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Wings Over Scotland


A Game Of Two Halves

Posted on May 03, 2022 by

15 years ago this week (today if you’re counting strictly by date, Thursday if you want to go with election days) the SNP came to power in Scotland for the first time ever. The media operating in Scotland is full of retrospectives and polls on the period, but as usual they’ve missed the real story, as a reader pointed out to us a few days ago.

So for old times’ sake, let’s do their job properly for them one more time.

When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister on 14 November 2014, she inherited a Scotland that was in pretty good health. Tuition fees, prescription charges, bridge tolls and hospital car parking fees had been abolished. The Tory bedroom tax had been mitigated. Council tax had been frozen for years. Popular major policies like free childcare, and free school meals for P1-P3 pupils, were in place. Crime, homelessness and hospital waiting times were at all-time lows. The SNP had just quadrupled its membership. Everything in the garden looked rosy.

Alex Salmond had become First Minister in 2007 by the narrowest possible margin, winning just one more seat than Scottish Labour – 47 to 46 – from 32% of the vote, and seizing the opportunity to form a government before the Unionist parties could process the shock and organise themselves.

Even if he’d secured the support of the two smaller parties in the Parliament – the Lib Dems with 16 seats and the Greens with two – Salmond didn’t have enough MSPs for a viable majority, so he had to govern as a minority in a very hostile environment, with 48 pro-indy MSPs (the other being the independent Margo McDonald) against 79 Unionist ones who reflexively obstructed the SNP at almost every step.

(The Greens at this point were still officially agnostic on the constitution under the leadership of Robin Harper.)

Almost immediately, the UK Labour government plunged the country into a massive financial crisis, putting the squeeze on the generous financial settlements that previous Scottish Labour executives at Holyrood had enjoyed from their Westminster colleagues during the “boom” years under Tony Blair.

Most political pundits expected the minority government to collapse in a few months or even weeks. But it didn’t. Even under such challenging circumstances, the Scottish electorate was sufficiently impressed with the competence and verve of Salmond’s administration that after four years they rewarded him with the only one-party majority in the Scottish Parliament’s history, returning a staggering 69 SNP MSPs on a share of the vote that had leapt from 32% to 45%.

Salmond delivered promptly on the primary duty of any SNP leader – an independence referendum. The Edinburgh Agreement was signed just over 17 months later, after a negotiation in which Salmond outmanoeuvered David Cameron into granting a two-option vote with the Scottish Parliament deciding the question, date and franchise.

Sadly, despite having taken Yes from a 70-30 deficit to neck-and-neck, the campaign ultimately failed, and Salmond resigned after losing the vote 55-45.

And then Nicola Sturgeon took over.

Sturgeon has now presided over five Scottish and UK general elections as SNP leader, the same number as Salmond (including his first in 1999). The graph of SNP support in those elections looks like this:

(It’s arguably even more striking if you only include Holyrood contests.)

Despite her reputation as an electoral asset, Sturgeon’s election record is almost entirely one of relative failure. The 2015 landslide was clearly Salmond’s legacy. Of the 60 months between the previous UK election and that one, Salmond had been First Minister for 54 of them – it was his record the SNP fought the 2015 election on, and nothing happened in those other six months that would justify Sturgeon claiming any of the credit for the result. (If you disagree, please name it in the comments.)

Since inheriting that golden chalice, Sturgeon has achieved nothing:

2016: lost Salmond’s majority at Holyrood

2017: lost 40% of the SNP’s MPs

2019: won back just over half of the ones she lost two years earlier

2021: failed to either regain the SNP’s Holyrood majority or increase its vote share – it actually fell fractionally, from 44.1% to 44%.

It barely needs saying that these failures came despite vastly more favourable circumstances. Sturgeon had resources and wealth at her disposal that Salmond could only dream of, thanks to the party membership quintupling between the indyref and the election of 56 MPs, with the resultant bonanza in both membership fees and UK government funding (on which the SNP is now wholly dependent to balance its books).

She had astonishingly inept opponents in Theresa May and Boris Johnson, where Salmond had had to contend with big beasts like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and (compared to May and Johnson, at least) David Cameron. She had Brexit, a weak Tory minority government, the catastrophically-handled coronavirus pandemic and stratospheric levels of Westminster incompetence and corruption handed to her on a plate to exploit.

Yet Sturgeon couldn’t parlay any of that into increases in support for either independence or the SNP. Salmond inherited a party on 22% of the vote and doubled it to 45% by the time of his last election in charge. Sturgeon has struggled for seven years just to stand still at that point, even as Labour and the Tories have torn themselves apart over Brexit/Jeremy Corbyn and the Lib Dems have collapsed into total irrelevance.

(From 23% of the vote in 2010 to just 7% in 2017, and from 62 seats in 2005 to 11 in 2019. We honestly have to Google to remember who their leader is now.)

In polling terms, stagnation is Nicola Sturgeon’s trademark.

But in governance terms her report card is far, far worse than that.

Good governance was Alex Salmond’s secret weapon. He realised that the key to winning people over to independence was to show them that Scots could do a good job of running their own country, and as shown above, he put that theory into practice – mainly by putting the best people he had available into ministerial jobs.

When Sturgeon took over, her first act was to overturn that policy and use genitalia as the main determinant of who should be in her Cabinet.

For some of us, that was the very first warning signal. Gender quotas are highly unpopular with the public, including women, because most people want the best person to be in the job, even if that means a given group is disproportionately male or female at any particular time. And based on its record since 2015, it’s very hard to argue that the Scottish Government has been putting the best people in the job.

Homelessness in Scotland, for example, fell in all but one year of Alex Salmond’s administration (there was a tiny increase in 2008). By the time he left office it had almost been cut in half.

But that improvement stalled immediately when Sturgeon took office, and the numbers have been rising again for almost all of her reign. They rose in 2016/17, rose again in 2017-18, rose again in 2018-19, and again in 2019-20, a cumulative increase of 10% since the 2016 Holyrood election.

(In this piece we’ll be mostly using stats preceding the COVID pandemic, which distorts everything for a variety of mostly-obvious reasons.)

How about health? The headline stat most beloved of the Scottish press in the last 15 years has been A&E waiting times. Under Alex Salmond the percentage of patients waiting more than four hours plunged from over 20% under the previous Labour administration to an average of around 7% (tending to fluctuate higher in winter and lower in summer).

When he resigned after the indyref in September 2014, the figure stood at 6.5%. Five years later it was regularly over 10% and had grown to a peak of 16% shortly before the COVID pandemic, before dropping due to lockdown restrictions.

It’s now more than twice that figure, at 34%.

The country has also seen spiralling numbers of drug deaths, setting a new record every year Sturgeon has been in charge. In Salmond’s last year in charge the figure was 613, but has now more than doubled.

(In fairness it’s a statistic that’s long been rising. Over the seven years of Salmond’s administration it grew by 35%. But in almost exactly the same amount of time under Sturgeon the increase has been 118%.)

And for the first time in recorded history, life expectancy in Scotland was falling (and inequality of outcomes widening) even BEFORE the coronavirus pandemic.

As for COVID itself, well, it’s probably best if we just don’t talk about the care homes scandal. After all, who could ever have foreseen that dumping thousands of untested hospital patients into the highest concentrations of highly vulnerable people in the country might be a bad idea?

And mindbogglingly, unbelievably, criminally, not just untested ones but also ones who were already known to definitely have COVID.

On education – something Sturgeon has repeatedly claimed is her priority – it’s difficult to compare figures, because the Scottish Government has pulled out of most international statistics programmes.

Possibly because the results in the ones it’s still in are bad enough already.

What we do know is that the vast “attainment gap” between rich and poor pupils was narrowed significantly between 2009-15 by Salmond’s administration, but as with homelessness, the improvement ended almost overnight when Sturgeon took over.

And the gap is now widening again.

The same pattern manifests yet again if you look at crime, the last of the main areas of devolved responsibility. After plummeting to a record low under Salmond (from 420,000 the year he entered Bute House to 256,000 the year he left it, a drop of almost 40%), crime is on the rise again since Sturgeon took over.

The rise is still slight, since Police Scotland have mostly been focusing their attention on women tweeting pictures of ribbons to bit-part soap-opera actors and arresting/imprisoning pro-independence activists like Manny Singh, Craig Murray, Mark Hirst and of course Alex Salmond himself for trumped-up non-crimes – good luck getting them to even bother coming out if you get burgled – but it’s a striking and abrupt halt to the previous trend of unbroken improvement.

(This site has also been threatened with imprisonment by the Crown Office for its reporting on the attempted fit-up of Salmond, and anyone associated with his legal or rhetorical defence has been subjected to sustained malicious hounding, as illustrated by the deeply suspicious circumstances leading to his QC being followed and video-recorded on a train discussing the case with an associate, with obedient Sturgeon mouthpiece Rape Crisis Scotland demanding his career be ended as a result.)

These actions are symptoms of a Scottish justice system which has now become so corrupt, broken and unaccountable that its most senior officer, Lord Advocate James Wolffe, was able to admit publicly to a “malicious prosecution” which put more innocent men through hell and will likely cost the public purse upwards of £100m, without having to resign or indeed suffering any sort of consequences whatsoever.

Even despite this, the Scottish Government has suffered a long string of humiliating legal defeats, from Named Person:

to the Salmond inquiry:

to the botched attempts to reform gender legislation:

and some over its pathological terror of any kind of scrutiny, transparency or accountability, and numerous attempts to either hide data or pressure scrutinising bodies into doctoring their reports to show the government in a more favourable light.

(The indyref legal advice will be fascinating if and when Sturgeon is finally forced to reveal it. Either she’ll have been told she has no power to hold a legal referendum, in which case she’s been feeding the Yes movement rotten carrots for years, or she’ll have been told she DOES have the power, in which case what the hell have we been waiting for?)

The phenomenon was most spectacularly demonstrated, of course, in the astonishing and almost countless obstructions of the inquiry into the Scottish Government’s attempt to imprison the former FM on false harassment charges.

And Salmond wasn’t an isolated case. Those in the independence movement who Sturgeon finds in some way inconvenient or threatening, but who haven’t yet been targeted by the police, have been attacked and removed or sidelined by the SNP instead, most visibly Joanna Cherry and Mark McDonald.

(Salmond and McDonald were both instantly ejected from the party at the first sniff of sexual harassment allegations, none of which turned out to be true, and were not readmitted after they were disproved. But loyal Sturgeon acolytes like Patrick Grady, Patricia Gibson and Derek Mackay not only stayed in the party, they were hugged closely to the SNP’s bosom even when they HAD been found to have done something wrong and creepy.)

Meanwhile SNP MPs and MSPs line up in the Unionist media – which Sturgeon has bribed with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money – to “declare war on” prominent grassroots independence supporters.

Fortunately, the rule of law is now optional in Scotland. Obeying laws you don’t like is now merely “encouraged” rather than being something you actually have to do.

This applies particularly if you’re an SNP council, such as in the case of Glasgow City Council who in April felt able to tell a Scottish court – which found the council had breached its duty to provide a suitable home for a family with an autistic child – that it simply had no intention of complying with the court’s order.

Or an SNP MP.

Or Sturgeon’s new best friends, the Scottish Greens.

Or Sturgeon herself.

Even the making of the law will soon be purely an SNP matter, bypassing the need for the involvement of the Scottish Parliament entirely.

(Objections to these proposals are by no means limited to Unionists or SNP critics. Even those among the party faithful with professional expertise in the subject are deeply uneasy about them.)

And if you DO still somehow manage to get yourself arrested and imprisoned (perhaps for one of the crimes that are still considered serious, such as misgendering or ribboning), you can just tell the police you’re a woman and at least get locked up in a nice women’s prison to serve your sentence, no questions asked.

Where the previous administration delivered huge infrastructure projects like the Queensferry Crossing and the Borders Railway essentially on time and on budget (it was also Salmond who signed off on the Aberdeen City Bypass in one of his last acts as leader), Sturgeon’s government has overseen a string of high-profile failures, like the children’s hospital that finally opened two years late at an additional cost of tens of millions of pounds:

and the still-unfolding scandal of the CalMac ferries, which aren’t anywhere remotely close to finished five years after being “launched” as empty shells with painted-on windows, in a striking metaphor for Sturgeon’s rule – the bridge of the Glen Sannox looks like one of the heavily-redacted documents the Scottish Government habitually return in response to FOI requests, hiding what’s really going on.

The ships are so far £150 million over budget, and all the key paperwork regarding the contract has mysteriously gone missing.

In every case they were warned well in advance, but ploughed on regardless, pausing only to set fire to the paper trail to cover their tracks.

(Which vanished rather like the £600,000 in “ring-fenced” fundraiser money, a story broken by Wings which those suddenly-loyal Unionist newspapers did their best to rubbish until it eventually got too big to deny.)

But the Scottish Government doesn’t like taking advice, particularly advice that interferes with its dogged attempts to foist Queer Theory on the nation’s children. It’s one thing to ignore the opposition or media critics, but quite another to ride roughshod over your own Children’s Commissioner.

Or your own very expensive legal counsel.

And of course, it cares for the views of the electorate even less (unless it’s an election day). Poll after poll after poll finds that voters of every age, sex, class and party are strenuously opposed to the SNP’s plans to redefine the entire concept of womanhood out of existence, but they plough ahead doggedly anyway, giving trans pressure groups lavish public funding and the keys to Bute House while refusing to fund or even meet women’s organisations who want to defend their rights.

(Incredibly, Sturgeon still has the nerve to issue regular pious proclamations about women’s rights, even as she refuses to say what a woman actually is. How can you possibly defend something you can’t define?)

It took two years of fighting the Scottish Government’s attempts to block Freedom Of Information requests before it was revealed that they’d risked hundreds of millions of pounds issuing guarantees to steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta.

Attempted rescues of Prestwick Airport and BiFab have also been costly failures.

A not-for-profit state-owned energy company has been abandoned.

The Scottish Government still hasn’t taken over numerous welfare powers that were supposed to come under its control years ago but which unfortunately fell into the remit of the serially useless but apparently unsackable Shirley-Anne Somerville.

Numerous other promises have been broken.

It’s also failed to implement the long-promised serious land reforms, to the extent that the party’s own conference rejected its watered-down draft bill – one of the first key policies authored under Sturgeon – in 2015.

Six years later nothing had improved.

But the views of the membership have long since ceased to be of any relevance to the party leadership, as documented in chilling detail here. (The SNP hasn’t even held an in-person conference since 2019, sticking to cursory and strictly stage-managed online events with no decision-making power despite every other party going back to proper conferences months ago.)

And most recently we’ve learned that the Scottish Government can’t even conduct a simple once-a-decade headcount without making a complete balls of it.

(Are we still allowed to say “balls”? Maybe “gender-neutral reproductive units”.)

The figures are brutal, and a 15-year measuring period tells a very misleading story. The truth of the matter is that Scotland has had two governments since 2007, and they have been not at all alike.

The first was a successful, efficient, competent one led by Alex Salmond, which grew steadily in popularity as it improved outcomes in almost all devolved areas AND managed to secure and hold an independence referendum during which support for Yes increased by 50%.

The second had an entirely different character. Assembled on ideological grounds rather than ability, it has undone and reversed most of the improvements made by its predecessor, failed to secure another referendum despite multiple ballot-box mandates, shattered the unity of the Yes movement and failed to increase support for its supposed raison d’etre by so much as a single point in seven years.

It’s like asking someone “Do you think this has been a good football season for Celtic and Dundee?” and only offering them a Yes/No answer.

The public have noticed the performances detailed in this article. In 2015, shortly after Salmond’s departure from Bute House, 51% of Scots said they were satisfied with the Scottish Government’s handling of health, with just 22% dissatisfied. And in 2017 a Panelbase poll found that 45% of voters thought the NHS had improved because of the Scottish Parliament while just 20% thought it had gotten worse.

But when the company asked an almost identical question last week, those numbers had flipped in just five years under Nicola Sturgeon – just 22% of Scots now think the NHS has improved in the last 15 years while 56% think it’s getting worse.

The poll also found that just 24% of Scots believe education has improved under the SNP, with 46% saying it’s worsened, and a similar level of dissatisfaction with the direction of travel on crime.

Observant readers will have noticed that these figures mean that – at most – only half of SNP voters think the party has governed well under Sturgeon.

Previous polls, however, have suggested that they’re willing to overlook her administration’s long catalogue of hapless domestic failures, brazen corruption, obsessive secrecy, calamitous mistakes like the bargain-basement sell-off of wind resources, obsession with wildly unpopular policies, the creation of scores of nepotistic quangocracies, growing amounts of sexual sleaze, the destruction of party democracy, and sometimes just sheer facepalming farce.

(Although even then, 17% of SNP voters thought she’d recorded no significant achievements at all in her entire time as leader, and a mere 11% thought her domestic record worthy of accolade.)

The reason for that forgiveness is because they inexplicably perceive that she’s in some way making progress towards a second independence referendum.

When they finally realise that they’ve been fleeced and taken for mugs on a second indyref too, there may yet be a bitter reckoning.

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448 to “A Game Of Two Halves”

  1. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    A heartbreaking tour-de-force from Rev Stu.

    The last journalist left, still reporting on the true state of Scotland.

    Please, pretty please with sugar on top, come back Rev Stu.

  2. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Brilliant, forensic analysis – well done! Wings at its best.

  3. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    NOBODY does it better Mr Campbell .

    Lacerating post , the * dope * on the Flatline Fraud and her intellectual toddlers laid-out for any sentient being to gasp in horror at . A legacy of * almost * unparalleled failure .

    How anyone could vote for this mob of fckn useless – worse that useless, dementedly destructive – clowns is beyond rational understanding .

    Great to have back all guns blazing Stu

  4. Elizabeth Hagan
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank you Rev for an excellent & informative article, albeit depressing. What a litany of disasters. How anyone could vote for them is beyond me. Keep up the good work.

  5. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Rev, thanks for depressing me even more. Written evidence of an absolute washout.

  6. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    It reads like an epitaph for the SNP. It certainly should be.

    The danger is that if Scottish voters don’t wake up and do something, it could be an epitaph for the movement as a whole. 🙁

  7. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    ” great to have YOU back ….”

  8. holymacmoses
    Ignored
    says:

    This is a long, fat catalogue of failure.
    All recorded and all accurate.
    Can Sturgeon survive?
    Has there been any response from the police regarding Murrell and the Money?

    Thanks for this Mr Wings. There’s enough meat for weeks of posts.
    I pray Alba has reasonable success tomorrow and I must remember not to be defeated if we don’t do as well as I hope.

  9. Pete
    Ignored
    says:

    Brilliant, sharp and detailed analysis as always. Hope you have been enjoying your break, but I for one would welcome someone genuinely holding this fakery of a government to account!

  10. Tom Kane
    Ignored
    says:

    There has been a coup at the SNP for 8 years… At least. And they have won the day so far.

    Sympathies with every person who still trusts Nicola Sturgeon and are genuinely wheeshting because of a sense of how close we are to Indy and how much we could lose by complaining against the one rule of law that is Nicola’s

    But for the mendacious, nothing but contempt.

    What an article, Stuart.

    Respect.

  11. Jan Cowan
    Ignored
    says:

    This list will surely convince the remaining Sturgeon followers to open their eyes and recognise her poor attempt at leadership.

  12. Awkward Westie
    Ignored
    says:

    Yet again proof you are one of the few true journalists left. Only thing I think you down played oor Nic’s biggest achievement … the way the announcement of “there will be a referendum next year” coincides so perfectly with an upcoming election, its now a more accurate way than atomic clocks for setting you watch

  13. Tartan Tory
    Ignored
    says:

    Thanks for ruining my morning Stu. Nothing in isolation there that I didn’t already know, but when you see it all stacked up in front of you…. 🙁

  14. Marie Clark
    Ignored
    says:

    Bang on the money as usual Stuart, but very depressing. When you think of where we were just a few years ago to now, it would make you weep. The most useless bunch of chancers that’s what the SNP has become, aand the rest of them sitting there struck dumb, feart to say this is nonsense, we see you as well, your time’s coming.

  15. David Beveridge
    Ignored
    says:

    Pretty depressing when you see it all laid out like that. Sadly, it still won’t get through to the Cult of the Selfie Queen though. She could boot fck out a guide dog puppy on live TV and they’d manage to find an excuse for it.

  16. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    I have thought of Sturgeon as a turncoat for some time now and i never thought i could be more convinced. This article of true journalism from a bloke with a laptop proved me so wrong.

    Stagnant Sturgeon, like a festering cesspit.

  17. Frank Gillougley
    Ignored
    says:

    I spoiled my last ballot and left Scotland about a year ago and live in Hungary now. The bureaucratic machinations of that wee colony grind on and on and on…

  18. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Brilliant round-up I’ll be saving this one to show the die-hard Sturgeonistas, and adding the disgraceful attempts by the Lord Advocate and the Scottish government on blocking Martin Keating.

  19. Zander Tait
    Ignored
    says:

    Never before in Scotland, has one solitary person destroyed so much with such colossal incompetence and corruption and yet remains responsible for nothing and accountable to no-one.

    Nicola Sturgeon and the nuSNP have darkened the soul of Scotland and made our country a most unpleasant place in which to live.

    Never reward corruption with your vote.

  20. Reginald Vernon
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank you for creating this painstaking analysis of successive failures of Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure as FM and SNP Leader. Would that a Scottish newspaper publish it in full, or that a benefactor send it to every household in Scotland as an act of public charity.

  21. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    A bleak but accurate performance appraisal of the First Minister by Stu. I have the notion that only electoral failure will dismiss the First Minister. A chance coming up this Thursday. Already ranked the SNP last and second last. The Greens third last. Working through the rest of the list. I have an Alba candidate standing. So that’s the numero uno sorted. I only hope that John Curtice polling figures for Alba are underestimated (2 to 3%). We need electoral change and fast.

  22. Robert Dickson
    Ignored
    says:

    Forensic as ever

  23. Vivian O’Blivion
    Ignored
    says:

    “Ah, but the 2015 Westminster landslide led to an influx of middle class humanities graduates that had previously gravitated to Scottish Labour and Nicola had to cope with that.”
    100% Naw!
    The middle class humanities graduates were welcomed with open arms by Nicola. They are the power base that has allowed her to systematically destroy any internal, democratic checks and balances, any barriers to absolute, Stalinesque authority.

  24. Nally Anders
    Ignored
    says:

    The enormity of Sturgeon’s betrayal on Independence and incompetent governance laid bare. It just looks deliberate, doesn’t it?
    Her only success has been the £3m bribe to the Scottish print media. Inspired actually. The cultists still refuse to hear a word against her.
    Truly excellent work Stu. You’ve been sorely missed.

  25. Guybrush Threepwood
    Ignored
    says:

    What a devastatingly brilliant piece. Unfortunately, you still have sycophants like Indy Car Gordon Ross and the intellectual giant that is Indy Truck Davy, who maintain there will be a referendum next year.

  26. gordoz
    Ignored
    says:

    I know Im old fashioned but I still prefer to read the truth ‘bad as it is’ ….

    The National has drifted into the SNP camp rather than focussing on the truth !

    Why Stu is so badly missed by the majority …. Christ the web is boring & uninteresting without him.

    Well done sir !

  27. Will Harvey
    Ignored
    says:

    it seems females abusers are not a concern to the SNP as shown by Cllr Jennifer Adam-McGregor who was in court last week for battering her husband; this has been known about since Feb but kept quiet until it was too late to drop her as a candidate (and she’s the only SNP candidate in her ward = so almost assured of re-election); no doubt all this is helped by her brother (George Adam) being a Scot Gov minister and Sturgeon sycophant – he’s even posted on twitter photos of helping her campaign for re-election – despite knowing of her impending court case. Below is the report from the local paper – apparently no national wants to touch the story…Council candidate denies assault
    April 26, 2022 | Paisley Daily Express (Scotland)
    Page: 1 | Section: News
    163 Words

    Read News Document
    Focus
    A Paisley council candidate is set to face trial over claims she assaulted her husband.

    Jennifer Adam-McGregor,-who is currently up for reelection in the Paisley’s North East and Ralston ward appeared at Dumbarton Sheriff Court yesterday where she faced charges of assault and behaving in an aggressive manner.

    The 43-year-old is accused of assaulting Jason McGregor between February 1 and 2 this year at a property in Campbell Street, Alexandria in West Dunbartonshire.

    Adam-McGregor, of Steeple Street in Paisley, is alleged to have struck Mr McGregor on the head, dug her nails into his wrists and thrown a hairbrush at him which struck him on the neck to his injury.

    She is also alleged to have behaved in a threatening or abusive manner on the same dates by shouting, uttering threats of violence and acting in an aggressive manner.

    She has pled not guilty to the charges against her.

    The Paisley woman will return to the Dumbarton court on May 18, when a trial date will be set.

  28. Milady
    Ignored
    says:

    A long, dispiriting, but accurate summary of where we are in Scottish politics. We have missed journalism like this so much.

  29. Bruce Buckstaff
    Ignored
    says:

    Feels like us true Yes supporters are fighting on two fronts. Unionists and the brainwashed Sturgeon followers. Not good!

  30. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    gordoz says:

    3 May, 2022 at 10:42 am
    The National has drifted into the SNP camp rather than focussing on the truth!

    Er, The National was ALWAYS a pro-SNP rag – its entire business model was from the start largely reprinting The Herald in a format that erased anything critical of the SNP to ensure every SNP run council would have it in their libraries and those braindead drones in the SNP ranks unable to tolerate reading anything contrary to the party line would not feel “triggered” enough to cancel their subs.

    It was basically a means by Newsquest of justifying keeping The Herald alive amid cataclysmic readership levels and SNP run councils cancelling taking it in due to “budgetry constraints”.

  31. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Sadly Mark Boyle that is absolutely true. Had it really been an independence supporting paper it would have appeared long before the referendum . It was just an opportunistic wee paper set up in an attempt to help ailing sales in the Herald.

    I am happy to say I have not bought a newspaper for many a long year and I still cowk at the thought that public money has been spent on keeping them afloat.

  32. Politically Homeless
    Ignored
    says:

    I’ve long held the view that we actually owe the achievements of the Scottish Parliament, including under the SNP, to the architects of devolution themselves. Any devolved government elected by Scotland would have done things like resist tuition fees, for example.

    What the SNP have brought that’s different is a tribal culture of governance masquerading as a civic nationalist project. They aren’t real nationalists, as can be scene by the Pretendy Neverendum. Nor are they a mature political party. They don’t believe in such basic stuff as civil liberties or the rule of law. They believe in a kind of New Labourism tailored for Scotland, plus Getting Out The Vote through demagoguery and progressive dog whistling. We could have Scottish New Labourism in a less toxic form with LABOUR.

    Alba meanwhile has failed. I campaigned for Alba in a minor way, and the simple fact is – Salmond is not a draw with the general public, yet internally Alba is his personality cult. Alba has too many kooks in the attic with a Putin fetish. It has too much quasi-SSP flotsam and jetsam. It’s not a fresh start and it’s not a credible political machine.

    So the independence movement needs the hard reset of a Labour Holyrood government to get its shit together and to be forced to think about a proper reboot. With Starmer bolstering Labour’s fortunes in Westminster, this is a real possibility. I hate Labour, but it’s like methadone to the SNP’s heroin.

    Ps. The SNP is not an anomaly in terms of neoliberal totalitarianism among governments during COVID. Anyone who wants to critique the SNP’s record on civil liberties will have to get realistic about the fact that there have been “agendas” that came along with “the pandemic.”

  33. Confused
    Ignored
    says:

    This is the kind of one-sided diatribal polemic which demonstrates the need for HATE to be cancelled in a democracy with freedom of speech. The shoots of truth need the glyphosate of censorship to thrive.

    Women-with-penises are being killed right now because of this.

    And a degree in Gender/Queer/Critical Racist theory is ample qualifications for any job.

    Dame Nicola Sturgeons commitment to the new world order of Neoliberal Trannyism and better jobs for wee brunettes has been faultless.

    I for one look forward to another 15 years of nuanced success by the Stonewall Noncing Party.

    Dorothy Bain does NOT own a broomstick and Lady Dorrian does not dance wi the de’il at midnight in greyfriars.

  34. fillofficer
    Ignored
    says:

    devastatingly sad but true, stu

    unfortunately, the uninformed voters still think NuSNP have independence as a priority, so i can see she/her being quite happy on friday morning, (thanks mainly to boris) which will give her some justification despite the harrowing performance as shown above

    betrayal at every level

    the dream will never die
    cos it’ll always be just a dream

  35. Ian
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank God for some f@*#ing sanity on this.

    Hope this can be the return to more sanity among these pages, even if just a round-up every other week or so.

  36. panda paws
    Ignored
    says:

    Well as others have said it’s not like you didn’t know all this if you were paying attention, but when you see it laid out like that…

    Frankly if she isn’t in the clutches of British Intelligence they should dedicate a statue to her as she’s done their job for them. Never has anyone been gifted with better circumstances to bring self determination for Scotland and made such an utter mess of it.

  37. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    Excellent, really excellent, article proving the disaster that is government and all public/civic institutions under Sturgeon/Murrell.

    I would love to think that The National’s, and every other editor and journalist in Scotland, are reading this, admiring it and swearing to do better themselves.

    Because we need the truth shown in order to get Scotland out of this hell hole. It’s not even difficult! Just state our constitutional existence as a nation and be blowed to what Westminster says. It is our right, after all.

  38. Black Joan
    Ignored
    says:

    Here we see exactly why Imelda tried to ban people from reading Wings. And why she doled out cash to the Yoon press.

    We miss you, Rev. You are simply the best at this stuff.

  39. Caroline Wilson
    Ignored
    says:

    What a sorry state of affairs the SNP has become and, far more egregiously, what damage the SNP government is wreaking on Scotland’s public services, institutions and people. It hasn’t only squandered gilt-edged opportunities to advance independence, its recent record in government has actively undermined it. Is it salvageable under different leadership? Maybe, but we’d be looking at a long haul and not under the anointed successor.

  40. Alan Mackechnie
    Ignored
    says:

    The problem for me is this: I wanted independence because I believed we could do something different- maybe a nordic style socialist government. But what is the point of independence if this is going to be the standard of government?

  41. robertkknight
    Ignored
    says:

    I used to find that, come elections, I’d subconsciously mutter the phrase “f***ing w****rs” under my breath whenever I saw a poster for either Tories or labour, with a regularity that would’ve had me mistaken for a sufferer of tourettes.

    Never thought that seeing a poster for the SNP would have the same effect, but it does…

  42. Patsy Millar
    Ignored
    says:

    As John Main says, ‘a tour de force’. Thank you for all the hard work you have put into this even though it makes heartbreaking reading.

  43. Tartanpigsy
    Ignored
    says:

    Mind boggling to see that all in one place.
    I truly despair

  44. Allan Moffat
    Ignored
    says:

    I regularly speak to current SNP members, I could not remain and left due to just some of what you detail but they all say that they will give her the benefit of the doubt til 2023, the doubt is over and as you devastatingly lay out here Stu there is absolutely no benefit to this farcical SNP Leadership lasting a single day more for the sake of Independence they must go…

  45. David Lyon
    Ignored
    says:

    ScotGov not only discharged untested patients into care homes, they discharged patients who had tested positive into care homes.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54719827

  46. A. Bruce
    Ignored
    says:

    That’s a tour de force Stu.Just a pity that most of Scotland won’t be reading it.

  47. DJ
    Ignored
    says:

    Well done Stu. Scotland owes you one – big time! It’s always darkest before the dawn. The only way is up. Choose either…or both. But it’s Alba all the way for me…

  48. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Tremendous though it is to see Rev Stu doing what Rev Stu does best, I can only add to the litany, because in my opinion, Sturgeon’s greatest failure, where she has done the most incalculable damage to Scotland, is in her unconstitutional capitulation to Scotland’s Brexit at a time when Scotland had an emphatic, sovereign mandate to collapse both Brexit and the Treaty of Union.

    Independence was there for the taking in 2016, and any ratification plebiscite held in 2016-17 would have ridden the same wave of optimism which returned 53 out of 56 SNP MP’s to Westminster.

    Scotland would have stayed in Europe and taken back it’s Independence in 2016, and ratified it democratically in 2017. Sturgeon arbitrarily threw it all away.

    All of that process, from start to finish, is Sturgeon’s greatest failure, and I for one, would welcome her impeachment as an unwelcome addition to the 1707 Parcel O’ Rogues.

    I believe that Constitutional incompetence is her greatest failure, but her most despicable failure is her trumped up witch hunt and conspiracy against Alex Salmond; in all probability the father of an Independent Scotland.
    May she burn in Hell for doing that.

  49. Chas
    Ignored
    says:

    It will be very difficult for any SNP supporter to counter your in depth analysis Stu.
    The problem is that the majority will not even see it, read it or understand it.
    Nothing good will happen in Scotland until Sturgeon and her acolytes are removed.

  50. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    A. Bruce says on 3 May, 2022 at 12:20 pm: “That’s a tour de force Stu. Just a pity that most of Scotland won’t be reading it.”

    My thoughts exactly! Was thinking too that it would transfer nicely into an A5 booklet, no idea how many pages would be needed though.

  51. Rev. Stuart Campbell
    Ignored
    says:

    “ScotGov not only discharged untested patients into care homes, they discharged patients who had tested positive into care homes.”

    Cheers, I meant to put that in but got distracted and forgot. Edited in now.

  52. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    Rev Stu says: “Cheers, I meant to put that in but got distracted and forgot. Edited in now.”

    And don’t forget, as RoS says further up, about them pulling out of the Martin Keating Court case.

  53. Donald Raymond
    Ignored
    says:

    Remember when Sturgeon was almost forced to resign in 2010? It was widely expected that she would have to resign because of supporting a fraudster. She scraped by at the last minute because she delivered a good speech in parliament in her defence, and because Salmond risked his own neck to back her. How might history have been different had she been forced to resign and someone else emerged as Salmond’s successor.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8510133.stm

  54. Rev. Stuart Campbell
    Ignored
    says:

    “So the independence movement needs the hard reset of a Labour Holyrood government to get its shit together and to be forced to think about a proper reboot. With Starmer bolstering Labour’s fortunes in Westminster, this is a real possibility. I hate Labour, but it’s like methadone to the SNP’s heroin.”

    I can’t disagree with most of your analysis, but I think the chances of Starmer being elected PM are slim, and the chances of Anas Sarwar being elected FM about a thousand times slimmer than that. Scottish Labour is an indescribable mess and needs rebuilding from scratch with none of the hopelessly discredited, inept clowns currently infesting it, and with a brand-new position on the constitution. They don’t have to be pro-indy, that wouldn’t be credible, but they do need to be pro-democracy to remove the roadblock on them ever winning back SNP votes.

    (That said, I reckon there’s at least a marginal chance of them taking back Glasgow City Council on Thursday, because the SNP really have made a monumental pig’s arse of Glasgow and it’d only take four or five seats changing hands to make Labour the biggest party again. I think it’s a long shot but at least possible. Nationwide, though, absolutely fuck-all chance.)

  55. Alan Mackechnie
    Ignored
    says:

    Dont forget that an independent Scotland led by Nicola would be a war with Russia by now: https://www.itv.com/news/border/2022-03-09/sturgeon-nato-shouldnt-rule-out-no-fly-zone-over-ukraine

  56. Arabs for Independence
    Ignored
    says:

    Great work albeit very sad and troubling reading.

    SNP/Greens have also delayed their much heralded Deposit Return Scheme for plastic bottles and containers. A system that has been in use in Norway for 10+ years.

  57. And Spouse
    Ignored
    says:

    Journalism is alive and well, “great piece” just doesn’t do it justice. (Didn’t get email notification by the way)
    Do we need the power of the SNP party?
    We certainly don’t present leadership. Who would be the best leader to shake it from its lethargy? Is it at all possible that a new leader can take charge , can anyone, with the present lackies in place, crack open the door, is it possible it can happen?
    Or do we just vote ALBA, ISP ………..

  58. P
    Ignored
    says:

    Excellent article Rev
    Got to be one of your best

  59. Calum
    Ignored
    says:

    Wow, I was aware it has been a shitshow under she / her but hadn’t realised it was this god awful.

  60. Dave M
    Ignored
    says:

    An utterly excoriating analysis, Stu. It’s probably just as well for the nuSNP that nobody else is credible or electable, otherwise they’d be out of office. Alba and the other independence parties (I’m excluding the SNP and Greens from that category on the grounds that they are clearly not interested) need to establish themselves electorally, quickly. We must have a viable alternative to that rotten party.

  61. Anne Johnston
    Ignored
    says:

    The best journalist in Britain for me…
    Read this and know why they tried to destroy his career and why the staggering ignorance of the Scottish people will, yet again, elect this disgrace of a woman/party on Thursday.

  62. Dave Llewellyn
    Ignored
    says:

    I sincerely hope that you wont be doing a piece like this to commemorate the SNPs 16 th anniversary on power but rather that you are writing an up to date expose on why half the cabinet are no in jail for a, sex offences d fraud c, perjury .Feel free to add to the list .

  63. Platinum
    Ignored
    says:

    Salmond’s only failure as First Minister was not thinking more about the succession.

  64. paul
    Ignored
    says:

    I think we can all forgive these bumps in the road when we reflect on the successful importation of an eighty year old Finnish policy ;the baby box!

    I think many of that generation will look fondly back on the one time they had a place of their own.

    The repeated examples of intransigence contrast markedly with the meekness exhibited before May, Johnson and just about everyone else beyond her patronage.
    A mere ‘shush’ has always been enough to send our FM scuttling back to the bunker.

    I have never doubted that she desires independence with the same breathless excitement she last felt on her wedding night.

  65. ronald anderson
    Ignored
    says:

    Same sentiments as Tartan Tory at 9.45 .

    Stuart we need U to get back on the horse U put the shitters up the Snp every time U write a piece .

  66. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    The most shocking for me is that they fecked up that Sevco fiasco and gave away 100 million to a bunch of charlatan’s that only came north to asset strip the Rangers. Still those clowns at Ibrox can’t see past their unionism and expect us to foot the bill for that Murray and co FOR THEM TO BE run them into the ground -spending well above their means, it’s truely shocking to fall for that scam.

    Outwith the big 2 ( well one and a quarter) as gers are mince that 100 million could have keep the other clubs going for a few years and developing our youth teams and even gave some to rugby clubs too.

    And no one – ABSOLUTELY NO ONE GOT FIRED!

    The only man with any honour in that 20 odd year period was Fergus McCann who came in with his own money ,got rid of the spongers in the White’s, Grants and others who’d been sponging off Celtic for decades. Mc Cann built them a stadium and got them on a good financial footing and walked away an honorable man unlike that crook Murray who lead the Gers to destruction and cost us the tax payer 100 million +

    And how many new independence votes do you think that has secured us if we get another referendum ? Zilch I tell yi zilch. Most of that lot are still true blue bigots with ties to Westmonster and will never vote for Indy. I know of only a few of them who support Indy.

  67. Frequency Modulation
    Ignored
    says:

    A brilliant post. Just brilliant. Thank you.

  68. Cuilean
    Ignored
    says:

    SNP MPs and SNP MSPs should be suffering imposter syndrome, en masse.

    My biggest criticism of Alex Salmond, is why, of why, Alex, did you nominate Sturgeon as your successor? We all know Alex is loyal to a fault and also puts Scotland before any personal feelings, so he won’t be drawn into un-statesmanlike debate, in strak contrast to the despicable Sturgeon/Murrells.

    Does anyone ‘in the know’ know if Alex regrets (he surely must) his successor?

    No-one has a crystal ball and we now have the gift of hindsight to know Sturgeon’s ability to dissemble, dissimilate & deceive are second only to the Britnat media, but I would love to know Alex’s innermost views, now, of his successor. As an honourable man, I suspect I may only read these views, if I live longer than Alex.

    But Sturgeon cannot hide forever her side-lining of Indyref2. If he ever doubted Sturgeon, Alex certainly could never have suspected (none of us did) he was nursing such a vile viper to his bosom.

  69. Black Joan
    Ignored
    says:

    I have tweeted the link to this exceptionally important article several times today. On each occasion a Twitter message appeared saying “something went wrong. Don’t fret. Try again” But trying again produces another message informing me that I’ve already sent that tweet and inviting me to delete. Is this some sort of sneaky attempt to silence the still banned WoS? According to my profile the link to the article does actually appear after this tiresome procedure.

  70. Jez Carroll
    Ignored
    says:

    Well Done Rev Stu
    To see it all pulled together in one article is truly disheartening but a very necessary read
    Am away from home for a week and almost contemplating not nipping home to vote on Thursday but think this will make me lol
    Great work as always

  71. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Rev.
    Excellent journalism as per usual.
    The two contrasts between NS and AS leadership of Scotland as first ministers could not be more stark.

    I hope Alba get all the council seats their up for.

    Regardless of the out come of this election , this is now up to the Scottish people where ever you are.

    I am with the growing amount of popular independence supporters that think the grass roots movement will have to by pass politicians and corruption using Salvo.

  72. willie galbraith
    Ignored
    says:

    Excellent piece.

    You need to get back in the saddle……..
    Well you don’t….WE need you to get back in the saddle.

  73. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Black Joan (3.40) –

    That palaver always happens when you try to Tweet link to here. Maybe it’s meant to be off-putting, I don’t know, but as you noted, it does ‘publish’. (What I”ve noticed is that it then hangs around at the top of my feed, as though it’s still waiting to be sent.)

    No matter – the link is getting out there and this post is causing a stir.

    😉

  74. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    Arabs for Independence says on 3 May, 2022 at 1:11 pm:

    “Great work albeit very sad and troubling reading. SNP/Greens have also delayed their much heralded Deposit Return Scheme for plastic bottles and containers. A system that has been in use in Norway for 10+ years.”

    Reading that i was reminded of Sturgeon’s pre-election promise if re-elected they would introduce special laws to protect our SNHS. But i guess that one is still blowing in the wind somewhere around the North Pole too?

  75. Derek Aitken
    Ignored
    says:

    I apologise if I ever doubted you in the past.
    This is the true journalism Scotland needs.
    We desperately need you back.

  76. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker.
    Our SNHS surgeries are nearly all private according to the head SNHS service i phoned last week. They just work along and with whats left our SNHS.

    From the horses mouth. Check all you’re local surgeries.

  77. Astonished
    Ignored
    says:

    As the poster said ” Your country needs you “.

  78. Georges
    Ignored
    says:

    Excellent, factually based analysis Rev.
    It’s shameful that in depth analysis like this would never appear in the Scottish (or British) mainstream media.
    I’d suggest that anyone having a problem with this article would do well to remember the old adage: if you have a problem with the truth, the problem is not the truth, the problem is you.
    Currently, the biggest boon to independence is arguably the Tory govt in Westminster, while the biggest boost to the Union is the SNP administration in Edinburgh.
    Mr and Mrs Sturgeon currently earn almost £300k between them for maintaining the status quo. Why risk that pursuing independence?

  79. Ian
    Ignored
    says:

    Westminster pissed away the first energy lottery win. Now the SNP are happy to do the same with renewables. The US will get around 18 times as much per gigawatt as the Scottish Government will from recently announced auctions.

    So instead of £700 million it could have been around £12.6 billion. But then a ludicrous auction limit would have to have been removed for it work how an auction should.

    “This is perhaps one of the biggest, most significant days in terms of Scotland’s energy and industrial future that we’ve had in a very, very long time. Really exciting.” – Sturgeon on Sky News 17 Jan 2022, or “Truly historic” according to her in the National. How very SNP.

    https://archive.ph/SUsXE

    https://archive.ph/HAB8u

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/25/us-offshore-wind-auction-in-ny-nj-raises-a-record-4point37-billion.html

    Even the National wasn’t impressed.

    https://archive.ph/UCAKO

    Yet still this farce just goes on and gets worse.

  80. Graham Lamont
    Ignored
    says:

    Just as Blair looked deep into the camera and said “I think people can see I’m a pretty straight guy”, which came of course just after the scandal involving donations to the Labour Party, Nicola meanwhile says “judge me on my performance”.

    The Rev has just laid out forensically her performance to date.

    There’s nothing more to be said. She’s every bit as much of a phoney and a liar as Blair was. End of.

  81. Alison Ross
    Ignored
    says:

    Depressing seeing it all laid out like that! I really wish more people would wake up to the facts and stop blindly supporting Sturgeon.

  82. Shauny Boy
    Ignored
    says:

    Some of your finest work, Rev.

  83. sam
    Ignored
    says:

    Stalling life expectancy is happening across the UK, not just in Scotland and is to do with UK government’s welfare policies. Such policies increase health inequalities.

    The socio-economic policies of the UK contribute also to homelessness in Scotland as well as “deaths of despair” due to drug and alcohol abuse and suicide.

    Broadband provision is reserved to the UK.

    I share the view that the SNP government has not performed well under Ms Sturgeon, particularly with women’s rights but it ought to acknowledged that the political landscape is probably a bit more difficult these past few years.

    I am not a member of the SNP or a supporter.

  84. The friendly sassenach
    Ignored
    says:

    Superb rigorous analysis

  85. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Black Joan says:
    3 May, 2022 at 3:40 pm

    I have tweeted the link to this exceptionally important article several times today. On each occasion a Twitter message appeared saying “something went wrong. Don’t fret. Try again” But trying again produces another message informing me that I’ve already sent that tweet and inviting me to delete. Is this some sort of sneaky attempt to silence the still banned WoS? According to my profile the link to the article does actually appear after this tiresome procedure.

    Ian Brotherhood says:
    3 May, 2022 at 4:48 pm

    @Black Joan (3.40) –

    That palaver always happens when you try to Tweet link to here. Maybe it’s meant to be off-putting, I don’t know, but as you noted, it does ‘publish’. (What I”ve noticed is that it then hangs around at the top of my feed, as though it’s still waiting to be sent.)

    No matter – the link is getting out there and this post is causing a stir.

    There is a way around this, and that’s by using a link shortening site (free ones only) – which makes it harder for the SNP “Ministry Of Truth” trawling Twitter for links to sites from “dissentors” and auto reporting it (esp. if said “dissentor” is already Twitter banned).

    If you want to be super evil, change to a fresh shortened link every couple of hours, which means even if someone does go to the bother of making a manual complaint in stating that it is linking to a “banned site”, it still needs to get through Twitter’s auto process, and the moment it notices the link in the complaint does not match the link on the post, it will auto-bin it as having been “already dealt with”.

  86. James Barr Gardner
    Ignored
    says:

    Dare to be honest and fear no labour.

  87. Proadge
    Ignored
    says:

    This is what real, fearless, evidence-based journalism looks like. And it is a rare, precious, beautiful thing. Up there with Assange and Pilger.

  88. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Rev: I’ve just read the Wikipedia entry for Neale Hanvey. It looks very like a hatchet job.

    As you appear to have some spare time could you take on editing such Wikipedia entries, please? 🙂

  89. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    https://gettr.com/post/p185g3zb7d9

    I didn’t have problems connecting today but I did yesterday. (Mon 2nd May) I got the ‘Failed to connect to database’ message.

  90. Saffron Robe
    Ignored
    says:

    Very impressive work, Stuart, which reads like a litany of shame. Any self-respecting politician would be embarrassed by such an exposé but the SNP have no self-respect left. They were elected to bring about independence, not to sneak through divisive and damaging minority interest legislation for which they do not have, and have never sought, a mandate. Neither were they elected to bring about our destruction by mindlessly aping English/British imperialist foreign policy. They have become, like Sturgeon herself, an abomination.

  91. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    OOFT.

    Missed you.

    Meanwhile, just for folks info, here out east, we are getting a very good reception for Alba round the doors… and I am not making that up.

    To that end, I’ll be coming back (after a wee break to recover) after Thursday, and am looking for any and all succinct (and accurate) references to Scotland’s true energy wealth – I’ve seen lots of ‘bits’ all over the place, but it needs collating and then boiling down to pithy slogans.

  92. Karen
    Ignored
    says:

    Fantastic. Census fiasco brings it all together – Angus R swanning about at New York Tartan Day instead of getting a grip of his day job; many people in Scotland still with shit broadband; Scottish civil service functions outsourced to useless private agencies, on the cheap but actually very expensive ; and people saying “what’s the point of answering questions truthfully when you can choose your gender rather than your biological, well understood and binary sex”?

  93. velofello
    Ignored
    says:

    Rev., keep the pressure on please, Sturgeon has to go asap/

  94. Black Joan
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank you very much @Mark Boyle at 6.45pm and @Ian Brotherhood at 4.48pm. Very interesting. As we are dealing with utterly malign forces, being super evil in return looks like a good way forward.

  95. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Black Joan (8.30) –

    By strange coincidence, I was twirling my thin moustaches and laughing as I read your comment there.

    😉

  96. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    If you were asked to list the following parties in order of which you dislike most what would it be?

    SNP
    Greens
    Tories
    Labour
    Lib-Dems

  97. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker at 8.11: “good response to Alba on the doors..”

    That is great news, Daisy. I am getting cautiously optimistic that Alba will win several seats due to school toilets/GRA/independence. There is publicity through Alba stalls/leaflets, social media, schools loos petitions/activity so where those issues are in-ward the Alba people have a chance e. Inverness, Nairn and Elgin.

    Also Dundee – Alba standing in every ward and Dundee is a Yes city. And Neale Hanvey’s constituency – folk voted for him personally so it should help Alba candidates.

  98. Alastair Naughton
    Ignored
    says:

    Depressingly accurate! What a damning indictment!

  99. Clavie Cheil
    Ignored
    says:

    We haven’t got a chance of seeing an Independent Scotland as long as Sturgeon is FM. We haven’t got a fogy of winning any Indy campaign with her as FM. She is at best a liability and at worst an out and out ("Tractor" - Ed).

  100. Shug
    Ignored
    says:

    I notice the BBC giving great coverage to the Natalie mcgarry case
    What’s the chances of such a case going back 4 years just appearing in court the week of an election.
    Is this just a coincidence

  101. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Clavie Cheil (9.47) –

    By coincidence, just read your comment there only minutes after writing to a friend that I don’t remember despising any individual politician as intensely since Margaret Thatcher in 79.

    I believe that her behaviour goes well beyond mere treachery. The effortlessness of her lying (see the Loose Women episode from just the last fortnight?) suggests something else. Some kind of narcissistic complex, sociopathic. So, ultimately, she doesn’t give a fuck really about the SNP, or Alex Salmond, or mutilated adolescent lassies, or Scotland in general. She’s above all that ‘parochial’ stuff, like Merkl tearing up the wee paper german flag, knowing full well the cameras were on her.

    Sturgeon has used her time on the world stage (so far) to tear a wee paper Saltire into pieces, scattering it bit by bit in the glare of post-indyref global media.

    Goodness gracious me – if you were a conspiracy theorist you might think she was doing it intentionally, to discredit the entire independence movement by enforcing unprecedented levels of incompetence, corruption and sheer brassneck, to make World Government look attractive.

  102. Dave M
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ruby

    I would struggle to order that list

  103. Graham Adamson
    Ignored
    says:

    Superb analysis. Christ, I’ve missed you.

  104. christine
    Ignored
    says:

    Many thanks Stuart for an outstanding article, a very welcome return of your sorely missed investigative journalism which strikes at the dark heart of Sturgeon’s deviant, fetishistic and dangerous ideology. She is a narcissistic sociopath whose shitshow of governance has been aided and abetted by the bunch of fuckwits surrounding her.

    Everything she touches turns to shit. I am especially concerned and enraged by the untold damage and harm she is inflicting on our children’s health, well-being and safety. People who abuse children are cunning and manipulative, specialists in deception.

    Wake up Scotland FFS and get rid of her…your children need you.

  105. Effigy
    Ignored
    says:

    After reading all that and watching Boris lie his head off about helping the poorest I’m willing to try methadone myself.

    Between a rock and a hard place at the bottom of a car crusher!

  106. TenV56
    Ignored
    says:

    That is a dull yin if a read Stu. If didn’t know was SNP you were talking about, I think it was New Labours’ history! Are they feckin up on purpose? Emboldened by repeated mandate votes so think we would never turf them out? It is as if they are deliberately undoing all progress we made as a country. Anything AS achieved must be undone? Is this her’I have time on my side’ game play? What a legacy she is leaving..and she will leave, one way or other! Spiteful & Vengeful.

  107. Joe
    Ignored
    says:

    You are far too good a writer/journalist to be hiding your light under a bushel. You and Wings Over Scotland are needed more than ever and not doing what you do consistently is letting the passengers of the gravy train off of the hook. You need to get back on the horse full time until Imelda is gone along with all her sycophantic acolytes. There isn’t another journalist working in the UK today that can do what you do.

  108. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Is it Robert & Clavie Cheil who don’t understand the the STV voting system or is it me.

    Why would someone after reading the above article not take the opportunity to hurt the SNP if there was a way to do that?

  109. Cherrybank
    Ignored
    says:

    Shug at 10.12pm. This is the second time Natalie McGarry has faced these charges. The first case ended in legal wrangling.

  110. stonefree
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ian Brotherhood at 10:13 pm

    TBH Sturgeon has passed Thatcher, I thought MT was her target in that NS wanted to surpass MT on the road to infamy Congrats she did.
    NS equals Narcissistic Sociopath , I have been using that description for about two and a half years , I have reset it to “Off her F-ing Head”
    There is a recent post ,this afternoon
    https://archive.ph/8VoHX
    Which suggest to me , the reset is accurate and she has lost any notion to carry on, leaving five plus million up shit creek
    Probably the last six years she has known

    Your last paragraph, I believe that is truly the case

  111. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    Re my last post on leafletting for Alba… I started out cautiously optomistic when the response was so much better than in May HR election…. now we’re talking chalk and cheese in terms of response. We shall stay cautious though.

    And … ovrwhelmingly we are sowing the seeds and establishing the Alba party.

    The Yes Movement’s getting its jet skates on… the game shifter is the fuel bills.

    Depth of ignorance re Scotland’s real energy wealth… and by theft, Britain’s ‘borrowed’ wealth is huge. We must address that as soon as possible.

  112. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    @ James Che on 3 May, 2022 at 5:26 pm:

    I wouldn’t doubt it for a second, James!
    __________
    Read this, folks, and see where ‘Sturgeon The Betrayer’ gets her standards from. Anyone still on Twitter? Slap this onto Sturgeon’s account: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/michael-gove-smear-freedom-of-information-clearing-house/

    “More than 4,000 openDemocracy readers responded to a survey on FOI. Readers crowdfunded public opinion polling, which showed that 87% of respondents said they were much less likely to vote for a party with a record of government secrecy.”
    __________
    And this is quite a good read, it doesn’t mince it’s words on Douglas Ross.

    “Ruth Davidson has been replaced with Douglas Ross, the school bully who never grew up. With the contradictions of Brexit making her project untenable, Davidson’s attempts at open, liberal Unionism have been swapped for divide-and-rule Toryism and her charisma swapped for the wimpish bigotry of a ‘leader’ who’ll join in any pile-on going, but flinch if you look him in the eye.”

    And this:

    “Ross carries the charm of a debt collector and the grace of an over-promoted middle manager who fawns to the boss and picks on his subordinates. He styles himself as a leader but is, in reality, a cowardly sidekick to Boris Johnson’s project, running up and down the sidelines hoping for some attention. A potential first minister has been traded for a startled rodent.”

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/scotland-local-elections-conservatives-lose-polls-douglas-ross-snp/

  113. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    Here’s another addition to Stuarts article above. On the day he put this article up on WOS the BBC in Scotland was reporting that Police Scotland numbers are at their lowest in 14-years (since 2008). An “SNP Spokesperson said Police numbers have always fluctuated.”

    LOL! LOL! And feckin LOL again! No wonder that “spokesperson” doesn’t want their name attributed to that quote. And that shower want our votes AGAIN? Not fricken likely! Fool me once and all that.

  114. twathater
    Ignored
    says:

    TBQH THIS article needs to be published widely along with the comments , an idea would be for ALBA and ISP activists going round the doors and standing at party tables to have copies of this at hand to hand out or even a blown up version in banner form to show VOTERS the real clusterfuck that sturgeon has and is presiding over and the damage she is doing to our country and people

    A literary masterpiece sir get back on the saddle

  115. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    On the theme of adding other SNP failures to the list. The Institute of Economic Affairs have stated that the flagship SG minimum unit pricing of alcohol has had little discernible impact on health outcomes. Other studies have indicated little impact on crime levels. This policy has cost the Scottish economy 270 million. So expect the SG to double down and increase the minimum unit price from 50p to 65p. It’s aw oor fault.

  116. Robert Louis
    Ignored
    says:

    An excellent, although somewhat sad summary of Sturgeon in government. This is what happens when you run your party and government by dogma rather than rational analysis.

    In Edinburgh we see the same, with our streets (roads AND pavements) falling to bits, yet the council spending millions on silly grandiose ‘schemes’ and road painting. Day by day, they close off some new streets, making folk in Edinburgh wonder if all the roads were built just for cyclists and NOBODY else! In Edinburgh, they don’t repair the roads, the just paint them – or block them. Most folk I speak to (other than from the green loony fringe) are sick of it. Bad decision after bad decision in Edinburgh. And soon, only the wealthy and tourists will be able to go into Edinburgh city centre. And then they wonder why city centre shops are all closing down. If you can afford a TESLA, or are a tourist living in a flat with airbnb, and annoying the hell out of Edinburgh residents (whilst destroying whole city centre communities) Edinburgh is open, but if you are one of the many Edinburgh folk who don’t have such cars (or live in a stair so can’t charge them), then Edinburgh city centre will be closed to you.

    Come the election, I will vote ALBA (who unlike the SNP, actually WANT independence). I know many folks say I should vote for other supposedly pro-indy parties as well, but I am herartily sick of Labour, the SNP and especially the GREENS in Edinburgh.

    Folk are struggling with rising costs, yet the loony councillors want to start a congestion charge and ‘low-emission zones’, so only rich folk and tourists can come to Edinburgh. Jeez, sniff the freaking coffee and all that. Soon no Edinburgh folk will actually live in Edinburgh.

    Honestly, if the tories were not such lying, low-life, corrupt, inept, Scotland-hating, England-worshipping scum, I’d vote for them, in a desperate attempt to get the roads of Edinburgh unblocked, the silly road ‘schemes’ stopped and some actual freaking common sense restored in the council.

  117. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Seconded Robert Louis but apply it to Glasgow. We have the same dreadful roads and pavements but pie in the sky idiotic policies aplenty.

    I have one vote and it will be going to the ALBA party – the rest will be blank.

  118. ian foulds
    Ignored
    says:

    A work of art.

    Thank you.

  119. ian foulds
    Ignored
    says:

    Dorothy Devine says:
    4 May, 2022 at 7:46 am
    Seconded Robert Louis but apply it to Glasgow. We have the same dreadful roads and pavements but pie in the sky idiotic policies aplenty.

    I have one vote and it will be going to the ALBA

    No – local elections – vote till you boak

    ALL Indy parties first and all unionists at the bottom.

    7 candidates – 3 indy 4 unionist 5 places

    3 Indy – first, second, third

    2 unionists – fourth, fifth (most likely not Tory or Labour)

  120. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian Foulds , why? I see no merit in any other candidate apart perhaps from one who has responded and taken action on behalf of a friend – he is a Conservative.

  121. robertkknight
    Ignored
    says:

    Remember…

    Tomorrow, if you’ve no ALBA or ISP candidate in your area, and all you’ve got to choose from are Unionists or Devolutionists, go in with a sharpie and mark up your own ballot thus…

    ALBA PARTY |1|

  122. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker says: 4 May, 2022 at 3:00 am

    And this is quite a good read, it doesn’t mince it’s words on Douglas Ross.

    “Ruth Davidson has been replaced with Douglas Ross, the school bully who never grew up. With the contradictions of Brexit making her project untenable, Davidson’s attempts at open, liberal Unionism have been swapped for divide-and-rule Toryism …

    Complete nonsense about Ruth Davidson, who has been canonised by the stupid (hello, Daily Express!) just because she revived Tory fortunes up north but no one bothered to ask the price.

    Davidson played the Orange card – trawling the lodges and the Rangers fanbase for troops and allowing any human rubbish into the ranks while appealing to the lowest common denominator at a time she knew full well too many of the proles’ priorities was the saga of the Ibrox tax dodgers rather than real life issues (such as her party making them pay the brunt of “austerity”). There was even orange used as trim on the Tory leaflets – and that wasn’t about trying to mop up the surviving Lib Dem vote!

    The result in my area alone we have a former BNP activist from the days of John Tyndall as a councillor and another overly and openly fond of “flute bands”, loyalist parades and the rest of the paraphernalia of the master race of the mediocre getting onto the council – with predictable results for the hapless idiots who voted them in (ie. useless).

    Ross inherited that mess, and the backlash from angry voters as a result. He may be an SFA lickspittle dickhead, but he’s having to clean up the mess created by a snollygoster so unprincipled she sought exactly the sort of elements whose ideal world would have saw her strung up from the nearest lamppost for being a lesbian.

  123. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Dorothy Devine says: 4 May, 2022 at 8:28 am

    Ian Foulds , why? I see no merit in any other candidate apart perhaps from one who has responded and taken action on behalf of a friend – he is a Conservative.

    Then your vote – with gritted teeth – should go to the Tory and any others you feel like voting for second, third, etc. Leave the rest blank.

    Your primary concern in any council election with multi-member wards should be first ensuring the return of those known to be decent councillors to make sure at least one gets home.

    Anyone who remembers the bad old days of “one councillor one ward” will know exactly why when you had Labour troughers elected in perpetuum on the neanderthal vote who never did a stroke except collect enormous inflated “expenses” claims.

    After that, fine to go with party or ideological considerations.

  124. ScotsRenewables
    Ignored
    says:

    Stu, I have a guy called Alex Macleod over on the ALBA RISING FB group who is willing to take your bet for £1,000

    Do please take it, Alex is a bit of an arse and needs reminded of that.

  125. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    ian foulds says:
    4 May, 2022 at 8:16 am

    Dorothy Devine says:
    4 May, 2022 at 7:46 am
    Seconded Robert Louis but apply it to Glasgow. We have the same dreadful roads and pavements but pie in the sky idiotic policies aplenty.

    I have one vote and it will be going to the ALBA

    No – local elections – vote till you boak

    ALL Indy parties first and all unionists at the bottom.

    7 candidates – 3 indy 4 unionist 5 places

    3 Indy – first, second, third

    2 unionists – fourth, fifth (most likely not Tory or Labour)

    Are you counting the SNP as an Indy Party?

  126. X_Sticks
    Ignored
    says:

    Jeezo, how I miss Wings. Still the best journalism on Scottish issues we’ve ever had. No wonder the Nicoratii were determined to shut it down.

  127. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    robertkknight says:
    4 May, 2022 at 8:30 am

    Remember…

    Tomorrow, if you’ve no ALBA or ISP candidate in your area, and all you’ve got to choose from are Unionists or Devolutionists, go in with a sharpie and mark up your own ballot thus…

    ALBA PARTY |1|

    What good will that do? Count being done by computer. Computer not programmed to recognise anything other than numbers. I’m sticking with ‘voting till I boak’ I can’t understand why others aren’t. Looks to me as if there are a lot of people who are all talk and no action.

  128. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    X_Sticks says:
    4 May, 2022 at 9:46 am

    ….. No wonder the Nicoratii were determined to shut it down.

    “Were” determined? I see in Rev Stu’s GETTR link that the above article was under attack by a malicious bot within hours of posting.

    Now who’s M.O. is it to disrupt and “cancel” opinions and truths which they don’t want to hear?

  129. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    I hate the SNP/Greens more than I hate any Unionist party.

    If I had a choice between only Unionists & SNP/Greens

    the SNP/Greens would still be last on the list.

    The lesser of two evils between the Tories & the SNP/Greens would be the Tories.

    I’m pretty sure there are a lot of women in Scotland who feel the same.

    If you want to know why I hate the SNP/Greens you could start by reading the above article.

    https://archive.ph/ShwsT

    Scottish Tory manifesto backs women-only spaces in schools and swimming pools

  130. robertkknight
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby

    “Scottish Tory manifesto backs women-only spaces in schools and swimming pools”

    So does the SNP, it’s just they won’t define what actually constitutes a “woman”.

    In other news…

    I’ll deface my ballot paper how I see fit, thank you, and if some Sturgeon acolyte clocks it when they sift through the spoiled papers, even better. It’s my choice and my own two-fingered salute to Nicoliar et al. I’ll slit my wrists before a Yoon gets my vote, and the same for the SNP whilst she/her is on the scene.

    “Voting till I boak”? WTF is that when it’s at home?

  131. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    With regards commenting.

    We have had trouble commenting and responding to wings for the last six months or so,

    Almost identical as above,

    We send our comment and it seems to disappear, so after ages and ages waiting, we press send again, this then says this message was already sent,
    a few moments later both appear simutainiously

    Any other problems noted by anyone else,

  132. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    Mark Boyle says on 4 May, 2022 at 8:58 am: “And this is quite a good read, it doesn’t mince it’s words on Douglas Ross.”

    “Complete nonsense about Ruth Davidson,”

    Of course it is, couldn’t agree more Mark, that much is obvious. Still doesn’t deflect from their 100% accuracy on DRoss. The piece was obviously written by a ‘Mooth’ sycophant.
    __________
    Ruby says on 4 May, 2022 at 9:55 am:
    “I’m sticking with ‘voting till I boak’ I can’t understand why others aren’t. Looks to me as if there are a lot of people who are all talk and no action.”

    So you want folk like me to further empower Unionist parties in Unionist strongholds such as my area? Unionist parties who all support the *exact same* anti-science guff as Sturgeon. I’ll be voting 1 for the Alba candidate and nothing else. My vote gives absolutely no support to the Unionist parties or their SNP/”Green” doppelgangers. And the so-called “independents” in my Unionist stronghold are all Unionist-types.

    Your ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in areas such as my Unionist stronghold only serves to further empower Unionists, which will add greater difficulty in getting the indy message across. An area where the SNP are likely to be on another hiding anyway. I’ll certainly not be empowering the Unionists any further. Had i lived in another area then i just might have had a different strategy to help bury Sturgeon & Co. But as things stand the best strategy in an area such as mine is to vote: ALBA 1, and nothing else.

    There is another very important factor at play here, just in case you didn’t notice. For a concerted voting plan to work it has to start being promoted a lot sooner than just a couple of days from the actual vote. Like every other time we just are not as organised as we should be on matters such as this. There are folk out there who still don’t even know if they have an ALBA candidate and the vote is *tomorrow*.

    All talk and no action indeed. Which reminds me, i seem to recall you prioritising wasting your time on combating Main & Ellis on here over the past few weeks. Never seen you push for everyone to get organised. Mind you, i’ve not been that into politics recently so haven’t been on here as much as i use to be so maybe i’m wrong and i missed your constant organisational attempts? Yeah! All talk and no action indeed.

    PS: I did, though, notice your constant pushing (and rightly so) against Sturgeon’s ‘freak franchise’ but how each area should vote? Not so much!

  133. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    @ James Che. on 4 May, 2022 at 10:58 am

    James, if it’s any consolation i’ve been having terrible time-delay problems recently when trying to submit comments on here. Not had that in a very long time. Frustrating is putting it mildly. Convenient or conspiracy? LOL! 🙂

  134. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    Has anyone else’s area witnessed a significant reduction in the political guff coming through the doors? My area is usually inundated with Tory & LibDem stuff but so far only one Tory leaflet full of the usual tripe & lies a week or two ago. Don’t know what to read into that.

    Normally by this time i’d have had several Tory, a couple of LibDem and SNP and one Slabber leaflet by now but i’ve had ZILCH! Never witnessed this before. Is it due to confidence? Lack of funds (Not likely) or some other reason?

    Hopefully some volunteers have decided to secretly bin rather than deliver their guff or they’re a bit short on the ground for volunteers too embarrassed to associate themselves with their party of choice? LOL! Mind you, the post may bring an avalanche later today.

  135. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker says:

    All talk and no action indeed. Which reminds me, i seem to recall you prioritising wasting your time on combating Main & Ellis on here over the past few weeks. Never seen you push for everyone to get organised.

    You are probably correct. Over the past few weeks there were only a handful of people posting here and they were more interested in the Ukraine war than anything to do with Scotland. I gave up trying to combat Main & Ellis and trying to convince Ellis who is a founder member of Alba to talk about the upcoming council election and not to drone on about the Ukraine war and call people names. I am not a member of any political party just an ordinary voter with opinions. I don’t see myself as a political activist so I won’t be trying to defend myself against your accusations that I’m a pretty poor activist.

    Although with regard to the upcoming elections I think I posted more here than anyone else over the last few weeks.

  136. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    robertkknight says: 4 May, 2022 at 10:51 am

    Ruby

    “Scottish Tory manifesto backs women-only spaces in schools and swimming pools”

    So does the SNP, it’s just they won’t define what actually constitutes a “woman”.

    If the SNP backs women’s only spaces in this election, it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

    Same goes for the Tories, whose candidate in my area couldn’t find space to mention it in his leaflet, but did have time to have a picture of himself outside Wallace Primary School, just to give a wee wink to the local bigots that he’s a “good Proddy” (and oh, “just happens” to be using orange and purple on his leaflets) – so he can fk right off.

    I’ll deface my ballot paper how I see fit, thank you, and if some Sturgeon acolyte clocks it when they sift through the spoiled papers, even better. It’s my choice and my own two-fingered salute to Nicoliar et al. I’ll slit my wrists before a Yoon gets my vote, and the same for the SNP whilst she/her is on the scene.

    “Voting till I boak”? WTF is that when it’s at home?

    Also known as the “Stormont Gambit” – after voting for the candidates you want, you vote for the rest in the order of least to most offensive – this is to stop anyone altering your ballot by filling in the blanks to increase their favourite candidates’ chances.

    Ruby does have a point in that putting all the candidates in some sort of order at least keeps your ballot in the running until it has been allocated to an elected councillor.

    The trouble is if you don’t know (or care about) any of the other candidates, it is a complete gamble: you could just as easily be partially culpable for letting a complete radge in as much as you would be if your ballot was eliminated. Unlike buying things in the shops, the wrappers candidates come in where local elections are concerned are no guarantee of the quality contained …

  137. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    “How the STV voting system works and the best strategy…”. James Kelly’s blog today…

    I hope it will make sense to me in the current circumstances of being unable to vote for one of the SNP in my ward on the grounds that she STILL thinks that self-id causes no problems. Sigh. And I don’t want to rank the Unionist parties.

  138. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Rev stu.

    I heard that the voting system is being altered and some changes being made to the electorial sight.
    Is this to be privatised,

    Not sure we have heard correctly,
    If we have, would this mean none of our votes for any election are worth the paper we put an X on.

    Do you heard anything down south?

  139. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    STV voting – best strategy? See James Kelly’s blog today.

    @ Dorothy Devine at 08.28 – I am hoping James’ blog will help me decide what to do in my ward. There is no Alba/ISP in my ward so at the moment I can only vote for an Independent who has agreed my views on school toilets and gender education and possibly an SNP who thinks gender decisions should wait until people are 18 years old, and that only surgically altered men should have access to women’s spaces.

  140. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker says:
    4 May, 2022 at 11:29 am

    Has anyone else’s area witnessed a significant reduction in the political guff coming through the doors?

    I posted earlier about my experience with political guff. A letter, a leaflet and ‘do not disturb type’ notice hanging from my outside door handle all from the SNP on the same day.

    This is the type of thing I am referring to:

    https://tinyurl.com/mr2d57hm

    Only it’s big and yellow with SNP guff on it.

    This doesn’t seem right. Can the SNP attach something to the outside of your house.

    Anyone else get one of these?

    There are a number of homes in the area still with these things hanging from their door handles difficult to know if they are claiming they are SNP voters or if they are away on holiday.

  141. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Well I had the SNP lot round ma wee bit the other day. They came nae where near ma door. They kept looking over et ma door but must have been put off chapping because I had Alba stickers over ma windie, courtesy of ma wee Alba lass coming roon nearly two weeks ago with them.

    Shame that.

  142. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    robertkknight says: 4 May, 2022 at 10:51 am

    Ruby

    “Scottish Tory manifesto backs women-only spaces in schools and swimming pools”

    So does the SNP, it’s just they won’t define what actually constitutes a “woman”.

    You are correct! But like trans women Robert the SNP can only fool some of the people some of the time.

    What I am suggesting now is that interviewer start to ask the likes of Sturgeon & Starmer ‘What is a trans woman?’

  143. christine
    Ignored
    says:

    I have 12 candidates for 4 council seats in Leith Walk ward. I will heed Stuart’s advice to list all 12 candidates in order of preference. The Alba Party candidate Joe Smith will be number 1, natch, the 2 SNP candidates will be numbers 11 and 12, with the Green following close behind at number 10, easy-peasy so far. Sturgeon keeps telling us she wants to be judged on this that and the next thing, nothing but posturing rhetoric, cynically dressed up as a promise of accountability. This is an opportunity for me to vote against her and she makes me want to boak every time I hear or see her.

    The rest are the usual Unionist suspects, with a couple of more interesting ones….Communist Party and a Womens Equality Party. The simple truth is to do your civic duty and vote, in my humble opinion.

  144. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    WOW! Leaves the régime without an atom of oxygen.
    Beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeee……..

  145. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    christine says:

    This is an opportunity for me to vote against her and she makes me want to boak every time I hear or see her.

    Yes! A woman afer my own hear! 🙂

    I had 13 candidates to pick. All was plain sailing until I got to the last 2. I just had to pick two who were less than ideal. Still putting Sturgeon’s SNP & the Greens last on the list made up for it. 🙂

    I’ve got my list all typed out and ready for my visit to Edinburgh Central’s polling place.

  146. Stuart MacKay
    Ignored
    says:

    From Alba’s latest press release, Scottish Politics Needs “Electric shock”:

    Scottish families are being taken to the cleaners in energy bills and household finances are being wrecked. The Tories are presiding over this disaster and don’t care while the opposition response from Labour is lacklustre.

    Meanwhile, instead of using the opportunity of Scotland’s vast resources to create a new public electricity company to deliver clean, green and affordable electricity to the people, the SNP Government have sold out the first offshore ScotWind acreage for a one off payment of £700 million.

    It is a giveaway of short sighted lunacy which makes the Ferguson fiasco look like efficient governance. Scottish families simply cannot afford anymore penalty kicks blasted over the bar by their own government.

    Scottish politics requires the electric shock that ALBA progress can bring if independence and control of our own resources is to be treated as an urgent necessity not an indefinite objective.

    Four short paragraphs. No ifs, no buts, no maybes, no coulds, no mights, no I don’t recalls. This is what a masterful communicator looks like.

  147. Liz
    Ignored
    says:

    I will vote till I boak.
    Alba 1, no ISP, so that’s it.
    Because to vote for any of the rest of those charlatans would make me boak

  148. Stoker
    Ignored
    says:

    There are 34 councillors to be elected from 77 candidates across 11 wards to Scottish Borders Council. Here’s my options for Ward 8, Kelso & District:

    3 x Scottish Labour candidates.
    2 x Scottish Cons & Unionist candidates.
    1 x Scottish LibDem candidate.
    1 x Vanguard Party candidate.
    1 x Scottish Green candidate.

    That’s my lot! And here’s the choices for the neighbouring Ward 9, Jedburgh & District:

    1 x ALBA Party candidate (Yvonne Ridley).
    2 x “Independent” candidates.
    2 x Scottish Cons & Unionist candidates.
    1 x Scottish Green candidate (Charles Strang).
    1 x SNP candidate (Pam Brown).

    Anyone fancy trying to proffer some voting advice? Spoil ballot? Move to Jedburgh? 🙂

    NOTE: The Vanguard Party are standing 4 candidates in 4 wards across the Scottish Borders Council area. ALBA Party are standing 1.

  149. Dave M
    Ignored
    says:

    @Robert Louis and Dorothy Devine

    I’m also in Edinburgh and I am heartily sick of the way the SNP-Labour coalition is running the city into the ground – literally. There are roadworks EVERYWHERE, and when I contacted my councillors to ask them to solve a problem caused by temporary traffic lights, it took four months for a solution which I don’t know how long it will be in place.

    Their only policies appear to be to turn Princes Street into some kind of hotel and restaurant complex, while increasing traffic congestion. Oh, and maybe some sort of initiative to acknowledge historic slavery.

    Alba will definitely receive my first vote, then it’s a choice of the Unionists, SNP, Green, and a couple of fringe nutters. I shouldn’t be boaking by my second choice, but that’s where it’s at.

    Even then, none of the candidates seem interested in campaigning for my vote. Only the Lib Dem has put leaflets through my door, but he looks like an unkempt teenager and his policies are a bit misguided. I’ve had the same Labour leaflet through the door two or three times, but it’s about national issues. I don’t even know what my Alba candidate’s local priorities are, and as a party member I don’t think that’s good enough.

    Edinburgh is an utter mess at the moment. I want to know how candidates propose to fix it, but I’m in the dark at the moment.

    Does anyone else get the sense that absolutely nobody is interested in tomorrow’s election?

  150. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Sarah , thanks I’ll nip over and have a look.

    Ruby , I want some astute person to ask them when they refuse to define a woman, to define a man. Some interesting answers might emerge.

  151. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    We have to, as the yes movement become more aware which way the whole of Britain and Scotland in particular is heading.
    The need to separate Scotland from Westminster is dire for our future,

    Here is a news article from the Guardian which i do not buy but had access to today.

    The new police state of Great Britain…..policing on a new level.

    The police under SECURE BY DESIGN bought in by Maggie Thatcher.

    In Stanhope, Ashford, Kent, and in Bristol,

    Police are removing park benches and tearing out shrubs in parks,
    The reason? To deter gathering of the wrong people!
    They suggest a single seats or stools instead set several metres apart.

    they are also warning Councils about footpaths and cycle paths being incorporated into planning.
    The height of garden gates and hedging. And no through roads in housing complexes.
    And that they have a large say in locked gates.

    This is a British police state coming to a town near you.
    Unless we separate our counties and pretty quickly.

    And NS will be the first to sell it to Scotland.

  152. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Meant to read separate our countries.
    Shanghi were they tie your doors and spray foam sealant around your doors to stop you going out coming to Scotland through the governance over the border.

    To stop people meeting and gathering,

  153. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    All connected to how you vote.

    A spike in oil and gas prices triggered by war?
    Could see energy giants enjoying BP and Shell unexpected additional profits of £11 . 6 Billion this year from north sea operatives alone.

    While Scotland suffers the highest energy bill in years.

  154. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    When you do not have a choice who to vote for.
    When who you vote for sing from the same hymn sheets.

    Change what you do.

    Salvo jurie Cujustlibet.

  155. moixx
    Ignored
    says:

    The six choices I have tomorrow are: 2 SNP; 1 Green (a he/him); 1 Tory; 1 Labour; 1 LibDem.

    I’ve emailed them all asking ‘What is a woman’ type questions specifically relevant to Council duties/remit. None have replied (the Labour one didn’t get delivered for some reason) except for the Tory who gave a clear reply to each of my questions and says he’ll stand up for women’s rights.

    I (think) I understand how the STV system works, but with no Alba, ISP etc I genuinely don’t know what to do. The choices on offer seem to me all equally bad. The GRA reform is a very immediate threat – independence seems to be nowhere on the horizon.

    If someone wanted to divert people from voting solely along independence vs unionist lines, could there have been a better way of doing it than bringing in the self-id/gender issues?

  156. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker says:
    4 May, 2022 at 1:34 pm

    There are 34 councillors to be elected from 77 candidates across 11 wards to Scottish Borders Council. Here’s my options for Ward 8, Kelso & District:

    1 x Vanguard Party candidate.

    NOTE: The Vanguard Party are standing 4 candidates in 4 wards across the Scottish Borders Council area.

    The Vanguard Party are “social conservatives” and “pro-Union.”, part of so-called Think Scotland.

  157. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    The Ego of Sturgeon the betrayer is huge, as she say at FMQ’s.

    “The First Minister has said she will not apologise for decisions made around the Ferguson marine ferries which have faced significant delays and cost overruns.”

    Meanwhile I hope this brings the betrayer down.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scotsman.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Finvestigation-launched-into-lochaber-smelter-accountants-linked-with-ps586m-government-guarantee-3679385

  158. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    For the benefit of anyone who missed it, the SNP “spin doctor” (at least, that’s what she is being called this week …) Sally Donald, has caused the party some embarrassment with the following tweet (now deleted – but not before it made the papers … albeit largely down south only)

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRr6z7ZWQAA5T_-?format=jpg

    Yes, she really did say “All aboard the Gravy Bus.”

    For those needing a bit of background, Sally Donald is the supposed “head of communications” for SNP MP Hannah Bardell (Livingston) and the “Women’s Officer” for its Edinburgh Central branch, having previously worked as an aide in quick succession for Drew Hendry (Inverness) and Angus Robertson (Edinburgh Central).

    Her rise up the ranks in near record time is something little short of remarkable, considering she is only qualified as a gymnastics teacher (unless you count her “psychology degree” from the University of Bums on Seats in Inverness – which judging by this tweet appears to have done her no good!) and no previous sign of being the least interested in politics until she took on an internship at Drew Hendry’s office in Inverness.

    It’s usually the position that someone being appointed to work in an MP or MSP’s office has some sort of relevant experience or qualifications to do with politics, administration, housing, the environment, etc.

    Heaven forbid anyone suggest – in light of the current furore in Westminster of the objectification of women in politics – that Mssrs Hendry, Robertson and now Bardell have been so quick to offer her employment for other reasons …

  159. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Dave M says:
    4 May, 2022 at 1:41 pm

    @Robert Louis and Dorothy Devine

    I’m also in Edinburgh and I am heartily sick of the way the SNP-Labour coalition is running the city into the ground – literally. There are roadworks EVERYWHERE

    Might be a good idea to plan a mini-break on the week-end of the 28th 29th May.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_fOQWSWo0UGhke1It5ITBlWhhE5c2zRZ/view

  160. twathater
    Ignored
    says:

    @ ROS 3.54pm these various spokespersons issuing statements for sturgeon and her cabal of morons never seem to be questioned on why the relevant minister or heid case is NOT available to respond to questions from the meeja,it is no wonder the spads and other representatives of the morons are multiplying like LEECHES it is the old favoured system of padding the route to YOU with sycophants and parasites forming an impenetrable barrier to STOP anyone getting near and exposing your gross ineptitude , and they are all on good salaries and pensions

    I wonder how many layers of padding Shirley Anne shit for brains has or Humza useless , they will require an employment bureau to keep them in padding

  161. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    SPOILING THE BALLOT PAPER

    Someone was asking the best way to spoil their ballot paper… and this is interesting, partly because of the various ‘artistic’ methods (drawing a cock and balls is somewhat cliched) … and partly because of how the spoilt ballot paper is then dealt with… (it is put on screne and adjudicated publically at the count) AND… the Secret Ballot Act 1872 – which legally protects the identity of the voter. As far as I can see.

    So if, just as an example, instead of a drawing, the spoiling took the form of oh, lets see, some form of embarrassing info on a leading politician, that he would rather not see the light of day, even to the point of a superinjunction…. then an interesting legal conundrum will have happened.

    Isn’t democracy and free speach wonderful. The pen is truly mightier than the sword.

    Just a thought folks, no guarantees attached.

  162. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says:
    4 May, 2022 at 5:48 pm

    SPOILING THE BALLOT PAPER

    So if, just as an example, instead of a drawing, the spoiling took the form of oh, lets see, some form of embarrassing info on a leading politician, that he would rather not see the light of day, even to the point of a superinjunction

    That’s intriguing Daisy. Ever thought of writing a novel.
    Do you know any embarrassing info on a leading politician?
    How about getting together with a friend/s and drawing jigsaw pieces on the ballot paper.

  163. handclapping
    Ignored
    says:

    It may be biased but its great journalism. A grand piece.

  164. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says: 4 May, 2022 at 5:48 pm

    SPOILING THE BALLOT PAPER

    Someone was asking the best way to spoil their ballot paper… and this is interesting, partly because of the various ‘artistic’ methods (drawing a cock and balls is somewhat cliched) … and partly because of how the spoilt ballot paper is then dealt with… (it is put on screne and adjudicated publically at the count) AND… the Secret Ballot Act 1872 – which legally protects the identity of the voter.

    For the umpteenth time on here, contrary to the crap from armchair anarchists and bloke down the pub “experts”, drawing a cock and balls on your ballot paper is not only puerile, it could land you in the dock.

    Contrary to the myth that your ballot is secret, there’s a number on the back. Officially, your ballots are all put in sacks after elections and kept for a year and a day in storage down in Hayes, but corrupt practices thanks to less than impartial returning officers and staff in certain areas has meant instances such as back in the bad old days of the Cold War, anyone daring to vote for the Communist Party of Great Britain routinely had their names and addresses checked by a clerk after the count and passed to Special Branch.

    The moronic Natalie Bennett when leader of the Green Party in England told people to “write a rude word” on their ballot if there was no Green candidate in their area in 2015, which only proved her own political naivity. If you get some James McGuire Smith type moody bastard for a returning officer, they may well decide to teach you a lesson and bring in the police on some trumped up charge – much easier in an era where everyone is pressing charges against everyone else for “triggering” or “traumatising” them, so best not give them an excuse.

    Leave it to those daft assholes who consider themselves “edgelords”.

  165. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    A novel and timely suggestion for those Parties and individuals wanting our votes to elect them to represent us…
    Maybe actually run with competent policies that the public want or agree with, rather than being beholden to the shite being punted by your own Parties or personal self interests…
    NB. Please remember that you are after all supposed to represent us…

    Vote till ya boak only works if folk manage to vote afore they boak. If you’re inducing boakage prior to voteage, yer on tae plums. HTH

  166. Meg Merrilees
    Ignored
    says:

    What a treat to read a fabulous, but devastatingly accurate, article from the forensic pen of the Rev.

    For the first time I can remember, I am thinking of ‘not voting’ tomorrow. We have no ALBA candidate so the choice is both votes SNP or spoil the ballot paper.

    Maybe I’ll spoil the ballot paper to ram home the point.

    Good luck to all the ALBA candidates brave enough to stand. Hopefully we can rebuild the country one or two seats at a time.
    Hope things are going well for you, Stu.

  167. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    It’s no even that windy ootside, but I see Scotland is currently enduring another energy “crisis”.
    Aye, it’s a totes crisis richt enough, we’re having to export about the same amount as we are using because we are generating so much!

    https://extranet.nationalgrid.com/RealTime

    @ Daisy W

    R. Energy. Whilst you have been out pounding the streets campaigning, I’ve bookmarked quite a few articles recently on the subject that you may have missed. Happy to forward links onto you as and when you wish.

  168. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    The die is cast. We have ranked our candidates. Tomorrow we will vote and be thinking of the suffragettes that prized the ability of being allowed to vote. We have ranked them in order of their declared stance on women’s rights and spaces (And thanks to Alba a little bit of Independence). First preference vote goes to Alba. If the SNP win there are other ways to defy a coercive state. I have been surprised by the number of people thinking about home education. Presently around 5000 to 6000 children are home educated in Scotland. If the pervy stuff goes through I would expect that to increase by an order of magnitude. My grandchildren are not registered yet to start school with the local authority, lucky them. They can be home educated without reference to the state. Education Act 1980. You don’t even have to inform them. The way out of the pervy stuff.

  169. Merganser
    Ignored
    says:

    Dear Rev, Stu.

    I see you have based this lesson on Jeremiah 5:21.

    (‘Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear’).

    Will you be following up with a lesson based on Matthew 25:30?

    (‘And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’)

    There has been no more unprofitable servant than Nicola Sturgeon. At the head of a list of SNP losers who have cost Scotland dearly. How wonderful it would be to see them doing the weeping and gnashing when they are all thrown out.

  170. A bloke called Gerald
    Ignored
    says:

    Superb article Stu, and badly needed. I’ve been posting links to it and sections from it all day onto Twitter and Facebook, which I hope will get through to people. It really highlights what’s been happening in the Scottish government since Sturgeon took over, and how corrupt, incompetent and vindictive she is. Not to mention the mess she’s made of the SNP and independence movement. She’s been a complete disaster. And to think, she could be there for another 4 years. God help us 🙁

  171. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Good luck to oor Wee Annie tomorrow!

    🙂

  172. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Is anyone here keeping across the election in N Ireland?

    Just wondering if anyone has their ear to the ground. Could be a big one.

  173. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ruby – 4 May, 2022 at 11:42 am

    Love you too.

    Talk after tomorrow. x

  174. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    He is one very creepy stalker!

  175. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    George Ferguson says

    If the SNP win there are other ways to defy a coercive state. I have been surprised by the number of people thinking about home education.

    That’s very interesting. Sounds like a very good idea.

    As with voting I will be ranking all shops, gyms, charities, venues etc etc in order of their declared stance on women’s rights.

    ‘Respect my sex to get my X.’ ‘Respect my sex to get my £’

  176. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Boyle – I think trigger is a very good name for a horse, can’t think why that might be important. You are correct of course, that strictly speaking the ballot paper is not secret and the voters ID could be obtained, after a lot of work, and most likely a warrant obtained.

    If, however, we don’t explore options like these, when the opportunity comes along, we will never win.

    @ Dan, thanks Dan, I’ll be taking a week off after the count, and if not in jail for spoiling my ballot paper, will be getting back on the horse as soon as possible. I’ll be in touch.

    @ Ian Brotherhood – re Wee Annie. Wee Annie is the beez kneez and you can tell her I said so. Absolute star… and luckily for Scotland, not the only one by a long shot.

    Good night folks, big day tomorrow, even bigger summer.

  177. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ruby 10:00pm
    Agreed. Time to roll back the nonsense. What purpose the SG when thousands are disengaging from the state. And many more to follow. Highlighted by the census of course. The next election is the General Election in 2024. Those SNP MPs must have their arses twitching already Blackford commented on the performance of the SG months ago.

  178. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Daisy Walker –

    What a tonic, to see your name again, and sounding so positive too.

    😉

  179. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian Brotherhood says:
    4 May, 2022 at 9:08 pm

    Is anyone here keeping across the election in N Ireland?

    Just wondering if anyone has their ear to the ground. Could be a big one.

    There’s one hell of a stushie going on in the South Down seat, and also watch out for events in Derry-Londonderry. In both cases, local party rebellions over having candidates imposed by HQ, although in the South Down case it appears more the more bigotted elements in the DUP objecting to a “wimmin” candidate, and GASP! one that doesn’t in private regard Catholics as scum.

    It doesn’t appear to have dawned on some in the DUP that in majority Catholic South Down the very reason Enoch Powell held onto the seat for as long as he did for the UUP despite the demographics was by not being some Orange sash wearing neanderthal. That’s not stopped a chunk of them throwing their lot in this time to support the Traditional Unionist Voice candidate (elderly bigots run by Jill Allister and The Milky Bar Kid), and this may well keep the SDLP from losing the seat.

    The real question of this election is how many seats are SF and the DUP going to lose each, as both their names are dirt with the locals after the carrys on of the last few years. There’s even the unthinkable prospect of some seats seeing the turnout below 60%.

    The real outlier however – and this would be a true WTF moment – is that Naomi “Bombur” Long’s Alliance might get more votes than the DUP …

  180. Scot Finlayson
    Ignored
    says:

    This election is going to let all the she/her/he/him and they/thems into power all over Scotland,

    tomorrow is the beginning of the end of woman`s rights and safety in Scotland,

    the transcult have infested all parties outside Tory party,

    the fricken `end is nigh`.

  181. Tamson Baird
    Ignored
    says:

    I do not entirely agree that the women’s only shortlist has been one of the main causes. The 2017 intake has had some excellent female MSPs apart from the useless Gail Ross (over promoted by Salmond and Robertson). The latest intake are woeful with Karen Adam (actually just a puppet for her officer manager, Josh Mennie) and the completely liability that is Emma Roddick, who was previously sacked by the party, blacklisted from future vetting, but then becomes an MSP after getting 2.4% of the members votes! Watch this space as she is going to burn the house down shortly, taking as many with her.

    Then you have to wonder what the MPs are doing in Westminter? Sheppard, Wishart, Bardell, Nicholson, Oswald, Black, Smith etc; all on the SNP gravy train and doing nothing to agitate towards independence.

    I am sick of so many of them but hoping Sturgeon resigns and we get in someone who will go back to ensuring public services are being delivered and not any if this woke nonsense. Boot out amyoneine who is incompetent and put every MP on notice that the game us up for them.

  182. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Mark Boyle –

    Many thanks. interesting stuff.

  183. Keith F
    Ignored
    says:

    Jeezo. You’re the real deal Stu. For the sake of Scotland please come back on a regular basis. The country needs you ?

  184. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Scot Finlayson says:
    4 May, 2022 at 10:33 pm

    tomorrow is the beginning of the end of woman`s rights and safety in Scotland,

    Women have never been safe in Scotland or anywhere else but now thanks to ‘Sturgeon’s Self-id’ the places where we need to be hyper-vigilant has been extended to include ladies toilets, shops & gym changing rooms, hospitals, hostels, refuges, prisons etc etc.
    ‘Sturgeon’s Self-Id’ will make it easier for the flasher, the stalker, the voyeur, the domestic abuser, the rapist, the murderer, the pedophile to gain access to women & children.

  185. BaronessSamedi
    Ignored
    says:

    Brilliant takedown. I’m so glad to be commenting on WOS again!

  186. Casper1066
    Ignored
    says:

    Well well well, nice to see you back.

    Hope you have a good break, you have been missed. I have been blocked on Twitter, SNP fans didn’t like me saying NS will not be holding a referendum. Who knew right.

    I also heard NS saying if she doesn’t win the referendum, she would resign. Think she is setting up her fair well swan song.

    Anyway, how’s the foxes and the rats?

    What sites are you running on now ?

    You notice Elon Musk has taken over twitter and is happy to unblocked blocked accounts – seemingly he likes free speech.

    Well I will have to catch up on what you have written.

    Take Care.

  187. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Stoker says:
    4 May, 2022 at 1:34 pm

    Here’s my options for Ward 8, Kelso & District: 3 x Scottish Labour candidates.
    2 x Scottish Cons & Unionist candidates.
    1 x Scottish LibDem candidate.
    1 x Vanguard Party candidate.
    1 x Scottish Green candidate.

    Anyone fancy trying to proffer some voting advice? Spoil ballot? Move to Jedburgh? 🙂

    Since nobody else has I’ll have a go. Too late to move to Jedburgh. Spoil ballot is an option as is not voting. The thing is you are going to end up with a Unionist council whichever of these options you choose.

    My voting advice would be to ‘vote till you boak’
    Put the Greens last and the rest in any old order.

    After you’ve done that treat yourself to something nice in the local coffee shop or perhaps a strong drink in the pub.

    Good Luck Stoker I hope you have a nice day whatever you decide. 🙂

  188. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says: 4 May, 2022 at 10:14 pm

    @ Boyle – I think trigger is a very good name for a horse, can’t think why that might be important. You are correct of course, that strictly speaking the ballot paper is not secret and the voters ID could be obtained, after a lot of work, and most likely a warrant obtained.

    There was no “warrant” ever required to lift voters IDs from used ballots in the past, so straw man time there.

    “Votes can be traced by matching the numbered ballot paper to its similarly numbered counterfoil; the numbered counterfoil also bears the voter’s registration number from the electoral register which is hand-written by the Polling Clerk when the ballot paper is issued.

    As all the ballot papers for each candidate – including fringe candidates such as Sinn Fein, communists, fascists, nationalists, etc. – are bundled together, anyone having access to those documents can speedily trace the name and address of every voter for such candidates if they wish.

    In 1981 Gordon Winter – a former agent of BOSS, the South African Secret Service – writing in his book, Inside Boss, claimed that the South African government knew the identity of everyone who voted for the Communist Party of Great Britain – thanks to British intelligence using this simple vote-tracing procedure.”

    David Northmore, Author of The Freedom Of Information Handbook

  189. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Well, that’s that done.

    Polling station was empty apart from the staff, and a solitary SNP dude on a chair outside the front door. Didn’t see anyone else arriving in the time I was there.

    Fortunately, recognised the name of a local guy who I know for sure has been a great help to residents in local sheltered housing where my maw-in-law stays, so he got vote 1, then 2 and 3 for local independent candidates. No Alba. Couldn’t bring meself to cast any further numbers for the 2 SNP and Labour names.

    Here’s hoping Alba do well.

  190. Carol Jardine
    Ignored
    says:

    I was fortunate enough to have an Alba candidate in Leith. He was No 1 and there was an independent who I think would be an asset so he got my second vote. I stopped there. Unfortunately Adam McVey is my councillor, much good it’s done me!

  191. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Dont know how many voted by post this morning.
    But when i went in the polling station to check percentages.

    One table registered 63 votes, ..the second table registered 64 votes.

    A very low turnout of voters going in person so far.

  192. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Dont know how many voted by post this morning
    But when i went in the polling station to check percentages.

    One table registered 63 votes, ..the second table registered 64 votes.

    A very low turnout of voters going in person so far.

  193. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Went to vote, there were two Labourites with rosettes (is it just me or like Penguin biscuits are they getting smaller as the years go by?), but so far away from the entrance to the polling station, my guess is they didn’t have permission to be actual polling agents and were doing so en spec.

    One of them asked me who I was voting for. Usually I blank them, but I told them who “and ONLY him” I replied.

    “But you have to vote for at least two candidates!” they shouted after me. Nice fking try, assholes – and thanks for the reminder why I’ve hated you lot all my life.

    The irony is the only one I was voting for was one of the two Labour candidates, but unlike the vast majority of candidates in this election he’s the genuine article – a millionaire c/o a lottery win, used to work for years for the Housing Office, didn’t auto-chuck it after his win but stayed on until someone was fully trained up to take over his position, has zero reason for returning to politics other than a genuine desire to do right by the people in his locality.

    Suffice to say this is a mindset that never went down well with those in the local party who treat the area as a feudal fiefdom. He was stopped from being council leader about a decade back c/o a palace coup just as Labour were about to retake the council from the SNP thanks largely to his work and reorganisation of them into a modern party instead of refugees from Game Of Thrones.

    The thieves and bandits went back to the same old ways that got them kicked out in the first place, and to no one’s surprise three years later they were out of their arses once again.

    I actually know one of the SNP candidates since childhood, and it felt low not to give him any sort of vote, but the SNP can go to hell so long as they regard it as remotely acceptable – let alone compulsory – to have the indoctrination of primary school children by transvestites. This is beyond belief, and beyond forgiving – even the old GLC under Ken Livingstone never stooped to such madness.

  194. Roger MARTIN
    Ignored
    says:

    Staggering!

  195. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    ‘URGENT PFIZER NEWS: Pfizer and the CDC committed fraud for willfully withholding critical data from the public resulting in harm and death to thousands. The CDC is spreading medical misinformation. What they have done is obscene. We are completely vindicated.’

    https://twitter.com/LakovosJustice_/status/1522001676508581889

  196. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Pretty sure we’ve had this clip before, but it’s always worth another watch.

    John McAfee, on neuro-linguistic programming.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTpt5JH4TWs

  197. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    Voting is a bit slow in Perth just now, but will hopefully pick up after tea time.

    Met a Labour guy putting out the A frames this morning, he said, ‘I should get you to put this one out, instead of me’ and indicated the local SNP’s frame (he was doing him a favour). I said, in fairness both your parties have been working together for some time… and he laughed.

    @ Boyle, re ballot security… does the British establishment cheat? Yes they do. Is the law written down in a certain way? Yes it is. If the ballot is spoiled in such a way, so as to indicate a crime has been committed (such as breaching a court order), then it would be the Police investigating it, and they would need a Warrant in order to obtain the the Voters ID.

    Would such behaviour lead to the voter being identified one way or another – almost certainly…. bit like posting on social media.

    @ Ian Brotherhood – its good to be back – and I am very positive.

  198. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says: 5 May, 2022 at 5:40 pm

    @ Boyle, re ballot security… does the British establishment cheat? Yes they do. Is the law written down in a certain way? Yes it is. If the ballot is spoiled in such a way, so as to indicate a crime has been committed (such as breaching a court order), then it would be the Police investigating it, and they would need a Warrant in order to obtain the the Voters ID.

    ***banging head on brick wall*** No Daisy, they – would – not – need – a – Warrant.

    This has already been covered by The Guardian (any port in a storm!) some years ago:

    https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,00.html

    Ballot papers are and remain the property of HM Government, before, during and after an election. As a Returning Officer acts on their behalf at an election, the police would not require a “warrant” concerning a matter regarding its own property! Hence why Special Branch and lord knows who else were able to have their merry way with ballots for the CPGB.

  199. PlatoEcosse
    Ignored
    says:

    I bet that was cathartic!
    What an outstanding piece of work.

  200. Fionan
    Ignored
    says:

    Finally went to vote. Voted an ex-snp now independent candidate 1 because she is a good councillor and also had the balls to leave the snp in protest. Voted all the others 0, with a comment against the snp candidate ” never again”. If that is a spoilt paper so be it, I voted according to my conscience and hopefully sent the snp a message they might even listen to if enough people have done the same.

  201. Daisy Walker
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Boyle,

    I can’t open the link to the Guardian you’ve provided… it says the page is not available.

    On that basis I can’t see the legal / historical example you’ve provided.

  202. Saffron Robe
    Ignored
    says:

    I was lucky enough to have an Alba candidate so I voted Alba 1 and the local independent candidate Brian Land 2. Brian came to the door and is a genuinely decent guy wanting to do his best for the local community so I was happy to give him my second vote.

    I did joke with my Mum that if my surname was Land I would have called my son Scott!

    As others have said the polling station was quiet, only a handful of people there when I was. There was a woman outside supporting Brian who I spoke to and said I would be giving him my second vote, although it might have been his Mum! The only other canvasser was someone from the Greens holding up a placard which I couldn’t be bothered to read. I have nothing to say to the Greens who are more interested in promoting transgender issues, and shoring up the SNP, than protecting the environment.

  203. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    The Pfizer revelations are just jaw-dropping.

    80k pages of documents that they wanted under wraps for the next 75 years.

    The ‘highlights’ so far:

    They tested the vaccine on approx 46,000 people.

    42,000 of them reported adverse reactions, and 1,200 died.

    Pfizer’s own findings.

    The efficacy of the vaccine was not 95%, as trumpeted by Fauci and others. It was 12%, dropping to less than 1% only four days after the jag.

    Pfizer’s own findings.

    Pregnant women were assured it was safe despite Pfizer’s own reports advising that it not be given to them.

    A lot of us here have fallen out over this stuff. But it’s surely time to put the insults and anger behind us. The data is in and it has to be faced.

    We were lied to, all of us, at every stage during the past two years. Everyone involved in punting this toxic shite, the lockdowns, the pseudo-science surrounding masks, PCR testing etc, the stage-managed media hysteria, the political theatrics giving cover to these criminals – all involved should be arrested and held pending trial.

    That includes Nicola Sturgeon, Jason Leitch, Linda Bauld, and every MSM hack currently conspiring to keep this information from us.

  204. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says:
    5 May, 2022 at 7:27 pm

    @ Boyle,

    I can’t open the link to the Guardian you’ve provided… it says the page is not available.

    On that basis I can’t see the legal / historical example you’ve provided.

    It’s because of the way this site chooses to post long links. If you left click and select all of it down to the html tag below, then right click and chose Open Link In New Tab, it comes up fine.

  205. Saffron Robe
    Ignored
    says:

    Well said, Ian.

  206. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    If you use Twitter, please search #pfizerdocuments – you should be able to access the original documents, as released by Pfizer.

    It’s all there. So don’t take my word for it – check for yourself.

    The 80k ‘dump’ of documents follows another hefty release, early last month. No individual can screen that amount of information but people are doing their best i.e. citizen ‘journalists’ are doing the job for nothing while the BBC pays professional, trained ‘journalists’ to ignore it.

  207. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Daisy Walker says:
    5 May, 2022 at 7:27 pm

    @ Boyle,

    I can’t open the link to the Guardian you’ve provided… it says the page is not available.

    On that basis I can’t see the legal / historical example you’ve provided.

    It’s because of the way this site chooses to post long links.

    If you left click and select all of it down to the html tag below, then right click and chose Open Link In New Tab, it comes up fine.

    You’ll notice that Liberty had been ringing alarm bells about it back in the days before they became Blairite cucks, whereupon they went quiet.

  208. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Oh wonderful, the site’s in Thomas The Tank Engine mood and posting what we say twice!

  209. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    Oh dear…Covidiots gonna covidiot, huh?

    I reckon most alert readers who haven’t over indulged in the conspiracy Kool-Aid will trust scientists and reality, not randoms on the internet. Those fluffing this a-scientific nonsense are the types who punted the certainty that MMR caused autism.

    They might also like to consider the kind of right wing nut jobs they’re standing shoulder to shoulder with…..

    https://www.newsweek.com/pfizer-documents-vaccine-deaths-1703869

    “Responding to the false claims circulating on social media, Irish cancer researcher Dr. David Robert Grimes tweeted: “Why is Pfizer trending? Short version: Because a bunch of conspiratorial half-wits with all the scientific, statistical acumen of a particularly inept hamster are, yet again, incapable of understanding (a) what passive reporting is (b) basic fractions.”

    “That accolade also goes for the collective clownshoes who crafted the hashtag #pfizerdocuments to showcase their absolute inability to parse technical documentation or trial data,” Grimes added. “Sure why do we even need scientists when we have conspiracy theorists on the internet eh?”?

  210. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Please just stop Andy, it’s becoming embarrassing.

  211. Breastplate
    Ignored
    says:

    Ellis, I’ve got to hand it to you, you really are consistent with your nonsense and sense of self importance. Well done!

  212. Breastplate
    Ignored
    says:

    IanB,
    As Ellis points out, you can’t use scientific evidence from scientists that Pfizer have paid for wh3n they don’t like the results.
    If we start treating scientific research that may prevent big companies from making money, where will we end up.
    Surely if Pfizer don’t like the findings that they’ve paid for, it entitles them to hide it and pay for new friendlier science.
    I mean, if we’re not allowed to hide reports we don’t like, where will we end up?

    No, no. Ellis is definitely correct when he suggests we should only take seriously the scientific reports that make us feel warm and cosy, not to mention make the pharmaceuticals loadsamoney.

  213. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Breastplate –

    Orwell described it, almost 80 years ago, as ‘the patent medicine racket’. (para 8)

    https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/

    They’ve had all that time to consolidate their grip on everything ‘health’-related. They take over governments and dictate every fuckin thing. They compromise, then neutralize, any threat, no matter how embryonic. And they throw billions at lobbyists and useful intellectuals to ‘validate’ their villainy.

    They even infest places like this.

    The only surprise (quite offensive really, when you think about it) is that they didn’t deploy someone more effective than Ellis.

  214. robertkknight
    Ignored
    says:

    Voted ALBA, despite no ALBA candidate on the ballot.

    One more spoiled paper but none of them were worthy of my vote – they’re all Yoons, in one form or another, and I refuse to vote Yoon.

  215. Confused
    Ignored
    says:

    Voted. No alba candidate; ranking the rest like a beauty pageant in an insane asylum.

    – has one good eye
    – lacks teeth, but really knows how to suck
    – only killed one husband

  216. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @Confused (11.09) –

    I assume you live in Bearsden, or mibbe the Mearns?

    🙂 🙂 🙂

  217. Confused
    Ignored
    says:

    “south lanarkshire” but with that kind of vibe

  218. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    🙂

    Understood.

    😉

  219. Effigy
    Ignored
    says:

    My polling station was deadly quite like I’ve never seen.
    My station had a Labour man handing out leaflets on his own.
    Another I passed had a Tory Suit a Lib Dem and a green.

    No SNP door knockers, I’m one who gave them up, one leaflet and
    no presence at polling stations.

    The ballot box I looked down into was pretty empty at 6.30pm.

    Turnout looks appalling with the majority sick to death of political corruption and incompetence.

  220. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    This is the site to access the Pfizer documents:

    https://www.icandecide.org/pfizer/

  221. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    Once again I should have complained to the returning officer. 2 SNP rosette wearing people standing at the entrance to the polling station. Intimidating to say the least (At least to my wife not me). Hats off to Police Scotland a van slowed up and had a good look at these people. We walked on so I don’t know what happened. Didn’t do them any good we voted them last and second last.

  222. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ian 10.11 pm

    “Please just stop Andy, it’s becoming embarrassing.”

    It’s you that’s embarrassing yourself Ian, not me. Once again you’ve bought in to a fringe narrative and come on here trying to sell it as fact. Why should youor anyone else expect not to be challenged on your fluffing for an a-scientific, Trumpian conspiracy theory?

    @Breastplate 10.13 pm

    “Ellis, I’ve got to hand it to you, you really are consistent with your nonsense and sense of self importance. Well done!”

    It seems you and a small claque of the hard of thinking in here are pretty consistent in punting conspiracy theorising. Why you think me pointing out scientific reality is self important I don’t know. Apparently it’s disagreeing with you and your fringe views that makes me self important? Not sure you’ve thought that one through.

    Once again for conspiracy wing nuts in here: the vast majority don’t buy in to the QAnon stuff, whether it’s about Pfizer, BigPharma, “the Ukrainians had it coming and Putin was right”, or “we wuz robbed, Scotland is a poor wee colony”.

    The only ones embarrassing themselves in here are the charlatans and Wolfie Smith types punting this nonsense over and over again, in every thread, irrespective of subject. Don’t expect not to be called out for your idiocy.

  223. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian B , I read that too – not altogether surprised , from the very beginning I have been thinking Thalidomide. That said I was too concerned not to be vaccinated but I certainly don’t want my wee grandaughter vaccinated – who knows what tomorrow would bring for her.

  224. gregor
    Ignored
    says:

    Repeat…

    FDA (05/05/2022): Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Limits Use of Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to Certain Individuals:

    Key Points:

    “After conducting an updated analysis, evaluation and investigation of reported cases, the FDA has determined that the risk of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), a syndrome of rare and potentially life-threatening blood clots in combination with low levels of blood platelets with onset of symptoms approximately one to two weeks following administration of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, warrants limiting the authorized use of the vaccine…”:

    https://archive.ph/DXGGL

  225. Breastplate
    Ignored
    says:

    Ellis,
    Have I not made it clear to you that you are right and I agree with you.
    Some people on here believe you talk shite constantly but if they sifted through the excrement they would find little nuggets of gold even though it left them feeling disgusted and a bit smelly.

    I’m with you all the way and I don’t understand why people can’t see that you are right about everything.
    All this nonsense about weighing up alternative evidence and listening to different points of view is for moonhowlers, surely?

    If people just listened to you, it would save them a lot of time by not having to digest contrary perspectives, if people could understand that simply agreeing with you is much simpler than the effort of thinking.
    Perhaps they’ll wake up one day, well here’s hoping.

  226. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    Breastplate

    There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty.

  227. Breastplate
    Ignored
    says:

    Don’t let it bother you, though, chin up.

  228. Willie
    Ignored
    says:

    What a well researched review of what the SNP have delivered.

    Under Sturgeon by every metric the evidence of bad, rotten, failing, incompetent and corrupt government is crystal clear for all to see.

    This foul vicious and vindictive women and her cabal is destroying Scotland.

    Truly she has to be removed. We need to take our movement back and get politicians for Scotland.

    This article nails why.

  229. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Why pencils?

    All other forms that are going to be read by a computer require ‘black pen’

    Do these wee stubby pencils you get at the polling station have some sort of magic?

  230. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    I ticked all 13. It was a bit of a faff but worth it.

    I like this STV voting system where you get a chance to vote against someone.

  231. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    I don’t think many people care what is posted BTL on Wings any more and that is very sad.

  232. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    This twitter account was previously good for posting results quickly and notice they are starting to tweet info on voting.

    https://twitter.com/BallotBoxScot

  233. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    https://archive.ph/rDtd3

    The tossers at Nicola’s Fanzine are as bad as the BBC trying to airbrush Scottish Independence parties out of the picture. What a waste of space.

    Here’s to ALBA!

  234. Effigy
    Ignored
    says:

    From Tory Evening Standard-

    Asked on Sky News whether Boris Johnson could become the Prime Minister who oversees the break-up of the United Kingdom, Mr Dowden said: “Let’s wait and see what the results are from Northern Ireland.

    “If there is a sustained majority of nationalist opinion in favour of a united Ireland, that would have to be put forward in a referendum

    “That’s beyond the power of the United Kingdom Government. We would have to allow that to happen were it the case”.

    Can anyone explain just how nothing like that applies to Scotland?

  235. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    I don’t think there is anything sinister about being supplied with pencils at voting booths.

    It sounds like it is more efficient to have a large supply of pencils than having pens which you can’t tell are done or voters potentially make a mess of voting slip when you have to continue go over paper for ink to flow with pens that have nearly running out of ink.

    If anybody is not comfortable with using a pencil when voting then come with a black pen.

  236. stuart mctavish
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks@10:41

    Even accounting for the Europa cup semi final, the delay in collating the results remains a bit suspicious eg. 12 hours after polls closed and the counting machines have only just managed to call some uncontested seats..

    My guess is the electorate must have voted overwhelmingly for the castrated cock and balls and reason for the staggeringly slow machine count must be related to protracted dispute with the returning officer/ counting machine owners about which candidate is best depicted by the graphic (depending on form, positioning, manifesto commitment etc 🙂

  237. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    Effigy says: 6 May, 2022 at 10:54 am

    From Tory Evening Standard-

    Asked on Sky News whether Boris Johnson could become the Prime Minister who oversees the break-up of the United Kingdom, Mr Dowden said: “Let’s wait and see what the results are from Northern Ireland.

    “If there is a sustained majority of nationalist opinion in favour of a united Ireland, that would have to be put forward in a referendum

    “That’s beyond the power of the United Kingdom Government. We would have to allow that to happen were it the case”.

    Can anyone explain just how nothing like that applies to Scotland?

    You just need to go over to WGD to see why. They only want a referendum when it can be won. It reminds me of one of the characters from Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ where he talks of big plans but all he does he drink and says mañana when asked about what he is going to do about these big plans. It is always talk of tomorrow but tomorrow never comes.

    With such a timid attitude why should the Tories even contemplate a referendum for Scotland?

  238. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby says: 6 May, 2022 at 9:19 am

    Why pencils?

    All other forms that are going to be read by a computer require ‘black pen’

    Do these wee stubby pencils you get at the polling station have some sort of magic?

    The reason why they use pencils is simply ink could potentially soak through a ballot paper and show on the other side, and so potentially put marks on another ballot in the box. One of those “trial and error” moments from the history of the electoral process!

    UKIP made a big play of telling voters to bring along their own pen “because … Conspiracy Theory”, rather than using the “official pencil” that used to be tied up with string in those innocent pre-Covid days.

  239. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    Many SNP voters are seemingly not very interested in independence. Like the stroppy teen they actually like their home comforts so leaving home is not a serious proposition and kicking the occasional door is enough to sort the frustration.
    I do not see Scotland quitting «home» until there is one hell of major bust up….and Scotland is thrown out.
    Some hope!

  240. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ian Brotherhood 5 May, 2022 at 10:40 pm

    I have a wee mirror on a stick I can sell you. Use it to look under chairs before you sit down.

    Also a taste-free, truth-drug powder to put in your family’s cuppas. You can then quiz them to find out which of them are reporting on you to the state.

    WARNING: be prepared to not like the answers you get.

  241. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ruby says 6 May, 2022 at 10:11 am

    “I don’t think many people care what is posted BTL on Wings any more and that is very sad.”

    Maybe calling people you disagree with c*nts just doesn’t do it any more. Try expanding your vocabulary to include new swearwords and insults, see if that reels in any new readers.

  242. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Ottomanboi says:
    6 May, 2022 at 11:45 am

    I do not see Scotland quitting «home» until there is one hell of major bust up….and Scotland is thrown out.
    Some hope!

    I have always been suspicious that the exodus from Labour to the SNP was possessed of a great ambivalence about Scottish Independence, but could recognise a bandwagon which might land them a career in politics.

    I mean, how the fk does someone like Kirsty Blackman rise to the position of SNP deputy leader in Westminster, when she has admitted lukewarm indifference towards Independence. It’s not the ambivalence that troubles me, but the promotion to higher office. Is that meant to be the “best” of us??? Jeezo.

    I think the soul of Scottish Independence has left the SNP with ALBA, but the SNP’s rabid aversion to ALBA is a measure of how little Indy soul was there to begin with. I fear true Independentists in the SNP were outnumbered by charlatans by a factor of 10 to 1.

    I have also never understood the SNP’s great reluctance to address itself to the Constitutional Sovereignty of the people. To me, ignoring sovereignty is like going to war but leaving you’re rifle at home so it doesn’t hurt anybody. People have grown too accustomed to seeing it hung above the fireplace like a relic.

    Worse, it doesn’t “read” like that the omission is a strategic matter of tactics. It reads like it’s a spectacular lack of knowledge and awareness about Scotland’s Constitution, – a symptom of a political “elite” in Scotland who are fully signed up to the UK model of British constitutional politics and find themselves trapped thinking inside the proverbial box which they’re meant to be thinking outside of.

    Scotland’s Constitution is something abstract to them.

  243. highseastim
    Ignored
    says:

    Looks like the good old ALBA party vote was wasted once again.

  244. PlatoEcosse
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks says:

    I think the soul of Scottish Independence has left the SNP with ALBA, but the SNP’s rabid aversion to ALBA is a measure of how little Indy soul was there to begin with.

    Indeed. I fear that you are correct,

  245. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Breeks and PlatoEcosse: I think the SNP aversion to Alba that we are hearing is just more of the same from the clique currently running the party. I don’t think for a minute that the bulk of ordinary members are indifferent to independence.

  246. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    Oh dear oh dear – Gillian Al-Samarai and Kirsteen Mennie are elected SNP councillors. Watch out for mixed-sex sorry gender toilets in schools and everything unpleasant and lunatic.

  247. Geri
    Ignored
    says:

    Succinctly put as always! This is why you’re sorely missed! I bowed out of Twitter a while ago due to ill health but also disolusionment of the SNP, the Court cases, womens rights & the flame fast extinguishing on the hopes of ever having indyref2.
    I really hope they’re given a good drubbing today & it hails the start of a good clear out! Somehow I doubt it. 🙁
    Please come back! I missed most of these shenanigans! We’ve no other credible source. Save us Obi Wan!

  248. PlatoEcosse
    Ignored
    says:

    Credit where credit is due.
    Sturgeon has played an absolute blinder.
    She has deadened the passion of independence but at the same time enhanced her own personal credentials on the international stage. The virtue-signalling will work and she will depart the stage that she has made ever more parochial for a seat on some global body that is consumed with spending other people’s money.
    Independence is currently dead. The SNP have consolidated their core support but not only failed to make inroads into the waverers but antagonised them through the very metric that AS was so good at, i.e. good governance. The SNP are sh*t at governing and so every ‘floater’ is going to vote against on the very rational grounds that if the SNP cannot manage a devolved ‘region’ of then UK, what chance is there of them managing an independent country.
    Extra port will be served at MI5 tonight. Job done.

  249. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    The far right British Unionist Party has taken a seat in North Lanarkshire from the Tories. Whilst his leaflets have been all about “bin collections”, their campaign round the doors has been “vote fur me coz ah’m a good Rangers fan, ‘un that!”

    Well done Ruth Davidson – these were the sort of “passions” you decided to appeal to, and have now discovered once you lift that particular stone, it’s impossible to get what crawls out from under it contained. Enjoy the monster you’ve now created.

  250. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Mark Boyle says:
    6 May, 2022 at 11:40 am

    The reason why they use pencils is simply ink could potentially soak through a ballot paper and show on the other side, and so potentially put marks on another ballot in the box.

    Thanks Mark. Now I understand why pencils are used

  251. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    John Main says:
    6 May, 2022 at 12:02 pm

    Maybe calling people you disagree with c*nts just doesn’t do it any more. Try expanding your vocabulary to include new swearwords and insults, see if that reels in any new readers.

    Lets clear up this issue about me calling people I disagree with cunts. The only person I call a cunt is your mate Andy Ellis. I don’t call him a cunt because I disagree with any argument he makes but simply because the guy is an absolute cunt.

    Cunt is not a banned word on this forum so you don’t have to be a pathetic
    snivelling little goodie goodie by replacing the u with an *. If I wanted to expand my vocavulary to include new insults I wouldn’t have to look far for ideas. There is always a whole list of them in every single mile long post your mate Ellis makes. Perhaps before you start lecturing others you might want to clean up your own act & a the same time have a word with your mate Ellis.

  252. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    PlatoEcosse says:
    6 May, 2022 at 1:33 pm
    Credit where credit is due.
    Sturgeon has played an absolute blinder.

    Yup. Sure the Unionists are absolutely delighted.

    Asking for a friend, if I flitted to Northern Ireland, would I be absorbed as Irish when Ireland re-unifies?

  253. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Dead right Breeks – I could greet for my country.

  254. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    If it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and looks like a duck, chances are it’s a duck. The individual who goes under the handle Andy Ellis exhibits all the characteristics of a troll, therefore is one and should be treated as such.

    Anybody who interacts with that troll is helping the troll.

    Don’t feed the troll.

  255. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    BREEKS 12:31
    I do wonder if the term «independence» never mind «sovereignty» is understood by many of these people in the political forum. Do they lack imagination or are they just too parochial to grasp the principle of a nation being in control of its destiny?
    For peoples who have taken the giant steps to freedom that is not an abstract principle.
    Those steps were generally taken on ground liberally strewn with the psychological equivalent of broken glass.

  256. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Well at least we gave the buggers a wee fright round my way.

    One of the two sitting SNP councillors finished fifth out of six candidates on first preferences, miles behind the replacement Tory and only beating the paper LibDem candidate. He had to rely on transfers to get back in.

  257. Cherrybank
    Ignored
    says:

    I see a key associate of Nicola Sturgeon in the Southside of Glasgow,Mhairi Hunter has been defeated by a Green Party transwoman.

  258. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Greeting and flitting does not win. Although i do feel your dispair.

    We are not going to regain our sovereignty or achieve independence through the norms we have been chasing.

    Stand up the last hundred that remain,

    We the people need to change tactics if the only options we have up to now are through a devolved government and a electorial system that is about to be privatised.

    Now is the time to move forward with the Scottish Constitution, Where Sovereignty lies, and the big issues that are over the hanging over the treaty,

    Form a Scottish people’s Sovereign assembly, [ very important which title to use ]
    those that Have good organisational skills need to step forward.
    Those well genned up on the Scottish Constitution need to come together.
    Those that are articulate as speakers motivate yourselves.
    Those that can contribute to high Tec.
    And up the grassroots visible marches.
    Wave new banners that say we are ending the treaty of the union. Have your flag or banner stating what articles of the treaty have been altered or broken since 1707.

    The only thing stopping our right to self determination is our lack of organisation and by passing fear.

  259. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    The sole Alba Party candidate in Renfrewshire has come 10th out of 11 candidates in the Paisley North West ward, coming behind even the Scottish Family Party, but beating the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – which, as I’ve mentioned before, exists solely to give everyone else a good laugh when they finish behind all the other candidates in a ward no matter how bizarre their designation.

    Elsewhere, Andy Doig topped the poll as an independent Scottish nationalist for the Johnstone North, Kilbarchan, Howwood and Costa Del Lochwinnoch ward.

    The Liberal Democrats have now been wiped out.

  260. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    @maureen –

    Mhairi Hunter blocked me a long time ago. Any chance of sharing what she said?

    😉

  261. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Feck um. We fight on.

    When that lot in New SNP whine about Alba share of vote and we’re irrelevant , remind them where SNP were when they started out in 1929 in cooncil elections. It took them 35 years to make any traction, yes 35 years to go from where Alba are in a YEAR!

    Get it roon yi Wishart

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1057795/scottish-election-results/

  262. maureen
    Ignored
    says:

    Here you go Ian
    Mhairi Hunter
    @MhairiHunter
    Well I didn’t expect today to go like this. A combination of Green & Alba votes leaves me no longer a councillor. Pretty ironic really. Still, more time to campaign for independence. Onwards & upwards.

  263. Stuart MacKay
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian Brotherhood, here you go:

    “Well I didn’t expect today to go like this. A combination of Green & Alba votes leaves me no longer a councillor. Pretty ironic really. Still, more time to campaign for independence. Onwards & upwards.”

  264. maureen
    Ignored
    says:

    Mhairi Hunter
    @MhairiHunter
    There are things I will miss about being a councillor, the work we have done in Govanhill & being on the IJB has been a wonderful & positive experience for me. I am very proud of Glasgow City IJB & will miss everyone a lot.

    the comments are far from complimentary

  265. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Ottomanboi says:
    6 May, 2022 at 3:20 pm
    BREEKS 12:31
    I do wonder if the term «independence» never mind «sovereignty» is understood by many of these people in the political forum….

    Sovereignty, I’d say definitely not. But that’s hardly surprising given all the indoctrination we’ve been subjected to down the years. The truth isn’t merely suppressed, there’s a false counter narrative being promoted as the truth. We even have the inglorious spectacle of Scotland’s First Minister peddling the fiction that Section 30 is the ONLY legal alternative. What a complete cretin. Like fucko it is.

    But if I could boil Scotland’s subjugation down to one single thing, it’s not our politicians, it’s not sovereignty, it’s the BritNat Media.

    Scotland will NEVER witness it’s people making an informed decision about anything while the British Establishment has a monopoly on Scotland’s broadcasting, and a slick agent of Unionism in every Scottish living room masquerading as a news channel. That is the enemy, and it is vastly more powerful than Alex Salmond on his best day, or Sturgeon on her worst. Scotland’s politicians are ephemeral while our media subjugation seems permanent and indefatigable because so many people just don’t see the pernicious process continually at work on their thinking.

    Only a tiny, tiny proportion of Scots have noticed the “cancelling” of any Ukraine based narrative which contradicts the pro NATO and anti Russian propaganda. You’re denied objective comparison when you’re only hearing one version of events, and there are some massive discrepancies in the story being told. We are fools to pretend the same thing isn’t happening all the time in Scotland, but anybody disrupting the process of indoctrination is discredited or marginalised. Take your pick… Alex Salmond, Craig Murray, ALBA… anybody with a pulse the BritNats can’t control.

    In Alex Salmond, we had one of Scotland’s very best. In Sturgeon, we have our worst, but nothing changes, because the media is there to make sure Scotland never manages to climb out the sand box. If that means wrecking a referendum debate, or insulating a narcissistic imbecile from due criticism, the BritNat media is on the job.

    In spite of everything, I still retain confidence in Scotland’s Sovereign Constitution. The problem is our political landscape is so institutionalised it cannot see beyond it’s next election or pay cheque. It will take someone really “special” to break us out the mould, but the system is designed to nullify any potent threat before it arises.

    I see Marin Keating’s is criticising the SNP again, and with some validity, but in some ways, that just typifies the problem. Martin Keating’s was trying to make Holyrood work and act in a sovereign way, to hold it’s own referendum “lawfully”. But I’m afraid that’s still sand box politics.

    Pardon the expression, but fuck Holyrood. Scotland’s “government” must either be sovereign, or be parish council. Make the fking call. Be one, or be the other. But can we please stop wasting time making a subordinate Parish Council “appear” to be sovereign when it simply hasn’t got the cahonas or vision to do it?

    We need an International Test case on disputed sovereignty, not a domestic spat about a deeply compromised devolved colonial assembly. Keating’s has the right idea, but in my opinion, chose the wrong platform. (That’s not meant as a criticism of him, far from it. He’s had the bottle to try, where others who “apparently” know better, have done nothing).

    I don’t want a deficient and perennially compromised Holyrood to limp through a referendum process so deeply compromised on all levels by UK interference. Go for the jugular; the binary black and white test case to determine the absolute condition of Sovereign or non-Sovereign.

    Over to you SSRG… Our last hope on our depressing current trajectory.

  266. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    I just passed a very smug looking Alex Cole-Hamilton and a bunch of his acolytes outside the EICC on Morrison Street.

    Please tell me the lumpen bourgeoisie of Edinburgh haven’t given that no-mark and his bunch of misogynists more seats?! 🙁

  267. Scot Finlayson
    Ignored
    says:

    @Andy Ellis,

    I think Axle Coke-Humblebum`s face is permanently smug looking,

    he is one of those English immigrants that doesn`t want to adapt and fit in to his new country he wants to assimiltate it into the English Collective.

  268. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    I stand corrected – the Lib Dems did win a seat after all in Paisley South West as they kept Eileen McCartin’s old seat with a new candidate.

  269. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Scot Finlayson

    Might be a tough gig persuading more New Scots” to support indy if someone whose family moved to Scotland when he was 8 is still considered an immigrant.

  270. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks.

    You and I are both aware that the electorial system in Scotland is monopolised in the same manner that the broadcasting is to Scotland.
    All our votes after this local election were transferred to a second town from where the votes actually took place, then transferred to a third larger town, ran by tories, snp. And labour
    Are the presiding officers and cohorts considered to dum to be able to count their own local votes.
    Are computers not working?

    Then we both also recognise that the devolved government is not Scotland’s to control either.

    The control of all three are under the auspices of down south,
    That tells you all you need to know about Scotland being under colonial control.
    The goal posts are always moved
    The keys to Scotlands voice are in the treaty of the union.
    That was where we lost them.

  271. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    By their works…
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/06/london-planning-river-developments-thames-south-bank-block
    Totally rotten to the core.
    Why is the SNP still dancing to London’s «stinking» tune?
    Tone deaf or….?
    BREEKS.
    I sense Scotland may well need a Dublin Post Office moment before this matter is «sorted».
    Shock and awe?

  272. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Cheers Maureen and Stuart.

    Interesting how it’s sometimes possible to hear teeth grinding from mere words.

    🙂

  273. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    Mhairi Hunter should simply Self ID as serial loser Shirley-Anne Somerville, and I’m sure a well paid position in the SNP will miraculously appear for her…

  274. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Cherrybank says:
    6 May, 2022 at 3:39 pm

    I see a key associate of Nicola Sturgeon in the Southside of Glasgow,Mhairi Hunter has been defeated by a Green Party transwoman.

    🙂 She did a fair amount of campaigning on behalf of transwomen. Didn’t she have lots of arguments with Stu on the subject of men being woman.

    Hopefully her pal Kristy Blackman will also loose her seat to a transwoman. Best of all would be if Sturgeon the feminist lost out to a transwoman.

  275. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ottomanboi 5.04 pm

    I’m not sure conjuring the ghost of the Easter Rising with several hundred deaths, the execution of a large part of the leadership of the “Post Office Moment”, and years of civil war afterwards will be universally popular as a cunning plan.

    Scots may disagree about the right path to independence, but I’m pretty sure virtually all of them would steer clear of the Irish example.

    Plus if anyone really thinks they can see the SNP manning the barricades and being shot at dawn in HMP Edinburgh I have a couple of bridges to sell them.

  276. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Andy Ellis

    What’s the spec of those bridges you have to sell? I’ve just been contacted by a Scottish Government Administration of Devolved Powers Minister and they were wondering if the bridges could cover a couple of ferry routes?
    Oh, let me know the cost of the bridges too while you’re at it. And FYI I’ll probably be able to ultimately get you around ten times more than you want for said bridges as we are in Scotland after all…

  277. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    ANDY ELLIS 5:44
    Pushing the history reference envelope it may be but when the buck finally stops, wha wad be a traitour knave?
    No hassle Independence at cut price? No chance. The Brits dont do cheap.
    Scotland needs to internalise the realities of «liberation struggle» or shut up the whinge.
    It will be costly.

  278. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    Ottomanboi says: 6 May, 2022 at 6:08 pm

    Scotland needs to internalise the realities of «liberation struggle» or shut up the whinge.
    It will be costly.

    A previous poster said that ordinary SNP members are fully supportive of independence despite SNP politicians being the opposite. However, these ordinary member continue to vote for SNP, despite the independence argument not been progressed in any positive way since 2014.

    Given how corrupt and ineffective the SNP has been under Nicola Sturgeon, it wouldn’t make any difference if a unionist party is in charge in Holyrood.

    Another possible solution is to boycott the SNP totally at elections until they get their act together and start pushing for independence rather than going through the motions and only mentioning it before elections?

  279. Politically Homeless
    Ignored
    says:

    Well done guys, Alba lost 100% of their council seats.

    Could it be time for a fresh start?

    – Yup Salmond was framed, but nobody cares. That’s not a reason to vote for him. Pre-2015 is ancient history for normal people who aren’t Independence Geeks.

    – Key activists running cover for the Russo-fascist war criminal as he threatens to nuke the planet is kind of uh, y’know, a bad look.

    – Failure to carve out a niche for non-woke independence politics, even though it should be easy.

    Nah, let’s keep doubling down. That’ll work.

  280. Clavie Cheil
    Ignored
    says:

    After those Council Results are we any closer to Scottish Independence?

    NO!!!!!!

    We are further away than ever. I am depressed and pissed off and I feel like a stranger in a strange land.

    Tories made gains in Moray. FFS!!! I am even more depressed. Too depressed to get angry any longer.

  281. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ottomanboi 6.08 pm

    Ultimately perhaps it will. Faced in the future with a brick wall of refusal/frustration of any of the now accepted routes to independence by the British nationalists, or with the use of violence, then the independence movement and Scots people generally would face a choice. One of the things that is supposed to differentiate civic nationalism from “old style” nationalism is that is eschews violence surely? Of course that doesn’t mean violence won’t be used by our opponents as our Catalan friends found to their cost in 2017.

    I have my doubts any of the current nationalist leaders are revolutionary, or would go to prison – still less against a wall – in the furtherance of the cause.

    I’m not saying violence or some kind of uprising could never happen under any circumstances: the future isn’t ours to see. I’m just sceptical that it will prove necessary when other less extreme and violent methods are still feasible.

    The outlook now may not be great for independence any time soon, but…you know…events dear boy, events! I’m not convinced the SNP is for changing, so either it will have to be “taken down” somehow from the outside (how long do we think that’s going to take given today’s results…?), or we’re relying on Scottish independence supporters getting fed up with the lack of progress and/or being radicalised by external factors like a really severe economic downturn and continuing Tory rule in London, and taking it out of the SNP’s hands by denying them a majority.

    The status quo isn’t cost free either: part of the task of the movement is to convince a majority of Scots that the risks of leaving the union are now less than the risks of staying, and that the opportunities of independence are greater. We failed in that task in 2014, but perhaps circumstances will change the calculus next time there is an opportunity, whether via referendum, plebiscitary election or some other means.

  282. Stuart MacKay
    Ignored
    says:

    Politically Homeless

    I am thinking that independence is simply not going to come with the political environment we have or will continue to have for the foreseeable future.

    Perhaps as the crisis with inflation gathers pace and western economies start collapsing due to the blow-back from sanctions, people will start taking to the streets and so an opportunity will arise – though hopefully without the Easter Uprising twist. Otherwise I cannot see anything or anyone busting out of this collective malaise.

    This is not something that can be pinned on Alba for a lack of success or the SNP for a lack of action, simply that the players for good or ill are simply not capable of the task. However, the main reason is simply the playing field and the political climate in the west in general – it’s simply not the season for revolution, independence or succession. That might change soon but I’m not holding my breath.

    We’re stuck in this morass until action is preferred over outrage.

  283. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Is the Rev Stu going to give us an equally incisive performance appraisal of Alex Salmond and Chris McEleney in the wake of Alba’s (all too predictable) failure to win a single council seat anywhere in Scotland yesterday. Or is that too much to expect from the author of the Wee Alba Book?

  284. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    ” Scotland needs to internalise the realities of «liberation struggle» or shut up the whinge.
    It will be costly. ”

    Fact .

    No one would wish or suggest a Scottish version of Ireland’s long , arduous armed struggle as a response to our predicament . But something akin to the fierce , unflinching commitment to regaining it’s freedom from it’s centuries long oppressor/exploiter will have to be found – on a psychological/emotional level .

    More warriors ; less worriers .

    Some hard truths to be faced before any real progress is likely. The Vale of Tears that is pinning all one’s hopes on a particular Party , seeing them lose/sell their souls or flounder in the margins of public awareness seems to invite only continual disappointment

    ” It will be costly ” very costly , not to

  285. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    That’s all the excitment of the Council elections over with not even half the electorate turning out to vote.

    What can you actually tell from an under 50% turnout.

    I had fun I learned all about STV & the ‘voting till you boak’ malarky & I why we use pencils. Thanks Mark Boyle.

    I don’t expect to hear from these councillors again until they want an upgrade to the ‘Westminster Gravy Train’

    In the meantime have no great expectations of things improving in Edinburgh.

    https://tinyurl.com/bdzxebw6

    Same as it ever was!

  286. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    6 May, 2022 at 7:33 pm

    Is the Rev Stu going to give us an equally incisive performance appraisal of Alex Salmond and Chris McEleney in the wake of Alba’s (all too predictable) failure to win a single council seat anywhere in Scotland yesterday. Or is that too much to expect from the author of the Wee Alba Book?

    What are your views Rob?

  287. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Here’s a rundown of all the results of the council elections, Alba didn’t get one single councillor elected. I’m beginning to think that Joanne Lamont was right when she said Scots are too stupid to handle their own affairs.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenational.scot%2Fnews%2F20121623.scottish-council-election-results-winners-losers-every-vote-scotland%2F

  288. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    I expressed my views very forthrightly Ruby when I tried (single-handedly) to force a contest for the Alba leadership rather than a coronation of King Alexander in the grand setting of Greenock Town Hall. I don’t see an point in repeating myself. Even the dogs in the streets of Dundee know why Alex Salmond’s future is behind him.

  289. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    6 May, 2022 at 8:05 pm

    I expressed my views very forthrightly Ruby when I tried (single-handedly) to force a contest for the Alba leadership rather than a coronation of King Alexander in the grand setting of Greenock Town Hall. I don’t see an point in repeating myself. Even the dogs in the streets of Dundee know why Alex Salmond’s future is behind him.

    I’ve never heard of you before. I don’t know what you said in Greenock Town Hall.
    Are you saying Alba failed because Alex Salmond is a has been and Stu should be writing an article stating that in very precise terms.

    I don’t think Stu will be writing that article. Anything stopping you from writing the article?

  290. holymacmoses
    Ignored
    says:

    Can someone, somewhere tell me who Elaine Gallagher is. Age? Nationality? Education? Work Experience?

  291. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Republicofscotland says:
    6 May, 2022 at 8:03 pm
    I’m beginning to think that Joanne Lamont was right when she said Scots are too stupid to handle their own affairs.

    I though it that was because we weren’t genitally programmed to make political decisions. Could that be because we have been living in a colony for the last 300 years and all the important decisons have been made for us by the English electorate or politicians making decisions on our behalf.

  292. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Rob Brown 8.05 pm

    Are you really saying you think Alba would have performed better with A.N. Other as leader? If so….who? That hardly seems likely.

    It’s still not that long since Alba was even stood up as a party: without a significant chunk of defectors from SNP with some big hitters like Joanna Cherry, Angus McNeil and more of their activist base who were appalled at the TRA extremism and lack of urgency on indy, there was never likely to be a big breakthrough short term.

    The focus has to be on on HR2026 elections and getting enough MSPs to hold the balance of power. If that doesn’t work, we’re probably in for a longer haul because I don’t see a bunch of devolutionists like the SNP delivering, do you? By that point I reckon our hopes will have to be pinned on some kind of step change caused by popular unrest at the lack of progress and economy.

    I’d love to think independence can be achieved faster, but going by today’s results I’m not going to hold my breath.

  293. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Rob Brown

    Form a new political party with you as leader and come back to us with what you propose to deliver independence.

    If it is good enough then we will follow.

  294. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    I’ve just asked Craig Murray, in response to a tweet of his, whether there is any precedent for prosecuting an elected leader for repeatedly misleading the people they are meant to represent.

    Does anyone know if it’s been done before?

  295. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby says:
    6 May, 2022 at 7:47 pm

    Rob Brown says:
    6 May, 2022 at 7:33 pm

    Is the Rev Stu going to give us an equally incisive performance appraisal of Alex Salmond and Chris McEleney in the wake of Alba’s (all too predictable) failure to win a single council seat anywhere in Scotland yesterday. Or is that too much to expect from the author of the Wee Alba Book?

    What are your views Rob?

    Hmmm, you already know my views on Alba of course, Ruby … but isn’t this the same Rob “Jaggyblog” Brown who was getting himself into all sorts of bother screaming to anyone who’d listen that the Scottish media were treating Alba like the IRA this time last year?

    His blog used for such sober pronouncements is now mysteriously offline too: https://jaggy.blog. How bizarre, how bizarre …

    Is this the start of his public disowning, his sackcloth and ashes, before crawling back to the SNP in the hope there’s still a seat left on the gravy bus (to be fair, thanks to their Green “friends” they now have more than a few spare …)?

  296. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Republicofscotland says:
    6 May, 2022 at 8:03 pm

    Here’s a rundown of all the results of the council elections, Alba didn’t get one single councillor elected. I’m beginning to think that Joanne Lamont was right when she said Scots are too stupid to handle their own affairs.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenational.scot%2Fnews%2F20121623.scottish-council-election-results-winners-losers-every-vote-scotland%2F

    Pseudo journalist Xander Richards getting it wrong as usual.

    There were not three independents elected in North Lanarkshire, there were two.

    The other was the candidate of a far right party which under various names and guises has been peddling its wares down that way for some time appealing to the “Mon ra Rangurs, we urra peepul” vote.

  297. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    I’m not seriously expecting anyone to answer my question at 9.09, or it they do, it may take some time.

    So, what about this one, just out of sheer curiosity?

    I’ve just put up a Twitter ‘poll’ asking whether or not folk believe there will be a referendum next year, as promised.

    After half an hour, with 100 votes in, how do you think it’s breaking down? Any ideas?

    Go on – have a stab at it!

  298. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    6 May, 2022 at 8:05 pm

    Even the dogs in the streets of Dundee know why Alex Salmond’s future is behind him.

    Problem there is the dogs in the street can, and do, howl like jackals but they don’t have any suggested leaders with even a fraction of Salmond’s command, intellect, strategic acumen and proven ability to construct a unified Independence campaign from the ground up, that can generate it’s own momentum.

    There’s no shortage of duffers and also-rans who think they can do better than Salmond. You needn’t look further than the SNP’s sitting 1 and 2 to find thoroughly depressing proof positive of that.

    Far from Alex Salmond being a liability to the cause, I kinda see the polar reverse. Alex Salmond remains the essential nucleus of Scottish Independence and it’s pretty much everything else that’s often a bit ropy, non-essential, and ultimately expendable.

    If people allow themselves to be influenced by the Establishment smears and conspiracies designed to compromise Salmond, it’s those weak minded, easily led people who fracture the movement, certainly not the best strategic general that we have in our midst.

    Frankly, if I sat down tomorrow, and in a blinding flash of inspiration worked out the absolutely foolproof method to secure International Recognition for Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty, I would take that foolproof plan and put it directly in the hands of Alex Salmond and thereby give that plan the optimum chance of actually being delivered.

    Whether or not he’s front man or not is irrelevant, but whoever IS frontman, I hope and pray they have Alex Salmond’s number on speed dial, consult him on every decision and damn well listen to what the man says.

    If Sturgeon had actually done that in 2021, Holyrood might easily have been a Unionist free zone, with a pro-Independence Supermajority that was able to call a plebiscite Election on Independence whenever it was ready.

    And cast your mind back,… who was it created that ALBA lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky? Alex Salmond. Alex Salmond doing what Alex Salmond does, electrifying the game when nobody else even saw it coming. Aye, but remember too, who was it royally fucked it all up with their feckless SNP 1 & 2 “strategy” to gift the Unionists their List seats?

    Salmond’s “problem” is he’s too fast on his feet and too far ahead for the nodding donkeys, nags and also-rans to keep up with. There’s few who can keep up, but there are many, many who cannot. But that “spark”, that uniqueness Salmond has, is priceless and irreplaceable, and in 300+ years of crippling Union, Scotland has witnessed it once, …maybe twice.

    Right now, I’m feeling profoundly disheartened, because the ONLY candle still burning is a Constitutional initiative along the lines of that suggested by the SSRG, but even that has an uphill struggle to win over the insufferable SNP and their brainless, pedestrian, dead-end fantasies and doom ridden strategies.

    The Union has NEVER been weaker, nor Independence so close we can touch it, but instead of crossing the line and tasting freedom with diligent leadership, we get a fucking useless waste of space narcissist who can’t even tell you what a woman is. Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and a thousand years of Scottish patriots who gave everything for our Nation must be spinning in their graves.

  299. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks , a round of applause from me!

  300. bipod
    Ignored
    says:

    I am trying to figure out why the SNP keep on winning elections despite the litany of failures, incompotent blunders and downright corrupt behaviour of the sturgeon regime.

    The only explanations I can come up with are 1) Scottish voters are very tribal and will keep on voting for the same party even if its not their interests or 2) Scottish are totally disengaged from what is actually happening in Scotland. In my experience most people up here seem to know more about the scandals and other such goings on in London than what is actually happening here. Other than the politically active people pretty much nobody knows about any of the fiascos stu has listed above. This is probably due to a combination of things, like a very weak local media that never reports on anything but football and Boris Johnson.

  301. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    In reply to Mark Boyle –
    After the council elections, there’s no denying that I got it absolutely right about Alba and why it wasn’t going anywhere.
    I tried my best to explain why this breakaway party was doomed in my short-lived Jaggy blog, which I wound up because casting pearls at swine is a pointless exercise. Just rejoined this forum tonight for the fun of saying to you and others: Tellt ye!
    As for reboarding the SNP gravy train, I have never been on it and have no desire to share any sort of political carriage with the likes of Sturgeon or Swinney. Now that international travel restrictions have eased, I’m planning far more exciting journey far away from the cesspit of Scottish politics.

  302. holymacmoses
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks – we need the apprentice – have we found one who can learn fast enough. The electorate seem to like them young. Any suggestions?

  303. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:

    I tried my best to explain why this breakaway party was doomed in my short-lived Jaggy blog, which I wound up because casting pearls at swine is a pointless exercise

    Jaggy trying to upstage Ellis?

  304. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Who’s Ellis? Is he related to Else (aka Nicola)?

  305. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown, Andy Ellis, John Main. The same person.

  306. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    https://archive.ph/AgwXR

    Alex Salmond to be challenged for Alba party leadership

    It’s all coming back to me now. I didn’t recognise the name Rob Brown.

  307. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    6 May, 2022 at 11:09 pm

    Who’s Ellis? Is he related to Else (aka Nicola)?

    Not something you need to worry your pretty little head about darlin’ since you are off out of this cesspit. Just before you go can you tell us if you did also post here as Ron MacLean?

  308. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says: 6 May, 2022 at 10:23 pm

    In reply to Mark Boyle –
    After the council elections, there’s no denying that I got it absolutely right about Alba and why it wasn’t going anywhere.

    Of course there’s no denying, when you scrubbed the evidence one way or another! Reminds me somewhat of Woofer the Bloodhound in the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon Clue Club, always proclaiming “”I knew it all the time!” after the fact.

    I tried my best to explain why this breakaway party was doomed in my short-lived Jaggy blog, which I wound up because casting pearls at swine is a pointless exercise. Just rejoined this forum tonight for the fun of saying to you and others: Tellt ye!

    “Tellt” what I had been warning about for weeks, as did others – which had you been here you would have realised your contribution after the fact was somewhat superfluous to requirements.

    But please, Captain Hindsight, enlighten us with more of your finite wisdom and Thomas The Rhymeresque gift of prophecy, such as tonight’s lottery numbers …

    Now that international travel restrictions have eased, I’m planning far more exciting journey far away from the cesspit of Scottish politics.

    Oh please, don’t let us stop you, don’t let the door hit your fatuous arse on the way out … although after years of reading all manner of “people’s champions” living vicariously through the internet – from Garry “Bottom” Otton’s Iberian property empire to Peter Dow’s laying low of Scottish academia – one is inclined to cynicism at such grandiose pronouncements …

    There were a number of remarks I myself was tempted to say about Alba and the ISP today, in view of previous matters I’d addressed, but kicking people when they are down, no matter how much they may deserve it, has never been my forte. There will be a time for postmortems and recriminations.

    Tonight however is NOT the night, and if you had the slightest modicum of either braincells or decorum, you wouldn’t have to have the reason why explained.

  309. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    My, my, Mark. My message obviously had the desired effect on you.
    I didn’t wait until a few weeks before the council elections to warn that Salmond would lead Alba to another slaughter.
    Kicking people when they’re down? Politics is a blood sport and Salmond showed no mercy to any of his enemies in the past (nor to any mild dissenters within the New SNP who dared to challenge his Blairite control freakery).
    He’s the one who doesn’t know when to exit and not let the door hit his arse on the way out (as you put it). Matt Hancock has more chance of forming a successful breakaway party.

  310. twathater
    Ignored
    says:

    I will say it again for the umteenth time our BIGGEST ENEMY and biggest stumbling block is the Broadcasters and MSM particularly the Bastard Broadcasting Corp and its many collaborators

    As breeks and others have said time immemorial the BRAINWASHING is continuous and endless , every newscast or political programme is skewed and constructed towards an english view

    The very fact that establishment agencies are going easy on sturgeon’s continuous clusterfucks only PROVES her usefulness to the WM unionist establishment , IF she wasn’t so useful to them or compromised by them they could quite easily bring her and the whole snp edifice down , they are happy to stand back and watch sturgeon and her morons sabotage and destroy the DESIRE for independence from ordinary voters bit by bit, by letting her create chaos , mismanagement , financial incompetence , insane reviled policies , corruption , proven sexual harassment claims , ALL the things that are considered NORMAL and EXPECTED of any unionist government

  311. gregor
    Ignored
    says:

    BBC (06/05/2022): Scottish election results 2022: How did the SNP get so good at winning?

    https://archive.ph/MQo3S

  312. Effigy
    Ignored
    says:

    All parties started somewhere, just ask Boris.

    Alba hasn’t done well as the Media and all opposition parties, including SNP have tarred and feathered an innocent man to a point where his political career cannot recover.

    On English owned Radio Clyde which politician do the put on the headline news?
    DRoss himself. The Flip Flopper Boris must go unless my job depends on it.

    He assures us on behalf of the station owners that the Scottish Tories are more determined than ever to control Scotland even though they will never once had a majority here in 70 years.

    I claim to be able to see other opinions to mine although I disagree with them but the English
    Still voted Tory in significant numbers and many Tory voters loaned their vote to Liberals as they do on a temporary basis. They always go back.

    So England are happy with the Brexit Disaster, a PM a renounced liar and sex predictor and serial law breaker, inflation out of control heading to 10% while pensioners and nurses etc get 3% increases, millions unable to heat and eat, 4 increases within months on mortgage rates and another 40% increase expected on home energy costs in 5 months time.

    The English voter puts it down to those damn foreigners causing a global crisis.
    How dare the French see their home energy bills increase by 4% when God’s own English homes was a 100% increase within a year.

    Even the bitter unionists of N Ireland are finally moving away from the Dinosaur Denying DUP
    to a degree where they might find themselves free of Westminster corruption and safe in the arms of the EU.

  313. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    ” Dorothy Devine says:
    6 May, 2022 at 10:12 pm

    Breeks , a round of applause from me! ”

    And me ! Typically excellent post B , of which this * may * be the key line ….

    ” Whether or not he’s front man or not is irrelevant, but whoever IS frontman, I hope and pray they have Alex Salmond’s number on speed dial”

    Not for me to pronounce on what Alex ( or anyone else ) * should * do , but I’ve been thinking of late his talents may be best used away from the frontline , as an active * eminence gris * advising/directing strategy .

    I still have – unresolved – doubts about the efficacy of any one Party ploughing the same old rut , playing the same game by the same rules in pursuit of our goal ,but in the absence of any fresh alternative to that rather depleted route we’re obliged to support those that are at least trying to progress our cause .

    As Stuart Mackay says above , the current political culture ( if we can dignify the quagmire of lies and hypocrisy it is with that term ? ) is not conducive to independent thought , let alone any nation aspiring to Independence – that concept anathema except when geopolitically expedient – the Scottish version just doesn’t make the cut . As Stuart also says ….the single most recalcitrant obstacle is the complete domination of MSM by elements hostile to anything that challenges the prevailing Neo Lib worldview and the entrenched power blocks that inform/enforce it .

    Sturgeon/NSNP are the epitome of bloodless/mindless adherence to the same mentality

    Both them and the MSM that serves them so well must be booted-out and/or our attention withdrawn completely from them .

    Don’t give them the time of day . Excise them from our consciousness . Get them to the place we call ” Fuck “

  314. The Isolator
    Ignored
    says:

    @ PacMan
    “Rob Brown, Andy Ellis, John Main. The same person” = Sally on the gravy bus ?

  315. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    Congrats to the devolutionist, monarchist, north british trans party for being in superfit form on a 43% turn out.
    More well rounded arses on comfy colonialist chairs, yet another resounding win for «The System».
    Wha sae base as be a slave Calgacus?

  316. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says: 7 May, 2022 at 1:38 am

    My, my, Mark. My message obviously had the desired effect on you.

    No elaboration as to what that “desired effect” would be however, Woofer …

    I didn’t wait until a few weeks before the council elections to warn that Salmond would lead Alba to another slaughter.

    Neither did I, neither did many others on here. The warnings were made thick and fast that it wasn’t doing anywhere near enough ground work just to stay still. Again, had you been here, instead of parachuting in after the fact to make a “YER MAW!” post, you would have known this, Woofer.

    Kicking people when they’re down? Politics is a blood sport and Salmond showed no mercy to any of his enemies in the past (nor to any mild dissenters within the New SNP who dared to challenge his Blairite control freakery).

    Politics is only a blood sport to those with no interest in democracy. Also name me one example of Salmond ever driving anyone out of the party under an array of jumped up criminal and outright libellous charges – the hallmark of the Sturgeon regime that has so shocked and appalled people across the political spectrum.

    He’s the one who doesn’t know when to exit and not let the door hit his arse on the way out (as you put it). Matt Hancock has more chance of forming a successful breakaway party.

    And yet you joined Alba all the same. Not a very good judge of either character or future events despite your protestations to the contrary, are you?

  317. A. Bruce
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks @8:05 pm

    Very, very well said.

  318. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown @10.23pm.

    Rob I read your blog ad even commented on it a few times, I recall you were disgruntled over not being able to throw your hat in the ring for the leadership of the party and you expressed that via your blog posts.

    I suppose now that the dust has settled, you might have been right, that Sturgeon and her SNP clique via their evil machinations against Salmond fatally tarnished his image, and this was compounded by a die-hard unionist media.

    Alex Salmond must have his own special place in Scottish history no Scot has come closer in the last 300 odd years on getting Scotland out of this rancid union, and that should never be forgotten. In saying that I kind of reluctantly agree that it might be time for a change at the top of Alba, Salmond can still play his part in the background out of the media eye.

    On the media, its a sad state of affairs in Scotland when the likes of an enclave in Moldova, the Catalan people and even the oppressed folk of Palestine have their own tv channels and Scotland doesn’t. Broadcasting will never ever be devolved such is the power of it in influencing minds.

  319. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank you. Please study the above comment from RepublicofScotland, Mark Boyle, and try to replicate its reasoned discourse in future.

  320. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Thank you. As a regular follower of my blog, you clearly remember what I wrote and why. I only wish personally abusive commenters here, such as Mark Boyle, did the same.

  321. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    The Isolator says: 7 May, 2022 at 8:24 am

    @ PacMan
    “Rob Brown, Andy Ellis, John Main. The same person” = Sally on the gravy bus ?

    I’ve got a suspicion that John Main and Andy Ellis is the same person. John Main just seems to fit the classic sock puppet pattern. It is also possible that they are bots. Whether they are or not, I’ll leave to others to decide as I just scroll past their comments.

    As to all these individuals I had mentioned being one person, I was talking figuratively as they are all ego and think they are more important than the cause.

    If they think they influence the movement then they have every right to do so. If they have good ideas then other people have every right to listen and follow them. However, I just don’t hear anything positive form either of them.

    As you say Sally on the gravy bus is the same type of person although it’s obvious she is just interested in financial gain.

  322. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    I came across the below YouTube clip which shows the mentality of the people who are elected to Westminster.

    They are so brazen that they just don’t care if they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

    I’ve tried posting this a few times but it doesn’t seem to post, I’m not sure if there is a filter to stop YouTube links from being posted but you do a search for the below on YoutTube you will find it.

    “Ian Hislop embarrasses MPs in their own select committee on lobbying and transparency”

  323. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 10:56 am

    Thank you. Please study the above comment from RepublicofScotland, Mark Boyle, and try to replicate its reasoned discourse in future.

    1. Who died and left you in charge?

    2. Rob Brown says:6 May, 2022 at 7:33 pm -Is the Rev Stu going to give us an equally incisive performance appraisal of Alex Salmond and Chris McEleney in the wake of Alba’s (all too predictable) failure to win a single council seat anywhere in Scotland yesterday. Or is that too much to expect from the author of the Wee Alba Book?

    Rob Brown says: 7 May, 2022 at 1:38 am – Politics is a blood sport and Salmond showed no mercy to any … who dared to challenge his Blairite control freakery).

    “Reasoned discourse”, eh?

    Bolt, ya radge.

  324. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    This should be the vid PacMan

    (25 mins long)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3O8mwDFo4M

  325. Stuart MacKay
    Ignored
    says:

    I think twathater has it exactly right but I’d throw in “the status quo” as well as the mainstream media.

    Without constant attention on how and why things could be better it’s going to be next to impossible to raise enough ire to force change. Independence is trapped in quicksand, some of it is our making and it will take a lot of slow, relentless force to counter the lethargy and fear of change and so break free.

    Personalities are not going to do it and neither are political parties.
    One reason is that presentational politics means that parties only follow, they never lead – that would be too risky. Nicola and the SNP are going to get a rude awakening if push comes to shove and a referendum comes over the horizon in the next year. It’s the same with Alba. Salmond is streets ahead in terms of thinking and leadership but even with a talented team it’s not enough to make any difference. The forces of mediocrity in the rest of the political environment are overwhelming – there’s simply no Gordian Knot to cut. Brexit didn’t do it. Lockdown parties didn’t do it nor will ferries.

    Maybe as inflation runs out of control people will become sufficiently desperate to demand change from the parties but the current crisis has to get a lot worse before we’ll see any movement on that front. Even if it does who do we have in a position of power or potential position that is up to the task.

    All in all, I’d say nothing much changed as of yesterday and nothing much will change in the foreseeable future. There are a number of storm clouds on the horizon for the UK and Europe which might result in a serious shakeup but it’s probably going to be a few years before the effects start to be felt.

    Only if there is some form of media agitating for change will it be possible to keep the issues on the table long enough to get people to stop worrying about today and start thinking about tomorrow.

  326. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    No doubt Sturgeon will create a job and title for this arselicking acolyte.

    “AMONG a shake up across the city, one of the most prominent surprise losses was the SNP’s Mhairi Hunter.

    Mhairi, who has served two terms in the Southside Central ward, is known as being

    Nicola Sturgeon’s right hand woman and a prominent figure in the party.

    She lost her seat to new councillor Elaine Gallagher of the Scottish Greens.”

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.glasgowtimes.co.uk%2Fnews%2F20121663.snps-mhairi-hunter-speaks-shock-loss-southside%2F

  327. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Thanks for reproducing my earlier comments, Mark. I stand by them and hereby repeat my request Stu now subject Alex Salmond to the same merciless scrutiny to which he revels in subjecting Nicola Sturgeon.
    Eck and Nicola formed the double act that led the Yes campaign to defeat in 2014. (There’s nae runner up prize in a referendum). They had their “One Opportunity” (remember that banner?) and blew it. Scotland can only move on when the pair of them do.

  328. stuart mctavish
    Ignored
    says:

    When shutting people up is preferred to spoon fulls of sugar to help the medical experiments go down I’m increasingly disinclined to take my own interest in any of it too seriously ever again, not least when confronted by official results suggesting a (the?) significant minority of Glaswegians voting A.B.S. now want their rubbish managed by green ladymen!*..

    That said, assuming there is a genuine need**, can anyone advise the loophole the education authority might be hoping to exploit in order to encourage young men, let alone four year old’s having fun in the dressing up box, to change their name and gender without parental consultation and consent?

    I’d have thought that, given an age, sex or moany face based definition of woman, young boys will generally not be allowed (let alone able) to live as a woman for 3 full months until such time as they have graduated – and would no longer be subject to the protections afforded by the education system in any event.

    * especially when trust is such that real time raw data and any concerns over legal issues arising through scarcity or abundance of census/ castration graphic postal returns must remain a closely guarded secret

    **ie children in real life being treated like the Timothy character in “sorry” and being sent to primary in a dress because his parents always wanted a girl, etc.

  329. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Dan

    That’s the vid 🙂

    No matter how many times I tried and even wrapping the link into HTML A Href Marker, it wouldn’t allow me to post.

  330. OB
    Ignored
    says:

    Get back to blogging man. For Scotland’s sake. Scotland has always been a corrupt country. It was always deemed necessary to corrupt our Institutions from time to time to meet the requirements of established power. The SNP were our way of getting our Independence in order to run all that around. Since Sturgeon took over the SNP have just joined the club and the abuse of power is now a weekly if not daily event. We need this rancid corrupt cabal headed up by Sturgeon exposed for what they are.

    Independence is gone for now. I’ll settle now for the guilty being punished. Only then do we have a hope of rebuilding.

  331. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    stuart mctavish says: 7 May, 2022 at 12:47 pm

    **ie children in real life being treated like the Timothy character in “sorry” and being sent to primary in a dress because his parents always wanted a girl, etc.

    This was exactly what happened to the unfortunate Peter Cushing, who was always very open about his rather “eccentric” and at times awful childhood. Despite his protestations, there’s no doubt that it was the inspiration for Pete Townshend’s “I’m A Boy” for The Who in 1966.

    It’s a sign of the ludicrous mental gymnastics of the transgender lobby that some have sought to adopt it as “their” anthem, when the song explicitly is about a male being forced into pretending he is female (even having to wear a wig!) by his insane mother under the threat of violence.

  332. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    It’s passing strange that the hard of thinking – and overwhelmingly anonymous – keyboard warriors in here jump to the intellectually lazy riposte that those disagreeing with them are either all the same person (who must be pretty busy) and/or a bot.

    Rob Brown is of course entitled to his own opinions about Alba’s performance, and obviously he does have skin in the game since he wanted to stand for the leadership himself, but I note the reasoned discourse he purports to want doesn’t extend to answering the queries up thread from last night?

    Council elections are something most folk find hard to get too excited about, as evidenced by the crap turnout figures. 38% of people voted in Edinburgh Central. The SNP’s Finlay McFarlane is now one of my councillors. What a bin fire.

  333. Merganser
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown@12.05
    You may be right about the need for Nicola and Alex to both go. However it was interesting to see the article on the ‘John Smythe Investigates’ site by Jennifer Dempsie which was very supportive of Alex, so if she is still of the same opinion, not everyone who worked closely with him is against him.

  334. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Well said breeks,
    For a while here the despair was turning into the sheriffs posse worked up to frenzie for the purpose of chasing down the wrong man to hang,
    While the baddie media and holyrood laughed their heads of in the saloon.

    And lets not forget NS was the new young apprentice at one time,
    How did that turn out?

    Alex has more experience, wisdom, political know how in his little finger than most politicians across the board,
    He failed on two accounts only.

    1) He had loyalty to his old party. He never imagined it could become so corrupted,
    usually loyalty is a proud banner to carry,
    You would be looking for that quality in your friends.

    2) He had expectations to win fair elections using the opposing establishments rule book.
    But it is obvious that they created the rules to be always in their favour for a reason. That
    therefore always took him down the wrong road to independence.

    The SSRG are nearer to the correct route.

    Lets us not think like a posse worked up to a frenzie.
    And ask ourselves why NS and the msm did a hit job on Alex….
    Because he was getting us nearer to independence than ever before, He was becoming a threat to all the opposition.
    They needed to eliminate him from Scotlands political scene.

    The other purpose was to cause divide between the grassroots loyalties for stalling and preventing the base having one direction or purposeful leadership.

    Well they succeeded
    Were so busy having a go at each other we cannot see the wood for the trees.

    The answer lies hidden in the open,
    in the sudden large union like protests and deliberate squirrels attempting to Deflect us all from talking that one subject,
    They quickly bring in other topics to deflect.
    They attempt to shame you or I for bringing the subject up. Thereby into dropping the subject.
    They avoid the topic like the plague,
    By name calling.

    To me, it means they the unionist minded are well aware that this topic should not be thoroughly discussed or acted upon by the Scots.
    For they, the unionist would surely be found wanting.

    However the SSRG are making the same mistake Alex did.
    They are Following the rule book made by the opposition,

  335. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    As with other posters, I agree that there needs to be a totally Scottish broadcast media. However, it isn’t the magic bullet as there are potential pitfalls with this.

    The most obvious one is that it simply can’t be used to deliver the message of independence. News that is one sided is at best opinion and at worst propaganda. There needs to be balanced and informed debate on it where both sides of the issue can be discussed.

    Next, there is the chance that it is manipulated to push agendas that isn’t beneficial to independence. We have seen this with Nicola Sturgeon where she has turned the independence campaign into the Nicola Sturgeon betterment campaign.

    There is no doubt that when she’s gone, there are plenty of other individuals in the SNP who will use independence in their own self promotion and there is nothing better to do that than a media they have significant influence over it behind the scenes.

    Finally, there needs to be intelligent content on the media platform. IIRC, the content of BBC is delivered in a way to be understand by a 11 year old. You simply can’t do that with serious political issues in an informed way.

    During the Brexit debate, I really enjoyed the output of RTE and their Brexit Republic podcasts which was really intelligent, well researched and balanced.

    This is what is required. I know that not everybody is a political geek and will have the time to digest it but it just takes those in the know to discuss them and when talking to non-political people about it in an everyday language that everybody understand.

  336. George Ferguson
    Ignored
    says:

    @stuart mctavish 12:47pm
    There is no legal loophole for local authorities to promote gender education for early primary school children. The Supreme Court ruling in the Named Person case reinforced parental rights and the associated commentary by the Judges made that abundantly clear. However look to America for some insight into what could happen next. America is about a year ahead of us on this debate. Read up on Ron DeSantis in Florida for an overview. It’s going to get polarised. Best to disengage and home educate your children. You have statutory rights under the Education Act 1980.

  337. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Stuart MacKay 11.47 am

    An overwhelmingly biased MSM didn’t stop the independence movement increasing its support from what was it…20 odd % to 45% between 2012 and 2014. Blaming the media for some or all of the failure of the movement to advance in the past 7-8 years just looks like a bit of a cop out.

    One way or another we have to change the minds of those who are still unconvinced: we can’t really use the hostile MSM excuse given the precedent of the #indyref1 campaign can we? Why did we succeed then, but failed since?

    I think you may be right that the answer to the inertia exhibited by lots of folk will in the end only come from some shock to the system, like an economic downturn. Mind you, lots of folk thought (hoped?) brexit would result in an upsurge of support for independence. When it didn’t happen right after the vote, others said it’d probably have to wait until the negative economic effects became obvious. Perhaps with Covid and the impact of Putin’s war in the Ukraine more people might be jolted out of their britnat comfort zone.

  338. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    Nicola Sturgeon in Vogue…such a pity independence isn’t.
    https://archive.ph/KrBbp
    Plainly the thing itself does not figure in «life after politics».
    Expecting a feeding frenzy for the memoirs.
    Good title. «Remembrance of Lost Opportunities».
    Should fill three volumes more than comfortably.
    Trust makes way for treachery….Bedouin saying.

  339. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @James Che 1.11 pm

    So let’s get this straight, everyone apart from you is wrong? Alex Salmond got it wrong, the SSRG is getting it wrong, but James Che has the answer…..? Riiiiiight.

    From what we can gather your solution is focusing on one subject, which you insist the movement is being deflected from, and all these other people are “following the rule book made by the opposition”.

    OK, so how long is it going to take you and those who agree with you to convince Scots to stop following this opposition rule book, how are you going to do it and what will it involve? If it’s so obvious and so much more likely to produce results faster than the alternatives, presumably you have a timescale in mind and can tell us who it is who will be leading this movement, who will be funding it and who will be doing all the organising and activism…..?

  340. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Here comes the opposition. Ready to deflect the one important topic,

  341. Gregory Beekman
    Ignored
    says:

    On the trans thing…

    As I’ve said elsewhere, we should do away with the terms men and women and replace them with penis people and vagina people.

    Then let a penis person claim they are really a vagina person. For that, they’d have to claim a penis is a vagina.

    Which is basically what they do now.

    I’m a gay man and I enjoy having sex with other men – I don’t see why I should have to pretend to be a woman or pretend that my sexual orientation doesn’t exist in order to continue doing that.

  342. Dan
    Ignored
    says:

    Andy Ellis says: at 1:24 pm

    An overwhelmingly biased MSM didn’t stop the independence movement increasing its support from what was it…20 odd % to 45% between 2012 and 2014. Blaming the media for some or all of the failure of the movement to advance in the past 7-8 years just looks like a bit of a cop out.

    Aye, that’s one view richt enough…
    It could also be stated that the overwhelmingly pro-union biased media only successfully managed to suppress growth rate and support for Indy to below 50% in the run up to the 2014 vote.
    Plus since then that very same pro-union media altered their tactics as the game had changed and they then had their compliant no threat to union patsies in place that they needed to protect.
    Just look back at the years of Stu’s articles here on Wings highlighting all the crap and corruption these compliant “pro-indy” patsies have been up to since 2015 that hasn’t been reported in the MSM.
    That change in tact from the very powerful drivers behind the pro-union narrative should not be dismissed or ignored by your simplistic take on it that assumes nothing has altered over the course of time.

  343. The Isolator
    Ignored
    says:

    With reference to my previous comment directed to PacMan. This is an interesting read from the NYT last year. I know of at least one high ranking “staffer” in Holyrood who uses a cell phone.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/us/politics/spies-conservatives-left-political-enemies.html?smid=em-share

  344. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Merganser says:
    7 May, 2022 at 1:07 pm

    Rob Brown@12.05
    You may be right about the need for Nicola and Alex to both go. However it was interesting to see the article on the ‘John Smythe Investigates’ site by Jennifer Dempsie which was very supportive of Alex, so if she is still of the same opinion, not everyone who worked closely with him is against him.


    Google Docs does an excellent job of transcribing an image to text. Sometimes it’s hard to read text in an image & also impossible to quote. The following is what I got in Google Docs from the screen shot in
    https://tinyurl.com/3fpt4t3j

    I think it’s very good.

    THE BOSS GOES, LEAVING A MUCH MORE CONFIDENT NATION BEHIND…
    The Courier 20 NOVEMBER 2014 By Jennifer Dempsie.
    THE AMERICAN Founding Father, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and
    or of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, said that: “There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.”
    In terms of our former First Minister Alex Salmond, nature and fortune were certainly handed out to him in sizeable measure which he will, in his usual modest style, readily admit. With a razor-sharp intellect and political antennae, a ferocious work ethic and a big personality to boot, he is one of the most formidable politicians to have ever graced the political stage on the British Isles. And always full of surprises
    ernoon he tweeted: Pleased to announce that my FM pension will be donated to support young people, community & charitable
    causes.
    Yes, that’s right, a politician undertaking a selfless act. Like him or not, he has served his country and if there is any one act which shows how the character of the man and his sense of public duty to Scotland then this is it.
    Having started working for him almost 10 years ago, I know this was no fluke. Alex, as he is known to most, or The Boss, to his close circle of staff, is a man driven by deeply held principles and traditional values.
    The annual pension worth £42.501 which he will receive after stepping down will be distributed to charities in the north east of Scotland for as long as he is an MSP. Alex said it was the “right thing to do”. At the time of writing his tweet had 1,309 retweets and his announcement was universally welcomed. As his twitter parody Angry Salmond would no doubt say, that really is #sexysocialism.
    Recognised widely as a political giant who has achieved some remarkable feats not only in his time leading Scotland but in his political career to date – and I say to date as it’s clearly not over yet-he is going out in style, surprising everyone again by going at a time and date of his choosing, which no previous First Minister has been able to do.
    Even though he lost the independence referendum, Alex Salmond could have stayed. Nicola Sturgeon even tried to persuade him to. But his mind was made up. After seven-and-ahalf years in office, Scotland’s longest-serving First Minister is now a backbench MSP. But not for long I suspect.
    When I was a young special adviser to the First Minister, as part of the 2008 Scotland Week programme we visited the University of Virginia, which Thomas Jefferson founded.
    Alex was in his element sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of history. He told us that Thomas Jefferson was one of 19 of the 56 delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence who were either Scottish or had Scottish or Ulster ancestry.
    Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson was tutored by a Scot too.
    Jefferson considered the founding of the university to be one of his greatest achievements
    Alex Salmond considers restoring the principle of free education and abolishing tuition fees to be his
    It was in Virginia, after working for Alex for almost four years, that I heard him make his first speech on independence. For me, it was one of his finest. Here is a small excerpt: “(Independence) That is our vision. It is the same vision that Thomas Jefferson showed America in the Declaration of Independence. A Declaration that was steeped in the principles of the Enlightenment – an intellectual revolution that Scots did so much to shape… And it is the words of Thomas Jefferson that will inspire us today and in the years ahead: “We are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it.” This principle was his political compass. So after seven and a half years, how has he left Scotland?
    It was in Virginia, after working for Alex for almost four years, that I heard him make his first speech on independence. For me, it was one of his finest. Here is a small excerpt: “(Independence) That is our vision. It is the same vision that Thomas Jefferson showed America in the Declaration of Independence. A Declaration that was steeped in the principles of the Enlightenment an intellectual revolution that Scots did so much to shape… And it is the words of Thomas Jefferson that will inspire us today and in the years ahead: “We are a people capable of self-government, and worthy of it.” This principle was his political compass. So after seven and a half years, how has he left Scotland?
    I would say he has reset the terms of the debate in Scotland and how Scotland is considered. We are definitely a more confident nation.
    He may not have achieved his ambition of independence, but he has left on a high. That in itself is a major achievement.
    Whether it is restoring free education, transforming our energy production to harness our vast renewable potential, making Scotland one of the most attractive places in the UK to invest in, or simply ensuring Scotland had an actual government not a branch office executive”, there’s a lot to be proud
    of.
    He wasn’t perfect – who is? But it was a privilege to work for a true radical, a true public servant and a politician driven by the principle of the sovereignty of the people
    As a staffer who has proudly served under his leadership I would say as thousands did on twitter this week #ThanksAlex. But I don’t have to worry about saying goodbye. It’s clearly not over yet for Alex Salmond.

  345. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    https://archive.ph/BtaUT

    Where to start with this stuff.

    The first trans councillor for Glasgow has said she hopes her election success will show others that transgender people are “not a threat”.

    That is a ridiculous thing to say. It’s like saying the election of a man shows that ‘men are not a threat’

  346. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ruby, Merganser, Rob Brown: That is a lovely appreciative article by Jennifer Dempsie.

    Jennifer Dempsie is now married to Angus Robertson. She seems to say very different things about Mr Salmond now, and has done for a few years apparently. What changed?

  347. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    I’m not gonna preach to them, because frankly I think they already know, but there is a MASSIVE change in emphasis required by the Independence movement, and that’s the change currently being signposted by the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group.

    Now rather that toning down and tempering the arguments to make what the SSRG is saying more “palatable” to a much wider audience, we need the SSRG to stand firm, hold it’s ground, and let “us” bring the masses to share their perspectives.

    In our devolved Holyrood Assembly, we Scots are simply “users” picking from a list of options presented to us, and then patting ourselves on the back for how jolly democratic we are.

    What the SSRG are trying to promote is a Constitutional approach to Independence, where we, the sovereign people of Scotland are not “users” merely using the application, but “super-users” who are authorised to alter or even re-write the application to suit ourselves.

    A Holyrood which swears any sort of fealty to Westminster, (and that means it respects the constitutional legitimacy of 1998 Scotland Act), is fundamentally incompatible with Scotland’s sovereign Constitution.

    Dutifully observing the Scotland Act makes us all “users” of a Westminster system, where “they” are the super-users who can change the rules and move the goal posts and we are powerless to do anything about it.

    However, dutifully observing the lawful legitimacy of Scotland’s Sovereign Constitution makes us “super-users” who can re-write the whole system from scratch, and because we’re sovereign and Westminster is not, there is NOTHING Westminster can do to interfere. They CANNOT overrule our decisions.

    We Scots MUST come to understand the difference between being subjugated “users” who follow the rules of UK system which we didn’t write, or alternatively, being Constitutionally Sovereign super-users who write our own rules and have the last word in Scotland.

    This is a binary and absolute condition. There is black, or there is white. There can be no grey. Either we ARE sovereign, or we are not. Either Holyrood answers to us, or Westminster. It CANNOT answer to both.

    The Scots are sovereign in Scotland, so we DON’T take orders from Westminster.

  348. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Dream on, Ruby.
    Aye, Alex Salmond was a singular figure in Scottish public life for several decades but his hopes of a political comeback ended in the High Court. You might choose to forget what his own defence advocate said about him during that trial but his many enemies in politics and the media will never do so, alas.
    Don’t forget the jury’s verdict on the most serious charge laid against him in that trial – sexual assault with intent to rape. Not proven is an acquittal as much as not guilty is an acquittal but not proven is not the same as not guilty.
    No political leader in any mature democracy could recover his standing after that. The dream has died for him.

  349. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Breeks at 3.26: You are completely right that the sovereignty of Scotland’s people is incompatible with being subject to Westminster rule.

    The SNP no longer have anyone in charge who has the nous or the guts to do anything about this. Oh for Margot Macdonald and Alex Salmond.

  350. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby says:
    7 May, 2022 at 2:39 pm

    https://archive.ph/BtaUT

    Where to start with this stuff.

    The first trans councillor for Glasgow has said she hopes her election success will show others that transgender people are “not a threat”.

    That is a ridiculous thing to say. It’s like saying the election of a man shows that ‘men are not a threat’

    SHHHH! Don’t interrupt your enemies when they are busy making clusterfucks covered in sprinkles and sauce.

    This is exactly what I hoped would happen. There’s been mutterings in the ranks over Mhari Hunter’s defeat, as the first dawnings that those who live by in politics by brittle ideological tenets soon die by them.

    The more stupid and absurd things this inevitable attention seeker does, the more they will dig themselves into a bigger and bigger hole which the electorate – horrified at what they’d done – will subsequently bury them in, just as the well meaning but stupid did with the BNP.

    Gregory Beekman says:
    7 May, 2022 at 1:56 pm

    I’m a gay man and I enjoy having sex with other men.

    Do you really?

    You’d qualified by the earlier definition in the sentence. But thank you for the clarification – in this day and age of ceaseless eggshell treading, always good to stay informed.

    BTW, with that in mind, what is the difference between a “gay man” and a “gay man“? Is this the new internet shorthand for one that is “out” by saying it in bold? What sort would they be if they were bold and in italic, like this?

    (Does this make me “Typographical emphasis curious”? Has that qualified to be a new sexual orientation or gender yet? If not and I register it, will I get royalties?)

  351. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Rob Brown at 3.30: are you not forgetting that the woman in question continued to work in Alex Salmond’s office at her own request? This suggests that the wording of the allegation is an exaggeration of the reality of the incident – the defence was that it was a consensual occasion where both were fully clothed, including overcoats.

    As for his defence counsel – those words were an extract – much like a review of a film where they keep the words “never seen a film like it” and omit “and hope never to do so again”!. Unless we know the whole it is unwise to judge.

  352. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    I am forgetting nothing about Alex Salmond – the good, the bad or the ugly.
    I was rooting for his acquittal but also praying he would be wise enough to perceive that as the end of his career in frontline politics.
    Alas, his sense of duty/ego (take your pick) got the better of him. Now his time in public life is ending even more ignominiously than it might have had he walked away from the High Court and proceeded to devote his considerable talents to something other than leader of a new breakaway party..

  353. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    PS – I joined Alba after its defeat in the Holyrood ejection in the hope and expectation that Alex Salmond would step aside and allow somebody with fewer stains on his character to lead the party. But it soon became clear that Alba stands for Alex not Scotland.

  354. Scot Finlayson
    Ignored
    says:

    Mhiari Hunter She/Her gone,
    Rhiannon Spear She/Her gone,

    `Glasgow`s Miles Better`

    “If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”

    ? Sun Tzu

  355. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    “Council elections are something most folk find hard to get too excited about, as evidenced by the crap turnout figures. 38% of people voted in Edinburgh Central.”

    Sighthill/Gorgie saw only a 35.9% turnout, whereas Colinton / Fairmilehead had a 59.3% turnout.

    https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/election-results/local-government-elections-2022-results

  356. sarah
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Rob Brown at 3.54: I too thought it better that Alex take a less prominent role whilst having his unequalled abilities and energy in the engine room.

    However I am a devotee of the truth and also a “prisoner of hope” so am not giving up yet on the prospect of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth coming to light in regards to all the SNP leadership shenanigans. With the purpose being for the decent SNP rank and file to replace the current leadership and get back on track using all available routes i.e. our existing constitution as unearthed by the Scottish Sovereignty Group and Salvo.

  357. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    A great breakdown on the council elections on my home town Glasgow, it also tells you why ballot papers were rejected, it gives you all the candidates and their amount of votes, Alba didn’t do very well unfortunately, however they didn’t filed that many candidates in the city from what the results show.

    Anderston/City/Yorkhill had a turnout of just 28.10% the lowest of the city’s wards.

    Click 2022 results then scroll down to find the wards.

    https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/forms/election/ResultsForLocal.aspx

  358. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 3:30 pm

    Dream on, Ruby.

    I thought you were getting out of this cesspit? What’s keeping you?

    Why do you think that ‘casting pearls at swine’ is any less pointless on here than it was on your “Jaggy blog’?
    I’m going to put you on my SQP list along with Main & Ellis.
    Bye now!

  359. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown.

    Right Rob, surmising that Alex Salmond ponders the results of these local elections and decides to step out of the limelight with the Alba party, who in your opinion (besides yourself of course) do you feel has enough gravitas or is statesman like enough, and is a well kent enough face to lead the party.

  360. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    Rhetorical question.
    Will Sinn Féin have the balls to challenge westminster that the virtuous Sturgeon coterie conspicuously lacks?
    Suspect Scotland is heading for the wilderness of irrelevance.
    Quote: Europe Minister Clement Beaune ramped up the rhetoric, saying: “We need to speak the language of force because that seems to be the only thing this British Government understands.”

  361. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Mark Boyle says:
    7 May, 2022 at 3:38 pm

    SHHHH! Don’t interrupt your enemies when they are busy making clusterfucks covered in sprinkles and sauce.

    Good call! I will try to restrain myself. I might even help pouring on the sprinkles & sauce.

  362. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    sarah says:
    7 May, 2022 at 3:12 pm

    @ Ruby, Merganser, Rob Brown: That is a lovely appreciative article by Jennifer Dempsie.

    Jennifer Dempsie is now married to Angus Robertson. She seems to say very different things about Mr Salmond now, and has done for a few years apparently. What changed?

    Maybe she got a knock-back and you know what they say about women scorned.

  363. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    “Ex-SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars has lodged a police complaint calling for an investigation into the ‘missing’ documents over Scotland’s ferry fiasco raising questions about ‘misconduct in public office’.”

    Mr Sillars, now a supporter of Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party, has called for the the police to investigate the missing documentation surrounding why ministers went ahead with granting the contract despite the concerns raised by the Government’s ferry procurement body, Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) over the lack of financial guarantees that placed them at risk.”

    Would Jim Sillar’s be in the running if Alex Salmond stands down as Alba’s leader? Sillar’s certainly appears by this article at least, to have the bit between his teeth, something we’ve been missing of late.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldscotland.com%2Fnews%2Fhomenews%2F20120568.jim-sillars-lodges-police-complaint-ministers-ferry-fiasco-missing-documents%2F

  364. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Did Jennifer Dempsie find herself out of a job when Alex Salmond resigned?

  365. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Sturgeon open to sharing power with the Greens at council level as her party does at Holyrood.

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scotsman.com%2Fnews%2Fpolitics%2Fsturgeon-open-to-replicating-greens-deal-at-council-level-3684917

  366. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 3:58 pm

    PS – I joined Alba after its defeat in the Holyrood ejection in the hope and expectation that Alex Salmond would step aside and allow somebody with fewer stains on his character to lead the party. But it soon became clear that Alba stands for Alex not Scotland.

    Aye, and thought that after such a disastrous defeat they’d hand over control of the player to a complete Who The Fuck Are You failed journalist. Even UKIP eventually realised that was a silly idea.

    Ah well, thanks for the giggles.

  367. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    “It is now almost universally accepted that Scottish local democracy is in a terrible state but with a scepticism that there is anything we can do about it.”

    https://robinmcalpine.org/democracy-is-something-you-do-and-can-do-better/

  368. twathater
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown you obviously weren’t around wings prior to the 2019 election when despair and defeat was the dominant feeling in the air and sturgeon had it all her own way not even caring that the carrots reeked of decay and mould , many people including myself BEGGED AS to come back and rescue Scotland which he is ATTEMPTING to do

    It is NOT his fault that Scottish voters are as thick as shit (evidenced by the continuous election of LIEbour for decades) or that WM has either recognised that sturgeon is a fraudulent coward and only points out her clusterfucks occasionally to keep up appearances , or they control her

    At any given time after Salmond’s aquittal on ALL charges WM could have DESTROYED Sturgeon easily and set back independence by decades , as anyone who has even half a brain will know , the EVIDENCE was GLARING and OBVIOUS but WM chose NOT to use it they have kept it in reserve and WILL use it when it will do the utmost damage

    I am extremely angry that Salmond is being gentlemanly and respectful in his exposing of sturgeons maladministration and treac hery but as is evidenced by the ignoring of him and ALBA by the MSM , and the collusion and co-operation of the justice system , justiciary and the police service what are the chances of success of anything coming to light

    You were and are supposedly a journalist , you cannot expect people to believe you don’t have an angle , you must still have friends and contacts within the industry that could produce a way to get the evidence of malfeasance by the SG out there and widely reported why haven’t you done that to save your country and fellow countrymen , I am sure Alex would be very appreciative of that

  369. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks.

    Breeks.
    There is no doubt that the Scottish constitution exists,
    And in that inclusion is Scots Law, which in of itself is confirmed and seconded in the treaty of the union words.
    This is a cause for controversy on the British government breaking the treaty of the union barely a year after it was signed when they imposed the English Treason Act into our Scots Law by via legislation that by passed the Scots version of Treason.

    The quandry of the two legal constitutions contributors that make up the british parliament had difficultty from the outset of the treaty.
    One could not eliminate the other, but at the same time are incompatible.

    Again when we study legislation passed by the british parliament annulling and making void old Scots Laws of Scotland they considered were out of date, and adding that most of westminster could not understand the old Scots language used in those laws, was a good enough reason to do away with them in their opinion.
    This interference in the Scottish constitution, Scots Law and breaking the promises they made in signing the 1707 treaty are just a few good reasons to suspend the treaty of the union for further investigations to take place,
    We may consider the poll tax in Scotland one year ahead of England being a third reason,
    And abolishing the boroughs in Scotland as a forth reason.
    Not continuing the land tax in Scotland as stated, as a fifth reason.
    Having a devolved government in Scotland as a sixth reason.
    Englands parliament ratifying the Scottish articles of the treaty of the union when they had no legal authority to do so.
    We do not need a long drawn out ending of the treaty of the union to begin with or sorting out who gets what, that can be managed at a later date,

    Out of this a few things would have to happen.

    1) We would temporarily have to run Scotland ourselves with a New Scottish sovereign people’s Assembly.

    It would also temporarily suspend The Snp and political parties sitting in Holyrude.

  370. PacMan
    Ignored
    says:

    @ The poster with handle Andy Ellis

    Ah, the poster with handle Andy Ellis who continually comes in and disrespects anybody who has an opposite view then greets and snorters when challenged….

  371. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Failed journalist? I earned a great salary for three decades practising and teaching journalism across the Anglo-Celtic archipelago and Asia (which is why I can now go globe-trotting).
    What have you ever done with your life apart from trolling (for nothing)?

  372. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    The above question is directed to Mark Boyle, although I’m sure he’ll seek to dodge it.

  373. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    In response to twathater, there’s nothing I nor anyone else who sympathises with Alex Salmond can do to resurrect his political career – irrespective of our media connections or personal communication skills. I tried to get that across to Alba members in the run up to the inaugural party conference in Greenock. But no lone man can administer an antidote to mass delusion.

  374. James Che.
    Ignored
    says:

    Irelands closer to independence than we are.

    Mind you we have some big reasons not to be allowed to go for a independent Scotland.

    We have are a strategic war base geography and maritime wise plus hold the nuclear armour for America and England.
    Add oil, which BP and Shell are making huge profits from the north of britain for the war on Russia/Ukraine, and possible China.

    Let Ireland go, but Scotland needs to be kept under the thumb for reasons outside of our politics.

  375. Ottomanboi
    Ignored
    says:

    Are nationalists prepared «to die» for their cause?
    No, then «haud yir whisht».

  376. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    In response to republicofscotland, I don’t think any of the weel kent faces in Scottish politics can lead a national rebellion (which is what attainment of independence would require). Jim Sillars is a wise auld soul so must realise his days as a political leader are well and truly past. I’m sure of one thing – a new force needs a new face!

  377. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 7:06 pm

    Failed journalist? I earned a great salary for three decades practising and teaching journalism across the Anglo-Celtic archipelago and Asia (which is why I can now go globe-trotting).
    What have you ever done with your life apart from trolling (for nothing)?

    I don’t need to justify what I’ve done with my life for the simple reason I wasn’t the one who had the absurd pretension – which you, by contrast, did – of being worthy to take over a political party run by a politician whom had been First Minister of Scotland.

    In short, up there with those fking no marks who send in their CV to take over their favourite football club because they’ve “taken them to the European Champions League final in Football Manager.” At least they’re doing it to take the piss – you by contrast meant it … Peter Dow levels of delusion there.

    For someone so keen to go globetrotting, you’ve spent an enormous amount of time on here the last 24 hours looking for bites – still thanks for the heads up about you teaching journalism, explains a lot about the current state of it these days (as Stu is fond of pointing out regularly, and for that matter Guido Fawkes, and Private Eye … etc!)

    Rob Brown says: 7 May, 2022 at 7:08 pm

    The above question is directed to Mark Boyle, although I’m sure he’ll seek to dodge it.

    But at least you’re not bothered about it … as demonstrated by you posting on here in reply to me at 1.38 in the morning. You fking sad sack!

  378. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    That Twitter poll I put up last night, asking who believes there’ll be a referendum next year…

    804 votes so far, 69% say No, they don’t believe it.

    So, given Thursday’s results, is it the case now that many people accept that Nicola Sturgeon is a liar, then go and vote SNP anyway?

    https://twitter.com/ianbhood/status/1522670338634571783

  379. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown @7.41pm.

    Thank you for the reply.

    Right Rob, assuming your the man to lead Alba and you have what it takes, if I recall correctly and I might be wrong, isn’t/ wasn’t there some animosity between you and one or two of the better known Alba MPs/Councillors, if indeed Rob that is/was the case, how do you expect to now get onto the list as a candidate to lead the party.

    I recall Craig Murray being given short shrift by the SNP for having good pro-active ideas, and for that he wasn’t allowed to stand for them as either a MP or MSP. Bearing this in mind, do you think now that the Alba party would treat you differently or the same as Sturgeon’s SNP has done with Murray.

  380. Merganser
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian Brotherhood@756

    The answer to your question is yes. It’s because they know she is lying and they don’t want independence and they know she won’t deliver it. The SNP is not the party of independence as I’ve said before. That’s why so many people vote for it.

    Solution? Convince more people that independence is better for Scotland, and get them to vote for a party that is genuine in its wish to deliver it.

    So simple. So hard to achieve.

  381. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    A wee gloat from Sturgeon at Alba’s inability to progress at these council elections, and a big hint that there’s not going to be a indyref anytime soon.

    “Look, the Alba Party didn’t register, I didn’t think it would register, I don’t think it’s ever going to register. You know, however much they may want there to be the groundswell of frustration with the SNP over progress to Independence, there’s not. Equally, I think sensible people know that however impatient they may be for Independence, there is no magic solution to make it happen, and you know Alba have actually been perpetuating a fiction on that, so I am not surprised… For me, my job is to get on with leading the SNP, leading Scotland and yes, I hope, leading the country towards Independence.””

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/05/some-off-beat-points-on-thursdays-elections/

    Courtesy of Craig Murray’s blog, who is an Alba member, and is a weel kent face, with loads of experience, the one drawback is that his image through no fault of his own has been tarnish by his unjust prison sentence, like Salmond, mud really does stick, and I’m afraid some unaware indy supporters would not vote for Murray and the unionist media would constantly report on his conviction to turn less aware voters away from voting for the Alba party come 2023 and Sturgeon fails miserably to deliver an indyref.

  382. Merganser
    Ignored
    says:

    Ian Brotherhood@756

    The answer to your question is yes. It’s because they know she is lying and they don’t want independence and they know she won’t deliver it. The SNP is not the party of independence as I’ve said before. That’s why so many people vote for it.

    Solution? Convince more people that independence is better for Scotland, and get them to vote for a party that is genuine in its wish to deliver it.

    2nd attempt to post this.

    So simple. So hard to achieve.

  383. Flower of Scotland
    Ignored
    says:

    HeyStuart, I watch The Duran everyday and Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforou. I was thinking when I was watching Alex walking about Cypress and doing his video, that you could maybe try this kind of platform.

    In your house or walking in a peaceful part of Bath, you could make some great videos.

  384. Flower of Scotland
    Ignored
    says:

    I tried to comment and I was timed out. Hmm.

  385. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @PacMan 6.45 pm

    The only greeting I do is with laughter at some of the skid marks on the independence movement that pollute the BTL comments in here, particularly those who think their woo-woo ideas and fringe narratives have any currency in the movement as a whole, still less amongst the majority of Scots.

    Respect is earned. Most of those wittering on in here about their fringe views deserve all the derision they get. Thankfully there are still a number of adults in the room however. it’s symptomatic of the conspiracy theorist mindset that they assume all the accounts disagreeing with them must be one person. Reality check guys: it’s not us who are the minority, it’s the moonhowlers in here assuring us Covid is a hoax, that the Ukrainians had it coming, that Scotland is a colony.

    Narratives like theirs are electoral poison, but then they aren’t really that interested in actual power. They’re just the modern equivalent of RISE/SSP and about as relevant.

  386. Sarah Mackenzie
    Ignored
    says:

    @ Ruby: Jennifer Robertson nee Dempsie didn’t find herself out of a job when Alex resigned because she is married to Angus Robertson, he of the “donate so I can do useful stuff to help independence” – Which I did and never seen anything “useful” done.

    It was Angus R who manipulated the conference into changing the party constitution to remove the highly-accountable to members National Council. See Ian Lawson’s blog.

    Steam is now coming out of my ears and blood pressure rising at the thought of this evil inner circle.

  387. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    In response to Mark Boyle, if it’s 1:38am in Scotland that doesn’t mean it’s that time in every part of the globe. (Google timezones and GMT).
    Even if I had been in Scotland and posting at that time, so what? Not all of us get tucked up at 8pm with the Wee Alba Book as bedtime reading.

  388. MaggieC
    Ignored
    says:

    A guest post from Neale Hanley on Iain Lawson’s blog ,

    “No Regrets”!

    https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/no-regrets/

  389. MaggieC
    Ignored
    says:

    A guest post from Neale Hanley on Iain Lawson’s blog,

    https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2022/05/07/no-regrets/

  390. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    Craig Murray seems to be a tad out of sympathy with Alba:

    “As for Alba, I don’t know if I shall remain a member. There needs to be a vehicle for those for whom Independence is the genuine and overriding political priority, and plainly the SNP is no longer that party. But the ferocity and unkindness of Alba’s stance on trans people – and the extraordinary priority it puts on the issue in campaigning – is something with which I am entirely out of sympathy. I don’t expect to agree with every policy of a party which I join, but this is really very difficult for me. I shall await developments following these sobering elections.”

    https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/05/some-off-beat-points-on-thursdays-elections/

    I have my doubts the party will change its focus on campaigning, and Craig’s views on the trans issue are from what I can see at complete odds with the party as a whole. Although it’s true that none of us have to agree with every party policy.

    His comments on this issue would however seem to put him so far out of sympathy with an issue which is a central differentiator between Alba and other parties – and one on which only Alba and the Tories reflect the majority popular view – that I can’t see why he’d remain in the party at all? It’s certainly utter bullshit to suggest Alba’s stance on the trans people is ferocious or unkind. With friends like Craig Murray the party has little need of enemies.

  391. MaggieC
    Ignored
    says:

    RevStu,

    Apologies for the two posts from me at 8.41pm and 8.44pm . The first post seemed to disappear after I hit the “Submit Comment” button so just remove one of them if you want.

    Please don’t hit me with Hammers, LoL LoL

  392. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    In response to Andy Ellis:
    Craig Murray is more concerned about Scotland transitioning to national independence than obsessing about a tiny number of Scots who choose to sexually transition. No wonder he’s scunnered with both the SNP and Alba.

  393. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Rob Brown 9.14 pm

    I suspect more Alba members are scunnered with Craig Murray than support him. He’s perfectly entitled to his views on the trans issue of course, but it seems rather a strange hill to die on given its centrality to Alba’s platform.

  394. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Ellis drops in with a gratuitous swipe at anyone challenging his pet narratives i.e. ‘covidiocy’ and ‘Ukraine-bashers’.

    Unlike pretty much any information coming from Ukraine, the Pfizer ‘dump’ of documents last week cannot be spun. That is why the MSM is blanking it. But it is what it is, and it is fuckin horrific.

    One small example – if you have any family members who are planning a family, they *must* be made aware of the information attached to the link below. It is from Pfizer’s own analysis. This is the stuff they wanted to remain secret for 75 years.

    Please don’t allow bullies like Ellis to dissuade you from doing your own research.

    https://twitter.com/Truckers8F/status/1523037208445583360/photo/1

  395. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    You need to ask yourself this Andy:
    Why did the trans issue become a central part of Alba’s platform? Because Alex and his acolytes thought this was Nicola Sturgeon’s Achille’s Heel. Turned out they were terribly wrong about that…and everything else.

  396. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    Truckers For Freedom….HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH…that’s hilarious even by your low standards.

    Everytime someone lowers the bar of expectation you just limbo right under huh Ian? Thanks for the laugh. After yesterday’s results we could all do with some cheering up.

  397. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Too late now for the scunnered members of Alba to do anything about Craig Murray.

    If they hadn’t been so obsessed with ‘Putin’s poodles’ they might have realised three weeks ago that Craig Murray was losing them votes.

  398. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Rob 9.52 pm

    It became central because that’s an issue that was important to the majority of those who were leaving the SNP and joining Alba. That’s hardly a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

    Whether it will prove to have been a mistake remains to be seen. I suspect most of us are more likely to listen to Alex and his team than some random journalist with an axe to grind? But by all means, put your case and see how far it gets. We’ll wait…..!

  399. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Aye play the man not the ball, Andy.
    I suspect “Alex and his team” are spending this weekend seriously pondering whether Alba is worth the candle.
    How many humiliating defeats can one man handle?

  400. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Ottomanboi says:
    7 May, 2022 at 7:37 pm
    Are nationalists prepared «to die» for their cause?
    No, then «haud yir whisht»

    A

  401. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Ottomanboi says:
    7 May, 2022 at 7:37 pm
    Are nationalists prepared «to die» for their cause?
    No, then «haud yir whisht»

    Aye a wid.

  402. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Sarah Mackenzie says:
    7 May, 2022 at 8:24 pm

    @ Ruby: Jennifer Robertson nee Dempsie didn’t find herself out of a job when Alex resigned because she is married to Angus Robertson,

    She didn’t get married to Robertson until 2016
    Angus Robertson was married to someone else in 2014
    Dempsie got married to Ruari Beaton 48 owner of ‘Am Bothan Bunkhouse’ Harris in 2011 they divorced in 2014. She does like the older man.

  403. Ian Brotherhood
    Ignored
    says:

    Ellis’s role here is as Frank Drebin, in Naked Gun, waving his arms, urging the crowd to disperse (“Nothing to see here!”) as a fireworks factory explodes behind him.

  404. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    2029 is the year for independence.

    I said that years ago and it will take that long to built it. What happens in the meantime with the Sturgeon woke cabal is anyone’s guess.

    In a few months/ years maybe any man found wearing trousers in public with be jailed unless their wearing a dress and have a dummy tit in their mouth and self identifying as a ——–?

  405. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Why not make it free by 2033 since it rhymes?

  406. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 11:09 pm
    Why not make it free by 2033 since it rhymes?

    Wit?

  407. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Don’t you remember Salmond’s first great rallying cry – Free by 1993?
    He likes a little rhyme.

  408. robbo
    Ignored
    says:

    Rob Brown says:
    7 May, 2022 at 11:21 pm
    Don’t you remember Salmond’s first great rallying cry – Free by 1993?
    He likes a little rhyme.

    I’m not gettin yir point-maybe I’m thick.

    Do you believe in independence or not or are yi jist et it?

    Alex Salmond has been saying free by any year for as long as I remember, cos he’s a true nationalist- Sturgeon and possibly yirsel are no.

    Why are you on here arguing with people who have a 100% commitment to freedom from the Union? I don’t get it .

    Earlier today I post a quote from Sturgeon that she said in 2017 that she would work with any pro independence movement to further the cause of independence from any angle of the cause.

    Why is a cause of standing up for women’s rights and not having freaks in oor schools teaching 5 year olds that their not a girl or a boy but a ???? not a worthy cause ? Maybe you and your ilk are “wolf’s in sheep’s clothing”?
    My auld granny wis right after all.

    Answer me that ya —-?

  409. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    I’m just pointing up how stupid and pathetic it is to still believe that Alex Salmond can lead Scotland to independence.
    Anyone who truly believes in Freedom needs to break free from mind control by him and Sturgeon. Because they are a right pair of selfish cults.

  410. Ayeright
    Ignored
    says:

    @Rob Brown

    I think you need to start a political party of your own. Alex Salmond can’t do it, Nicola Sturgeon can’t do, Alba doesn’t do it for you, so maybe you’re the man.

    Go for it, I believe in you.

  411. Rob Brown
    Ignored
    says:

    Gee shucks. What do you suggest we call it – the People’s Front of Caledonia or the Caledonian People’s Front?

  412. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Republicofscotland says:
    7 May, 2022 at 8:17 pm
    A wee gloat from Sturgeon at Alba’s inability to progress at these council elections, and a big hint that there’s not going to be a indyref anytime soon.

    “Look, the Alba Party didn’t register, I didn’t think it would register, I don’t think it’s ever going to register. You know, however much they may want there to be the groundswell of frustration with the SNP over progress to Independence, there’s not. Equally, I think sensible people know that however impatient they may be for Independence…

    And there’s the Gaslighter in chief… Doesn’t give a fuck about actual Independence or the despair felt by those who actually want it, she’s only concerned about her next majority. Independence isn’t an objective, just a meal ticket.

    And there’s the Hypocrite in chief too… Blind to the anger and exasperation of true Independence supporters, that doesn’t exist apparently, but adamant there is a groundswell of enthusiasm to push for Self-ID. Where the fuck does that “register”? When is that ever going to register? It’s a crank denial of science and biology, and every poll is firmly and overwhelmingly against it. What’s on display there? Lunacy and self centred arrogance, or a psychopath’s lack of empathy?

    Credit where it’s due. If it was Mi5 who picked this stooge, they did a thoroughly excellent job. Scotland is well and truly fucked while her and her SNP fraud squad are so deeply content to be Scotland’s Vichy Government, and drizzle their corrosive poison over every enterprise and positive Independence initiative, simply because it might wreck her meal ticket.

    Sturgeon the Untouchable, the toast and saviour of Westminster Unionism once again…

  413. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    ” …. I think sensible people know that however impatient they may be for Independence..” waffle waffle waffle …. she might as well have said ” there is no magic Independence Tree ”

    Even by her own pathetic standards, the rapidity of this latest carrot-withdrawal is so brazen , so contemptuous you’re forced to conclude the people who continue to vote them are an insipid blancmange of supersoft * Yessers * who’ll support Independence as long as they’re guaranteed it won’t cost them a penny in cash or effort , dyed-in-the-wool * Nays * who enjoy the freebies in , for example Higher Education , OAP care , bus travel etc and escapees from an asylum who actually believe every false promise she makes – and disdainfully breaks .

    ” Too small ” ? What , like Norway ?
    ” Too poor ” ? LOL
    ” Too stupid ” ?

    The jurys’ out on the latter .

    It’s significant that despite holding the * accolade * as the worse Tory Party/Gov EVER , they made gains in places like the Borders , Arran , Moray and other parts of the Highlands : areas which have seen increases in South to North immigration .

    Is this what the future holds for Scotland : not * only * a decline in support for Independence , also a revival of Tory support : enclaves of Union ( New ) Jocks ?

  414. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks . Looks like you were writing your post above as I was writing mine ! We both picked-up on the truly despicable nature of Sturgeon , but personally , that’s my attention on her withdrawn again for the interim . She makes me * unwell *

  415. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Looking forward, in briefest terms…

    Scotland urgently needs a Citizen’s Assembly to sponsor the defence of Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty, and bring forward a Constitutional Test Case at the UN disputing Scotland’s undemocratic subjugation through Brexit.

    The initiative must not succumb to “domestic” distractions internal to the UK, such as interventions by the UK’s “Supreme Court”, (which isn’t supreme over Scots Law), nor by the devolved Holyrood Assembly which submits itself to Westminster’s Scotland Act , and doesn’t respect the primacy and ascendancy of Scotland’s Sovereign Constitution.

    The initiative must succeed in bringing Scotland’s Constitutional injustice to the attention on the International community, and NOT allow Scotland’s integrity as a lawful nation with Sovereign rights to be regarded as a matter of internal UK domestic politics, but recognise the issue as one nation seeking to usurp and subjugate the sovereign integrity of another. Thus it breaks International Law, and is not considered a matter of domestic UK politics.

    Scotland must act to defend itself, but act entirely independently of UK institutions, and defend Scotland’s sovereignty using Scottish institutions and Scots law, not UK law or “hybrid” institutions like the UK Supreme Court or devolved Holyrood assembly. Neither are superior in hierarchy to Scotland’s sovereign constitution and the popular sovereignty of the Scottish people. There is no higher authority in Scotland than the sovereign people; not Westminster, not Holyrood, nor the UK Supreme Court.

    For political acceptance in a country where opinions are divided, I strongly recommend the Constitutional initiative refrains from a positive assertion of Scotland’s Sovereignty, and instead makes do with formally disputing Westminster’s colonial subjugation of Scotland through Brexit, grievous action which was imposed on Scotland contrary to the unequivocal democratic will of the sovereign people. We are not the instigators of a Constitutional crisis, but the victims of an unconstitutional outrage.

    Thus, in the unraveling of that dispute, the legitimacy and supremacy of Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty will be re-affirmed and recognised by International Law, but in a Test Case styled as Scotland’s self defence, and occasioned by Westminster’s colonial misadventure. Thus Scotland didn’t collapse the Union and end the UK. That responsibility lies squarely with Westminster, so any subsequent grievances amongst Scotland’s Unionist community can be taken up with Westminster.

    We don’t need Sturgeon, we don’t need Holyrood. We DO need a Citizen’s Assembly briefed by the SSRG, and fully conversant with Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty.

    Scottish Independence will be delivered, not by choice, but in direct consequence of Westminster’s unlawful misadventure, and failure to respect Scotland’s rights under International Law.

    Scotland’s affirmed sovereignty in the eyes of the International Community will render the Treaty of Union untenable and undeliverable in law… Something that should have been recognised 300 years ago. Better late than never.

  416. stuart mctavish
    Ignored
    says:

    @Republicofscotland

    Good find on the detail of some of the results.

    Interesting that (even) what appear to be official results from Edinburgh and Glasgow seem to be in summary format when the convoluted system would be far more transparent if recorded in a tabulated array showing the votes won by each candidate in each round

    Done properly such a table could also highlight any discrepancy between the second preferences in the postal votes and those made by the 20% of the electorate that appear to have honoured their civic duty and voted in person (regardless).

    Odd then that such a reporting device is not used by default but perhaps We The Pork are considered ill prepared for such information lest any apathy be redressed before full agreement can be reached to render voting superfluous – and have the choice of cooks tasked with preparing our enmerdements made by those better groomed to do so.

  417. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Rob Brow 10.22 pm

    “Aye play the man not the ball, Andy.
    I suspect “Alex and his team” are spending this weekend seriously pondering whether Alba is worth the candle.
    How many humiliating defeats can one man handle?”

    Says the man furiously attacking Alex Salmond and describing those around him as “acolytes”. Self awareness obviously isn’t your forte is it Rob? It’s not playing the man to ask what it is you, a former journalist few have ever heard of, brings to the table that Alex Salmond or those around him with political experience lack?

    Alba may prove to be unsuccessful. No party is entitled to our support as of right. There is obviously a constituency of former SNP supporters who are disillusioned enough with the SNP to form new parties. It’s also obvious that there are still some “hanging in there” who may jump ship when the promised #indyref2 doesn’t happen.

    Perhaps Alba isn’t the answer. The future isn’t ours to see. However, it doesn’t look to me and others I’ve spoken to that the alternative routes to independence being punted have widespread support either. It’s all very well to emphasise the sovereignty of the people, it’s a different thing to translate that belief in to the First Minister (or the leader of some Constituent Assembly or Convention) reading out the Declaration of Independence from the steps of Bute House or in front of Holyrood.

    Perhaps we do need new faces, but who is it going to be and where are they coming from? If we don’t trust the existing faces or think they’re tainted by association with the SNP, or deemed to be failures because Alba didn’t sweep the SNP away like Sinn Fein did with the IPP 100 years ago in Ireland, where does that leave us?

    Throwing rocks from the sidelines because you didn’t get your way in Alba doesn’t bring us closer to independence Rob, any more than “doing a Craig Murray” and subjecting the party to (supposedly) friendly fire does. Compare and contrast Murray’s bitterness and spite with Neale Hanvey’s thoughtful and considered piece linked to by another poster above. I’d sooner have folk like Neale fighting our corner than a loose cannon like Craig.

  418. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    I believe people in Scotland have given up!

    That’s my reading of the latest council election.

    Those who haven’t are consoling themselves with the words of Phil Collins:

    https://tinyurl.com/3mwakk3p

    ‘You can’t hurry love
    No, you just have to wait
    She said trust, give it time
    No matter how long it takes
    No, you just have to wait
    Mama said just give it time”

  419. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    😉 🙂 🙁 😕 😉 🙂 🙁 😕

    This forum is marvellous! It’s highly entertaining.

    Currently we have ‘that cunt Ellis’ in conversation with that ‘total nutter Rob Brown’

    I do wish we had more emojis but hey got to make the most of what we’ve got.

    😉 🙂 🙁 😕 😉 🙂 🙁 😕

  420. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    It’s just a shame that the otherwise rational discourse is sullied by foul mouthed harridans whose intellectual level depends largely on the use of emojis, eh?

  421. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    I am hoping that the results show that folk have bought into ‘ only the SNP can bring independence’ and have sighed and put them as their first preference – those that could be bothered to vote.

    ALBA will grow I hope very quickly, time is of the essence and maybe folk will become more aware of what is being promoted to children in schools thanks to the SNP and Greens.

    Child protection eat your heart out – perverted policies are coming your way.

    Meanwhile the weasel words ” I will lead Scotland to Independence’ – but never let it happen despite the worst , most corrupt shower of lying thugs in Westminster.

    Scotland concentrating on a very small bunch unhappy in their skin and not on infrastructure ,job creation , education ,health or independence.

    I am full of rage at missed opportunities and the piffle and prattle.

  422. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Shame Alba didn’t listen to me way back at the beginning of April.

    They could have cut him off before

    ‘Prima Donna Craig Murray’ resigns from the ‘ferocious, anti trans’ Alba Party and makes a big song and dance about it on his blog.

  423. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    I don’t wanna get involved with the Craig Murray Trans thing… I don’t agree with him, but still recognise Craig as a big beast who’s on our side, with a wealth of knowledge on how to out-flank the Establishment. That makes him a good guy, with proven courage of his convictions, and he has a mind we want in our Scottish “think tank” and Citizens Assembly.

    I don’t know Craig at all, never met the fella, but given the Julian Assange situation, and the Chelsea Manning component of the Julian Assange situation, I hope it doesn’t sound too dreadfully patronising, but of all the people in the world who are pro-GRA reform, Craig Murray is top of the pile when it comes to the ones I’m least worried about. Frankly, it’s a bit like the vicar coming to tea, help yourself to tea and biscuits vicar. Let’s have a chat about revolution and bringing down the government, but no, save your breath, you’re not going to convert a heathen like me to religion, so let’s just avoid controversial things like that.

    Ruby says:
    8 May, 2022 at 8:39 am

    This forum is marvellous! It’s highly entertaining…

    Aye, a sudden influx of so many people who want to talk about anything except Scottish Independence. It’s just like an SNP Annual Conference.

  424. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Dorothy Devine says: 8 May, 2022 at 8:53 am

    Child protection eat your heart out – perverted policies are coming your way …

    …Scotland concentrating on a very small bunch unhappy in their skin and not on infrastructure ,job creation , education ,health or independence.

    I am full of rage at missed opportunities and the piffle and prattle.

    Don’t be angry. Sometimes it takes the arrival of the LOLwaffe saturating the population with clusterfuck bombs to blow them back to their senses. If they’ve called them in by their own volition, so much the better.

    They’ve returned to their same lazy ways as they did under Scottish Labour of reflex voting for “their team”, so they can spend more time concentrating on Old Firm trivia and the like. They’re in need of a wee lesson.

    As the delightful H L Mencken (wonderfully parodied by Gene Kelly as E K Hornbeck in “Inherit The Wind) put it, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard!”

  425. Dorothy Devine
    Ignored
    says:

    Mark , I do so hope you are correct and I live long enough to see the explosion and the implosion.

  426. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks says:
    8 May, 2022 at 9:10 am

    I don’t wanna get involved with the Craig Murray Trans thing

    Well OK then! You won’t be asking him ‘what is a woman’ when he comes to tea. Even better ask him ‘what is a transwoman’

  427. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Where’s John Main?

    https://tinyurl.com/ynjhkkna

  428. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby says:
    8 May, 2022 at 8:22 am

    I believe people in Scotland have given up!

    That’s my reading of the latest council election.

    Those who haven’t are consoling themselves with the words of Phil Collins:

    https://tinyurl.com/3mwakk3p

    ‘You can’t hurry love
    No, you just have to wait
    She said trust, give it time
    No matter how long it takes
    No, you just have to wait
    Mama said just give it time”

    I think Genesis are a lot nearer the mark:

    “The path is clear, though no eyes can see
    The course laid down long before
    And so with gods and men, The sheep remain inside their pen
    Though many times they’ve seen the way to leave

    Or perhaps a little more poignantly …

    “They’re running backwards today
    And once again you stand alone
    Bury your memories bury your friends
    Leave it alone for a year or two
    Till the stories go hazy and the legends come true
    Then do it again, some things never end”

  429. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Giggles…

    https://twitter.com/GNDRising/status/1522902822475509760

    Quite a simple protest, but more sophisticated than most and very well choreographed and executed I thought.

    In the spirit of Father Ted, Up with this sort of thing!

  430. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    …And just for a split second at the end, I actually thought the bouncer was Keir Starmer.

  431. Robert Hughes
    Ignored
    says:

    ” They’ve returned to their same lazy ways as they did under Scottish Labour of reflex voting for their team…….”

    That sounds about right Mark , even allowing for the usual low turnout for Council Elections being not much different this time .

    The historic high engagement of the populace evident in 2014 seems now like a * Black Swan * moment ; not to say it could never be replicated , but I fear that energy is being dissipated ( with the emphasis on * diss/ed * ) and squandered at an alarming rate .

    Sure , the SNP keep * winning * but , as stated above , I doubt the reasons for this are reflective of growing support for Independence , certainly the stasis in polling does not indicate any significant rise .

    I know quite a few people who vote SNP but are against Independence . When I’ve asked why – if they think the SNP are the best option to govern Scotland , they can’t see the obvious correlation ie wouldn’t full Independence be also the best option ? the answers are incoherent remixes of the * too poor etc * broken record .

    As we’ve been saying …..maybe the looming effects of the economic Shock Doctrine will compel more to face the truth . The UK is F.U.B.A.R and will drag Scotland down with it . I wouldn’t bet on that though : it could just as easily have the opposite effect , people clinging desperately to the known , fearful of the uncertainty of the unknown ie Independence . Any honest appraisal of NSNP’s record will only confirm those fears

  432. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @Pacman 6 May 11:13 pm

    Wrong.

    That’s you busted as just another farcical fantasist.

    But keep posting. We all need the laffs.

  433. Chas
    Ignored
    says:

    Now that the dust has settled I will share with you my reflections on the election results-

    !) Great to see the Tory’s going backwards
    2) More than half of the electorate could not even be bothered to vote. Yes, I know it was only local elections, but this apathy says a lot about how the electorate view politics, at any level.
    3) Labour starting to rise again after previously bottoming out.
    4) SNP vote holding up despite 15 years of almost constant shambles. The only conclusion to draw from this is that their supporters are blind, stupid or both.
    5) Greeens are picking up ‘sympathy’ votes from the blind and stupid because of their association with the SNP.
    6) Lib dems holding their own mainly because of disenchanted Tory voters switching. Will this last?
    7) Alba dead and buried. They will not attract many votes from Tory and Lib Dem voters. Previous Labour voters have already switched to SNP. The only way they can possibly prosper is to gain votes from the SNP. To do this they have to attack Sturgeon and her incompetents. Something they have spectacularly failed to do. Dish the dirt Alex although I suspect this is now too late.
    8) Is their really an appetite for Independence in Scotland from greater than 50% of the electorate?

    Much gnashing of teeth amongst the posters and the usual suspects desperately waffling on about 300 year old Treaties, Sovereignty, Grand Scottish Assembly etc etc. When will the penny drop that only the 10 or so posters on here droning on about it are the only ones interested? The majority of the general electorate simply do not care!

    My gut feeling is that Scotland will need to decline even further before it gets better. The demise of Sturgeon is the start.

    Would any poster seriously contemplate living in a fully Independent Scotland with Sturgeon, Swinney, Useless and Forbes being the leading lights in our Government? A government that promises a referendum in 2023 yet cannot tell us what currency we would use, what share of UK debt we would ‘inherit’, how pensions would be paid etc etc etc! If any one thinks that the cabal would simply ride of into the sunset-job done’ they are simply being naïve, at best, and downright stupid in reality.

    Too many politicians have their snouts in the trough to want change. If, by some miracle, Independence was achieved, I can almost guarantee that the first thing our brave new Government would do would be to increase the salary levels of our elected officials because of their increased responsibilities.

    All very depressing but sometimes REALISM hurts.

  434. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @Chas

    Ouch, that stings. But thanks for posting truthfully.

  435. John Main
    Ignored
    says:

    @Ruby 9:41

    Jeezo Ruby, you must be developing loss of memory.

    How many times have you posted that you don’t read my stuff?

    Or are you now admitting that those claims you made were lies?

    I don’t have much time today to help you out, but be patient, normal service will resume soon.

  436. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    😉 🙂 🙁 😕 😉 🙂 🙁 😕

    Things just get better!

    Now we’ve got Chas asking:

    What currency we would use
    What share of UK debt we would ‘inherit
    How pensions would be paid

    😉 🙂 🙁 😕 😉 🙂 🙁 😕

  437. Chas
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby

    Please tell us as our ‘Government’ is unable to!

    You might find that there are actually some people in Scotland who would be a wee bit interested in knowing. Don’t you think?

    Am off to the dinosaur’s golf club now. Will look for your response later.

  438. Ruby
    Ignored
    says:

    Chas says:
    8 May, 2022 at 10:48 am

    Ruby

    Please tell us as our ‘Government’ is unable to!

    You might find that there are actually some people in Scotland who would be a wee bit interested in knowing. Don’t you think?

    Am off to the dinosaur’s golf club now. Will look for your response later.

    Hang on a mom. It’s only going to take me a jiffy to respond.

    The answer is ‘Only Unionists’
    Have a good day at the DGC. Don’t forget the ask the boys how their menopause is going.

  439. Mark Boyle
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks says: 8 May, 2022 at 10:07 am

    Giggles…

    https://twitter.com/GNDRising/status/1522902822475509760

    Quite a simple protest, but more sophisticated than most and very well choreographed and executed I thought.

    In the spirit of Father Ted, Up with this sort of thing!

    Very old school. The League of Empire Loyalists used to do that sort of thing all the time and get publicity out of all proportion to their membership. Avril Waters, Rosine de Bounevialle, Rodney Legg (only 15) and Austen Brooks even managed to wreck the 1958 Tory party conference with just the four of them.

    A lot of it however was there was “competition” between them and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (back in the days when it actually did things …) for who could pull off that week’s biggest stunt. It was the era of That Was The Week That Was, of Orwell’s “What is funny is subversive”, back in the days before the humourless far-left and far-right took over and substituted thuggery for wit.

  440. Andy Ellis
    Ignored
    says:

    @Chas 10.25 am

    The epitaph for Alba based on local council elections may be premature. I think you’re right that in general it will have to take support largely from existing pro-independence voters, but it’s still early days IMO. When the SNP fails to deliver #indyref2 and the economic situation worsens, we may see more movement.

    It’s also possible that more and more women are going to start seeing the extremist TRA positions held by the SNP, Greens, Labour and LD’s as so unattractive that they will be faced with a choice of either voting Tory or Alba. As Rev Stu’s recent polling showed, the number of women supporting independence is falling. That may not be solely due to the TRA stramash, but I’d wager it’s certainly part of the explanation.

    The whole point of Alba initially was to present an alternative to the deeply dysfunctional SNP, particularly WRT the back pedalling on indy and the SNP’s misogynistic approach and capture by TRA extremists and their apologists. It was never realistic to see them as replacing the SNP à la Sinn Fein/IPP: the aim was to hold the balance and keep the SNP honest…or if necessary hold a political gun to their head.

    That could still be achieved for all we know. Events can change the landscape quickly. The SNP may still seem to be in a strong position now….but what happens when #indyref2 isn’t delivered, brexit and the economic downturn caused by the Ukraine war really start to bite?

    None of that guarantees that Alba will break through or succeed of course, but it’s a brave person that confidently asserts there’s no way the movement can deliver a majority for independence. The past 7-8 years of stasis aren’t encouraging for pro-indy folk right enough, but history is full of political parties and movements that ended up in the dustbin of history. Many of us hope and will work to ensure that the SNP ends up suffering the same fate as Scottish Labour.

  441. Confused
    Ignored
    says:

    I, for one, welcome our new Moshiach, Rob Brown.

    Billion year contracts, okay?

    Mine’s a KOOL AID, extra snappy.

    Let’s start a covers band

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY6J2mukMlo

    – even better than the real thing.

  442. Republicofscotland
    Ignored
    says:

    Breeks @6.25am.

    I feel your anger, our only real recourse for the time being is as Harold MacMillan put it, “Events dear boy, event” meaning that Sturgeon could still be tripped up if not by the ferry scandal, the there’s the real possibility that when the 2023 indyref doesn’t materialise, that some die-hard Sturgeonistas might begin to have second thoughts, and there could be an outcry for the 2024 GE to be plebiscitary one in Scotland.

    Of course Sturgeon will probably ignore that call as she did with the last one, I see no clear way forward until for Scottish independence until Sturgeon is removed and an internal fight ensues for the heart of the party with Scotland and Scots futures hanging in the balance.

    I say that because Alba doesn’t appear to be making any progress, so how to recapture the SNP, and purge, if that’s even possible it seems the only way forward to me at present. But this cannot be done until Sturgeon is gone.

  443. Breeks
    Ignored
    says:

    Republicofscotland says:
    8 May, 2022 at 3:04 pm

    I say that because Alba doesn’t appear to be making any progress, so how to recapture the SNP, and purge, if that’s even possible it seems the only way forward to me at present. But this cannot be done until Sturgeon is gone.

    I think ALBA is doing OK, but OK isn’t the meteoric success we were hoping for. It takes years of commitment to be an overnight success as they say… I’m not sure the disappointment is terminal, ALBA will “get there”.

    A bigger problem is the barrage of hostility from Sturgeon combined with the airbrushing of ALBA from the media, and then everybody saying this is a disaster for ALBA. ALBA is vulnerable in it’s infancy, but down the road a little, it’s memory will remember plenty…

    I think there are more than a few people in the SNP need to wake up and smell the coffee, remind themselves who the enemy is, and better yet, remind themselves what the SNP was meant to stand for.

    The million dollar question is whether the SNP core vote is backing the SNP because it’s the SNP, or backing the SNP because they desire Independence. In simple arithmetic terms, I cannot see why people would back the SNP through slavish loyalty. I believe the “little people” are still trusting the SNP to deliver Independence, but they’re not political anoraks keeping their eye on the ball. Tick tock, tick tock….

    Maybe it’s me who is out of touch, but right now, the moment I hear people mention the word referendum, I feel a yawn coming on, because I’m hearing the obsolete Party line from the SNP. Mention it’s unresolved Section 30 cul-de-sac, and suddenly I hear the lash of a dead horse being flogged.

    Whatever happens to break this dreadful period of stagnation, I just don’t think it’s gonna be a referendum. – Definitely not a Section 30 “approved” Referendum.

    With luck, maybe Nicola will be captured by aliens in the meantime. More chance of that than her delivering a referendum.

  444. Chas
    Ignored
    says:

    Ruby

    ‘Only Unionists’.

    What a pathetic response but……………not unexpected!



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