All quiet on the forgotten front
Posted on
May 02, 2020 by
Chris Cairns
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02 05 20 08:57
All quiet on the forgotten front | speymouth
Ignored
Great cartoon. The people we as a society owe the most, forgotten by the lying murderous barstewards in Toryland.
Or, as Dominic ‘let them die’ cummings might put it, “RESULT!”
Sad cartoon but sadly true allowed to happen by the Conservative Party and their nutters in charge, aided and abetted by the MSM, Leave their newspapers on the stand and the BBC who are the chief liars on their behalf unwatched and the hated license unpaid.
That is so poignant…
Oh this wasn’t forgotten, this us exactly what they wanted and the rest. What they had forgotten that like the Black Death, viruses don’t care how rich you are. The major problem with this one is that those people who will prosper have enough money to try and keep away from the dirty unwashed as they see the rest of us. This should be remembered but probably won’t by the people of Britain.
We are being governed by a bunch of easily manipulated idiots.
That gave me a lump in my throat.
Not going to lie that hit me like a gutpunch…
Fantastic carton Mr Cairns.
It says it all. The elderly cleared out by death, and death that was part of the callous murderous plan to sacrifice a few pensioners.
And for me the empty care home room brought into sharp focus hypocrisy of all of the razzmatazz for veteran Captain Tom Moore who fits perfectly the profile of those who the Tories were quite happy to sacrifice.
What a filthy odious shower of murderous bastards the Tories are.
And yes, thinking about our elderly military veterans of whom the Tories invest so much faux commemoration, the cartoon picture of an empty day room further reminds us that the Erskine charity has reported multiple COVID deaths in all three of its care homes in Bishopton, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
You nailed it absolutely with the allegory of this cartoon Mr Cairns.
Truly upsetting and may we hunt the holocaust deniers who not only failed to prepare but actually let this virus wreak its devastation on the weakest in society in a plan as eugenic as 1930s Germany.
A hard hitting cartoon Chris, you have to think this has been a deliberate policy.
Boris/ Trump seem to think in the same way, that may be the answer.
Excuse me.
Aren’t care homes in Scotland the responsibility of the Scottish government?
Some are also run by Local Authorities.
Back to the grievance culture.
What a shower!!
Great cartoon Chris,
A very sad situation.
I have heard it suggested that, from the start, at the core of the great Tory “Herd Immunity Plan”, was the sacrifice of those drawing old age pension in the lower social orders. They kill off the pensioners and the disabled/infirm – it saves them money on pension and benefit payouts. I pray it’s not as simple as that, but we are talking about right wing Tories here!
Higher death rates from many causes are already well documented among the poorest in our so called “caring” society, making them all the more susceptible to the current virus threat.
Remember one of their ilk wrote a book on how to dismantle the NHS.
Johnson & Co must pay the price when this is over. No stone must be left unturned in the search for justice, and a very bright light must be focused on the Government’s “incompetence”.
Blood on their hands.
I raised concerns on here about the governments putting elderly people into care homes to convalesce straight from the hospital, without testing them for covid19.
It was clear even back then that since we already knew that the elderly were the most at risk from this virus that this decision could cause wide-spread infections and deaths.
I take no pleasure whatsoever in now seeing that I was right to be concerned and I am still wondering that since it didn’t take a genius to figure the danger out, was this a ‘convenient’ way to bring down the pension liabilities.
I know this might seem a ‘conspiracy theory’ on a grand scale, but why on earth would no one in a position of authority both political and medical not stand up and say ‘hey guys this is a potentially disastrous idea, let’s think carefully about this’?
I for one think that like me there would have been quite a few people raising concerns about this but with the people holding the power strings, pushing this policy through, nothing was able to stop it.
What a disaster!
Aye the world has to change after this, the greed of the financial gods that rule us will have to end, Scotland has to get away from this union and start looking after its people in a different way starting with care homes, we have to look out for our older folk and the people who care for them need better wages, nobody should be allowed to make profit from people’s ill health, the Scottish people would be willing to pay more tax to take care homes under government control, my mothers in a care home just now, she can’t speak hardly eats £1200 a week it’s not right, Scotland’s people need a change we’re getting nowhere being tied to this unfair Union with three other countries.
Our caring sharing government.
You can hear them saying to themselves, “someone has to make the hard choices!”
Well done Chris.
And then there were none,
I see Pete so it is Holyrood that has been controlling Westminster these last 10 years?
SNP was it that put us through 10 years of austerity that would pay off England’s debt but in
Fact took that debt from £0.9 Trillion to £2.3 TRILLION before Brexit debt gets built in?
Oh yes it was SNP that didn’t force Westminster to heed the Cygnus Exercise that proved the UK
had no chance of managing a Pandemic adequately.
Our budget is linked to Westminster’s budget, after much fudging, so when England pays their nurses less than us it puts a pressure on our budget to maintain a reasonable wage.
The same applies as England sells off more and more of the NHS to companies like Virgin Health.
Branson is now suing the NHS over an NHS contract he lost.
I think you will find that applications from Europeans to work in low paid jobs fell by 90% as England’s Brexit and declaration of hate for Johnny Foreigner has led to severe staff shortages
in our Care Homes and Hospitals.
Ah yes it must be Handcock the SNP minister who comes on TV each day to lie about availability
Of PPE and how great they are at distributing it?
Was it Nicola or Bojo who couldn’t be bothered to attend 5 Emergency COBRA mettings?
Is Dominic Cummings appointed by SNP or the Tories to attend SAGE meetings which is for leading
Scientists, providing the only come from England.
Was it SNP or the Tories who signed off the emergency order for ventilators from G Tech, who had the design and production ready to go, and then cancelled it as with more delay they could get the
Tory Funder, James Dyson to start work on something similar in his Singapore factory.
Which party controls our borders?
Which one lets 1500 people per day into the UK without any testing?
Got to get on with some irk now so can I finish off by asking you Pete if it was SNP who asked the
English PPE Equipment manufacturers not to sell to Scotland but Trumpland can buy?
Nothing worse than winging Scots ungrateful for England’s abuse, incompetence and debt!
If you don’t care if your granny lives or dies, and you are wanting to stick your auld granny in a care hame but,
she disnae want to live in a care hame, at least noo you can reassure her in aw honesty: it will probably only be temporary: she won’t be living there for long.
This is so sad and entirely predictable. Wonder what Captain Tom and his daughter think about it!
However maybe Chris could do his next pic around the emerging demographics of poverty and ethnicity? Can’t see this government trying to shield them at all!
As the death toll mounts in the care homes many in the SNP are devoting time to produce a bill that panders to their woke brigade.
An ill defined bill will be used by the powerful to shut down dissent, maybe not by this government but subsequent ones.We just need to remember the terror bill that was claimed to protect us against terrorist being used to drag a pensioner out of a conference. This bill seems ever less well defined, it is dangerous to our freedom of speech and thought.
Wow Chris, that pulled me up short. So sad, but it’s what the shower at Westminster wanted was it not.
Shameful.
Oh and Pete, most care homes are privately run, some are under local authoritys, but not the majority.
O/T
Looks like Pete Wishart is blocking any commoner on Twitter that has SNP in their bio. Seems to a trend as Nicholson seems to be blocking women who can’t prove they have a penis.
Society as sculptured by Westminster undervalues the elderly. As a result they are packed off to care homes run for profit. Employment in this sector has a low value. We need to change this. As for Pete – London controls the borders and allowed this virus in, that should be all that needs said.
Epic ‘cartoon’. Absolutely epic. Words fail us. All that is missing is the Vera Lynn soundtrack to be supplied by HMG.
It is nigh impossible to express my loathing, disgust and contempt for those who would spin this total shitshow into a victory parade. Damn them. Damn them to hell.
In all the Tory ‘planning for herd immunity’ they forgot care homes. Great cartoon.
Rainbows, clapping for Care and NHS workers, crowdfunds…. all well and good. However the best way to show support and prevent a repeat of this disaster would be for folks (especially in England) to take a solemn vow to never vote Tory!
@Gary45%
@Patrick Roden
@Rm
All correct,
In addition all Care houses should be nationalised and come under whatever NHS body is relative to the ocation(country)
The culling of the elderly/infirm, not put too fine a point on it tantamount to genocide.
Is that an extreme thought?..No
Johnson has caused me to question my beliefs and attitude.
ie don’t hate anyone and capital punishment
Translation the bastards should be hung
My sister in NZ reports that our Mother’s care home has not had a single Covid-19 case despite being prepared for one. The NZ response has kept vulnerable elderly people safe. Visits are banned so my sister had a video call to Mum instead.
In contrast here and in the US care homes have been carnage. It breaks my heart because it could have been so different.
Pete, Not all care homes in Scotland are the responsibility of Scottish Local Authorities. In fact, I believe there have been more deaths in the PRIVATE SECTOR who are responsible for the care and SAFETY of their patients and staff (minimum wage). Remember PRIVATE = PROFIT, can’t go wasting money on PPE for staff now can we!!!!
Pete, It’s the responsibility of private care homes to supply PPE to their own care workers.
Nicola Sturgeon has already stated the NHS stands ready to top up supplies of PPE but private care homes charging £1000 a week per patient and not protecting their care home workers are avoiding scrutiny.
Making profit from the plight of auld folk with ailments such as dementia and physical disability raises ethical questions that will need to be looked at after this crisis is over.
I’m afraid we can’t just throw this one at Westminster, they had an influence but I can’t remember anyone at the Scotgov screaming out that this was the wrong policy. They followed the Westminster model hook, line and sinker, we are all complicit, it happened will we were all at home watching TV.
Care homes in Scotland , both residential care homes and nursing homes are private they are NOT administered or run by the Scottish NHS it was Margaret thatcher that privatised care homes across the whole of the U.K.
Care homes charge patients hundreds of pounds a week for residential care
Care homes charge thousands a week for nursing care
Nearly all care home residents do not have enough of an income or enough savings to pay for it
So what happens is that just about every penny of their income is taken off them and given to the care home and the government then gives the care home the rest
Caree homes spend the least they can on staff
They advertise in Philippines and other countries with low pay so that people come here and work in the care homes for low pay but think it’s good pay until they see what their cost of living is here
Old folk bad hearing poor sight and a person with an accent they cannot decipher
Not good
Care homes try to keep patients alive as long as possible it’s where they get their profit
I’ve been in many many care homes
With my job
Outwith visiting hours
You will never ever ever get me in a care home
I’ve already told my wife I will be found lying in the snow in the highlands somewhere frozen to death
before I go to a care home
So many scandals about awful things in care homes over the years
Making money from people who have no say and no control over their circumstances
Once you’re in you rarely come out
If you ever visit one you will see those patients still able to walk
Hanging about the exit door of their ward
Coming at you like zombies
Drugged up to the eyeballs
Trying to escape
Is that how you want to send up ?
Is that how you want your mum or your dad to end up ?
Scandalous
The privatisation of care homes was a U.K. government decision
It’s not a devolved matter
Scottish government cannot change it
Bit like PPF
Pete says:
Excuse me.
Aren’t care homes in Scotland the responsibility of the Scottish government?
Some are also run by Local Authorities.
Back to the grievance
No Pete – I think you’ll find that most care homes in Scotland and everywhere else are the responsibility of the private sector – most care homes are owned by big private companies, Holmes Care Group, HC One, Barchester Healthcare, Foxcare Ltd, Care UK, Four Seasons Healthcare, Larchwood Care, to name but a few who have care homes all over the UK.
Care homes are big business, it costs £1200 a week to keep my mother in a care home!
I’m pretty sure the care home companies can more than afford to pay for adequate PPE for staff but have obviously chosen other priorities.
A quick Google search shows that most care home company headquarters are based in London or south of the border and their owners are extremely wealthy people.
So NO, these care homes are the responsibility of the care home owners, and not the Scottish government – no grievance, just putting private profit before the health and safety of people.
Wee Gingier Dug cast has Dr Philipa Whitford on, she states that while Carehomes in Scotland are mostly privately owned and run, the Scot Gov has been reaching out to them with a view to assisting in block procurement of PPE – so that no-one runs out.
Also updates that so far, so far, our hospital staff have not run short on vital PPE, unlike the images on the news from areas in Englandshire.
Well worth a listen. As always with Dr P the quality comes shining through on every level.
Peace a lovely gardens to you all.
“What a filthy odious shower of murderous bastards the Tories are.”
This is very true but not primarily intentional, it is largely the result of a bio-neurological impoverishment in empathic abilities, and social conditioning towards authority and inherited privilege.
It is a rare skill to be able to escape one’s nature and nurture.
Social cognition
Social cognition, sometimes called emotional intelligence, plays a major role in children’s social and emotional development. It is therefore important to understand what it is and how a child’s environment can affect the development of this skill.
The Development of Theory of Mind in Early Childhood
http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/social-cognition/according-experts/development-theory-mind-early-childhood
Sorry but it has been obvious for weeks that the most vulnerable were old people with health issues, worse if they have multiple health issues, that exactly defines a care home. The homes are private businesses and the responsibility of the owners but did anyone think the private sector would handle this correctly.
Care homes should have been put under special measures and been monitored they were following the guidelines rigidly, any that weren’t should have had action taken against them. Obviously I’m no legal expert on this but surely there is enough legislation during a health crisis for a government to protect its vulnerable citizens.
Just pointing and blaming is comforting but we did nothing, just complaining here or on twitter isn’t actually doing anything.
And if you really want to get technical about it, here’s some brain science. Just so the three stooges don’t start whining about me being a bigot. 😉
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0026456
Most care homes are under private ownership, but not all.
In my area there are a number run by the local authority.
However, they are very strictly controlled and are monitored regularly by quangos under the control of the SG.
In fact, most residents have a significant amount of their fees paid by the local authorities.
I really don’t see where Westminster come in.
If the Scottish Government told the Scottish people that if we were totally independent they would take care homes into Government control and more money for the SNHS we could be Independent within a few years, especially after the shameful way the english Westminster Government have behaved, Scotland have to break free to have any future, things are getting more stagnant by the day.
Arresting cartoon Chris.
Very poignant Chris,it says more than a thousand words could ever do.
Meanwhile YouGovs poll indicates that the SNP will do really well if next years Scottish elections go ahead. Its amazing what a bit of airtime can do.
Oh, I’m so glad I’ll never reach an age fit for a care home. To end up in such a place is suicidal in all sorts of ways. Poignant cartoon, Chris.
Your essential weekend reading
‘Bercow Bitchin’: https://wp.me/p4fd9j-oMD
Sad and superb .
If anyone needs cheering up , try reading the editor’s notes at the end of a particularly dire piece on David Icke ( for younger viewers he is the man who believes in the invasion of the lizard people and he wears shiny tracksuits)
You will all be delighted to know that,
‘News form trusted and credible sources is essential at all times, but especially now as the corona virus pandemic impacts on all aspects of our lives. To make sure you stay informed at this difficult time our coverage of the crisis is free.
However , producing the Herald’s unrivalled analysis, insight and opinion on a daily basis still costs money …..
Ho Ho
What I dont understand about the chat that the Tories deliberately want to kill off old people, is that it is the same old people who overwhelmingly vote for them. It doesn’t make sense.
So old oeople dont usually die in care homes?
The Tories are not deliberately killing the old that would be their voter base so that piece of paranoia doesnt make sense.
Meanwhile Hancock lies about coronavirus testing and English/British nationalist incompetence continues to kill.
Cartoon somewhat propagandistic although well executed .
I know someone who works as a cook in a care home In and out of the place like a yoyo. Goes home to family of adults who pay scant attention to rules. What to do a denunciation?
Oh! I wonder after David Icke the Sunday Herald will have Mystic Meg and her Ouija board predictions on the SNP.
This crises is certainly not intentional, though it is a perfect example of an ideological rejection of “universality”, and cognition and Theory of Mind that is limited in terms of being able to cope effectively with complexity and ethics. Such is the Tory mind.
Nice but sad toon Chris.
Wonder if the private sector of that industry might have cash flow problems going forward from here for a few years.
ah, Chris.
It looks like you have some experience of the inside of a care home. My mother was cared for by a fantastic care home in Greenock … It is a credit to Scotland how it is run, it’s award winning, and the staff are superb. The care they gave my mum til the day she died… I’ll always be overwhelmed by.
You almost drew their front room. There were activities every day of the week and there were communal spaces like this one you’ve drawn with bright sunny windows, nice chairs, a stray zimmer, and a board for the activities coming up. And I don’t just mean small ones like haidressing, games with children, singalongs, memory days, karaokes… I mean trips to Largs, days out to coffee shops, trips to watch Morton playing.
Their board will be empty. I am very worried for the staff and the residents there. And I am so sorry they are having to face this.
I cannot tolerate the thought of a world where we allow our frail, vulnerable, elderly to be the herd for the herd mentality … I mean what kind of herd is the generation that came before us? That’s it? They are a herd? That world is poison to me. So too is a world that puts carers in danger… staff who change nappies, medicate, hold, accompany, monitor, wash, feed, become friends with, minister to when there’s nobody there, and now sometimes too, die with. Another herd? That’s a world I will fight to change.
Chris, you are a human being. Respect.
Never let it be said that Boris’ choice of Coronavirus strategy has been ineffective.
Craig P says:
What I dont understand about the chat that the Tories deliberately want to kill off old people, is that it is the same old people who overwhelmingly vote for them. It doesn’t make sense.
Dog biscuit says:
So old people dont usually die in care homes?
Craig; it makes sense when you consider how overwhelmed the Western nations are with the pension liabilities. it is a serious problem that is getting worse as people are living longer.
it’s not that people believe for one minute that the Tories introduced or wanted this virus in the UK, but that some people at the heart of that party see everything including people as commodities to be used and discarded whenever they see fit.
The suspicion is that once the tories saw that this virus was lethal to the elderly and infirm they took the opportunity to ensure that they could make the best of a bad situation by reducing the pension liabilities of the elderly.
remember the Tories wanted to introduce the herd immunity system, that would basically allow the virus to do its worse with the hope that by the end of it, the population as a whole would be immune. The fact that this would possibly kill hundreds of thousands (some estimated millions) of the elderly and disabled did not seem to matter!
Dog biscuit, yes old people die in care homes and if you think about it, nearly every resident in these homes eventually dies in there, but what we are talking about is the FACT that many residents are dying all at once suffering from conorovirus19.
And that this was a concern that was being raised at the very start of the outbreak even before the deaths in care homes were being reported, and it is interesting that it was only last week that the Tories have been forced kicking and screaming to include the people dying in care homes in the numbers of reported deaths.
There was also a report that doctors in England were told not to put covid19 on someones death certificate unless that doctor could prove by testing that this was the cause of death, the problem being that tests were not available at this time!
so someone with the clear symptoms of covid19 could not be reported as dying from the virus.
Shame on anyone who supports the Tories.
Re voter base:
Since Brexit, a lot of traditional Labour voting areas have turned and are now voting for the tories.
The polls have shown that since the last election, polling in England has shown an increase in the Tory share of the vote.
The elderly as a commodity is no longer needed and is now considered a burden,
Time to get rid!
Care homes concentration camps for old folks.
Jumping to Big Pharma’s tune.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/criminal-big-pharma-charge-covid-19-vaccine/5711471
Would you trust these guys?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/24/opioids-crisis-big-pharma-drugs-carnage
No money in this, guys!
https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/big-pharmas-blindspot-before-covid-19-vaccine-and-antiviral-research-went-neglected_partner/
In Globalism only shysters prosper.
Arguing a point does not equate with supporting Tories.
@ Dog biscuit
The cartoon would only be ‘propagandistic’ if there were a spitfire flying past the window.
Remember that evil organisation with the “one world philosophy” of universal human rights and natural law? Well here’s one that might prove instructive, given that those living in Scotland do not enjoy unfettered access to the international rule-of-law (see Brexit).
link
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000118400
A focus on care home disaster a focus on the very worst aspects of this disease is to ignore the fact that that youre not talking about the general population who are on the whole healthy. If care homes and their staff had been isolated at begining of crisis and pour resources into isolating the sick instead of the costly excercise of shutting down the whole damned Planet.
Herd immunity is the eventual aim of lockdown is it not and you speak of herd immunity as if it were some how unusual strange hocus pocus.See how your language is written by the media and you now speak it.
Stark and sobering!
🙁
PS:
WM Government counts mailouts to hit 100,000 testing target
https://archive.is/KnnEX
Chris, this is a brilliant, evocative depiction of what many homes will be like now. I’m sick to my stomach about it.
As tom kane says, my mother too was in a lovely home for just over a year – caring staff from all over the world doing a good job. They were sad whenever a resident died – I can’t imagine how they cope with multiple deaths especially when so many were avoidable, as Germany and other countries demonstrate.
Apparently UK’s pandemic plan was so good that other countries copied it – the pity was that it was never implemented here so stocks of supplies were inadequate, went out of date etc etc etc. Yet UK government continues to lie – the latest lie being to say tests have been carried out when they mean they have written to Tory party members urging them to apply for a test. That letter is included in the total of tests done. What kind of person thinks that is a reasonable way to go on?
Excellent article – ‘The pro-independence faction of the SNP’ – by Peter A Bell. peterabell.scot
Bonus – He doesn’t reference pedants writing about irrelevant writings.
Just seen details of a report commissioned by the SG in 2015 about how to deal with a pandemic.
Apparently, most of the conclusions were ignored.
All I’m saying is that hindsight is a wonderful thing and Westminster and Holyrood are equally to blame. To be honest, I don’t believe in the blame game. It’s just one of those things to which we are all guilty.
C’est la vie.
Libby Brooks of the Guardian 02-05-2020
“New polling shows extraordinarily high support for the SNP government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a YouGov survey for the Times Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has the confidence of 71% of Scots when it comes to her ability to make the correct decisions in dealing with the virus, with 23% saying they do not have faith in her judgments. That gives the Scottish first minister a +48 rating overall.
There was a high level of cross-party consensus in support of the Scottish government’s performance – three-quarters of Scots, including the vast majority of Tory and Labour voters, believe the SNP government is handling the crisis well.
As well as 85% of SNP voters and 84% of Liberal Democrats, 70% of both Conservative and Labour supporters are happy with the approach taken by the Scottish government. Just 19% said the virus was being handled badly in Edinburgh.
This consensus falls apart when assessing the UK government’s performance. Scots are split, with 47% of those surveyed agreeing Conservative ministers have handled the outbreak well and 48% disagreeing. Boris Johnson himself has a net rating of -15.”
__________________
There is only one vehicle that will secure our freedom, that is the SNP!
Excellent cartoon, Chris. Very sad.
Care homes were privatised in the 1980s under the Thatcher government. Those are now run for profit. Yes there are some Local Authority care homes left. However, there always was the option for wealthy people to buy care in the private sector.
Nothing more needs to be added.
Pete says:
2 May, 2020 at 12:10 pm
hindsight is a wonderful thing and Westminster and Holyrood are equally to blame. To be honest, I don’t believe in the blame game.
Isn’t that a contradiction?
And do you have a link to the 2015 report?
A lot of hate for the “herd immunity” plan on here, but can anyone actually tell me what the alternative is? Locking down until there is a vaccine which may or may not work given the constant evolution of the virus, but of course the nation would be completely bankrupt by then and the government wouldn’t have money to spend on white elephants like NHS Louisa Jordan.
With a mortality rate of only 0.1% (about the same as the flu), herd immunity seems to be the only realistic option. Of course it won’t happen and the lockdown will continue until the people have recovered from the mass hysteria generated back in march, there are still people out there who think they are fighting a war by just sitting in their living rooms.
@Dog biscuit
No herd immunity is not the aim of lockdown, you can never achieve it through lockdown. Herd immunity requires as many people as possible to catch the disease, even then it never eliminates it. The occurrences and deaths are just reduced to a level the government believes is acceptable.
If you expect lockdown to last till we achieve herd immunity you better get ready to stay indoors for the rest of your life.
Doug Buchannan
I agree, but they will need internal reorganisation to expand their legal horizons and end any support for gender ideology. Otherwise they will continue to harm the fabric of international human rights law.
Cultural Rights in International Law and Discourse: Contemporary Challenges and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18918131.2019.1682222
The Yoons don’t like the reality being held up in front of them.
@bipod
My alternative and it looks like the Scotgov and possibly the UK also is lockdown until there is a manageable level of people with the virus still in the community. I don’t know what this number is as it needs someone with expert knowledge here, also we don’t know how many people have it but so can only use the numbers being admitted to hospital as a guide.
Then we can let businesses open using proper precautions, and test, trace and isolate those that have symptoms.
The areas that are difficult are pubs, restaurants and clubs where social distancing may not be achievable, although some possibly could if they rearrange the internal layout (not clubs). Other difficult areas are cinemas and theatres, not sure how it can be achieved here in the short term.
“There is only one vehicle that will secure our freedom, that is the SNP!”
Its a pity then that the SNP hierarchy are content then with just keeping their party in government first and foremost and see independence as nothing more than a means rouse passions and gain votes.
What makes you think that the SNP having more seats at Holyrood equates, in any way, to them pushing harder for Scottish independence.
Sturgeon couldn’t even bring herself to attend AUOB marches, never mind deliver independence.
How the faithful have been duped to believe that Sturgeon’s medicore performance on handling this virus, somehow means that she’ll now deliver independence if the chance arises, which it won’t.
The unionist media has done its job well giving Sturgeon X-amount of airtime and bigging up her exposure in the process, ask yourself why would they do that?
@bipod
Forgot to add, where do you get this mortality rate, the current deaths so far this year are about 30,000 above the average death rate including those that have had normal flu outbreaks. There is no accurate figure as yet as nobody knows how many have actually been infected, WHO latest I can find is 3.4%.
“Care homes were privatised in the 1980s under the Thatcher government. Those are now run for profit. Yes there are some Local Authority care homes left. However, there always was the option for wealthy people to buy care in the private sector.
Nothing more needs to be added.”
Really?
Did anyone really give a monkeys about who ran care homes or if they had adequate PPE before this pandemic? Did Sturgeon, did Carlaw, or Davidson or Leonard?
There are commentators on this site who positively relish the notion of viral spread and herd immunity.
Quite how many deaths these people are prepared to stomach is anyone’s guess. Had lockdown not been belatedly imposed six weeks ago we could by now have been well on our way to maybe 750,000 deaths by end of June.
Six weeks of lockdown stopped the numbers of deaths doubling every two to three days as R0 soared. Burning bodies in an industrial pyre and or disposing of bodies like carcasses in an animal cull would have been the result. Quite how anyone, anywhere in the world could propose such a policy is unbelievable.
But the Nazis sent millions to the death camps and there those who would do so again.
The cartoon of the empty day room that started this exchange of views reflects exactly that eugenic thinking.
None of us have all the answers. But letting the virus rip was not the answer. Not here in the UK and not anywhere else in the world. But the UK tried it!
It may well be that the SNP will benefit from the current crisis in any forthcoming election, but there’s also a time fast approaching when people like me will no longer be prepared to vote for the Party while holding our noses. The Party has shown a dire lack of independent-thinking from day-one of this crisis, choosing, instead, to follow the advice and the lead of Downing St and its patently incompetent residents. We should be, and remain, very angry, indeed, at the stupidity of jettisoning testing in concert with people whom we know to be concerned first and foremost with the health of the economy.
“Other difficult areas are cinemas and theatres, not sure how it can be achieved here in the short term.”
I heard on the radio that the old drive in movie lots are making a comeback due to this virus, Iran being one of the countries using them to let folk see movies, they normally wouldn’t get to see due the lockdown.
Apparently John Nicolson equates those who do not agree with him to those who , he has determined , did nothing to help elect SNP peeps like him as he tweeted the following :
“Exactly. Angry Scottish Twitter doesn’t, in any way, represent the progressive, liberal democracy we now are. Thank goodness. They never canvass or speak to real voters. Let the angries tweet and rave into a Twitter vacuum”
John is one of the few SNP MP’s who are blocking peeps who , support independence….but do not support John’s main ‘Raison d’etre as a elected MP….a Raison D’etre which he did NOT canvass for pre his election in 2019…funnily enough.
Well, as a woman I am very angry…angry at MP’s like him constantly promoting and representing 24/7 an issue for which he was NOT , I strongly suspect , elected to promote and support on behalf of all of those who voted for him…indeed I would guess the elusive issue of independence was more the reason…..though seems to be, for John, a lost cause…or rather a minor cause NOT to be progressed by the likes of him.
Well as a woman I am one of those “angries”…not on twitter but I am a Scottish voter, SNP member and just so he knows I have canvassed, posted many leaflets on behalf of his party and was a volunteer coordinator that got a SMP MSP elected…I was at their respective office volunteering Monday to Friday for 8 hours a day and a few hours at the weekend to help get this person elected….but hey that’s history eh John and according to you could NOT have happened…and I am expected to just get with JOHN’S program and support something that will be detrimental to ME….
Well if it makes John happy I will NEVER EVER canvass, help or do anything to try and help and get a SNP politician elected again…THEN…John will be right in his sweeping assumption….perhaps “Now is the time” to give up my SNP membership as I appear, according to John and may I add others too..apparently one of the undesirables whose services and support is not required or desired…..a “liberal democracy” that suppresses free speech….the new norm according to John & co…..
I am beyond angry…..and nothing will ‘block’ my rage ….irrespective of how many SNP MP’s block those who, like me, seek to challenge them on this….I suggest that tis John who is in a vacuum …..not the kind he suggests….as his vacuum seems to be for us to ‘Suck it up’….and then consign us to the rubbish heap….wow how progressive….NOT.
So sick of this….no independence…lose rights as a woman…politically homeless and have never felt so full of despair and such a sense of hopelessness as now….
Apologies to all on here for such a downbeat comment…just my opinion……really am sorry for posting such a negative comment.
Jesus, you know your party’s leader (and head of the S&G) is captured by Westminster, when the Sunday Herald allows a piece from David Icke to attack her, thus driving more voters towards her. The Sunday Herald of course then gets a sympathetic response and possibly more sales from the Sturgeon faithful who think she can walk on water.
Doug buchannan 12.10pm. ‘47% of Scots think that boris’s conservatives are handling the outbreak well’. I’m away for a lie down in a darkened room. God help you Scotland.
@RepublicofScotland
Not sure the drive concept really took off here, can’t hear the dialogue as it’s being drowned out by the rain hitting the car roof.
“Not sure the drive concept really took off here, can’t hear the dialogue as it’s being drowned out by the rain hitting the car roof.”
I’m pretty sure headphones would cancel that out now, but I get your point, and no it didn’t really catch on here.
From the Hebrides News 01 May 2020
‘Slackening the lockdown in the Western Isles and other Scottish islands will be considered by the Scottish Government, indicated the First Minister.
Allowing people to operate under less stringent measures within the islands is an idea being floated about.
Nicola Sturgeon said: I’m not ruling out the islands being pilot areas or having things happen ahead of schedule. But we’re not yet at the stage to rule that in either.’
Feeling a bit pensive after the Cairnstoon I wondered if the people of the islands ever get first crack at anything worth having.
@Clapper57
Those like Nicholson are now insulting many who have been campaigning for Scotland most of their lives, while he was in London supping from the BBC financial pool.
His interest in independence only seems to have emerged when the broadcasters interest in him waned. I have a feeling if Labour had still been in the ascendency in Scotland he would have been an avid socialist.
Trapped in high risk environments. Silenced. Let down by those who should protect them.
I remember a time before granny farming for profit was a thing. LA elderly homes. Real standards of care. Real rules. Real training. Employees on good wages and permanent pensioned jobs. Then along came shiny new “care facilities” with fancy logos and care commissions. HC staff are great but they can’t argue with profit above all else culture.
Time to change.
@ Willie.
I read on fb, I think, a good post regarding those advocating ‘ herd immunity’. It was a simple question, who within your family would you be willing to sacrifice to this theory to gain herd immunity, because in the end, that’s what it boils down to.
Mike d
I wonder how many of that 47% would vote No to Independence….
In my opinion we all have to get back out there sooner or later. We can’t hide at home for another year until a cure is found. However, I don’t mean all rush out at once. Currently we are going through a sort of herd immunity as we speak, albeit herd immunity lite. We are not in a real lock down as compared to the lock down the likes of Wuhan, Italy and Spain have gone through.
There will have been quite a few folk who would have contracted the vies in the UK before the lock down kicked in. On top of that there are still a lot of people travelling to work that are strictly speaking not essential, but that they can’t work from home as they operate machinery or equipment, drivers etc. I think I saw somewhere that around 40% of people are working from home, whilst some others have been furloughed. However, it still leaves a lot of folk out there travelling to work.
We are still going to shops for messages, and now going to B&Q! the posties are still out there, as are multitudes of deliver drivers, deliveroo drivers, community volunteers delivering food to isolated people, charity groups out and about, thousands arriving at airports unchecked etc. etc. I live not too far away from my local hospital which is hugh and have seen on quite a few occasions hospital workers who have finished their shifts still wearing their scrubs form their days work and going into shops on the way home, possible carrying the virus on their scrubs.
So what I am saying is that in my opinion, the virus is still spreading about relatively freely in the UK, given the number of folk out and about each day and in shops etc. The whole idea of the lock down was not to overwhelm the hospitals, but sooner or later we will have to get out and get infected one way or another. I think the best we can do in that situation is to try and protect the most vulnerable, i.e. care homes, as these hadn’t been taken into consideration when the virus arose as it was all about protecting the NHS hospitals, believing that private cares homes would look after their own residents which was the biggest mistake of all, money comes before residents in these private homes.
Anyway, that’s my tuppence worth. 🙂
@ Clapper57 – well said you. I quite agree. It’s astonishing that this regressive, misogynistic ideology – transgender ideology – has infiltrated so many otherwise progressive parties so thoroughly. Please do make your feelings known to the SNP – I have.
We must not tolerate hate towards anybody. That includes women.
Wonderful and thought provoking cartoon Chris! Has anyone heard anything about Robert Peffers – he’s well into his 80s and as far as I know he lives alone!I used to live near Dunfermline and in these circumstances would have broken the rules carefully to go and find out for mysel but now live in Birmingham and it’s a long drive. Clapper 57 – understand your disappointment – i’m disappointed in the SNP approach to independence too but we only have the one bus at the moment. John NIcolson is a fraud!
AberdeenPict
We will have to get things moving at some point in the future, but as we can deduce from the current crises we face, HMG is not capable of delivering on its’ legal duty of care.
Different pathogen, same theory. Full text.
Ethical considerations in
developing a public health response
to pandemic influenz
https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/WHO_CDS_EPR_GIP_2007_2c.pdf
The Economist is providing articles on Covid-19 for free. Some interesting reading. Here’s an article on the excess deaths in selected countries.
https://tinyurl.com/ya8xep7x
Ah well never mind, Friday is VE day so we’ll all have nice victory celebrations, my neighbour is getting her butcher’s aprons ready to roll. Might spot some spitfires overhead. Tallyho chaps we’re all in this together dontcha know, harhardehar.??
Similar, not the same theory. Full text.
Emergency Ethics: Public Health Preparedness and Response
Public Engagement in Emergency Preparedness and Response: Ethical Perspectives in Public Health Practice
https://oxfordmedicine.com/view/10.1093/med/9780190270742.001.0001/med-9780190270742-chapter-5
@Mike d
I remember reading a book by Anthony Beevor regarding D-Day and the final year of the war. His description of the British leadership gives me the impression they were lead by the same types that currently are currently running the UK, incompetent. The celebrations are a fallacy, the belief that the UK (in think they only actually mention England in the old war films) won the war single handed. The war was in actuality won by the Russians and Americans, the UK had a walk on part.
I’m not sure if it’s fair to describe the British war effort as being a “walk on part”. It is true that Russia and America played the leading roles, but HMG mobilised the entire empire in a global defense of her colonial possessions. I’d have thought that merited credit as supporting actor, at least. 😉
Golfnut @ 1.32pm.
It’s a very good point to ask who in your family you would be prepared to sacrifice to contribute to the herd immunity theory.
But it’s worse than that. The Johnson government decided who to sacrifice, not you.
Red Squirrel says:
2 May, 2020 at 1:30 pm
“I remember a time before granny farming for profit was a thing.
You must be pretty old then. Neil Munro wrote about them over 100 years ago. In “Para Handy Tales” one of the stories is about “Pension Farms”, where a crofter takes in pensioners for profit.
Scottish Daily figures delayed say S. Gov.
All the other three Nations have been published,unusual.
@CameronB Brodie
Yeh, probably over egging it there but the small compared to the over exaggeration that we are about to be assaulted with. I’m not criticizing those that fought there, my father did, but the leadership and the use of it as propaganda.
.
How can a simple cartoon have such a physically gut wrenching effect?
Mr Cairns, there is an observational genius about your work. Thankyou for all that you do.
—————-
By the way, who is the “Pete” troll. I know speech is free, but that “Pete” creature is the most obnoxious thing I have seen on this Wings Over Scotland website.
The last opinion poll I saw said that 50% of the UK electorate would vote Tory and that 23% in Scotland would still vote Tory. Yet you couldn’t find anybody to admit they voted Tory except for a Tory MP.
So far the Care Home my niece works in is Covid 19 free. I have no doubt that it wont remain so if the Yoons in the MSM and the Tories get their way.
To Aberdeen Pict
I tried to get back out there but I got harassed by Gestapo Scotland for driving just one and half miles from my home along the Kinloss – Roseisle road to have a walk in some Forestry Plantation. I doubt if the Tory/Yoon Lairdies want us going back out there at all. I think they have been trying to expel us peasants from the Hills, Beaches, Mts and Countryside for centuries. They have finally got their way. I am not the only one who has been so harassed in the last month.
It is a very long time since I was involved with public health ethics, but I’m certain I’m not pointing folk in the wrong direction. Gender ideology lacks coherance with a legal respect for biology. As such, trans-activism is antagonistic towards the practice of public health ethics. Telt you Nicolson is a numpty.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2015.00023/full
CMB you are correct. It is completely unfair to say that the U.K. and the early allies, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India played a walk on part.
The U.K. was the only country to fight the Nazis from start to finish and entered the war to defend Poland, unlike the Russians, who seized half of Poland and who supplied Hitler with raw materials right up to the day they were invaded, or the USA who profited from British arms purchases and stood back until they were attacked.
Of course it could have been done better but all wars are full of disasters for both sides. However no one can dispute that the fight against the Nazis was a just war and the British held the ring until the Russians and the USA joined in, late as usual.
Having said that, the English nostalgia for dragging it up at every possible occasion is sickening. To me the wonderful (and private) effort of Captain Tom has been tainted by the Conservatives jumping on the band wagon and trying to use him as a Union Jack icon.
Scotland will do things better.
jfngw
I was only trying not to be predjudiced. 🙂
Boris Johnson Killed My Granny – and all I got was
a temporary increment on my universal credit (which is fair)
in Frankenstein movies, at the end, the towns folks come for the mad scientist and the monster with pitchforks and flaming torches, finally had enough of his crap, his experiments, the rampages, the destruction
– these are always set in a vague central europe where the people had some backbone; would not work in england … there they would make the mad doctor mayor and the monster his special adviser, the doctor having reminded them that they live in the greatest country in the world, born of free markets and liberal democracy … anyway
the excess infant mortality was little more than the typical, falling down wells, of little girls, that they do … shit happens eh? – have a greggs and a can of carling!
“never shall be slaves”
– never been anything else
Had Scotland gone its own way in dealing with this, hard, early, nip it in the bud, and we had almost no deaths, while england was being hammered – this would put boris head on a spike and kill the govt, and make the best case ever for independence; the SNP seem determined not to score, even when the ball is on the line.
@ Clapper 57: sorry to hear your despair as I feel much the same. However I am not going to leave the stage clear for the likes of Nicholson. I shall carry on speaking up at branch level and emailing my MSPs and MP.
On a slightly different angle, the AUOB marches hitherto have been a cheery get-together to boost ourselves and to show the SNP/Greens that independence is hugely popular.
If we suspect that independence is not being pursued as hard and urgently as we think it should be then perhaps the marches should become more of a protest. They should be aimed at Holyrood/Bute House.
Given that we can’t march now we need to do a petition to Holyrood Parliament pressing for independence now, to be decided not by referendum but simply by a majority vote in Holyrood, with or without a Convention.
I don’t think the virus should be a reason to stop going for independence – it is a reason to go for it right now before even worse is done to Scotland by Westminster. We are never going to get fair treatment by media or the English parties – appeasing them is no use whatsoever. So we should seize the moment and get Scotland’s resources into our own hands to use for Scotland’s benefit.
I am sick of the Westminster system and of the media pouring out lies instead of exposing the criminal, murderous incompetence and wickedness of the UK government. They will never respond to any argument or discussion so it is pointless spending time on them.
Honestly peeps, Scotland better get a grip of her politicians and judiciary, before they destroy any potential for justice in Scotland.
Biology, Equality, and the Law: The Legal
Significance of Biological Sex Differences
scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3264&context=smulr
@ Willie.
Exactly the point. Brings it closer to home if asked to think about you would be prepared to sacrifice for the ‘ greater ‘ good, eh!
BBC now reporting:
Scotland ……..today……44………Total…….1559 (all)
Wales…………today……44………Total……..969 (all)
N. Ireland…….today……11………Total……..376 (all)
England……….today….*370………Total…..*20853 Hospitals
============================================================
UK …………..today….no fig…….Total… no fig
England deaths in the community will be added later to the totals
probably at the WM daily update says BBC.
Re AUOB marches,
I feel they have been a great success but, just because something has been a great success it does not mean you should just keep doing it.
Look at it this way: 100k marchers, at a very conservative estimate, it cost £10 for each person to participate.
That’s a potential £1 MILLION war chest that could be used for legal cases challenging the legality of the Union or Scotland’s forced Brexit or various other constitutional challenges.
Boris and his colonials can ignore the flags, they cannot ignore legal cases.
Sad. so sad.
I remember the glee back in the 90’s after the Thatcher government had introduced legislation on care homes, in particular one individual declaring how his mother who was a private care home owner was “raking it in”.
I’m sure that they are not all the same, but also sure that zero-hours contracts and minimum wages for staff having effectively forced some of them in to work, has contributed to the rapid spread of infection in badly hit homes. And because of lockdown, the normal critical eye of relatives has been absent, allowing bad practice to occur unhindered.
How a country treats its most vulnerable is an indicator of how civilised it truly is.
Surely now its obvious that private care must be brought back within the remit of our National Health Service, with protection for residents and staff alike. That will probably only ever happen in an independent Scotland.
Re AUOB
Another AUOB march to get a media blackout
or £1 million to fund pro-independence films, tv adverts or websites, or fact-finding studies etc etc as we cannot rely on the SNP to do that.
As, for some time to come, Wings is more or less in stagnation as a means of promoting indy.
Would the Allied Powers have nuked Germany if the bomb had been ready or if the war in Europe had stalled,
think Churchill would have but Roosevelt maybe not.
“Surely now its obvious that private care must be brought back within the remit of our National Health Service, with protection for residents and staff alike. That will probably only ever happen in an independent Scotland.”
Surely means nothing in a country that can’t even control its own borders, or say who can stay or who can’t stay in it. A country where most of its governments powers reside in a foreign nation, a nation that drains our resources at its leisure.
A foreign country that uses Scotland as a nuclear naval base just 30 odd miles from its largest city. We are a tamed people, anglicised over the centuries, spoon feed on all things English, our own heritage sidelined we invented or at the very least patented tv first, yet we don’t even have Scottish tv stations showing Scottish content, such is our apathy to grow a backbone.
I could go on all day about how weak and pathetic we’ve become, but it would pain me to do so.
callmedave says: update.
Scotland ……..today……44………Total…….1559 (all)
Wales…………today……44………Total……..969 (all)
N. Ireland…….today……11………Total……..376 (all)
England……….today….****………Total…..***** (they don’t tell us yet)
============================================================
UK …………..today….621…….Total… 28131 (all deaths)
The England figures are integrated with the UK figures
so you’ll all have to do the math and unravel it separately. 🙂
BBC it figures!
They will be on other stats but not on the one most folk tune into get their information. Good old Auntie.
bittie45@3.43
I also remember my granny who lived with us, visiting her friends who lived in a local authority run care home in my home town, I would chum her along the road, and then chum her home, I can honestly say the “old folk” were always happy and well looked after.(This was the early 70s)
The situation from the greed cultured Tories and I can also include the Red Tories , is private health care, private child minding/nurseries, private care homes, all place profit before wellbeing.
I personally know people who own some of these profit making businesses,they have no shame, and when its time to renew the Range Rover, they plead poverty.
I agree with those who have spoken out against Nicolson. A typical gravy trainer who has latched on to the SNP like a leech. They all need cleared out. If NS won’t do it then somebody else must. I am so sick of this misogynist, anti science shit. Yes I say SHIT. Because that’s what it is.
Hi Clapper57 glad to see you and hope you and yours are doing Ok.
I hear you re : John Nicolson. I am increasingly astonished at what he tweets these days and it as if he is willfully missing the point and refusing to engage because that would destroy the image he has of himself as a SJW which it seems is built on cowardice and vanity.
Those who knew him at Uni suggest he was in the closet when others were risking their livelihood and personal safety. I knew of him him because of his constant reference to his debating medal as a student (shades of Kevin of the graphs there). Debating skills that haven’t stood the test of time or improved with having to debate real issues.
I knew he was BBC through and through. I never knew or cared that he was gay. Supposedly he was in the SNP when it wasn’t fashionable or risky, I never knew that. He has been so low key about things that are apparently important to him.
The figures for the SNP in Holyrood look good and the Wokies actually think it is because of them. I would suggest a reason for that are that the SNP are no longer a threat to the Union and soft Noes and Yessers can vote happily in the knowledge there will be no nasty referendum to cause them anxiety or pain. Similarly the ravages of Covid-19 can be the diversion to focus upon. The FM will be the continuity safe pair of hands. Even marches will be banned.
So, Hooray! It is SNP Wokies’ dream come true – no independence and 5 more years of doing nothing to promote Indy and concentrating on getting the Cuckoos in the nest fatter and more in charge.
Devolution for ever.
Craig P says: 2 May, 2020 at 10:44 am
Whether it is intentional or not, I’m being generous in saying they are certainly not looking after the best interests of old people.
The Tory ideology is one of selfish individualism underpinned by an attitude of bad things happen to other people. The media, including the BBC, are pro-Tory and have a see no evil, hear no evil attitude toward the UK Governments handling of this health crisis. This is shown clearly in this article.
It is hardly surprising that the Tories are enjoying huge levels of support at the moment. I don’t doubt they are getting new found support from age groups of the young whose parents are under 70 and less prone to be affected as well as in part of the UK where high population density makes deaths more anonymous.
I do hope that elderly Daily Mail readers start cottoning on, drop reading that shite and get themselves clued up about what is happening in the real world and realise where their true interests are.
Sobering cartoon Chris and a very good illustration why there should have been a total quarantine of the nursing and residential homes. This would have provided protection to people vulnerable to this virus while the viral infection peeks and fades in general society, as viral infections do. Instead, the whole of society is put under experimental semi house arrest but no extra precautions are taken with care homes. So there has been massive disruption and the vulnerable have died anyway.
The Tories killing off the elderly, I know it seems like they are shooting themselves in both feet, but anyone else notice, the wee sweeteners they are now providing for the younger voter, the classic has to be, “we will look after the NHS”, that statement alone, would have the potential younger voter falling into the trap.
Most of them have no idea what Thatcher did to their communities, I know that was a while back, but they have Never Changed.
Never Trust A Tory.
Simples.
AberdeenPict says: 2 May, 2020 at 1:34 pm
I haven’t been following this site for nearly a week but before then there has been an argument about the lock down going on.
Lets be blunt, there are various health experts popping up in the media giving various conservative times about when the lock down needs to be lifted. From a health perspective they are absolutely right. However, we don’t live in a laboratory and the lock down needs to be lifted to some degree in order to stop the economy from suffering long term damage or possible collapse.
I see the need for a lifting of the lock down but don’t see any viable exit strategy.
The current lock down was essential because we had a societal level virus outbreak that couldn’t be contained. There will come a time where this outbreak can be managed without health services collapsing.
Once the lock down is lifted, it is inevitable that outbreaks will occur. These outbreaks need to isolated, contained and eradicated. This will happen repeatedly until either herd immunity occurs where infection flat lines to normal levels experienced by other common viruses or until an immunisation or cure is found.
In order to ensure post lock down outbreaks are kept within socially accepted levels, there needs to be measures put in place like for instance mass testing, monitoring of affected individual movements and rigorous enforcement of temporary lock down of certain areas.
These aren’t even being discussed never mind considered. Therefore while I am favour of a lifting of the lock down, I can’t support it until these issues are brought up.
Another interesting little study here:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1
It proposes that the lockdown measures in Western Europe have had no real impact on the coronavirus epidemic. Of course though this is worthless and it isn’t real science until professor ferguson at imperial has modelled it.
The granny farmers seem to be losing an awfy lot o’ their crop.
Gary45% says: 2 May, 2020 at 4:51 pm
This health crisis has shown a great community spirits and humbling acts of compassion. However, it is a glaring superficiality in our society that is not confined to the young team with their TV reality stars but with the older generation, particularly those of the Tory persuasion who are clapping every Thursday for the NHS workers but just a month ago was demonising them.
Shallowness runs right through our society and history is going to repeat itself with people getting taken in by the Tories only for them to find out when they themselves fall foul of Tory policies.
Maybe I am being cynical. Hopefully I am and people start seeing through the Tories. This lockdown has removed the certainty and to some, the crutch of normality and the status quo from everybody’s lives. It is giving them time to take stock of their lives, the things they should be focusing on in life and what is happening in the real world. It is a unique opportunity for people to asses their world-view and change accordingly. It will be wasted if people are stupid enough to cling to lets be honest, their old lives before the lock down.
@ Pacman.
Lockdown was necessary because we weren’t prepared in any shape or form to cope with the clinical requirements of meeting head on a pandemic. We had neither the protective clothing, ICU accommodation, respirators or staff to meet the level of infection experienced by other country’s despite the dire warning the 2016 epidemic resilience exercise highlighting the inadequacy of equipment and procedures. It looks very like ‘ herd immunity ‘ was the favoured choice in meeting a pandemic, rather than address those failures.
To be honest, there is no way that a government that has at its heart the physical well-being of the the electorate, that wouldn’t be the tory’s then, without a plan similar to South Korea. Testing a hundred thousand people a day means absolutely not thing unless you have a plan which details what action is to be taken for each individual tested if they test positive.
So hope and pray somebody is working on a plan and that its not the Tory’s.
susan says: 2 May, 2020 at 4:29 pm
In a previous comment, I had mentioned there is a superficiality running rife throughout our society. It has also affected the independence movement with the SNP riddled with this Woke nonsense.
I am currently reading Henleins Stranger in a strange land. Like most of his work it contains long, boring monologues of his libertarian political philosophy but I enjoy his work because he does come up with some interesting insights. In this book, one of his characters mentions that governments reflects those of the general populace who votes them in.
The reality is that most folk don’t know or don’t care about this woke nonsense and are happy for their elected representatives to pursue this. As I said in my previous post, I hope that when we get back to some form of normality, they stop doing this and elected representatives act accordingly and stop foisting social policies that nobody wants.
@Clapper57
Mr Nicolson is lucky the pish he’s peddling is also only seen in the Twitter vacuum.
It’s quite astonishing to see the fuckin arrogance of some of these individuals claiming support is all down to them and their policies and has nothing to do with the years of efforts put in by the local grass roots activists building support in the areas these twats were parachuted into as candidates.
That’ll be grass roots activists like me who was out biking round rural communities in minus 10 temps in December for days, plus weeks spent chasing voter registrations from dozens of folk that had dropped off the electoral register, along with delivering election material, to get SNP candidates elected.
I did that yet can’t get a single response from the chosen ones in the Party when they specifically contacted me stating to get in touch if there is anything they can assist with re. Covid and lockdown matters.
I’m still fucking waiting… 3 weeks on.
I need to get rid of the 6 sets of boards I’m storing from the 3 polling stations I covered in December. I’d burn the fucking things as a protest but I know an Indy joiner spent time and money on materials making them.
“Progressive and liberal society”, what like his Party trying to stop jury trials, sitting on serious allegations for political leverage, hate speech bill, ignoring biological reality and trashing women’s hard thought for rights, allowing us to lose our EU Citizenship against our expressed will, the man’s a fuckin dolt.
Golfnut says:2 May, 2020 at 5:23 pm
Thanks Golfnut
I didn’t want to get bogged down in my post about the total inadequacies and incompetence of the UK governments response before the lock down where we are in the total mess as needless loss of life that we see now.
The Tories have a plan remember!
The old ones that survive will be told Boris saved them!
Don’t forget the Tory Think Tank headed up by Mr Universal Discredit himself
Iain Duncan Smith that suggest the UK retirement age needs to be 75.
I’m sure most Scots can be worked to death after 60 years of toil.
90% of us could ever afford £1,000 per week for a Care Home bed
While we are working.
I think the Tories will send us James Dyson gun capable of firing once as a 75 birthday present.
Assistance can be arranged for those with arthritic fingers.
ffijy says: 2 May, 2020 at 5:29 pm
I mind reading a link that said in the early part of the 20th century, before the 1945 Labour victory, the UK retirement age was about that which IDS mentioned. The reasoning being was that most people didn’t live to that age and therefore the state didn’t need to pay much out.
The entire SNP management appear to be a bunch of fucking idiots.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human
Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine
https://rm.coe.int/168007cf98
A section of Scotland’s politicians and judiciary pose a serious threat to open society. These clowns will not stop until they have destroyed open democracy and the potential for justice. And we hope that these fuckwits will protect Scotland from English Torydum and Berxit?
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights
Adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at its twenty-ninth session on 11 November 1997; endorsed by General Assembly resolution 53/152 of 9 December 1998
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/HumanGenomeAndHumanRights.aspx
Why are most people in care homes because their famiies put them their so they don’t have to look after them .My father died at home with us we fed him changed him and loved him we gave him the care he needed and considered it an honour this man who spent his life working round the clock to bring us up and feed us and love us deserved no less myMother died suddenly from a stroke so we never gotlook after her but I assure you we would have no care home I know everyone’s circumstances are not the same but I also know that some have forgotten the law of gratitude as it says in the bible as you did unto the least of them did you also unto me I do not wish to upset or offend anyone but I just had to say i
On this David Icke thing,is this the same David Icke that predicted that Arran would sink?
I have heard a rumour on Youtube that the Democrats in USA have been floating the idea of a ‘mail in’ vote ,the same as our postal vote . It is interesting that First Minister has same idea.So much about this crisis seems co-incidental to me and Sturgeon is a keen fan of the thief and murderer Hillary Clinton. Postal/mail in vote? Co-incidence
The Honest Government broadcasts are very good. Their latest informative effort is on The Machine. But the back catalogue is good too. 3 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWl7kQZHZE0
`A possible treatment for COVID-19 using plasma from patients who have recovered from the virus is being trialed at London’s Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospital.
The treatment, known as convalescent plasma, involves blood plasma donations from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 being transfused into coronavirus patients whose bodies are not producing enough of their own antibodies against the virus,`
nearly 3 weeks ago,
Scot Finlayson says:
13 April, 2020 at 9:13 am
Would a blood transfusion from someone that has had and survived the virus maybe help in someone going through the virus,
just a thought.
@Dog biscuit
I’ve also noticed the distinct similarities between the Alex Salmond WITCH HUNT and the antics of rotten US Dems (e.g. Kavanaugh WITCH HUNT & Impeachment CLOWN CIRCUS – based on Democrat/rogue deep-state emotions/hearsay/opinion/projection/conjecture ‘evidence’).
Quote of the day “We only have the hospital figures for the number of Johnson babies. The true figure is likely to be MUCH higher.”
msean says:
On this David Icke thing,is this the same David Icke that predicted that Arran would sink?
Yes, he did and he also ‘revealed’ that the queen was actually a lizard with human skin used to hide her true appearance.
Obviously he was wrong about Arran! 🙂
David Icke said the royal family were lizards. Can’t be all bad.
Just saying.
@Scott Finlayson
Would a blood transfusion from someone that has had and survived the virus maybe help in someone going through the virus,
They’ve been doing that in US for a month with some good effect.
Remdesivir, an anti viral drug used for Ebola seems to be the latest big hope for therapy.
Pacman
every life lost is a tragedy for the family concerned, the NHS staff involved and for our society. Maybe this will be a catalyst for a whole lot more people to query their political views.
Why are we creating crowd funding sites and allowing 100 year old men to push themselves physically to provide PPE for the NHS. It should not be provisioned by charity!
Any other business sending its employees into dangerous work without the correct PPE would have the Health and Safety People down on them like a ton of bricks with prosecutions etc.
How does the WM gov get round this, by downgrading Covid 19 from a really serious contagious disease requiring full gowns, goggles, masks etc to a not so serious disease only requiring aprons. masks and gloves. Nifty way to make sure you don’t get prosecuted.
Not sure the courts will buy it if any NHS staff feel inclined to bring a lawsuit – oh I just remembered most of the nurses, porters, junior doctors, cleaners etc can’t afford justice.
So much for a civilised society – as Blair Paterson says above, we put them into granny farms and forget about them. Mind you, look what happened in Spain and Italy ( and Asian families) where three generations are in one house.
And suddenly we don’t need to be 2 metres apart any more??? Not sure about that one.
Seems the French are in it for the long haul.
https://twitter.com/fidelmacook/status/1256586596192849920
Effijy
When I was in my early thirties ( half a life ago) I used to say that by the time I retired in 2016, there probably wouldn’t be pensions anymore ( not far wrong as I’ve got to wait till I’m 66 and I can see that changing yet) but I also said that we would probably be given compulsory euthanasia pills on our 75th birthdays – not sure I would want to use a Dyson gun- can’t stand his products as they are so noisy and create really awful high frequency sounds that are really damaging to hearing. My cats are terrified of them and run a mile anytime I use the ‘hoover’ which ‘inherited’.
My 94 year old Auntie is in a council run care home. They have all the proper PPE, full gowns, visors etc and have had 5 suspected Covid cases each of which tested negative so there are some places out there carrying out miracles. I take my hat off to the staff as it must be so, so hard.
For those thinking the problem with testing is the lack of infrastructure to deal with the positive results
https://twitter.com/DanielleYorks/status/1256276364623257606
WARNING
Prepare for some serious squirming of the toes if you have not yet seen the footage of the test being administered
To wear or not to wear?
This track and test seems like another way of tracking every move to you make.
I for one will not be installing any app that gives the authorities another tool in their Box to spy on you.
Virus or no Virus,,,I will never give them even more powers to control your life
Thin end of the wedge and all that.
re. tracing apps. Good idea but potentially a source of intrusion into personal privacy. Unfortunately, Scotland is no longer protected by EU law.
COVID-19 tracing apps: side effects on personal data protection should be avoided
https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/corona-apps-chair-of-the-committee-of-convention-108-and-data-protection-commissioner-on-the-need-to-avoid-unwanted-effects
@ Mike Cassidy.
I think what this farce of a test demonstrates is that the uk gov doesn’t have a plan, they don’t have a process or procedures that come into play using the information from the test. The tests are just part of a numbers game, not part of a strategy to get us out of this mess,smoke and mirrors, nothing more.
The governments may be malfunctioning but at least the YouTube algorithm is working ok, with a prescient Hale and Pace offering from years ago.
Social Distance Bar Fight(2mins)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juaQvrlsZw
It seems that in North Ayrshire we dodged a bullet in 2015. John Nicolson was on the selection list for the seat until he dropped out so he could be defeated by Jo Swinson in East Dunbartonshire. (Would a better candidate have beaten her?) I was suspicious of him as soon as he mentioned working for the BBC.. Fortunately the excellent Patricia Gibson won the nomination and the seat. Feel sorry for any SNP workers in Ochil who have wasted time and money helping elect the charlatan Nicolson.
Blair, that was an unfair comment. I had a relative who had to go into care, because another relative was disabled and there simply wasn’t the ability to care for 3 people in the immediate family with serious health issues, none caused by lifestyle either. Please don’t make sweeping statements.
Just think if the SNP had put as much effort into test, trace, isolate in the beginning as they have into GRA and Hate Crime then maybe we could have saved a couple of thousand lives in Scotland rather than building up court cases against a government sometime in the future.
The old saying is oppositions don’t win elections it’s the party in power that loses them.
I’ve been voting SNP for almost 30 years but the arrogance emanating from some of their elected MP’s is starting to smell. Some of them have started to believe the public is their to serve them. I don’t think I need to mention any names, everybody on here will know who they are.
@dakk,7.33
Remdesivir didn’t do too well in the clinical trials but it is being approved anyway.
With early intervention, the treatment which does work is chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine and/or the older drugs used to combat HIV. This was used successfully in China and Singapore. An example of another country which has proved the efficacy of this treatment is Algeria https://www.observalgerie.com/coronavirus-les-specialistes-font-le-bilan-du-traitement-a-la-chloroquine/2020/
@ Fairliered at 9.36
In 2015, he did defeat her. It was in 2017 that she returned the favour, possibly because he was such a waste of space that even she was preferable to the electorate. Given a better candidate two years later, they booted her out again.
OK, here one for all members of the SNP. If you don’t clear the trans-activist from the party, the SNP can’t be considered supportive of law that is universal and impartial. This is why they are currently as useful to Scotland as a chocolate teapot.
Liberty, solidarity and the biopolitics of COVID-19
https://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/blog/liberty-solidarity-and-the-biopolitics-of-covid-19
@Aberdeen Pict (1.34), Cirsium (4.41) et al –
I tweeted, this morning, that it’s ‘fuckin criminal’ that weans can’t get out to enjoy the fresh air and unusually long spell of sunshine we’ve been having of late. I can’t even source the original tweet now because I had to delete it after a deluge of genuinely angry responses.
The denial and fear surrounding this issue is quite incredible. I’ve only been an ‘active’ tweeter for three years or so, and don’t recall deleting more than 3 or 4 tweets out of almost 70K. (I only remember ‘deleting’ a tweet if I’d been asked to do so, or if I’d realised it was factually wrong. I’ve never been suspended or banned from Twitter.)
But this, today, felt different – my phrasing may have been awry, the ‘point’ nebulous to some, but the reaction was swift and vicious and intense. Remarkably so. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t be remarking on it.)
There’s a lot of fear and ignorance out there, in places you really don’t expect to find it.
It gets a bit testy, at times, in here, aye, but for the most part we just disagree, with varying degrees of name-calling, and that’s it.
Out there, in Twitterland? Express the slightest doubt about the ‘official’ narrative (I daresday FB is the same) and ye’re an instant monster.
Dangerous days we’re in, chums.
Mind how ye go there!
🙂
Boris and Cummings obviously have a plan, but what is it?
Is it to kill off the elderly and infirm?
Is it to kill off badly run businesses?
I have been trying to get to the bottom of their thinking and can honestly say, I haven’t got a clue what they are up to.
All their state handouts end in June, so if we continue the lockdown into the autumn, are they going to be able to afford this policy of giving out Billions without any tax takes to cover it.?
I am completely baffled,
and maybe I am wrong, maybe Boris and Cummings don’t have a clue what is happening either.
I was sent a WhatsApp I appreciated.
It shows a UK Nurse at the till with people queuing behind.
The Nurse is look up inside her upturned purse with nothing
Falling out.
She asks if they take Clapping or Rainbow Drawings?
Exactly! Stop insulting these people who are risking their lives daily
For miserably poor pay and conditions.
https://www.facebook.com/100017164360009/videos/635767063672100/?fref=mentions&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARAWBYqupnNo3y-hGQYK78Nudx10Q3fdAVvK6btX6FyjF5SoRh-cfHTH0Hx7p8-ZeW2uIFf7qaJkGNaOflp7pjFpYSfFdY0BEpp-5tCkF2I_9GIiAhaqG1ZlxJWen58vOeb3wHvpQR795hmtzSemhmUBwBvdjYSLBEBXAHKmaMdJTROmfJmlPdGDat6ybGtIiNLleBMijGL99yqzhrfstZX3lEGJsA&__tn__=KH-R
As a retired secondary school teacher I’m glad I don’t have to face the prospect of teaching classes in the present covid pandemic. Don’t fancy travelling in planes, trains, buses and taxis. Don’t fancy going to a cinema, theatre, football stadium, pub or restaurant either.
The Tory government have bungled and lied their way through this crisis heavily supported by most of the MSM who never seem to hold them to account and are literally letting them away with murder.
I live in Prestwick am a member of the SNP where our MP is the superb Philippa Whitford. Philippa is an MP desperate for Scotland to achieve its Independence, she works hard, is approachable and down to earth. I like her a lot and am happy to work and vote her in if needed ( hopefully we will be Independent before the next UK election )
In the next Scottish parliament election are people supporting Scottish Independence actively going to stop the SNP regaining power by not voting or by voting Tory or Labour or Libdem or Green ? There is no other party available to vote for if you support Scottish independence. If you don’t like some SNP policies, personnel or ideas then change them from within the party.
If the SNP is defeated next year then there is no chance whatsoever of Scottish independence. Well not in my life time.
Old Pete – Well said!
Old Pete
I dearly want independence and dearly want to support the SNP, but their current legal position is harmful to the fabric of international human rights law. This is because their legal horizons are defined by British constitutional practice and trans-activism, which are detached from the Natural Law. So the party is dangerously parochial and myopic in its’ approach to the law. This needs to change pronto, IMHO.
Full text.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40901-016-0020-9
The SNP’s current legal position can not be considered supportive of global health, justice, or sustainability. Full text.
Normative Foundations of Global Health Law
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3988830/
Millennium
There job was Brexit and judging by the UKs refusal to allow EU offices in Belfast, Cardiff or Edinburgh as they agreed to, looks like they’re going to brazen it out.
Further down the line, I do wonder how all these Scottish Tories are going to defend their positions of not just being part of this right wing Govt but enabling the even more extreme right wing to hustle them into making the decisions they are ?
Effigy @ 11.31
While I take your point…I still think clapping is a very personal decision.
It wasn’t originally a Westminster/Media suggestion,or even one from our own Government.If it had been I’d be one of the first to say “have not a thing to do with it”!
I think Westminster saw after the first week how popular it was, and decided to piggy back on to it,and try to own it.
Nevertheless…I still do it and will continue to.
I have two family members in the NHS, (one in particular is an intensive care nurse) who are both touched by it and really look forward to it every week.
I clapped for them and unless and until they find it distasteful, I’ll join in…they can’t be the only one’s who feel this way,so while there’s one frontline worker drawing something positive, Fuck Westminster and their media ,me and mine know why we’re takin part and we’ll do it despite of their sanction,not because of it!!!
As an aside…I still think it scares the shit out of them too 🙂
@bipod, 5:03
thanks for that link. So the experiment hasn’t worked.
@Ronnie, 11:58
I couldn’t access the Facebook clip. I found the following article educational https://journal-neo.org/2020/04/15/the-remarkable-doctor-a-fauci/
Old Pete says:
“If you don’t like some SNP policies, personnel or ideas then change them from within the party.”
Can someone who is in the SNP tell me, Is that still possible?
The gradualist strategy has achieved all the objectives that it set out to do when it was adopted 25 years ago.
It has proved that the SNP is capable of Government.
Support for independence has doubled.
The Unionist parties and the union it’s self are at thier lowest ebb since it’s inception.
The “lend us your vote”, to protest against X,Y & Z plea, is no longer relevant.
It is time for the SNP champion the cause that it was set up to achieve – Independence for Scotland.
I would like to see the party fight the next election with an unequivocal promise that victory will mean INDEPENDENCE.
I would like to think that no constituency would select a prospective candidates who did not endorse that policy.
I would also like to think that no vetting committee would rubber-stamp anyone who didn’t.
Are there enough of the party’s internal democracy procedures sufficiently intact, to make it worthwhile tying to put it back on track?
@ronnie anderson
Er! Thanks Ronnie. That’s pretty scary stuff. 🙁
@ Old Pete 11.59pm Pete this is a comment I posted on Peter A Bell’s latest post , sorry for length
Wishart’s snide and petty comments aligned with Nicolson blocking anyone who has an alternative view on the GRA and Hate bill indicates to me that the SNP has not only been infiltrated by the woke brigade but has been totally commandeered by them and the woke commander
Wishart likes to CROW about the SNP lead in the polls but as we all know that lead can disappear in a heartbeat once people are enlightened to the effects these reviled bills will have on our womenfolk , our Mothers , our Aunts , our Sisters , our Wifes , our Grandmothers , our Daughters , and our Granddaughters , but throw them ALL under a bus to satisfy 0.01% of the population just to appear the most progressive of progressives
Wishart alongside others in the party like to THINK that the SNP’S current standing in the polls is down to their policies , where is the proof of that , I would disagree , I think the lead is due to the total clusterfuck bozo the clown and his circus is making of the pandemic , and let’s face it NS is just following WM but presenting it with more empathy and gravitas
I BEG and PLEAD to the SNP membership , if you believe in an independent Scotland PLEASE take back your party , even if it means FORCING NS to stand down and replacing her with Joanna Cherry and force her to take the union to the ICJ
——————————————-
BELIEVE me Pete I am as desperate as anyone for independence , but what the SNP hierarchy are doing amounts to BLACKMAIL ,if you don’t vote for us you will get a yoonionist twats SG , dissenting voters and members who are outraged at the SNP’s policies have LITERALLY no one to vote for , so obviously if and when the SNP are defeated due to their lunatic reviled policies it will be us dissenters to blame , rather than NS and her woke brigade who will just not listen to women and voters , many people will just abstain rather than vote for a unionist party but it will have the same effect
As I posted up comment I PLEAD with the SNP membership to take back control of the party to enable US dissenters to be able to elect them again , the BALL is in the memberships hands
For anyone who has started reading research papers in order to make sense of this pandemic, I would highly recommend reading a book called ‘The seven deadly sins of research’ before you take research as gospel.
I am immediately suspicious of research that compares the overall infection/death rates of one country over another and attempts to come to conclusions based on the raw data.
Compound variables are variables that would explain the findings rather than the variable being tested and quite a few springs to mind looking at this research. for starters, what about the political approach taken by each countries governments? or how about the level of public adherence to lockdown? maybe the amount of PPE and how quickly it was available to staff at care homes? the quality of PPE?
However, the killer for me is that none of the ‘lockdown’ countries mentioned are yet out of lockdown and none of the non-lockdown countries are through the pandemic yet, so how can someone claim that research shows A and B show no significantly different rates of growth if the full growth rates are not yet fully known?
Just to add to the comment above; the ‘seven deadly sins’ book is recommended to university students who are doing research as part of their course.
It shows that we have a problem with many researchers desperate to get noticed and submitting papers that they know will get ‘headlines’ so the more controversial the content is, the better.
Of course, once it’s peer-reviewed it will be rejected, but by that time the researchers will have their paper published, and sometimes that is the focus of their paper rather than the adding to scientific knowledge.
Not a million miles away from the MSM’s approach to bringing us the truth!
Has the revs new twitter account been suspended?
Old Pete at 1159pm,
I understand your feelings. Until around a year ago, I held on to the belief that whatever I may disagree with, I’d hold my nose and vote SNP to get indy. At the most recent general election, I was so fed up with Nicola’s dithering over independence and failing to assert Scotland’s rights regarding brexit, I was not going to vote. However, she appeared at a do in George Square Glasgow, and I genuinely believed that if she had a good result, she would feel confident to stand up to Westminster. I also based my decision on Iain Blackford’s constant declarations that Scotland would not be taken out of the EU against its wishes.
I voted SNP at that last general election, and what happened? I saw NS cheering some good results on TV, but when push came to shove regarding Scotland and Brexit, she dithered yet again, did nothing, made what is perhaps the most shallow and pathetic speech ever, from Bute House.
NS and the SNP have sat back, and let Boris the Cllown forcibly remove Scotland from the EU, wholly and completely against our democratically expressed wishes. They did not asserts our rights both under the union treaty and our Scottish constitutional principles. They did nothing. All talk, no action. Blowhards, I think they call them in the USA.
It is simply not acceptable. She is a failed First Minister, surrounded by goons who want to dictate how people MUST think, and conceited MP’s who think they are above debate or disagreement. The SNP spend their time wittering on about gender, when in reality polling shows it is NOT what folk want.
Sad as it is, I now genuinely believe the SNP will NEVER make the slightest attempt at independence, while Nicola Strugeon and her husband Peter Murrell are in charge.
Yes, there are still some of their MP’s who clearly do want independence, Joanna Cherry for one. But all I see, is a party filled with sycophants, greasy pole climbers and the bearded wokerati(who seemingly have taken over ALL policy decisions).
Independence is on the back bunrer in the SNP. In the last five years the SNP have had opportunity after opportunity to go for indy, where the whole world was watching and waiting and would have understood, but they did nothing.
Nicola Sturgeon and her coterie of sycophants are all doing rather well out of it. Good careers, very good money, and a wee bit of pretendy power. It seems Nicola Sturgeon is quite happy with that. In a few years, she and her husband will retire, and will go off into the sunset with very big bank balances, gold plated pension pots, and that will be that. Independence? wayyyy too much bother.
We, on the other hand, will still be marching, shouting;
‘what do we want? Independence, when do we want it? well not quite now, not until the circumstances are just perfect and we know more about the impact of brexit and know in full what Westminster’s plans are, and only once we can see polling at more than 60% in favour of indy, but even then, we will need to set up a group to work out or strategy for the next four years, to aim for getting cross- party support for indy, and of course, we’ll only hold an independence referendum, if we ask London nicely and they say yes’.
And, much as I share your passion, Old Pete for indy, for those reasons, I will not be voting SNP, until they have a leader who actually puts indy as their number one priority, before anything else. Oh and the other reason for not voting SNP is their homophobic gender recognition bill.
Hi cirsium at 1:43 am.
You typed,
“@Ronnie, 11:58
I couldn’t access the Facebook clip. I found the following article educational https://journal-neo.org/2020/04/15/the-remarkable-doctor-a-fauci/“
Here’s Ronnie’s video on YouTube:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yK3uXjp_hQ
Hear, hear! @ twathater and Robert Louis.
The use of blood plasma and anti viral drugs to treat Covid-19 patients is described in the Chinese Medical Journal published on 28th February. Many other interesting observations. I posted a link some time ago but ICYMI:
https://journals.lww.com/cmj/pages/collectiondetails.aspx?TopicalCollectionId=2
@ Patrick Roden – i can see the twitter account OK. He has updated the graphics. The charming self portrait with a jar of what seemed to be insects is no longer there. 🙁
https://twitter.com/RevStu
I honestly believe the power rush Nicola Sturgeon is on has went to her head.
She just loves hearing her own voice.
Her ego ratings are through the roof.
Her delusions of grandeur are through the roof.
It seems it’s going to be Nicola’s way or it will be the highway.
The Lady is not for turning.
She is surrounded by people who will never question her judgement.
In Sturgeon’s eyes, she is up there and we are way down here.
Something dramatic will need to happen from within the SNP inner circle for her to be brought down, and Only those with access to that circle will know how to start the process of changing things at the top of the SNP.
Nicola’s peak has long since past, she is now on a personal journey, where only Nicola’s dreams will come true.
There is talk that all this showboating is a dress rehearsal for a job at the UN,,that maybe so, but one thing is for sure, she has completely forgot why she was put into the position she is in, which was to put Scottish Independence, front and centre of of her decision making.
This is where Nicola’s thinking got somewhat lost and ended up being , how far can Nicola Sturgeon climb that self serving Political ladder.
What we need to start hearing is dissenting voices from within the higher echelons of the SNP.
For the sake of Scottish Independence we need to start hearing these voices very very soon.
FFS, I just wish somebody from within the SNP would grow a pair.
And I am fully behind a list Indy Party starting up.
@Cappella.
I suspect Patrick, like myself, can’t see the Rev’s tweets and retweets embedded at the top right of this page anymore.
If the SNP is happy to be a political opponent of the World Health Organisation, then all they have to do is to continue disrespecting international law, and complete their assault on a legal respect for biology. Then the SNP will be a proper party for parochially minded fascists.
International Law and Global Public Health
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1655&context=facpub
I don’t like the GRA nonsense and i’m very unhappy that First Minister and others in the SNP appear to have sidelined independence. Hold on – we are in the middle of a murderous pandemic! Nicola has done very well during this horror – not just my opinion but the opinion of many in England and some of the media. I can’t believe that people on here are saying they won’t vote SNP and also write that they are desperate for independence. I’m desperate for Scottish independence too and I won’t benefit as I live in England. If the SNP lose power in Scotland we will NEVER acheive independence. Even, independence aside, do you want Tories or Labour in power in Scotland. I know some feel that this is in SNP thinking ie they think we won’t vote for unionists at any price which means SNP get continuing power. Not sure that we can prove that and as i’ve written before if you really want independence “we only have one bus at this time”! Concerned that the few who started this “Nicola and the SNP bad” meme are winning the battle. Nobody suspicious? Nobody concerned about the old empire “divide and rule” practices? It may just need one last shove folks! My opinion – rant away!
Bill McLean
I hear you Bill, but the SNP’s current approach to the law poses a serious threat to Scottish democracy, and the international rule-of-law. The SNP will not be in a position to defend Scotland, while their approach to the law remains antagonistic to Natural Law. Scotland needs legal champions, not solicitors who are happy to stand under the authority British constitutionalism, which lacks adequate moral foundations.
International Health Law
https://brill.com/view/journals/yido/1/1/article-p445_445.xml
@Bill McLean
It’s results we should be measuring success by, I admit NS is better at presenting the death figures than the UK government, but Scotland is in the top ten of deaths/million of countries, in reality I call that failure.
I want a leader not a competent presentation manager.
Bill McLean says:
3 May, 2020 at 10:10 am
….I can’t believe that people on here are saying they won’t vote SNP and also write that they are desperate for independence. I’m desperate for Scottish independence too and I won’t benefit as I live in England. If the SNP lose power in Scotland we will NEVER acheive independence…..
I hear what you’re saying Bill, and I know where you’re coming from, but personally I cannot see my way past the SNP’s complete abdication of Scotland’s Constitutional Sovereignty and their gutless capitulation over Brexit. Between Brexit and the Sovereignty of the Scottish people, we had everything necessary to bring down the Union, and put the BritNat Brexiteering Tories in the dock for making it happen.
Open goals don’t come any wider, nor do they stay open for upwards of 5 years. Unfortunately with the SNP in charge, the open goal could stay open for 100 years and they still wouldn’t find the back of the net.
All this conspiracy against Alex Salmond reeks of infiltration and subversion of Independence ideals, and just as sinister as the elements agitating disruption, like the Salmond Conspirators, there is an equally troubling complacency about the whole rotten stink. Leslie Evans should have been booted out months ago.
The Plague of Wokists is equally troubling. Not just weak people abusing influential positions for their own self interest, but the whole business is a ticking time bomb. Nicola Sturgeon gets slated in the press because she makes announcements ahead of Downing Street. But strangely, when it’s SNP strategy to drive through GRA reforms which compromise womens’ rights, there isn’t a peep about it. The Press is saving the GRA project for when it does the most damage….
I don’t care about Party politics Bill. I’m not tribal. I’ll vote for what a Party stands for, and right now, there’s an open spot waiting for a Constitutionally driven Independence Party. That means I’m currently voting for a Party which doesn’t exist… yet.
It really is that simple. If the SNP wants my vote, they need to embrace Scotland’s Sovereign Constitution in the very immediate future. Unfortunately, I fear under Sturgeon there is absolutely no prospect of that happening.
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/1256726577334964233
Or alternatively… “Let’s hope the public never catch up with the bin fire that passes for the proposed GRA reforms, and how certain voices are not being funded or listened to in that process”…
IIRC have the Conservatives not already stated they would weaponise this subject as and when they feel the need? If so, when they do, along with their compliant media press, I’m not confident the SNP Rebuttal Unit will manage to counter it.
From further down that tweet thread.
https://twitter.com/MrEuroScot/status/1256864070365523968
@ susan says:
3 May, 2020 at 8:18 am
Hear, hear! @ twathater and Robert Louis
Completely concur.
Bill McClean 10.10
I think you have been in England too long
Nicola Sturgeon had took over full ownership of the SNP for her own personal gain
What we want is that ownership transfered back to the Scottish people.
Bill you miss the point completely,
As I said, you have been in England too Long.
It is clear the FM and her hanger-on, thinks rather highly of themselves, as they appears to consider their judgement superior to the jurisprudence of international law. That’s a dangerous excess of ego, that is.
International Law Impact and Infectious Disease (ILIAID) Consortium
Examining issues relating to the governance and impact of international law on infectious diseases
https://ghss.georgetown.edu/iliaid/
SNP leadership challenges should be talked about, right now, and I would go further, SNP leadership challenges should be undertaken right now.
This is to let any potential new leader bed in and prepare for next year’s election being fought on an INDY ticket.
@ Breeks at 10.38: what if the SNP have taken legal advice on enforcing the Treaty of Union and the advice is that we would lose? That the centuries of going along with the breaches of it by Westminster mean that Scotland has accepted the Westminster system? It would look bad if such a case were taken and lost, would it not? Other methods might be better.
I do think we should be asserting Scotland’s position as a nation right now. I would take Craig Murray’s advice that is based on how most countries’ achieve independence – a vote in parliament. The Brexit vote is a good basis for convincing the international community of Scotland’s right to so declare.
UK government has enough on its plate right now so it is a good moment to seize.
British constitutional practice and trans-activism are incompatible with international human rights law. Supporting both suggests the SNP really do not have a clue about the rule-of-law. As such, they are currently powerless to defend Scotland from the cultural misogyny of Brexit and English Torydum.
Full text.
IS HUMAN RIGHTS PREPARED?
RISK, RIGHTS AND PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCIES
https://academic.oup.com/medlaw/article/17/2/219/939461
Hi Dan at 10:03 am.
You typed,
“I suspect Patrick, like myself, can’t see the Rev’s tweets and retweets embedded at the top right of this page anymore.”
Where the tweets should be, it has “Unable to load Tweets”.
You can read them here though.
https://twitter.com/RevStu
Robert Louis at 7:33
I’m afraid Robert that I can’t agree…
If you had used the term ‘paper tigers’ as opposed to “blowhards” then I would have been able to agree with 100% of what you had written.
As it stands, I can only agree with 99.999%.
Sorry.
Breeks at 10:38. Can’t find it within myself to disagree with anything in what you say either.
It certainly feels as though the wheels have come off the SNP juggernaut where Indy is concerned. I can only hope that Salmond’s book results in a night of the long knives and a clear out from the top down. It’ll be messy, but what we’ve seen since 2014 is that we are going nowhere for the foreseeable if things don’t change at the top.
@ Old Pete @ 11.59pm on 2 May
Hi Pete….I totally respect where you are coming from and like others I understand your fear when you said “If the SNP is defeated next year then there is no chance whatsoever of Scottish independence. Well not in my life time”.
However I think the point some people are making is that we seem , via the SNP, to have stalled…indefinitely…..lots of talk and no action…adopting a carrot and stick policy towards members…so perhaps we need a new Indy party to emerge to shake up the complacency that seems to have seeped into certain individuals within the SNP….I say complacency but perhaps I mean disregard for those of us who, as loyal independence supporters, are now being demonised and condemned for not accepting …..or rather daring to challenge….policies that seem to have no connection to the supposed ultimate goal of the SNP which is to….get independence for Scotland.
You know Pete we criticise other political parties because they constantly mention independence more than the SNP….perhaps we should be criticising the SNP for NOT mentioning it more…a tad ironic that we should accuse other political parties of being obsessed with independence and at the same time give a free pass to the very party whose existence is supposedly to enforce it….and yet for some weird reason seem too fearful to address it…as if it is wrong as a concept….if the SNP are always defensive on Indy it gives the impression that they, as a party, are somehow trying to defend a flawed concept as opposed to what should be presented as a normal, acceptable and achievable position for your country to be in….and one that is financially viable via presenting evidence as facts…would work better than the SNP’s constant surveys testing the water …water which is becoming kinda stagnant….and that’s not down to the Indy supporters that is down to the SNP as a party.
The SNP are not doing that…instead they are being sidetracked by some within the party dictating their own personal mission which bears no relation to independence and to quote George Foulkes…” They are doing it deliberately”….
ps. I do agree that Phillipa W is a very competent MP and you are lucky to have her as your political representative.
Take care Pete and have a nice day.
Very moving cartoon, Chris.
Gives us so much information and insight. We knew a pandemic was coming, we even brexited. But we did nothing about it, we didn’t prepare, or at least the powers that be didn’t give us the opportunity.
There are always parallels in life. The next big one is climate change. We know what could come and what are we gonna let the powers that be do for us?
We do need to have a Scotland that looks to building society not bank balances.
As ma mammy used to say “hell mind ye”
@ Me @ 11.38am
“The SNP are not doing that”….meant to be ” The SNP are not acting like a Indy party striving for independence”
Millenium , excellent although I think she serves a higher Trans Atlantic power.
The Ronnie Anderson link is fascinating or have I just given it the kiss of death?
When you become deaf, dumb and blind to the patently obvious, you are verging on becoming a dictatorial leader.
DO YOU HEAR US NICOLA?
DO YOU SEE US NICOLA?
SPEAK TO US NICOLA!!!
The party that will get my vote is the one that puts independence as its primary objective. The unionist will play on this claiming they are interested in nothing else, but nothing can really be achieved until this primary objective is obtained. We will always be playing second fiddle to another countries objectives and just tinkering round the edges.
One to ponder is if Charles Stuart had made it to London would he have been content just to take Scotland’s crown or become Pete Wishart and found the climate and the cut of their jib down south much more to his satisfaction.
Dog Biscuit
Please elaborate Dog,
Always keen to hear what others think of what exactly is going on inside the Sturgeon head.
Although I know for a fact, it has nothing to do with Scottish Independence.
Old Pete is spot on and those who shout they’re not voting SNP – how exactly do they propose Scotland gets to independence when the inevitable result would be Holyrood & Westminster seats filled with LibDem Tories, Labour Tories and Tories rather than SNP?
The list-only party proposals are fine as long as it’s done right in the right areas, and would even up the unfair independence/unionist imbalance that exists currently but that’s as far as it goes IMO.
No, the only way is for those on here shouting the odds about SNP Bad etc is to JOIN the SNP, go to the meetings and propose change from within.
James
Yet another who is completely missing the point.
Sturgeon has taken personal ownership of the SNP.
We want it back.
The plan being that at next year’s election we fight it on an INDY ticket, backed up by a new list Party who will also fight it on an INDY ticket.
77% of people in teh UK support teh lockdown being extended:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2020/05/01/39a7a/1?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=daily_questions&utm_campaign=question_1
As is becoming clearer, the reason the government insists on the lockdown is not because they have any scientific evidence that shows that it has had any effect on the spread of the virus (there is an increasing body of evidence that shows that it has had no effect, and that measures like hand washing were far more successful) it is more based on public opinion, and the British public have been scared stiff. Why hasn’t the MSM reported that the virus is not as deadly as first thought? Instead we get daily death counts, Nicola sturgeon threatening “devasting consequences” if people don’t adhere to the lockdown.
My perception is that a lot of people think this is a bit of a holiday. The lucky ones get to “work” from home, and the rest get free government money for not doing anything. People are totally ignorant to the fact that the economy is being wrecked, and it will effect everyone eventually.
In response to and in support of many:
Time for ‘The Scottish Independence Party’.
– a political party that strives for what it says on the tin. Otherwise many are simply disenfranchised.
@James
Those proposals wouldn’t see the light of day under the present hierarchy.
@James
I could ask the same about voting SNP, in the last three Westminster elections they have had 94%, 60% and 80% of the Scottish seats in a parliament that 50.0001% of the seats is a majority, nothing has been achieved. Even if they took 100% of the seats I suspect nothing would happen.
Winning in Holyrood seems pointless as the UK parliament has indicated it is supreme and can ignore any constitutional declarations from it. No matter how we vote the UK parliament will change the rules to suit, we need a bolder initiative.
@James 11:55am
‘No, the only way is for those on here shouting the odds about SNP Bad etc is to JOIN the SNP, go to the meetings and propose change from within.’
Any mention of independence will go straight into the too difficult drawer.
Ian B. An organized Twitter pile on perhaps?
International law stands above national law. The Treaty of Union is part of international law, but Brexit insists British constitutional law is superior to the legal authority of international jurisprudence. So standing under the authority of contemporary British constitutionalism, suggests a deep cultural colonisation of intellect and imagination.
April 27, 2020
We Can ‘Recover Better’ Through The Art of Law in the International Community
https://www.ejiltalk.org/we-can-recover-better-through-the-art-of-law-in-the-international-community/
Hmm!
Partner Karen, much muttering filling in a new panel base poll with questions about the AS trial and corona virus measures.
I don’t get to look but one Q she volunteered was something like
If Scotland got independence should the SNP disband and if so which other party would you vote for? (kinda thing)
She’s Winging her way through it! 🙂
Jings!
All the crosswords taking ages today…too many French and Latin place name spellings. 🙁
‘The fact is here we are in the summer of 2019, five years on from the 2014 referendum – tonight will be the first time that I have delivered a speech on independence in five years. The SNP’s not campaigned for independence for five years, the Yes movement has to some extent been on the sidelines.’
Ian Blackford in an interview with Greg Russell – ‘The National’ 8 June 2019
I don’t think anything has changed since.
Jfngw you preach to the converted.
Is this some kind of joke?
“VE Day 2020 celebrations: We’ll Meet Again doorstep singalong and a reading from Prince Charles announced”.
https://inews.co.uk/news/ve-day-commemorations-2020-well-meet-again-dame-vera-lynn-prince-charles-2553284
Are you going to stand at your door and sing this Vera Lynne song next Friday?
While joyously waving the Butchers Apron.
Don’t think so.
@callmedave
Seems a pointless question, it would be up to a political party if they want to disband, opinion is irrelevant.
Who would I vote for, without the SNP the choice is dire, the quality is abysmal. Rennie is a chancer, Carlaw is hopeless London sycophant and Leonard doesn’t even reach this level of competence. They are no worse than the UK versions mind you.
I must be getting too old, the politician’s seem to be getting worse, or possibly they were always this bad and I was just too naive to notice.
O/T Ayemail’s appeal hasn’t shifted since my modest donation yesterday – still at 151 donors, total £3,680, target £6,500.
If you can spare a bit it is “ayeMail emergency appeal” on donorbox.org.
Her pursuit of her political enemies through the courts her hardline on what I believe is an exagerated flu crisis the lack of a release date for the public.You do realise thats a life sentence? Dont you? The WHO I suspect us run by Mengele types. Does that require elaboration?
I prefer Lily Marlene.
@Dog biscuit
It’s not preaching, it’s opinion. That’s all BTL comments are, I’m under no illusion that I will change anyone’s mind. You never change someone’s opinion by preaching, they have to do this themselves.
Millenium, Scottish Government sends interns and msp’s to an all expenses paid Junket to in the USA . I cant remember the name of the CIA financed organization-which is a mortal sin of ommission on this site- but however, it is the same organisation that groomed New Labour politicians and many of the front of house News Braidcasters.Jane Hill being ine I think.
Today’s statement from Boris re his alleged ‘near death experience’has predictably been swallowed wholesale by the media and splashed all over the front pages and broadcast bulletins.
It would be interesting to hear the views of his medical team re the veracity of his heartbreaking tale of alleged suffering.
The metropolitan media is now a wholly controlled govt. propaganda mouthpiece.
millennium@12.26
I might be drawn to standing at my front door blasting out Anarchy in the UK.
gus1940 says:
3 May, 2020 at 12:43 pm
I quite agree gus. Load of shite. Even if he had been, he certainly hasn’t shown any humility or been humbled by his ‘near death experience’.
@jfngw
But surely all these unionist chancers in the ‘other’ party’s cannot stand either or would they take off their union flag jaickets and put them on outside-in sporting a shiny saltire lining that they kept hidden for years?
@Dog biscuit (12.14) –
No, I don’t believe there was anything ‘organised’ about it. I was probably a bit intemperate in my language, expressed too much frustration, and did it in a clumsy way which enraged some folk. I can see why they were angry, why some took it as a personal affront (i.e. I stated that some folk ‘never get over the door’ which sounds like an exaggeration, even if it’s probably true), as if they were neglecting their children by not taking them outdoors for the permitted daily half-hour.
But what’s really worrying (to me, anyway) is the speed and intensity of the reaction. The whole ‘lockdown’ scenario has been embraced by so many, and so uncritically, it’s become heresy to question the method of imposition let alone efficacy. We’re in Emperor’s New Clothes territory, big-time.
Maybe those who wish to “save” the SNP should : Look Back – To the Future!
Re-hash the relevant parts of the Declaration of Arbroath into a binding contract, between the SNP membership and anyone wishing to stand for office in or on behalf of the SNP.
The Moles would find it hard to oppose such a move, without showing their true colours.
And the Parasites would to go along with the flow because that is what they do to preserve their ill-deserved status.
Who could possibly object to re-affirming our desire for independence, on the 700th anniversary of the signing of that historic document.
The original text :
Yet if he should give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the King of England or the English, we should exert ourselves at once to drive him
out as our enemy and a subverter of his own right and ours.
To make some other man
who was well able to defend us our King;
For, as long as a hundred of us remain alive,
never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English.
It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom alone,which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
@jfngw
But surely all these unionist chancers in the ‘other’ party’s cannot stand either or would they take off their union flag jaickets and put them on outside-in sporting a faded saltire lining that they kept hidden for years? 🙁
Dog biscuit
You’ve admitted that you don’t think a scientifically recognised global health crises, merited any restriction on personal liberty. This suggests your judgement is grounded in narrow-minded prejudice, so it would not be rational to consider your opinion reliable. Ken fit ah mean?
Public Health Ethics and Law
https://www.thehastingscenter.org/briefingbook/public-health/
@ gus1940 @ 12.43pm
Yep Gus…and his remark re him “needing litres and litres of oxygen” is a tad Trumpian…methinks he doth protest too much…almost as if he thinks that we, the public, doubt how ill he was….as if…Lol
crazycat says:
2 May, 2020 at 10:21 pm
@ Fairliered at 9.36
… in 2015. John Nicolson was on the selection list for the seat until he dropped out so he could be defeated by Jo Swinson in East Dunbartonshire
In 2015, he did defeat her. It was in 2017 that she returned the favour, possibly because he was such a waste of space that even she was preferable to the electorate. Given a better candidate two years later, they booted her out again.
John lost his seat to to Jo Swinson due the smear campaign ran against him by the LieDims and Bearsden and Mulgie torys flipping their votes. Not forgetting the vast amount of dark dosh fired in from London to fund a massive mailing campaign.
Sarah says:
3 May, 2020 at 11:12 am
“@ Breeks at 10.38: what if the SNP have taken legal advice on enforcing the Treaty of Union and the advice is that we would lose?”
There is the law and there is justice. Sometimes the law does not deliver justice.
I firmly believe legal challenges should be made in the 100% expectation that the courts would not defend Scottish sovereignty. However, not asserting Scottish sovereignty means no challenge to the illegality of Imperial rule.
Serious question: is there any colony that has ever gained independence via the Imperial courts?
Freedom will ultimately be a political decision for the people of Scotland. Legal cases (whether won or lost) are one of the ways the illegality and injustice of the Union can be be highlighted in the political battle for Scotland’s freedom.
@James says: at 11:55 am
“…the only way is for those on here shouting the odds about SNP Bad etc is to JOIN the SNP, go to the meetings and propose change from within.”
This is theoretically correct and is the process Robert Peffers often highlighted in past btl discussions.
I’ve pointed out that if any new or previously silent member turned up at a Branch meeting and hoped to progress the development of a policy, then they would have to convince the current standing Branch Committee and possibly a few others that make up the tiny percentage of the local membership that actually bother to turn up at meetings.
You’d have to have a particularly receptive group of individuals at the meeting for this to get any traction whatsoever.
The confidence and commitment it would take for an individual to take this on is considerable and may ultimately reach an adversarial situation where the only way to push the idea through the Branch was with getting enough people to pretty much takeover the Branch, and thus adopting all the day to day running and administration work that entails.
That’s just at Branch level, then you’ve got the Constituency level to get acceptance from next…
I’m sure there was a recent case (growth commission challenge?) where an individual had to join another Branch to progress a policy that had met a dead end at their previous Branch.
It’s all a bit academic at the moment anyway, with no Branch meetings or Conference happening for the foreseeable, so this is frittering away time to run with any particular membership driven policy at next Scottish Elections should they actually occur and not be postponed.
Good to see you are not completely dismissive of an Indy Party of some sort standing on the Regional lists.
This lockdown time is an ideal time to put something together. Using the KISS acronym thus keeping any List Party’s policies very simple, honest and limited, it shouldn’t be an impossible task to develop this concept into a reality. Regional Lists could have candidates that are better suited to each area too.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/speeches/gto1922.htm
As Ghandi said at his trial:
“In my opinion, the administration of the law is thus prostituted, consciously or unconsciously, for the benefit of the exploiter….
“In my opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.
But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evil-doer.
I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiples evil, and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.
Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is deliberate crime, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.
The only course open to you, the Judge and the assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil, if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil, and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty, if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country, and that my activity is, therefore, injurious to the common weal.
Millenium at 1059. Really don’t like the implication behind “you have lived in England too long”! What do you know of me?
Why I moved to England last August? How many hundreds of letters have you written to Scottish newspapers since 2000? Did as much as I could at my age for independence and the SNP.
How bloody dare you say “you miss the point completely”! You may have a problem with democracy – I don’t. Really struggling with the haters on this blog these days. Breeks and Cameron B. – thanks for your measured response. Glad to see we still have people with manners who recognize differences for what they are. Oh and Millenium, I don’t hide behind a nom de plume, so do me the courtesy of spelling my name correctly.
Compare Ghandi’s non-cooperation with the Evil Empire with the SNP’s ongoing administration of the Scotland colony,
which continues despite the devolution agreement being shat upon and numerous other abuses such as breaches of the referendum terms of conduct, no home rule following a no vote and Scotland being dragged out the EU AND denied a special deal that is being currently offered to N.I.
Brexit constitutes an act of “constitutional legal violence” against Scotland!
The NHS and Health Law Post Brexit:
Views from Stakeholders and the Devolved Jurisdictions
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/The-NHS-and-Health-Law-Post-Brexit.pdf
Compare Ghandi’s non-cooperation with the Evil Empire with the SNP’s ongoing administration of the Scotland colony,
which continues despite the devolution agreement being blatantly breached and numerous other abuses such as breaches of the referendum terms of conduct, no home rule following a no vote and Scotland being dragged out the EU AND denied a special deal that is being currently offered to N.I.
Scotland deserves better protection from constitutional authoritarianism.
There Is A Human Right To Health, And This Is How It Works
https://eachother.org.uk/is-there-a-right-to-health/
Bill McLean says:
3 May, 2020 at 1:24 pm
Millenium at 1059.
—————-
Agree
I too understand the frustration of breeks,CBB,Ian and a few others.But am damm sure am no getting taken by the lame false flag provokes with much the same nonsense as couple of other on here. Nothing ever as yet pro-indy from them.Just same old SNP bad NS bad.
Never really knew there’s 3/4 cheeks of the same arse,guess i was wrong!
The China trialled surveillance (works on keeping those Uyghurs in check) system, rolling out soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/25/contact-apps-wont-end-lockdown-but-they-might-kill-off-democracy
And in detail.
https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/white_paper_5_outpacing_the_virus_final.pdf
Lockdown is seemingly popular with the Brit public.
Never underestimate the gullibility of the masses.
Sentiment, patriotism, irrationality and fear, they fall for the mix every time.
“It is a quite special secret pleasure how the people around us fail to realize what is really happening to them”
Adolf Hitler
robbo at 1.39 – Hope i’m totally wrong but it looks to me very much like a “false flag” and typical British divide and rule tactic. If it is there’s one thing for sure – if we are divided, they will win! I supported Labour from age 18 to age 56 – I didn’t like them all, far from it, but I supported them in the hope they’d bring us a better world. Now the only path to that at the moment is the SNP!
Bill McLean
The SNP needs a radical shake-up in its’ legal thinking then Bill, as they are currently undermining the principle of universal human rights. Full text.
Bioethics and Human Rights in the Constitutional Formation of Global Health
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/4/4/771/htm
CBB ‘ it would not be rational to consider your opinion reliable’ is a long winded way to say you dont believe me even though you agree about threat to democracy.
Clapper 57
re Boris needing litres and litres of oxygen… and ‘they were planning for my death’
those are very telling phrases – to me that says that Boris Johnson has led such a privileged life that he has never known ‘no’, ‘you can’t do this’, ‘you can’t get it your way’, ‘you are not immortal’.
Perhaps for the first time, if he was genuinely ill, he has actually had to confront the fact that he is no better, no more privileged than anyone else and that he will die someday and not when he chooses.
I think everything up till now has been ‘a laugh’ and ‘jolly good fun’ – look at me I’m the Prime Minister haven’t I done well – let’s have another bottle of claret and we’ll pop over to Chequers for the weekend; do you fancy lobster for dinner? Great game this.
We’ll see if it has been a life changing moment or not….possibly forget the George Cross, but give the NHS staff a pay rise and some respect.
CBB, Dr Fauci is a scientist you must believe him since you worship at the Alter if science and recieved opinion.Miiaow.
Nah biscuit, I understand science and respect democracy, but I don’t think you support either.
@bipod, 12:00
Good comment. The virus is not the reason for experimental lockdown of society. The virus is not a hoax, it’s quite real, but the lockdown is a strategy to redirect blame for the crashing of the economy and prevent public demonstrations. The mass terror campaign has encouraged people to abdicate responsibility and not to question. Did you see the report on a CBI video conference where George Osbourne was saying that there would have to be a second round of austerity to recoup the UK’s finances? How many excess deaths is that going to cause?
@dog biscuit, 12.39
Is it the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)?
Robbo,your problem is that youre a poor judge of character. So youll be looking forward to your postal vote if thats all thats avaiable? CBB is correct’ the SNP need a radical shake up’ .More Craig Murreys and less Sneaky Pete Murrell. Ther is our main problem in the party Millenium, Peter Murrell.
The SNP definately needs a radical legal re-edumication, so here’s a start. Full text.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13642987.2015.1045340
Cameron at 1.56 – then tell us who is going do better? I know nothing of the law I freely admit but still have to believe that the SNP are the best around at the moment!
I can smell a dug. I don’t need to see it.
Al Stuart ,so Pete worse than me? How dare you I’ll have you know that as well as making enquiries and being informative I have tried my best to be evilly obnoxious ,as well as entertaining- you know who you are- and you award most obnoxious to sneaky old Pete ? Well thats just not fair . What does a chap have to do?
Is the Rev on a Twitter ban?
Nothing for hours and searching @RevStu in the box comes up blank. Account still there but static.
I see Pete Pishfart is bumping his gums about how Twitter is a disconnect from the real world and Twitter concerns are not of the real world. While I accept the focus and minutiae on certain subjects is exponentially more intense they are not removed from one another completely.
Didn’t comfy slippers Pete think Twitter was the be all and end all when he was winning baubles for his digital musings from his Westminster chums? Times change and it was when he became a Cybernat and called no voters ‘Nawbags’ that his Tory landowner pals in Perth said enough was enough. Now he raises pints with them and their Gamekeepers while reassuring them there won’t be an Indyref in their lifetime.
No wonder his majority went up last time.
The Dog smells you,Robbo.
Robbo, have you tippled the duality of some of my statements?
Robbo,your mind is a tiny playground.
It would be good if the SNP started having meetings again so you could find out how they think and to put your opinion across but would they listen I doubt it, with The Computer and internet now you can’t have a face to face with anybody and that’s the way they like it, all politicians are getting further and further away from the real people who vote them in, they just hide all the time, does anybody really know how their thinking, they have to open up start mixing with the real folk, if they don’t it’ll be up to the voters to change things ourselves.
Bill
The SNP are not the best around they are the only one around, but unfortunately they are more interested in Woke and Brexit than independence.
Bill McLean
I don’t want to hurt the SNP, they are Scotland’s most powerful opposition to English Torydum. I just think they need some help in connecting with ethical legal reason. Otherwise they will not be any further help to us, but they will destroy any potential for justice in Scotland. An unjust Scotland is unlikely to seek, let alone gain, constitutional justice.
https://scindeks-clanci.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0365-4478/2018/0365-44781802034T.pdf
The British American Project
The wikipedia view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British-American_Project
The cynical view -of which there are many!
http://archive.is/1f80O
From ‘The Constitution of the Scottish National Party’ (Version 1.05 – February 2020).
‘2. Aims
The aims of the party are –
(a) Independence for Scotland; that is the restoration of Scottish national sovereignty by restoration of full powers to the Scottish Parliament, so that its authority is limited only by the sovereign power of the people of Scotland to bind it with a written constitution and by such agreements as it may freely enter into with other nations or states or international organisations for the purpose of furthering international cooperation, world peace and the protection of the environment.
(b) the furtherance of all Scottish interests.’
I find it difficult to match the current performance of the SNP leadership with the ideals expressed in its constitution. Without evidence of independence seeking it seems justifiable to accuse the SNP leadership of cynical hypocrisy.
The SNP are our only hope of independence for the moment. Words fail me.
@ Bill McLean 1.47, ‘I supported Labour from age 18 to age 56 – I didn’t like them all, far from it, but I supported them in the hope they’d bring us a better world. Now the only path to that at the moment is the SNP!’
Hello Bill, re the above… for me therein lies the rub, as the bard would say.
Labour were nobbled almost from conception. The pinnacle of their nobbling was Tony Blair.
Right from the outset with the SNP since Indy Ref 1, I was on the alert for signs of the SNP becoming likewise, and very much wanted safety measures in place to make this difficult to achieve and conspicuous for those who were turned.
The safety measures I thought of were,
The MPs and MSP’s laying out their stall with declarations about things like GRA.
That campaigning for Indy continued – non stop, and as a matter of routine – in the form of Billboards and Info Graphics, and video displays in their constitution windows – constantly, never letting up. In this way, even if ‘there’s trouble at top’ the ground is still being covered.
And those dragging their heals would be seen to do so.
You quite rightly point out that NS is doing very well with regards the corona crisis, and I agree to an extent. Remember Tony Blair.
Ultimately if all our eggs are in one basket for Indy we just make it much easier for the British Establishment to nobble it.
We really must, as individuals and groups, anticipate that this is a move that the British Establishment HAS to make, as well as being the most obvious move to make. And the methods are ruthless and effective, bribe, corrupt and if that does not work, threaten their loved ones.
It is this last one, which makes me ask us all, to be realistic and compassionate, we must not try to prove guilt instead – look at what needs to be done, what ground must be covered, and if the party responsible is not going so, then we quietly bypass them… and ensure that we have more than one option at the ballot box.
I understand your concern about divide and conquer, but please let us not make it easy for the Brits to do a PLP/Tony Blair on us.
Lets be flexible and cleverer than that.
Kind regards to all
A long read.
But a view of the spreading of the Covid virus through the prism of Flugge’s Droplets
ie what actually comes out your mouth and nose at high velocity
http://archive.is/FH0L7
The weekend Sunday figures as reported by the BBC
They are lowish because of weekend reporting and will calibrate upwards on Monday or Tuesday. 🙁
Scotland……….today……..12…….Total…….1571 (all)
Wales………….today……..14…….Total……..983 (all)
N. Ireland……..today……..05…….Total……..327 (all)
England………..today……*327…….Total…..*21180 *hospital
================================================================
UK…………….today ..no data…….Total……28131 BBC
The Sun……………………………Total……28463 SUN
Out of hospital deaths for England probably added to the above table later BUT the actual figure for England separately not likely to be given as it is merged with the UK Total and is never written anywhere now by the BBC just announced as UK figures by Hancock. Or today it will be Gove 🙂
My biggest concern is about allowing the Britnat parties to have control of Holyrood is they will either cede control of any referendum in legislation to WM and hand back control or even try and negate the claim of right (they are that Britnat in my opinion). So although I have concerns regarding the SNP’s commitment to independence and some of the legislation they are passing, just now there is no alternative. The problem is they know this and some are taking the support for granted.
If a viable alternative does emerge I will give it consideration, but time look too short just now to make any progress before the next Scottish election, unless we see something emerge fairly quickly.
@ Meg merrilees @ 2pm
Yes Meg….perhaps someone should have reminded Boris that many have actually “died” via this virus….and so once again to quote the now infamous ex PM May’s quote ” Now is not the time” to give a blow by blow account of how he ‘nearly’ died…..but didn’t…….
You know , if I were being cynical… I’m being sarcastic now… one would be forgiven for thinking Boris was being presented as a Hero…his battle…he fought…he won….is there going to be a graph via the CMO in England to show how Boris was more infected and more ill than others with the virus …while an alternate could be presented via a poster showing why and how the worst possible practice during this crisis is to shake hands with those infected…and worse still to advertise it…in a boasting Boris like manner…..how cavalier and yet…. how very Boris.
Desperate Tory times calls for desperate Tory measures…Desperately seeking illusion…The Sun provides the smokescreen yet again…..
@ Silverdarling
Hi hope you and yours are well …glad you are still commenting on here.
@ Bill McLean
Agree…we can all have different points of view but choose to express it in a respectful way…you have been posting on here for a long time…your support for independence is indisputable….
Have a good day…
FFS, talk about cognitive dissonance, or ‘doublethink’ if you prefer? –
‘Astonishing results from Sunday Times poll. 67% think government prepared badly for coronavirus pandemic, yet 61% think government is handling the situation well.’
(twitter.com/JohnJCrace/status/1256896631963815936)
McDuff at 2.34 – with respect if the Snp are the only party around then surely they must be the best!
Daisy at 2.56 – I gave Blair 3 years before realizing that he and most of his cabinet were frauds. Much of what you write is what I can totally agree with.
I don’t know how many times I have to make this point – the SNP are far from perfect. I dont like the GRA stuff and they seem to have sidelined the push to independence – hopefully temporarily, but they are the only “eggs in the basket”. The comparison between the SNP and PLP/Blair does not compute – there was an alternative to Blair, in fact as you know, more than one. I agree with you
yes be realistic and compassionate and show it to those who may not agree at all or in part with you – this blog has become nasty and even the two who were openly Tories from England seem to have disappeared. Be careful, be very very careful. The British are past masters at causing division. Produce a party in Scotland whose sole aim is Scottish independence and I will give it my support. Until then all we have is the SNP. It is totally self-defeating calling each other names and making false innuendo at each other and only suits the Britnats!
The British American Project of course.Are we getting to the heart of the Dragon?
Thank you Clapper and I hope you and yours are well and let us hope that despite it all we live long enough to see our rightful Independence.
@ Ian Brotherhood @ 3.26pm
Hi Ian …at least they, the people, are consistent in their inconsistency..Lol
@ Bill McLean @ 3.32pm
Amen to that Bill.
Take care…insert smiley face.
Hey many have actually survived the virus. In fact most survive.
A shout out for the survivors there.Way to go.
Point Im trying to make is that it’s ludicrous to be enthralled by casualty numbers which some here are keen to keep impressing upon us, while ignoring the high survival rate and the question must be ,given that we have passed the so called curve ,why still a lockdown and why are politicians horse trading us? No sign of a release. A desire by all Governments to more tightly control citizens,a STASI dream come true. I don’t wish to keep banging on about it but while we are politically immobilised we will be subject to more and more draconian laws.Give a fascist a rifle and he will start a war, give him a shovel and he will build death camps. Give them a news paper and they will weave spells with words. Has anyone actually thought what the word glamour means?
I went off on some hot rhetorical bullshit there did I not?
When it’s gone, it’s gone.
http://www.societalvalues.co.uk/are-we-witnessing-the-death-of-freedom/
T’is indeed a pity so few appear to care.
Dog biscuit
International human rights constitute global constitutional rights, which need to pay regard to public health law in order to be effective. I suspect you are ignorant of both constitutional and medical law, so I doubt your judgement holds any social value. To continue pushing a position without evidence to support it, suggests you think all our heads zip up at the back. Gonnae no?
Full text.
Global constitutionalism, applied to global health governance: uncovering legitimacy deficits and suggesting remedies
https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-016-0216-2
Hi Clapper!
Glad to see you too and the other familiar voices keeping things going. I drop in to vent now and again. It’s weird that life is so much online now – I have a taste of the way my offspring live!
I do get the feeling that things will never be the same again, for good or bad I don’t know yet. While people may scoff at fears, the virus is allowing changes to our laws and freedoms that we as citizens have no way to challenge. I think we have to accept the medical advice for now as I don’t know any different although I try to read up and be aware. I know of a couple of people who have been very ill who don’t fit the vulnerable groups. I worry about my family and whether I will see my friends and relatives who are overseas any time soon and if they will be OK. Worries about the future are very different way from even 3 months ago.
I’m happy to go along with the lockdown. What my tipping point is I don’t know. Are the Tories playing fast and loose with information and what they want the media to say? Yes, definitely.
BBC Scotland have agents of the UK state to review the papers and condemn the Yes movement, most of us laugh (I don’t watch any political output from BBC Scotland, it’s dire). The only people enjoying this are the Britnat parties and sadly a number of SNP elected politicians.
Many of these SNP members are praising to heaven another Britnat attack on Alex Salmond (under the guise of standing up to misogyny) in the Scotsman, the most ironic title in history I imagine.
Ottomanboi says:
3 May, 2020 at 4:09 pm
When it’s gone, it’s gone.
http://www.societalvalues.co.uk/are-we-witnessing-the-death-of-freedom/
T’is indeed a pity so few appear to care.
That is a great read and very well articulated.
Silver Darling
I suppose you are including the SNP SG in your assertions about playing ‘fast and loose with information’.
The following appeared btl on Craig Murray’s blog last night:
(by ‘Red Corvair’, but paragraph-breaks are mostly mine)
May 2, 2020 at 23:39
AberdeenPict
I agree that human values are under pressure like never before, but your man has been using right-wing logic to punt his position. So I’m not sure if he knows where he’s coming from. It certainly doesn’t appear to be a position that respects public health ethics. Just my opinion. 😉
Ian Brotherhood
IMHO, Mr. Murray talks a lot of shite some times. Just saying. 😉
Bill McClean youre essentially correct but it’s a tough biscuit to chew. CBB I am indeed ignorant when it comes to constitutional and medical law .I do however have a fine grasp of reality and the last time I looked Western Governments all Governments for that matter dont give a fuck about Human Rights.Show me some of your course work to prove me wrong.
Craig Murray
I wasn’t meaning to be hurtful but I’m not sure you have as firm a grip of meta-ethics as you believe.
Dog biscuit
How can you have a firm grip on reality if you reject scientific reason? Which you have already admitted to in public.
@Ian Brotherhood
Hmm, interesting. But is that a genuine individual’s writings or a carefully constructed ruse to influence and steer folk that read it.
Not saying it isn’t genuine, but my spidey sense are twitching with the construction and range of areas it covers, plus sources, culminating in just wanting lockdown to end and to hang with the consequences.
We’re just over a month into this and with time, hopefully more will be learnt and come to light to inform us of how we best proceed.
It’s not quite the same but speed kills in driving because for every doubling of speed, the stopping distances quadruple.
Slower therefore gives you more time to absorb what is happening and react, and also in an impact the energy needing dispersed is considerably less too.
From my motorsport days I can tell you shit gets lairy real fast at high speed.
Hear Hear Red Corvair. Read it fools!
Hope Stuey’s safe – his last tweet was 17hrs ago! Hope he’s up to some good and not arrested for calling some c*nt a c*nt on twatter. 🙁
Dan .your not only paranoid but you also think you’re Spiderman Que?
Cameron fuck off back up Sturgeons arse.
Bet its like the Aircraft hanger from Hell full of little Devils like you.
The U.K. Gov., has had us in isolation for weeks now but the SNP gov have had us in isolation over our fight for freedom a lot longer than that I say to the top SNP ones live up to your founding principles For Scottish independence do it now as an Irishman once said we ask for no more but we DEMAND NO LESS
Dog biscuit
So you think I support the First Minister? You’ve either not been paying attention, or you display a stunning lack of comprehension and political insight. Just saying. 😉
CBB a J-Type Hanger.
Dan.I don’t wish to trouble you but speed is good when it comes to delivering a knock out blow and it is instructive surely the speed with which our Governments delivered a knockdown on democracy. Do you need the barn to be a pile of ashes around you before you believe theres a fire?
Craig Murrey , you’re more stout hearted surely?
I think a certain dog needs worming. 😉
European and International Occupational Safety and Health
German occupational safety and health law is based largely on European and international legal standards
https://www.bmas.de/EN/Our-Topics/Occupational-Safety-and-Health/european-and-international-occupational-safety-and-health.html
CameronB Brodie at 5:22 pm
It certainly does looks like this wee yappin’ wannabe ankle biter has been too busy munching Whinealot biscuits instead of actually reading what folk have written. 🙂
Dan
You reckon? 🙂
Interesting article here on the UK governments handling of the epidemic in england:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/29/lokin-20-the-lockdown-regime-causes-increasing-health-concerns/
Worth a read if you don’t just accept the UK governments narrative on the crisis.
Cam
Well who can say, but I recall never seeing any dugs in my English and Physics lessons, and clearly this yin can’t adsorb the written word and also hasn’t got a handle on Newton’s Laws of Motion.
I’ve just returned to this site after being away for a while. What a transformation. I can’t believe the amount of doom gloom and misery. Has the rev. turned to Prespeterianism for his new vocation?
Science eh? 🙂
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Populism
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00107530.2018.1458347?src=recsys
That was only an abstract so this one is full text.
Implications of psychoanalytic theory on the understanding of individual, social and cultural phenomena
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265693929_Implications_of_psychoanalytic_theory_on_the_understanding_of_individual_social_and_cultural_phenomena
Bill McLean says: at 1:47 pm
” Hope i’m totally wrong but it looks to me very much like a “false flag” and typical British divide and rule tactic”.
You think the Evil Empire is paying people to claim, that :
“under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon – The SNP is dragging their heels on the Independence issue” ?
Sure there are “false flags” aplenty – but you are looking at the wrong poles.
Tony Blair created the modern SNP, I think by accident when he pulled the 1997 Referendum out of his arse, when the Alex Salmond SNP, was in third place behind the Lib/Dems in Scotland and with less than half of the votes and a tenth of the MP’s that Labour won in Scotland.
And Hey Presto – The SNP went from having 3 MP’s + PA’s + 3or4 HQ staff to an additional 35 MSP’s + PA’s and next stop the gravy train…there must be around 300 on the payroll by now.
As Labours fortunes declined in Scotland and SNP stock rose, it was inevitable that the parasitic slime who would previously have slithered into the all-powerfull Labour Party, would have to find a new home.
From a political spectrum defying hotch-potch of Patriots, Anglophobes and People who just thought it Madness, to allow your neighbour to make all your political, financial and moral decisions for you.
To a centralised self-serving patriarchy’ who’s chief concern is to remain “In Power” and promote gender expansion, ethnic homogeny and whatever eco-bandwaggon happens to be in vougue – Independence? … That’s ssoo 20th century, lets file it on the same shelf as clause 4.!
I don’t think that is what Salmond had in mind when he handed over the reins of “his” party to Little Nicki … But he should have been aware of the Axiom about power and absolute power.
Dog biscuit at 0501 – you cannae spell ma name either! Woof
I’ve just seen this reposted by someone else on twitter from Stuart re his Rev Stu twitter account , he’s saying that there’s a problem with his account as below –
Twitter’s latest zany prank is to lock my
@RevStu
account for “suspicious behaviour”, but not let me reset the password to get back in ?
5:10 pm · 3 May 2020·Twitter for iPad
He’s using this account just now this link explains the problem
https://mobile.twitter.com/SealandGazette/status/1256979348248317952
Ah, Su’s tweeted on another account ‘Twitter’s latest zany prank is to lock my @RevStu account for “suspicious behaviour”, but not let me reset the password to get back in.’
You can find him here: https://twitter.com/SealandGazette
MaggieC – great minds. 😉
You beat me to it! @MaggieC and TJenny.
Dating Agencies and Big Pharma must be beelin’ with this lockdown, their profits will be taking a hit coz it’s very difficult to hook up with someone and catch an STD from 2 meters, resulting in a drop in demand for their services and pills to treat the conditions.
I can’t be arsed googling to see if their economic downturns is in anyway being offset by increases in sales of inflatable or high end synthetic partners.
Guess these days one could simply identify as a synthetic doll and that would take some of the stigma out screwing a glorified lilo…
‘Tony Blair created the modern SNP’.
Lol.
It’s the way you tell ’em !
Plucked from a news feed. This could mean a long wait.
“Social distancing to remain until coronavirus vaccine developed, says Gove
Some social distancing measures will remain in place until a coronavirus vaccine has been developed but ministers will seek to restore people’s lives to “as close to normal as possible”, Michael Gove has said.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster warned that people would have to live with “some degree of constraint” until they can be immunised against the deadly disease – suggesting Britons would have to accept a “new normal”.“
“The New Normal”: yes, it’s noticeable that this phrase is being used more and more by the MSM. Just another step in our twenty-four hour social conditioning, no doubt.
Accept, conform, obey…
Well I suggest The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is only looking to sweep the crap under the carpet. This lock-down is due to criminal negligence, and there appears to be a distinct lack of effort to acknowledge this fact, or rectify the initial error of judgement.
Without sufficient preparation for a return to normality, our lock-down will be longer than necessary and will have been in vain. More lives will be lost unnecessarily, than would otherwise have been the case. Policy needs to be guided by a legal duty of care grounded in the principle of DO NO HARM. The Tories don’t feel morally bound by such legal obligations, and British constitutional practice gives them plenty of room for maneuver.
The Establishment always looks to maintain itself. Never trust a Tory.
Legislative assessments as a tool for strengthening health security capacity: the example of Guinea post-2014 Ebola outbreak
https://www.joghr.org/article/11968-legislative-assessments-as-a-tool-for-strengthening-health-security-capacity-the-example-of-guinea-post-2014-ebola-outbreak
Alec Lomax @6:45
I don’t think he meant to.
He was just trusting Lord Robertson of Armageddon’s judgement, when he said that “Devolution would kill the SNP stone dead”.
The SNP wasn’t making much headway at the time – Nothing would have been the best thing to do.
But the clown thought that he was just giving us shiny beads, when he decided to actually honour an election promise and hold a referendum .
The gravy train that is the Scottish Government is what made the SNP what it is today – Previously, progress at any level in the party involved a lot of hard work and expense and was by no stretch of the imagination a sound career move.
Hence most in the SNP actually wanted self government for Scotland – where as now there are an alarming amount of our elected representatives who curiously remain silent on the issue.
Maybe the weasel-faced bastard wasn’t as wrong as we thought he was?
You have to wonder by Handcock chose Deloitte to run the Coronavirus test centres, an accountancy firm, instead of health professionals/virologists.
OOPS! Rev Stu
I forgot that Robertson got about fifty grand in damages from The Herald, because some BTL guy claimed that he had helped get Thomas Hamilton a handgun licence.
If you don’t think “weasel-faced bastard” can be explained away as “fair comment”, perhaps you should remove the entry @ 7.22.
Dog biscuit 5.30pm. We need the barn to be a pile of ashes when the enemies of Scotland are burning within it.
Michael Gove said
‘suggesting Britons would have to accept a “new normal”.
Gettin’ steamin’ every night?
Roger, little Michael.
@TJenny –
Thanks for the heads-up about Rev’s twitter woes.
Word is spreading fast.
The https://twitter.com/SealandGazette account had 230 followers just over half an hour ago. It now has 425 and is gathering pace.
Twitter is going to have to realise that we will not stand for this – the man is entitled to a voice same as anyone else and if they keep shutting him down we’ll make sure everyone knows about it.
The Labour government in the 1990s were forced, by the Council of Europe and/or the EU, to have a devolution referendum. It wasn’t Tony Blair “doing the right thing”, because of his kind heart.
Here’s a quote from the link I provide at the end of this comment.
“The Breakthrough
The heat was on the UK by now, and there was no longer any possibility of putting off reform of the Scottish political and administrative structure. This hot potato initially landed on the lap of the Conservative government under Prime Minister John Major, who had no time to do anything about it before he was out of office at the 1997 election. He was no doubt extremely thankful that the matter immediately bounced onto the lap of his Labour successor, Tony Blair, who had had no intention of doing anything about devolution, but was now forced to take action, whether he liked it or not.
The lack of serious political opposition to the devolution legislation may seem surprising, but it merely reflects the fact that all the party leaderships at Westminster knew the background and were aware that it was an obligation that could not be avoided.
The matter had been exercising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office behind closed doors since the 1993 European Summit (a copy of the S-UN Memorandum had of course been sent to London too), and especially since the first UK monitoring session that was held by the CoE Committee of Ministers in June 1996.
The Labour leadership had tried to kill the Strasbourg action as early as 1993, even before attaining government office, but the attempt ended in a monumental fiasco that never achieved publicity. However, by that stage devolution was not a party project at all, but a foreign policy commitment that had to be fulfilled, no matter what government was in office.”
https://www.electricscotland.com/independence/uncommittee.htm
Ooh, will Pete’s pending article be For or Against the concept of a 2nd Indy Party standing in the Regional Lists.
BANZAI! Place Your Bets Now… 🙂
https://twitter.com/PeteWishart/status/1256963925545046016
Also wonder if Pete will contact Gavin Barrie whilst researching information for his article on a 2nd Indy Party.
Gavin did some number crunching based on a Wings Party of sorts, but a YES Indy Party of is another possibility.
https://wingsoverscotland.com/flying-with-wings/
For those clinging to the illusion we’re
‘ better together ‘
https://www.facebook.com/958477034169215/posts/3481032688580291/
I think a ‘YES’ indy party is the way to go to get everyone on board. There will be no baggage. Contest every Scottish seat with their mandate, not independence. But dissolvement of the union ( same thing I know) but wont frighten the auld yins the same. DISSOLVEMENT OF THE UNION.
What’s missing from these daily virus updates is any detail about the environment the new diagnosed cases are from. Are the majority in care homes, hospitals, etc or just in the general community. It would give you some information about how safe going to the supermarket is.
If the majority is in the community we need to know why as the lockdown should be stopping these after five weeks but the new detections still seem quit high (I’m referring to Scotland only).
Ian Brotherhood – too bloody right. Je suis Rev Stu. 🙂
@ Mike D.
It must be a direct instruction from people to Parliament. Repeal the Act of Union and withdraw from the Treaty of Union. It needs to be clear that we are leaving on our terms, not westminsters.
@TJenny –
🙂
Makes ye wonder how safe this place is?
why is everyone still going on about the lockdown being designed to save lives?
The idea was and still is to stop an overload of the NHS,
everyone is going to be infected by it, some worse than others,
why the surprise that the elderly in care homes are dying in greater numbers than in the rest of the population, they are the most vulnerable.
The only way to cut the deaths is by finding a better way of treating it and developing a vaccine.
Hopefully, being an really old fart, I’ll not get a too severe dose, it’s the best I can wish for.
Ian Brotherhood – i’m wearing a face mask and gloves, just in case. 😉
Hi TJenny.
Don’t forget the crotchless earflaps…
John Jones. I watched an interview a few days ago on utube by some top Indian bacteriologist/virologist?. Who said that the majority of deaths were people with low vitamin d. And that those with mild infection had good levels of vitamin d. So who knows?.
Golfnut. Agree with that.
@BDTT –
Sah!
Real Scots Ken the score.
If you want a wee chuckle, Still Game starts 10.30 pm BBC Scotchland channel
Scotsman has report Boris was at deaths door
Well we now know that was not true
If it is on call kaye in the morning it is Confirmed not true
BDtT – and you’ll be needing padded ear flaps next time we meet. ;-b
Let’s hope the guys n gals behind the new INDY Party are getting things together as we speak.
What we can’t have is a Wings Party, a Yes Party, AUOB Party and so on.
They all need to be under ONE Party name.
Everyone who is involved should no all the rules, and definitely No Nicola Sturgeon types ,(Prima Donnas).
John Jones @9.35.
My thoughts exactly.
@BDTT –
Wooooft!
Yer tea’s oot pal!
😉
I’d suggest the easiest way to cut deaths is to continue suppressing transmission in the population, through lock-down. Simple, effective, and immediate in effect. That sounds a lot like policy that is compatible with public health ethics. The delivery of the policy might not be quite so sound though, given it’s the Tories in charge.
Ian Brotherhood – and how. 😉
I see Stu’s now got 1049 followers. The power of Wingers. C’mon, let’s get him loads more.
Brian Doonthetoon
Thanks for that, I had forgotten all about Dr James Wilkie and the Scotland UN Committee and had never realised the extent or importance of their work.
Though I do have some vague memories of the Vigil for Democracy and Billy Wolfe handing me a Saltire and telling me to park my backside on the pavement outside the old Royal High School building .
I can’t remember if there were 72 of us to represent the then number of parliamentary constituencies, or a hundred to prove that there were that many of us still alive.
Interesting set of links on the same site,
https://www.electricscotland.com/independence/scotlandun.htm
@ Millennium says:
3 May, 2020 at 11:00 pm
Let’s hope the guys n gals behind the new INDY Party are getting things together as we speak.
Pat Lee I think is trying to get a Yes party of the ground because this stagnation needs sorted.
Dan, It sounds like people will have to accept being immunised.I hope you don’t mind being kidnapped by Michael Gove.
If, by definition, the lockdown has kept the number of deaths relatively low, then also by definition, the number of deaths will rise if you reverse the lockdown.
So, by definition, the only way you are going to keep the deaths relatively low is to continue the lockdown,
So where is all this talk of ending the lockdown coming from?
Dog biscuit
No vaccine has ever entered my veins – And I have had loads of diseases to prove it.
Though I did spend two of my teenage years living in Hertfordshire – Which immunised me against Unionism.
I am only stating the bleeding obvious regarding this lockdown.
Sturgeon tells us on a daily basis that this lockdown is working, so if you undo something that is working, then it’s obvious that it will not work anymore,,no?
Therefore, going by Sturgeon think, we are in this lockdown until we find a Nationwide cure.
And they tell us a Nationwide vaccine could take 12 months to get up and running.
If in doubt, refer to international public health law. Simples.
Full text.
https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)30373-1.pdf
John Jones at 9:35pm on Covid-19: ‘everyone is going to be infected by it’, and ‘The only way to cut the deaths is by finding a better way of treating it and developing a vaccine.’
John those statements are complete bollocks. Either you are ignorant or you are purposely spreading lies.
Lie one: ‘everyone is going to be infected by it’.
No, that is what happened in the middle ages, actual ‘herd immunity’ when there were no cures, no vaccines, no 21st century medical expertise. Humans could not stop diseases spreading, so only the lucky survived. We have progressed since then.
New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan prove you a liar. They locked down their countries strongly and early. They ensured CV-19 did not spread by isolating the infected. They did what Scotland and rUK should have done.
Lie 2: ‘The only way to cut the deaths is by finding a better way of treating it and developing a vaccine.’
Right now, New Zealand has cut the deaths; South Korea has cut the deaths; Taiwan has cut the deaths.
Two methods used by sensible nations: a) test, test, test;
b) Test, trace, isolate.
We do that now, to reduce the death toll NOW, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed.
John, stop posting rubbish. Be better.
Obviously, as the pubs are shut, many bar-room lawyers have joined this site.
Dog biscuit you are sounding a bit anti-vaxxer-y at 11:52pm.
Did you never get the MMR jab as a child?
Do you not believe in the yearly flu jab for the vulnerable?
FFS use your brain.
David
More than half the population haven’t had the MMR vaccine because it was not developed until the late 80’s and initially only given to pre-school aged children.
Craig Murray
I don’t think I was apologetic enough earlier on. Excessive honesty was a symptom of my brain injury, which took a good number of years for me to manage effectively. That was a lot of ‘fun’. So sorry, I’m just getting carried away with this honesty lark and should have been a little more diplomatic. 😉
@David
Re: vaccines. I find it funny that people normally so wary of big business can be so happy to trust the good will of an industry that has, as public record, been responsible for uncountable deaths and subsequent cover ups
Example: Merck found its hemophiliac medicine was tainted with HIV in the US. They took the product off the shelves and dumped it in Indian and European markets. The swine flu vaccine was investigated by the council of europe for its dangerous process of manufacture
Currently big pharama have been working on a no liability clause for their vaccines.
Can we just accept that vaccines are fine in principle but it doesnt mean we must by default trust the murderous, bloodsucking, lying cnts that make money from their manufacture?
If there was a cheap, already tested, already patented and currently successfully deployed treatment for COVID would big pharma be happy? Would their media spread disinfo? Does your, and your families, health matter to them?Hydroxychloroquine? Why would this time be different?
Joe
I’ve missed you, I hope you’re well. 😉
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
Ethical considerations for vaccination programmes in acute humanitarian emergencies
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/4/12-113480/en/
Hydroxychloroquine?
Clutching at straws, FFS
@ Cameron B Brodie
Garbage. I don’t care what the Friends of the CCP say. When a car manufacturer makes efforts to block legal proceedings should its newest model car petrol tanks explode you know its not worth buying. Same with medicine. The WHO are currently totally corrupt.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general has a very shady past with links to the CCP (you know. Those guys genociding millions of muslims currently) and there seems to be the presence of a famous profiteer by the name of Gates.
Apart from some software, this guy is known in some parts of the world for starting a polio epidemic and a vaccine that destroyed the lives of over 400,000 children.
Its not science or vaccines that are the problem. Its the multi-trillion dollar industries that make them, own the regulatory bodys (including the WHO) and simply dont have to give a single fk if cost cutting damages anybody.
Its amazing to me that people normally so sensible about the dangers of big money owning national governments seem so utterly blind to the prospect of them owning international bodies also.
Equally it surprises me when people normally quick to point out the potential for corruption in market dynamics seem to lose that distrust when you stick a nice big official tag on a group of people like the WHO.
The last 100 years is one example of literal mass murder by profit seeking industries after another and who always seem to continue on as if justice doesn’t exist.
I avoided the swine flu vaccine in 2009 because I knew it was full of heavy metals and carcinogens. I was vindicated when the Council of Europe opened an inquiry into it.
I will absolutely not be accepting a vaccine for this Coronavirus BS even if it means restrictions on freedom or jail.
I encourage others who arent pathetic sheep to start considering this also. Fk them and the hundreds of billions they will make by shooting shit into me thats probably more dangerous to me than the virus itself
@ David
My argument is sound whether this drug works or not.
People. Pay attention. There is zero reason for anyone to trust the pharmaceutical industry or their shills with your long term health. Fkng ZERO
Joe
How perceptive, I’ve not missed your right-wing paranoia in the slightest.
https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/bma-comments-on-older-people-and-easing-of-lockdown
Distrust of an industry that has a public record of criminal failure leading to mass deaths with few criminal cases being won = right wing paranoia. Ok then.
I thought it was the left that were the guard dogs for this? Oh, your all too busy figuring out how many fkng genders there are. The real left are swivelling in their coffins now.
Joe
The world is a shity place, but anyone who considers the World Health Organisation “Friends of the CCP”….”, would appear to be a “conspiratorial thinker”. Are you pals with Alex Jones?
Joe
This should help sort you out. 😉
The SAGE Handbook of Identities
Chapter 2: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity: From Ego to Ethics
https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/hdbk_identities/n3.xml
Cameron, in the old days ‘conspiratorial thinking’ was just simply called ‘thinking’
Its truly amazing. The mainstream left, having set about dismantling sex based rights for women and trying to criminalise ‘hurting feelings’, are now defending multi-trillion dollar industries and their front organisations from critical thought by labelling dissenters as ‘conspiratorial’
I’ll end with this – the pharmaceutical industry is worth trillions and you could fit all the key decision makers into a small gym hall and they are absolutely not answerable to you or me. Dont you think a key objective of these people would be to have as much influence over a global health organisation as possible? Do they have the resources? Strings to pull? Careers to make? Funding to grant?
Joe
No Joe, the world is far from perfect but you don’t appear to be a rational individual. You appear to imagine you understand how the world should work, and to concoct imaginative explanations as to why the world does not conform to your ego.
Full text.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4340140/
Thats fine then Cameron. The UK establishment arent trying to keep Scottish people shackled to a system that doesnt represent them. It was all just conspiracy theory. Can’t wait for the Wingers to wake up and read this. They’ll be most relieved
Or wait…maybe they’ll be pissed that any of them whose thinking doesn’t match the mainstream narrative are mentally ill.
Cameron, let me return your smug, self satisfied ad hominems and attempts to bracket me as mentally ill with the observation that your posts are reminiscent of a man who has never, nor ever will, have a mind of his own.
Joe
You appear to think I’m part of the “mainstream left” and support trans-activism. I’m what is called a ‘radical feminist’, or more properly, a post-colonial feminist. So I respect Natural Law and post-foundational legal epistemology that respects biology.
So either you’ve not been paying attention, or you’re a total numpty. Take your pick.
– Im saying vaccines are a great invention. But like food its whats involved in the making of them that counts.
– Im saying that the Pharmaceutical industry has massive power. Multiple trillions in market cap and many hundreds of billions in annual profits
– Im saying that they have a public, proven history of causing death and misery while escaping justice through bought politicians and judiciary over most of the world
– Im saying that the manufacture of vaccines has raised warnings from official bodies for their dangerous ingredients and unsafe methods of manufacture.
– Im saying it would be in the interests of big pharma to have as much influence over international organisations as they do national ones.
– Im saying there is zero reason to assume that any international body is immune to the kind of power a massive industry can wield.
– Im saying that there is an awful lot of money to be made by providing world governments with a vaccine for more than 7 billion people.
The counter arguments to this typically are ‘oh, your a vaccine conspiracy theorist’
Yet when it comes to Brexit, or Trump, or the Right wing or anything else you don’t have a positive bias for there ARE such things as shadowy corporate interests with concealed plans and not much care for ordinary people, who can and will shape world events to suit themselves.
This is like talking to half-baked child
This is without getting into the sheer BS that is COVID-19 infection numbers, death rates, free flowing international travel during national lock down, China’s complicity in lying and covering up the virus for months while allowing international travel from Wuhan. Nor even talking about the uncommonly low seasonal flu deaths. Or the tiktok dancing hospital staff and derelict hospitals.
An old guy who worked in the local supermarket died of Coronavirus (apparently). Its sad but my questions are:
– Why is the store not closed down for a time? Surely if someone can be infectious for 2 weeks before symptoms he would have given it to virtually every other staff member? Who would then pass it on to customers and you’d have a local pandemic?
– Why was he, an older man, even put into that position of risk?
– Why were staff not required to isolate?
Why aren’t laws governing this in the same way as normal citizens?
How does one officially die of corona virus without a test? Is it guess work?
Of course. It doesn’t matter. Get your cheaply made, hastily rushed out vaccine from the type of companies that would, as a matter of fact, rather have people contract HIV from their product than lose money.
Since Keir stammer became leader of the Labour Party, we seem to have returned to the two Party politics in the eyes of our UK media.
The only trouble with that is that when asked how they would deal with the Covid19 crisis, they don’t have an opinion on anything.
As for anyone from the LibDems, or from Scotland Wales or N Ireland having an opinion on anything, well at the moment, our MSM in England don’t seem to be interested.
So it looks like we are back to having the Tory Party as our unchallenged rulers, with the Labour Party returning to be once again known as the Abstention Party.
And as for the SNP, well they will just continue to sit in the background, picking up their huge salaries.
The University of Cambridge opinion on Hancocks testing. The truth will out.
https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/05/03/scottish-covid-19-tests-useful-while-uk-english-tests-are-travesty-of-statistical-science/
As companies see their bank accounts dwindling, the UK safety issue seems to be getting forgotten about.
So to get us back to work, the 2M distancing rule will get kicked into touch, that’s so they can cram you back in to trains and buses and work places.
It’s amazing how quickly Health and Safety goes out the window when money is involved.
I bet you won’t see a director of any of these companies sitting up stairs on a crammed bus or an over full train.
Lambs to the slaughter, so rich owners become even richer.
As I said up thread, Sturgeon and Johnson tell us on a daily basis that lockdown and social distancing is the only thing that is keeping this virus from bursting out of control,,,so what has changed?
The answer is money has changed all these rules,,the government simply can’t afford to keep paying out all these subsidies without getting tax money back in.
Therefore, they will turn a blind eye to Health and Safety in favour of getting you back to work and getting the public out spending their money.
This is the Wealth over Health rule that we knew would have to face sometime.
So it now becomes a personal choice, Wealth or Health,,,take your pick.
I am thinking of Thalidomide thanks to some poster input.
Big Pharma has been trying to guard against big payouts ever since it EVENTUALLY had to face up to its bad science.
I am in no rush to be vaccinated .
From the Lancet in february:
[Therefore], it is time to reduce the hype and hysteria surrounding the 2019-nCoV epidemic and reduce sensationalisation of new information, especially on social media, where many outlets aim to grab attention from followers. Additionally, the disparity between the strength of language as presented to the media by some researchers and politicians and the inference shared on social media requires more research to determine how content is being relayed on different platforms.
An effective way of putting this outbreak into perspective is to compare it with other respiratory tract infections with epidemic potential. 2019-nCoV (now SARS CoV-2) appears to fit the same pattern as influenza, with most people recovering and with a low death rate; the people at risk of increased mortality are older in age (>65 years), immunosuppressed, or have comorbid illnesses. There is currently no evidence that 2019-nCoV spreads more rapidly than influenza or has a higher mortality rate.
Apart from continued ignorant media hype, effectively little has changed since then.
Ending this manic exercise in globalized social engineering is going to be much harder than starting it. Johnson and Sturgeon among the many here today and gone tomorrow globalist politicians are going to be well tested at that stage.
How high the popularity scores then?
Career politicians are all educated at universities who use the same doctrine that’s why they all sound and act the same, what Scotland needs is an individual who is an independent thinker who sounds and acts different from the rest, a person who’ll show more backbone against Westminster, this next few weeks will tell us what the current leadership are made of, Scotland have to do things in a Scottish way.
@Joe (2.22) –
Hear hear.
And Cameron? It’s really disappointing to see you implying that someone is a ‘conspiracy theorist'(*). It’s a cheap line of attack which has been used against you in the past, right here.
*Do you know the provenance of that term in modern usage? If not, take the time to check, please.
an Brotherhood
Do the suggested reading before you think you can judge me. Mkay?
Ian Britherhood
Would I think of suggesting your crosswords are crap?
Everyone Included: Social Impact of COVID-19</b?
https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/everyone-included-covid-19.html
You know, I’m getting right fucked off at the general contempt folk appear to hold ‘expert’ opinion in.
A Rights-Based Response to COVID-19: Lessons Learned from HIV and TB Epidemics
https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/03/a-rights-based-response-to-covid-19-lessons-learned-from-hiv-and-tb-epidemics/
Presume this will be on the MSM news at some point but there’s more than likely extra info in the tweet thread than the news will put out.
https://twitter.com/Innealadair/status/1256964926842814467
All the best and fingers crossed folk pull through.
I suppose with such a concentrated situation it may offer an example to study in various parameters.
@Ottomanboi (8.27) –
Do you have a link for that extract, or a date?
Dorothy Devine says:
“I am thinking of I am thinking of Thalidomide”
Did you know that they are still prescribing Thalidomide, under a different name of course and reassuringly – not if you are pregnant, think you might become pregnant or reckon you are in with a chance of making someone pregnant, though.
It’s on the WHO list of essential medicines, but curiously costs 7 times as much in the USA as it does here.
I’m sure that is nothing to do with compensation payouts being much higher over there.
@Ottomanboi
All he has to do now if he believes it is no more deadlier than season flu is explain why there is over 30,000 more deaths in one month than normal over the last five years and why this is happening in many countries around the world.
@Dorothy Devine,
The Distillers Company Ltd was responsible for the manufacture of the drug Thalidomide in the United Kingdom,
that`s the company Guinness(through Guinness share-trading fraud,Ernest Saunders) took over and both now owned by Diageo.
If folk are thinking I’m up-myself then it suggests they haven’t done the reading. All I’ll say is just be careful who you put your trust in, and try not to include those who espouse hard-right philosophers as being compatible with pro-social AGENCY.
New OECD outlook on the global economy
https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/en/
With Joe back.
Does that mean Jackie disappears?
Meanwhile, in the real world
Nobody knows anything.
The Covid-19 Riddle: Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?
http://archive.is/xBIJH
This thread seems to be inhabited by a lot of Dominic Cummings types, just let it rip because only the old will die or anti-vaxxers. Because if you are not of the Dominic Cummings persuasion that would appear to put you in the conspiracy theory area, desperate for any link that confirms your view.
@CamB –
I’m not ‘judging’ you at all, merely pointing out the hypocrisy of using lazy ‘conspiracy theory’ pejoratives when you’ve been on the receiving end of exactly the same treatment.
Ernest Saunders – the only person in history to recover from Alzheimer’s Disease !
Anti-Vaxxers: quacks of the world unite!
As the Britnats dance around on Friday celebrating a victory 75 years ago achieved mostly by America and Russia another few hundred will die of a virus that could have been saved. Meanwhile in Germany its government will just get on with saving its citizen’s lives.
Scot Finlayson
How dare you accuse Ernest Saunders of fraud!
Next you will be telling us that he feigned Alzheimer’s Disease, to secure an early release from prison, before making a full and complete recovery.
Ian Brotherhood
I don’t think you’ve done the suggested reading Ian, so I doubt you understand where I’m coming from. Yet you’re disappointed in me for rejecting opinion I consider to be bollocks. Now that is disappointing.
I hope everybody is going to download the app written by the company of the brother of the friend of Dominic Cummings who sits on the sage committee and the data administered by GCHQ. It’s certainly tempting.
@CamB –
If it is so important to you to have the last word, fair enough – you win!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a crap crossword to complete.
😉
Ian Brotherhood 🙂
Ian Brotherhood
You do realise I’ve never see or attempted one of your crosswords? 😉
@CamB –
Well, here’s one for you to mull over…
YyYy???yYy?? (10 letters)
😉
Joe @2.22am makes an utterly nonsensical claim that Bill Gates of Microsoft caused a polio outbreak that killed 400,000 children and then goes on to claim vaccination is something to be avoided at all costs.
I have never heard such stupidity, Vaccination has been responsible in my lifetime for wiping out across most of the world, smallpox, diphtheria, TB, polio, yellow fever, rubella, measles, mumps, cholera, and a host of other diseases. As a result millions of people are alive today who would have died a hundred years ago.
The only places where these diseases hang on are in countries run by religious zealots such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, but a few idiots like Joe seem to be happy to see these diseases return to satisfy their crackpot anti-vaccination conspiracy theories.
Ian Brotherhood
Piss off. 🙂
@CamB –
Go on, have a stab at it.
Hint: Remember the Catchphrase catchphrase? ‘Say what you see!’
Ian Brotherhood
I’m not trying to gain sympathy here but I do have a problem with reading and writing. Always have and it looks like I always will. So anagrams are something that I’m not bio-neurologically ‘fitted-out’ to cope with. That’s just the hand nature dealt me. Sorry for being a pussy. 😉
From Guardian live page earlier this morning.
‘The government’s former chief scientific adviser David King will launch his “alternative Sage” meeting of experts on YouTube at midday. They will discuss the UK’s approach to coronavirus. It . He’ll follow up with a press conference at 4pm.’
In case anyone wants to check it out at 4pm today:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqqwC56XTP8F9zeEUCOttPQ/featured?utm_source=POLITICO.EU&utm_campaign=9f12ffb70e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_04_06_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_10959edeb5-9f12ffb70e-189986489
Expert opinion can and is easily bought on a regular basis.
Trusted expert opinion is a completely different animal altogether and incredibly valuable and necessary for making correct decisions.
Experts used to tell us that smoking was actually good for us (the tobacco industry kills more people than any virus every year yet we are not calling for their shutdown).
A healthy cynicism is needed when it comes to information we are meant to swallow, I repeat, a healthy cynicism.
VE Day celebrations: Vomit Engendering.
Fireproofjim
Gates does have previous re whipping up paranoia about viruses and making a fortune from the solution.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/jan/03/y2k.internationalnews
Never known a site with so many experts talking pish.
Expect important announcement re Health Care Workers this week!!! Talk soon.
Colonel Blimp , I knew that it was still used in South America and those in the remote parts had past it on with the usual results – whether that is still true I know not. I believe it was/is used in the treatment of leprosy.
Scott , I had no idea who manufactured it so thanks for that.
Did the Guiness family ever write down how he cured his Alzheimers??
Col.BlimpIV
Bill Gates was probably correct about the computer virus striking in 2000. Many companies and governments went ahead and upgraded and the computer companies profited, but that was not immoral like calling for vaccination to be stopped.
Breastplate.
I can’t recall anyone saying smoking was good for you, but since the 1950s it has been generally agreed that it was bad for you. Everyone knows that now, and it kills millions every year, but that is nothing to do with vaccination, which has been a universal good.
Dorothy Devine
It seems they still use it for quite a few ailments, just a bit more cautiously than in the past – and it is being trialed as a possible ant-covid19 treatment.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-infamous-drug-thalidomide-being-considered-covid-19-treatment-149621
Question for today:-
Has anyone ever opened a Cameron b Brodie Link???
I am having a bit of fun, but seriously, has anyone?
Cameron, you put in some shift on here, 24/7.
Phycology and philosophy is not my forte, so I’m afraid I haven’t opened any of your Links.
And what is that gear you are on, Speed or Cocaine?
You are definitely getting your money’s worth.
Joking pal,,,you being a phycologist will understand our need for humour in these dire times.
I wonder how many of those who died over the last 6 weeks or so had the flu jab, I also had for the first time one for pneumonia(don’t know which pneumonia was being covered). The flu jab isnt compulsory, just recommended. Is there any legislation that makes it compulsory in Care homes. It would make an interesting research project.
Kevin Pringle the SNP’s former director of communications, has said that no new indy party should be created to challenge the SNP until after we’re an independent nation.
There’s just one wee problem Mr Pringle, the current leadership doesn’t look likely to deliver independence.
Millennium
Non-prescription drugs are child’s play, I’m driven by the strongest of all human emotions. FEAR. 😉
Some of you might recall the Asian flu pandemic of 1968.
It killed 80000 in the Uk and nobody really bothered too much.
Life just went on.
Those were the days!
The thing you ought to be scared of…
https://academyofideas.com/2015/11/fear-and-social-control/
Regarding repetition, the daily sentimental govt. propaganda about ‘saving’ the health service, advertisers exploiting lockdown and the contestable ‘stay safe’ mantra is proving productive.. The distinct possibility that lockdown conditioning of human behaviour, infantilization?, may become normative among many gives ‘influencers’ broad scope for mischief.
Doug 11.43am
The English Establishment want you to stand at your front door on Friday and sing “We’ll meet again”.
Naw Doug,,,me neither!!!
Failed car saleman, and branch manager of Londons Tory party in Scotland Jackson Carlaw, wants building sites in Scotland to open and allow work to resume.
Carlaw points to England which has now given the green light to the building industry to return to work, as an impetus for Scotland to do like wise.
Carlaw just can’t see past Londons lead as usual.
So the advice is clear as mud,,, Boris is telling you to go back to work,,and Nicola is telling you to stay at home.
Is that clear children???
Meanwhile (SAGE) the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which lacks transparency, even all, its board members are unaccounted for, now has a rival group. As former UK science advisor Sir Dave King, who worked under Blair and Brown (doesn’t say much Dave) has assembled a group to assess key points on the virus that King believes (SAGE) have failed on.
I trust (SAGE) as much as I trust a former Blair, Brown advisor, and that’s not at all.
Ottomanboi
Scotland’s psyche has undergone a process of “infantilisation”, which has left a lot of us unable to recognise authentic normative value. Ideational nationalism is now perceived as being natural and wholesome. So we are not a million miles apart, just gonna lay of the Scruton bollocks?
Fireproofjim,
Of course vaccines are good for you but only if tested appropriately.
Compare that statement to this.
Vaccines are good for you.
As ever, the Devil is in the nuance.
The ‘Academy of Ideas’ are nutters with links to Spiked mag, ‘libertarianism’, & former ‘revolutionary communist’ and Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox, and to the “media-friendly Tory extremists” in the ‘Institute of Ideas’ think-tank.
Please do not promote them.
@Republicodscotland
I’ve not read his piece but the obvious question is why would we need another independence party after we are independent. On the surface it’s just a recipe to keep the SNP in power but never achieve independence, on the current trajectory anyway.
Sorry, “identarian”, not ideational.
Anybody out there still thinking the UK gov briefed the SG on the Pandemic in a time to plan an alternative strategy, read this.
https://www.facebook.com/1419943011629069/posts/2410773269212700/
Hi Ian Brotherhood,
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30070-9/fulltext
It seems that, at The Lancet’s site, the longer the phrase you paste into the search box, the more likely you are to pin it down.
I pasted in, (exactly, in inverted commas)
“Additionally, the disparity between the strength of language as presented to the media by some researchers”
and got the ONE correct document.
@BDTT –
Cheers. Much appreciated.
😉
Fireproofjim says:
I think it would be crazy to claim that mass vaccination is not beneficial from the perspective of society as a whole.
But we are all individuals and most vaccinations carry some albeit very slight risk of doing harm to the recipient.
I personaly elect not to take the annual flu vaccination – Why?
Because it’s formulation is based on guesswork. Meaning it is unlikely to provide protection more than 60% (sometimes significantly less) of the time.
I don’t catch the flu very often, have never missed a day off work because of it and only once (in the early 70’s) was I actually call the doctor, unwell because of it.
My belief being that on balance the possible benefit does not significantly outweigh the prospect of harm from the known side-effects.
https://www.livescience.com/40279-flu-shot-information.html
P.S I smoke like a chimney LoL.
https://www.google.com/search?source=univ&tbm=isch&q=doctors+recommend+smoking+ads&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi11O26jZrpAhUAQhUIHXLGDoMQsAR6BAgJEAE&biw=1920&bih=949#imgrc=oEMOCTnsm5YNMM
Fireproofjim,
Just a quick google,
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/media/07adco.html
Also, your generalisation is correct, the tobacco companies had to become move from it’s good for you approach, through it won’t do you any harm until they finally had to admit it was bad for you.
My point earlier was that they always had experts who people would trust on their side ready to tell the punters explicitly or implicitly that their product was good for them.
Caveat emptor.
Pete,
You are a complete and utter Crackpot.
Nobody bother when 80,000 died with Asian Flu?
Are you mentally disturbed?
Let me tell you hundreds of thousands were bothered
Seriously Bothered at loosing a loved one.
It sounds like you consider Covid 19 death tally as a minor inconvenience
Until it can exceed 80,000.
Comments like that just waste this site but that’s exactly what you are all about.
Finally got a laptop to work….
Re singing “We’ll meet again”. Anyone else remember Billy Connolly’s joke that ‘WW2 was started in order to push Vera Lynn’s new single?’
SENTIMENTALITY, the stuff being liberally sprinkled by the state and media during this ‘crisis’, is according to the American writer James Baldwin,
“the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, it is the mark of dishonesty. The wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mark of cruelty.”
The theatrics and emotive rhetoric re the NHS are potent exemplars. ‘Reality’ has never been more fake.
Been Googling for an hour trying to establish the Civid Death Tally
For Scotland which I do know have been announced.
Not being able to find this very important stat I take it
That it’s very low?
All focus on a Skye Nursing Home with an outbreak or
They would be forced to make up today’s negation story for Scotland
My son who works on construction on a site in Glasgow
Has been told by his employer this morning they are looking
to open the site next Monday.Anyone else heard anything ?
Relying on science alone will not provide an adequate guide to our actions. Science needs to be supported by ethics and empowered through the law.
opiniojuris.org/wp-content/uploads/B.-Sander-J.-Rudall-eds-COVID-19-and-International-Law-Opinio-Juris-Symposium-copy-1.pdf
@Effijy
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon confirms 12,226 people have tested positive for Covid-19, an increase of 169 from yesterday.
1,720 patients are in hospital with a suspected or confirmed case (up 54), with 99 being treated in intensive care (no change).
2,780 people have been discharged from hospital after receiving treatment for the virus since 5 March.
A further five people who tested positive have died, taking the total to 1,576 deaths in Scotland by that measure. Ms Sturgeon reiterates death registration tends to be lower at weekend so this figure may be “artificially low”.
I rarely comment and especially now confined to quarters with a broken limb. Usually it is because other posters are making comments with which I am in agreement – with the obvious exceptions.
However, I find myself surprised that those very same posters with whom I usually agree are making comments on the present Covid-19 crisis that cause me some dismay.
The article from The Lancet dates from February and launches into drawing conclusions from what is still a new virus. It would surely be an elementary mistake of scientists to make those conclusions during an ongoing epeidemic. It appears that this coronavirus does have a very fast transmission rate which differentiates it from Mers and Sars which might be why these became localised infections and not global pandemics.
It also appears that science is rapidly trying to understand this virus. Yet people on here who I usually respect seem ready to extrapolate from the data which is still coming in and which is causing clinicians actually ln critical care to say that they have never encountered a situation like this.
Apart from the deaths of older people which some appear to be sanguine about, surely we must also consider the disproportionate effects on those from poor backgrounds and those from the BAME communities? Not knowing enough is not a reason for throwing caution to the winds.
I don’t claim enough knowledge to know the solution which is why I am not ready to back a decision to simply raise the drawbridge and let the poor and disadvantaged take their chances. I am averse to allowing us to go back to the days when survival was a cruel lottery. It is becoming clearer that just as there are disadvantaged groups in this situation that there are also groups better protected against this virus such as those mostly under sixty but also the better off.
Whether you like it or not to consign people to their fate as if they were dispensable is a political point of view. It makes me very uneasy to see it expressed by people I admire like Craig Murray.
Jfngw @ 12.37
Initially we should have a new independence party for two reasons..
Firstly…. Negotiations
Separating the Assets and Liabilities for Scotland will be an important first step.
We (the people) need none of this secret behind closed doors shit.Which politicians of all stripes tend to want to do.
We don’t need to be left wondering and debating ” if we got our fair share”,we’ll not get everything we think we should,and we need to understand why!
Otherwise us “plebs” will,he left arguing the toss with each other,coudda wouldda,shoudda for years…centuries even 🙂
Westminster will resist this,mainly because they’d not want the English to know their worth.We should not consider accommodating this. Therefore we need people directly from the Yes Movement who won’t buy it.
Then there’s the Unionist Parties…who’s interests will they negotiate in?
Having been Westminster lacky’s all their lives and in anticipation of a reunification/stop Indy Campaign it would be in their interests to produce a “bad deal”, even a “punishment” deal!
As the Unionist Parties current out number the Indy Party’s …we need the back up in the room of some “take nae prisoner’s” and honourable Scots.
Secondly….
The Constitution..
The current crop of Scottish Politicians and “so called” Civic Scotland shouldn’t get a free hand to write up *Our Constitution*!They are moulded very much in the image of the class system that the UK maintains….we’re not in this ( I think) to create a mini me Westminster!
Again…we should have grassroots people involved,who won’t sit back and have cozy terms and conditions written up.
The Constitution is OUR rules for them,not,Their rules for us.
That’s why I’d say we need another Indy party… And that why I’d like the Rev right in there 🙂
It’s pretty much accepted the the Holyrood parties will need to reform any way….and the London funding has to stop.So the current set up all have to change and we need politicians drawn from the People,including Unionists. We cannot have a chunk of Scots not represented,hopefully if the see an new Indy party they’ll do the same thing!!!
There should be another disclaimer on Scotland’s death total, that is has been artificially inflated to make the epidemic seem worse than it is in order to justify this increasingly pointless lockdown.
Doctors and nurses under pressure to register deaths as covid 19 without any kind of testing. Unqualified care home staff making medical diagnosis on the cause of death of residents (which is what is being used in the Scottish governments statistics), and again without any testing being done.
@Bipod.
Only a Doctor can sign and determine what goes on a death certificate.
@Marie M
1st May Darn Sarf (England) was the day that some building sites could start up again. Not in Scotland to my knowledge.
PS:
I have seen building work going on in three places within 300M of my house.
All extensions to single or two floor domestic houses + new windows in another one.
PPS:
Good old Auntie, it’s the way they tell it.
Run through the latest figures there on the TV news.
England hospital deaths today 204 (Lowest for a month deep joy) but no Total given. 🙁 Bit of shielding there Auntie.
Wales…….. 14 deaths (all) Oh! Total…. 997.
N. Ireland….06 deaths (all) Oh! Total…. 387
Scotland……05 deaths (all) Oh! Total…. 1576
No deep Joy for Scotland form Auntie very low total today 🙁
Anyhoo! Weekend deaths still to catch up.
@Bob Mack
On a death certificate, but that is not what is being included in the statistics.
The ONS is using data collected by care home providers:
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-14/coronavirus-care-regulator-to-record-care-home-deaths-from-covid-19/
Can anyone please point me definitely in the right direction.
I know it may have been done before BUT I am a bit bereft without the revs twitter feed/edit for all the news/analysis re what’s really going on. Where does it live now or does it still exist?
Many thanks in advance. Apologies if i waste your time due to multiple responses.
@Frank Gillougley
https://twitter.com/SealandGazette
@Frank G-
https://twitter.com/SealandGazette
Scottish Death Certificate:
https://www.nes.scot.nhs.uk/media/2736701/mccd_power_point.pdf
PS:
UK deaths now highest in Europe say the counters at ‘The Sun’
28,650.
With regards to UK covid death totals it has to be noted that there were changes in the Law as to how deaths are attributed on death certificates in March .
My son being a Law graduate currently in the middle of his bar course, made the changes in Law quite simple to understand for me .
Now a death can be attributed to Covid 19 if there is a suspicion that may be the case without any testing. Our UKing government has decided though that only deaths tested positive for Covid 19 will be included in their official figures. So we will be having deaths wrongly attributed and not attributed depending on the desired choice. Our government is allowed to decide who died from what. The low level of testing being carried out in the UK compared to our high level of infection allows the government more leeway to ‘play’ with.
The UK familiars on here must be loving our government’s deviant behaviour.
Look up Journeyman Pictures for more from Dr Erikson.
@ Liz g
‘ its our rules for them, not their rules for us’
Great comment.
JGedd,
Surely the whole purpose of data is extrapolation, we need proper and current information to guide us in decision making.
Your point about the Lancet report being out dated is correct also, we should continue to monitor and evaluate new information and change tack accordingly without emotion.
An emotional attachment to one side of a debate is not conducive to logical or reasonable thinking.
Also, to suggest that there are people on here who wish to cull the elderly is neither correct nor helpful. I believe that is an emotionally charged argument.
callmedave & ianbrotherhood
many thanks guys
Dog biscuit
Dr Erikson is a private clinician with a rather narrow perspective, IMHO. Yes, harm in the community needs to be minimised, but global bio-security also needs protection. International health law is there for a purpose, it’s not simply decoration.
https://www.globalhealthnow.org/2020-02/coronavirus-expert-reality-check
*elderly or vulnerable.
Breastplate
Science shouldn’t be cherry picked to suite a position that is not compatible with the precautionary principle.
THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE AS A NORM OF CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW
https://academic.oup.com/jel/article-abstract/9/2/221/410518?redirectedFrom=PDF
Dog biscuit, CBB,
Whether one believes Dr Erickson or not, that video and access to what he was saying should not have been censored.
Would you agree with that?
Great cartoon no words needed and after this is over very hard and far reaching decisions will have to be taken on how we fund and run the NHS care homes included Also how this whole mess happened .And what do about it .
All the governments and devolved administrations are trying to work together ordinary politics is out the window right now. And btw agree with her or not Nicola believes in Indy .
CBB,
We have already covered the cautionary approach.
Breastplate
So just how much international law do you understand?
CBB,
Very little I would imagine.
Breastplate
So I’d suggest you lack adequate insight to comment “competently” on the PREcautionary principle. 😉
The Precautionary Principle in General International Law: Combating the Babylonian Confusion
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9388.2007.00553.x
CBB,
Are you suggesting that everyone who does not have a degree in international law is wrong?
On ye go Joe.
CBB,
My earlier comment was to say that we have already discussed the cautionary approach and we disagreed on how much information there was to make safe decisions. Which is true.
Breastplate
Insufficiently competent, in a legal scenes, yes. You are still entitled to an opinion, just don’t think I’m bound to agree with you. That’s why we have the rule-of-law, or thought we did anyway.
Breastplate
It’s the PREcautionary principle. ?
@liz g
It’s a noble wish but we need to be careful that just after gaining independence that we don’t give the unionist parties more say than they should have. In fact no party that is financed from outside Scotland should have any part in the Scotland side negotiations, they either set up Scottish versions of their parties or bow out.
The separation agreement should be our first priority, the constitution will take longer and involve the whole of Scotland, if it takes 10 years it is of no consequence as long as we get it right. But it has to be a proper consultation, not like the GRA pseudo consultation. You are wise to be wary of politicians, especially those with a minority mission.
CBB regarding Dr Erikson I think you miss his points deliberately assuming a grand strategic overview .Youre wrong manand CIA coined the term ‘conspiracy theory’. And in the real world, all Governments conspire.Why would we have an official secrets act if that were not the case? Your textbooks are a poor smokescreen.
CBB I notice you are quick to bat away any questioning of the official narrative like several other posters onsite.
CBB,
Does it matter? Surely we are talking about the same steps to address the same problem? But I concede to your point even though it amounts to the same as which word is better, like flammable or inflammable.
@liz g
Forgot to add, the oath should be changed on day one from the monarch to the Scottish people and all MSP’s should be required to take it or resign.
There are about 500 comments on this thread as I write this, about 300 seem to be a few people kicking lumps out of each other, Fucking tedious.
Dog biscuit
Stop quacking like a duck.
Which Covid-19 Future Will We Choose?
https://www.csis.org/analysis/which-covid-19-future-will-we-choose
I like it when this site teases out truth of a story.Sometimes almost as satisfying as witnessing the creation of a masterwork.A gift to humanity.
A lot of folk still don’t realise that the @RevStu twitter account has been ‘frozen’ and that he’s now using:
https://twitter.com/SealandGazette
So please share, esp if you are a FB user
It had 230 Followers at 8pm yesterday, now has 2,163.
😉
Sorry CBB,
I thought I was clear before that in my view a debate was an exchange of ideas and not a necessity to agree with me.
Breastplate
I hope you don’t think I’m trying to brow-beat you, but a legal understanding of the PREcautionary principle is central to understanding the criminal negligence that has deprived us of our liberty, and crashed the global economy. That’s English Torydum for you (see Brexit).
Cammo,Arsetroll! A new word for you to learn. Youre not neuro-biologically connected to this Planet ,are you?