales were enthusing about how great it was the CG were coming to Glasgow and even better Forbes said Glasgow and the SG won’t be paying a penny towards it, the conversation continued then came back to Forbes who THEN said the SG will hardly be paying anything towards it, Stephen Jardine immediately pulled her up and said, YOU said the SG won’t be paying a penny towards it, now you say won’t be paying much which one is it Forbes started waffling pish, she is one weasily greasy amoeba who makes your skin crawl, Alex Salmond’s contribution was to tell Forbes NOT to organise the games via a committee, appoint a single czar to do the organising, NOT one of them Salmond included mentioned the £600 million Birmingham got from WM for THEIR games
I guess the great tactician had an off night??
I am totally done with all these fuckers and would tend to subscribe to the Father Jack (Gore Vidal) point of view:
that the word “politics” comes from the Greek root “poli” (meaning “many”) and “tics” (small, blood-sucking insects).
Why people still vote is beyond me.
“Say what you see”
A. I see the reason why Operation Branchform remains stalled:
It seems the establishment still needs this limping SNP to block independence from 2026. Operation Branchform’s outcome might just finish the SNP off, terminating any value this version of the SNP still holds for the British state. I wouldn’t be surprised if the resolution of Operation Branchform is dragged until after the 2026 election.
B. I see political Autophagia
The con of the British state’s political set up in Scotland is voraciously eating itself up to preserve the union.
In science, Autophagia is a self-degradative cellular process aimed to economise energy at critical times during development and in response to nutrient stress (Glick et al, 2010, JPathol 221(1):3-12
Let’s transfer this to a political context.
What is the nutrient stress here?
The lack of pro-union voters, which means the British state’s signature three-party model can no longer be sustained.
Why is this a critical time of development?
1. Because status quo unionist parties are being challenged from within by Reform, which is also competing for the unionist vote
2. Because none of the status quo parties (and I include the SNP here) have enough traction by themselves to attract sufficient vote to ensure a unionist majority at Holyrood. This means the establishment will have to fabricate that majority.
How? By deception. They will openly drag the SNP to the unionist side so they can use any remaining pro-indy vote trapped under the SNP brand to frustrate independence.
3. Because infiltration of and exposure of the SNP as a devolutionist party has alienated the the pro-indy vote. An infiltrated SNP which is unable to attract the pro-indy vote, will quickly become worthless to the British state unless it swaps the SNP brand for one of its three status quo parties. The most likely candidate are the libdems, which are the ones currently attracting less vote.
4. Because the orphan pro-independence vote is quickly growing and is ripe to be hoovered up by any credible pro-indy party.
Some calculated that up to 700,000 previous SNP voters did not cast a vote at the last GE. If a new pro-independence party hoovers up that vote, that pro-union majority, even with the SNP on the union side, may no longer be feasible.
For any nationalist, the arrogance of labour towards Scotland and how it has mistreated it, (the McCrone report, stealing Scotland’s territorial waters or insulting us by calling us racists, for example) are unforgivable and unforgettable.
It is unthinkable that any serious Scottish pro-independence party would even consider allying with a nasty, anti-Scotland and pro-colonial English party like Labour whose only aim for Scotland appears to be to keep it as a prisoner of this toxic union so it can finish off the stripping of its assets for the benefit of England.
But we all know by now that the SNP has become Labour in all but name. By revealing itself as a devolutionist party and by voting against making the Holyrood election a de-facto referendum, this infiltrated version of the SNP is actively eating itself up.
While the SNP brand was perceived by Scottish voters as a pro-independence party, an infiltrated SNP was very useful to the British state to reign in, stop the momentum and (mis)manage the expectations of the yes movement. But, as an open devolutionist party, the SNP no longer has such use.
The only one use the SNP has left for the British state is that of openly contributing to the unionist majority. SNP-Labour alliance step forward.
An alliance between the SNP and Labour will be the kiss of political death for one of them. My hope is that it becomes the kiss of political death for both of them.
The entire political system in Scotland is eating itself up for the sake of the union. For instance, both in Ruthlergen by-election and in the GE, labour got an increase of vote in Scotland mainly at the expense of a sharp decrease of the tory vote. The British state is finding a way to concentrate the unionist vote into one party.
This makes sense, because the English dichotomy right/left is pointless in Scotland. Here, the only dichotomy that matters is indy versus union. Labour, tories and libdems are natural allies in Scotland.
If the establishment had to expose its infiltrated SNP toy as a unionist party by feeding it to Labour, it must be because even combining the tory, labour and libdem vote is no longer enough to ensure the pro-union majority. But this must be a weapon of last resource, because once Labour has “eaten up” that infiltrated SNP, one of the two, if not them both, will be finished.
I think Alf Baird might be right in that we might be approaching the last stages of the colonial process in Scotland. Certainly it does look like the ability of the British state to keep holding Scotland to ransom via political means with this fake democracy is coming to an end.
My question is what method are they planning to use when all this political autophagia ends and there is nothing else to “eat up”. Brute force? Military occupation? Fascist legislation?
Or are they going to drag us into another of USA’s self-serving imperialistic wars as an excuse to completely reset the political system?
I wouldn’t put it past them.
What we have to think now is what the best way to frustrate that plan is.
Clearly the best way is to have a party that can hoover up all that orphan pro-indy vote. But we are all so hurt, resentful for the sNP betrayal and have become so suspicious of another back-stabbing that trusting another political party is going to be very difficult.
Personally, I want to see clear and irrefutable evidence that such party is seeking independence. And I don’t longer mean just telling us how good independence would be. I already know how good for Scotland independence will be. I don’t mean the promise of a referendum pipe dream either. We have been stuck in that pipe for the last 10 years.
I want to vote for a serious party that is ready for the fight, that takes the gloves off from the get go and goes head on against the British state.
I want to vote for candidates standing on an abstentionist vote – no more nonsense of pandering to the game rules of the establishment and to the caprice of a foreign monarch.
If such option is not available, it will have to be abstaining from voting or ballot spoiling.
What I am not prepared to cast a vote for is more begging for permission from an entity that is a byproduct of the treaty of union that is therefore a subordinate to Scotland’s continuous consent, more excuses for procrastination, more pandering to the English convention of Westminster’s parliamentary sovereignty and more insisting in demoting Scotland to the status of Catalonia so as to avoid revoking the treaty of union.
I don’t care what those spineless parasites warming the seats in Holyrood, instead of representing us, voted for. They can stick their vote right up where the sun does not shine.
They have undemocratically forced us to wait for far too long, therefore 2026 must be an election on independence, one way or the other and they want it or not.
If they do not facilitate the opportunity, then we should simply grab it ourselves.
@Flying Iron of Doom 2.06pm
I haven’t looked at WGD for an age. Doubtless the bitter einders and Nicophants there still think all is well in the best of all possible worlds.
I’m not sure the Scottish electorate have the political smarts to do to the SNP what the Irish did to the IPP, but who knows?
I suspect there will be a rump of loyalists who are just not prepared to abandon ship: I honestly can’t fathom why Joanna Cherry insists on remaining in the party for example. Then again, I didn’t really understand why the few remaining adults in the room didn’t defect en masse to Alba when it was formed, when it might have made more impact.
I suspect we’d be in a better place now if more of them had grown a spine then, but sadly it was not to be. Folk like Angus McNeil and Ash Regan left it too late.
Given the current political outlook, I think many will echo Rev Stu’s take on things: I don’t think I could actually bring myself to support an independent Scotland governed by the SNP. Luckily perhaps that isn’t something we have to worry about, as they have vanishingly little chance of staging a political recovery.
The only real question is how quickly we can destroy the SNP as a political force, even if we can’t remove them altogether.
Spectacular unforeseen circumstances you say? Unseen by you because you have blinkers on when it comes to Salvo & Liberation.
I would put the UN Decolonisation Program riding into town banging heads together in WM & HR qualify? Because between now and the ’26 election there’s a good chance of that taking place.
And when people discover that ISP has been all over both Salvo & Liberation (our deputy leader was voted onto the Liberation Council) then the 8.75% our John Hannah got in the Armadale by election could be a gross under estimate.
I will take great pleasure informing everyone, on social media, on stalls, on doorsteps etc etc.
Where is moribund Alba with their leader on -47% in the polls? Nowhere to be seen, with the deputy chairman of the NE Freeport a prominent member and candidate they are nowhere on Freeports either which issue is gaining traction & Salvo are preparing a challenge to the contracts under Scots Law.
We can join no part of Europe/EFTA/EEA/CU/SM with these Freeports. Contracts are for 25 years, if we cannot challenge or neuter them then iScotland will be out in the trading cold. Thanks to SLab, Tories, SNP & blinkered Alba.
“Impeach the tr@itors.”
All of them! That has to include all of the Scottish MPs at Westminster for kowtowing to England’s MPs for three centuries and then some, without once considering that nothing in the Treaty or Acts of Union ever required them to in the first place.
It is Scotland’s MPs alone who carry and wield the sovereign authority of the Scottish half of the Union into the Union’s parliament to be deployed on Scotland’s behalf.
England’s MPs have no legitimate authority over Scotland nor over her MPs, and they cannot even speak for the Union on their own, because they simply don’t represent it; they represent only the English half of the Union. Their actual numbers are thus completely irrelevant to Scotland.
How on earth do you agitate for a second ref when you’re tethered to Labour and they’re to continue a vaguely unpopular zombified government?
The SNP need, like Labour, to be OUT OF POWER for many to beging to forgive and forget… not limp on..
The problem with the SNP being a devolutionist party is that their record in government has been every bit as depressing as their failure to even campaign for, let alone achieve, independence. Sure they can point the finger at the Greens, but who was it that invited them into government? Like all reformist parties they struggle as soon as money becomes tight because they have no real understanding of capitalism.
«all really important innovations and changes normally start from tiny minorities of people who use their creative freedom»
Ernst F. Schumacher,
Small Is Beautiful:
“How on earth do you agitate for a second ref when you’re tethered to Labour”
You don’t. That is the whole point of what the Rev has been trying to warn us of and to explain through his last few articles.
The SNP HAS, at all practical effects, DITCHED all intention of holding such referendum, if they ever had that intention in the first place, that is. Personally, I think they never did and they have been deceiving us from day 1.
And with the vote in the Holyrood chamber yesterday, they have ditched any intention of holding a plebiscitary Holyrood election in 2026.
In other words, the two-faced bastards have completely skewered the yes movement and have been deceiving and lying to us for the last 10 years.
You can say that with that last Holyrood vote about the plebiscite they have officially ceased to be a party that has any interest in seeking Scotland’s independence. Now, at all practical effects, what they are openly and actively doing is blocking any progress of Scotland towards independence.
The SNP will no longer be in power from 2026. I honestly do not think they are in power even now. They are probably held to ransom because of the budget.
They may be given a handful of ministerial cars, but the only thing the SNP will be doing from now on is to work towards and prop a labour government. I bet that their contribution to government will be significantly less than the contributions the mad greens have been doing with the toxic Bute House Agreement. They will be government in name only. Just like the libdems were when they were in coalition with the tories.
What would be really interesting is to find out what the SNP leadership are are getting in exchange for deliberately triggering the demolition button of their party. Will a labour government find a way to simply vanish Operation Branchform into the ether? Will such government screw permanently down the lid over the conspiracy against Mr Salmond?
The SNP is over. They have capitulated everything they stood for. They have betrayed every single promise they made regarding progressing independence. They are now labour in all but name.
The only value that failed brand has left is the number of pro-indy voters who insist in remaining loyal to them despite their monumental betrayal. Opening the eyes of those is the way to finish the party off.
@ Muscleguy 5.28pm I responded to your comment on the last post re Stuart Campbell,WOS and his deliberate and obvious ignoring of SALVO, SSRG,and Liberation.Scot or indeed anything to do with Scots SOVEREIGNTY or the COR
Perhaps Stuart could enlighten everyone why
Unfortunately it IMMEDIATELY went into moderation for reasons unknown and has disappeared
It really is glass beads and typhoid impregnated comfort blankets north American Indian style here in Scotland.
The indigenous Scot like the Indian is headed for extinction. And steady as we go under the sure had of our colonial administrators.
Reservations we have few. That’s reservations where folks live not the other kind of reservation.
South Africa had its Sowetto style reservations. Economically and socially deprived townships the Jock’s know the model.
Ah well, it’s the life we choose. Freedom? Nah not for us.
Or what am I missing?
Mia @ 4:40 pm
“that we might be approaching the last stages of the colonial process in Scotland.”
Yes, Fanon’s 3-phases, the final phase leading to liberation, failing which the nation continues along the road to perish:
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/05/25/the-three-phases-of-decolonization-lessons-for-scotland/
Labour’s «liaison dangereuse»
https://archive.ph/M9hg6
LGBTXYZEE honey trap snaps another useful idiot.
That is a good question.
I have a good idea why women might not vote for Alba.
I posted the following in reply to a post my </b<Moixx
https://wingsoverscotland.com/10-years-on/#comment-2912572
It’s possible Moixx did not see my reply. It’s always good to check back. Some posts appear a wee bit late.
Basically I wouldn’t vote for Alba because they are supporters of Trans.
Not sure as yet where ISP stand vis a vis Trans.
Initially I though reform were going to shame Alba re ‘Trans’ but in the end they chicken out and just became as wishy washy as all the other parties with the exception of Posie Parker’s Party.
In this Union, Scotland and England should at least be treated the same. England should have a devolved administration too. England’s income should be handed to a Union administration and about half given back to them to be spent on certain defined matters.
Perhaps if this argument was put to “Proud Scots but..” and their ilk, they might see the injustice and sheer stupidity of sticking with the Union.
@ twathater: You are not alone in wondering at Wings’ silence on the subject of Liberation.Scotland/Salvo. However we all know that the Rev is a clever man, and painfully honest in his pursuit of Scotland’s restoration to self-government, so there must be a good reason for the lack of input from him. It is a pity because we also know that every computer in Holyrood is a follower of Wings so it would be a good way of spreading the word in the corridors of …well, you know what I mean.
@ Muscleguy
” Where is moribund Alba with their leader on -47% in the polls? Nowhere to be seen, with the deputy chairman of the NE Freeport a prominent member and candidate they are nowhere on Freeports either which issue is gaining traction & Salvo are preparing a challenge to the contracts under Scots Law. ”
Good points .
It’s greatly to ISP’s credit that they have seen & embraced the potentially game-changing nature of what SALVO/Liberation are trying to do .
And a major WTF ! that ALBA have spurned the opportunity to connect with the new energy those groups are generating . Those dismal polling stats are surely a consequence of ALBA’s seeming determination to be exactly like all the other Parties – other than in their genuine desire to achieve Independence .
It’s up to Stu what he deems worthy of attention / space here on WOS , but , given the disadvantage from lack of exposure in MSM all the above-mentioned groups suffer , would it not be beneficial to a wider/deeper discourse on how best to realise our ambition if the ” Most Read ….” allowed space – if only occasionally – for the arguments & positions of these entities to be heard ?
Destroying the SNP may be a legitimate , ie necessary goal ; to do so without simultaneously building something to fill the vacated space may lead to a pyrrhic victory .
If ALBA were intending to be that replacement , they’re – to put it mildly – failing to convince . In contrast , ISP are becoming more convincing as they stretch out from the Political Party confines to collaborate with other bona-fide Independence fighters .
Xaracen says:
It is Scotland’s MPs alone who carry and wield the sovereign authority of the Scottish half of the Union into the Union’s parliament to be deployed on Scotland’s behalf
.
I don’t think they hold or wield any indigenous Scots sovereignty. Has any politician ever asked you for a loan of your sovereignty . No one has ever asked me for mine. Sovereignty puts us the people above everything. How many Scottish people know that they are sovereign. And that we must be consulted before any appointed person can do as much as fart. Politicians wield sweet FA
This was prepared as an addendum to my previous post, but it does touch on the odious Stewart McDonald and the reasons why he is front and foremost in this latest episode of “expectation management”. I also question whether he is intent on warming a seat in oor pretendy parliament come 2026.
My previous post was a synopsis of my overarching thesis. For this reason I try to avoid being bogged down in detail. Nonetheless, evidence of Security Services malfeasance is available. When dealing with that which is by design, intended to remain covert, certain allowances must be permitted. This is explained better than I ever could by Simon Matthews in the preamble to his essay; The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolph Hess, 1941 (Lobster 81).
What for example is remotely nefarious about the US State Department educating young UK politicians and those operating in political circles on the workings of the US Government? Nothing really, until you examine the details.
All four SNP elected representatives known to have been inducted into the State Department’s International Visitors Leadership Program have a whiff of subterfuge about them. The IVLP proclaims that it seeks out “future opinion leaders”.
Well, Humza Yousaf was inducted into the IVLP in his second year as a humble parliamentary aide to his MSP uncle. I guess he must have impressed someone with his photocopying and coffee making skills. Former school teacher, Jenny Gilruth was in Washington on a IVLP field trip, 35 working days after being sworn in as a rookie MSP. Given that we are discussing the present Education Minister and a former First Minister, the prescience of the State Department is uncanny, one might almost say spooky .
Patrick Grady and Angela Crawley were on the same visit as Gilruth (and Kezia Dugdale). While Gilruth and Dugdale declared the exercise in their Holyrood register of interests, Grady and Crawley did not do likewise on their Westminster register of interests. This is doubly curious as the trip took place while Holyrood was in recess, but Westminster was still in session. Apparently Grady and Crawley’s plebeian constituents didn’t need to know what they were up to while they were “on the clock”. We only know about Grady and Crawley’s participation due to an indiscrete social media post from Gilruth and some admirable research from Calton Jock. In the song, Love Detective, Aidan Moffat poses the question; “If you’ve nothing tae hide, why hide it?”.
In total seven elected Scottish politicians are known to have been inducted into the IVLP *. To the SNP four, we can add, Patrick Harvey MSP (Green), Kezia Dugdale MSP (Labour) and Ross Thompson MSP & MP (Tory). Of the seven only Yousaf is heterosexual. Coincidence or targeting? I leave this to you to decide.
* We must say “known” as Grady and Crawley presumably escaped the requirement to report on their register of interests due to their membership of the British American Parliamentary Group. Other former members of the BAPG include Angus Robertson and Ian Blackford. Why the BAPG is exempt for declaring gratuities from the Sate Department remains a mystery. This is gross exceptionalism redolent of AIPAC not being required to register as a foreign lobbying group in the US.
Stewart McDonald’s ten day sojourn to the Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars certainly paid dividends for those footing the bill (the WWCfIS is a de facto annex of the State Department). On his return, McDonald was reliably in lockstep with Anglo/American geopolitical doctrine. Analysed as a matter of pure self interest, this could be seen as an insurance policy. The position of an elected politician is a precarious one, and having becomed accustomed to £90k pa, our onetime holiday rep probably didn’t look forward to resuming his former career. Expect McDonald to appear at some third sector think tank before too long.
At this point, the infiltration is so pronounced that maintenance of the project at Foggy Bottom is probably entrusted to junior officers as a training exercise.
This said, you have to admire the thoroughness of their approach. In November last year, Finance Minister, Kate Forbes attended the Liverpool conference of the British American Project. Attendees at the BAP’s 2022 conference in Minnesota were advised they should “… not post any photos of BAP conference’s on your personal social media.”.
I am reminded of the question put earlier by Aidan Moffat. With Gilruth and Forbes, the State Department has pretty much all the bases covered.
Prior to being recruited as a SPAD for Alex Salmond, Stephen Gethins was employed by an outfit called NGO Links, “specialising in peace-building, arms control and democracy in the Caucuses and Balkans”. NGO Links was based out of the University of Arizona and was substantially funded by the US Government’s, National Science Foundation. Now why would a body tasked with furthering scientific endeavour within the territorial boundaries of the US be financing political influencing activities in countries of the former Soviet Union? Gethins held the SNP, Foreign Affairs, Spokesperson remit at Westminster from 2015 to 2019. Gethins’ contributions to Hansard in this period were multitudinous but the range of topics wasn’t as numerous.
It is said that Cato the Elder in his monomaniacal obsession with the Phoenicians, couldn’t end a speech to the Senate without stating, “Carthago delenda est (“Carthage must be destroyed”) “.
Gethins’ equivalent was “Russia bad!”.
At the end of August, Catherine Smith was elevated to the post of Advocate General for Scotland (and life Peer to be confirmed). This being the position tasked with advising the UK Government on the Scots law. In truth, this has always been a political appointment and the office holders have not necessarily been top tier legal authorities to the same degree as is required to become Lord Advocate. The issue here is that Catherine Smith in her site biography for the John Smith Centre (for which she is Chair) describes herself as having worked “… internationally on conflict resolution and democracy building in the NGO sector, working particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.”. This is an amended blurb of the original which specifically made reference to working for “London based NGO Links”. As we’ve already established, NGO Links wasn’t “London based”. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. They most certainly look efter their ain. A Spookocracy indeed.
Rev. Stuart Campbell, you know we trust you and we know that there will be no push for independence until the SNP has been completely destroyed, like the Irish party that had become the enemy of Irish independence 100 years ago.
The SNP tractors you expose on a regular basis are completely shameless and carry on in their own self interest, Cherry included.
It time for you personally to become leader of the grassroots independence movement and expose the tractors at public rallies.
We know that you will never be corrupted.
We also know that unlike some others, you don’t have a desire to pursue other national and international issues. You will stick to the issue, as you have done all these years.
Reactivate the political party you had set up a few years ago.
But your party must have ZERO other policies. The only policy should be independence.
The condition of party membership would be no public comment on any issue except independence.
Independence first, everything else afterwards.
The colonies who fought for and got independence had ZERO policies apart from independence.
The foolishness of a devolutionist party is that westminster is in the process of undermining devolution at speed. The uk single market, the channeling of money to local authorities directly from the westminster government are only the start of the process. A devolutionist party will only enable the plan to abolish the whole project leaving a talking shop in Holyrood with zero powers or responsibilities.
Lorna
“In any case, if Putin carried out his threat to launch a limited nuclear strike against Europe – and it would be Europe, not America, because America can wipe out Russia”
America can’t. They can’t even win against a bunch of goat herders. Russia is far more technically, military advanced & they can churn out weapons cause they never deindustrialised. In true Brit style tho they’ve resorted to a spot of terrorism instead.
Sir kid Starver has already been told his weapons are shite & won’t be in range other than to hit civilian targets. If that’s their game then they’ve just upped the ante. They’re psychotic & think he’s bluffing. I wouldn’t bet on it & internationally, to use nukes on a conflict that’s fck all to do with them, it’ll spell the end of the west far faster than its going already. Russia hasn’t even started yet.
I dunno wtf gives with the English establishment who perpetually think we’re still in the 1940s so everyone else must be too. WTF do they teach these ppl in private schools? They excel at entitlement.
I forgot to mention that you would also not be so gullible as to trust the likes of George Galloway with absolutely anything.
Wullie
You loan yer sovereignty when you vote for them.
Which is stupid really because they then take that vote, win, then take an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch. In both Holyrood & Westminster.
Now there is something we’ve never been asked. We should have a referendum on the monarchy. He isn’t our king & he hasn’t taken any oath to Scotland.
Just another unionist party.
Devolution is just the new carrot to replace the independence one that’s now dead.
Labour has made it abundantly clear on various occasions there is absolutely no way there’ll be any more devolution to Scotland. They have even publicly stated they wish they’d never agreed to it in the first place. So do I. We’d be independent by now without it.
So there’s no Indy & no devolution so there’s no reason for the SNP. They can collect their coat & fck off.
hee-haw for Scotland from the yoons of whatever shade just as most of us predicted in 2014. They immediately started rowing back after the no vote & stripping powers… remember Cameron during indyref?? “That the Scottish Parliament will become one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world”
Aye..that happened. Not.
No wonder they’ll not agree to another ref but they don’t have to & that’s what is so sickening. They have no authority to refuse. We’re not their possession.
But, Wullie, that’s the whole point of Scotland being represented in the Union parliament in the first place. The Union is of two entire sovereign kingdoms sharing the same parliament for the purpose of jointly governing their two territories.
Scotland’s MPs are the sole representatives of their entire kingdom, and they need to wield their parent’s full sovereign authority because they are facing the representatives of an entire foreign sovereign kingdom, and they need to be able to make major decisions on our behalf without constantly consulting us.
They don’t own that sovereignty, but they have to be enabled to wield it for us. That’s what elections are for. We are choosing our formal representatives to speak for, and make serious decisions on our, and our kingdom’s behalf, and we authorise them to wield our sovereign authority for us because it isn’t remotely practical for us all to do that ourselves.
They are Scotland’s agents operating in the field of legislative and political combat with potential enemies.
And it’s not just a matter of the Union; yes, Scotland’s people are sovereign but even before the Union they didn’t spend their time governing themselves directly, they were too busy getting on with their own lives in their own wee patch to be able to effectively and efficiently organise, integrate, and provide for all the needs and wants of a million or so other people all trying to govern their entire country at the same time.
It would be an utter organisational nightmare. It is no coincidence that the governance of any nation is always delegated to a full-time institution of some kind whose sole purpose is to do all of that larger scale governance on its people’s behalf.
The tricky bit is making sure that the few that are delegated the authority to govern for the many do so for only the right reasons, and that makes accountability essential.
Jimmock
Correct regards channeling money & the single market, also the power grab after Brexshit. Over 80 powers stripped which includes NHS, Scottish Water, Fishing, Agriculture, Procurement, Animal welfare, Fracking, GM crops etc, ect…
Now fracking – “Scottish” Labour will lift the moratorium on that tooth sweet if they get in to Holyrood & what’s the betting it’ll be in the Freeports zones..
Neil Mackay is at this moment writing the supportive article for the Herald.
There is absolutely no way this is happening. The SNP would go for it, but Labour have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Labour/Lib Dem minority government with the Tories staying out of the way.
I think you may be right Derek, in local authority, Holyrood and Westminster; the Labour Party utterly and completely despises the SNP for stealing (in their opinion) the working class vote.
Labour on the other hand is a London-centric construct there to arm wrestle the Tories once the Liberals were shoved out the way.
Absolutely Nothings changed, just the date.
Our votes are taken for granted and the Holyrood experiment of keeping the Jockonese infighting and divided will be deignfully allowed to continue and gleefully stoked by the Westminster parties the the UKs totally impartial media..
It REALLY is no more complex than that..
Depressing.
You really don’t need a masters in politics to recognise it.
Radical action is required or the complacent acquiescence will just continue and continue..
Yes Honest John I’m talking about you..
Just saying.
@ Wullie 6.21pm
THIS is OUR reservation with no say or power
This is Scotland and Scots Future
In October 2023 there was a referendum in Australia the cultural and historical home of the original indigenous Aboriginal natives, the question put to the people of Australia was
“The question for the Voice to Parliament referendum was: “A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
The First Peoples, Aboriginals, had requested that a permanent representation be permitted within the Australian parliament to oversee and ensure that the First Peoples VOICE would be heard in matters relating to the First Peoples
Bearing in mind that Australia was a penal colony and EVERY resident since the First Peoples were immigrants or HaHaHa new Australians it should come as no surprise that the MAJORITY voted AGAINST the rational and minor request that was asked for
“Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
I. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
II. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
III.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.”
The referendum question and constitutional amendment were announced by the Prime Minister on 23 March 2023, and were settled following consultation with the First Nations Referendum Working Group.
The referendum question and constitutional amendment were set out in the Constitutional Alteration Bill that was passed by both Houses of Parliament on 19 June 2023.
YET the NEW Australians voted AGAINST that minuscule representation for the ORIGINAL INDIGENOUS INHABITANTS
People like to use the term “Blood and Soil as an epithet to ridicule and berate patriotism and to silence , my ancestors Blood is riven through the Soil of Scotland and I am proud of my Scottish nationality and ancestry, I will never be ashamed of that, but I am ashamed and angered at politicians and others who hold Scottish nationality and citizenship like a cheap watch to be given away to all and sundry
What happened to the Aboriginal peoples will happen to Scottish indigenous people if we do not learn lessons from others mistakes
Young Lochinvar 2.11am.
If you were referring to me when you said complacent acquiescence, I can assure you that I’m neither. Just sick of wasting energy on the SNP.
https://tinyurl.com/mschr2ky
Tom Harris
Scotland became the laboratory for trans extremism – and it’s not just the SNP’s fault
Actions have consequences. The mindset at Holyrood remains one of overwhelming support for trans ideology, and to hell with the concerns of these silly women
I liked this article except that he focuses on Scotland when the root cause of all the problems lies with the UK Gov.
Hopefully one day soon someone will focus on the GRA 2004 brought in by Labour with no concern for ‘these silly women’
Tom hasn’t been clear what he means by ‘women’ I on the other hand do not believe transwomen are women so are not included in my use of the term women.
In their mindless and craven subservience to gender ideologues, MSPs have let Scotland down.
You could say the same about ‘The Precious Union’ and it’s not just the SNP’s fault. 🙂
I think he was referring to that political powerhouse John Swinney?
Old Kenny has an article about trans rights today too! He says:
No rights are absolute. So when there is a conflict of rights, as is undeniably the case with women’s rights and trans rights, there has to be an accommodation of some kind. This is difficult when, as has happened here, both sides of the argument default rapidly to their extremes.
No Kenny I won’t be giving an inch. You know what they say about giving an inch.
“if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile”
What is extreme about women not wishing to give their rights to men?
I wonder what Kenny means by ‘trans’.
The Flying Iron of Doom , oh for a political powerhouse!
And John H he was definitely referring to thon Swinney bloke.
Xaracen,
Thank you for you’re kind thoughts and wishes the other day, they mean a lot to both of us during this half latter of my spouses illness. He is resting back at home now for pallative care.
Does a devolution parliament to Scotland breach the treaty of union articles in what is supposed to be a equal union of one parliament of Great Britain?
As under Devolution the Westminster Parliament members of the official governing parliament of England and Wales are thus now the sole controllers of the Scottish members Actions through the back door due to the restrictive reservations in that devolution to Scotland.
It would appear that the devolution settlement sent to Scotland from the governing parliament of England and Wales breaches the article of the treaty of union of one parliament of GB and the Scottish representatives are not free to be Scottish representatives without imposed restrictions in Scotland.
And Scotlands representatives in this union are not able to apply reserved matters to the only governing Westminster parliament of England and Wales in the same manner,
Is that what was proposed in the 1707 articles treaty of union that Westminster parliament would remain the sole Westminster parliament of England and Wales as prior to the treaty of union?
CAN YOU TRUST POLITICIANS?
Catch the BBC Panorama on HS2 and find out why not.
Also NYC epidemiologist adviser during draconian «lockdown» who attended sex parties is now big pharma exec.
Cool move mr Varma!
Democracy stripped of 24/7 oversight and accountability is totalitarian and corporatist.
«Not enough rope, too few lamp posts» the masses cry….or ought to.
«If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools»
PLATO
As others have pointed out, officially this not won’t happen.
In reality, whether it is a minority SNP or minority Labour government, despite the usual hot from both sides, there will be no serious opposition due to not wanting to be seen to be on the wrong side of the ‘moderate centre’.
Officially both parties will not be in coalition but unofficially, they will.
Xaracen,
Say what you see.
From my personal view this is What I see,
A devolved parliament sent to Scotland under the legislation and Statues of the parliament of England and Wales (breaches the treaty of union) and under those circumstances the Scottish representatives are under the reservation restrictive control of Westminster parliament of England and Wales. With the result that the fake Scottish representative are then sent down to the parliament of England and Wales.
Which makes a mockery of the suggestion that “Westminster parliament” is in a one parliamentary union with Scotland.
Whilst it [governs England and Wales solely and separately] from the connection of Scotland representation, or from a pretend Scottish parliament that breaches a fundamental foundation of the treaty of union.
Why and how does the sole governing “Westminster parliament of England and Wales” suppose it can Colonise and dish out statues to Scotland in a treaty of union Whereby the parliament of England and Wales was never dissolved in 1707?
@Lorna Campbell 2:13
If the Central Belt getting nuked is indeed the “final price of the union” as you claim, would it be fair to say that the price of Independence is to resign ourselves to the “right” of big, imperialist, colonialist, militarist powers to absorb and exterminate wee sovereign, independent countries?
There’s a logical flaw in there, big enough to be seen from Earth orbit. I’m not going to point it out to you though, because as the man said, “none so blind, etc. etc.”
Talking of none so blind, it’s hardly any time since a majority of the people of Scotland freely went out and voted for Labour to represent them at WM. They may choose to freely do that again in 2026, then again, they may continue to vote SNP.
If both these choices are supposedly so unpalatable, the obvious solution is to organise to put up an alternative – all these ideas that are continually claimed to be popular on here, such as republicanism, fiscal redistribution, public ownership, individual Scottish sovereignty, pro-Humous, pro-Pres P, the entire basket of goodies every Scot is supposedly hankering after.
So tell us again. What’s the hold up? What’s the problem?
Andy Ellis
If you won’t support an Independent Scotland governed by the SNP, isn’t it about time you started a new party/movement capable of governing Scotland that you and others can support?
Come on, Alba is going nowhere.
It’s a never ending Groundhog Day on here. Perpetual “discovery” that the SNP is also going nowhere, and perpetual laying out of alternatives.
And always, perpetual delegation of the heavy lifting to non-existent others.
Take Breeks for example. Another in the long sequence of his calls for impeachment above. What’s that all about really?
If he truly believes Sovereign Scots have the right to impeach tractors, then all he has to do is announce the date he intends to turn up at HR to exercise his constitutional right. Announce it on here to have thousands marching with him. Tens of thousands cheering him on. With the TV cameras recording for posterity. Sure, he’ll have his day in court as a result. But he has his Scottish Sovereignty protecting him, right?
But no, it’s a call for AN Other to do the impeachment, and Breeks will turn up after the fact, when it’s judged safe to do so.
It’s a long way from inspirational. A long, long way.
The devolved parliament was a lie. It wasn’t a reconvening of a Scottish parliament. It was a London outpost that had no authority here. All it did was reinforce to the masses they actually had a parliament to make decisions. They don’t. & To stamp English authority where they actually have none.
All it did, imo, was to shift London rule & pretend we could make decisions. It is a breach of the Union by the very fact that they have no authority here to impose a Scotland Act & that they didn’t give England a devolved parliament only legitimizes the idea that they do.
Its stuffed full of yoons, plants, meddlers, cadgers & careerist. Best thing to do would be to close it & reconvene the real Scottish parliament & fck the Scotland Act in the bin where it belongs.
Or open an English devolved parliament & re-establish the PROPER parliament of GB as intended under the Act of Union.
What Scotland seems cursed with is cowards & serfs who nod along being trampled all over because they lack an education on Scotlands constitution, the original claim of right & the act of union.
Look at the HoC. It has a team of constitutional & parliamentary experts sitting in front of the speaker. Where is Scotlands constitutional experts? Where is Scotlands Lords & Ladies (that’s not bought with trinkets) scrutinizing Acts & laws in conjunction with the Act of Union? No doubt learning all about fcking queer theory at Glasgow & Stirling University. The place where ppl seem to go to actually EMPTY their heads. Not fill it with actual knowledge…
Maybe there’s a lot to be said for scrapping tuition fees. Maybe they’d think twice about taking up a Mickey mouse subject if they actually had to weigh up the costs.
Seems, from a tweet yesterday (or perhaps day before) that Peter Bell is now on-board with Alf Baird’s analysis re Scotland’s ‘colony’ status.
The more the merrier.
😉
Shitface
How can you be here 24/7 yet not absorb a single thing?
No one is interested in Holyrood or Westminster. Its a pointless exercise. The choice is yoon, yoon or yoon. Or, if we’re really lucky, another independence party who’ll switch to *drum roll* yoon.
Scotland is taking a different route that bypasses that interference.
The only elections I’ll be voting on are those abstaining from going to London & council elections to get the deviants out.
*scrapping should’ve said introducing.
The Flying Iron of Doom and Dorothy Devine.
Fair enough. ?
The Teflon Don John Swinney – desperately trying to fool indy supporters into voting for his party.
“The SNP is urging Scots to be “optimistic and hopeful” as the party launches a new leaflet on independence.
Speaking ahead of that he said: “Scotland has for too long been held back by Westminster. It’s time to once again be optimistic and hopeful about our future as an independent nation.””
Swinney will be hawking his tired old wares – around my home town of Glasgow.
This American woman, now resident in Scotland, writes a lot of interesting and sensible stuff on issues of interest to readers of this site, from a sane and sensible and perceptive perspective. Her Substack deserves more readers.
https://deemingdreaming.substack.com/
“it’s hardly any time since a majority of the people of Scotland freely went out and voted for Labour to represent them at WM”
I am sorry, what?
The SHARE of the vote that Labour got in Scotland, according to Wikipedia, was only a 35.3%. That is indeed the largest share of the vote, but short of almost 16% of the vote to be able to claim they got the majority of the vote.
Now, the turnout was only 59.2% (value taken from Wikipedia), so Labour got a 35.3% OF 59.2%.
This means that Labour was supported by only 20.72% of all those who were registered to cast a vote. That is far, far, far from a majority.
Actually, of all those registered to vote, 79.3% DID NOT cast a vote for Labour. Now, THAT is the majority.
40.8%, a proportion almost twice the amount of those registered to vote who cast a vote for Labour, did not even bother to approach the polling places, perhaps because they decided there was no-one worthwhile to vote for or did not see any point in participating in a UK GE any more.
Not satisfied with simply exaggerating, you went completely overboard by a few miles and even stated that “the majority of the people of Scotland voted for Labour”
Well, the total number of people who were registered on the 1 December 2023 to vote in Scotland for the UK GE (information taken from the National Records of Scotland), was 4,007,187.
According to the Scottish Government, on Census Day, 20 March 2022, the population of Scotland was estimated to be 5,436,600. This means that only approximately 74% of the population in Scotland is registered to vote in UK GE.
This means that only 20.72% of 74% of the population in Scotland actually cast a vote for Labour. In real terms, this means that only an approximately meagre 15.3% of the population of Scotland actually voted for Labour. Hardly “the majority of the people of Scotland” that you claim. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the people of Scotland DID NOT vote for Labour.
This is what First Past the Post is hiding. Time for labour to come down from that cloud of theirs and the pretence that, somehow, Scotland miraculously has decided to resurrect its support for a party which, since the oil was discovered, has done nothing other than stabbing constantly Scotland in the back to ensure England can siphon all its resources and wealth. Never mind if that means killing children of Scotland of hunger and freezing the elderly to death. That is just collateral and part of the cause for Labour’s sadistic vision of unionism.
@James Che
My best wishes to you and yours.
@Republicofscotland
““Scotland has for too long been held back by Westminster”
Swinney is, of course, attempting to deceive. Because, for the last 10 years, Scotland has not been “held back by Westminster”. Scotland has been held back by a useless devolutionist SNP of which Mr Swinney himself is one of the main architects.
The SNP were given three absolute majorities of MPs. Has he already forgotten of those? Because I haven’t and never will.
With those absolute majorities the SNP could have ended the union at any point from 8 May 2015 and until the last GE.
Doing so would have completely removed any power from Westminster to hold control over Scotland and would have completely removed any possibility for that English court they call “Supreme Court” to be abused by the crown so it could be deployed for English judges to undemocratically block any legislation to enter our effing parliament in Scotland.
Instead, the SNP, including Swinney, chose to continue handing that free power and veto to Westminter and that fake “Supreme” court whose legitimacy in the context of the Treaty of Union is beyond dubious.
So Swinney can stick his bullshit lies, double-speak and sickening attempts to deceive where the sun does not shine.
If Scotland is not independent today it is not because of “Westminster”. It is because the political frauds in control of the SNP since 14 November 2014, and that includes him, chose to keep us shackled to England and to facilitate the ransacking and transfer of resources from Scotland to England for free.
Disgustingly, there is an article in the National that claims this political hypocrite has claimed that “SCOTLAND will seek to grasp the opportunities from energy policies pursued by Westminster “with both hands” ”
What a hypocrite. Scotland does not seek to “grasp” the opportunity of being fleeced out of its energy as it was robbed of its oil and being sent to England for free or being exploited to generate profits for somebody else or some other country. It is clearly Swinney’s SNP who will grasp whatever opportunities for THEMSELVES which might arise from selling Scotland again.
I am sick and fed up of the SNP crooks’ attempts to deceive, their blatant lies and double-speak. I am sick and fed up of these spineless cowards continuously insulting our intelligence as if we were idiots.
The EU/USA are losing the plot.
Georgia elections coming up..
EU/USA – vote for our guy or else!
Georgia – naw! What you going to do?
EU/USA – Remove yer freedom of movement & we won’t recognise yer election & you know what that means, we overthrow the winner.
Meanwhile, over in America – ‘everyone is interfering in our elections. whhaaa, whhaaa, whhaaa – spark up the nukes! This is an existential threat to our democracy!’
Aye Fascism has arrived.
P.S
Well said Mia. Labour hasn’t made any advances & they’ll organise something to fix Holyrood just like they did with the Hamilton by election. Tories will play along with tactical voting.
James Che – glad he’s home now. Sending my best wishes x
At the next Scottish Elections I’m voting for Trump. Maybe get something done around here for a change.
James, you’re welcome.
As to your questions, the Treaty specifies that the United Kingdom will be governed by one parliament, and that is still the case today. The introduction of the devolved parliaments doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that the Union parliament is still in overall charge; the devolved parliaments are essentially just branch parliaments using a delegated subset of the Union parliament’s authority to provide regional governance, in basically the same way that local councils provide more closely-localised governance in their own areas.
So I don’t see these as breaches of the Treaty. As Westminster and others often point out, devolved authority is retained authority. “All constituted power is subordinate and inferior to the power constituting.”
Basically they don’t take any power away from Westminster that Westminster can’t take back.
But there is a corollary to that which applies to the Union parliament itself, because the Union parliament is also exerting delegated authority, actually two authorities both delegated to it from the two Treaty Principals in 1707. Thus the authority it can wield over England uses authority delegated to it from the Kingdom of England under the terms of the Treaty, and its authority over Scotland was delegated to it from the Kingdom of Scotland. Because both of those kingdoms were, and still are sovereign, they can both take those powers back!
It also needs to be made clear because it isn’t as well understood as it should be, that the delegated authorities from those two kingdoms are vested directly in the two separate bodies of MPs, and not to the Westminster parliament as a whole. In other words, Scotland’s MPs are the only body in Westminster which is formally entitled by Scotland to wield Scotland’s delegated authority in the Union parliament, and only England’s MPs wield England’s delegated authority.
(By England, I mean the Kingdom of England, which contains England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and all their MPs.)
On your second question; “Is that what was proposed in the 1707 articles treaty of union that Westminster parliament would remain the sole Westminster parliament of England and Wales as prior to the treaty of union?”, no. The Treaty proposed that the new parliament in Westminster be the parliament of Great Britain, defined as England, Wales and Scotland.
What they did propose to remain the same as prior to the Treaty of Union were the numbers of non-Scottish MPs to represent those three territories in the new parliament.
Regarding your subsequent comment;
The post-1707 Westminster parliament is the Union’s parliament, shared between the two kingdoms that founded it expressly because it contains the formal representatives of both those kingdoms. As Mia pointed out some time ago, it is entirely reasonable to consider the new Union parliament to be the continuation of both of the previously separate parliaments of Scotland and England, since its first session contained MPs from both of those previous parliaments who had been elected to them prior to 1707. This did not breach anything agreed in the Treaty.
The parliament of ‘England and Wales’ was dissolved when fresh elections were called in April 1708, though by then it had already been renamed as the Parliament of Great Britain, and sat as such on the 23rd October 1707. None of that is significantly contentious as far as I am concerned. Major changes were happening, and some clumsiness and awkwardness was only to be expected.
So for me, therefore, the most contentious and serious issue by far is the unwarranted presumption of the English establishment that England’s MPs are entitled to overrule the formal majority decisions of Scotland’s MPs, for no better reason than a difference in overall numbers. Those numbers have no formal constitutional or legal significance, and does not reflect any difference in the levels of authority of the two equally sovereign kingdoms that founded the Union and its parliament.
As I have been pointing out for quite some time now, there is literally nothing in any of the three agreed founding documents of the Union that obliges Scotland and her formal representation in the Union’s parliament to defer to England’s representation on any matter of Union governance.
The Union parliament’s internal flat voting system is therefore utterly inappropriate for the purpose of identifying the outcomes of debates between the two distinct bodies of MPs because it completely ignores the critical distinction between those bodies, which is that they formally represent completely different sovereign foreign kingdoms. As such it is patently ludicrous to insist that one of those bodies of MPs is obliged to defer to the MPs of an actual foreign kingdom, with no reciprocal obligation on the other body! Nor is there any formal agreement in the Treaty or Acts for the use of that flat voting system in the new Union parliament, and Scotland’s MPs have no business putting up with it, and neither should Scotland’s sovereign people!
Correction to my previous comment;
What they did propose to remain the same as prior to the Treaty of Union were the numbers of non-Scottish MPs to represent those two territories in the new parliament.
NEW BRIT POLITICS IN ACTION
https://archive.ph/0QXp0
The messiah dances.
Two good comments Mia – both spot on I didn’t vote in the English GE – I know many folk who didn’t even receive their postal votes either – and of course the GE was set up to take place – when many Scots were out of Scotland on holiday, due to the school holidays, and; many folk were left disenfranchised – due to the new voter ID rules.
As for Swinney and the SNP – they are a unionist party now – and they’ll jump into bed with any other party if there’s a chance of having some power – the SNP are a major roadblock to indy – they must be removed from office – of course it goes without saying that indy supporters – never, ever, vote for unionist parties – those parties overall remits, are too keep Scotland down and locked into this illegal union.
I can’t see past voting for the ISP party – ISP must stand as many candidates as possible – in the 2026 Scottish elections – no ISP, or even Alba candidate – then I’ll be spoiling my ballot. paper.
Xaracen and Mia top class posts, James Che love and best wishes for you & hubby, you’re both fighters
And still Stu remains silent on Scots Sovereignty, maybe he’ll make it a banned word to go with all the rest
@TURABDIN 2:48pm
Messiah we have seen that already in Scotland. Very similar to the SNP rallies in 2015. That Dad dancing seems to be working in Scotland. Percentage vote increasing from 0.21 to 7 to 9.1 to 11.2% in Scotland in several months. Reform UK forecasting today 15 MSPs in 2026. Reminiscent of En Marche and Macron. I wouldn’t lay against a SNP and Labour coalition but how about this for a long term punt. Reform UK to be the official opposition in 2026. Also their price has reduced significantly to win 2029. Should that worry Independence voters? Doesn’t worry me. Labour and Conservative leaders have said there will never be another referendum. Perhaps if Mr Referendum himself becomes the PM he might roll the dice. In any event something is happening amongst the Scottish electorate. And I don’t think it’s Dad dancing.
e were ALL 72 minutes away from destruction last week – and most folk didn’t even know it, it might yet come.
The one-time R Premier Nikit-a Kh-rush-chev – said of nuc–lear war:
“The survivors would envy the dead.”
“Had Bi-d-en yielded to Starmer’s pressure (the British, together with U and several N-A–T-O- nations, believed that Poootinn was bluffing), and signed off on the permission, U was prepared to launch strikes on R that night.
(British soldiers deployed in U would be needed to operate the St-or-m Sha-dows and they are already there, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has refused to send similar weapons to U.)
R would likely have responded with conventional attacks on K—iev- using new weapons, such as the Avangard hyper-son-ic warh-ead, which would each deliver a blow equivalent to 26-28 tons of explos-ives.
R would also most likely have struck N–AT-O- targets in Poland and Romania where U fighters are based. And, lastly, R would have struck British military targets, possibly including those on the British Isles.
This would prompt a N–AT–O- retaliation under Article 5, using a large number of N-A-T–O- long-range strike weapons targeting R command and control, airfields, and ammunition storage facilities.
The R response would most likely involve the launching of more Avangard conventional warhe–ads against N-A–T-O- targets, including Ramstein airbase and N-A-T-O- headquarters, as well as airbases from which strikes against R were launched.
At this juncture the United States, using nuc–lear employment plans derived from a nucl–ear posture which emphasizes the pre-emptive use of low yield nuc–lear weapons to “escalate to deescalate”— i.e., force R to back down through a demonstration of capability — would authorize the use of one or more low-yield nucl–ear warheads against R targets on R soil.
But R doctrine has no capacity for engaging in a limited nu–clea-r war. Instead, R would respond with a general nuc–le-ar retaliation targeting all of Europe and the United States.
Whatever U.S. strategic forces that survived this onslaught would be fired at R.
And then we all die.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/19/scott-ritter-72-hours/
@Hatey MecHateface 11.16am
If you won’t support an Independent Scotland governed by the SNP, isn’t it about time you started a new party/movement capable of governing Scotland that you and others can support?
Why is it suddenly all my responsibility?! 🙂
There’s already a route to indy, via plebiscitary elections which only require pro-indy parties to sign up to the concept. It doesn’t matter if they disagree about other policies, or indeed if they hate each others guts. All that matters is a relatively simple agreement amongst themselves to be “real” nationalists and not accept that our self determination is in the gift of Westminster.
That is the realist position. It’s what the vast majority of ordinary Scots expect and will support.
The fact a dwindling bunch of diehards in here insist on believing in Brigadoon-esque fantasies about “cunning plans for indy”, de-colonisation, Salvo and the UN riding to our rescue only goes to show how deluded they are. They have the cheek to disparage the performance of Alba or the ISP whilst simultaneously having nothing but unicorns and rainbows to offer.
It was Alex Salmond and Rev Stu that drew a big (paying) crowd during the week, not the other mob. As for the Vivian O’Blivion’s et al and their sophomoric plans for splendid isolation and a New World Order which some in here are so enamoured of, good luck selling that on the doorsteps. Support for our future as the new Tartan Albania of Hoxha’s generation will make Alba’s current support look gargantuan in comparison.
I never liked the SNP (a brief moment of likink when Salmond first won Holyrood) but it was the only sheep in town. Now, the SNP is a pathetic, Brit-riddled embarrassment and I hate them.
Just fkn disappear ASAP.
GEORGE FERGUSON
All electorates in Europe are ageing with the result that dad dancing politics actually looks cool to that constituency.
“As for the Vivian O’Blivion’s et al and their sophomoric plans for splendid isolation and a New World Order which some in here are so enamoured of, good luck selling that on the doorsteps.”
Who mentioned isolation?
Being independent & in full control of your own country, economy, trade, money & foreign policy will go down very well on the doorstep.
That new world order you despise so much is growing at an alarming rate exactly for all of the above reasons.
NATO is over. Its a colonial outfit. A foreign power who takes control of a countries Sovereignty as well as a huge patch of land that supersedes that countries laws & doesn’t even require the host countries permission to stockpile all sorts of shit on their territory & their personnel are immune from the law too.
They also demand control of all your military & a chunk of yer GDP for the privilege. Oh, & if they don’t like the fight they’ll pretend not to get involved & when they do, innocent civilians are their only level.
Good luck selling that shit on the doorstep.
Germany are beyond pissed they’ll be the proud owners of USA missiles without so much as being asked first & joining them is their latest new shiny members Finland & Sweden who are having buyers remorse already & Sweden already suffering casualties for interfering in a conflict fck all to do, supposedly, with NATO.
Lest we forget, NATO breaks international law. Its various conflicts have NOT been sanctioned by the UN but they just did it anyway.
As for the new world order, aye, no one is buying the ‘rules based order’ pish the Yanks just invented according to their own made up rules.
Suck it up sunshine.
Its isolationist to remain in a union making enemies around the world. Their empire is over.
Stevie
That was a common problem. Not all Indy supporters did. The yoons stupidly thought that if they’d get rid of them then independence would be over. It isnt. The last 300+ years seems to have sailed on past them.
That’s why Salvo & Liberation are ideal. They’re not associated to any single party. Exactly how the YES movement started out before Sturgeon & the SNP decided we were their adoring fans.
& Ellis & Main shouldn’t knock it with their insults. Here five fcking minutes & not involved in the last ref but already knows everything. It was a cunning plan that delivered devolution & not a political party begging at WM. Fecking ignoramuses.
& Alex Salmond wouldn’t listen not to accept it. Little old Scotland was being heard at the council of Europe by the little people who had cunning plans for Indy. Salmond should’ve stood in the queue for Independence instead of a fcking administration.
@TURADBIN 5:59pm
I think it goes deeper than Dad dancing. As an analogy any commercial organisation that performs poorly will be subject to a hostile acquisition. If the said organisation fails to reform or have a tin ear to the needs of customers or if they wilfully ignore their wishes. Then they must reform in the generic sense or be reformed by an external party.
For the last 10 years Holyrood has invited a disruptive influence by doing their own thing often against the voting public. Example 70% of the public against GRRB. Something has to give in those circumstances. The party is over for Holyrood incumbents and if not by Reform UK then by somebody else. An opportunity for somebody. The public want betterment and as a bare minimum competence. The last ten years has given neither.
@Mia 12:07
So 79.3% of Scottish voters (your figures) were all there to be persuaded of the supposedly in-your-face obvious superiority of the goodies I listed earlier.
Republicanism, pacifism, BRICS, the Humous boys, individual Scottish Sovereignty, blah de feckin blah.
As I see it, Mia, quoting a figure like that just makes things worse.
Four fifths of the Scottish electorate don’t like our WM government. Really difficult for me to comprehend, when there are so many just waiting to be persuaded, why it is that Indy can’t persuade them.
Unless, they don’t want any of the wet dreams on offer here. They want sane, rational, responsible, adult-lead, grownup government by smart people who can do joined-up thinking.
Certainly would work for me.
The boy fae scooby says:
Surrender!
What he also says, is that an imperial colonialist outfit that feels miffed about a former colony’s independence is entitled to use its nukes in the process of taking its colony back.
So why is he on here, continuously insisting that Scotland should be written as “scotland”?
Surely if we ever get Indy, London will be entitled to seize Scotland by force, backed up by the threat of nukes, if we don’t play ball. So says the boy fae scooby.
Why indeed.
I wonder what currency he gets paid in. I’m betting USD.
What next……? Vote SNP 1 and Scottish Labour 2 in 2026 ?
I often wonder what people mean when they say GRRB.
Do they just mean self-id?
It’s fine if doctors declare someone was born in the wrong body and should change sex but not it the person self-identifies as being born in the wrong body. There are a couple of articles today about the trans issue one by Tom Harris in the Telegraph and one by Kenny Farquarson in the Times.
I saw an interview with Richard Tice & Posie Parker before the GE and it looked as if they were in agreement vis a vis woman rights however in the end Reform were disappointing.
However if they choose to make an issue of ‘Gender Recognition’ & all that entrials in the Holyrood Election and 70% of voters are against gender recognition then I think they could be onto a vote winner.
I have my particular reasons for not voting for Alba but what reasons could independence voters have for not voting for Alba
Who are independence supporters voting for?
Sure we need better politicians but does anyone think we might need a better electorate?
“So 79.3% of Scottish voters (your figures)”
Figures which I have clearly explained where they came from in the post above. I did not make them up.
“were all there to be persuaded of the supposedly in-your-face obvious superiority of the goodies I listed earlier”
What goodies are you talking about? 79.3% is the approximate proportion of people who were registered to vote in Scotland at the last UK GE and who did not vote for Labour.
“quoting a figure like that just makes things worse”
Only for those who like to claim there has been a resurrection of Labour in Scotland. Those figures prove them wrong.
“Really difficult for me to comprehend, when there are so many just waiting to be persuaded, why it is that Indy can’t persuade them”
What exactly makes you think that a significant proportion of that 79.3% have not already been “persuaded” about independence?
That percentage includes the SNP, Alba, ISP voters plus the (according to the calculations of some) 700,000 ex SNP voters who did not vote at all this time because they were disgusted by the betraying devolutionist outfit that the SNP has become.
And don’t forget that there is a significant proportion of labour voters who also support independence. There are claims that the number of labour voters who support independence in Scotland could sit between 30 and 40% (Ross Colquhoun ; Ferret Fact Service).
“They want sane, rational, responsible, adult-lead, grownup government by smart people who can do joined-up thinking”
Isn’t that what we all want? But where is it? Take a hard look around you. Do you see anywhere in the entire Uk any “rational, responsible, adult-led, grownup government by smart people? Because I don’t.
Take a look at Starmer’s government. Do you think THAT is a “rational, responsible, adult-led, grown up government?
When one of his first policies was to preserve the rape clause and to suspend the subsidies that are allowing the elderly to keep the heating on, potentially increasing the number of casualties among them and the number of people who will have to be treated in the NHS as a consequence of living in a cold household, you cannot talk about a “rational” or “reasonable” government. It is a heartless, cruel government.
But when the PM then has the brass neck of accepting bribes from donors in the form of expensive clothes for him and his wife, you cannot talk about a “responsible” government.
When he accepted as leader of the labour party £4m from a tax haven-based hedge fund, you cannot talk of an “adult-led” government.
When he is engaging in warmongering nonsense and pushing to drag the state whose interests he is supposed to look after into the verge of a nuclear war for the sake of pandering to the wants of USA and helping them to maintaining the hegemony of the dollar, far from acting like a grown-up, he is behaving like a negligent lunatic.
When was the last time the UK had a grown-up in government?
I cannot even remember. I certainly do not consider somebody who squandered the UK gold stocks or somebody who lied to us claiming another country had hidden weapons of mass destruction so he could drag the UK into another of USA’s imperialistic wars as “responsible” “grown-up” or “rational”. I consider them as incompetent and a war criminal, respectively.
“Four fifths of the Scottish electorate don’t like our WM government”
It is not just that they don’t like England’s current government. A significant proportion of that 79% don’t want a UK government at all.
In any case, can we really call it “our” government when it is completely controlled by the interests of other countries?
I don’t think we can.
“Unless, they don’t want any of the wet dreams on offer here”
It seems to me that the only one who was offering a “wet dream” was that lying Anus Sarwar. What were his words?
Ahh yes: “Read my lips – no austerity under Labour”
And what was the first thing that that beacon of honesty Starmer did?
To outdo the tory austerity.
“Certainly would work for me”
Give us a real example of a government that has worked or will work for you. Because from where I am standing, a “responsible”, “rational”, “grown-up” government hasn’t existed in n10 for decades.
The last “rational”, “responsible”, “grown-up” government I recall in the entire UK was Mr Salmond’s government.
“They want sane, rational, responsible, adult-lead, grownup government by smart people who can do joined-up thinking.”
They certainly won’t find it in yoons.
Labour, who flip flops from one day to the next, is proving just as corrupt & toxic as the Tories. They’re not in the job five minutes but want to ask America if it’s okay to fire missiles (there’s that sovereign country we hear about. Can’t shit without permission from its handlers) Laying the boot into the most vulnerable over winter fuel & already on the take. More freebies & gifts than their fellow toxic predecessors. Britain, the one party state.
Good news tho. Those BRICS countries have a young population well advanced in technology & the modern world. Unlike the UK who is old & decrepit cause arseholes like you have argued for decades everyone is a scrounger except you & yer fictitious taxes. You’re Thatchers wet dream but oh deary, the UK is heading for a cliff. Speculation doesn’t pay the bills & it’s coming home to roost as the G7 is kicked in the nuts by the IMF. Things must be bad when even the highly biased IMF says yer shit.
“is that an imperial colonialist outfit that feels miffed about a former colony’s independence is entitled to use its nukes in the process of taking its colony back.”
U was an independent sovereign state. They threw it all away by sabre rattling on behalf of the USA. Now they can’t take a shit without asking America’s permission & it’s going to be that way for eternity now. America has also bought up all its farms & also gave out loans the UK is told to repay. That was nice of them wasn’t it? If it wasn’t nailed down Z has sold it. There’s trillions of minerals the Yanks just can’t shut up about too. R doesn’t need it. They already have plenty but this is what it’s all about – get into R & get their mitts on its energy & mineral wealth.
Who is this colonial power you speak of again? That’ll be the one with over 800 military bases & poking their noses into everyone’s business around the world.
From “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”, a talk given by James Joyce in 1907:
« […] Because, even today, the flight of the wild geese continues. Every year, Ireland, decimated as she already is, loses 60,000 of her sons. From 1850 to the present day, more than 5,000,000 emigrants have left for America, and every post brings to Ireland their inviting letters to friends and relatives at home. The old men, the corrupt, the children, and the poor stay at home, where the double yoke wears another groove in the tamed neck; and around the death bed where the poor, anaemic, almost lifeless, body lies in agony, the rulers give orders and the priests administer last rites.
« […] One thing alone seems clear to me. It is well past time for Ireland to have done once and for all with failure. If she is truly capable of reviving, let her awake, or let her cover up her head and lie down decently in her grave forever.
“We Irishmen’, said Oscar Wilde one day to a friend of mine, ‘have done nothing, but we are the greatest talkers since the time of the Greeks.’ But though the Irish are eloquent, a revolution is not made of human breath and compromises. Ireland has already had enough equivocations and misunderstandings. If she wants to put on the play that we have waited for so long, this time let it be whole, and complete, and definitive. But our advice to the Irish producers is the same as that our fathers gave them not so long ago – hurry up! I am sure that I, at least, will never see that curtain go up, because I will have already gone home on the last train. »
Kellie Jay Keen had tomato soup poured on her head at this afternoon’s Let women speak in Sheffield.
@ Cherrybank at 10.15. That is awful. Poor woman. Don’t tell me that the police have let the perpetrator get away with it.
Let me speak so I can tell Sarah that he got arrested & charged.
https://x.com/i/status/1837467395172012467
Sarah, a man is in police custody.
Further footage
https://x.com/i/status/1837500390859854049
Look at him running!
@ George Ferguson 3.41pm you said
“Reform UK forecasting today 15 MSPs in 2026.”
Where is their predicted vote coming from George,is it from the new Scots from engerland and the ruk who aren’t actually new Scots but dyed in the wool blood and soil imperialists and royalists who favour the orange order mindset and congregate in usually tory held areas, the white flight ones fleeing from the hordes
Or is it coming from normal working class people who are sick and tired of listening and watching perverts and deviants from ALL the political parties FORCE depraved policies down the throats of voters whilst celebrating biology deniers and mental cases strut their porn addled deviance openly
Or is it coming from people reacting to the WHITE,WHITE,WHITE racist speeches uttered by politicians elected in a majority white country
It appears amazing that reform have gained such a following in such a short time especially in Scotland but it also appears that people in Scotland have not properly investigated their policies, which are very english mindset policies ,fuck you Jack I’m all right
Or maybe they are sick of the rampant corruption of the tories and Labour and they think Nige is more honest Ha Ha Ha
When you consider reform’s voting percentages against ALBA and ISP it is clear something is going on, and ALBA and ISP are not competing with it
twathater
Ignored
says:
22 September, 2024 at 3:26 am
When you consider reform’s voting percentages against ALBA and ISP it is clear something is going on, and ALBA and ISP are not competing with it…
If the Compromised SNP is decoupled from Independence, and please God, let it be so, then the UK Establishment has a problem on its hands.
We Scots should brace ourselves for the usual onslaught of BritNat propaganda to elevate English arguments and agendas as relevant to Scotland. – Anything to keep Independence off the main agenda at least until the UK State has the dirt dug, and got its hooks into the “new” Indy campaign camp.
That isn’t the Reform agenda as such, but it’s the record they’ll play incessantly in Scotland regardless – UKIP style, Brexit style, Farage style, pro-Zionist style, anti Rus style, anti EU style, anti French tropes, anti German tropes, … all the usual BritNat bigotry and derision on the BritNat Bigotry Channel.
Scotland must be discouraged from dissent or independent thinking. You’ll get the Briddish agenda for breakfast, dinner and tea.
A young population? Wait, don’t Russia and China both have fertility rates well below that of the UK?
I think the only way to remove this mob in power is to hope their budget dose’nt get past then they would have to have an election next year then fight anither wan in 2026 As they struggle with their finances i dont think they can afford them
@Geri 9:42
Those South African shanty towns are indeed “well advanced in technology and the modern world”. I believe the Brazilian equivalent is the favela.
Maybe your neighbourhood is such a shithole you’d rate a corrugated iron shack with an open sewer running down the middle of the road as a step up!
Mind you don’t let it go to yer heid! Vow to never let your success and upwards mobility change you.
Don’t you ever lose your common touch.
Reform is the Tories with a new name.
Ukippers who were a protest group of Tories against membership of the EU.
Someone mentioned above that maybe Nigel will be favourable to independence LOL! Have you heard him? He thinks we’re too wee & too poor. One glance at the UK accounts & he’d discover that it’s actually the other way around.
Anyone remember the odious Tory MSP Michelle Ballantyne of “poor people shouldn’t be allowed to breed” fame? Holyrood was stunned LOL. Well she went to Reform. That’s the type of ppl they are.
Reform will be doing so well because it’ll not only have big backers but it’ll be rigged to get tories into devolved parliaments under a new name & I wouldn’t bet on them scrapping GRR – it’s right up their street to have the poor, disabled, mentally challenged & other undesirables willingly remove themselves from the gene pool. Its a win, win to them.
SCUNNERT?
A shot in the arm for cringing «Scots»?
https://archive.ph/59Cmp
Or the emergence of orange Unionism Militant?
The Brits love a nice partition.
Not that I follow UK politics closely, but my interest was peaked by the stushie around our Prime Minister’s, Chief of Staff, Sue Gray.
Gray comes from solidly working class, Irish diaspora stock, having grown up in London. Financial restraints prevented her going to university, and she joined the Civil Service straight from school. How did she end up joined at the hip to Keir Starmer? Well, she resigned from the Civil Service in 2023 to take up the position as his Chief of Staff while he was leader of the opposition. By exercising this highly unusual move, she was found to have broken the Civil Service code. Prior to this, her most high profile move was to produce the report into “Partygate” that was credited with bringing down Boris Johnson’s government. Johnson had exhausted his usefulness to the Permanent State by this point and was seen as an increasingly rogue and inept liability.
One curious note from Gray’s Wiki page; “Gray took a career break in the 1980s, a step described … as “strikingly unorthodox”.During this time, she ran the Cove Bar, a pub in Newry … during The Troubles, … Peter Caldwell, a former special adviser to several ministers, said it had been speculated Gray was a spy at this time, though Gray denied it.”.
It’s touching how much loyalty these senior politicians show to their Chiefs of Staff (handlers) when the going gets tough. All terribly redolent of Sturgeon’s visceral attachment to Liz Lloyd.
@twathater
I’ve been pointing out what seems like forever that brand new political parties and movements are springing up all over Europe. Some of them now hold the balance of power. People nobody had heard of three years ago are now calling the shots.
No reason whatsoever why Scotland should buck the trend. Unless the Scottish Exceptionalism some posters believe in actually works against Scotland’s best interests.
It’s a fundamental truism of politics. If enough people really want something, then they’ll organise, and leaders (inspirational believers and tag along carpet baggers) will appear.
If it’s not happening here yet, maybe change the record to something plausibly believable and factually relevant to ordinary, apolitical, fundamentally small ‘c’ conservative Scots.
In my opinion, another ten years of the same old guff won’t cut it.
Alternatively, I suggest what I am increasingly starting to think will happen. Scotland will split from the UK on the day that the ever increasing numbers of English immigrants decide it’s time to cut loose from the mother country. That will be the day England’s trajectory to third world shithole becomes undeniably obvious to all. Scotland will be the immigrant’s lifeboat, crewed by Jocks, with the immigrant English making up the officer class.
Not the worst fate for Scotland either, considering some of the alternatives. If that leaves the bulk of the ethnics permanently south of the border I for one will take it as a win.
No doubt Reform in Scotland are thinking along similar lines. If that’s getting traction with Scots, there’s some pointers to the messaging Indy needs to take on board.
Geri says
“mentally challenged & other undesirables willingly remove themselves from the gene pool”
Nnnnaaaaaawwwwwww!!!
Stay with us, Geri!
@Twathater 3:26am
There was polling analysis done yesterday in the regions of England to find out the likely cap on the Reform UK and it suggested 30%. The former FM Nicola Sturgeon always maintained a centre right party was capped in the low 20s in Scotland. So let’s call it a cap of 25% in Scotland. As our voting system is effectively a zero sum game when you reset the electoral calculator to take account of this type of vote. Reform UK can secure 31 MSPs in 2026. Hence my claim they could be the official opposition in Scotland. Big health warning on that. Lot’s of other variables to consider. Branchform for the SNP, new leader for the Conservatives. The arrest of the freefall of Scottish Labour’s vote by corrective action
And so on. I can’t account for the low polling for Alba or the ISP. Both on course for zero MSPs. As the event last Saturday showed, the Independence movement is very much alive but bobbing about like flotsam and jetsam.
I wouldn’t bet on them scrapping GRR
Bloody GRR!
GRR isn’t going to stop the likes of Mr Idul being the CEO of a rape crisis centre because Mr Idul can apply for a GRC which would legally make him a woman. GRA 2004 allows men to change sex.
Stop focusing on bloody GRR and take a look at the GRA.
Ach I’m away back to watch
‘Hundreds of paratroopers leap to mark daring WW2 offensive’
on BBC World News 24.
‘CPS twice did not prosecute Fayed over sex abuse claims’
“‘unprecedented’ rains in Japan’
‘Coal Mine Explosion in Iran’
It’s great it takes my mind off things like ‘the price of mince’ in Scotland or thinking about whether a tomato is vegan or non vegan.
Shitface
BRICS countries are more advanced. The whole reason their economies are booming. Across all sectors, science, engineering, technology & innovation & with a young workforce.
They weren’t so stupid as to deindustrialise because America said so & South/ Africa is on the rise. They got rid of apartheid & the last of the colonisers are on notice to fck off. They’re finally free of their overlords stealing their wealth so it can only boom.
& As for yer racist pish about South Africa, Transnet, a state owned logistics company, has just had a loan of nearly $290 million from the BRICS new development bank. No blackmail from the IMF required, no forced unwanted policies, no colonial overlord running it into the ground. That loan will update it’s aging infrastructure of its rail & ports.
That’s what happens when a country boots out it’s colonisers.
India & China are years ahead in technology too.
Little England will soon be the shanty town. It is already. It owns nothing, has an aging population & has dumped down young people. It has fck all the world wants as we seen by Air miles Hammond only returning with some duty free. After these latest two conflicts it’ll be a pariah state shunned throughout the world, not just for its persistent meddling but because BRICS members have bought apples from their lying, thieving, double crossing, shit stirring cart before & ain’t about to do so again. France has already been rejected for the exact same reasons. Colonialism is over. Countries are taking back control of everything, from their wealth being syphoned to making their own decisions without America & the band of leeches in the G7 imposing restrictions. Aren’t you pleased? BRICS doesn’t need a single thing from U or from little England either. Even Bojo, the gift that keeps on giving, opened his gob & informed everyone their wee empire was over if they didn’t get their mitts on Us wealth & ultimately Rs cause they have fck all of their own.
The guy who has never been on a ” doorstep ” promoting a Political Party – or any other cause – in his puff now proclaims what wouldn’t go down well in that scenario ; and guess what he declares would ? ….
yip , ALBA AVON calling ! people will be so blown-away by that companies extensive range of reasonably-priced cosmetics ( eg BOGOF Freeports & W.M faux-fur bench-covers ) they’ll snatch them out of the hands of Sales Reps like Andrex E : in the unlikely event the latter would condescend to actually interact with the legions of schemie deplorables in order to secure their support
What was that about ” unicorns ” ? ……
” There’s already a route to indy, via plebiscitary elections which only require pro-indy parties to sign up to the concept. ”
And what is the ” cunning plan ” to get these” pro-Indy parties to sign up to the concept ” ? spike their deracinated coffee with a few drops of distilled Tincture of Salmond Charisma
Will Andy Blink n you missed it be sent as ALBA’s Special Envoy to penetrate Jackson’s Entry ( politely ) @ GENDERZ-R-US HOUSE to bring about this historic concord ? Then jump on a diplomatic Space-Shuttle way out beyond the fringes of the known Universe to Planet Green ( there be * Trans * dragons )to secure the bizarre residents’ participation in this magic plan ?
If this histrionic mission is successful – as a ” vast majority ” of people who have no clue what’s going on and have never been asked/informed about anything are presumed to believe it will be – there will be no need to use that fuel-intensive Space Shuttle on the return journey : the Greenlings will offer the services of one of their fleet of Intergalactic Harpies to deliver ALBA’s intrepid space cadet safely back to Terra Firma .
Don’t miss next week’s episode of ANDY’S ADVENTURES IN SPACE – SEASON FINALE ( SPOILER ALERT ! ….Andy finally gets accepted as an ALBA candidate in the 2095 S.E )
Vivian O’Blivion
Spot on. Its amazing that she’s managed to collect a salary that’s way above a PMs too. How did a supposed lowly barmaid manage that I wonder?
CAPTURE THE STALE SCENT of ReformUK «Scotland region»
https://www.reformparty.uk/ayr-carrick-and-cumnock-constituency
https://www.reformparty.uk/dumfries-and-galloway-constituency
https://www.reformparty.uk/lothian-east-constituency
Most constituencies have «paper candidates»
A party that dare not show its face?
Cherrybank
Ignored
says:
21 September, 2024 at 11:42 pm
Sarah, a man is in police custody.’
I should hope so. Unfortunately if you hold certain beliefs then you are treated leniently by the law in countries captured by neo-liberalism. That’s why the cult members who assault women for arguing for their rights get off lightly. This cult and the social justice bullshit they imported from the US are useful to the ruling clique. I have no doubt these assaults on women will continue until they are treated seriously by the authorities.
I was reading up on the GDR earlier in the week, people such as Erich Mielke and Hilde Benjamin. Something I was not aware of was that people who were caught trying to flee East Germany and who were not shot in the process were sent to work in the uranium mines for the Soviet nuclear program.
The plebiscite route is a non starter.
We’ve already voted to end the union, like, five times already.
We’ve already been told to fuck off, like, five times already. Six if you include Brexshit.
What cunning plan is there for WM to take notice next time? None. Because eejits are so fcking dumb to continually play the game in a domestic setting where nothing changes & there’s no one to enforce it – just as the did during indyref, breaking purdah, so what? – who you going to cry too?
Westminster wont suddenly drop their last remaining colony & kiss its energy cash cow goodbye. They’re busy starting wars looking for more.
We’ve had ten years at WM. Achieved nothing.
Why would an independence party even want to sit there to be mocked & insulted on a daily basis? Its not anyone serious about independence.
Scotland needs to win seats in Westminster to be recognised Internationally to show intent for our exit. Its the ONLY parliament we need a majority but it does not have to attend. & It certainly doesn’t have to take up office space to argue the toss with English colonisers about English matters or their latest fcking drama that’d be feck all to do with us & only serve as a distraction. Cherry being a prime example of that in action.
Scotland doesn’t need a political party either. It can be 50+ independents which would be even better.
Thank you to all for you’re best wishes for hubby and myself,
He has always been a strong advocate for the Sovereign people of Scotland needing independence of their Country since his youth, he will appreciate all your best wishes. And likewise myself.
We spent some precious time yesterday holding hands and reminiscing. All of it memories of Scotland as he has never left the place of his birth, but he is undoubtably worldly wise, sometimes more so than those elites that think their educated because they have travelled and jetted around the world.
Inner wisdom cannot be bought or sold. nor found, it comes from inside oneself naturally. And the leading politicians of Scotland do not own one ounce of it shared between them.
Such is the desperation of the the Rape Crisis Scotland Chief -Sandy Brindley to keep her job – there have been many calls for her to stand down – that’s she offering a news rag, the phone numbers of rape victims, to bolster support for her to remain in the job – some victims are furious that she’s doing this.
Brindley MUST resign.
https://archive.is/wvW1P
RoS
Another plant on the payroll.
No woman with a moral compass would employ a man, with a fetish to dress up as a woman, at a rape crisis center.
Just think about that for a minute. Its preposterous.
& they certainly wouldn’t allow him to gob off to victims for them to “reframe their trauma” & undergo trans joy indoctrination bullshit or they’re all bigots. He obviously isn’t any kind of health professional. Questions need answered why he was given that job without a GRC.
She shouldn’t be forced to step down. She should be sacked with immediate effect & I’d even put her on a register of some sort to keep her the fck away from vulnerable women so she can’t jog off into another lucrative salary.
This whole episode was to undermine Scotland as being fcking nuts & the SNP walked right into it.
@Geri 10.41: “BRICS doesn’t need a single thing from U or from little England either.”
Yep, BRICS countries are sick of the American big stick with tiny carrot approach. Simply put, they only want prosperity and progress, whereas the Collective West under USA hegemony is in thrall to the insanity of American Full Spectrum Dominance everywhere, forever, which requires perpetual war to sustain its economic model of (proxy or otherwise) killing and asset stripping on a global scale (compare the British Empire).
There has to be a better way but the lunatics in the American (congressional) military-industrial complex are beyond delusional and just ain’t listening.
So it would be OK if he had a GRC?
This certificate would magically change him from being a man, with a fetish to dress up as a woman to being an actual woman?
“Basically I wouldn’t vote for Alba because they are supporters of Trans.”
Of course they’re not. Don’t be stupid. Craig Murray was not speaking for the party and has in any case subsequently adjusted his stance.
“Re SALVO ,SSRG & Liberation.Scot I too have raised the attention deficit from Stu and WOS on what IMO constitutes a very important educational and illuminating asset towards Scottish independence, his deliberate ignoring of anything to do with these people’s organisations almost makes me believe that in the words of his numero uno sycophant he thinks that it is cloud coo coo land”
I don’t talk about Salvo et al because (1) they’re not going to achieve anything – their arguments are interesting but could only work in the context of being advanced by a political party, and (2) they’re prone to spouting some wacko conspiracy shit about other topics that totally knackers their credibility. Simple as that.
@ Rev: Do you not think that a case can succeed through the UN? The Kosovo case did, I think.
And I’d be interested to hear about the other “wacko conspiracy” topics because I am keen for all avenues to independence to be pursued and don’t want anything to divert from the main aim.
And, Rev, of course I agree that having the backing of a political party [especially an electorally successful one] would be a huge help for Liberation.scot. Could you use your influence with a party to get such backing, please?
Stu
I’d also be interested in what Sarah has asked.
Regards the UN. Given that England has already denied a political party then I’d wonder if a special envoy/mediator wouldn’t be a possibility? A country can’t be held against its will & it’s not a territorial union. Surely the UK cannot sit at the UN security council while denying it’s partner an exit?
Tbh I believe the UN is so corrupt it’s just an American version of Westminster. One country rules the entire roost & just ignores everyone else..
Ruby
I didn’t see your comment until now.
“So it would be OK if he had a GRC?
This certificate would magically change him from being a man, with a fetish to dress up as a woman to being an actual woman?”
No. He shouldn’t be in this job because he hasn’t legally changed his gender at all. I thought self-ID had been shelved? If it has then why was he still allowed to continue being there?
@ Sarah and Geri
Silence…
Have you not noticed how uber selective Stu is with regard to the subject matter and who he responds to.
Kind of ridiculous for him to drop insinuations about Salvo spouting whacko conspiracy theories, then fail to actually state what they are when asked.
And for all the useful focus on genderwoowoo this site has produced over the years, there was virtually silence when it came to giving any credence, support, or promotion to the gender critical women that took the considerable step to stand as candidates in the recent general election.
Whining about how bad something is and wanting that bad thing destroyed, without putting much focus and effort into creating a positive to replace the negative just leaves a vacuum, and loss of yet more precious time…
That there is no apparent sense of urgency to address and deal with Scotland’s continuing and escalating predicament rather reeks of what Alf states on many occasions, in that the nationalist “leaders” can find themself rather too comfortable and are effectively assimilated into playing along with the coloniser’s overall schemes.
Genderwoowoo is a useful circus distraction diverting maybe jist a little too much of our time and attention away from the big money aspects of our Energy resources getting evermore exploited and stitched up on the QT.
Agree.
The genderwoo is a distraction. I said as such a few weeks ago much to Rubes annoyance. Far to much attention spent on that shit while Rome burns & the UK government has used that distraction & introduced all manner of nasty things to stitch up Scotland. Freeports to GB energy (which is no more than a hedge fund to benefit London) & their latest laws on censorship & detailing ppl just cause they feel like it.