About time, frankly
In December 2013, the editor of this site – who knew nothing of the secret this article is about to reveal – tweeted “When we write the chronicles of independence, I hope there’ll be a whole chapter on @A_DarlingMP”.
Well, this is as close as we’re going to get.
@A_DarlingMP (which morphed into @A_LordDarling last year) was created in January 2013, back in the days when many people in the oil industry got paid a decent amount to do next to nothing. I was one of those people, having found myself sitting in a portakabin on a Hamburg shipyard, in a year-long job created just for me. As I stretched out my limited number of tasks each month, I got sucked into the Scottish independence debate online, knowing that I’d be back home in 2014 to campaign and vote.
I was beginning to get the hang of Twitter and was amazed at the speed with which information could be presented. Spend half an hour on the site and you could quite easily have a good laugh, a good cry and a good scream. I discovered Tweetdeck, which fills your computer screen with columns customised by the user. I was getting news, sport, politics and more directed straight to my face.
No longer did I have to search for interesting tweets, images or links – I trusted the accounts in my columns to send them to me. No longer did I have to put up with the main Twitter site suggesting I follow Eddie Izzard or Stephen Fry or some other celeb I couldn’t give a toss about.
Parody or spoof accounts, on the other hand, could bring quite the comic relief to your day. The Queen has one, God has one, even the cone on the Wellington statue had one. In 2013, the top emerging parody account in Scotland was @AngrySalmond. He was funny, but he wasn’t realistic. Nobody could fall for it as the real Alex Salmond because it was crude, unprofessional and silly.
Salmond’s main rival at this point, at least according to the media, was Better Together campaign chair Alistair Darling. His parody on Twitter would be realistic, I said to myself one day. Dry, but realistic. So I went in search of him.
There were, I think, two fake Alistair Darling accounts but neither were being used. They’d been pretty much dormant since the very beginning of the referendum campaign. Around this time the real Darling was beginning to carve out some catchphrases, intended or otherwise, thanks to his No campaign speeches. Darling was performing the same speech on a daily basis – the same empty, dull, unoriginal rhetoric spewed out at campaign events and dutifully, endlessly re-published in newspapers and magazines.
None of it was funny, but there was an opportunity to simply re-post what Darling was saying thereby demonstrating the hollow repetition of his message, and quite often the hypocrisy of it too. It took a while for @A_DarlingMP to get off the ground, but once I got the hang of deadpan tweeting (and making use of “funny Alistair Darling” search results on Google Images), the account pretty much took care of itself.
With each television interview or debate, more and more people were noticing Darling’s repetition, his incessant blinking, and his fondness for the word “frankly”. The tweets began to write themselves. “Look – the nationalists have got to understand that, in reality, oil won’t last forever, frankly. It’s about jobs.”
Before the independence vote, the tactic was simply to re-post the lies Better Together and the No campaigners were tweeting, and sign them off with “frankly”. After the referendum, I just had to take something the Tories were messing up and tack “We’re better together” on the end to get people riled up.
As things started to heat up during the long campaign, the actual Alistair Darling appeared on Twitter. I was pleased, but it was clear from the outset he wasn’t enthused about the whole thing – either that, or he had a social media staffer more boring than he was.
At first, tweets from @TogetherDarling (account now deleted) were few and far between. Soon afterwards my account was suspended because of a complaint about re-posting the tweets of others word-for-word. According to the bods at Twitter all I had to do was put the word “parody” in my profile bio, and it also helped to change my Twitter name away from plain Alistair Darling, to help avoid confusion. It didn’t help.
At the beginning of 2014 I was suspended again, and this time it wasn’t so easy to get reinstated. After a dragged-out email exchange with various faceless Twitter people, it was obvious there were complaints that the account was aggressively trying to be a person it was not. Deadpan, serious spoofing was not on, apparently. I was too much like Alistair Darling.
Did I have to be sillier? That couldn’t have been it, because at the same time they also instructed me to remove the background of my Twitter profile, which was a harmless mock-up of Darling as Indiana Jones. I can’t find the image anywhere but it had Ruth Davidson, Johann Lamont and Willie Rennie on it too, so you know it was funny. Someone found it offensive enough to complain about it.
The suspension hit the two-month mark, during which time I played Grand Theft Auto V instead. Weirdly, in all that time, the real Alistair Darling hadn’t tweeted once. It wasn’t hard to tell that they didn’t want to anyway, but with the spoof vanquished it seemed like his job was done.
But then out of nowhere, I was reinstated! My version of Mr Darling quickly blamed it on a dirty tricks campaign concocted by the nationalists (of course) and continued with his doom-laden ways. Hilariously, and to my surprise and delight, the real Alistair Darling began tweeting again – the very next day!
It was only a stupid parody account on Twitter (with not even that many followers), yet it wasn’t hard to conclude that someone at Better Together was spending their time – in between trying to save the United Kingdom – deciding on how to deal with it, and instructing the chair of the campaign or a representative to get back onto Twitter and bloody well tweet! This cracked me up greatly. I’m only shocked that they still remembered the log-in details.
We were getting closer to the referendum – it was time to ramp up the nonsense. The official debates were taking place, giving me the gift of being able to tweet-spam everyone with “BUT WHAT CURRENCY ARE WE GOING TO USE?” and “WHAT’S YOUR PLAN B?”
Every single little inconsequential thing was “vile, frankly” or a “blow for Salmond”. Anytime a foreign country was mentioned Darling would insist on not wanting to be them for six minutes, as he’d bizarrely announced about (not so) poor old Panama.
One of my favourite series of tweets would be posting “Great response for Better Together/Scottish Labour” accompanied by images of increasingly-larger crowds, in numbers that would never in a million years be out campaigning for them. “But that’s a picture of Woodstock,” I’d get in reply.
Better Together’s 500 Questions farce was easily re-worded for Darling. “What will the price of a first-class stamp cost in the year 2054? The nationalists just can’t answer.” Or a particular favourite: “Andy Burnham is right to ask what side of the road we’ll drive on with separation. Will we even have roads? Salmond won’t tell us.”
I’d make Darling explain how much of a burden North Sea oil was, then tweet immediately about making a speech in London on how great North Sea oil was. I’d repeat his words about there being no way back after separation then repeat his other words that, with currency and then political union, going back would be inevitable. It was too easy. Using Tweetdeck I could schedule tweets days or weeks in advance – handy for the holidays.
To keep the complainers at bay and a possible third suspension in the run-up to the vote, I slapped a Yes Scotland badge on Darling’s profile pic, explaining that it was a mistake by his personal assistant. It stayed there for months, yet people still thought I was the real deal.
In the run-up to the 2015 general election I put a massive SNP badge on instead – many folk still didn’t twig. I started calling SNP voters “Yesticles”. The more I tried to be unrealistic, the more people would send me angry Tweets about speaking pish. You can put “parody” in the profile and mess around with images, but if just part of a tweet reads like something a real person would say, people are going to assume it’s them regardless.
From that point on, the account mostly copied dodgy tweets word-for-word from prominent unionist political and media figures on both the Labour and Tory sides. I don’t actually want to name them all here because they don’t deserve the promotion. Darling would reference the daily SNP BAD articles flooding the press, but forget to attach the link to them. Now that the referendum was over, nobody seemed to be complaining about me copying the tweets of others.
In truth I should have quit after the general election (I tried, actually, and got hundreds of messages saying they’d miss it – it obviously wasn’t for everyone, but those who got it really enjoyed it), but after a break Darling returned for the next step – the Labour leadership contests of 2015. Unfortunately this wasn’t anywhere near as fun as the independence campaign, as I was reduced to tweeting about Liz Kendall. A low point, frankly.
The amusing abuse only increased, however, with Darling being called a giant feartie for quitting as an MP before being voted out, and then a massive sellout for entering the Lords as Baron Darling of Roulanish. It was always fun to log on and see great responses such as “Roulanish isn’t even a f*cking place, Eyebrows!”
The last funny period (for me anyway) came during the Forth Road Bridge closure. I had Darling protest at the bridge until it re-opened, posting the exact same image each day. It was ludicrous, but variations of “That’s the Kessock Bridge, you badger-faced traitor!” continued to fill up my notifications for weeks. Joyous.
It’s been well over three years now, and the account has overstayed its welcome. The man himself is either in the Lords or hanging out with his Morgan Stanley pals, and should rightly be slowing down after a hectic decade. If you saved the banks and then the Union you’d deserve a quiet life too.
I was no Angry Salmond – the furthest I got to fame was having a tweet published in The House, the magazine created and edited by the MPs of the Commons. While independence for Scotland remains a possibility there’s always a space for Lord Darling to point out there’s no oil left and we wouldn’t have money or banks or clothes or eyes – but the scaremongering just gets a tad boring after a while, doesn’t it?
I only told a very small handful of people over the years that I was behind the account, and as far as I know they kept it to themselves. Only one other person had access to the account for a short period – I think it’s worth noting that more than one person can control an account, which can often make trying to unveil identities of notorious arseholes on Twitter a lost cause.
(I actually slipped up a couple of times and posted personal tweets as Darling, but quickly deleted them before anyone noticed. Or if they did, they didn’t spill.)
During the independence campaign the man himself probably found it slightly irksome to have a Twitter account ripping the piss out of him – I got that general vibe from some in the Better Together camp at least. I don’t hate him, but I got very angry with some of the things he said during campaigning. I’m sure he’s a nice man in private.
I don’t really know much about him, to be honest – I didn’t even bother to buy his book. Finding an image of him as a guest speaker at the Tory Party conference was enough material for me. I also stayed well clear of his wife on Twitter, so he should probably thank me for that.
It would have been the mature thing to ride off into the sunset, ditch the account and not announce it to anybody, but I hadn’t seen many articles out there describing what it’s like to run a parody account, in Scotland or otherwise. And this site, which genuinely didn’t know who was behind it until I wrote this, had promoted fake Darling a fair bit so I wanted to give a little back.
For those of you who don’t use Twitter, if you’ve managed to read this far, give it a go! Don’t listen to those who say it’s just for telling nobody in particular what you’re having for dinner. It’s not even for following celebrities (because all celebrity tweets are classed as hard news items now – you’ll see ’em elsewhere). If you’d like to find out things as they happen and not a day or two later, have a browse, follow accounts that will link cool things to *you*, and from that point you barely have to lift a finger.
So thanks – to those who “got it” for sharing the tweets; to the Yes and No voters who fell for it, to the Labour MPs, MEPs and activists who followed me thinking I was really Alistair Darling; and for the hilarious and inventive abuse that often made me laugh out loud. Mainly, though, thanks to the unionist commentariat for the constant barrage of SNP-bashing, hypocritcal nonsense that anybody could lampoon with their eyes closed.
As for me, well, the main reason for quitting is that I’m leaving for a new adventure which will involve much less internet access and a completely different time zone to boot. The option to pass the account on to someone else was toyed with, but in the end I decided to kill it off.
I kept a fairly regular blog during the independence referendum (it was actually cited by Alex Salmond both on Sky News and in his book The Dream Will Never Die, which I also have never bought) and it will return under a new guise as I leave Scotland, possibly never to return.
I’d like to say the blog will contain sex and drugs and guns and stuff, but in reality my future is deeply uncertain – I don’t even know what currency I’m going to be using. And hear this, Baron D – the uncertainty feels f*cking great!
So, Lord Darling will regenerate into something new in the near future but for now you can follow me, the real me, on Twitter. After all, you and me – we’re better together, frankly.
I absolutely loved this account – AngrySalmond is funny, but yours was funny *and* clever. Thanks for the laughs. 😀
I always thought that the author of that parody was Dougie Daniel so I was wrong, at least it came from the Aberdeen area.
I always liked the way Robbie fooled so many who thought it was really from Dr No.
Well, Ray-Ray, I found your wit and wisdom a sheer delight.
I shall miss our faux Lord Darling.
I hope you find another parody of a politician to parody.
I often wondered who ran the account – never suspected Ray. Sorry it will be ending – loved it. Best wishes to Ray in the future but I hope he’ll return to an independent Scotland. However what we all want to know is what is happening with the cute dug?
Maybe one day I’ll open a twitter account, until then I’ll just read everybody else’s!
Congratulations! I have enjoyed AD’s alter-ego enormously.
Best of luck in the new venture.
Aw. You’ll be missed, frankly.
I am not a Twitter person but even I was aware of the A Darling tweets. They were nicely weighted. I could see why they would annoy Bitter Together. 🙂
Loved the account – was always astonished by the people who treated it as the genuine article – the big “Parody Account” in the Twitter bio should have been a clue.
Well done Mr McRobbie – heroic, frankly.
It makes me sad you are leaving – so funny and always in character. When something ‘big’ would happen you interpreted it in an nonsensical fashion, just like the real thing. Few parodies make me laugh as much as yours.
Good luck in your new life and please keep writing as you have a real talent.
All the best for the future dude. Enjoyed your Darling tweets. And your personal ones…
So long and thanks for all the laughs. The funniest account in the Twittersphere. Good luck with your next venture.
To repeat myself once again, unionist don’t do humour!
Of any kind.
Is this a parody? I think you are Baron Darling of Ranalouniash. Frankly.
“I’m sure Darling is a nice man in private”
I’ve met him: link to wp.me
“Mainly, though, thanks to the unionist commentariat for the constant barrage of SNP-bashing, hypocritcal nonsense that anybody could lampoon with their eyes closed.”
If only it was over but it is just getting worse and worse by the UKOK day.
Oh you will be missed!
So basicaly the Darling buds of May wrote the parody without even knowing they were doing it!
Where is the best place to hid somthing? In wide open view!
Genius = )
So long, safe journey and most important of all, HASTE YE BACK!!!
A fantastic end to a fabulously entertaining account, frankly.
Good luck in your new adventure. Uncertainty. 😉
Thanks for all the laughs
“To repeat myself once again, unionist don’t do humour!
Of any kind.”
We’ve still got my Slovene girlfriend’s parody account.
link to twitter.com
Give us a kiss babes.
Excellent… frankly.
Don’t do twitter meself, but do follow and often had a damn good laugh at your posts. They brightened more than a few dark days.
My very favourite Twitter account, I think 🙂 Made me laugh no end. I hope you’ll maybe leave the tweets up, even though you’re calling a halt to it.
Good luck in your new adventure, by the way!
The internet, the web, the …
Its all ephemeral thought.
Thanks for those memories, for the guffaws.
I thought the Darling account was the best parody account going. I was furious at the first tweet I saw but thankfully noticed the word ‘parody’ in the description.
It will be missed, frankly.
It’s always amusing watching people get all het up at parody accounts, done it myself early in my twitter learning curve!
But “Darling” you will be missed and you too Ray.
There are a fair few tweeters you tend to look for and yours was one which has been funny and sad and funny again!
Good luck on your next adventure but don’t be a stranger 🙂
Frankly should have known that you would be thinking about yourself.
No consideration for all your loyal followers.
I believed you were telling the truth when you said we are Better Together and now you are the one jumping ship.
Vile.
Loved the account, thanks for the laughs 🙂
Best of luck in your new adventure
When I did my “Hootsmon Headlines” all I had to do usually was take an article off a Scotsman front page and turn it up to eleven frankly 🙂 Sad to see you going, but you’re obviously looking forward to it. Bon chance.
Great work Ray. The Darling account is/was hilarious.
Not convinced by this explanation frankly!
Another blow for SNP / Salmond as no plan B!
Future uncertainty … vile !
Could you not just leave the magnificent eyebrows ? At least leave us that !
All the best for your next move Al.
Parody Darling will be missed, frankly.
Lord Darling – just loved this account and the Kessock bridge tweets were just ace. Was laughing out loud this morning again
Maggie Vaughan really hated it and thought Rev Stu was behind it. Vile Frankly.
So all the best – Keep the Twitter account and re-actvate it next year for indyref2.
Lord Darling will still be fronting Better together 2 – there is nobody else!
Just realised it was Ray McRobbie all along ! Doh !!!
Loved the quips Ray ( keep at it if you can )
You Sir were a royal pain in the arse, the amount of times I had to tell people that it was a parody account because they were so kicked off.
Thank you though for the laughs and for the perfect send up of Eyebrows.
Wish ye aw ra best fir ra future
Once you get into it, who’s not a toryboy britnat parody? “Media folk” is nice though, its not a giant moral and ethical black hole/sewer, its just folk, sitting around knitting, chatting, waiting for their gong.
Iain Martin ?@iainmartin1 24m
One good thing about Cameron list – no media folk on it at all, which will disappoint a few people…
The Ligger? although Rupert Murdoch’s puppet at the BBC isn’t a parody, or is it?
Andrew Neil Retweeted
The Spectator ?@spectator 2h
Why do lefties hate my pedigree dog? link to specc.ie
Thanks for this article Ray it made me feel happy and think of all the wonderful genius ways Scotlands people in all their political cultural or national religiosity, got under the skin of the Britnats and the powers that be against Scotlands drive for Independence. I was one of the ones who were hoodwinked for a while by the account – no techno genius I was unfamiliar with the finer nuances of twitterology and had to have it pointed out to me. Since then I’ve read the bios before responding to stuff. Have a great life Ray be happy and well and all that.
Talking of parodies – Lallands Peat Worrier has a good article on the nasty journalists’ reporting of the Named Person judgement.
link to lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk
On his holidays too.
Well done Ray! Your Lord Darling account was absolutely brilliant.
I also enjoyed reading your article.
Will there be an e-book of Lord Darling tweets?
Here’s to the future
May you continue to Rule A Niche
Best wishes and good luck with @D_TrumpPres ! Just a suggestion! ?
Very funny. A few times you appeared in my TL, I would think why is WoS sharing this clown, and giving him oxygen, until I finally clicked.
Then it was enjoying the short, dry, lifelike tweets, timed for whatever was happening.
I shall miss the only Lord I ever followed!
Lots of luck in your new ventures, but hope you will be returning.
Thanks for some great laughs especially on Currency .it showed how silly better together £! nonsense really was. Good luck frankly.
If I were very witty & clever like Ray I would post on Twitter but as I’m not I just enjoy reading all the tweets on the Wings Twitter account.
I just love them and I always get a good laugh. I am also a big fan of ‘Stueys photo essays’ they are works of art.
[…] Wings Over Scotland About time, frankly In December 2013, the editor of this site – who knew nothing of the secret this […]
Soo-perb, and so long. Twas a job worth doing, and you did it brilliantly.
The great achievement of this account was to firmly locate Darling in the surreal hinterland occupied by ermine-loving ex-Marxists. Even by the standards set in The House Of Unelected Old Shitebags, they’re a peculiarly contemptible bunch.
Few will ever view The Lord as anything other than the sick joke he made of his own life and career.
“In truth I should have quit after the general election”
NO YOU SHOULDN’T, YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT IT GOING FOREVER AND EVER, FRANKLY.
Brilliant parody account…..loved it when people actually thought it was real…. which proved so effectively just how much the target of your parody is in the ‘arse’ zone.
Best of luck in future ventures you have earned it.
LOL i take my hat off to you sir exemplary trolling i wish you all the best lol really vile 🙂
Was always funny,thanks for the laughs.
Thanks for the great response, everyone! 😉
The whole thing made people smile and riled people up, that’s all that matters really ain’t it. I’ll leave the account up for a while but I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do with it.
If you wanna know more about my reasons for leaving Scotland for a deeply uncertain length of time, I’ve started blogging about it here 🙂
link to rayversiontwo.com
That pompous ass used to be my MP, so I did enjoy your send ups! Best wishes for the future and I hope it all pans out for you.
kind regards
Dram
Doug Daniel says:
31 July, 2016 at 1:04 pm
“In truth I should have quit after the general election”
NO YOU SHOULDN’T, YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT IT GOING FOREVER AND EVER, FRANKLY.
Ruby replies
Why don’t you take over the account?
I’m looking at the above photo and thinking about cutting the shape of his hair out of the ermine collar. It’s a perfect match. Ermine toupee!
Frankly, my darling, I don’t give a damn!
Thanks for the great response, everyone! 😛
The account made people smile and riled people up, that’s all that matters isn’t it. It’s been amusing to see so many people appreciate that. I’ll leave the account up for a while, not quite sure what I’m doing with it 100% yet.
In the meantime if you want to follow my reasons for leaving Scotland for a deeply uncertain period of time, you can do so here 🙂
link to rayversiontwo.com
Ray
He should be known as Lord Flipper Darling of J P Morgan.
( Millionaire Trotskyite ).
O/T Seen a copy of the Sunday Mail, sister paper to the Daily Redcoat, not to be confused with the Hitler supporting
“Scottish” Sunday Mail owned by the non-dom Tax evading millionaire.
I was hoping to see myself marching among 5,000 or Scots through Glasgow, but the front page was dedicated to Pipa Middleton’s Boyfriends business contacts.
Of course this Westminster Supporting paper sees this story as a priority over anything that might involve
Scotland.
They did have a postage stamp sized picture somewhere inside the paper.
I’ve sent it off to a forensic scientist friend to see if he can magnify it enough to make out the origin of the flags that the dots are carrying.
Ha ha, thanks it was a great account, will be missed.
If you don’t know which currency you will be using, are you a time traveller and and going to be living in an independent Scotland as envisaged by the unionists? Hope it’ s fun, and sunny!
I loved that account! Could never understand how people didn’t get the parody part!! I tweeted you a few times and you always replied with someone equally as bizarre as I had tweeted you with, lol!!
Thank you, and good luck!
Ray you can’t shut it down. Uncertainty.
@ Ray – I don’t really do twitter so haven’t seen most of your Lord Darling posts. But your new blog has two great articles to start off with.
Glad you’re not stuck with the P&J! You’re tyoo good a writer for that.
Thanks for everything Ray. Your tweets were amazing.
Darling looks decidely peaved in that ‘reduced to clear’ pound shop there. If we can’t have the pound, what will those shops call themselves! He and his pals made sure that their UKOK is very reduced to clear. They almost gave it away in fact, with Scotland as part of the package, for free, except we decided that was a step too far.
I watched ‘patronising bt lady again’ just to remind of the utter crap they came out with. The parody’s of that were ace and very witty. The Scots’ ability to parody so well, must be a bit annoying for the britnats, hope it continues.
BBCRadio4 : link to bbc.co.uk
15m discussion from about 5m in on the Brexit problems around the Irish border. Some interesting comments from T Villiers at the end suggesting a EEA / EFTA type solution with UK outside the customs union. Which is madness on crazy skates
I’m not on twitter but read the odd timeline, and read some of the tweets on this spoof account – it’d make you think “Is this a spoof?”, as Darling was a bit all over the place at times. It did catch a lot of people.
Shame it’s going, good luck with what you do next.
Loved this account. Saw a tweet about five minutes before this article came up where someone is still asking if it’s a spoof!
Followed Ray for years too. All the best in your new life.
I too have to out myself as an avid admirer of “Lord Ali D’s” futile attempts to convince Scotland that what he utters is of any importance to anyone..! 🙂 RIP.
Best of luck with your new adventure but don’t forget where you came from. I did the same a long time ago.
…………..
O/T but worthy of spreading for old and new readers and being aktuell regarding the NP case AND the Constitutional Rights of Scotland. Peter Thomson at his very best again.
link to tarffadvertiser.blogspot.de
Another earlier post from Peter, slightly out-dated but still worthy of being read again.
link to tarffadvertiser.blogspot.de
Don’t Tweet or FB but read some of the Darling posts and enjoyed them in the main. Good luck in your future activities. 🙂
PS:
Fundamentalists who fought Named Person law face financial probe.
link to archive.is
When you think about it, it really is quite sad that our country is being held back by a Yoon media that has a vested interest in England maintaining control over Scotland.
I think we should get 38degrees to run a petition calling for Alistair Darling to lead BT2.
@call me dave
The thing about that cmd, is that it’s a case of shooting the messenger. But the “fundamentalist” group didn’t make the decision, it was the court. And what they HAVE done is show that the People can challenge Government in court – the Judiciary – and win.
Having an effective and independent Judiciary is a cornerstone of Democracy, Democracy where the People are Sovereign. If we don’t have recourse through the courts, our only other choice is civil disobedience, or worse, violent rebellion.
For me the Executive (the Scottish Government) and the Legislative (the Scottish Parliament), need to be split up, to make a proper independent triangle of Democracy. My symbol for that would be, unchanged from my Guardian posting days, a triangle within a circle, with the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary at three points of the triangle, enclosing and surrounded by us, the People (I always capitalise that word in this context).
Then we have a properly safeguarded Democracy where, indeed, the People are Sovereign. That is something that absolutely needs to be tackled after Independence but I’d go further. If plans were published NOW to show how that was going to be done in future, it would be a very strong argument for YES 2 in the forthcoming Indy Ref 2 campaign.
This has been no more than a pathetic & pointless, nay puerile, political point scoring exercise against a good man, steadfast and true, who has devoted his whole life to public service. Graft, due diligence and integrity were only ever Alistair’s middle names.
To be subject to such ridicule at the end of such a distinguished career, and by cultish Nats especially, is beyond the pale and the comprehension of most sane Scotch people.
I used to be a YES voter but to hear the truth now, by the outed Ray McRobbie – sounds like a character out of “Forbidden Planet” to be honest, – puts me firmly back in the NO camp, frankly.
Utterly vile, frankly!
Call me Dave,
The Christian institute who were partly behind the cases against the named person scheme, push an extreme, antisocial and offensive right wing ‘christianity’ agenda. They are homophobic, regularly funding spurious cases around the world to fight against ANY gay rights or equality on the grounds of ‘christianity’. They believe that their god’s law (as THEY interpret it) is above and superior to any other law.
They don’t want gay equality, gay marriage, gay adoption, evolution taught in schools (Fictional creationism only for science classes), they oppose ANY transgender rights or medical help, they oppose ALL abortions, they oppose sex outside of marriage, homsexuality, divorce… I could go on. They even condemn any gay characters or storylines in TV soaps.
In short they are extreme in every sense, originally (you will not be surprised) from the USA. Vile, frankly. 🙂
I do wonder what Ruth Davidson or Kezia Dugdale thinks of them – although I am confident NO journalist will ask either of them such a difficult question.
Jon Drummond
Unlike most Scotch people I can assure you as a former constituent that”Graft, due diligence and integrity were only ever Alistair’s middle names” doesn’t resonate with me pal,however maybe the complete irony of your post has flown right over ma Heid.Sorry.
Nice of you to pop in though Al.
Ta for all the fun. Good luck with your adventure.
You cant leave the Tories have taken away the Free Movement of People.
If anybody deserves to be called “A Shit!” it’s Darling!
Jon Drummond
I was going to engage you re your comment but I can here your mammy shouting you in for yer tea.
Oh that’s mine ready too. 🙂
@Jon Drummond
Jobs yours,
when can you start?
Jon Drummond
You nearly had me fooled!
Another clever parody! Are you on Twitter?
Jon Drummond
With you all the way, frankly!
I put this link on previous thread regarding Christian Institute…IMO they really need to rethink “Christian”
Read this utter….
link to christian.org.uk
@Jon Drummond
Ironically I have some sympathy for what you say. Alistair Darling did go over the top with his black holes and hyperbole, but then so did the YES camp at times. Unlike some of the current anti-Indy voices, he did have some decency. He was prepared, for example, to agree that of course Scotland could be successful as an Indy country. And yes, the currency union would be a good idea. He was far from the worst voice against Indy even in Indy ref 1, there were some real nutjobs.
To be honest, with his constant anger, I suspect his heart wasn’t fully in what he was doing. He’d been appointed head of Better Together and therefore had a duty to fill the role, to lead against Independence. But in his position a lot of “facts” would come to light, and at times I think he questioned the side he was on. Had he been not part of BT, I wonder which side he would have supported.
There is a tendency amongst YES to ridicule anyone who was in the NO camp, particularly activists. It’s a tendency I try not to share, and would encourage for Indy Ref 2, even less partisanship. We need to convince the undecided of whom there are now a lot, and even soft – and hard – NOees to think again.
But for the spoof account I’m afraid I found it funny, and not really malicicious.
yesindyref2 says:
31 July, 2016 at 5:38 pm
He was prepared, for example, to agree that of course Scotland could be successful as an Indy country.
Ruby replies
How could he possibly have said anything different?
Are you sure ‘Scubeagh Dubh’ isn’t taking the pee pee?
Anyways, having at last had my 6 weeks late 5 day (business) trip around the Outer Hebrides, ferries all luckily going smoothly, and time to think, I’ve come to realise that Alex Sloan who some will remember from Newsnet and the Herald, was totally correct.
My view was then that we couldn’t have a proper Constitution until after Independence because of all the reserved powers at Westminster. But that’s starkly completely incorrect. A Constitution of the People, properly enshrined in the Judiciary, is ABOVE all Government and Parliament. This recent NP court challenge proves ultimately, that the People are indeed Sovereign, at least in regards to being able to challenge Government Legislation against a higher authority – in this case the ECHR.
But what’s need is a properly codified but simple, Constitution that really does enshrine that the People of Scotland are Sovereign – a reaffirmation in the 21st Century, rather than a reliance on hundreds of years of history.
So we need a Constitution NOW. But not one with party politics in it – like “nuclear-free”, “free education”. This is party politics, another party might have different ideas, and times and needs can change. What should never change is that indeed, in Scotland we determine the form of our Government. And have recourse against it, in Law, in the Courts.
The irony of this, of course, is that it puts US above not just Holyrood, but also Westminster. So if we want a Referendum on Independence, nobody can then challenge us in court as to coin a phrase “WE ARE RA PEOPLE”.
The ultimate irony is, it inevitably leads to Independence.
@Ruby
LOL. Yes, he might be, no idea 🙂
O/T apologies if this has been mentioned already…
Ian Taylor, CEO of Vitol, major donor for the Tories and Better Together, and Brian Wilson’s pal, has been nominated for a Knighthood by Cameron.
As Lord Darling would say… ‘well-deserved, frankly.’
Time to scrap this nonsense.
Ghillie, Thanks for your kind words in the earlier thread!
That infamous petition is still progressing well.
Coming up to 90,450 Signatures condemning the BBC.
link to you.38degrees.org.uk
Wait a minute! Scottish – immigrants?
“Dear Mariella Frostrup, This evil referendum [Brexit] has driven a wedge between me and my partner. We’re in midlife and have no children. My parents were immigrants – my mother Scottish, my father a British Indian soldier who came to the UK after the war. I was brought up to be open and accepting of other cultures.”
Guardian Agony Aunt.
Lord Darling is to retire?!?
To spend more time in the garden of your fourth home? Frankly.
Sturgeon must condemn. Vile.
But what is Plan B?
The Johann Lament twitter account?
Thank you for an excellent post, a powerful blog and a parody Twitter account of genius.
In Better Togetherland media bosses reward tired old yoon hacks for recycled pish and yet they tell the talented Mr McRobbie that he’s not qualified for even the lowliest job because they’ve changed the rules. Oh, but he’ll still have to repay that loan he took out to cover the fees for the course that would have qualified him under the old system. . .
Very much hoping that your abundant skills will be rewarded handsomely somewhere warm and agreeable.
Can’t blame you for leaving, but what a terrible loss to Scotland.
Yesindyref2: “To be honest, Darling with his constant anger, I suspect his heart wasn’t fully in what he was doing.”
Hey! That’s be the reason he refused a peerage, saying, he argued the best case for the people of Scotland not for his own aggrandisement, adding, he wants the common person to know he’s always approachable.
Ian Taylor, CEO of Vitol, major donor for the Tories and Better Together, and Brian Wilson’s pal, has been nominated for a Knighthood by Cameron.
Vitol paid £1 million to a war lord. Planet toryboy is just stuffed with sleazy shits and yet this shit’s still not as barking mad as Lady Mone of Mayfair.
link to heraldscotland.com
Vitol has admitted paying $1m (US) to Serbian warlord Arkan in relation to an oil deal but insisted it broke no laws. Most recently, it admitted involvement in tran-shipping Iranian oil but stressed this was before the introduction of all relevant international legislation and this did not break any sanctions.
@ Ray McRobbie
Alas, when The National took Angry Salmond on as a columnist, there were quite a lot of people who wrote in (unless they were all invented by the staff), complaining that Alex had become foul-mouthed, a real disappointment, they were never going to vote SNP again, etc. The paper had to put a footnote at the end of the columns to say it was a lampoon.
Never under-estimate people’s capacity it be taken in (I’ve missed irony on here a number of times, and I’m not alone).
@ Everyone who was in George Square yesterday – as usual I’m finding out afterwards that lots of people were there whom I would have liked to have met; sorry I missed you, and hello again to all those I did meet, including a few new faces to put to names. I’m really glad I made the effort to go, even if I couldn’t manage the march.
Loved this article! Had me in tears laughing. I only discovered Twitter in late June this year and hadn’t found your Darling account. Hope you are as amusing as yourself – nae pressure, likes.
Great account, respect to you Ray. Superbly judged satire throughout, I hope you’ll keep writing in some form. Bit a long winded goodbye, but nobody’s perfect, frankly.
Has Corbyn promised to abolish the House of Lords if elected PM?
Who Is Owen Smith?
Good article in True Republica from Craig Murray.
link to truepublica.org.uk
And there, and at last, we have it and from the horse’s mouth and all this condoned by “Rev Stu”;
“In 2014, I was suspended again. Deadpan spoofing was not on, apparently. I was *too much* like Alistair Darling.” link to twitter.com
The YES campaign in a nutshell – a bunch of deadpan spoofs…
Frankly, etc.
You’ll be missed big time Ray. It never ceased to amaze just how many – on our side – thought that your account, despite, if you’ll forgive me, its bleedin obvious status as a parody, was genuine.
But I guess it explains why people buy the Sunday Herald.
All the best for the future.
crazycat – I only recall one letter complaining about Angry Salmond’s debut in The National. My jaw just about hit the floor when it was printed without any explanation back that it was a parody. I wrote in and can’t remember if they printed my letter. It was a huge mistake of the editors not to clearly state from the start that it was a parody. Some folk may even have thought it read “Alex Salmond” if they just glanced at it.
OK I’m paranoid but it doesn’t mean Auntie’s out to get me right.
Just clocked the official USPGA scores for the golf and my man ‘opportunity Russell Knox’ is lying tied for 19th place at the moment fair enough, all 86 players on the board.
Now the reason I’m checking is because when I go to Auntie’s BBC sport/ golf scoreboard there is a name and a Saltire flag missing … michty me! Surely some mistake! 🙁 Aye right!
Russell Knox where are you?
Good old auntie…mind you I’m not paying for a licence.
Checked both scoreboards three times in the last 10 mins before I press post! Still the same.
Back to the golf on live streaming! Funny old world init!
@ harry mcaye
You could be right – I’ve recycled the papers so I can’t check. I thought there were at least two, on different days, but perhaps they did print yours, and I’ve mis-allocated that in my memory.
(The more I think about it, the more I do remember a letter in response, yours or someone else’s making the same point.)
The paper did declare in advance that “he” was going to have a column; my daughter asked me to buy her a copy because she was going to be away on the relevant day. But they were wrong to assume that every reader knew about the twitter account and/or would read the by-line correctly.
Frank. Frankly.
Sturgeon must act to stop this, now !
You’re killing off A_LordDarling?? Well! That’s just VILE, frankly!!!
Seriously, I soooo laughed at your antics at a time we really needed it! 🙂 And while I shan’t miss pointing out in tweets that “It’s a PARODY account!” lol! I shall miss the tongue in cheek comments that only the real Darling could fail to appreciate. 😉 Thanks for the tears of laughter as I wondered what the old boy was going to say next to incriminate himself!
Whatever you are off to do, frankly I hope it works out well for you! Good luck in your uncertainty! 🙂
@ Jon Drummond, Darling the Che Guevara of the Labour party . I wonder what happened to him.
I think you,ve over imbibed on that Scotch.
I remember Darling being a young revolutionary Labour activist involved in local council politics in Edinburgh in the early 80s.
However, it was clearly just a phase he was going through rather than genuine conviction. The inner Tory outed in the end.
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a lot of new twitter accounts being opened for what purely looks like trolling Scottish Independence.
Would not be surprised if it was a handful of BritNat Yoon media troll types trying to give the impression that there are more ordinary people against Independence than there really is.
Off topic
Just read a very long blog post by Owen Jones, who I do like, because I find him very honest. He is suffering dreadful abuse, besides the usual homophobic stuff, because he is in despair about Labour.
Owen has always been consistent in his condemnation of Tory, and heavy support of Labour and the Left. He is so grief stricken at what’s happening, he is actually revealing a lot of previously unknown work with Momentum etc.
Owen is being attacked because he has been critical of Corbyn, and some of his performance, such media, messages or MIA.
His long dissection and analysis concludes Labour are at a party on a crumbling cliff. Cheering the huge numerical support for Corbyn, when he has no chances of winning an election, even though it pains him to say it.
Worth reading his Blog, I think it’s a good political study. It’s exactly what I’ve been thinking, watching the debacle, and I’ve withdrawn from Facebook, because my English friends are hysterical in their support of Corbyn, and I don’t have the heart to tell them they are wrong, because they are desperate.
At least we have a shot at independence but because of what’s happening with Labour, I’m terrified if we don’t become independent.
Flipper Darling is more Dye Brow than High Brow!
Never in the field of in-human conflict has so much been stolen from so many by the lies and distortions of so few.
I’m on Twitter but avoid following yoons as its bad for my health. Sorry Ray , seams like I missed a good laugh , which we are all badly in need of at times frankly!
I must say I remember the Kessock bridge post as it landed on my TL .
I do recall bursting out with laughter and thinking “You plonker ! ”
The fact you did it & stuck at it deserves all the praise posted above me , so a pat on the back from TB and enjoy the rest of your life .
I do hope you can return to join us in iScotland …. soon.
Cheers
Sorry – but this is one of the more disappointing posts on the WoS blog
@ Valerie
Just read the Owen Jones blog. He seems to be panicking about the state of Labour’s ratings. Can he be surprised? The party is in civil war. Voters won’t trust a party busy stabbing itself in the back and shooting itself in the foot.
The SNP and its leaders have suffered the full force of media attack for years. I’m almost glad that, in England, someone else is on the receiving end. Maybe Owen could set himself up as Wings Over England (WOE) and expose the political hypocrisy of Westminster and its media lackeys. That would do us all a favour.
BTW I don’t see what’s wrong with Jeremy Corbyn. I like his left wing policies. I’d be more afraid that he might provoke a Labour revival in Scotland but happily the Blairite wing of the party are scuppering any chance of that.
@Capella
Yes, definite parallel with how the media has treated SNP. I think Owen is panicked because no one is listening to his views, and I believe he is right.
I too admire and respect Corbyn, up to a point, because he is a weak leader, he tries to lead in a consensual way, and that only works on communes.
Last year when I watched the Syria vote, and that disgusting performance by Benn for the Tories, that was when I knew it would turn to shit. The party wasn’t whipped, but he should have known Benn would lead a coup after humiliating Corbyn in broad daylight like that.
PLP just went from bad to worse since then, obviously decided to make the coup after the referendum, not thinking Brexit would happen, but decided to proceed anyway.
The PLP collective IQ could barely make it into 3 digits based on their post Brexit clown show.
When Labour are like this, it will just embolden Tories to ratchet up the suffering, which may help us win indyref2.
BTW, Owen Jones is a prolific writer, his last book exposing the way the elite ruling class operates.
He writes in the Guardian, but I don’t think he is on the staff.
It’s just recently he has felt the need to start standing back from Corbyn, because he sees this fight as being the split and death of the party.
He has known and supported Corbyn for years, but the strategy with Momentum was to have Corbyn as a holding solution, build Left support, and bring through a young Corbynite for 2020.
Sensible enough strategy, but the Blairites would rather tear up the party, than allow a return to the Left.
“As for me, well, the main reason for quitting is that I’m leaving for a new adventure which will involve much less internet access and a completely different time zone to boot.”
———-
I read the blog post linked to Ray’s real twitter account in the final line. It seems there are personal reasons for having a tough year after the referendum, but the result may have at least partly contributed to the reasons for wanting a fresh start.
It makes me pretty angry to think of how many talented people Scotland has lost to emigration, and I have no doubt at all our political situation is partly to blame.
We have shitty weather much of the time, a large degree of inequality and pockets of sectarianism. But to top it all off, we don’t even run our own country like a normal nation. We have watched 40 billion barrels of oil being sucked out of our waters with little to show for it. We have a UK media that patronises and insults Scottish aspiration on a daily basis.
No wonder Scotland’s population has been at a standstill for the last century. We are half the country we should be.
Ireland, for reasons of its own, has also seen many young people leaving for a better life. But it is back on track to being a thriving modern country with unemployment falling fast. Where emigrants can return to whenever they want.. to a place they will always belong. A country where its citizens are well-liked and respected across the world.
So if Scotland does get the opportunity of a second referendum, then perhaps pride and emotion should take a higher place.. not just economic issues.
Brexit won on a platform of ‘taking back control’.
The same should also apply here, even if we have to tighten the belts for the first few years. Where is the pride in the alternative? Effectively being a remote region of England where big political decisions are made for us.. feeling helpless as a nation to decide our own destiny?
We need a campaign emphasising that it is time to upgrade Scotland to a NORMAL country – where we can have more respect as a nation, more respect in the world, and more control over our potential to make this a better country to live in.
@ Valerie
I’ve bought his book “Establishment” but not yet read it (spend far too much time on Wings) and watched videos of speeches etc. Apart from him looking about 12, I think he is a very bright young man with a keen sense of political dynamics.
In Scotland, the SNP have occupied the left of centre ground, which New Labour abandoned, and are not budging from it. SLAB have nowhere left to go. The Tories are clearly better at being right wing.
England has a problem. I wasn’t kidding about a Wings Over England type blog. None of the MSM oppose the pitiful politics being played out in Westminster. So the people are turning to UKIP in despair.
But please don’t let Stu be diverted! Someone like Owen would be ideal.
Capella 11.07
Jeremy Corbyn thinks Scotland should be governed from London,England.Same as May and Brown and Blair and Thatcher.What do you like about that policy?
@Onwards (12.00) –
Hear hear.
Cameron slated over gongs for cronies as resignation honours list leaked
link to archive.is
Rennie accuses Sturgeon of risking Holyrood consensus on EU because of focus on independence
link to archive.is
Ireland, for reasons of its own, has also seen many young people leaving for a better life
@Onwards
Have you ever worked for an Irishman? I did on countless London building sites, and every Irishman I worked with, said they would sooner work for an Englishman.
Because (an English boss) were generally considered fairer, I presume.
I always ask that question, when I hear Scots wax lyrical about “Ireland”.
@Papko (12.40) –
A fascinating comment, for several reasons, all of which expose you as an idiot.
HandandShrimp @ 22:10,
Darling wasn’t the only one by any means. Jack Straw (eg.) was another.
I was around in Aberdeen at the time to observe privately-educated Darling dabble in radical student politics. With apologies to Capella and Valerie, the trouble with lefties in general, and self-appointed radical lefties in particular, was – and largely remains (see RISE) – that they have an arrogant and suffocating belief that they have sole proprietorial rights to being progressive.
This is why (eg.) they indulge in “People’s Front of Judaea” type internal feuds and why they just can’t handle civic nationalism as manifested by large sections of the indy movement. It’s competition at a visceral level, and since (to their mind) we can’t possibly be “progressives”, we must of course be the only sort of nats they know, ie. the nasty kind.
I don’t really see much sign of any real change in that view. The recent SLab “consultation” has shut the door on an independent Scottish party, which is the essential first step. Corbyn lately seems to be pondering some kind of “anti-Tory” UK alliance, but any rapprochement with the SNP will be purely a temporary marriage of convenience, and also implies a hardening of Labour Unionism to keep us “in play” for them.
As Labour here in Scotland leaks more and more members willing to think afresh, the remnants are inevitably becoming more vehemently reactionary and BritNat. These people seem to have an unshakeable belief that the Scots are uniquely and congenitally incapable of prospering on their own. (One in the hearing of my mrs recently announced that he “didn’t want to live in a third-world country”!) Yet if the party is to survive up here, it will have to change policy. (Who wants to vote for a party which has no faith whatever in its voters, and thinks they are all scroungers?) I’m not holding my breath, though if it did so I would still warmly welcome the change.
But Labour’s highest ambition, it would seem, is to see us stuck in a right-wing Tory UK for the foreseeable future with them in the role of token rump opposition. Some future, that! I can see the party disintegrating instead, riven by its own internal contradictions.
If so, I just hope it gets the job done before indyref2.
@ mealer 12.04
I don’t agree with it.
The original Labour Party supported Home Rule but they dropped in the 30’s I think. They have been overrun by Fabian entryists.
Keir Hardie was also anti-immigration, no doubt on account of dilution of wages.
Nevertheless, not as bad as UKIP which is where they are all heading now.
Ian Brotherhood says:
–
A fascinating comment, for several reasons, all of which expose you as an idiot.
Have you ever worked for an Irishman?
Re Onwards @12.00 am
“We need a campaign emphasising that it is time to upgrade Scotland to a NORMAL country – where we can have more respect as a nation, more respect in the world, and more control over our potential to make this a better country to live in.”
I’m sure the Brain Family would agree with you on that one- facing deportation in 23 hours.
Why can’t they be allowed to stay? Bring on Independence.
@Papko
LOL what a diddy.
@ Papko
Since you are only “presuming” that English bosses are perceived as fairer, perhaps you are mistaking your erstwhile colleagues’ reasoning – maybe the English bosses are seen as stupid and more easily manipulated, for instance. That’s only one of many reasons that might make them “better” to work for.
You are also extrapolating from a few Irish bosses to all Irish bosses, so yes, you have exposed yourself as a sloppy thinker.
@Papko
Verrrrry interesting. But stupid.
@Papko,
Hardly waxing lyrical, just pointing out a difference according to my experience.
Ireland has had troubles of its own, and plenty of Irish people may live and work in England, but I have never met a single one who isn’t proudly Irish or thinks that Ireland should be governed by England in a larger UK.
Curious as to why you put “Ireland” in quotes ?
Onwards, Meg merrilees,
I agree with you both there.
The kind of control we can only have as a sovereign nation.
Funny, but things seem to have gone very quiet on the “federal UK” front of late. Is that simply because its proponents are either all distracted by arguments over party leadership or all away on their summer hols to Tuscany?
Frankly, it all boils down to the ruthless style with which Mr. McRobbie conducted his pragmatic campaign of semiotic disobedience.
Top trolling McRobbie. 😉
@Papko –
Yes, I have.
I was asked to do a critical review of one of the first scripts commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland.
The ‘Irishman’ responsible for that script was Neil Mackay, editor of the Sunday Herald, author of ‘The War On Truth’, and one of the most important investigative journalists currently working in mainstream media.
Oh, and if you’re alluding to more menial tasks? Aye, I’ve worked for guys from Mayo (where my maternal grandparents came from), and Donegal, doing basic summer-job bollocks with ‘landscaping’, grass-mowing and suchlike.
So, anyway, your point is?
Papko
It’s more likely your Irish colleagues preferred English bosses, as this would maximise the utility to be gained from sharing a language and cultural understanding which was alien to the poor sods. They probably ripped the pish out of every English boss they had.
Look, you’re way out of your depth here. We’re not a bunch if ignorant muppets, in general.
Your outlook is wrong mate, plain and simple. Btw, would it be too personal a question to ask if you are based in Scotland?
I watched a TV programme featuring native American Indians and their history
First off The “new” Americans slaughtered as many of them as they could, then they infected them with disease, then they drove them out of their mineral and oil rich lands, then they created a system whereby poverty was assured
Now the Native American is used as a tourist attraction to sell leather stuff head dresses of feathers and clothing most of them never wore
And the purchasers of these items and biggest tourists for it? Brits, and the beneficiaries? big foreign tourist companies run by? you guessed it, Not Native Americans
Anything familiar about this story?
The Native Americans are now too few to do anything about anything now because they’ve been bred out kicked out have shorter life expectancy and their whole history has been made up and rewritten by everybody but them because they’re now too poor and too wee and not considered educated enough to be listened to
This is how to conquer a Nation from the inside and guess who they learned it from,… Right again!
Even if anybody did care about the Native American
….it’s too late now
Anyway, off to bed got to get up early and practice “ma heilan fling” it’s always something to fall back on
@Papko,
Leaving bosses aside, I suppose the point I am trying to make is that emigrants are more likely to return if they are proud of their native country and fellow countrymen, not ashamed or disappointed in them in a way.
It’s about jobs, lifestyle, family & friends, but there is also a sense of “Is this a country worth coming back to? A positive looking country that is going places and worth contributing to ?
Ian Brotherhood: I was asked to do a critical review of one of the first scripts commissioned by the National Theatre of Scotland. The ‘Irishman’ responsible was Neil Mackay, editor of the Sunday Herald, author of ‘The War On Truth’, and one of the most important investigative journalists currently working in mainstream media.
Was it any good?
Coincidentally, I’m handed the occasional script from ex-editors and ‘struggling’ journalists who think scripting is easy, you just write dialogue and bits of direction. Few have an ear for dialogue.
The curious thing is, none have anything to say.
“Flipper Darling is more Dye Brow than High Brow!”
‘Exposure’ of faux Darling has this passing 2,000 hits, yet written months ago. link to wp.me
This is topical: link to wp.me
The Partition of Ireland was a total disgrace. The majority in Ireland wanted Home Rule. Not an Aparheid State. Ulster. A Law unto it’s self. Unequal and divisery, which still exists for a minority Unionism. Westminster unelected Lords and Gladstone created the Balfour Agreement and caused misery death and destruction in the Middle East.
Westminster Unionist misrule has caused poverty and death in Scotland. The unelected Tories are trying to ruin the world economy.
Dr Jim,
On the subject of the native Americans, if you have not read it i would recommend ‘bury my heart at wounded knee’ by Dee Brown.
A great book telling the whole story of what really happened to the native Indians available on Amazon.
O/T (like most of the comments above)
BBC Radio Shortbread on Cameron’s honours list failed to make any mention of Ian Taylor Vitol plc who was Better Together’s largest donor at £500,000 until Harry Potter punted £1million.
Some background here
link to heraldscotland.com
Valerie: ” Owen Jones is a prolific writer”
And speaker. He can barely stop speaking to take a breath.
Brilliant, well done. It’s something that resonates with me.
If I can bore ye all with my story, I was same but discovered Twitter a few years earlier and used it for news, politics and a special interest in hacking, em I mean penetration testing!
Following journalists at the front line of the Arab Spring and getting real news that the BBC took days to report was a real joy. Sad too as the people being bombed, shelled and shot at as they went about their daily lives.
As the referendum came up I switched one of many accounts to tweeting/ following independence debate and like Ray found it was like shooting fish in a barrel as I took apart prominant unionist Twitter accounts.
They were angry. Jesus the abuse!
The account I used was a little used account just for keeping up do date with current hacking practices and only a few followers. As the campaign grew it reached a respectable couple of thousand of you lot. For which I was grateful.
Many followers admitted readily that they had persuaded someone to vote Yes through my Tweets even somebody’s husband such was the split in voting intentions.
The account was anonymous, for a reason. I worked away and the level of abuse and threats was such I didn’t want the risk of someone turning up at my door. Whether that threat was imagined or real doesn’t matter, I couldn’t risk it.
A few months before the vote I was outed by a guy from Belfast, I must have been careless and left a few bread crumbs. My fears had been correct, plenty lunatic loyalists lined up to offer me a good kicking. One even said my dog would get it first!
There is no denying that I’m not as cool headed as some and with a forces background I’m a wee bit rough around the edges. So I guess I could have handled things differently. Anyway it worked out in the end. The Yoons never did find he actual guts to door step me, dog is still here and weighing in at 8 stone I don’t fancy her chances.
I’ve since disposed of all accounts but one and I’m trying to be a good boy this time.
Lesson learnt folks, the Yoon Loyalist Thugs on Twitter for all their talk won’t and can’t harm you. They won’t do anything, so I took one for the cause to prove that.
The Yoons only like to drag wee girls around by the hair.
O/t
Cameron hands out honours like sweetie, meanwhile the Brains are to be deported today.
Too angry for further comment.
O/T:
Reading the headlines this morning I read this :-
My immediate thoughts were, “Well the wee moggy will certainly be a far more competent Chancellor than the last few incumbents at the Treasury and will probably keep the rats out of the treasury building too.”
@valerie
Thanks for the owen Jones article. Very thought provoking indeed and for me there is alot of food for thought in there for YESers.
Here’s the link..
link to medium.com
@Papko,
“Hardly waxing lyrical, just pointing out a difference according to my experience.
Ireland has had troubles of its own, and plenty of Irish people may live and work in England, but I have never met a single one who isn’t proudly Irish or thinks that Ireland should be governed by England in a larger UK.”
Curious as to why you put “Ireland” in quotes ?
@Onwards Personally I think its a great thing that folk work in other countries, leaving their homeland and seeing the world. I consider it a positive that a Scot can get a job elsewhere.
Whereas as we see in the Mediterranean every day, if your born in an African country, your choices of working abroad are limited.
Ireland does have a high % who choose to work outside Ireland, obviously its not for any negative reasons according to you.
In my experience “Ireland” in quotes is a place for the storytellers, they do have a gift for telling a story, and they know how to polish up their own country.
Having worked on building sites as a self employed carpenter in London throughout the 80’s, I always found an Irish private building company hard to work for, as did many of my fellow Irish workers.
They considered the Irish boss unduly vindictive, whilst an English building company was a deal more benign.
This is off course personal anecdote, and I have had no funding from the SG, to pursue my findings further.
My question to all part time gender equality officers at Glasgow council “have you ever worked for an Irishman”, is misleading, as I am referring to Irish contractors, 30 years ago, though if any young Scots, seek employment with a group of immigrants who have come to Scotland to work in our many booming industries, like agriculture, fish processing, or Building sites .
I am sure they will find the same ruthless zeal from their East European gang masters.
They have the same hunger, and desire to make money at any costs, regardless of suffering, that the Irish builders did in London 30 years ago, which is the subject of my point.
@Grouse Beater, he does speak a lot, lol! I do think he is honest and consistent, as an old fashioned Leftie.
@Robert J Sutherland
I agree with your comments about the radical Left, and the RISE debacle, and give us your second vote dishonesty.
I’m old enough to know we need business to pay for stuff. My aim is we get fair and logical treatment of business, good workers protection, loopholes are closed etc.
According to RISE, we should be trading in shells and beads, and learning to weave.
We have the system we have, and there is a place for big business, just not exploiting people, and making obscene amount of money for yachts.
Alistair, your ‘Ray McRobbie’ spoof identity may fool the masses but not this cat. Frankly 🙂
Dr Jim & Ken500
Will Palestine sue the British gov’t over the Balfour Agreement? Hope this gains traction, not seen on the BBC.
link to archive.is
Even through his resentment of this monumental piss take, Darling will nevertheless relish the column inches he will consider as testament to his self inflated importance.
Narcissists are like that; while they hate any form of criticism & will project their faults onto others, they ironically do take any form of attention as proof of their grandiose position in life, even if that position in reality is relatively minor.
They are frequently destructive in their relationships with people & will often take whatever measures necessary to eliminate competition & undermine all those around them.
But they do rely on weak underlings to support & confirm, at least in their own mind, their worth. So it is common to find a weak personality on whom the narcissist dumps menial tasks such as scheduling & paperwork.
Darling exudes many of these traits so it is no surprise that he is vacuous, insincere & distant; all the while wishing to have an important audience which no doubt made his constituency surgery meetings painful for him, no matter the seriousness of the constituents concerns.
Imagine then this near sexual delirium at receiving a title & an ermine robe; job finally done. And such a number of people he fucked over to get there.
Alistair Darling; another proud “socialist”.
Valerie says:
“We have the system we have, and there is a place for big business, just not exploiting people”
Yes, that’s the way I look at it too. I think Scotland should be on the Northern European part of the spectrum, not on the North American.
Tories, UKIP, Brexiteers all dream of following the US model.
@ Bill – that’s an interesting story! what a talented bunch we have posting on wings.
@ Valerie – that Balfour article is a cracker. Ends by pointing out that if Boris Johnston lasts as Foreign Sec till next November then he’ll be the one celebrating the Balfour Declaration. “Can’t wait”, says Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz journalist.
That is November 2017 I should have said. Boris expected to last until next year.
Apparently the Foreign Office has already discussed how to handle the Balfour centenary. Some delicious ironies:
“Tobias Ellwood, FCO minister for the Middle East, said in June that he would use the word “mark” rather than “celebrate” what he admitted was still “a live issue” in the region.”
O/T.
Paul Dacre: Daily Mail editor set to cash in on new hydro scheme at his Highland estate.
The project being built on Paul Dacre’s estate north of Ullapool owned by the editor-in-chief of the right wing Daily Mail, stands to earn over £15m over the next 20 years.
Is this the biggest hypocrite of them all.
Where is greedy flipper hiding out now
An excellent article from George Kerevan in the National. A must read. On the end of neoliberalism not, under the new Tory government, signalling better times for the rest of us:
link to archive.is
Papko says:
1 August, 2016 at 9:48 am
@Papko,
“Hardly waxing lyrical, just pointing out a difference according to my experience.
What’s your UKOK point sensiblePaps, or is it just the usual denigrating Scotland riddles of, UK is the only way for you sweaties.
Saw this in rancid The Graun lately Paps?
millionaires in Europe.
One in every three people in Monaco are millionaires, according to research into the cities of Europe that have the most high net worth individuals, with Zurich close behind.
London ranks fourth. Millionaires on its Mayfair streets and penthouses may be more numerous than Monaco, but they account for only one in every 29 of the capital’s citizens.
Edinburgh, ranked 16th, is the only other UK city to make it into the top 20, with an estimated one in 67 of its inhabitants a millionaire.
Consultancy company WealthInsight, who carried out the research in partnership with Spear’s Magazine, said Dublin was the surprise entry into the top 10, beating Paris, Berlin and Moscow.
“Dublin has a higher density of millionaires than many other European capitals. Most of these have earned their wealth from Dublin’s burgeoning tech scene, which has attracted talent from both Europe and the US,” said researcher Oliver Williams.
Jon Drummond,
I was in the No camp until I started reading Ray’s lampoonery of Darling. Now firmly in the Yes camp
Utterly brilliant !
So you see sensiblePaps, its just that that Australian family are getting kicked out by the UK, despite being invited here and Scottish gov has absolutely NO immigration legislative power whatsoever, despite some of Scottish histories greatest liars, Crash, the Flipper, BBC etc, explainerising to Scots 2014, vote NO for devo-max and federal UK.
Then you read Dublin’s got loads of millionaires because
“Dublin has a higher density of millionaires than many other European capitals. Most of these have earned their wealth from Dublin’s burgeoning tech scene, which has attracted talent from both Europe and the US,”
Are you getting it sensiblePaps?
England’s rule over Scotland’s gone mental as anything now anyway Paps. Last nights BBC r4 Westminster Hour thing was essentially 3 toryboy wafflers waffling for toryboy UK. There is no third party now in UKOK Westminster, just red and blue tory, 99% blue ofcourse in BBC land but absolutely nothing SNP whatsoever.
Can this level of tory corruption of the BBC and their SNP airbrushing work sensiblePaps? Maybe. Pretend the SNP do not exist in England. BBC Scotland will take out the SNP in our Scotland region.
Hi Heid
I can only guess that a favourable tax regime attracts millionaires
Monaco certainly and Dublin has 12.5% corporation tax as a presumed incentive for multinationals to locate there.
Though how Ireland pays for its NHS, free University education, and generous public services on such a low tax environment is truly impressive.
Off course being rid of odious UKOK they will have no Foodbanks, or regressive, punitive welfare policies.
@Capella
I find the Palestine suit timing fascinating. It is surely kicking out following Brexit, when this island looks weak, isolated, friendless and xenophobic?
It can’t just be a coincidence. Remember all the rows last year when Councils were forbade to fly the Palestinian flag in solidarity, or say they were boycotting Israel? The Brutnat gov’t said it couldn’t have councils making foreign policy.
I think this is the first of some big old ugly chickens returning to roost.
Especially as I think USA will quietly move away from the spesh relationship with UK, and speak to Merkel.
UK will be left floundering in the wake, left to join in or not as a bit player.
Capella, just read The George Kerevan article, yes very interesting.
If only the Brain family had thought to make a donation to the Tories
What was the Brain family’s crime that’s made the British government want to transport them to the colonies
Funny how the Brits treatment of others hasn’t changed in a hundred years
If they can’t defeat folk they create laws and steal from them using their own bribed countrymen to do it
I guess we’ll just have to aspire to be a cabinet ministers Barbours and get on in life that way or keep up the Hielan Dancing for when the tourists come to see original Jocky folk in our quaint wee hooses wae oor wee Tartan skirts just like it’s supposed to be “Och aye the noo” Time for a song “Campbelltown loch a wish ye were whisky”
I’m told the EU quite likes the modern version of Scotland
But who do we think WE are (Ah dreams)
@Papko says: 1 August, 2016 at 12:40 am:
” … I always ask that question, when I hear Scots wax lyrical about “Ireland”.”
Which, “Ireland”, do you refer to Papco?
The independent Republican part or the English Province?
Perhaps the reason that you are reminded of, “Ireland”, when you heaer Scots wax lyrical is due to the Plantation of so many Scots into Ireland by first the Kingdom of England then the United Kingdom.
Quite obviously there is thus more than a little Scottish strain in the present Ireland gene pool. Not to mention a Welsh strain and among the, “Ascendancy”, much English genes. including that of the former Chancellor Gideon Osborne who is heir apparent to two Irish, “Ascendancy”, Baronetcies.
Here’s that Graun thing sensiblePaps, a variation on your creepy NO stuff maybe but not clear why its in their awful as ever scotland region section. If its up to teamGB meeja, there is no such thing as Scotland now.
link to archive.is
Re. GK’s article in the National.
“The wisest men follow their own direction.” – Euripides
Why wouldn’t the UKOK political system be better understood in a Twitter account which is more representative of the political parody that performs weekly at the Palace of WM and forever casts Scotland as the court jester, frankly.
Dunleavy wrote in 2005 about the changing nature of the political party system although his focus was not Scotland’s independence,
‘Voters have demonstrated a clear tendency to fragment their votes across more parties, creating distinctive party systems in England (with significant regional variations also), in Scotland and in Wales.
There is a continuing process of partisan ‘de-alignment’ across Britain, as positive voter support for two-party politics gradually unravels.
The ‘co-existence’ of plurality rule and PR elections is progressively accentuating and accelerating the transformation of both voters’ alignments and parties’ strategies.
A slow-paced transition to using PR for elections has already proceeded half-way and some form of transition of representation at Westminster seems inevitable as existing multi-party politics develops further’
link to pa.oxfordjournals.org
Over a decade later the WM cabal refuse to get it. The WM two party dominant system is beyond saving, deux impertinences égales. Unable to motivate and becoming decreasingly rooted in the communities they claim that they represent, they now aspire to represent a small % of the UK population.
Scotland recognises this and chooses a different politics- the March on Saturday was an uplifting and positive democratic expression of this.
Dr Jim @ 12.22 pm
Re visas and extensions for those who come here to study:. This might be of interest
link to indianexpress.com
Re. millionaires. I wrote a while back that “power always follows the money”. My bad, as this is only half the equation and you deserve better than Yoon accounting.
Money also tend to gather around power.
Papko says:
1 August, 2016 at 12:10 pm
Hi Heid
I can only guess that a favourable tax regime attracts millionaires
Monaco certainly and Dublin has 12.5% corporation tax as a presumed incentive for multinationals to locate there.
Though how Ireland pays for its NHS, free University education, and generous public services on such a low tax environment is truly impressive.
Off course being rid of odious UKOK they will have no Foodbanks, or regressive, punitive welfare policies.
Ooooh you’re a right one Paps! Corp tax control has done a lot for Ireland, it is a cheat over the rest of the EU but they dont charge off to illegal wars, buy Trident, tolerate a giant tory BBC led propaganda media freak show, nor do they endure a super rich elite that wont pay tax, relentlessly shoring up the wealth that everyone else goes to work to earn. Funny that.
The whole point of this WoS thread in particular is just how much of butt reaming ar____le Flipper Darling is. And much of this is based on his historic UKOK shyste on Scots 2014, namely the Vote No for devo-max, fed UK.Its all come down to nothing, or worse than nothing less than 2 years later, as yoonster toryboy’s like you sensible Paps know full well.
Anyway Paps, Ireland has slightly higher PAYE than the UK but they include council taxes in their PAYE, prices did go up with joining the euro and their banksters are just as wildly greedy as the City spivs too. And despite having a completely free access to the UK, everything UK, jobs, health care, FE and HE education, they’re not reigned over by blue and red tory BBC Westminster.
I’d take that, as a vile separatist.
OK then..’which Ireland are you referring to’..
Britain and Ireland, two very large islands and part of the British Isles.
A very recent (historically speaking) colonial border cuts through Ireland marking where a sectarian based imperial mandate replaced ancient law, commonality and democracy.
The gene pool of the Irish People ebbs and flows, as it has always done. It takes more than the Late British Empire to kill off a true nation. That would require coercion from nasties rarely seen since democracies and constitutions took back some control from the merchants, lords and pirates.
Interesting, Tory peer says HoL could delay any move to activate A50, if it has to.go through parliament.
It’s back to this legal wrangle, as to whether the PM has the legal power to activate A50, or as Remainers say, A50 is so significant, it must be debated and voted on law passed to enact, meaning Lord’s would get a shot at it.
I think the legal argument is due to be decided by Autumn. Hell of a lot going on in Autumn according to May.
Just interesting the Tory Lords are obviously getting their support ready to fight it, if necessary.
Received this months iScot magazine,brilliant read as normal….
Details of SBC set top box that turns off all BBC channels.
🙂
link to sbctv.co.uk
call me dave said at 12:25 am:-
” Cameron slated over gongs for cronies as resignation honours list leaked
link to archive.is ………..”
A snippet: “Former prime minister David Cameron has been accused of bringing the honours system into disrepute after recommending rewards for dozens of his “cronies” in his resignation honours list, including a businessman who gave £500,000 to the Better Together campaign.
Among those reportedly set to get gongs is Ian Taylor, the businessman and philanthropist, who heads the oil trading company Vitoil and is expected to receive a knighthood.” !!!!!!!
Let’s get out of this rotten UK.
Let’s get out of this rotten UK.
Look at the latest Hinkley C nuke power toryboy UKOK mega fiasco/catastrofuck up.
link to theguardian.com
Another display of just how tory the Graun is now but imagine if it was FM Sturgeon and not PM Thatch 2 making such an appalling mess of what Greenpeace say is the most expensive public service spend in the world ever?
UKOK meeja howling at the moon for FM Sturgeon’s head would probably reach the actual moon, let alone the BBC Scotland fury. But this is UKOK planet toryboy.
So from PM Thatcher 2’s latest colossal screw up
link to greenpeace.org.uk
to
link to blogs.spectator.co.uk
Then Rancid the Graun says
“But just hours before a signing ceremony was due to take place on Friday, May’s new government said it would review the project again, raising concern that Britain’s approach to infrastructure deals, energy supply and foreign investment may be changing.”
What a way run the UK but its all fine between the ears of the toryboys.
@Ledgerwood
Thanks for that, it’s good to know that while a perfectly decent family like the Brains lives are on a knife edge in Scotland the good old UK English government is changing the rules down south for Universties in England to benefit from a nice new shiny system while at the same time excluding Scotland and it’s Universities from the same shiny deal
They couldn’t possibly be anti Scotland, could they?
Surely not!
O/T Waiting for Independence.
Waiting is a major pain
Waiting goes against the grain
But nothing nips my aching brain
Like waiting and waiting
In bloody Vain.
heed @ 14:29,
Yes, you’re darn tootin’ there.
It was the exact same with Sturgeon’s China talks, the press thundering and the usual suspects queuing up to condemn, while Osborne was away in China doing real deals without a peep from the UKOK meeja.
The laugh is that after Brexit, Little Britain, all on its own and desperate for trade deals, will get pushed around by the likes of China easy-peasy.
@Heed
Hinckley is the biggest, most expensive white elephant that we would have to.pay for.
Nothing short of a fcking disgrace.
The cost of nuclear energy to the consumer is astronomical, outstripping any green energy source.
30 years ago workers and bankers were working on projects in London secretly funded by Scottish Oil revenues. ‘Loads of money’. Canary Wharf – Bankers – Tilbury Docks etc. Unemployment was higher in Scotland.
Thatcher had over 3 million unemployed and interest rates at 15%.
NI (2million pop) raises £28Billion in taxes and gets £14Billion (50%) = £42Billion. Norwegian levels of funding for Unionist bigotry.
Robert J. Sutherland says:
1 August, 2016 at 3:01 pm
heed @ 14:29,
Yes, you’re darn tootin’ there.
Tory BBC led propaganda is really at its most aggressive ever now. They went berserk at Scotland 2014 but this is an extraordinary and very mental nationwide tory BBC shyste, from no Brexit strategy at all, BBC r4 Westminster Hour gimps say its because planet toryboy didn’t expect Leave to win, then the appalling waste of money that is Trident, all to fcuk up Corbyn and now its the Chinese that PM Thatch 2 doesn’t like the look of, at the very last minute.com.
BBC Scotland creep show is just insufferable now but toryboy BBC diverts include the Pig Fancier toryboy’s honours thing and Rio 2016, otherwise, vote toryboy, they’re NOT a pack of braying troughers without a clue or plan and they’re still in charge of all the big stuff in their Scotland region too.
Thanks again for that, sensiblePaps types.
Funny. US satire. @A_DarlingMP is also very funny but its one twitter account holder’s satire in a teamGB owned by the tory BBC that just doesn’t do any satire now.
And toryboy world closed @A_DarlingMP down.
link to youtube.com
Cracking professional pics here of Saturday
link to documentingyes.com
Story in the Guardian about needing a TV licence to watch iPlayer starting in September. If you are one of those who watch iPlayer rather than the actual broadcast shows on BBC then you can do so at the moment without a TV licence but this is set to change come September. Not sure how they will monitor this though.
Great article in the Daily Telegraph online by Mr McTernan about why David Cameron’s honours list rewarding his friends is OK!! Seriously!
The next time anyone tells you it would be such a pity to ditch trident because of all the jobs that would be lost, don’t tear your hair out; try a different approach:
Tell them that you’ve read in the papers that the main manufacturers of Semtex or Kalashnikovs have gone out of business. If they don’t immediately react by expressing regret over all the jobs that will be lost, feed them the line: “I feel sorry for all those people whose jobs will be lost.” 9 times out of 10, they will react by telling you that that is a ridiculous thing to say, and that it is more important to remove the threat to human lives than to worry about people’s jobs. At that point, walk right in and talk about trident.
Hey Marcia.
Have you seen that there is an story about Clara Bow in the Guardian today?
Just in case you want to add something to the comments.
Congratulations and thanks to those signing up to the petition against Blatant Bias at the BBC.
You just crossed through the 90,500 Signatures mark.
Thanks too for the Rev, “The Wizard of WoS”, for keeping us updated and united in all things Pro Scotland.
link to you.38degrees.org.uk
Valerie : “Cracking professional pics here of Saturday.”
They are. Thank you, Valerie.
I love the bikers and the girl with the placard “Immigrants welcome.”
Wonder if I’d be allowed to reproduce a few on my essay site.
Every time you look, yoon culture gets dafter. especially in rancid Graun. Only SLab can raise a laugh in their very first sentence. I hope Kez is having an ace holiday over there but I also hope no American asks her how she’s getting on her Scotland region politics. Its like asking the captain of the Titanic how its going.
Or, maybe its a parody Dugdale? ahah!
link to archive.is
The Brexit vote rocked the UK’s political establishment, stunning an elite that had taken voters for granted. Having spent a couple of weeks in the US and attended the Democratic convention, I fear the complacency that led to the UK establishment being turned upside down could be repeated in the White House race.
“So my hope is that the Clinton campaign won’t repeat the UK’s mistakes. Brexit proves what can happen when the political establishment loses touch. One thing we learned during the EU referendum is that facts and figures alone aren’t enough.”
Tomorrow we’re hiring a car and heading for the Grand Canyon! Everyone says we have to see Yosemite and then Frisco, that’s what they call San Francisco, I get carsick though so we’ve got lots of Dramamine. Cant wait, love to all,
Kez.
In case you missed today’s bargain hunt, it was in Scotland.
Best one I’ve ever seen.
Very proud of my fellow Scots.
Here’s a going away present for you – verse 3 of a song I’m writing.
No-one’s darling sold his soul
For Tr…or’s wage and ermine stole
Proud righteous chants forgotten now
See Mammon’s subject scrape and bow
@Effiyy.
Are you determined to give the details of every active ‘nat’ to the British 38 degrees?
Do you know the history of Brown and Kuenssberg?
@Grouse
I picked up the link from FB. Wouldn’t hurt to ask the guy, and perhaps say it gives him more coverage if you give him a credit?
@ Smallaxe
Im waiting oan the Indy train
its ower long but not in vain
its had many halts along the way
its back in motion whistle blawin
the points are set the road is clear
onward to that day weil hold so dear
Independence day.
link to thenational.scot
Oh er mrs they went doon weil.
BrianDTT git oan that phone an order mair.
Hinkley Point will cost £24 billion to build.
2016 power cost £37 per megawatt hour (MWh)
In 2012 UK Ministers agreed to pay £92.50 MWh for Hinkley Point nuclear power by 2016 this had gone up to £99 MWh
The UK’s first new nuclear power station for a generation will cost electricity customers at least £4.4bn and the subsidy bill could reach £20bn, the government has revealed.
Details of the costs – an average of about £150 to £660 per customer over the 35 years of the deal – are exposed in a document quietly put before parliament in October 2015.
If inflation continues at current rates then UK government would be paying £120 MWh when Hinkley starts operating in say ten years time.
£1billion is the estimated annual subsidy EDF will receive from UK consumers when Hinkley starts operating (based on wholesale prices rising to £65 MWh )
Even Margaret Thatcher cancelled the nuclear build programmes in the early 1980s as the economics didn’t add up.
Fossil fuels enjoy £27bn a year in subsidies in the UK, according to the IMF, £425 for every man, woman and child in the country. The UK is the only G7 nation increasing fossil fuel subsidies.
The government reneged on its manifesto commitment and abandoned the £1 billion carbon capture competition for demonstration plants which Peterhead was among favourites to win.
Oh well, on to their next ‘project’ for the Scottish Resistance.
They want to go to Westminster Abbey to recover the corpse of Mary Queen of Scots.
@ Valerie
Well they better do it before Clerkin gets sentenced ha ha, a bloody embarressment to the Indy movement.
I’m sure if the snp discovered a cure for cancer, the daily mail./ express /hootsman headlines would be ” snp deliver fatal employment blow to funeral directors.
Juteman says:
1 August, 2016 at 5:10 pm
@Effiyy.
Are you determined to give the details of every active ‘nat’ to the British 38 degrees?
Do you know the history of Brown and Kuenssberg?
Hi Juteman,
Yes. I don’t want to hide who I am and what I stand for.
My Details will be well known to the BBC from the many times I attempt to confront their Blatant Bias as an individual.
As an SNP member, and I’m sure Westminster Know it
sinky @ 17:30:
Oh dear, there goes another one. It’s hard to keep up!
When the Turdy/LieDem coalition took office, the official mantra was that all nuclear projects would have to be commercially self-funding. No government aid. Well that didn’t last long. Renewables cut without warning then cut again, and then a no-lose sweet deal offered to EDF.
Another case of capitalism for the people and socialism for the privileged.
Also, the latest figure that I read for the estimated cost of Hinkley Point C was £37Bn, and even that is almost certain to rise.
If it ever gets finished, that is. The current builds of that reactor type are way behind schedule.
If we don’t get indy before those enormous costs come barrelling in, we here in Scotland will have to pay our “Better Together” share. While our crucial renewables future is left languishing. (Can’t ever have those uppity Scotties getting one over us in the energy stakes, can one, chaps?)
heed @ 16:36:
Well, there’s a very tempting thought for someone…
As for the real Kez, I think she’s probably been updated to a newer version while in the USA, but I doubt if the makers have yet managed to solve that tricky Union indecision bug that has manifested of late. A serious design flaw, there, methinks. I fear she will blow some fuse first. (If she hasn’t been replaced by an entirely different model beforehand, that is.)
Davosa,
thank you for your comment (and bravery) and welcome, welcome, a thousand welcomes.
Radio Shortbread: Bill ..erm…urmm…Whiteford sucking up to some cockernee geezer type re. Cameron’s honours largesse about how honours are good for getting’you top table’ etc. etc. This in our country when 50% despise the whole fucken system.
Then in my home toun of Dumfries..Wullie Johnstone havering on about the Camera Obscura..the oldest in Scotland. As predictable as ever the ‘curator’ some daft English lassie talking about ‘The Old Bridge’ being visible on the Obscura table.
Sorry, but apart from the fact that it is well documented that there is reverse discrimination in staffing of our Cultural establishments of English over Scots (see Prof Robertson survey)..the fact that this person couldn’t or wouldn’t use the correct nomenclature of the town’s oldest landmark ‘Auld Brig’ makes me personally spew.
It demonstrates an institutionally racist approach by employers in certain sectors of Scottish society. The arts, the Universities, the cultural centres are dominated by non-Scots, but specifically and overwhelmingly, by English people. I don’t object to diversity, in fact the opposite, but this is the crux of colonialism. Its about the ruling group, nation etc. imposing its own elite on the subordinate population to the detriment of the indigenous one. So that everything is seen and interpreted by the colonist’s prism of reality.
I want to hear about our history from locals, who can pronounce the names, and have local knowledge of the surrounding areas. If people don’t understand why this is how our languages, both Scots and Gaelic have been suppressed and our culture has been increasing and deliberately put in the hands of English people, then I don’t know what?
Ask yourself..was there not a locally born graduate suitable out of a region of 150,000 people who couldn’t have done this job? I never encountered a similar situation in England or Ireland..Wales, I have never been to, but with 25% being English residents, I’d take an even bet its even worse there.
I feel cheated.
@Lochside (7.06) –
Hear hear.
Lochside
Double hear hear.
Slightly related. I watched a programme on the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh last night.
As most here will know the whole run up to the event was mired in political shenanigans over apartheid. Thatcher refused to back sanctions which resulted in a boycott by a good number of countries.
It appears that, even if she could have done something to help the games proceed, she wouldn’t have as she didn’t care if they failed due to her dislike of Scotland.
Now that’s no surprise but is just another example of how we are treated by our colonial masters.
If we don’t claim our country back next chance we get we deserve nothing but more of the same.
Lochside 7pm, heard this and fully agree with your commentq although I could not have put it as eloquently and forcibly as you have, thanks.
OT
It is getting hard to keep up with just how sleazy and corrupt UKOK is. The saga of Better Togethers dirty foreign money just continues. No doubt the Sleazy and corrupt Brit Nats in the UKOK Press and Media will turn it all around into a collection of SNP bad stories. Taylors gong only cost him 500k plus whatever total donations he made to the Tory Party. I don’t think we will ever get to the bottom of just how much dirty foreign money financed Better Together.
@Lochside (7.06) –
You’re right. And does it ever get on your wick that those recorded voices on the automatic tills at the supermarket never feature a good Scottish accent?
@ ronnie anderson
Thanks ronnie I’ve been feeling a bit negative today,re.the Brain Family etc,if we can’t as a country keep one family here
what chance do our other Scots by choice have.
Thanks for the Positive Vibe.Peace, Love and Inclusion.
It demonstrates an institutionally racist approach by employers in certain sectors of Scottish society.
There’s not a Scottish race though. So they’re not racists, just culturally dominant in a Scotland they view as their country. Its part of most countries cultural ID makeup to go to places and lens everything they see through their own culture. Even the Moon is English.
England is Britain and Scotland’s Britain and they own everything they see even when they look back at themselves too. As in BBC r4 Front Row review thing of a new BBC series on Thatcher’s 80’s tonight, with the profoundly brilliant BBC producer exploring the profoundly fascinating era of profoundly interesting Britishness, all the usual profoundly brilliant BBC bleh but the BBC dudes kept saying Thatcher did not defeat Scargill and the miners, it was division within the miners themselves you see.
What the r4 gimps left out as usual tonight, was just how hard the 70’s and 80’s BBC alone helped to completely destroy Scargill and the miners. All the rest of the tory press followed that BBC lead but it was really the BBC alone that totally annihilated Scargill as a human being, let alone a strike leader, every night on telly.
Maybe you had to be there but here we are today, next gen of the same toryboys trying desperately to destroy people like Alex Salmond, JC, SNP and ofcourse Scottish democracy, while looking back and airbrushing their own giant media outfit from UKOK history, all for over three thousand billion quid a year and in a teamGB with no actual industrial heart, all thanks to Snatcher Thatcher and her toryboy BBC.
Corrupt as any mafia but not racist.
Smallaxe,
I know what you mean re the Brain Family, gongs for wealthy party donors, etc., etc., but don’t let it get you down. Just think of each such knock, hurtful as it can be to real people, as being one more step along the road to indy. Each one wins more people over to the realisation that we just have to take these decisions by ourselves, for ourselves, not have them foisted upon us high-handedly by a distant government for which we never voted and which basically doesn’t give a toss about us.
Chin up, mate, it won’t be long now and we’ll be there.
Lochside and Free Scotland – Today I had cause to phone Wishaw General hospital about an appointment. I got the recorded message, an English voice, saying “NHS Lanarksheer!”
Winds me right up!
OT. Just to say that Sky Arts are broadcasting an updated performance of the Mikado. How do I know it has been updated? The SNP would be on the LIST.
Charming. The audience lapped it up though.
So much for the most powerful devolved government in the world!
@ Robert J.Sutherland
As you say Robert,seeing all the wrong people getting praised and rewarded for all the wrong things must be bringing more people across to our side.Speed the Day.Peace.
Lochside et others.
Firstly, this isnt a go at English people. Its a go at the Establishment and msm who are clearly manipulating perspectives. Im not going all blood and soil.
I lost my rag over this the other day.
It was a report from British Broadcasting regarding the reintroduction trial of Beavers in Knapdale Forest in Argyll and a rogue colony on the Tay.
Again, the academic scientist was English accented and the complaining “Farmer” / Landowner was also similarly accented, but posher.
This came on the back of a report on Scotlands finances from some minted City Fiscal Expert with the same privelaged accent saying basically that we are hard up scroungers.
I ended up sending a rather intolerant text to 80295 (BBC Scotlands number).
Im aware that other folk I know who are No types that are picking up on it now as well. Comments about “roving reporters” on the news interviewing folk in the street and sure as a bear shits in the wood, there will be a majority of folk from south of the border speaking. I might as well be living in England if I put the news on.
You should listen in. I will guarantee the next “expert” will not be Scottish.
lochside
Just so. Its interesting that if you watch the various BBC regional news in England the readers, reporters and contributors are all surprisingly English.
Lochside at 706pm,
Lochside, I so agree with what you say. Day after day, night after night, on programmes purportedly about Scotland, we have people from England telling us our own history (but via THEIR English perspective), or even worse on the BBC, Posh English voices giving us the weather where we are – it seems NO weather forecasters with Scottish pronunciation of place names can be found.
You are quite right in the point you make regarding the auld brig, as repeatedly we see such things turned into anglicised versions.
All my life in Edinburgh, the Tron Kirk has been the Tron Kirk, yet a few years ago, some moron put a sign on it that said Tron church. Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY who comes from Edinburgh calls it the Tron church. In Sweden they also use the word Kirk for church, but nobody there feels the need to change historic names, in the way it is done in Scotland.
On their own such things can seem, and probably are trivial, but when it is endemic, in every aspect of Scottish culture, life, broadcasting and the arts, then it needs tackled hard.
I am sick to death of the fact that the person in charge of the Edinburgh International Festival is not a Scot. Why not?? Likewise many of the other arts bodies in Scotland. Invariably when such non-scots are appointed, patronising platitudes come a-plenty, about how they visited Edinburgh once, or even more cringe-worthy tell people how they ‘did’ Edinburgh, and simply adore the new town or some such tosh.
It is hardly surprising our arts scene does NOT reflect Scottish culture or politics, when so many of the people in charge are non Scots. The worst recent example, was the point blank refusal of the Edinburgh Festival to cover the referendum. Just the most important cultural event in Scotland’s recent history, that’s all.
I have often thought it might be interesting to just compare Scotland with other EU countries, for positions such as heads of museums, curators of art galleries, monuments, heads of art bodies, broadcasters etc.. Is it for example just the same in France? Do they have lots of Germans as heads of cultural bodies in France?
Anyway, Lochside, you made a good point well.
Some pig face called Sir Desmond Swayne, in a cricket outfit telling us how hard all these parasites ‘work’ in order to receive ‘honours’ from pig poker Cameron.
Heedy…what’s the difference between racism and discrimination by nationality?…de facto, nothing. You still get discriminated against by your imperial/colonial master.
It’s funny but the fact that the Yoons on twitter now have this need to constantly repeat that there will be no IndyRef2 suggests that they actually believe it will happen but are in denial.
Scotspine ….. That’s been going on for as long as I can remember ! It drove me mad for decades but now I don’t have a TV so they can’t get me ! 🙂
Heedy…what’s the difference between racism and discrimination by nationality?…de facto, nothing. You still get discriminated against by your imperial/colonial master.
Maybe. The Scottish and the English race doesn’t really work though. Is there are French race, Norwegian race, Irish and so on?
When I was down in the far west of Cornwall they used to say that an ¨expert¨ was someone who came from over 100 miles away — LOL!
@One_Scot -10:41
It will turn out to be a case of “McTernan’s Children Predict.”
Remember his famous words: “There will be no referendum.”
Scotspine – The trick the BBC do is interview 20 people in the street. They only show 3 and make sure 2 are English. It’s getting their message out even if the other 17 were Scots.
Re;One_Scot@10.41
They think if they repeat themselves, that people will just shut up and eat their cereal, accept their slavery and britnat masters, end of.
We must allow them that fantasy, while working towards independence however it may come to pass. Even the opposite might happen, one day the daily rags will headline how Scotland must
be unshackled, for fear of dreadful alien attacks, or dragging down england’s reputation, or culture, or something. La la la…
I have often thought it might be interesting to just compare Scotland with other EU countries, for positions such as heads of museums, curators of art galleries, monuments, heads of art bodies, broadcasters etc.. Is it for example just the same in France? Do they have lots of Germans as heads of cultural bodies in France?”
As long as Scotland is British, we are always going to have hard core Conservative English people in top Scottish cultural jobs, just by dint of numbers, class, education, honours, cronies etc. 54 million v 5.4 million. Its merely socio economic and cultural domination and as we all know, a fair few Scots cringers like it this way.
Go to posh schools like Lord Darling’s old school Lorretto, that’s going to put you at or near the front of the Oxbridge Q, get an arts 2:1 and bob’s your teamGB uncle. This is what its all for and its that easy. Just ask @A_LordDarling.
Just tuned into the Parliament channel to see Baroness Goldie speaking in the House of Lords. Crivens! Baroness…well she’s got the accent, very Kelviside.
However the speech was same old twaddle. Lots of snidey remarks about NS. Telling her to ‘simmer down’ she has no mandate apparently, ‘clicking her stilettos round the corridors of Brussels’, Goldie has ‘lived through two doses of referendum acrimony’ and we’re still too poor with ‘no currency, a worsening budget deficit of £15b and business jitters’ and of course every sinew must be strained to protect the Union.
Lots of hear, hears by the Lords and Ladies.
I know it goes against all that is honourable about the SNP, but I would love to see just one SNP MP in there, Salmond would be perfect, to get up and tell them a few home truths. He could have some fun with them, I’m sure. Not to mention how Goldie and Darling would choke on their cereal to have him in their midst.
(This was a debate from early July, I’ve not seen it before tonight, sorry if it’s old news to others).
Re;Scotspine@10.04pm
Well a walk around certain parts of Edinburgh and you could be forgiven for thinking you are in a posh english city. I am english, well, not really being geordie, but I do notice it when I struggle to hear a nice Edinburgh accent around town, any Scottish accent would do! Thing is, the accented posh ones are all very comfortable, always have been, always will be, long as they vote yes! Hmmm.
On the “settlers & colonists” topic.
Add escapee’s 🙂
And yes, it does grate.
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!”
WTF does your average Embra tourist make of it all, given that England = Great Britain in the eyes of much of the world (less so now you’d hope) ?
The usurpation of the tartan tat industry hasn’t exactly helped perception. Self, or viewed from abroad.
Just tuned into the Parliament channel to see Baroness Goldie speaking in the House of Lords. Crivens! Baroness…well she’s got the accent, very Kelvniside.
However the speech was same old twaddle. Lots of snidey remarks about NS. Telling her to ‘simmer down’ she has no mandate apparently, ‘clicking her stilettos round the corridors of Brussels’, Goldie has ‘lived through two doses of referendum acrimony’ and we’re still too poor with ‘no currency, a worsening budget deficit of £15b and business jitters’ and of course every sinew must be strained to protect the Union.
Lots of hear, hears by the Lords and Ladies.
I know it goes against all that is honourable about the SNP, but I would love to see just one SNP MP in there, Salmond would be perfect, to get up and tell them a few home truths. He could have some fun with them, I’m sure. Not to mention how Goldie and Darling would choke on their cereal to have him in their midst. ( I know, quite rightly, they will never go there)
(This was a debate from early July, I’ve not seen it before tonight, sorry if it’s old news to others).
Mungo, yes, I know, but its the wider populace who get fed this. Normalising that Scots opinions are lesser.
Big Jock, I agree, although I must say, you could walk the length of Elgin or Forres High Streets and not hear a local voice.
In Callander the big hotel opposite the car park has a board outside that reads “We sell English tea”
Which is OK, but you wonder why folk who visit us don’t want Scottish tea, after all it’s made with Scottish water whatever kind of tea it is
Which leads me to wonder when I go down to Wolverhampton to visit rellys there they just sell tea, I don’t know where it comes from or care much, but I do know it tastes like pish because the water down there’s horrible
Which reminds me of The Steamie and Mrs Gilfeathers mince and tatties fae Galloways
SNP Deputy leadership interviews
I heard a bit of Mr McEleny on GMS with thone voice a canna thole Gillian Marles
She did not take long to jump on to the too poor indy etc
I really feel it is time the SNP would be a bit more ready to bite back with a wee quip to head off the crap.
On BBC it would be easy …. ” We all know the BBC say this because you loose about £200m in revenue so its understandable you feel we are better in the Union”
There are better and more swiping ways to bite back but they need to get info like this out in the airwaves , but it will only happen when live of course.
That said the SNP have a fantastic choice all strong candidates with individual strength.
I loved the abuse you’d get, when I was the cone a guy got a bit angry and threatened to come to royal exchange square and leather me.
Wee Ruthie must be tearing her hair oot ,she’s no oan the honours list,says alot when Samantha’s hairdresser gets a gong before the leader of the Scottish unionists.
Ruthie shut up an eat yer cerial.
Baroness Goldie? Baroness Doubtfire mair like.
That guy Jackson Carlaw really is an asswipe. He’s so obsessed with the “Nationalists” it’s like a red haze comes over him. To be fair though, if anyone swapped a pea for whatever passes for his brain, nobody would notice the difference. The pea might be a bit disappointed though.
I should really shut up and make no comments, as surely he’s as blatantly obvious to anyone impartial, as he is to “ardent” Nats. And with any luck he’ll single-handedly destroy any chance the Tories in Scotland have of taking voters from Labour in the Council elections to come.
But he’s an asswipe, and being an honest guy, I have to call an asswipe an asswipe.
The BBC and yoons should know,back in the day,only teachers were called Sir or Miss,things haven’t changed that much….young people still know the score,respect is earned,never bought.
“They always seem invincible,but in the end they always fall,always”
No disrespect,just remove any tartan decals from your weapons of mass destruction,as you remove them from our beautiful country,we do not want them,we never wanted them…..not for all the tea in China.
#justfuckoff
I could cry the number of times I have said this here already, but one more time.
Yes, the current estimated electricity generating cost per MWh for Hinkley Point C is horrendous in comparison to other generating methods.
Especially in comparison to ON shore wind generation, which is now the cheapest way of generating electricity having dropped below that of coal and gas last year.
Folk are right to be appalled by it.
However, it is quite astonishing just how ignorant people are to the fact that OFF shore wind generation cost is more than twice that of ON shore.
Hinkley is to cost about £95 per MWh, but OFF shore wind already is costing around £140 per MWh.
Furthermore the installed capacity of Hinkley is to be 3.2 MW and already OFF shore capacity is around 5 MW with around 11MW planned to be installed by 2020 and well over 30 MW planned for the future.
I repeat for the umpteenth time England could easily generate at least 2/3 of that capacity ON shore if it were not for the degree to which English nimbyism has been accommodated by the Westminster Government.
Think about that, then suck it up and mind your manners when you pay.
Pooling and sharing, the union dividend.
@ Chic McGregor
Is the cost for offshore wind likely to remain at that level (for technical reasons, for instance)? Or could it fluctuate?
The thing that infuriates me about Hinkley C’s costs is that it has been guaranteed, regardless of external influences, for so many years.
(That not the only thing that infuriates me about the project, just one of the most blatant.)
Re. Pooling and sharing, I’d actually decided not to post this earlier but I suppose I might as well now.
Would you know if that is the “becoming” of modernity, Chic?
I suppose that’s the Better Togetherness of pooling and sharing UKOK style?
link to equip.org
P.S. I ain’t pushing God so just dunny. 😉
or should that be “dinae”?
I’ve had my heritage out of me, innit.
Go easy on the English being recruited to figurehead jobs. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, it’s the first step on the slippery slope towards accusations of blood and soil nationalism. It the same pernicious wee change in perspective that starts off condemning immigration and leads to Brexit.
Get the Indy ball in the net. Then leave it to our guests to decide where their loyalties lie. Any “problem” will right itself in the fullness of time once Independence is the norm. We will all be Scots,
Set myself up for a punchline then blow it. Must be genetic. ;(
I’ve had my heritage BEATEN out of me, innit.
I totally agree about keeping thing civil, Breeks.
It is the British state that is the abomination not England and not the English. Well, OK. Some of them are but we’ve got ass wipes like The Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. 🙂
We are governed by the votes of English voters, most of whom would wish us no harm. It is not their fault that the capabilities of the British state have been allowaed to lag so far behind the requirements of a modern, progressive society.
P.S. I’m not cultured enough to discuss the makeup of Scotland’s cultural structures.
Wonder if May is thinking ahead re Hinkly ‘C’. Bearing in mind the initial costs & the billions more before it comes on stream, & her cash cow, Scotland, is there no more to bail the country called England out, what then. Will they have genitised bananas so that they can be grown in England.
Cameron B Brodie.
Agreed. The British State, not the English is our enemy.
PS The Lord Ass-Wipe of Cummnock is English
Breeks: Go easy on the English being recruited to figurehead jobs. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, it’s the first step on the slippery slope towards accusations of blood and soil nationalism.
It IS true. It’s called ‘placemen’, and a legitimate political issue.
Why are you advocating censorship?
Why are you scared of what opponents might say?
Am I to avoid questioning, remain subservient and compliant?
Radio shortbread mulling over a ‘Scottish Six’ programme this morning or maybe half a dozen of the other, who can say?
The Hootsman:
link to archive.is
UK Government fast-tracks Trident renewal with £1bn payment
link to archive.is
Scottish Secretary omitted from new economic taskforce
link to archive.is
Belated good morning all. 🙂
@ Lochside 7.06
Well said. And you can add the ‘Scottish’ Government civil service to that list of institutions colonised at the top level. There was not one whiff of dissent in the Westminster civil service as they published reports during the indyref campaign telling us how Scotland had been extinguished in 1707. Indeed HM Treasury were given awards for their economic pronouncements (all negative) on the prospects for an independent Scotland.
Up here? Damaging leaks to the colonial MSM (remember the ‘top secret’ file?) and constant insinuations that the integrity of civil servants was being compromised by the production of the White Paper etc.
Grousebeater is right, it’s a fair subject and politically relevant.
We’re a smaller country than England, there are fewer senior posts. Employers recruit the best person for the job regardless of their nationality. It means a Scot is competing against a larger pool of candidates.
It’s the same with Scottish University places, another time bomb nobody has discussed.
Further up the thread,
G4jeepers mentioned the Bargain Hunt programme for Edinburgh. On that recommendation watched it on catchup.
Aside from the shite shots of kilts to let you know they were in Scotlandshire and a naff heilander door knocker, what both my partner and myself remarked on was that the curator of the David Livingstone museum -in Scotland- has a Scottish accent.
Now it’s many a mile I’ve travelled,
10 thousand miles or more,
But one single Scottish curator,
I never saw before!
Couple of good pieces by Taranaich and well worth the read.
link to wildernessofpeace.wordpress.com
link to wildernessofpeace.wordpress.com
Just finished reading Ian Hamilton’s excellent “The Taking of the Stone of Destiny!” he states that English folk have never bothered him, it’s Anglicised Scots who are the problem.
Castigated by some patriots? for returning the stone & that if it was up to them it would never have been returned. His response was that if it was up to them it would never have moved from Westminster!
Bill: “It’s a fair subject and politically relevant.
Lenin, this idea to storm the Winter Palace, I’m worried. It’s sure to appear as if we hate aristocrats. Let’s send them a postcard asking them to take a long vacation with their English cousins? You know, come back when the revolution is over. Just asking.
We’re engaged in a revolution of ideals to challenge conventional wisdom and shibboleths. Our opponents should expect to have their sensibilities outraged. And we should be prepared for them to express shock.
Apologies if any of the following links have been posted already, not been following this last week due to treatment. May tae a while to get up to speed.
Anyhow are we independent yet?
Links
link to tommyballgovan.blogspot.co.uk
link to dropping.theferret.scot
link to uk.businessinsider.com
link to ictsd.org
The fabled Scottish Six being discussed on Call Kaye i.e. Louise White. Don’t know how long I can stand it though.
Links
link to nytimes.com.
link to buzzfeed.com families
link to truepublica.org.uk
link to aljazeera.com
Grousebeater,
How true.
It’s why I can’t mention the Scottish University places problem for Scottish school leavers.
There are youngsters denied places this year despite having very good grades because quotas have been filled for Scottish places. Even a friend of my Wife was rejected teaching course application at Dundee because “Scottish student quota has been met”.
Shhh! Don’t mention in case were accused of blood and soil nationalism!
Bottom line is my daughter had to compete against a quota system for EU students and English students, meaning her grades are compared against a massive pool of candidates.
Some Scottish universities don’t accept students on some courses if they’ve had resits or remarked papers. Except if your coming from EU or England in some cases. I know this to be true as I’ve met and spoke with students in Edinburgh and St Andrews.
At St Andrews open day they told my daughter don’t even apply unless you’ve got 4*A first attempt. Turns out they regularly accept students from EU and rUK that don’t meet that criteria.
I wonder why eh?
Capella: “Don’t know how long I can stand it though.”
🙂
Amazing how that programme is equivalent to having lighted matches stuck in your fingernails.
link to ericjoyce.co.uk
A short film on Saturday’s march
link to youtube.com
Bill: “I wonder why eh?”
As a family long engaged with Scottish education, from nursery to higher, including inspecting university exam standards, I agree completely.
More and more university places are going to foreign students who can cough up the ludicrous fees.
@ Naina Tal,
Well it’s many a day I’ve traveled a hundred miles or more,
but Cameron on a sow sure,we all have seen before.:-) Peace
Bill says:
“Scottish University places, another time bomb nobody has discussed.”
I think that is a problem which will go away after Indy and EngWexit.
The EU rules say that students from other EU countries should get the same deal as you give your own students. England&Wales will be a foreign country and won’t be in the EU so their students will be in the same position as say US students, paying full Scottish fees.
@Bill @me
“Scottish University places”
Just realised, you may have meant teaching posts, which is indeed another issue where the vacancies are open to a wide pool of candidates, most of whom are non Scottish.
At Indy, those here will become naturalised Scots, if they wish. Integration of immigrants then becomes the issue.
Good piece on canary about owen jones’ article…
link to thecanary.co
Some silly bigoted old bat banging on about ‘the totalitarian SNP government’ and the Scottish Six on CK and Louise White lets her go on and on without a break. Sadly so does her guest Blair Jenkins. The cringe, we just canny manage, out in full force. Not a word about widening the range of talent amongst Scottish student journalists. Not good for blood pressure.
Re Uni places / tuition – I believe the requirement for having your tuition fees paid is to be resident for a minimum 3 years in Scotland.
Does that mean that 3 years resident at boarding school qualify the child for free tuition fees? I know the school my daughter is boarding at have asked her several times to register her vote there.
@ Nana,9:12am
Nana if you have just had treatment please be careful your links are much appreciated and no one would want you to cause yourself any pain.Love,Peace and healing vibes sent your way.
A wee ayeMail package popping through my letter box just put a big smile on my face – thanks Lindsay and Stu
On Radio Scotland phone in this morning re: BBC Scottish Six, listening to Brian Wilson it is easy to understand why Scottish Labour now have only one MP.
What a narrow minded dinosaur.
Anent (ooh!) Lochside and others on colonialism, I thought I heard Denis Law being referred to as English on Pravdasound4 at about 0830. Anyone else confirm?
Naina Tal: well spotted. Of course the main reason the David Livingstone Centre doesn’t have a gushing Samantha or Quentin as curator is that it’s in Blantyre, which is much too proletarian for the bright young things. I even hear it’s difficult to source a macchiato or an olive ciabatta on its Main Street.
The argument that we shouldn’t complain because there are “Scots” in prominent positions in England doesn’t wash because they are inevitably Mone types who would run down their country for any Establishment doggy treats going and have essentially been colonised in the mind already.
We are actually struggling for our cultural and linguistic existence and must not allow the debate to be closed down by attempts to class resistance to this form of colonisation as mere anti-English chippiness.
Well Call Kaye (Louise White) was pretty dire as expected although Blair Jenkins was pretty level headed and positive, in spite of the ghastly Brian Wilson being allowed to spit feathers at him.
Blair revealed the secret deal between Labour politicians and BBC heads to block the Scottish Six in 1998.
The usual girning, querulous British callers insisting everything remain as it is, that this an SNP plot to sow division, Scottish news is too parochial and boring, it’s all a political plot etc etc.
Managed to thole an hour. Do I get a badge?
Yoons are funny aren’t they, they see everybody else as foreigners except themselves
@ scottiedog
Thanks for that link to the Canary article.
@ mike cassidy might be interested to see that it contains more up-to-date figures from Ofcom on share of media (TV, radio, internet, newspapers)for news 2013 – 2015 with a link to Ofcom data.
link to thecanary.co
Capella says:
“… it’s all a political plot etc etc.”
What Wannabe Greater Englanders never seem to appreciate is that the status quo is NOT some neutral unbiased position, it in itself is a ‘political plot’.
Scotland has been subjected to a political plot to promote a Greater England agenda since broadcasting begun. A measure of how successful it has been is that many Scots have swallowed it totally and now fail to see through it.
So, is undoing the current political plot a counter political plot, or just setting things right? I suppose that depends on how well it is done. The wrongs need to be righted anyway, by whichever means.
@Deffo 23:33
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us. To see oursels as ithers see us!”
May I present “The GollyJock”.
Hey, Smallaxe,
So much material. This thing could be a thousand verses long.
As you’ve noticed, of course it’s Seven Drunken Nights or as heard on Alba (Dougie Mclean’s Perthshire Amber Festival) the other night the Scots version by Tom Spiers “Hame drunk cam I”.
Missing Matt McGinn right now!
@Tackety Beets says: 1 August, 2016 at 11:50 pm:
” … There are better and more swiping ways to bite back but they need to get info like this out in the airwaves , but it will only happen when live of course.”
In fact, Tackety Beets, it won’t work even then.
Unless things have changed since I bothered with, so called, “live”, TV broadcasts, the BBC has a standard few minutes delay on all such, “Live”, broadcasts.
This is outwardly to allows the production team the opportunity to, “Bleep”, out such things as illegal advertising, inappropriate language, offensive items and, “sweerie wirds”.
The short delay, however, also allows the Production Team to cut out short bits of any, so called, live broadcast. It also allows them to introduce a fake, “inadvertent”, technical fault to prevent, BBC censored, political items being broadcast live when the production team chooses to NOT broadcast parts of a claimed live interview.
It also allows for the insertion of fake, “canned”, applause, fake, “Canned”, laughter and a corresponding reduction of volume of applause and laughter for genuine stuff that the BBC frowns upon.
Like, for example, fake loud applause for Wee fat Ruthie and a corresponding reduction of applause for Nicola in so called live debates.
Believe me the Westminster Propaganda wing are up to all the tricks in the BBC Book of, “How to fool the Sweaties”.
Capella 10.59
Thanks for that.
When msm reps like Collier and Jones start saying we should not be complaining about the msm –
maybe they represent the first attempts to block the holes in the dam.
So the consultation for the repeal of the offensive behaviour at football act is underway?
Stand up Mr James Kelly!
It is a common misconception that the prevalence of sectarianism in Scottish society is not fuelled, aided and abetted by two football clubs, whose reach from its heartlands in the old industrial centre of Scotland extends to every area of our country. Whilst great efforts for re-education of the supporters to abhor sectarianism have occurred over many years, the actual effect has been negligible.
This predominantly is the result of two factors, societal and religious. it is undeniable both teams principal support is based not on location as is normal with team support, but on the supporters identifying with the teams religious and cultural foundations.
Any investigation into crowd behaviour in these clubs will recognise in each camp a section of support, whither from the Orange tradition, “Billy Boys”, or Irish Nationalist, “Green Brigade” , this is not to say that the vast majority of fans support the aims of these actors, but they are the main catalyst for crowd violence and it is inescapable for the crowd not to become embroiled in any antisocial or criminal actions perpetrated by this hardcore fan base.
It is this cultural identity when taken to extremis that the Act is designed to combat, the most vocal opponents of the Act are those who most closely identify with the religious and cultural background of the clubs.
It is also a common misconception mostly propagated by opponents of the Act that it is not achieving its aims, or has a poor arrest to conviction ratio, this was true, as most laws are, before the courts set the case law, in the early years it is no longer factual today. The Act as constituted and enforced is a robust instrument for law enforcement, but more importantly sending the signal that sectarianism is no longer acceptable ether as way of life, a world view or a political tool.
I come now to the reason why this Act is unpopular with some fans and some politicians. To understand that first you must question the motivation in repealing the Act, who benefits, well the answer is those who may be subject to the powers of the Act, i.e. those engaging in violent sectarian acts, provocateurs who wish to see old rivalries, or scores settled. Those perpetrators who identify with strict ethnic, religious or cultural bigotry need this Act to fail, as this would reinforce their bigotry, if it continues, then they have to question their place in a modern multicultural society.
Finally the lawmakers themselves, what are they to gain, can it be as simple as votes, or is the political divisions’ to be foisted as acceptable along religious grounds. Statistical evidence exists that shows this Act as popular, not only amongst society as a whole, but amongst most fans themselves. So the question remains unanswered, what’s in it for the politicians promoting this agenda, who do they relate to or identify with?
Politicians themselves have propagated this tribalism for their own advancement, this very act of questioning the act is sectarian in foundation.
In my lifetime I have seen the promotion of Conservatism and the Labour party on religious grounds, that this has not been consigned to the dustbin of history is a damming indictment of Scottish society.
In his rebuttal of the Act Mr Kelly repeats the following statement “banning songs doesn’t stop sectarianism” let’s turn that on its head, allowing sectarian songs to continue, can that stop sectarianism or in actuality just help to promote it.?
The truly sad fact is that Mr Kelly is a indoctrinate from a bigotry so fundamental to his very being that he can be both outwardly against the ideology, without understanding his place within it.
More from the cuddly EU.
link to archive.is
@Naina Tal,
Agreed Naina,Matt and Hamish Imlach et.al.really missed,they kept a lot of our old street songs alive.Peace,Love and a Big
Effin Bee. 🙂
Grouse Beater says:
2 August, 2016 at 8:07 am
Breeks: Go easy on the English being recruited to figurehead jobs. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, it’s the first step on the slippery slope towards accusations of blood and soil nationalism.
It IS true. It’s called ‘placemen’, and a legitimate political issue.
And then the head of the British Museum’s a Scot, and never off BBC r4, and probably not a Yes vote but you never know. He sounds like Fraser Nelson’s grandad and as he’s on BBC r4 a lot, he’s probably not exactly a progressive liberal type.
Do these upper class patrician types do a good job though? Far more people go to art galleries and museums than ever go to Ibrox or Parkhead, goes the cliche.
From wiki
Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, AO, FSA (born 16 June 1946) is a British art historian and former museum director. He was the editor of the Burlington Magazine from 1981 to 1987, then Director of the National Gallery, London, from 1987 to 2002, and finally Director of the British Museum from 2002 to 2015
and
Gordon Rintoul (born 29 May 1955)[2] CBE is Director of National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland.[3]
Rintoul was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1955[4] and was educated at Allan Glen’s School, a science-orientated school in the city.[5] He studied physics at the University of Edinburgh and received a PhD from the University of Manchester in the history of science and technology.[6] In 1984, he was appointed as curator of the Colour Museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Between 1987 and 1998, he was Director of Catalyst, a museum in Widnes, Cheshire on the chemical industry. In 1989, he was awarded the Diploma of the Museums Association.
In 1998, he became Chief Executive of the Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust.
On the other hand! There’s a good documentary on BBC iPlayer on the life and films of Ken Loach. Available for 27 days. Well worth a watch for the political censorship of the Thatcher years and beyond. See it before the iPlayer requires a TV Licence. 90 mins
link to bbc.co.uk
It mentions a film I’d never heard of – so well buried it was. “The Flickering Flame” about the dockers’ strike in Liverpool. 50 mins
link to youtube.com
@Andrew McLean says: 2 August, 2016 at 11:43 am:
“So the consultation for the repeal of the offensive behaviour at football act is underway?
Stand up Mr James Kelly!”
Great comment, Andrew.
In regards to Mr. James Kelly, MSP.
If it looks like a fool, talks like a fool, acts like a fool and espouses foolish political concepts then the likelihood is that the person is indeed a political fool.
My impression of Mr. James Kelly is that he is the willing puppet of those who shy away from such foolishness themselves yet who have just enough awareness to realise the foolishness of voicing such idiocy and who manipulate Mr James Kelly’s strings.
Robert Neil MacGregor, OM, AO, FSA biog in the Independent’s interesting
“The energy required for the job is clearly something MacGregor has in spades. He often walks to work from his home in Maida Vale, west London, some five miles away. He is gay, a devout Christian, dedicated to his work – a man, according to Jowell, “of intense and acute moral purpose”. He is, she says, sociable without being “one of the gang”. He has twice turned down knighthoods.
He doesn’t ally himself with any political party, his independence and his mastery of his sphere such that, according to Jowell, “it would be a very foolish culture secretary who alienated him”. He is committed to the principle of free entry to museums, and, says Jowell, “utterly understands that there is a fatuousness about the argument that you have to choose between access and excellence”.
Issues like the Lewis Chessmen, which Macgregor refused pointblank to return to Lewis despite their huge cultural and economic potential for Lewis and Scotland, also speaks volumes…
Macgregor later told the Graun that Scottish independence was like “leaping off a bridge.” He’s a smart apolitical dude and probably didn’t mean to say, a “bridge to cross.”
link to old.theartnewspaper.com
There’s loads of ways you can block Scottish cultural development and one of them is just saying No, to everything.
Robert Louis says:
Yes, you are very very right, the English seem to be appointed top positions across all of Scotland’s institutions. Not getting any better either.
Ref the Arts, they will be reborn in our new Scotland, of that I feel certain.
For the balance and what apolitical politics looks like, in the UKOK establishment
link to archive.is
“Let’s jump off that bridge when we get to it,” said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, when pressed on the putative future of the institution were Scotland to become independent.
The question was raised at a British Museum press conference today not by a journalist, but, intriguingly, by Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary under three prime ministers and once the most powerful civil servant in the land.”
He’s a historian and will be remember in Scottish history for what he’s done, either to or for Scotland. History will decide.
Robert Peffers says:
2 August, 2016 at 12:23 pm
@Andrew McLean says: 2 August, 2016 at 11:43 am:
“So the consultation for the repeal of the offensive behaviour at football act is underway?
Stand up Mr James Kelly!”
Mr Kelly is known in our area to join in with “football” songs in his local bar.
This is his own Mr Big Time attempt at saving face after being voted out of a former Labour safe seat that a Donkey with a Red Rosette would win forever.
He can soon drown his sorrows when his attempted coup falls flat on its face, just like his party.
Heedtracker: “the head of the British Museum’s a Scot, and never off BBC r4, probably not a Yes vote”
Can you see him at his interview, saying, “I’d want to redress the balance of culture with a great deal of exhibitions on Scottish history, Irish too, and more Scots working here to facilitate the expansion.”
Yeah, right.
Comment from Royal Academy executive to Scottish-born Academician, “Once you have independence I suppose you’ll be resigning.”
Re the Scottish News at Six suggestion–[and it’s only that–a suggestion]
Yesterday I deliberately went to the Flagship BBC National News at 6pm and 10pm.Something I don’t normally do.
They were getting themselves all worked up over Cameron’s Dishonourable Honours list,and guess what?
On BOTH TV bulletins they had a Tory reaction,a Labour reaction and a UKIP reaction !!!!! UKIP!!!!!!!
Whatever happened to BBC balance by broadcasting a response from the third largest party in the House of Commons?
Propaganda by omission—–the basic tenet of fooling viewers and listeners.
ARE YOU LISTENING PACIFIC QUAY?
Proud of your HQ?
I’ll better go before I say something I regret.
Anent the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. It is common knowledge that James Kelly MSP, as a sort of High Heid Yin in Greater Glasgow Labour, gets his instructions in the posh seats at Celtic Park on a Saturday. He is a fully-paid-up member of the self-styled Greatest Fans In the World – the Celtic Family.
His and like-minded members of the CF such as Lord Reid’s main objection to OBFA is – some of their own bigots have been caught by it. In their wee world “the other lot” cause all the bother, with songs such as “The Famine Song”, the CF song book is pure as the driven snow in comparison, or so they think.
They are continuing the GFITW’s long-held belief, they are perfect, it is everyone else’s particular them Proddies across the city who are at fault.
They want the act repealed, so they can continue to sing their bigoted songs, simple as that.
Offensive behaviour at football is not confined to one, or even both of the Bigot Brothers, I have seen offensive behaviour at junior games where, if there was a “break-in”, the players would outnumber the fans. But, that said, there a lot more offensive characters follow the Bigot Brothers than any other club.
Yes, OFBA is bad law, badly drafted and hurriedly-introduced, it needs tweaking, not trashing, but, that will not suit the agendas of the likes of Mr Kelly, or Murdo “Queen’s XI” Fraser on the opposite flank.
Effijy 1.05 – Agreed. I know you should never judge someone by the way they speak. However James Kelly MSP is the thickest guy I have ever heard speaking in public. He’s like a burst balloon slowly depressing.
Usual ill informed Yoons on twitter saying they don’t want an hour of Grannies shortbread recipe- regards Scottish Six. It’s for those exact reasons that we want a grown up news programme produced in Scotland. Not a parochial local news programme that we currently have.
@Lochside, GB, Tinto Chiel and many others upthread –
If you haven’t seen it, this is a comprehensive review of media reaction to Alasdair Gray’s ‘Settlers & Colonists’ essay, by Scott Hames.
What a stushie!
A lot of familiar faces on either ‘side’.
link to storify.com
O/T (posted there too)
Just received my reminder about Electoral Registration.
We need to remind peeps the rules changed and that they have to do it themselves as individuals.
“Head of Household” can no longer do it for them.
Also noted that my status as a citizen is “British”. Unable to change this FFS.
Grouse Beater says:
2 August, 2016 at 1:09 pm
Heedtracker: “the head of the British Museum’s a Scot, and never off BBC r4, probably not a Yes vote”
Can you see him at his interview, saying, “I’d want to redress the balance of culture with a great deal of exhibitions on Scottish history, Irish too, and more Scots working here to facilitate the expansion.”
No.
My beef with rule Britannia types like that dude is the whether or not art galleries and museums are any good at all. And there is no way in hell the Lewis Chess Men should not be back in Lewis.
The problem with having an elitist cabal of MacGregor types pouring out of private schools, oxbridge, Burlington magazine, Spectator, BBC etc, is are they actually any good, cultural, economic etc.
You mentioned how the chap that took over the Scottish National Gallery, explosion in a tartan factory, massively expensive/pointless extension and was it any good? not really, unless you love explosions in tartan factories.
You can moan about the UKOK art establishment all day though. They’ve shut down/destroyed Aberdeen art gallery for years for a pointless revamp. The Burrell’s gone for 4 years for same style of revamp in October. The Burrell actually boasts that they can only show 20% of the actual Burrell collection but its never changed much on display for 30 years, why now? Cant be arsed presumably.
Glasgow Art School burns down, no one accountable, nothing said, oh dear, what can you do, BBC Scotland a Scottish cultural wasteland, owned by reactionary and highly paid tories, STV a load of shite basically, but underlying it all is that grand old British autocracy, accountable to noone at all, extremely well funded but very lazy and devoid of creativity. How frightfully Scotland region.
England has some answers though
link to hepworthwakefield.org
Wow!
Also, we had a chat with a jolly British Museum curator about the Lewis Chess Men and he said that they were Scandinavian so they belong in fact to Scandinavia, not Lewis. Establishments can look mad and its like saying the Elgin Marbles should go back to Elgin, was the reply he got. Finger tapping of temples all round
I too have just received my Electoral Roll Registration form.
I thought that one of the new forms of security to combat electoral fraud was to include the NI No. of individuals.
As the householder at my address I have never been asked to provide my NI No.
Can anybody clarify the situation re NI Nos.
@ Socrates, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new!”
Socrates!
Re Scottish Six
It is my firm belief that BBC Scotland (Jackie Bird and co) deliberately make themselves like Job in the Bible or Charles Dickens’ Uriah Heap.
They deliberately seek to make themselves parochial, small-minded, amateurish, cringing…. so that, in this way, it will infect all the Scottish viewers through the telescreens, denigrate Scotland and make us prefer the broad shoulders of the UKOK, Rule Britannia…
I have always believed it even when watching BBC Scotland News in the 1980s. These are Scots who would rather crawl on the ground like earthworms than walk tall like, well, homo erectus!
If you wanted to create a Scottish hybrid of Job, Uriah Heap and the archetypal ProudScotBut with automatic sneer everytime the word “Scottish” is pronounced (what would you call the machine? the Cringometer?)… what would pop out at the bottom would be… Jackie Bird.
The employees of Pacific Quay are like the religious right homophobes who use rent boys… they hate themselves for some very strange reason.
Interesting link to that article, Ian Brotherhood, thanks. Depressing, of course to see all the “dark side of nationalism” drivel from the usual suspects but worth it for this quotation from James Kelman: “Even to assert that we do have literary tradition of our own is somehow to be seen as a form of anti-Englishness or xenophobia or racism.”
This reminded me of the great work by Kurt Wittig, “The Scottish Tradition in Literature”. Obviously Germans must be narrow-minded, haggis-munching, provincial, English-haters too. Or maybe because, free from the BBC/Establishment-induced Scottish Cringe, Wittig could value our literature with a clear eye. “Scottish literature is part of our European heritage, ” is one of his most oft-quoted comments. Obvious to us perhaps, but not to the philistine metrovincials of Londinium. Apparently, just by standing on our dignity and wishing merely to exist, we are being anti-English.
Seeing those pathetic comments from Jack McConnell and the like about anti-Englishness being just under the surface amongst nationalists also reminded me that you don’t hear such remarks from SNP members, nor did I hear them from Yessers in general, possibly because English people make up a fair number of each group.
Ironically, you are much more likely to hear stupid racist comments from our own Proud Scot But ninety-minute patriots who seem to have a reservoir of hate and frustration to draw upon and whose behaviour at football matches can be deeply embarrassing and offensive. The worst offenders can be the Crombie-coated Scottish bourgeoisie. Twisted as a corkscrew, most of them.
There’s no repression in Scotland from England’s rule, only English on English.
“For several years Ricky Tomlinson and other campaigners sought to clear the names of those convicted, saying that the strikers – known as the Shrewsbury 24 – were prosecuted in a politically motivated trial designed to suppress trade unionists.”
“pathetic comments from Jack McConnell and the like about anti-Englishness being just under the surface”
De rigueur if you want a knighthood.
The idiot known as James Kelly MSP and his online survey which was basically, for anyone who lost the will to live attempting to complete it asking the public for guidance on Labour policy
I did complete it because I’m a saddo about such things and I answered the loaded questions with the same answer which was
“If you require my assistance to formulate Scottish Labour party policy email me then we’ll discuss the price”
I did however give the Scottish Labour party some free advice on OBFA inasmuch as if you repeal this act just because you have a numbers opportunity to do it from a purely ideological bitterness point of view, come the local council elections almost every woman who is prepared to vote will not vote Labour and every man who is not a Unionist will not vote Labour
Result, wipeout of Labour to the bone
So if Mr James Kelly MSP, and joiner in of the bigots brigade is happy to see Labour stripped of even more power over this one issue then so be it
I went on to further point out Mr Murdo Fraser MSP Conservative and Unionist party’s use of his language of bigotry and sectarianism by naming his chosen football team “The Queens eleven” as more of an issue than defeating the SNP and that remembering the Tories in Scotland are the enemy of democracy not in fact the SNP so continuing this course of action has basically NO upside
I have absolutely no doubt however that my suggestions to Mr Kelly MSP are likely to be paid as much attention to as the Labour party have ever paid attention to anything which doesn’t contain the words “Death to the SNP” and for this reason and whatever was used to bribe the untrustworthy Greens (Which was pointed out by many on this site) into supporting Mr Kelly’s motion the opposition parties will likely succeed in their plot to strike down a piece of legislation which was designed to tackle a problem (perfect or not) to be replaced by, well, do we think the Scottish Labour party and Mr James Kelly MSP will have a plan B
That’s yet to be determined, but I’m excited to hear it
F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k.
“Furthermore the installed capacity of Hinkley is to be 3.2 MW and already OFF shore capacity is around 5 MW with around 11MW planned to be installed by 2020 and well over 30 MW planned for the future.”
Should of course be:
Furthermore the installed capacity of Hinkley is to be 3.2 GW and already OFF shore capacity is around 5 GW with around 11GW planned to be installed by 2020 and well over 30 GW planned for the future.
With Holyrood and Westminster in recess, it’s like the wind has dropped, the sails hang empty and limp, and the good ship Brittanica is going nowhere fast. Welcome to the doldrums.
Now what shall we talk about while we wait till September 4/5, when anyone who has anything to say which will be reported by the propaganda wing of the British Establishment returns from their holidays.
Top of the list remains Brexit which remains as yet formless. PM May tours Europe in response to the EU referendum result in England and Wales, but utters not one word about what her Tory Government plans to do about it. No plan A, or B, and no clue about how to proceed. And yet it is clear that there is a plan. It is to say and do nothing to advance the Brexit process. This is a case of the Tories refusing to build their own gallows.
In response, the EU will be forced to lever the UK out, which will enable the Tories to make political capital in the. Shires, save some face and then proceed to rebuild the Empire, albeit on a far smaller scale. But at least it will be on their own terms, as they are sure to say. As if one can mitigate one’s economic and political suicide.
Let the doldrums continue therefore. We shall all amuse ourselves in our own way for the next 5 weeks. Just let’s not pretend that anything important will be taking place in the UK during that time.
But above all else, we really ought to take advantage, by cancelling the papers, switching off the news broadcasts, and chilling out.
Brittanica is going nowhere anytime soon.
crazycat:”Is the cost for offshore wind likely to remain at that level (for technical reasons, for instance)? Or could it fluctuate?”
Short term, both on and off shore will be impacted by the falling pound due to BREXIT.
Longer term, both are expected to fall further.
Off shore should fall more relatively speaking than on shore because it is a more recent development and should make greater learnings savings from this point on.
However an intrinsic turbine cost delta and on going maintenance delta will still exist.
To be absolutely fair to OFF shore, cabling and foundation costs, a significantly higher capitalization cost for off shore may be shareable over 2nd or 3rd generation off shore installations which could result in a significant reduction in the future delta. Like way in the future and not definite.
Training Day @ 08:50:
Och, you’re all confused about this.
They published the report, true, but it was not written by them; the specific part to which I presume you refer, “Annex A”, was written by two independent legal professors.
Secondly, if you had read it, you would realise that it effing doesn’t say “Scotland was extinguished, etc..” It actually says the opposite (or as near as dammit that a legal eagle will ever get).
That comment was a distortion of the facts alleged to have issued from an orifice of our Great Defender, Fuzzy Mundell.
We need to get our facts straight here, and not shoot off in random directions on half-digested misinformation.
As for the Scottish Civil Service, having observed a teeny bit of it at first hand, and otherwise, I believe that Nicola Sturgeon is very well served by the civil servants around her, despite pressure coming from Westminster to keep the Civil Service as a single unionist entity. I imagine that the vast majority of Scottish civil servants (and maybe even some English exiles among them too) would be very happy to continue to serve an independent Scottish Government, and serve it well.
Save your ire for deserving targets, the miserable unprincipled Scottish BritNat cringers. You all know who they really are.
Has anyone else been wondering if hinckley point is anywhere near crinkly bottom?
Sorry, someone did mention it is the silly season.
Ian B…Thanks for the link re. Alistair Gray. You’re left with an unpleasant taste in your mouth with the fabricated cant of Unionist ‘holier than thou’ pish about anti-Englishness by the great man. No turn unstoned as they say.
“Hinky” Point, sounds so much better.
@Lochside –
Yep.
And it all, somehow, seems so long ago now.
Surely just a matter of time before a similar rumpus erupts, eh?
😉
manandboy says:
Yes you are right, but the propaganda regime will continue and the various security services will keep infiltrating and planning.
Cameron
“Would you know if that is the “becoming” of modernity, Chic?”
Utilitarianism – “The greatest good for the greatest number.” was certainly seen as a modernising philosophy in its day.
However, note that it is still essentially hedonistically based. Moral decisions are still made on a ‘carrot and stick’ basis but informed by a system of accountancy which tries to maximise good outcome and distribute it to as many as possible.
It can be described as being a,an at least partly, socially responsible hedonism.
It was probably a necessary intellectual precursor to underpin and promote the then nascent democratization process. And of course, proponents like John Stuart Mill were well aware of this and actively supported politically aligned reform like universal suffrage.
It has undeniable good intent compared to that which went before, although a few ‘benign’ tyrants may well have had some such thing as a personal goal prior to that.
Democratization, they thought, would ensure it becomes the norm, give or take a tweak or two.
However, ‘Greatest good for greatest number’ is lacking in ambition and scope. ‘Greatest number’ is not equal to ‘everybody’.
It is not a difficult task for a self seeking elite cabal to conflate both accounting systems, moral and monetary, to their own advantage.
As such, IMO, it fails the modern aspirations of most voters.
A more modern underpinning of democracy, would, IMO, be something like “Sufficient good for everybody.”
The bar for ‘sufficient’ would be set quite high.
Sufficient would mean everyone having access to the nutritional, educational, medical, judicial, social networking and transport systems required to maximise, should they so wish, their personal potential.
That is a more ambitious but achievable goal.
Note it does not preclude people having more than sufficient, there would still be the incentive/competitive thing going on, which however distasteful some might find that, is of fairly well established necessity for generating the enabling wealth.
In some ways, with welfare systems and minimum wage, democracies have already moved baby steps in that direction, so Utilitarianism is to that extent already passe.
But of course, there are still many dinosaurs around who are even now trying to reverse things.
By the subversion of democracy.
So, at best, we have still the acceptability of ‘tyranny by the majority’ where self-identifying groups, by class, religion, ethnicity or region, can cooperate to concentrate wealth for their own membership at the expense of the rest.
Increasingly, worse than that we have a concentration of governance into a small grouping of even the elected representative population who are in turn working hand in hand with a small group of corporates.
Furthermore, one suspects, that the psychology of that concentrated ruling cabal is such that their narcissistic psychopathic tendencies mean that ‘sufficiency’ for all, the idea of everyone fulfilling their full potential, is anathema to them. It does not meet with the need they have, which is symptomatic of their illness, to have their obvious (to them) superiority emphasised by pushing the rest into miserable subsistence.
Which now seems to be their next goal.
Thanks Chic. “Sufficient good for everybody.”?
IMHO, that would require the observance of human rights and for development to be people-centered.
link to ourworld.unu.edu
Ta.
Very much.
Well. Just had a long chat with a nice taxi driver called Nairn. (Yes he has Scottish roots.) Without prompting he told me how he doesn’t listen or watch the BBC due to its bias…he watches aljezeera. Have him lots of info re Indy and the great Scottish rip off by Westminster and he was not surprised. also told him to try RT news
Weird seems to be getting around even down here in deepest darkest Devon.
Sorry on phone, tiny wee buttons…GAVE him info..and WORD not weird!