And Nothing Happened Forever
Well, we told you so. We told you in March (and indeed long before then) that the 2026 Holyrood election was a giant waste of time and money that would deliver exactly the same useless Parliament we already had, and so it proved.
The SNP ended up giving half-a-dozen seats to the Greens, Labour donated a handful to the Lib Dems, the Tories split into two parties with 29 seats instead of a single party with 31 and that’s about it. The SNP, Greens and Lib Dems stayed first, fourth and last, while the right-wing split let Labour creep from 3rd to joint 2nd despite losing seats.
A pro-indy tally of 72 became a pro-indy tally of 73, big whoop, and almost every SNP list vote elected Unionists instead, just as we told you for almost a year it would do.
We also told you that the only place there was even a chance of an SNP list seat was in the Highland region, where they did indeed sneak one at the very death of play, only because they’d somehow pulled off the incredible feat of losing Kate Forbes’ old seat of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch on a huge 21% swing, despite having started with a 15,000 majority in a seat where only 39,000 people voted.
So there we are.
Anas Sarwar, meanwhile, managed something almost as bleakly impressive as the SNP contriving to lose Skye – he hamfistedly extended Scottish Labour’s remarkable unbroken record of getting fewer seats and a lower vote share at every successive Scottish Parliament election since the first one in 1999.
Even though the SNP recorded its lowest vote, vote share and seat tally since 2007, the result was a dream come true for John Swinney – not only did he manage to avoid winning a majority and therefore having to awkwardly face up to his impossible promise that it would lead to a second indyref, he now finds himself in a position where his minority government can pass any bill with the support of ANY other single party in the chamber – the SNP’s 58 seats plus the 10 of the last-placed Lib Dems is enough to pass the majority threshold of 65.
While we can’t rule out him being stupid enough to repeat Nicola Sturgeon’s mistake of entering a formal alliance, making him a hostage to the minority partner, it would be SUCH an idiotic move that we can’t see it happening. It’s hard to imagine any law the new government would want to pass that it couldn’t get support from ONE of the other parties on with a minor concession or two.
So while the Greens will crow about their increased vote share and seat tally, it doesn’t actually count for much. They have the ability to give the SNP a majority just as they did before, but so does everyone else. They’ll have to compete for the government’s favours rather than being the tail that wags the dog.
So we really may as well not have bothered. Everything will be business as usual for the next five years just as it was for the last 10, except that the UK government will feel even more empowered to reject demands for a new referendum when it’s backed by just 41% of the votes cast in the election, compared to 49% five years ago.
(And that 41% is the SNP and Green votes combined, even though Swinney said only SNP votes counted. If you count SNP votes alone it’s 33%.)
The SNP lost over 910,000 votes in this election compared to 2021 (roughly 1.5m vs 2.4m). The result is the most disproportionate and unfair in Holyrood’s history. The Unionist parties will have a fair point in saying they got almost 60% of votes but only 43% of seats, and mocking the idea that the outcome represents any sort of mandate.
Yes still leads in most opinion polls, but the election did some serious damage to the credibility of polling, with figures and predictions hopelessly all over the place, while the election was a hard count. The SNP are now a highly effective firewall for the UK government against ever having to allow another referendum.
“Look”, they’ll say, “Swinney said this vote was all about independence and you had to vote for him to get it, but only 33% of you did, on a 53% turnout. You’re trying to claim a mandate on 17% of the electorate? Epic fail, losers.”
By making an unpopular party the proxy for the concept of independence itself, the SNP have dragged the cause down with them. As Wings has told you for years, they are the corpse blocking our path. The less popular they get, the more our chances recede, and they’re only going to get less and less popular.
The next five years will be a degraded replay of the last five, in every sense. Holyrood now has the most wretched, embarrassing collection of MSPs it has ever assembled. A brutal financial reckoning is on the way and the government’s already threadbare popularity will take a hammering as a result – especially as hopelessly inexperienced and clueless new MSPs take control of the levers of state – and even a divided opposition won’t be enough to save it next time in the way Reform did yesterday. Nigel Farage’s party have their sizeable beach-head in the Parliament now and five years of easy shots to take. Things will change, and not in the SNP’s favour.
Make no mistake, as resounding as it looks on the surface, this victory is the SNP’s equivalent of John Major’s triumph in 1992: the last gasp of a lame duck staggering towards its doom. SNP supporters should gloat while they can – Swinney’s victory comes from an even lower share of the vote than Keir Starmer’s 33.7% Westminster landslide less than two years ago, and look at the state of Starmer and Labour now.
It took the Tories almost 20 years to get back to power after Major’s term. For most readers of this site, this will be the last SNP government of our lifetimes. And since it has absolutely no hope whatsoever of achieving independence, well, you can finish the grim logic for yourselves.
You have been banging on for years about SNP 1&2 and what a complete waste of time that is. Why is this not a topic of conversation in the media etc. Why is this strategy not under serious scrutiny. Baffling.
The media is English
Why would the unionist media want to do that?
BB John gets to remain as head toilet monitor. Huzzah!
I would just like to thank all of the mouthbreathers here in Banff & Buchan (that’s the proper name for up here) who have lumbered us with the intellectual powerhouse of Karen Adam. Maybe Scotland could have a minutes silence or something for us? 😐
Minceheid, you have my sympathy , I couldn’t believe that numpty was given a vote never mind several.
I blame a media that does NOT serve the people of Scotland.
The losers yesterday where the Tory’s, Labour and the SNP supporters who voted for the SNP twice who aren’t going to secure a referendum or change on the constitution to allow Scotland to decide for its self.
I watch the results as they came in and even the BBC highlighted that if a party wins big on the constituency the party isn’t going to win any regional regional seat. I just hope James Kelly, Gingerdug and The National was watching and take responsibility.
If yesterday show us anything it was that the Independence movement was split in two first part given pro-indy parties another chance at securing a referendum and the second part not prepared to vote for the SNP or Greens.
The SNP throughout these results were saved by Reform taking votes from both Tory and Labour or else the SNP loses would have been more.
I would entirely agree that the SNP has just had its last election win, they will never win again but will the SNP take heed, Naw.
If I was the leader of the SNP I’d be writing to Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin to work together to force the UKG to allow the devolved parliaments to decide on their own constitutional question themselves. But listening to Plaid Cymru they weren’t interested in a referendum but good governance which indicated they where going to follow the SNP mistakes.
Douglas Ross, stated on TV that reform had made a big mistake, that they should have only stood on the regional vote and allowed the Labour Party and Tory party to win on the constituency vote and the unionist parties would have defeated the SNP. We now know this is what is going to happen if the parliament still exist in 5yrs.
Scotland not being Independent can be blamed on the SNP, The National and the people written in and for the National, James Kelly, Gingerdug along with Riddock and the SNP membership.
The SNP has a opportunity along with other Celtic nation’s but from experience they’ll waste it.
“even the BBC highlighted that if a party wins big on the constituency the party isn’t going to win any regional regional seat.”
They do that every Holyrood election time. Only after the polls have closed obviously. Never when it would be of any use!
So why isn’t people getting D’Hondt Method and why oh why is the SNP saying two votes SNP.
I was making the point that even the BBC is pointing it out.
Do you really think low information voters are a) watching the results b) even if they do see the explanation, are going to remember it 5 years later which is the next time it will be of use to them?
The more important Qs imo are why we don’t have this info prior to each election on TV infomercials or sent with the polling cards and why we are stuck using such a daft system anyway? Wales changed their system this election and they aren’t using D’hondt!
Glasgow Central: i had labour leaflets through my door but the only party campaigner who chapped my flat door and actually spoke to me was a wee dark cladding woman who asked me if I was going to vote, I said no as was going away, asked if I had a postal vote, I said no im not too impressed on whats on offer, she gave me a look of half puzzlement and disgust, haha, I took her leaflet and said see you later!
I’ve just seen this on youtube I had wonder if it had any merit, I’d just like to point out its not me saying this although it did have me wondering, ”
@malcolmmcblain3954
6 hours ago
I think Swinneys secret plan is to legislate for a national postal survey of the population asking the question; Should there be a referendum for independence? There is precedent for postal surveys to settle a question. eg The Australian govt could not get the numbers in parliament for a same sex marriage referendum due to a block in the senate. The govt then legislated for a non binding postal survey carried out by the bureau of statistics. All people on the voting roll were sent a registered letter and a paid return envelope asking the question. There was a huge response of above 80% returning their papers. The response was overwhelmingly for same sex marriage, so much so that the opposition conceded without a binding referendum and the government quickly legislated to make it law.
Is see no impediment to the Scottish Parliament voting for a non binding national postal survey on the question of holding a binding referendum on independence. Stuff relying on polling companies do your own indisputable poll of the people. Just saying.”.
I would have thought the question would be more likely should Westminster devolve the Constitutional question to the devolved parliaments. There is a lot of people who don’t want Independence, but do believe it should be up to Holyrood and Scotland to decide not England.
I thimk that the mere thought of Farage potentially becoming Prime Minister in 2028/9 will focus the minfs of my fellow Scots and drive them toeards Independence
Not if they don’t learn what D’hondt means in terms of their vote and it looks as though the media and the SNP are quite happy to let that deception continue.
There should be front page explanations on the National and any other so called Scottish newspaper,for weeks before any election – however that assumes a commitment to the cause and as we are all aware that doesn’t exist, in fact quite the reverse.
Well it doesn’t seem to have done judging by the results!
My god…
The delusional and willfully blind are breathtaking.
The SNP has haemoraged 414,127 constituency votes and 428,465 regional votes in just 5 years, yet Farage will frighten them all back.
Really? FFS…
Wake up!
The SNP do not want Independence.
They consistently vote AGAINST it.
Ash Regan offered it on a plate in the SNP leadership challenge. It was rejected by the wholly captured membership who chose the continuity dud instead.
Ash Regan offered it again, in Holyrood when she switched to Alba, 2026 election (this one!) would be a defacto referendum – SNP voted it down.
Ash Regan, yet again, pushed for indy to be front & center in return to save the continuity duds job, he chose to resign instead.
They don’t even want devolouton. During the SNP leadership election the SNP ran around every media outlet like headless chickens to say they were not prepared for more devolouton. Really? What about all those grand plans Sturgeon had in the background? 10 years they had. It turns out they had nothing. Zip. Nada. Fuck all.
It’s tragic Ash Regan will not be returning to Holyrood. The only voice in that place that had principal, courage to stand by her convictions & continually push for what the electorate voted for & to protecting children & womens rights.
SNP even told everyone they’d rather work with yoons in Holyrood than other independence parties. It gives them a five year easy ride with no challengers. Sturgeon made sure there’d be no challenges from inside the SNP either as she personally vetted & surrounded herself with morons.
& Just look at that shower of fckn misfits expected to work together. Holyrood is now the Big Brother house except we don’t have the weekly option of voting anyone out.
For goodness sake, when these ppl show you who they really are, believe them.
& PS, no one in England cares you don’t like who they vote for & Scotlands vote doesn’t make a difference anyway.
“They don’t even want devolouton”
“they were not prepared for more devolouton”
They don’t even know what it is.
Why don’t you enlighten them?
That’s what they said about Theresa May, and Boris Johnson, and etc etc etc.
Pointing to the threat of Boris becoming PM didn’t work; pointing to the consequences of Brexit didn’t work. Why would the threat of Farage be any different? I would wish that the possibilities to build a better nation would motivate people to action, but it’s not easy to maintain that optimism with this shower in charge.
Can’t believe that Fergus Ewing lost out to complete waste of space Emma Roddick. Unbelievable. The next five years are going to be chaos incarnate…
Yes, made that comment on SM yesterday. Perfect result for Swinney.
And of course, mandate aside, the press will associate the validity of an independent Scotland with the competence of the Swinney administration and the greens. The London labour govt will continue the destruction of Scotland and reform will have the backing of the media to promise a fresh start in 2029.
The SNP with all its plants and its wholly owned grassroots org – Believe in Scotland will do everything to capture the independence pursuit in 2029, headed by goodness knows who.
I think the voters rather than the press will make an association with the performance of pro-indy parties and the prospects of an independent Scotland.
The SNP can, potentially, ally itself on a policy by policy basis with any of the other parties, but the Greens are the favoured ones because Honest John will have to distract his deluded followers from the fact that they ain’t getting another referendum and to try and hide the fact that he never intended they should.
He didn’t expend all that energy in managing to persuade nearly a million people to vote SNP 2 just to throw away that advantage on trying for another referendum! Energy in Scotland is not used to heat homes or to power industry, but to evade responsibility for everything and hide in the bunker.
Whatever happens now, a referendum is out of the ball park and always was, in reality. Those pesky domestic policies will have to be addressed now and the pocket-money stretched just a tad further, services cut and so on when independence could have gone some way to alleviating the worst.
When independence comes, and it will come sooner than we think, the impetus will be on UDI after England kicks over the bucket of manure. Whether Reform UK can survive into the next General Election, 2029, as a separate party from the Tories remains to be seen, but, if they ever regain sense and ally themselves, England is out of the Union.
Whatever, the four constituent parts of the UK are now so far apart that the decline of the Union is all but guaranteed, anyway, although it will not be via the pretendy nationalist parties in any of the satellite parts, but overreach by the post modernists who never even learn history, let alone learn from it.
The arrogant Greens will push and push for ever more extreme ‘progressive’ – actually regressive – policies and their two LGBTQ+++++++ into infinity ‘laydeees’ will make sure they do. Even the Greens are going to discover that which women’s groups discovered quite some time ago – that the LGBTQ+++++++ into infinity never take no for an answer.
Like tantruming toddlers, they/them will scream the house down to get what they/them want. Tough old Mags who thought Mugabe was a handful is going to meet her match. Or is it their match? Whatever. It is almost guaranteed that these two beauties will instigate a coup within a very short time. She and her party will never placate them. They always want it all – and the rest.
Plaid is set to destroy itself, and any notion of independence for Wales, by following the same path as the SNP and Sinn Fein. Ach well, women of Scotland, gird your loins for another running battle against delusion and madness as our institutions crumble before our eyes. It makes me laugh that so many are so afraid of Putin and his Russian hordes when the rot is so far set in already in the form of DEI/’woke’ that, if Putin were ever daft enough to set foot in Scotchland, it would be like poking his finger through a wet paper bag.
I dunno why you mentioned P but now that you have – it’d be a blessing if he DID come! LOL! (Joking btw!) But welcome none the less on diplomatic terms. It’s not wise for any country seeking it’s liberation to start insulting the very countries who’d probably be amongst the first to recognise it.
Anyway – What’s wrong with P?
He doesn’t allow this pish to parade on the streets never mind being elected to parliament.
They’re a historic sign of a nations decline. (True story)
They’re anti family & family values.
They’re listed as a terrorist organisation & who can deny that is rather an accurate description?
Cut to the USA & the TRA running around topless in the Whitehouse rose garden shouting obscenities to the gathered press pack & beamed around the world giving the finger – Or the absolute state of the opening Olympic ceremony in France mocking Christians worldwide.
Obviously as a signatory to the ICC he’d be arrested upon arrival but sure . .
He isn’t a signatory. He withdrew over Crimea.
Crimea was never a part of an independent U. U failed to sign off on conditions at the UN on gaining its independence. It was time to settle the matter once U decided to persecute it’s residents.
He was proven correct for removing R. It is bent. The ENGLISH judge issued that warrant instantly based on nothing but propaganda from one side & did not even attempt to gather evidence from R direct of why they moved those children from a war zone. He was later forced to apologise & admit he was wrong to issue it & had been bullied to do so & without due process. Funny tho that it took that same judge aaaages to figure out what a Jenny looks like tho eh? Finally forced not to look an eejit he had to issue one to Yaboo. Death threats & personal sanctions were his reward for that.
Yet more English bent judges were the outcome of that episode. Making a complete mockery & trashing what could’ve been a respected organisation.
Okeydoke,
I see what you mean. You’re referring to the UK being a signatory.
Interesting can of worms that.
Could Scotland take the UK government & its minions to the Scottish courts over war crimes? It’s already disregarding the more serious ICJ advice.
“The Act enables Scottish courts to prosecute grave crimes such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
Anyway AI Dan, that wasn’t the point. The point was he doesn’t allow this depravity in his country. It’s a terrorist organisation. Something I’m sure Lorna would agree on. It’s a destructive force & he isn’t wrong is he? A bat shit cancer invented by the Eppy class to destroy societies.
Och me, it was a joke, Geri. Yes, I agree that this is a very evident sign of decay on a large scale. Not necessarily that some men seem to get a huge sexual frisson out of wearing women’s clothes, make-up, shoes, etc. – that has always gone on – but that the public flaunting of such is the indicator that collapse is close, and even more so, that so many, so often handmaid women, positively cheer it on, too.
The really sad and rage-inducing things, though, are that young women and boys have been butchered in the name of diversity, and young children’s bodies have been damaged permanently by hormone use before puberty. These are the groups where the most damage has been done and, when absolute idiots in the SNP parliamentary party, Lib Dems, such as ‘we did it for you, Beth”, Greens, Chapman, Harvie, Slater, et al, spout utter bull about being in the wrong body and boo hoo, “They are totally a victim”, my foot itches to give them a good hearty kick up their nethers. Evil is, indeed, banal; you couldn’t get more banal than that lot of grifters.
The damage that has been done to the SNP and to independence, and to Scotland, is really secondary to the damage done to a whole generation of youngsters who, in the future, will have to live with the physical and mental consequences of what is nothing more or less than a mass delusion instigated by psychopaths, narcissists and misogynists – the billionaires who funded it all and who funded (behind the scenes) the procurement of the Denton’s Document. If anyone hasn’t yet read it, he or she really, really should. Read and weep for our young people and for Scotland and the UK, Europe and the West.
Aidan, pu tin is used as a bogeyman to scare the bejeesus out of us western plebs.
The horrific idea that the British would have to learn to speak Ru ssian when, en masse, they can barely manage to speak the English language properly, is a bridge to far for most.
I’m pretty sure the bookies would give shorter odds on the Americans invading Europe rather than the Ru sskies, Denmark are shitting themselves, for example.
The good ol’ USA, we
Lorna,
Aye. I was joking too. That it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he did rock up for the reasons I mentioned. He’d soon put an end to this nonsense. He recognised it for exactly what it was immediately & banned everything to do with it. A destructive, depraved force he probably recognised from the Nazi experiments of butchering body parts & sterilising ppl. The West has rebranded it for population control & to remove morons from the gene pool.
I do feel sorry for the young. Especially the ones not old enough to understand but were pushed into it by fckwit parents.
Off topic but he probably saved those children from a fate far worse than being bombed. U has a history of selling them & was being investigated of where all the children were disappearing to long before war broke out.
They were probably put on a plane to Eppy island. Not everything has been released about that.
Wow, Geri.
Didn’t take you long to start on your next 5-year plan for carpet bagging your agenda on the back of this Indy site.
Right enough, eh? When people tell you what they are really about, you had best believe them.
“en masse, they can barely manage to speak the English language properly, is a bridge to far for most”
And individually, Implants, you are unable to write the English language properly.
I’m assuming, on the general theme that the next 5 years is going to be identical to the last 5 years, that you’re going to continue to pop up from nowhere, every time somebody posts some criticism of poot and his amazing dying Orcs.
How odd, to alert readers, that you should not only have this dismal chore assigned to you.
But you don’t have too good a grasp of written English either.
John Main,
I like to point out hypocrisy when I see it, that’s why I like to reply to your nonsense on occasion.
As Kissenger once said
“It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
How true.
“Didn’t take you long to start on your next 5-year plan for carpet bagging your agenda on the back of this Indy site.”
That’s priceless coming from you.
1,000 scattergun posts from you per day & all managing to be completely irrelevant – across all topics.
I’m glad you recognise this is an Indy site. You don’t support Scottish Independence & you don’t even like the ppl who post here frequently, so what is the point of you exactly other than to be fckn annoying?
You don’t manage to fool ppl either with yer endless propaganda. We’re of independent mind & can think/research for ourselves. So yer time is rather wasted trying to convince us P is heading our way when all the evidence suggests it’s the US that’s the nasty Colonising invader that’s just lost an independent country some territory & highlighted along the way that the English haven’t lost their knack for terrorism. Being the wee irrelevant, disposable Proxy that you are.
Get yersel fit tho & stay awake. Reform will have yeh signed up & marching tae Trumps tune soon enough.
Take it easy, Geri.
Remember what lies ahead of you for every day of the next 5 years.
You’re gonna have to remain unable to spell.
You’re gonna have to lie, dissemble, exaggerate, fantasise, gurn, weep, gnash teeth, and if all else fails, accuse people of being nonces.
You’re gonna have to steer clear of all primary school kids yourself, just in case one of them manages to show you how the apostrophe works.
It’s gonna be a marathon for you, not a sprint. And we don’t want anything happening to somebody who garners 100 new Indy supporters with her every post.
So pace yersel. Scotland will need your gravity, your dignity, your endless charm and feminine wit, your peerless intellect, burnished and honed to a needle sharp point by your continuous thirst for education and learning, for many decades to come.
You’re a national treasure, Geri. The brightest hope of our downtrodden, Scottish nation.
Our promised one. Our Messiah.
Sorry, must stop now, welling up.
Well done to the dedicated independence fighters at ATLS for their ground breaking electoral result today, achieving a 3 figure number of votes in some regions. I stand here humbled and rebuked, the strategy of not fundraising until a few days out, no media appearances, but 24/7 spamming of Wings BTL paid the dividends you said it would folks.
Great oaks from little acorns grow, Aidan. Ask Farage about English nationalism masquerading as British nationalism. In Scotland, you can fool some of the people all of the time, as the SNP has just proved.
AI Dan doesn’t realise it’s all pantomime. Reform is just another distraction for another five years cause the British State already ruined the two main parties so had to establish another one for the proles to fall for. Reform. They’ll go exactly the same way as all the rest. Backpedal. Rinse. Repeat.
They’re not an Independence party, English or otherwise. Why would they be? They already run the entire shit show already & who would ever wave goodbye to the neverending cash machine that keeps spitting out free money & free energy security that is called Scotland?
Reform isn’t even in power & they’re already on the take. They work for foreigners. Instead of that being a warning sign the goons will celebrate it. It’s to be pitied. We’ve had that with the SNP. I guess it’s their turn now.
ATLS is doing the best thing possible. Going external & bypassing the whole corrupt system. AI Dan is too stupid to realise that tho.
A few seats in Holyrood would’ve been nice to shine a light at epic failure but it isn’t essential. It’s a colonial outpost, a branch office with no International clout no one cares about.
I hope they start building & preparing for Westminster. That’s the only seats worth winning.
Yes, it is indeed a chastising experience, Aidan. 😀
Who knew eh?
AI Dun
Yes, you did AI Dun, but then again those willing to consider and vote on it did say things start small.
So don’t be too smug, they at least can hold their heads high.
Anyway anyways, who did you vote for, and, broadly where?
Just askin’ an’ that.
Gaun, you know you want to say..
“they at least can hold their heads high”
As an oath breaker, a betrayer of your vow of allegiance, WTAF would you know about that?
“Vote SNP 1 & 2” -how did that work out then?
For independence momentum, it did nothing. For spreading the seats evenly across opposition parties, it worked a treat for Swinney. No other party could get a result which would give them leverage, and no independently-minded minor party or coalition could get attention.
For a current SNP regime who desperately does NOT want either independence or Referendum II, it worked out perfectly and they even gained a list seat.
Well, you’ve given them 5 more years.
Honest John will just keep the seat warm and continue to do nothing useful, Sturgeon’s 5th column will continue to torpedo anyone tlwith imagination or drive, and promote her unelectable ‘friends’..
A useless Cabinet will ensure health, justice, education, transport, the economy and everything else, will just get worse.
The best of our citizens will continue to leave and who can blame them.
Wally. It shows democracy working. Watch this soace. Peolpe were writing off the SNP they were wrong. There is an Independence majority in Holyrood and several new charasmatuc MSPs. Not all SNP.
You should have called yourselves Deluded. Your favorite Blogger Mr Kelly already advocating SNP should push for the Westminster election on Independence, we’re only into day one.
@ Izzie
Still polishing the turd?
AS the new MSP, charasmatuc is certainly the word for them ???
The question marks after the second paragraph is supposed to be emoji’s which I had copied and pasted from a website.
There is a HTML code for it which might work on this site. There is a test to see if it works – 😂
Can’t help being a geek 🙂
It’s even worse than 33%, the vote we should be looking at is the List vote, the one the SNP pushed relentlessly and yet still only managed 25%. That’s the figure we should be looking at, that’s the furure, as we will inevitably follow Wales and get rid of the single-member FPTP constituency battles and move to multi-member constituencies. Last night the SNP would have picked up 35 seats, not 58.
The Opposition, Greens included, would be daft not to go for it…
True, Sophia, but, then, the SNP would be gasping to ally with the other nationalist parties and take the List.
The other nationalist parties? I’m not sure you mean Reform, but they’re the only other nationalist party in Holyrood, I’m not even sure the SNP are nationalist now, try asking any SNP member or rep if they’re nationalist and see what their response is. The Greens, who I think you mean, are *anti-nationalist*, they pursue a globalist internationalism which denies nationalism, their support for independence is as fake as everything else they come out with. Sorry, I’m actually laughing at the thought of any of them being nationalist. Anyway, the point is they’re starting from 25% rather than 33%, forget the FPTP figures, they’re history. Suddenly the Establishment will see benefit from PR, it slows change down.
I was being ironical, Sophia.
Yep onward and upwards for ATLS. We have to start somewhere.
We DID start somewhere. We’ll never get closer than to where Alex took us. The generation that fought with Alex is now an irrelevance to the people in that Holyrood building. I’m not interested in starting again. I haven’t got the energy, and I’m too heartbroken and angry. I’m done with politics in Scotland, it’s a filthy fetid stinking swamp I want nothing to do with.
Indy is dead for me. Scotland has noone in its political ranks who is competent to run a country, and it has a parliament full of idiots.
I’m for Rupert Lowe from now on. I want the country and society around me brought back to what I grew up in, and something my grandparents would recognise, and would have been happy that they went through a world war for. I want women’s rights and safety as top priority. I want the boat gangs and the organised crime gangs and the rape gangs smashed, I want illegals deported, I want criminals jailed. I want order, policing and decency.
I want to be among my own tribe on these isles. Rupert Lowe is a man of probity and decency. I’m voting for him as UK prime minister. He’s the only light in a very dark place right now.
I’m with you on that, What Rot.
Restore Britain are the only political party who have stated that they will repeal the GRA 2004, an Act of parliament which should never have been instated in the first instance. Basically Rupert Lowe wants to ‘do a Pu Tin’on Queer Theory and Gender Ideology.
And that gets my immediate attention. And approval.
I also really like his take on the anarcho-tyranny we are being subjected to through the numerous Globalist Agendas and dangerous ideologies that have now infected every area of life.
Patriots (in all corners of the British Isles) now need to join forces to resist(and hopefully defeat)the Globalist take-over which is in full swing and robust health.
Scotland’s cause is now a lost cause.
In my opinion, it’s a cause that is overshadowed by much more sinister/pressing threats than remaining a colony could ever pose to us.
«What is any political campaign save a concerted effort to turn out a set of politicians who are admittedly bad and put in a set who are thought to be better. The former assumption, I believe is always sound; the latter is just as certainly false. For if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar». — H. L. Mencken
However, the robotic masses will do their civic «duty» and promiscuously chain themselves to «systems».
In an informed universe the masses might just say NO to such bondage.
Mr SWINNEY will be releaved big decisions are still off the must do list.
Search term: MEDIOCRACY
He doesn’t need to search for it , he found a looong time ago.
At least we’ll now be spared the gruesome sight of Swinney and Starmer going head to head in an independence debate or Gordon Brown being wheeled out of retirement to tell us how much better off we are with Westminster in charge.
You have seen the news this morning. The crypt has been opened and he’s back as and economic advisor!
A
Talk of the devil, you had to mention Auld Bleary’s name and up he pops through a crack in the floor (or as you hint at wheeled out of the deep freezer).
Yes the wet wipe with a haircut clinging on at number 10 has recalled Auld Bleary to steady his ship on, wait for it; economic matters.
Wait for any remaining national family jewels to be sold off then (he already sold the gold).
It’s like the ghost of Christmas past, sees himself as another Tam Dalziel (except Tam didn’t slever).
Anyone have the breakdown of turnout? I see 53% in the article and I am surprised that it was that high!
40.5% of a 53% turnout – something like 20% of the voting age population – pathetic!
Now, with Reform in Holyrood (thanks to the both votes SNP fuckwittery) and their surge in England, watch them push to end Devolution as we move towards the next UK General Election (I know, a few years off, but watch).
Is the closure of the Scottish parliament really such a bad thing? I would vote for its removal these days for all the good it is and has done.
It has done a lot of good, TBF.
Once SNP completed Alex Salmonds projects the decline & rot started. Sturgeon had zero fresh ideas of her own, dismissed all political advice & just stole bat shit crazy policies from the Greens instead & it’s been a disaster since. Not helped either by Sturgeon allowing Westminster to strip it of all meaningful powers after Brexshit.
Holyrood does allow decisions on health, education etc that we’d not have under direct rule. I’m sure we all remember what a shit show that was being ruled by ppl that don’t live here.
Yep. The SNP don’t inspire, moribund, but the competition continues to under perform even more.
Twenty four thousand and eighty six… not bad for a shiny new political party never before heard of in Scotland (there is definitely an opportunity here to build a greater following over the coming weeks, months, and years).
Especially so when that grand, but now grinding, groaning and rusted, machinery of Westminster designed to prevent such new births was operating at full industrial strength, steam factor 10 on the British Empire power scale, in the run up to Thursday’s ‘democratic election’.
I was, perhaps, far too Panglossian in my premature hopes for an ALS – I’m dropping the preposition “to” in the name Alliance to Liberate Scotland, I find it overly cumbersome when included in the acronym – candidate’s ascension to the motherfucker of all parliaments… that Whore of Babylon, Holyrood.
Of course, this latest dream of democracy implanted in the bedazzled and confused minds of the Scottish electorate, this most current illusion of a people’s control over their own nation’s fate, this continuation of England’s ‘soft’ invasion of Scotland was always going to end the way it inevitably has done.
The ALS was but a fevered dream I had… but now, back to reality, it’s time for a new plan to fuck-up Holyrood, Westminster, and the arse-end of England’s former British Empire and its rancid presence in Scotland.
It’s time for us Picts (I am so disappointed with the Scots that it might take some time before I can bring myself to utter their name when referring to the indigenous people of Scotland) to paint ourselves in mysterious patterns and set about removing the threat to our people’s continued existence through some other – more esoteric and possibly involving the occult – mechanisms.
Do not despair, my fellow Picts, there was never much hope that this election would deliver Scottish independence, and though we have gained nothing… neither has anything been lost, the status quo remains, as was always intended by this election; an election owned and operated by the English state.
Brace yourselves, however.
For we are fast approaching the colonial end-game and we must grit our teeth and bear the pain about to beset our people before the tables are turned on Scotland’s interloper; when we can point and laugh as one at its demise… and we can rejoice in being free again.
Aye, not a bad result for an alliance only established eight weeks ago & with very limited coverage & funding.
Well done everyone involved.
Aye, Geri… setting my facetious nature aside for a moment, garnering so many votes in just a couple of months is a remarkable achievement; especially so when ALS had zero publicity from ‘Britain’s’ MSM.
“For we are fast approaching the colonial end-game”
Fit wuy did thon wee ginger dug get in here?
Bet you any sum of money you care to mention, Northy, you’ll be deid first.
Dinna be feart noo. If I win, you’ll be deid, so I can never collect.
Brilliant Analysis Stu! James goes pop kelly must still be banging on about how more people should have voted snp 1 & 2
As for the dug…. what an arse!
Swinney has the demeanour of a man who just smothered enthusiasm with a pillow.
The Greens have continued on their quest to turn Holyrood into a freak show. As if Mad Maggie and Loopy Lorna weren’t mad enough, they’ve now given us Man Iris and Unco Q, the latter a Sri Lankan visiting on a student visa.
Independence is going nowhere while Holyrood is home to the incapable and dissolute.
Meanwhile, in England the Muslim / left and radical right are squaring up to each other. Listen to the victory speeches in Urdu and then look to Great Yarmouth. ‘The center cannot hold’.
It’s a bit too early to believe that narrative.
It’s possible that Labour’s English voter base may desert 3 ways to the Greens, Lib Dems and Reform.
This may dilute the English Greens where they are not as electorally powerful as the media makes them out to be. Of course, they is probably done to make them a bogeyman so the English electorate stays to the centre-right.
It’s not too early, and it’s not really an electoral issue: it’s about polarity.
The Greens are limited to university and Muslim areas. Reform and Restore have support throughout England. What will happen after the next atrocity?
The UK government is weak and afraid. The UK state is busy clamping down on free speech which endangers it. The authorities will largely appease the most violent group by prosecuting the objectors. Women with ribbons are arrested before violent trannies. Free speech advocates before violent Muslims.
People are beyond fed up. People have to suffer the cost of living crisis and looming food shortages while illegals get their three meals a day. The resentment increases with every boat across the Channel.
Alienation, economic inactivity, roads and bridges falling into disrepair, performative politics… Thing’s aren’t going well.
And Scotland can’t escape the mess because Holyrood was designed to paralyse ambition and we have politicians exploiting that flaw.
Can someone tell me, what are the conditions of eligibility for the SP? I am thinking about the new green guy. And does Lorna have a British passport?
According to this article, the elected MSP is eligible to stand.
link to archive.is
And they said immigration had nothing to do with the Holyrood election X?D
Dear me…
What about Lorna, is she a dual national? I couldn’t find any info.
Oh good God, I’ve just looked it up and it appears to be allowed. Words fail me… ?
Just ran the Scottish Elections (Franchise and Representation) Act 2020 through AI and it has come out of the following output:
Do this individual or even Slater fit these criteria?
Nice one Bilbo, thanks for that info.
@ Sven
I’ve got a feeling that the fella isn’t Transgender or Queer but a grifter.
It’s a good way though to do as you get to put yourself above criticism with all the righteous do-gooding gatekeepers to protect you.
I never trust AI, as Judge Kemp taught me.
Bilbo: indeed. Nowhere else would this be allowed. I believe that Lorna Slater was born in Scotland and moved to Canada with her parents, but could be wrong. What I really object to are those who, with few or any ties to Scotland get to import cruel and divisive claptrap/mayhem into our country without a by-your-leave. Most of the ‘trans’ I have come upon are either English or trans Atlantic, albeit we have our share, too, but most of them in Holyrood are the virtue-signalling kind, not the dyed-in-the-wool sort who have undermined Scottish cultural/political/institutional life for a number of years now.
SNP and Green virtue-signalling opened the doors: “Oh, we must be different from them down there, so let’s ruin every aspect of our society that made us different and might have even been good”. The SNP, in particular, has been a law unto itself since 2014 and has, both openly and surreptitiously, sought to change every rule in the book that makes Scotland Scotland. Other carpetbaggers have jumped on the bandwagon. This is also colonisation masquerading as ‘kindness’ and ‘openness’ and welcomingness’ – the sort that sealed the fate of the indigenous American Indian populations.
Why do people keep quoting AI responses as any kind of evidence of anything.
AI is not facts; it’s simply the vomiting up of all the content on the internet. It’s not proof of anything.
What Rot
Aye, but it can be a quick digest/brief summary if you only pay attention to the official sources like Scot.gov etc. Rather than every FUDs revisionist opinions on the internet.
What Rot
If you had actually read it, the AI response I had quoted was a summary of the specific part of legislation concerning people on student Visa’s standing for election.
If you are so concerned about AI, why don’t you supply the link to the legislation and post appropriate detail in support of your argument?
“Everything will be business as usual for the next five years”
Politically, maybe, but the inevitable failure of the political process in a colony means other strategies must be pursued, such as Liberation Scotland’s petitioning of the United Nations.
And the UN is full of former colonies who clearly understand our ‘condition’ better than most Scots:
link to youtube.com
Brilliant, Alf. I’ve posted the transcript below:
“We have to remember that colonialism leads to a psychological condition imposed on a people. It’s called the colonial mindset. We call it the Scottish cultural cringe. So this colonial mindset leads to these stereotypes of the Scots.
We hold them ourselves, but we’re also reminded of them all the time, which are always negative, of course.
Fundamentally, colonialism is just economic plunder. That’s the main function of colonialism.
But it’s done politically, obviously, external political control, but it’s done culturally. It’s actually done by debasing a people, a culture, their language, their way of doing things.
It’s making them inferior and invalid and then making them believe that. And that’s what creates, essentially, the Scots ”No’ voter. Colonialism is essentially just three elements.
It’s external political control. I mean, that is a fact. Westminster runs Scotland by virtue of any preponderance of MPs outside Scotland, they can do anything they want with Scotland, largely.
But the main function is economic exploitation. And this is where a people have no control over the land, resources, assets. We know this from oil and gas. We also know this in all other respects.
We can see it from renewables. I mean, I’ve just been involved in a calculation which shows that by 2030, Scotland will be selling renewable energy worth in retail prices, about £60 billion a year. That is equivalent to the entire Holyrood budget.
What it also means is, I’ve been calculating Scotland’s trade, export trading, if you include that renewables, oil and gas, aquaculture, fish, whisky, aggregates, all the other aspects, you’re well in excess of £100 billion pounds a year. That is almost 1/3 of the UK’s export trade value.
Now, Scotland has only 10% of the population, but about 1/3 of the UK’s trade value. Scotland also imports about £100 billion, so it has a fairly balanced trade position.
The rest of the UK has a trade export of about £370 billion, but imports are double that. So it has an enormous trade imbalance.
Scotland is enormously rich in all these respects. So it’s really about economic plunder. And in fact, most of my research took me around the world to former colonies like Dubai, like Malta, like Singapore, like Hong Kong, Panama. There’s hundreds of places around the world that exploited.
The first thing they did, of course, after the decolonization was to develop their seaports, which were left in a poor state, and also to reorientate their trade away from Britain.
We have to do what Ireland’s done and what Australia, New Zealand and other former colonies did years ago, Canada, too: reorientate their trade away to Europe, to Asia, to Africa.
So our ports, airports, utilities, were sold off by London, now owned by Cayman Island offshore equity funds that just exploit Scotland, including all these grouse estates that are just speculative ventures that do nothing with the land.
Scotland is just a big asset play for the London financial institutions. And that really is corporate colonialism. We have no control over our resources in that sense. So this is where the other colonies had to reorientate their trade away from London.
Also, we get into areas of population movements. And if you look at Scotland’s population history since the Union, since 1707, we have seen almost 4 million Scots moved out. And since the Victorian times, particularly, the inflow of a meritocratic elite from England. So you end up bringing in a meritocratic elite and you also create your own native elite.
And this is what I found very interesting in studies of post-colonialism, is that colonialism is always a cooperative venture with native elites. And the native elites align with the culture of the coloniser, they align with the values of the coloniser, and only the values of the coloniser are sovereign in a colony.” – Prof Alf Baird
Thanks Alf. Excellent pitch.
Are you sure, Fearghas?
If somebody is selling something, surely their pitch is only excellent if people buy it?
Looking at yesterday’s results, are you seeing any evidence that Scots are believing Alf’s pitch?
Anyone promoting SNP 1 & 2 is intellectually redundant.
A couple of things I think you’ve missed Rev.
Firstly the bumbling idiot Sarwar conceding a catastrophic defeat around lunchtime only to finish joint second. What a political visionary he is (not). Most amusing.
Secondly, that graphic you’ve used above, also used on the BBC website. Very misleading. The bars above the line are representative of the results, but, they extend below the line making the smaller parties appear much bigger compared to the SNP than they actually are. Usual BBC sleight of hand.
Finally, one small point of disagreement. Now that the SNP + any single other party forms a majority I’d contend thats a positive improvement. However, will almost certainly do no good whatsoever in practice.
Is it possible to ascertain how many Reform MSP’s got in due to SNP 1 + 2?
The big winner is Stephen Flynn.
Ready to take leadership in early 2028.
Swinney will take the pain of the cuts in 2027 to clear decks.
Reform looming large for GE 2029 is the perfect bogeyman to campaign against.
Flynn has just won the Gravy Bus lottery – 10 years as First Minister, no need for action on Independence.
At least £3m in pay & pensions incoming for Flynn! International travel beckon.
Jackpot Stevie!
With the disappointing result of no AtLS candidates not being elected, you need to look at the very few positives.
* The SNP scam of vote SNP 1 & 2 vote has been exposed. They only got 1 regional seat and didn’t secure a majority.
* If the SNP wants to carry on with the charade that they care about interdependence they will have to cosy up to the Greens and the Greens will want a lot of concessions for that. The Reform cohort will have a field day with that.
* It is possible that the Green MSP has been illegally elected due to his immigration status. Whether it does gets investigated is another thing as we don’t want to be seen as a racist country 😉
* Possible SNP infighting with Steven ‘Lurch’ Flynn elected as a MSP and wanting to oust Swinney to be head honcho. That’ll be fun, one baldy replacing another 😂 😂 😂
Are there any legal folk here? I’m sorry, but I really cannot get my heid around how it can be legal let alone acceptable for a foreigner on an expired visa to be eligible to stand in an election over here. Somebody explain this madness to me, please 😱
The media focus on all these boats coming across the English channel but nothing is mentioned about the many, many more who come here studying for a couple of months and disappear.
It’s been going on for decades and nothing is done about it as it would mean genuine proper border controls but more importantly, the requirement for some form of government ID for every citizen which is deeply unpopular, particularly amongst these Reform types who are the most vocal about illegal immigration.
This should be an issue but sadly it won’t. The Scottish Greens don’t have a moral compass as they are all for No borders and the establishment will overlook it of course, for services rendered 😉
The moment I read about the work visa – klaxons sounded.
USaid activists are funded from all over the world & are deposited around the globe either in elected parliament positions or in NGOs with the intended aim to disrupt, derail & destabilise. Established by the Clinton’s.
Holyrood is littered with them. Especially around the YES movement & the SNP after indyref. People who emerge from nowhere with no background story but catapulted into either a position in parliament, on a parties executive committee or as a yappy social media influencer sowing disdain & doubt about the party direction. Universities are their favourite recruitment drive. They’re already in the country & have a visa.
These were caught in Georgia & the parliament quickly changed their rules much to America & the EUs annoyance. Hungary followed. Holyrood won’t. They’re an administration. Westminster won’t either because they’ve achieved their objective of destroying the Labour party from within & remove all notions of socialism, expel them from the party membership too just to be sure.
They even brag about this activity in their Senate when they attend to justify their funding, the latest was all the brilliant results they’d had in U that they were deeply proud of. Those bastions of Democracy & values “proud” of laying the groundwork for a coup & marching thousands to their deaths for American interests.
New World Atlas/Brian Berletic on YouTube brings receipts on how these ppl operate.
SNP & Greens are completely captured already but isn’t it strange that it’s the “foreigners” in the Greens that have done the most damage in Holyrood? If this person is fast tracked it’ll be highly suspicious.
So we’ve five years of the Greens pushing toxins. They want to investigate POTUS & destroy Christianity. The cult of death to everything they touch & the SNP will duly follow with the stupid.
From Sri Lanka’s electoral commision:
03. What are the qualifications and disqualifications to be a candidate at a Parliamentary election under the Parliamentary Elections Act No 1 of 1981?
Qualifications
The candidate ,
1. Should be a Sri Lankan Citizen
So we’ve five years of Geri pushing toxins.
You got EXACTLY the result you wanted, Geri.
Don’t insult our intelligence by claiming otherwise.
In Gumpian Logic justice is as justice does.
Or, put another way, “Justice exists only where actions make it real.”
I am beyond tired of watching Scotland sink into oblivion under the glaikit smiles of idiots who wouldn’t know a Pict if one rocked up to them painted ‘Arctic’ blue and gave them a guid belt ower the heid wi an elaborately decorated rock.
And so, I am tempted to call upon the Goetic demon duke, Bune, who rules over 30 legions of demons and is best known, among other more macabre activities, for increasing one’s knowledge and wealth.
The Ars Goetia tells us that Bune is the 26th demon in the Lesser Key of Solomon and is one of the more ‘friendly’ demons for humans to engage with… be careful though, he can still ‘bite’ if you piss him off.
He kicked the absolute fuck oot me one time a few years back, and I’m still recovering.
But, wait… I digress.
The conjuring of demons is for another time.
Although, with logic and reason having completely failed in Scotland perhaps calling on the help of one of Solomon’s great and powerful demonic dukes is the best route to Scottish independence after all.
It is, I think, too soon for the conjuring of demons from Hell to aid our people’s quest for liberation… maybe later if all else fails.
A better route in the short term might be the wearing of Ghost Shirts bearing Pictish designs; those sacred garments worn by Native Americans during the Ghost Dance and believed to offer spiritual protection and symbolise hope, cultural identity, and resistance.
Yes, before we get to conjuring demons from Hell (a dangerous activity for beginners unschooled in the ways of dark magic) let us first try dressing in our Pictish versions of Native American Ghost Shirts and Ghost Dance aboot Holyrood chanting suitably indigenous tribal slogans at passing politicians… at least until the wearing of Pictish Ghost Shirts is made a hate crime and is banned outside the privacy of one’s own home.
Im sorry this platform has degenerated into baseless name callimg and hurling of insults. We used to have discussion. I had hped witj the SNP on the up that people will be pleased
You would be treated with a bit more respect if you actually took the time to spell check rather than splatter gun your high and mighty opinions all over this site.
I have athritis and cataracts but take your criticism on board. I am sure you are not a mean person
With respect, you come into this forum with such nonsensical stuff about the SNP. It’s coming across as you are barging in here like a bear with a sore head wanting a fight.
I get it you have physical problems but surely you can do a quick spell check before you post comments?
Lastly, if you are being stressed by comments put at you, please take a step back and refrain from posting. Life is too short and it isn’t worth the hassle.
Izzy: there is not one day passes that does not witness someone enter the BTL commentary to tell everyone how rubbish we all are. The name-calling might be unpleasant at times, but it is a reflection of the rage that inhabits most of us now. We are so, so sick of all the virtue-signalling ordure and chicanery that passes for Scottish and British politics these days.
Had you been alive in the 18th century, you wouldn’t have had the vote (I’m assuming you’re female?) but you would have witnessed really savage political discourse that would never be contemplated today. People were sometimes beaten to death in the hustings. Yes, civility is cheap but so, apparently, are the people who presume to rule us. The level of debate here has not actually changed that much; the level of see-sawing of rage/despair has escalated considerably as the level of ability and nous to be found in our political class has waned to a dangerous degree.
The SNP on the up? I assume you are being ironical? Yes, some MSPs will be able and decent, but relatively few these days, and the party machines usually chew them up and spit them out again. The really good ones, the ones with intellect and ability, will not last long and will return to civilian life. The SNP does not listen to anyone with skills or ability, not least from the business and economics worlds. They are far too busy constructing Gilead with the Greens and Lib Dems.
“I had hped witj the SNP on the up that people will be pleased”
According to postcolonial theory all we can expect from a colonial administration is more oppressive and ‘mystifying’ laws and independence delayed, much as the SNP has proved over the last decade and more.
A sure sign of a colonial administration is whan thay aw tak the oath tae ser anely England’s imperial croun next week.
As far as I can see, Izzie, the SNP entered the last Holyrood session with some 64 MSPS, they enter this one with 58.
You have a strange definition of “on the up”.
Seems to me that whether you’re looking at numbers at Holyrood or Westminster the SNP numbers are (thankfully) on the way down. Which will hopefully allow some genuinely independence minded independents into the devolved administration.
SNP losing over 400,000 voters in 5 years, with a net loss in MSPs and relying on biology denying zealots and social anarchists in the Greens to prop them up in Government, isn’t exactly “on the up”.
Best toddle off back to Wee Ginger Fud.
The cause of Indy will only be advanced when the SNP are no more and Sturgeon and the alphabettes are in jail.
Sorry dont know what you mean? After the troubles the Party has experienced and the dite predictions of a yesr ago i think that the SNP are recovering and on the up. I really believe that everyonr who wants our country back should rejoice.
To be honest I’d forgotten about those clowns. I’ve just had a look over there and I see that nothing has changed, they still think that the SNP is totally going to deliver independence by…erm…well they just will, OK? Oh man… 🤡
Look at the numbers Izzie…
2021…
SNP Constituency Vote: 1,291,204
SNP Regional Vote: 1,094,374
2026…
SNP Constituency Vote: 877,077
SNP Regional Vote: 625,949
You do the math…
Over 400,000 votes lost in just 5 years! A swing of -9.5% on the Constituency vote and -13.1% on the Regional Vote.
Why do you think that is, Izzie?
The SNP needs a new song to close the Annual Conference, might I suggest Del Amitri…
“And nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before’
Kinda sums things up since 2015, no?
Satan’s nonce parties win again.
Joh 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
Believe in Jesus! He is your only hope, always was and always will be.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
from The Second Coming..W.B.YEATS
might be a vision of fractured farascist England, to which Scotland is masochistically shackled.
ALL IN IT TOGETHER?
Ouch! Ouch! we love it….
«You are offered a piece of bread and butter that feels like a damp handkerchief – and sometimes, when cucumber is added to it, like a wet one»
from Vestal Fire (1927),
Compton Mackenzie, cofounder National Party of Scotland.
The franchise for the Scottish Parliament needs to be revisited and reformed so that only permanent residents in Scotland can decide what laws are passed by the Scottish Parliament. I know of an American student who stayed with a friend until Christmas, here on a 2year post graduate degree who was sent a polling card despite no longer living at that address. No election material addressed to the actual homeowner incidentally! She will be back home while we live with the consequences of her choices Would we get a vote in USA on a 2 year visa? Methinks Trump would have plenty to say on that subject. ??
We now have a Tamil student here on a Visa with no permission to definitely remain in the country who was elected to our Scottish Parliament We are being taken for fools in this country and it makes a mockery of the will of the SCOTTISH people when temporary residents can decide our fate It is an absolute disgrace. It ridicules democracy in Scotland and its parliament especially if people only temporarily in the country are deciding the fate of the Scottish people. SNP are corrupt charlatans and the franchise needs revisited and tightened up!
Lorncal @ 11.59.
As far as I know Ms Slater was born 27/11/1975 in Calgary, District of Alberta, Canada. She left Canada about one month after graduating with a degree in Electro- Engineering Design, having bought a one way ticket to Glasgow. I’m fairly sure that I’ve heard an interview where she stated that this was due to avoiding paying University tuition fees, although I may be inadvertently maligning her.
What does seem plain to see is that she has achieved the ambition of so many of our MSPs, a much sought after seat on the gravy train.
Thank you for that, Sven. I was going to do a bit of research myself because I wasn’t sure. That makes it even worse! She has imported Tranada’s insanity with her and force-fed us with it. Yes, the SNP changed the rules a while back – or, at least, the parliament did. It really is a disgrace. Just because they join the SNP does not mean that they want independence for Scotland. Few of the actual Scots in the party want it. Who the hell do these people think they are?
Many Scots are overjoyed about Plaid. It is just as bad as the SNP and will do nothing for Wales. Sinn Fein has also fallen foul of the men in frocks and their handmaidens. Eire is a basket case these days, out of the church’s grip straight into the post modernists’ grip, and NI has been captured, too. The number of brain cells most of them possess is in direct inverse proportion to the damage they do. The thing is, most of them do not believe that men can be women and vice versa, but, boy, doesn’t it open doors for you?
Historians will look back at our age at all the perversion, scamming and sheer psychopathy and wonder what happened. This is why I keep on saying that, until this ‘woke’ insanity is rooted out, independence should not happen because we will simply import it into an independent Scotland with us. It needs to be rooted out now before we achieve independence because we will never get rid of it after independence. Eire proves that comprehensively. Also, a study needs to be done on why all the nationalist movements are so prone to capture by what it a mass delusion.
I think MSMs coverage pretty well sums up the position that we know we find ourselves in.
Elections for the wee parish cooncil with certain devolved powers are now deemed at the same level as English local council elections and mayor elections.
ITNs scriptwriter made Julie Etchingham (?) give the game away with the anchors opinion line on non-SNP majority “staving off” the threat of an independence referendum. Staving off..
Real impartiality eh?!
Like it or not Westminster is where the SNP should be fighting for independence, which they haven’t and, have flunked out to sit in the “wee parish cooncil of certain devolved powers on a par with English councils or cities” instead..
”[…the SNP] are the corpse blocking our path. The less popular they get, the more our chances recede, and they’re only going to get less and less popular.”
==========
They are also Scotland’s establishment party. As was Labour in Wales the day before yesterday.
How long will Swinney’s SNP goes the same way- after 20,21, 22…. years in office?
Farage-obsessed Swinney is repeating Sturgeon’s error after the BREXIT vote. Instead of rebuilding the independence movement he bets the store on Farage becoming PM. He remains Sturgeon’s legatee, not his own man but HERS.
But Farage or no Farage, “this victory is the SNP’s equivalent of John Major’s triumph in 1992: the last gasp of a lame duck staggering towards its doom.”
I had caught a bit of Swinney on Sky news and it was vomit inducing.
It’s hard not to get caught up in these sarcastic Honest John comments about him. He was pontificating about how he’s going to shut out Reform from governance in Holyrood.
It doesn’t need to do anything. He has the support from all the other parties to get legislation through. He’s just virtue signalling to the gullible and naive but he’s no Sturgeon and he certainly can’t use her Me-too deflection of her being attacked because she is a woman.
The SNP won the most seats yesterday and the SNP supporters are trying to portray it as a victory but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to turn out as a hallow one.
The SNP has to know the constant vote for Indy sooner or later is going to fail because lets be honest the SNP doesn’t have any thing other than that.
What’s happening in QUÉBEC…
link to france24.com
Mon dieu, a 17 year old rapper……
SNP looking a bit carehome?
I think we need some Lego vids lol..
Bite size & factual.
I was just wondering if Mr Broon was in downing street to address Scotland and the constitutional question?
‘And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties?
A hand-me-down dress from who knows where
To all tomorrow’s parties
And where will she go and what shall she do
When midnight comes around
She’ll turn once more to Sunday’s clown
And cry behind the door
And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties?
Why silks and linens of yesterday’s gowns
To all tomorrow’s parties
And what will she do with Thursday’s rags
When Monday comes around?
She’ll turn once more to Sunday’s clown
And cry behind the door
And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties?
For Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown
For whom none will go mourning
A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown
Of rags and silks, a costume
Fit for one who sits and cries
For all tomorrow’s parties’.
Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a GREAT IDEA which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
Leon TROTSKY
“Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? He got an Ice pick that made his ears burn.”
And lots of people blame Trump for ICE.
They should learn some history.
We DID start somewhere. We’ll never get closer than to where Alex took us. The generation that fought with Alex is now an irrelevance to the people in that Holyrood building. I’m not interested in starting again. I haven’t got the energy, and I’m too heartbroken and angry. I’m done with politics in Scotland, it’s a filthy fetid stinking swamp I want nothing to do with.
Indy is dead for me. Scotland has noone in its political ranks who is competent to run a country, and it has a parliament full of idiots.
I’m for Rupert Lowe from now on. I want the country and society around me brought back to what I grew up in, and something my grandparents would recognise, and would have been happy that they went through a world war for. I want women’s rights and safety as top priority. I want the boat gangs and the organised crime gangs and the rape gangs smashed, I want illegals deported, I want criminals jailed. I want order, policing and decency.
I want to be among my own tribe on these isles. Rupert Lowe is a man of probity and decency. I’m voting for him as UK prime minister. He’s the only light in a very dark place right now.
You won’t get much support here for that point of view and so I thought I should offer mine. I voted SNP twice in Glasgow Cathcart during 1974 shortly after turning 18. From memory, we came fourth out of four on both occasions. By 1979 I’d come to my senses and realised that if you can’t beat them, join them. I moved down south to London in January 1980 and so I’ve got something in common with Reform’s Scottish Leader, Malcolm Offord. That said, I only own one house and have just two private pensions. I’m not complaining; me and the missus get by ok. That said, I think Malcolm Offord has done very well to get where he is today given his background and should be listened to by John Swinney rather than ignored. Like you, I see Rupert Lowe as the only man who can take us back to what we once were.
“You won’t get much support here for that point of view”
And that’s precisely why Indy is going nowhere.
What Rot wants what the majority of rational, decent, hard working, small ‘c’ conservative Scots want. The low lifes that lurk on here mostly hold rational, decent, hard working, small ‘c’ conservative Scots in contempt.
As any casual review of the BTL comments will tell you.
AlanM/HMcH: without hard-working and hard-thinking business people and competent economists, there is no way to steer the country back to something resembling solvency. I am on the left of the nationalist movement, and I loathe the fact that so much of what ordinary people depend on daily has been privatised and made into profit machines for the few. Public utilities should always be in state hands.
However, I support our SMEs and do not want to see them taxed to the hilt, but encouraged to create jobs and to expand safely. Big business and the City will always be there, but globalism has crippled our (and every other country’s) ability to trade properly, and made us dependent on goods and services from abroad. Not saying that cannot be a good thing if controlled, but the Iran and Ukrainian conflicts have shown us how vulnerable we are to being cut off from supplies.
Grangemouth was closed, but five refineries in England were kept open, and Grangemouth refined oil for aviation fuel. The SNP government listens to no one from the business sector or to manufacturers and it certainly does not listen to those in the cultural fields. This started years ago when, apparently, no one in Scotland could possibly run anything of any size within Scotland and people were shipped in mainly from England to occupy every top job, every environmental, cultural, arts, etc. niche because big really is better, according to our devolved government. It is good and energising to have people come in and refresh the blood, but not if they are here to milk us dry, use us for their own agenda and relegate us to the lowest rungs of the financial ladder.
We are on a trajectory to bankruptcy and poverty, alienation from our own culture and institutions, and people in the Unionist camp say that the pain of independence would be impossible to bear, when we are heading for pain on an unimaginable scale precisely because we did not take our chance in 2014 when we had it. Post modernism is set to destroy the whole of the West unless we all do something to root it out, while, here, we are too feart to take our own country back and put the brakes on this deluded madness.
Guys, guys.
Get a private room and circle jerk off all you like about those good old times.
Is that your best, Bilbo?
You read a post you don’t like and you immediately start thinking about strangers jerking off?
What I can’t understand is why you choose to tell the world about your little problem.
Are you never going to post on here again? If you are, alert readers will recall the niche kind of fantasies that obsess you.
And rate your views accordingly.
@ Main
I appreciate you are not very bright. It is beyond your comprehension that you can’t understand the intellectual impotence of what these two individuals are saying where they opine over a past that isn’t going to return.
Toddle along wee man.
Exactly Bilbo.
They’re longing for a time that was pre Thatcher. They pine after her with no self awareness that she is the entire reason for all their problems, including immigration.
Sorry to burst yer bubble guys but she sold everything, closed everything, outsourced everything, fckd everything, crushed everything & imported slave labour. Those days aren’t coming back. It’s called Capitalism & it’s here to stay & everything is for profit, rent, debt, low pay & self interest. That’s its very nature. It asset strips & once it hits a bump in the great casino called *the markets* – us plebs stump up a bailout whether we like it or not cause god forbid the top 1% pay it. & Tories wonder why no one wants to fight to defend that shit?
That includes their wee colonial outpost known as Holyrood. You honestly didn’t think that’d be allowed to continue with ideas above its station, actually functioning well & completing projects under budget did you after such a close call with indyref? We were well warned what would happen in the event of a no vote & that is exactly what did happened even with Cameron’s acceptance speech. Powers stripped, SNP infiltrated with fckwits & relegated to being run as a wee county council talking shop to argue the toss over personal pet projects & run by morons.
You seem to forget that Indy was to break the cycle of Westminster rule & it’s decline.
Lowe? Seriously? The one that witnessed the decline & corruption as a Tory? The same one that wanted Brexshit? The same one that praised Milei for selling his entire country to the USA & taking in Yaboo immigrants to Colonise it? The one that wants to ban quantitative easing that’d bankrupt the UK? Are you kidding me?
Tories do seem to live in a time warp that must come with an amnesia helmet. Romanticising about the good old days of ration books, war & reading poetry in the parlour before bedtime. That was back when Britain could live large off the backs of its overseas territories & you had the last remnants of an Empire to defend guys. America took it off you, remember? It didn’t sink in though cause they’re still sinking money they can’t afford into overseas conflicts while its own wee patch of land is going to the dogs…
@Geri
Bilbo was posting about jerking off.
Try to (ahem) stick to the subject if you have anything to add.
@ Main
I have explained that I was using that as a metaphor concerning the futility of longing for a past that will never come back again but you have taken it and still take it literally.
Something you not telling us John 😉
“Guys, guys.
Get a private room and circle jerk off all you like about those good old times.”
Ugh. What is it with you lefties? Yuk.
Hardly a surprising response though. What the fuck do you people know about the genuine, heartfelt concerns of the British Working Class? Nowt, that’s what pal. Get back to your council office, assuming you even work at all.
Another one of the usual suspects taking my metaphor literally. Funny that?
Farage’s Brides 😉
Cave Dweller
We know plenty. Maggie turned a country that was mostly self sufficient into a barren wasteland. Yet she is still viewed as a saint. That takes a special kinda mentalist.
We also know you aresholes continue to vote for it with zero brains to work out they’re the cause of all yer problems.
Look at you eejits now, jumping from Tory to…ummmm… Fckn Tory with a new coat on to fool you all over LOL!
The working class could fix it immediately. They have more power than anyone in the country. They down tools. Bring the country to a standstill. Start a proper, genuine Labour party. Strike up the unions. (Not the captured grifting kind)
It’s that simple.
That’s what used to happen before you eejits cheered like morons at the Tories clamping down on strikes & workers rights while they carried on with rampant corruption to feather their own nests.
Immigration could be easily fixed too.
Start by not obliterating their homeland.
Start to properly vet people. Other countries manage it.
Start to pay better pay.
You cheered on yer own demise & now you want to cry about it?
That’s priceless.
Don’t blame us. Scotland voted to end this shit & get off the path they’re heading. But blow-ins ruined that vote.
Holyrood, lest you forget, is a colonial outpost under the direct rule of Westminster with the Scotland Act. Don’t cry to us that it’s shit. We voted to close it & make our own decisions, with our own parliament, with our own money & resources.
“Farage’s Brides”
Brides…
Probably one of the “grow your own cervix” clique, one imagines.
“We know plenty”
You know fuck all.
You need to:
(a) Work
(b) Live in the UK
As prerequisites to understanding the challenges facing the British WORKING Classes mate. As your verbose, cretinous, poorly written diatribe amply demonstrates.
HTH.
Turabdin @ 11.30.
Somehow as I survey the Cowards’ Castle of self serving careerists at Holyrood the portion of W B Yeats which springs to my own mind is;
“And what rough beast, it’s hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”
spineless, slithering, slobbering beasts copulating together….but with what?
Or as an alternative:
Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.
How dare you, Sven.
Remind the usual suspects about Bethlehem and they might remember where Bethlehem was 2026 years ago, and still is today.
Don’t you appreciate how awkward that makes things for them?
They’ll be having to think about Jerusalem next and that will blow their minds.
‘So we really may as well not have bothered’
The same could be said of both the mainland devolved assemblies; however, here in Wales we are privileged to have an additional 50% of the useless bench-warmers to ‘elect’, which might at least make a tiny dent in the hideous unemployment figures.
Re. Tommo, inverted commas for ‘elect’, is that a comment on the ‘closed list’ system?
THE POLITICAL CLASS survives thanks to collective amnesia.
Commenters here act surprised that this week voters voted pretty much the way they’ve always voted. Which voters have been doing for the last, oh, 300 years.
If the Scottish government is unfit for the purpose (and it is), well, blame the voters. The Scottish people are getting the government they deserve.
Anybody know how long this wake will go on?
Fit’s that ye say, Sooty, 5 years!
In among all the despondency, gloom and trashed aspirations, spare a thought for oor verra ain would-be MSP for G@za, CM.
Five more years of grifting handouts from the die-hard anti-semites for him.
I’m raising a glass to that right now.
All his fans, dig deep, and be prepared to keep digging deep for the next 5 years!
Hateface comment at bottom of the thread resulted in it being read!
He/she/it seems to imagine there are elections in g@za but maybe it is mere sarcasm.
CM is presumably C Murray but anyone supporting him is almost guaranteed to be pro-semitic for the obvious reason that surviving inhabitants of g@za (for whom he shows humane concern) are some of the semitic people, native to that region. It is unlikely that the same native status could be reasonably be claimed by some who settled in the ‘promised’ (by whom?) land. Does Hateface claim to be a Semite as well as well as having showed a very negative attitude (in various previous comments) to people who are probably of a different religion? Readers might wonder whether ‘religion’ or race’ is the stronger motivation. Do let us know.
Fun fact.
The “J” that is Homer Simpson’s middle initial actually stands for “Jay”!
“surviving inhabitants of g@za (for whom he shows humane concern)”
Check out the irony on Jay!
The best way of showing humane concern for the surviving inhabitants of g@za is to fervently wish for every last one of the ham ass scum to be buried deep in the tunnels they dug for themselves beneath their own helpless people’s houses, schools, hospitals, etc.
To keep their stolen money, their weapons and their own yellow skins safe.
But you’re angry, Jay. I get that.
You must have spectacularly wasted your vote, supporting something only a vanishingly small number of Scots actually give a scooby about.
“is to fervently wish for every last one of the ham ass scum to be buried deep in the tunnels they dug for themselves beneath their own helpless people’s houses, schools, hospitals, etc.”
Imagine having the brass neck to admit you believe that rubbish. Imagine having the brass neck to think someone else would too if you just repeat it often enough.
Do you think we all live in a media black out or something?
How very dare they defend their land & properties against blow-ins. They should just roll over eh?
Spare us yer ancient biblical bullshit. As any self respecting Judge would say, Moses isn’t here to give evidence, he probably isn’t well versed on International law & most definitely didn’t attend law school. Did he even have a map cause it seems to forever extend itself too.
Everyone can see Colonialism is hiding behind a religion. The gig is up. It’s especially up in the US who are sick to death of funding this forever wars bullshit. Mowing down unarmed civilians isn’t cool. Neither is collective punishment. It’s war crims against a ppl that live there.
You really don’t look cool either. Have a wee think at what yer actually defending here – cause, you know, Karma likes to listen & take notes.
HMcH @ 9.52
So you’re back again eh?
Conservative friends of Is Rye Ale in a blue funk over their poor showing so the “sponsors” money is flowing again?
What is the going rate?
Don’t they pull you up for the repetition or is that just exactly what they want?
Y’know “y’all”, say it often enough and AI eventually picks up on it to “turn it into fact”?
And they’ve still not picked up on your sodomite lifestyle..
Maybe they hold their noses over who they pay like AI Dun tells us all to do over who he reckons we should vote for.
You spoilers are all fake..
Posted around midnight, deal with it sad sack milk monitors..
Criticise the ham ass scum and up pops Geri to defend them.
Beats me why all the other ham ass sympathisers didn’t beat the drum far louder in the run up to last week’s HR election. Surely there must be a solid groundswell of ham ass support in Scotland just waiting to be harnessed – perhaps even a majority?
The likes of Geri certainly believe so. According to her, allied with the poot fan club, then harnessed for Indy, Indy would be in the bag.
What a missed opportunity, eh?
Still, what’s another 5 years to wait when we’re all having fun? And cheering on the ham ass scum, poot, and no doubt the wee, fat boy from NK will be far more fun, and infinitely easier, than ever coming up with something likely to engage traction with ordinary, sane, decent Scots.
How’s yer pals in Tehran, Geri? Is gunning down tens of thousands of protesting citizens in the streets a policy that you would recommend transferring to Edinburgh and Glasgow? Think carefully before you answer – could be another mega vote winner!
“sodomite lifestyle” YL?
My, my, every accusation, etc. etc.
Just as well we all ken you’re what we Scots used to call a turncoat. A betrayer of solemn oaths. Somebody who swears a vow of eternal allegiance, then lightly breaks it for convenience and cash, laughing at the very concept we Scots used to value most highly – personal honour.
And its foul antithesis – black dishonour.
In plain words, YL, you’re a self-identified, untrustworthy liar.
As much use to Indy, or any other cause demanding resolution and steadfast commitment, as a sword with the blade snapped off at the hilt.
Shitface,
Newsflash – Your twisted world view is in the minority.
At home. Abroad. In the courts. At the United Nations.
Under International law, a country has a right to defend itself *using any means necessary*
Occupiers & Invaders have no rights to anything at all. None. The aggressor doesn’t get to play victim.
An occupied ppl have rights too, to be treated humanely – not starved, beaten & sniped at for fun.
As for Tehran. Fine you know that was an orchestrated terrorist attack by the West. Stop with yer incessant propaganda. No one is buying it. You are lying even when the guilty parties have publicly admitted it. You look foolish.
& Stop clutching yer pearls over womens headscarves anyway. The UK loves dictators & despots around the globe. Why even an UNELECTED head chopper & a Nazi have graced Number 10 Dowdy Street & the Mother of all fucked up parliament in recent months, along with an entire Nazi battalion for Blow hards blessing.
So, sunshine, play us a different tune.. Ordinary, sane, decent Scots don’t share your fucked up world view & if you bothered to look outside yer bedsit – they don’t share it world wide either despite what their elected governments are saying with absolutely zero public support to say it.
That’s just another sign of Western decline. Repercussions will be metered out later. There’s no time limit on war crims.
HMcH @ 8.12
You are late clocking on this morning.
Late night of sodomy was it..
Your “reply”..
Mere deflection as usual, the usual boullibasse of sophistry and utter b0llocks.
You know, I’m really beginning to wonder if you’re a mason or suchlike; you are absolutely obsessed with oaths and your own wee made up pretendy perceptions of duration and perpetuity..
Maybe some of their alleged initiation ceremony questionable “tests” were just right up yer “street” so to speak..
Had to laugh; “as much use to independence as a sword broken at the hilt”.
Maybe that’s another bizarre metaphor for you secret society hazings but taken literally, coming from someone who voted Reform?!!
Hahahaha!
Comedy gold, you just couldn’t make this up!!
Ya fruitcake catamite..
Sodomy, Young Lochinvar?
You need to get the heid doon. Arise at 2 AM to post.
What better time to let everything that’s preoccupying you all out in one ginormous stream of consciousness post?
@Geri 10:31
Why oh why oh why couldn’t you have posted that a week ago?
We could have been celebrating an SNP landslide right now.
But naw – 5 more years to wait – and all because of your laziness.
For what you’ve done to Indy, you deserve the same opprobrium as Sturgeon. Ask a close family member what that means.
Even the colonizing cheer leader, Churchill, in the 1940’s, came to a rather different conclusion, predicting the likely end of the dream of a ‘promised land’ as a consequence of Z*****m’s “wicked activities”:
“If our dreams for Z*****m are to end in the smoke of assassin’s pistols and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of N**i Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”
His description of ‘gangsters worthy of N**i Germany’ seems particularly apt.
Did you post that yourself, Alf, or did you get CM to help?
How odd that less than a week after your world view was trounced at the Scottish ballot box that you come right back with more of the same.
Scots really don’t care,Alf.
We know that we live in the glass house we built over centuries of colonialist invasion, exploitation, ethnic cleansing and genocide. So we can never throw stones.
We know all that because there is hardly a corner of the world where we won’t find Scottish place names, Scottish surnames, pipe bands, Highland games, and boring farts keen to tell anybody who’ll listen that one day they intend to visit Scotland to see where their ancestors came from.
You also predicted 18 months ago there would he no pro independence majority. A lot can change
There is no pro independence majority today.
There are two parties in Holyrood who says that they are for independence. However, those two parties don’t have a plan to deliver independence other than vague soundbites.
That’s the crucial difference. If you can’t see that, there isn’t anything I can say.
Wings was talking about snp and greens whether you like it or no
@ Ross
Give me the grand master plan about how the SNP and the Greens are going to deliver independence?
Not the point I was making was it?
The point is predictions are predictions only and wings dodnt get that right
The frustrating thing about both thec alphabetties elected was that they were not elected at all. They are list MSP’s which means a small section of a small party decided they would be MSP’s
Nearly every one of the list MSP’s is either one who failed to get elected as an actual MSP but was also on the party list or someone who would never get elected if they stood but the party wants them in anyway.
Do you really think folk like the alphabetties or folk like Maggie Chapman etc all would ever in a million years be actually elected as MSP’s?
Don’t they have some kind of separatist/insurgency/civil war scenario going on in Sri Lanka?
Let’s get some of that transposed into HR and onto the streets outside.
I’m sick of the current bunch of marching protesters, screaming in Arabic from behind their tea towels. That’s yesterday’s wee, pretendy jenny side. The world has long since moved on.
Let’s get a new set of marching protesters, spewing hate in Tamil.
If we don’t have enough in Scotland to block the streets, I bet London is hoaching with them. We can bus some in every weekend and bank holiday.
I’m certain there will be some kind of colonial history the usual BTL suspects can get their teeth into and work up into a righteous cause for Scots like them to virtue signal about how they’re on the right side of history.
Well I think, yet again, your right Stu. I will be dead by the time of the next Scottish Parliamentary Election. And I go way back to the Gordon Wilson days. But a few mines have been laid. Number one Public Disengagement and not through a low turnout at the Election. But by disengagement with the Government process. The increasing numbers of home schooling, the ire to towards Local Government. The only thing that is working is voluntary Community work and looking after your neighbours. Nothing to do with the SNP Scottish Government. 5 years of revisting GRRB. Misogyny and every wayward social cause under the sun. Because that is easy. They Govern for less than 20% of the population.if we had a functioning MSM then the £5 Billion should have been an electoral factor.
REALITY: The “Alliance” got 19,000 votes–out of 2.284 Million.
Not even 1%. What an embarrassment….
And their star constituency candidate, Craig Murray, finished behind joke candidate “Bonnie Prince Bob” (BPB 176 votes, CM 150, out of 33,000). Murray finished in 7th place in Edinburgh Central.
At this point when us old tins are talking about the SNP it might be worth reminding folk what the SNP originally was.
The SNP was supposed to be a broad church of political views within a single party that had its main unifying aim as independence.
If independence was ever achieved the party was intended to break up into a number of Scottish parties representing all political viewpoints and cease to exist.
What they were not supposed to be was a far left party only representing a small part of the population as a permanent party of government, ie a means to an end rather than the end itself.
Absolutely spot on Rob.
They’ve lost their way and become what the Unionists caricatured them as..
Well said, Rob. The party, just like the Labour party, was hi-jacked by the ultra left and both have been gutted. There always was a left in the SNP, but it was centre left, moderate, liberal (small ‘l’) and conservative (small ‘c’). Now, everything is filtered through the lens of Gaza (never any other source of human suffering and mass killing, note) or through the lens of the cross-dressers, the “most marginalised people on Earth bar none).
Independence is now, according to the MSM, reliant on these issues coming first and foremost although they have nothing whatsoever to do with independence. The underlying and fundamental problem is that these two issues are symptomatic of the entire ‘woke’ infection that has been introduced by those for whom independence is not a priority. The worst aspect of it all is that it actually undermines any hope that independence might solve anything.
The real eye-opener is that most of those who have introduced the ‘woke’ infection, apart from Nicola Sturgeon, are not Scots-born, but have taken it upon themselves to all but destroy any hope that the Scots might have had of throwing off the Union yoke by moderate political means. We may well be a colonised people geographically, but we are certainly colonised by the mind controllers of the post modernist nihilism.
TBQH I am scunnered with the whole independence situation , Scots are about to become the Aboriginal or First Nation American equivalent in Scotland , the only thing that has to be decided is where to place the reservation and whether fencing is required or not
Some Scots have brought this on the rest of us by their misplaced “Aw Jock Tamson’s Bairns” insistance and bestowing the grandiose “NEW SCOTS” title on anyone and everyone who sets foot in Scotland ,whether they are legal or illegal and whether they are here to benefit the country or themselves
The situation has been fast tracked since the 2014 referendum and the use of a franchise deliberately manipulated and designed to sabotage the route to independence by the imperial colonisers , the irony is that Alex Salmond who is regarded by most independenistas as our greatest modern day statesman failed to see the trap that was being set by perfidious albion
Unfortunately even today we have an electorate and a political party system that is eagerly accelerating our indigenous demise yet any attempts to expose or illustrate what is taking place is met with the usual RACIST or BIGOTED epithet in an attempt to silence or ridicule the exposer
The situation we are in today has been created by the overwhelming insistance of the be kind and inclusion mindset without taking cognisance of the future repercussions of what the implications will be , the unrestricted insistance of DEI adoption has led to the capture of all our organisations who are now at the mercy of nefarious characters
If you look at the WOS situation he has spent the last 4 years fighting and defending women’s rights against an onslaught of deviant and perverted individuals, YET he was one that defended the adoption and use of the current franchise which has enabled the dross from anywhere and everywhere to turn up in dear old Scotland and DEMAND their wants and needs are addressed
Where is the ultra progressive franchise fanny and his woke family who escaped from the hordes moving into engerland and insisted that Scotland should welcome every tom dick or harriet, does he agree with visitors sitting in HR determining the future of Scotland and Scots
I reckon we need to bring back first past the post in Scotland. This experiment with D’Hont is rewarding failure. Loonies are being elected on a 12% vote share.
“Loonies are being elected”
Loonies are electing them.
Myself, I’m for bringing back something like the property qualification for voting.
Or at the very least, a track record over the previous administration’s timeline of a positive contribution to state coffers.
Workers and net tax payers get a vote. Grifters and claimants don’t.
The era when non-contributors could vote themselves more money is ending naturally anyway, but its death is taking too long. We need to kill it dead before it kills our entire economy.
Doing so will solve the immigration problem at one fell swoop.
Of course, it’s gonna hit the pensioners hard, but as the regulars never tire of telling us, who cares?
They’re all yoon cants anyway.
Lets have 73 Seats and a straight fight.
Anybody ken hoo lang this wake will gang oan fer?
Ah may hae tae nip oot fer anither boatle.
Seeing as hoo nane o ye miserable, grippy cants has pit onything ahent the bar.
For comedy I still nip into James Kelly’s daft logic poll analysis. Latest is that he is saying not voting SNP on list worked this time, but it was just luck. They got one list MSP tye last time and one this time. Despite still getting 26% of list vote share.
His argument that if they dont win constituency , it cuts their MSPs. I am no expert, but isnt that the very point. If they ony won 40 seats , they would get represented in the regions with several MSPs in the regions. I.E end up with MSPs that represent their vote share overall.
He seems to have lost the plot with both votes SNP.
Big Jock @ 08.51.
You’re being a bit unfair to Mr Kelly, B/Jock, bringing logic and common sense into the debate.
They’re probably not abilities which he indulges in too muchly.
The fact that you are undoubtedly and demonstrably correct is unlikely, I fear, to change his views.
Mannivannan identifies as ‘non-binary’ – so in Holyrood it can go in both the Ladies and/or Gents depending how it feels on a specific day!
As I understand he can only use the mens or the unisex bogs.
You have to question how on earth both transgenders got on the green list other than they are trans, brown and black, immigrants, students etc etc and let’s not worry about the fact neither are actually Scots, have ever had a job,have any experience with real people other than students, and have experience of making laws and politics.
They did get aff their flabby erses and stand for office, though.
Something none of the regulars on here, despite their self identified decades of vociferous and committed support for Scotland’s cause, have ever yet managed to do.
I predict with the utmost confidence that the regulars will sit firmly on their flabby erses and talk away the next 5 years, just like they did the last 5.
Then they’ll bitch, moan, gurn and whine about the people who do stand and get voted into office in 2031.
HMcH: fair point. Although many of understand the old saying, horses for courses, knowing that we would make terrible MSPs. You will have noted that the best and the brightest are quickly spat out by the party machines and the system.
EVENTUALLY, it may dawn that the comedy of bits of paper in metal boxes has zilch to do with regaining Scotland’s sovereignty.
If it really matters it will have to be «fought» for.
How that is executed is an existential/psychological leap for the informed few.
The theory has been well rehearsed, the «active» stage is next.
A civil struggle is inevitable, conceivably nothing more than knocking down a house of playing cards.
Classic NEWTONIAN physics on INERTIA
«Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon»
Mocking an Indigenous language is racist; it is racist because it attacks a protected characteristic indirectly:
I’ve written down some points below to expand on why mocking the Scots language, something we see a lot of in this place, isn’t at all humorous, but is really a vicious and cowardly form of racism and discrimination.
Cowardly because perpetrators of such racism often use rhetorical techniques – whether they are aware of using such deliberate rhetoric or not – to disguise their hatred of a people and their culture in fear of the possible social or legal consequences they might face by being openly and directly racist.
Anyway… this:
This is why linguists, human rights bodies, and anti?racism frameworks treat the mockery of indigenous languages as a form of racialised discrimination.
In rhetorical terms such racism is often expressed using Cultural Derision, Linguistic prejudice (or linguicism), Coded Disparagement, Cultural Insinuation, or Dog?whistle (see how their pals rush to join in the attack) Cultural Rhetoric.
In short, an indirect attack on a people’s cultural beliefs or linguistic tradition is usually called Linguistic Prejudice, Cultural Derision, or Cultural Insinuation.
All three describe the rhetorical move of striking at a people by mocking the language and culture that carry their identity.
Such rhetoric should be called out for what it is… racism.
Insightful intellectual analysis, Northcode.
Which confirms the cultural and hence linguistic divide in the colonial framework.
And of course, that colonialism is’hateful racism’ (Cesaire).
Not that Swinney or Greer seem to have figured this oot…yet.
Like everybody else on here,Alf, I’m so looking forwards to the next 5 years of my daily Fanon, Memmi and the Jonesy boyo.
Get yersel regular health checks. We don’t want you keeling over 3 years in.
The Scots language you allude to and use in some of the mince you post is basically 75% misspelt English words. Granted there are some genuine Scots words which are rich and descriptive and I use some of them every day. I also use ‘Scots’ words which do not appear in the Dictionary and are local to the area where I live. In the new Scottish utopia, following Independence, would the use of these words be verboten? Vould anyvone caught using zem be sentenced to ze cooler? Spending time next door to Steve McQueen who vould drive you dementit vith ze constant stoating of a ba’ against ze flair and ze wa’.
I own a copy of the Concise Scots Dictionary, published in 1985. The dictionary is concerned with ‘Scots’, the language of Lowland Scotland, the area lying to the north, east and south of the Scottish Highlands. The number of actual words contained within this dictionary is roughly half of what you find in the Concise English Dictionary!
Whilst it will not please you, English is the accepted language of Technology, Science and Commerce throughout the World.
The Scots language is lacking in these areas. Maybe it would be helpful if Wings readers could suggest new words which could be incorporated into a revised Scots Dictionary. Can I start the ball rolling-
TECHNOLOGY
Compyooter
Washin Masheen
Inturnett
SCIENCE
Joopiter
Yoorerse
Elektron
COMMERCE
Kwantitiv Eesin
Forin Kurrenci
Budjits
Only a small selection but I am certain that the intelligent Wings readers will be able to come up with lots more. Perhaps you and the learned professor could keep a note of suggestions as they come in? You could then demand their inclusion in a revised edition of the Scots Dictionary. There could even be some money in it for you if you arrange for a reprint yourselves. Even if only a few hundred are sold this would probably be double that for the eminent professors tome which he constantly refers to. He does like to sing his praises!
I trust you find the foregoing of some assistance or maybe I am just a racist
I doubt want to get involved in this language debate but many languages incorporate English loan words and adapt them to allow those language speakers to pronounce them.
The below links gives examples of Japanese words that are adapted from English Loan words and amended due to Japanese people having trouble pronouncing for example l’s and r’s in English words.
link to en.wikipedia.org
If the Scots language was the main one spoken in Scotland today and English was used as a secondary trading language, the same thing would have happened.
It makes little sense to change words that have been created recently like computer, internet or smartphone to newly created Scots words.
As I said I’m not into linguistics and I’m sure you and your pals can jump all over this till the cows come home but highlighting English loan words in Scots seems a rather petty argument to use when other languages do the same.
Chas
Ah..
The usual sermon from the Scotchland Tory house Jock..
Rehabilitation in mother Englands eyes by looking down on your own while using a few choice words and labels to distinguish your regionalism in the greater England project..
BTW, “English” is just an imported Germanic mash up of languages used back in the day in Denmark, the Netherlands and German Westphalia. Subsequently watered down by French, touches of Scandinavian and now topped off by yoof speak and ultimately doomed to be overwritten by American.
Mary Queen of Scots English gaolors had to converse with her in French as they admitted they couldn’t speak Scots.
Gar ye greet?
Northcode 9:38
You appear to have missed the point again !
Alf Baird has not been criticised for posting in Scots.
Rather, he has been been criticised for posting in his own concocted “Oor Wullie/Broons” gibberish which bears little resemblance to true Scots !
Ye an aw colonialist baw-heids like ye dinna ken naethin aboot Scots wirds nor oor dictionar, an ye dinna want tae ken either.
‘Misknaw’ (Scots): (i.e. Not to know, to be ignorant, to fail to recognise)
You also demonstrate with your ignorant utterances that colonialism, which is ‘a racist ideology’, always depends on ‘de-basing the colonized’ (Memmi).
Alf Baird @3:30
A different vocabulary doesn’t equate to a different language !
You are obviously (1) Thinking in English
(2) Writing in English
and then…(3) Laboriously translating each English
word into what you imagine to be a Scots word !
Pathetic !
Vocabulary differences alone don’t create a new language… but vocabulary differences combined with structural differences do.
That’s why Scots is a distinct language and not a dialect of English.
Scots has:
Vocabulary is a language signal, not the definition.
But this information will sail over the heads of anti-Scots racists because, as Alf Baird says, their intention is to debase the Scots, not understand them or anything about them… including their history, traditions, cultural identity and language.
When Alf Baird writes in Scots in this place I hear the voice and natural cadence of a Scot speaking Scots; when deliberately twisted and grotesquely caricatured Scots is posted I hear the bastardisation of my mither tongue deployed with the intention to insult, mock, and ultimately debase the Scots as a people.
Voila (that’s French).
An Inglis racist (living in Scotland, apparently), in a show of brazen, fathomless stupidity, is reeled in by my braw rhetoric and manipulated into publicly exposing their true, anti-Scots racist nature; a venomous, natural racism that comes easy to them; an anti-Scots racism accompanied by a quite vicious racist mockery of the German language, anaw.
It’s a sort of relief in some ways to discover that us Scots aren’t the only targets of their uber-racist tendencies.
It’s time, tho, that Scotland made HER “Great Escape”… her great escape from England.
Is there any language, anywhere at all, on God’s Earth that’s safe from mockery by English exceptionalism, I wonder.
Stupid is as stupid does, right enough, eh?
Perhaps “Stupid is as stupid does” should be the legend writ large aneath the English croun.
If only, if only… oh, if only.
If only you English WOULD make a point in this place that I COULD enjoy missing.
Sadly, not a one of you seem capable of making a single, coherent argument… let alone adorning that argument with ‘points’.
Yet another opportunity to promote the braw Scots leid is given to me by a colonialist.
Every Scots word I set doun in this place, as are those set doun by Alf Baird (I’ve checked), can be found on the websites of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (Dictionars o the Scots Leid) and The Online Scots Dictionary.
Online Scots Dictionary (Pittin the Mither Tongue on the Wab)
Dictionars o the Scots Leid
Great to see you back to your full tonto, Northy.
Alert readers noted how in the two week period prior to the election, not a single word of your Scots language lunacy found its way onto here.
It was manifestly clear how you realised just how badly that would resonate with any potential voter who may have found her way here – perhaps keen to discover what Indy might be all about.
Couldn’t have her running screaming in fear and derision, could you, Northy?
But now your panic is over and you have 5 glorious years of howling at the moon to look forwards to.
Braw.
Here’s a guid Scots wurd fer ye, Northy – wacism.
Its English equivalent is “racism”.
Even many Scots speakers mis-pronounce it as “racism”, as in English.
But wacism more accurately captures the pathetic, petulant, and above all, contemptibly whiny spectacle of a white Scot, even one self identifying as a Pict, in his own country, attempting to play the race card.
Only in yer ain, sowwy heid, Northy, are you being wacially oppwessed.
Why is the outcome of this election not regarded as the ideal result? The Scottish government can now do nothing unless more than half of our democratically elected representatives are in favour of the action. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong is the zombie SNP gets flung a lifeline for another 5 years of paying lip service to its raison d’etre whilst supping at the trough of devolution.
As I said further up this BTL…
The SNP needs a new song to close the Annual Conference, might I suggest Del Amitri…
“And nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before’
Kinda sums things up since 2015, no?
The SNP seem to be in a panic about reform and most will conclude its all about Holyrood, I don’t believe it is. I think its more about what share of seats will reform take in Scotland at the next Westminster election. After all the SNP isn’t getting any money from donation and is totally dependent on Westminster short money.
Now I’m going to be honest the things Reform says are worrying but I don’t believe their is a party in the hole of the UK that is corrupt and evil as the SNP and I’m talking about their actions since 2015.
I would welcome the closure of Holyrood and the demise of the SNP, don’t think for a minute that Holyrood is the path to Independence is not.
They wouldn’t close Holyrood.
They’d just send in more civil servants to do the administration themselves.
Then Scotland has lost any voice it had on decision making in certain areas entirely.
We’re outvoted in Westminster too.
If you want to have an insight of that disaster in action just ref back to when NI closed Stormont. Unionists kept their voice by just switching to Westminster to bleat & cry about devolved issues & were reprimanded for it on more than one occasion that they were the cause of the chaos. Meanwhile, back in NI, rioting was close cause no one was receiving their energy & cost of living payments.
It would be interesting to hear your take on today’s Telegraph story that the Greens have elected a bi/trans Sri Lankan PhD student with no current visa as the list MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East. No money, no visa and now he/she/it will get 77K/year. How can this person possibly be a representative of the taxpayers in the constituency and understand the needs of indigenous Scots?
Now it may be that the dae nothing SNP have been returned. That is what the Brits have wanted, have engineered. But the headline sentiment, albeit leadership hollow is independence. The desire for independence sit with the people and the dae nothing leadership of the SNP are not the people.
And so, for me at least it is heartening that in Northern Ireland SinnFein has the first Minister. Sinn Fein has not had a history of dae nothing.
And in Wales Plaid now have the First Minister.
That makes three parties, all notionally committed to independence the parties in devolved government. And in England Reform, an anti just about everyone party believing only in the supremacy of Greater England sit poised to wreaking havoc. One wonders how that will play out.
The Brits may have created a devolved parliaments that they control.but how will that control continue as mother England starts to rip itself apart. And under Reform the spectre of Brexit, the spectre of England’s resumed golden era of world success looms again.
Yes I am depressed about how the SNP let us down after 2014. But the desire has not gone away. And ditto, with Sinn Fein the desire has not gone away either. And Plaid, they have just swept Labour out from their devolved colonial administration.
And the Brits they have welshed on the Good Friday Agreement. The Border Poll has not happened and they think the Bealfast Agreement is something they can now disregard.
Its all unfinished business. Independence has not gone away. The colonial control has only muzzled it.
Willie: The SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein are all infested with, and infiltrated by, the ‘wokerati’ whose only concern is with those not indigenous their parts and to those who cross-dress as a sexual kink. None of them will ever bring independence. The Scots, the Welsh and the NI and Southern Irish are all superfluous. Don’t be fooled by them.
Well said I couldn’t agree more.
“Independence has not gone away. The colonial control has only muzzled it.”
Indeed so. Which is why all three ‘internal’ colonies elected ‘nationalist’ governments should follow Liberation Scotland’s lead and now jointly be knocking on the UN General Secretary’s door and that of its decolonizing committees C-24 and C-4, to ensure that our respective peoples’ right to self-determination/independence under international law is respected, and no longer allowed to be blocked by imperial England and its colonial courts.
Aye, Willie and Alf, independence has most certainly not gone away.
I suspect many indigenous Scots have cottoned on to Westminster’s trickery and have arrived at the truth of Holyrood… that it’s an instrument of oppression and not a government of Scots chosen by Scots for the benefit of Scots, hence Thursday’s very low turnout.
At least Scots now have 17 new MSPs (Reform) who might have the stones to stick their hands in the air and challenge the SNP/Greens bonkers anti-women and anti-gay pro-tranz policies.
Radical Cartoons,
One thing is certain we have a clique SNP, Labour, Lib-dem, Greens and the Tory’s who ave been quite happy with the politicians and Holyrood set up the way it is and don’t want anything to change.
Do don’t have to like Reform to realize that there is something rotten about the people who work and run holyrood, now there are new kids on the block no one want to work with them, WHY?
After all the parliament was set up for everyone to work together and now Reform has a presence the SNP wants to try and make Independence look as if it is important, some are fooled I’m not.
Since Sturgeon took over she has made Westminster a priority not Scotland or our people, the SNP is only interested in send loads of MP’s to Westminster for the Money the MP’s bring to the party.
Reform, if they do there job right will lift the lid of Holyrood and expose criminals who hide there.
Radical Cartoons,
Your cartoons are very good maybe Wings is had a look and would be interested in asking you to post on wings, god knows we need a laugh.
Happy anniversary today of the 1307 battle of Loudoun Hill.
Bruce’s victories over the English just kept on piling in from here on..
Raise a glass to them!
But not if you’re a lying turncoat.
Obvs.
There’s a small but finite chance of meeting Scotland’s historical heroes on the other side.
They won’t take kindly to oath breaking ("Quizmaster" - Ed)s attempting to carpet bag on their steadfast heroism.
HMcH
Mair catamitery from you, yet again..
Gaun, do the Masonic funny walk!
You’re making me break my solemn vow to not engage with you more than once a day.
An oath I willingly and voluntarily swore! But, hey, you’re in no position to complain about that, are you now, YL?
Why don’t you nurse your catamite and sodomy fantasies until 3 AM tomorrow? I’m confident you’ll be ready to post a belter by then, having allowed your excited over imagination free reign through the wee, small hours.
If you can’t keep it all in until then, go lurk on the canal towpath again for an hour or two after midnight.
Dinna forget some fishing gear! Some nosy vigilante cant, ower ready wi his fists and muckle boots, may demand to know what’s your game.
HMcH
Is that it?
Hahahahahaha:-)
You’re losing it “old boy”; whanging oan endlessly about an oath issue completely of your own wee invention and the “wee small hours posts” of you, Fat Slag Wilma and her new flame AI Dun.
Ah well, whatever keeps you happy in between whanging oan on endlessly (again) on behalf of Conservative Friends of Is Rye Ale against all people “brown”..
Now there is foreign government intervention/ treachery for you to ponder as you go down the canal tow path you and Wilma are so fixated about on yer “fag break” in search of forbidden fruit.
It’s a sin ye know..
Nothing new?
Nothing funny?
Nah, just the same tired nonsense from you, yer overdoing it and lost any originality!
Raw nerve hit eh catamite? Putting you off yer stride?
Can never bring yersel to deny it, still all the Edi Uni glory hole swimming about in you.
You’re as fake as yer fellow spoilers/ milk monitors/ pearl clutchers 🙂
Gaun reply again, catamite..
Just try to be original eh?
@Young Lochinvar says: 11 May, 2026 at 12:16 am
“canal tow path”
“fag break”
“forbidden fruit”
“sin”
“catamite”
“glory hole”
“catamite” [again!]
My, YL, but it’s good to see you have an interest. At your age too! Michty!
Maybes tone it down a bit? Alert readers will likely have picked up on the “doth protest too much” vibes you’re eagerly broadcasting to the whole, wide world.
Broadcasting, as per usual, after midnight when everybody else is fast asleep. The witching hour when a boy’s uneasy conscience or hyperactive imagination just won’t leave him be.
HMcH
Deflecting yet again “old boy”, as usual, and still no denial.
Speaks volumes.
Posting at 12.16; So what?
Just because matron has taken your phone away by then, real sane adults get to stay up a bit longer 🙂
Thank you.
THE BOTTLE IMP
Anyone interested in Scottish language and literature should note that back issues of The Association for Scottish Literature’s periodical ‘THE BOTTLE IMP’ are free to read on line:
link to thebottleimp.org.uk
This struck me as fitting our colonial predicament, Fearghas, as well as postcolonial theory of course, which highlights the collaborative and co-operative role of the native bourgeoisie in colonial societies:
“Class-conscious we are, and class-conscious wull be
Till our fit’s on the neck o’ the Boorjoyzee.”
OK accepting the challenge, let us get the gray matter working on on some Neu Scotis vocab.
computer = reknar,
quantitive easing = quantitatif aisement
artificial intelligence = airtifeisal inteligens
physics = fisic
mathematics = mathematic
independence = independens
washing machine = weschmaschein
science = sciens
commerce = handil
republic = repoblíc
state = estait
prime minister = prym meinistir
general election = general wal
politics/political = politíc
nation = nacioun
news = tydans
technologist = technolog
online = onlyn
working from home = haimwarkand
foreign currency = forain sillar
vacuum cleaner = stoursoukar
mathematical physics = mathematic fisíc
big bang theory = mekil flaucht theoric
Freudian analysis = Freudlik analitic
parliamentary democracy = parlementar democratie
social media = social moyans
English literature = inglis leteratour
Where there’s will….or fools rushing in,,,
It’s the Sabbath, praise The Lord, but instead of delivering a sermon on the teachings of Christ… I’ve decided on spouting oot a mair Earthly and patriotic ‘sermon’.
I’ve come over all rhetorical speech when considering my country’s ancient and special language.
I got to thinking about what really sets the Scots leid apart from other languages and I was inspired to dramatise my conclusions in full baritone voice and in front of my ‘dressing room’ mirror’s rhetorical reflection and, finally, to record my musings here.
I believe that what truly sets Scots apart is the depth of my mither tongue’s cultural voice; a voice carried through centuries, shaped by the land, the people, and the shared memory of a nation.
Across the English-speaking world, there is no other language that encompasses a literary tradition as ancient, as abundant, or as distinguished as the one we inherit in Scots.
This is a tradition that begins with the great medieval makars, whose poetry helped form the early imagination of Scotland.
It flows forward through the work of Robert Burns, Walter Scott, James Hogg, Hugh MacDiarmid, Nan Shepherd, and Lewis Grassic Gibbon… writers whose words are woven into the fabric of our cultural identity.
And that tradition is not merely a relic of the past.
It lives on in the voices of modern authors such as Iain Banks (his Culture novels written as Iain M Banks are a feat of pure imagination – he died too young), James Kelman, Liz Lochhead, James Robertson, and Irvine Welsh – writers who have carried Scots into the contemporary world with power, wit, and unshakeable authenticity.
But the cultural life of Scots reaches far beyond bookshelves.
It thrives on our stages and on our screens, in the sharp humour of our drama and our comedy, in the everyday brilliance of comic strips and cartoons that speak directly to communities across Scotland.
Scots remains a living, breathing force; a language of art, of belonging, of shared experience.
Scots is not simply a way of speaking… it is a way of seeing.
A way of seeing the world.
A way of remembering our people’s past.
And a way of being a Scot at hame in thair identity.
As long as we cherish it, speak it, write it, and pass it on… Scots will continue to carry the stories of Scotland; stories of the past, stories of the present, and those stories yet to come.
Amen…
Nae treasures, nor pleasures
Could make us happy lang;
The hert aye’s the pairt aye
That maks us richt or wrang
You forgot to say that Scots is a minority language, even in Scotland.
Haha, hark at me. You “forgot” as much as I “forgot” you’re just another carpet bagger – hitching a ride for your hopeless hobby horse on the broad back of the Indy movement.
No minority in Scotland is going to force its language on the majority of Scots. That’s a catalyst for civil war. And it’s you antediluvian nutcases that will be the minority.
Have just been watching the footage of the Edinburgh Central count where Lorna Slater won the seat from Angus Robertson. The thing is: Angus was not even on the List or not high enough up on the List to make the grade. Either that, or he does not wish to return to Holyrood. However, judging by his face, he was not happy at all and knew he was out of HR.
So, did the SNP deliberately keep him low on the List, or off it altogether, believing that he would win the seat no problem, or were they ensuring that he would not be returned, knowing the seat was turning Green? The exodus of older and experienced MSPs in such numbers is unprecedented, so, is the party ridding itself of the old guard by refusing to back them or by not putting them high on the List? If so, why?
Of course, they could all have wanted to exit the scene, and who could blame them, but I have never seen such a sloughing off of the old guard as this latest manifestation. Usually, it starts with a trickle and the some time, but Angus Robertson’s face and the fact that he was not high on the List seemed to me to be telling a story, and, if we thought the last five years were hell on Earth, the next five will be an era of such unmitigated disaster for Scotland that we have seen nothing yet. Never thought I’d say it, but I hope that Reform does stick its oar in to mitigate the insanity, even if just a little.
Robertson was 3rd on the list.The new intake has a lot of the stale old guard elected.At least 8 rejected from the 2024 Westminster election and 2 other’s who’ll have to give up their Westminster seats
Yes, just looked it up and saw he was 3rd. Amazing! Normally, someone they were desperate to be elected would be top of the List as well as standing in the constituency vote. The old guard who have been rejected and now re-elected are party ultra loyalists or ship-jumpers from that other hellhole with ambition to take over soon. Angus Robertson is not a fool. Perhaps he stood in someone’s way?
Joanna Cherry has said that Gaza intervened in the election. Imagine. No matter how you feel about the Israeli government and its treatment of the Gazans, what the hell does that have to do with Scotland in a Scottish election? What precisely can the SG do to change anything in the Middle East? Talk about delusion!
This place is going down the tubes fast. When even more Scots are living in tents or on the streets and living on food bank handouts, I look forward to the Gazans and other Palestinians electing politicians who want to talk about nothing but Scotland, and all the marches they will plan. Sure, feel sympathy for people on humanitarian grounds, but the sheer delusion that we can actually do anything at all bar going out there in person, person by person, to help the aid agencies, and to let that affect our elections when we are in thrall to Westminster, is utter madness. We can’t even achieve enough votes to get our own independence, let alone that of the Gazans, for the love of God.
Geri @ 9:29
re Mr Flynn…I have two family members in Aberdeen who were active SNP supporters until they became disillusioned….
They worked with Mr Flynn and described him as “dodgy as f**k)!
No surprise to read then..
‘Hypocrite’ Stephen Flynn enjoys a two-week stay in America…courtesy of Donald Trump.
The Mail on Sunday reports that Mr Flynn accepted accommodation and domestic flights worth $4,400 (£3,242) as part of the trip. He also racked up expenses of $2,000 (£1,474) in transportation costs and $1,100 (£811) for meals. Mr Flynn was handpicked by American diplomats as a future leader to attend the programme, which is run by the US Department of State.total donation came to $18,425 (£13,948).
Lorncal @ 17.13.
I don’t doubt for a nanosecond that, had it been up to him, Mr Robertson would have been no 1 on the list, “just in case”.
I can only suspect that behind the scenes they’re fighting like rats in a sack and those of the ‘old guard’ whom the young Turks feel have been tainted by association with the Sturgeon years are, as you suggest Lorn, being ruthlessly discarded. It’s pretty certain that irrespective of the Party concerned career politicians have about as much sympathy for their fellows as the steel toecap of a navvy’s boot.
For me, the best hope for the independence cause in Scotland remains the independent candidates standing under umbrella groups.
And a clear adherence to the recognition of biological fact when it comes to safe places for our women and children. I can imagine fewer vote losers than standing on an independence ticket on the basis of advocating gender confusion.
Yes, Sven, I think, too, that they are having a clear-out, and, having known Angus Robertson fairly well, I feel sorry for him, but he has been the architect of his own demise. I always suspected him of being in the John Swinney/Nicola Sturgeon camp and thought he made a grave error in not backing Alec Salmond. He chained himself to the narcissist/sociopath/psychopath wing of the SNP and underestimated just how natural it is for youth to be totalitarian and nihilistic in outlook. Swinney was ever the ruthless devolutionist behind the Honest John independista facade, and he should have known that.
I do think that they will return to the GRRB as a dog returns to its vomit, but, this time, women will not respond as kindly as they have. In a way, I believe that it is what the women’s 21st century movement needs to force it into the political arena as a force for females’ and children’s protections across the board, not just on this issue. The day of the handmaiden, in every sense, is about to wane.
I wouldn’t feel sorry for him. He has all the hallmarks of a plant.
He was the architect behind giving the Murrells absolute power over the SNP & removing party democracy too.
His wife was as dodgy as fck too.
I only caught a little of the campaign but folks are furious about the gentrification of Edinburgh & land being given to developers. If that’s true, fck knows why they voted Scottish Greens cause they’re globalists pretending to be environmentalists. I can only assume they rallied the Purple Taliban & the blow-in student vote.
& Why exactly were duds from Westminster allowed to stand when they changed the rules that blocked Cherry from doing the same? Shed to resign her seat first. Did Flynn resign?
Cheeky barsteward, he didn’t.
“As per the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 which bars individuals from holding both a
Scottish Parliament and Westminster seat simultaneously, Flynn will be required to resign his House of Commons position within 49 days.”
He waited until he won first. That wasn’t the rules Cherry was given. She’d to resign her seat FIRST.
Geri: I liked him, and that is why I feel sorry for him, but I also think that he should have expected it. He might well have been a plant. My thoughts, too, initially, but his face was genuinely and deeply disappointed. Hurt, almost. I wouldn’t have expected a plant to care. Job done. He must have been aware that the knives were out for him, placing him way down the List, and Stephen Flynn leaving Westminster for Holyrood needed him gone, too, so that he can challenge for the leadership unopposed or be handed it on a plate. Well, now Angus will know at first hand what Alec Salmond suffered, even if only a little.
I am sure the Greens will try to resurrect the GRRB, and Swinney has been holding it in reserve, refusing to remove it from the books, and he might well agree to its resurrection in return for a budget nod. Yes, they are globalists, but that Green tag blinds so many to their true nature – which is not to support independence. How can you advocate for open borders while, simultaneously, calling yourself a supporter of independence which, by its very nature, must have borders. However, these people are blind to hypocrisy, reality and common sense.
Insider
“handpicked by American diplomats as a future leader to attend the programme”
Another plant off to the USA to be indoctrinated by his Colonial Overlords. What interest does the US have in a wee diddly Scottish administration to be handpicking anyone?
I don’t like him either. He’s a shifty piece of work.
He manoeuvred his way to be leader of Westminster – then did fck all when he won it. His move to Holyrood will just be another non event.
He was insulting to critics over the gender rubbish too.
The whole rotten lot are captured.
Plant called out by plank.
Sometimes the headlines really do just write themselves.
Swinney has been SNP leader since 2024.
In the 2024 General Election the SNP lost 39 seats.
In the 2026 Scottish election the SNP lost 6 seats.
Is Swinney/SNP a winner?
C’moan, x.
Pit yer tribal hat oan.
Obviously, to one tribe, Swinney has just delivered another result, good for another 5 years.
And that’s all that matters to them.
Tribe before country, geddit?
The Rev’s analyses are normally spot on and it is interesting and I am sure sound the way he compares the SNP ‘victory’ on Thursday to the Major’s in 1991. What I am not currently seeing though is who is the equivalent of Blair’s Labour to sweep the SNP aside next time? Perhaps, the way things are going UK-wide, who is to say that won’t be Farage’s Reform?
Regarding the Local elections in England (not of that great a concern here, I know), the take-home for me is how much the FPTP system is kind of breaking, if not broken. Where I live Labour got 16% of the vote and no seats, Green 18% and 12 seats and LDs 10% and 5 seat, Reform 30% and 29 seats, and there in a nutshell is the problem for any who do not want a Reform government next time – most of Reform’s newer votes are from ex-Tories, and Greens, ex-Labour, but the Greens are on the rise and Tories sinking like a stone. I can only see one result at the next GE if the centre-left continue to compete with each other and Polanski continues with his line of being out to ‘destroy and replace Labour’ (his words). He might do that to some extent, but the result will be opposition, not running a government.
Polanski’s popularity will likely take a hit once the MSM decide we all need to know his real name – David Paulden.
Whether that will be sufficient to counter the swelling support his hypnotic skills are rumoured to bring about, only time will tell.
Myself, I’m rooting for the Ginger Growler. On two counts:
1) Pure entertainment value. Think of a southern (northern to you 🙂 ) schemie Geri with a tax evasion fetish, then tell me you don’t agree the cabaret will be superb.
2) We all need the ultimate in unserious to usher in the serious main act – Reform.
Paulden’s unserious, sure, but the Ginger Growler is playing in a different league.
I doubt very much she will be leader, even if Starmer is ousted. Sadly, for me as a supporter despite everything, I think Labour are fucked. When the knives are coming from all directions and the frequency of the stabs so high it is not possible to withstand it no matter who is in charge and what their policies are. And Labour will probably do a good job now of destroying what’s left of their government, all on their own, cos that’s what they do.
I admit I did not know Polanski’s real name. He is populist just like Farage, though Green friends really hate that comparison. Almost as much as they hate Starmer.
I think at the next GE Reform could well win (no revelation there) but not by much and so there will be chaos as minority governments are not really catered for by the FPTP system. They may go into coalition with the Tories but how much difference that will make in terms of seats is open to question.
It will be interesting to see what Reform do with all these councils either in their control or with a significant higher number of councillors. It is hard to imagine them getting down to the everyday business of bin collections, potholes and managing tight budgets (rather than banging on about ‘woke’ and immigration/mass deportations or how ‘crypto’ isgoing to save GB). Given their track record so far in local government, I don’t think they will do well. But will that affect teflon Farage? I doubt it.
You only have to look a the total wasters who became MSP’s through the list vote to realise that FPTP is much better than PR.
Look at the morons we would not have had in government if it wasn’t for the list, Ross Greer, Maggie Chapman and the two transgender students…………
Is the Civil (Colonial) Service bugger (person who bugs) still in place?
Perhaps some surveillance booster course would be in order.
Geri, the SNP changed the rules deliberately to stop Joanna C from coming back up the road. Angus Robertson wanted that seat and the SNP top brass of the time wanted him to have it.
Recently, they changed the rules back to let Stephen Flynn come to Holyrood.
Angus stopped internal democracy within the SNP, prevented groups like Commonweal having any influence and he’s a Z…..ist. So, oddly, if the SNP wanted him out, just for a change, they’ve made a good decision IMO.
MaryB: he made the wrong choices when he backed Sturgeon. Now, he has been removed to make way for Flynn who, when questioned on the SNP’s attitude to women, said that the SNP has other policies (apart from the removal of women’s rights?) – meaning, one would assume, that they will allow a return to the GRRB if that is the price they have to pay for the Greens’ backing.
Have been saying this for ages, that women need to toughen up and be far more combative and obstructive. My one hope is that the Greens will tear themselves apart on this issue because the LGBTQ+++++ into infinity will never, ever be placated, as women who have experienced their tactics know. They use the tactics of the nursery – tantrums, spitting out their dummies, kicking mummy’s shins. The naughty step and placatory language will not work. Neither will a “no, dear, you can’t have that”. A good old-fashioned spanking is the order of the day if they step out of line. Back to basics when the adults are in the room.
Well, they didn’t want him to have it on Thursday, MaryB. Stephen Flynn is the king in waiting now. I doubt that Angus Robertson’s removal will prove to be the chess move you believe it to be, though. Hilaire Belloc springs to mind: “…and keep a-hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse…”
Aye, good riddance to him, imo. I won’t be crying over him gone.
As for Flynn, what a scummy, devious thing to do regarding changing the rules back to let him win his seat first.
He’s another klaxon alert – an obvious plant slithering up the ladder of success while achieving nothing of note to get him there.
He’d be the most boring FM ever. That’ll be the plan. Bore Scotland back to its slumber.
Lorncal. I think it’s been done as a way of distracting the parliament from doing anything useful. Q is clearly very attention seeking and probably put there for that reason. It’ll be a good distraction from having to try to seek independence, whilst also being very divisive.
What will the Reform MSP’s make of the trans folk I wonder?
MaryB: I really don’t think that this is the distraction. For these people, independence is the distraction. They simply do not want it – neither the SNP nor the Greens, neither Labour nor the Lib Dems, (neither the Tories nor Reform, for different reasons). So many people regard all this ‘trans’/’woke’ stuff as a ‘women’s issue’. Nah. It’s the raison d’être of their existence.
It is post modernism and it has infected every institution, every organisation, every aspect of life in Scotland, in the UK, in the EU, in Europe and in the West, as a whole, so quite how independence would fix it is the big question because it wouldn’t and couldn’t. Until many more people understand that, independence is off the agenda.
There are very brave people fighting it, but the majority lack the cojones to do anything. Even if we regained our independence tomorrow, this stuff would undermine it to the extent that we would sink into absolute and irredeemable poverty and lack of action to prevent Year Zero. It is designed to sap all creative energy across the board, particularly in economics and business, but everywhere.
It really doesn’t matter whether you are ultra nationalist or right wing or centre left or liberal. It wants to tear it all down to start again. The thing is, it does not have the nous to create anything vaguely humane and/or democratic. Totalitarianism is built into it; it is its foundation.
Its whole ethos is based on destroying, not creating. It knows no boundaries; it understands no nation states; it repudiates the human binary and all biological discourse on sex, age or even species in the pursuit of sexual desire, regardless of how perverted. That is why it appeals so much to the (everything is black and white) young and to those who have traded their intelligence and critical thinking for tenure in a university or a political career, as our American cousins put it.
The D’Hont system was useful when the smaller parties were progressive. Now we have agenda driven , racist , mysoginistic parties. Electing the dregs of society, that most rational people would avoid in the street.
Basically these parties are smeaking these individuals in on the list. Most voters reject them on the constituencies. So I feel they are abusing the system.
It also allows these micro parties to claim to represent the electorate. When actuslly the electorate said gtf.
Sturgeon abused it.
She allowed the Greens into government for absolutely no reason & started implementing their manifesto that had been rejected at the ballot box.
They all then went onto claim they had a mandate for all the bat shit policies from the Greens.
So a vote for Indyref2 was used for gender reform, juryless trials etc & Menacing Harvie walking about the gaff, bullying women, like he owned the place.
Yes, that system has to go but I very much doubt it will. It gives deadbeats a seat & let’s rejects sit there for 20+ yrs doing nothing. *Looking at you Murdo* who now wants to lead the Scottish Tories despite never winning an election. FFS..
A masterful summary, Geri.
12:31 am, and a signature “double tap” at the end, too.
What a mystery, eh? The most alert of our alert readers will never get to the bottom of it.
I’ve concluded that the answer to the question: “How long will this wake go on for?” is 3.
Whether 3 weeks, 3 months or 3 years remains unclear, but my money is on 3 years. And then a bit more.
For the usual suspects, including Alf, Geri, James, James, Confused, TWATHATER, Auld Lochinvar, and of course, dear, dear Northy, I can but advise another 5 years of the same old mince.
Sure, it spectacularly failed last time around, but new mugs are being born every minute, even in Scotland.
Besides, I’m sure that none of you can change, this side of the grave. So it’s mince, or nothing. And there’s not one of you that my Scotland will be the better for if you retire your keyboards and get out more.
[Humblest apologies to any regular who aspires to be one of the usual suspects, but does not appear on my list above. As it says in the Good Book, the Last shall be First when the Promised Land is ushered in, so just hang in there and be patient for another 5 years]
It’s difficult to capture with a single word what was done to Scotland and the Scots, but it can be named, and named with honesty.
Scotland, for centuries past and to this day still, lives under a system of internal colonialism – a system of oppression that concentrates power in Westminster, reshapes our economy to serve distant English interests, and treats our land and our people as resources to be managed rather than communities to be cherished.
It is a system that brought cultural suppression, where the everyday language of Scotland was pushed out of the classroom, the courtroom, and the public square, and where generations of children were taught to be ashamed of their own voices.
The result was not only the loss of words, but the loss of confidence, a people’s memory, and our sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves.
It is a system of oppression that carried out forced displacement, most brutally in the Highlands, where families were cleared from the land their ancestors had lived on and worked for centuries.
Entire communities were broken apart, scattered across the coasts, across the Lowlands, and across the wider world.
This was not an accident of history; it was a deliberate re?ordering of society, driven by profit and violently enforced through power.
And it is a system of oppression that inflicted linguicide – the slow, grinding destruction of a people’s language through stigma, punishment, exclusion and neglect.
The damage was deep, and the scars remain with us still.
These were not isolated events. They were part of a long pattern: ethnic violence, cultural erasure, and the steady narrowing of what it meant to be Scottish in the eyes of the state.
But here is the truth that matters most.
Despite everything, us Scots endured.
Our language endured.
Our stories endured.
Our identity and sense of ourselves as a distinct people endured.
And today, as we speak openly about our history, we do not do so to divide, but to understand.
We name these things not to dwell in grievance, but to reclaim what was taken – our voice, our dignity, our history, our language and nation, and our right to define who we are.
The work of repair is far from finished… in fact, that work is yet to begin.
But it can only begin with truth.
And the truth is this: Scotland was shaped, and is still being shaped, by forces that seek to diminish and destroy her – and yet she and her people remain unbroken.
Aye Northcode, oor Scots langage bides deep in oor verra saul, sae naethin an nae ither fowks langage can ivver brak it.
Oor ain bonnie Scots langage is the verra grund o oor naitional identity an withoot hit thar wad be nae Scots onythin.
******
And so, as a colonized native people move ever closer to liberation “..suddenly the language of the ruling power is felt to burn your lips” (Fanon).
Do you actually believe any of the nonsense you talk about the UN or is it just a case of if you repeat it often enough maybe you will get a second person who believes it?
The UN is going to do nothing about this because it is just nonsense.
You cannot be a colony if you have a valid process for gaining independence but don’t use it.
Personally these days I would want to see a far more competent government in Holyrood for a while before I would take the take the chance of putting them in overall power.
The quality and politics of the previous and current lot are poor and at the moment I am happy that there is some sort of backstop in Westminster halting the worst of the looney Tunes stuff HR generates, god help us if they didn’t have that check.
Manybe if they could prove for a while that they could actually govern the country reasonably well things may change.
The liberation of ‘a people’ is seldom merely a matter of politics, rather it is primarily ‘a matter of national culture’ (Fanon).
We will be unlikely ever to see a competent colonial administration, which postcolonial theory explains is due to the fact such forms of governance tend to comprise at best a ‘mediocre meritocracy’ (Memmi) which also mainly functions to protect ‘the colonizers interest’ (Fanon), not that of the people whose interest is thereby ‘sacrificed’ (Cesaire).
It helps to better understand the colonial condition, and in order to find the only remedy:
link to cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com
“The tongue of the conqueror on the lips of the conquered is the hallmark of a slave”
=======
Although this thought is often attributed to Franz Fanon , it is at least as old as Welsh nationalism (Michael Collins made similar comments about the attempted extirpation of Gaeilge). Its sentiments recur today even in “moderate” activist groups like
Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (The Welsh Language Society).
Among living languages, spoken Welsh is possibly the closest relative if Scotland’s lost Pictish and Brittonic tongues. (The name William Wallace was an Inglis rendition of “William Wallis- William the Welshman, an archaic locative). However Radio 4’s Today featured last week an item on attempts at reviving threatened languages. At the end of the piece, it was pointed out that farmers in West Yorkshire until recently still counted sheep in the Cambric or Old Brittonic tongue.
Did the Picts and Britons in their own regions of what would become Scotland do the same? We can be sure the Scoti (the name Romans gave to Gaelic speakers in Hibernia and Caledonia) did not. Even so, radical Gàidhlig language activists in e.g. Ceartas share the same view.
There has been a shift from 30% to 46% of the population.
But what does this shift mean?
Well, I’ll tell you… and the colonialists who wander aboot this place are not going to like it.
This shift has taken place between 2011 and 2022, more specifically the 2011 census and the 2022 census.
In the 2022 census almost 2.5 million Scots claimed to have some ability with the Scots language, 46% of the total population of Scotland.
Of that 2.5 million folk over 1.5 million claimed to be competent speakers of the Scots language.
The total current population of Scotland is reckoned to be around 5.63 million folk of which 4.5 million identify as being Scottish.
The 2022 Census clearly shows:
This makes Scots one of the most widely known minority languages in Europe.
If we base our calculations only on the 4.5 million Scots who live in Scotland then the percentage of Scots who claim some ability with Scots leaps from 46% to 55%.
And if we base our calculations on the 3 million Scots who identify as Scots only the percentage claiming some ability with Scots goes up to a massive 82%.
So, on those figures the Scots language is spoken by the majority of Scots who identify as being Scots only.
But so, too, is Scots still spoken by the majority (55%) even if we include those poor confused Scots who actually believe they can be both Scottish AND British.
It seems that Scots is still spoken or understood, with varying degrees of ability, by the majority of Scots who live in Scotland.
So, aye, Alf. Scotland’s maist recent census statistics appear tae support Fanon’s claim.
Mibbe the SNHS should stert tae think aboot buyin’ in large quantities o lip balm.
Excellent analysis Northcode.
Which we might extend further, thanks to the post-referendum survey, which found that those identifying primarily as ‘Scottish’ comprised the bulk of the Yes vote; which in turn means that the Scots language is the very basis of the independence movement; and in turn that that Yes/No divide is to a large extent between Scots speakers and English speakers – which follows other examples such as Quebec where the Yes/No divide was similarly between Francophone and Anglophone.
Which further confirms that peoples in self-determination conflict always tend to be linguistically divided.
Superb book —
THE MERCAT ANTHOLOGY OF EARLY SCOTTISH LITERATURE 1375-1707, Edited by R.D.S. Jack and P.A.T. Rozendaal, Mercat Press, 1997 (pp xii,xiii) —
« Was ‘Scottis’ the accepted, homogeneous literary language of Scotland in earlier times? Once the historical dimension to the question is opened up and one looks at origins, it becomes clear that the answers is ‘No’. The dialect known as ‘Scottis’ has no claim to be the original national tongue. In fact, if there were any politico-linguistic ‘treachery’, it was that which resulted in ‘Scottis’ gaining dominance over the native Gaelic.
« At the end of the thirteenth century Malcolm Canmore and David I had intentionally ‘driven back Gaelic to (virtually) the present Highland line’. Scots originated in Northumbrian English and only grew later into proud distinctiveness, because of the positive sociolinguistic forces inherent in nationhood.
« Unsurprisingly, therefore, lowland Scottish writers from the fourteenth century until the seventeenth almost always claim to be composing in ‘Inglis’ and seek their poetic origins south of the border. Dunbar eulogises his master, Chaucer, in ‘The Goldyn Targe’, posing the rhetorical question ‘Was thou noucht of oure *Inglisch* all the lycht,/ Surmounting eviry tong terrestriall,/ Alls fer as Mayes morow dois mydnycht?’
« Only in two instances do the writers of that time call their language ’Scottis’. The limitations of the nationalist claims made in this way by Gavin Douglas and James VI will be discussed later.
« The loss of the ‘nationalist’ prop to the icon of the ‘homogeneous national literary language’ inevitably makes the easy identification between anglicization and treachery untenable. »
I see that the aold adage of bullshit baffling brains was attempted by Alf by not answering the question and simply posting more guff.
Language is not the answer to what makes someone scottish, because there is more than one language that was spoken here and none were dominant.
I have always had a problem with gaelic being pushed as the national language, it is a regional language only spoken in some areas of the country. My part was originally auld scots and you have to consider the other languages also spoken in some areas like Lothian is traditionally a old English speaking area, Doric in the grampian area and Danish further north and in Orkney and Shetland.
Whish language is the original and makes you scottish?
Language and national identity is not than complicated:
Danish folk speak Danish;
Norwegians speak Norwegian;
English speak English;
Welsh speak Welsh;
Scots speak Scots.
If ‘a people’ lose their language they lose their identity, which is the aim of colonial/cultural assimilation and linguicide.
And all the above nationalities speak English fluently . .
So all areas, no matter what their ethnic language roots are all the scots languange? What a lot of tosh.
How do you fit gaelic into actually being the scots language or the fact that Lothian is linguistically still the purest for of the original english language?
Even english is not the only national language or england, original it would have been a form of welsh and then old english then danish and then an overlay oy french from successive invasions. What one is the “native” language.
How do you equate all the scandinavian place names in caithness, Orkney and Shetland with the original language in the area being scots?
Are the original gaelic speakers in the west now not scots because they speak a different language from the one you say is the auld tongue?
There is no such thing as one original scots language and never was and that is before you even start on regional dialects and accents!
“And all the above nationalities speak English fluently”
That’s called bi-lingualism, Aidan.
But it disna mean ye depreeve yer ain fowk o lairnin thay’re ain langage!
That’s called colonialism.
Alf @2:32 says
“Scots speak Scots”
Nonsense!
Scots speak Scottish/English.
“And all the above nationalities speak English fluently”
The main difference between us Scots and our bilingual European neighbours, of course, is that in these countries it is a requirement for employment purposes that they be proficient in their own indigenous language.
In Scotland meanwhile ‘the door of opportunity is only opened by the colonizers language’ (Memmi); hence the need for the colonized ‘to mimic the colonizers tongue’ (Fanon).
And with numerous negative outcomes resulting for the colonized group including socio-linguistic prejudice, institutionalised racism, self-hatred, cultural dislocation, and more.
Extract from Introduction to THE PENGUIN BOOK OF SCOTTISH VERSE, introduced and edited by Tom Scott (first published 1970) —
« The Scots are, like the Welsh, and even the English, not an Anglo-Saxon people but a Celto-Teutonic one. The word ‘Scot’ derives from the Gaelic tribes who overran Ireland before the beginning of the Christian era and were Christianized by the Strathclyde Briton, Patrick [speaker of Strathclyde Welsh?], and his associates and successors.
« The ‘Scots language’ meant Gaelic until Gawin Douglas, acknowledging the dominance of the lowland tongue as the national language in his day, applied it to what had hitherto been known as ‘Inglis’.
« The literature of the Scottish people is written in at least four, if not five, languages: Gaelic, Latin, lowland Scots and English: the putative fifth is Welsh, or more correctly, Brithonic. The great ’Welsh’ poets Aneurin and Taliessin were both natives of what is now Scotland — one from the Edinburgh area (which still has its Arthur’s Seat overlooking the city), the other from what is now Ayrshire.
« Perhaps it is as well not to press the Scottish claims to Aneurin and Taliessin too closely. But we must remember that the south-west of Scotland, indeed the south-west of what is now Great Britain, was Welsh-speaking from the south bank of the Clyde down to Wales and beyond. »
As it seems that we’ll never “Rise now and be a nation again” until we all forsake the English language and revert to one of the various local dialects found throughout the land or, indeed, the Gaelic which is still represented in so many areas in the place names may I make a plea for the speech of my own ancestors.
“Lat okkum laer føroyskt”
(Let’s learn Faroese”.
Or, we could just retain what has been a national language for generations and which enables us to communicate freely with each other.
The Scots language has five major dialect groups:
Each has its own sound, some specialised vocabulary unique to its geography, and each has its ain history, tae.
But all are of the Scots leid… and recognisably so.
And the colonial status of Ulster Scots is…?
What?
Do you think I’m your info-bitch, Fergus.?
You Scotti, whit are ye like? Always trying to boss us Picts about.
Those days are long gone, chum.
Go find out for yourself… I’ll wait here till you get back with the answer.
UK PARLIAMENT: IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE (Northern Ireland) ACT 2022
Statement made on 28 January 2026 by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, Government Spokesperson for Northern Ireland, Labour Life peer.
STATEMENT:
My Rt Hon Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn) has today made the following statement:
I wish to provide an update to the House regarding the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act 2022 (‘the Act’).
The New Decade, New Approach deal which was instrumental to the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive in 2020 (after a three year absence) included an agreed legislative framework for progressing identity and language commitments: the Act.
The Act received Royal Assent in December 2022. Specific provisions in sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Act were commenced in May 2023 establishing the following roles: (1) Director of the Office for Identity and Cultural Expression; (2) Irish Language Commissioner; and (3) Commissioner for the Ulster Scots and Ulster British tradition.
I warmly welcome the Northern Ireland Executive’s decision in October 2025 to appoint Pól Deeds as the Irish Language Commissioner; Lee Reynolds as the Commissioner for the Ulster Scots and Ulster British Tradition; and Dr Katy Radford as the Director of the Office of Identity and Cultural Expression.
In order that they may now carry out their duties, I am today commencing further provisions in Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Act, following a request from the Executive Office.
Provisions being commenced in Section 1 relate to the principles of national and cultural identity to which public authorities must have due regard, as well as the functions and responsibilities of the Director of the Office of Identity and Cultural Expression.
Provisions being commenced in Section 2 outline the functions and responsibilities of the Irish Language Commissioner in developing and promoting best practice standards in relation to the Irish language.
Finally, provisions in Section 3 relate to the functions and responsibilities of the Commissioner for Ulster Scots and the Ulster British Tradition in promoting the language, arts and literature associated with Ulster Scots as well as developing and promoting guidance in relation to Ulster Scots.
In commencing these provisions, we are continuing to ensure respect and tolerance for all of Northern Ireland’s diverse identities, cultures, languages and traditions.
link to questions-statements.parliament.uk
“respect and tolerance for all of (Scotland’s) diverse identities, cultures, languages and traditions.”
If that ‘respect and tolerance’ were indeed the case, then pro-rata, the 1.5 million Scots language speakers might expect some £1 billion/yr state spending on the Scots language to provide parity with the £50 million/yr state spending on the Gaelic language, and an unknown figure for English language taught from state nursery to primary to high school to university level and applied throughout state sponsored media incl TV.
As someone once said, ‘if there is no money spent on it then there is no policy for it’ and that’s the brutal oppressive colonial reality for the Scots language speaker.
It depends – when and where.
Generally, they were described as the “scum of the earth” by their own Presbyterian ministers.
Some of them were the bandit border reivers such as the Armstrongs. King James VI solved two problems at once. The Ulster Scots were there to strengthen the colonialism of the North of Ireland, building on the earlier Montgomery/ Hamilton transfer of Scots to North Ireland.
James threatened hanging of the border reivers unless they removed to Ireland. Fermanagh has many Armstrongs.
Being Presbyterian the Ulster Scots faced religious discrimination like Catholic Ireland. Their marriages were not recognised, something that pained the very religious Presbyterians and caused legal difficulties and shame to be regarded as living in sin.
As a consequence and seeking a better life some 100,000 Ulster Scots went to America settling in middle and southern areas. there they played a significant part if overturning the colonised state of America.
George Washington recognised the skill and bravery of the Ulster Scots as soldiers. He said, “If defeated everywhere else, I will make my final stand for liberty with the Scotch-Irish (Ulster-Scots) of my native Virginia.”
The descendants of these men went on to form the KKK, initially it seems as a harmless organisation involving music and song.
The racist KKK found its way into England’s racist groups in the 1960/70s.
In Ireland dispossessed Catholics often worked as labourers on land they once owned and still regarded as theirs.
In 1798, the United Irishmen formed in the North and South of Ireland. Their aim was to unite Catholic and Protestant/Presbyterian in seeking more democratic representation.
Their organisation was easily penetrated by spies. There was a strong mixture of idealism and naivety among the United Irishmenand supporters. On the appointed day of rebellion, many men and their women walked to the field in their Sunday best. The rebellion was crushed and the leaders hanged. They included Henry Joy McCracken. There is a song about his death. Here is the last verse.
“In Belfast town, they built a tree
And the redcoats mustered there
I saw him come as the beat of a drum
Rolled out in the barrack square
He kissed his sister, went aloft
And waved a last good-bye
My God he died, I turned and I cried
They have murdered Henry Joy”
About the sectarian nature of the Orange Order and its manipulation and use as a buffer between the Protestant/ Anglican elite and Catholic Ireland you might read for yourselves.
Here’s a description, given in the dialect of Central Scots, of Insular Scots as I hear it…
Insular Scots – The Sea Voice of the Shetlands and Orkneys:
It’s the romantic in me, a cannae help it.
Here’s a description, given in the dialect of Central Scots, of Northern Scots as I hear it…
Northern Scots – The Earth Voice of Doric:
It’s the poet in me, a cannae help it.
Here’s a description, given in the dialect of Central Scots, of Central Scots as I hear it…
Central Scots – The Heart Voice of the lowlands:
It’s the lalander in me, a cannae help it.
Here’s a description, given in the dialect of Central Scots, of Southern Scots as I hear it…
Southern Scots – The Border Voice:
It’s the reiver in me, a canna help it.
My post election afterthoughts.
i blame the Leprous Sturgeon and the Toxic Wokes for the SNP lass of Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch to the Fiberals.
I blame Sturgeon and the Wokes for the loss and the Western Isles
i also blame the Toxic Wokes for the failure of the SNP to take Aberdeenshire West.
I blame the Toxic Wokes and an inept SNP Campaign for the failure to take Galloway or Dumfries.
I blame arrogance and hubris for Angus Robertson getting booted out.
The presently incompetent and inept SNP also allowed some sleekit gerrymandering by the Yoons. The febrile Yoons who are also equally incompetent and inept failed to take more advantage of it than they did.
It was shame that Fergus Ewing didn’t get elected. He should have stood on the list.I think the days of the personal vote are long gone.
That was an astonishing result from Shetland though.
I think the SNP should go for a minority Govt they surely cant go into a coalition with the Toxic Greens and they are toxic. The second I heard that a Greens Trans creep got elected on the list i thought fuck any coalition with them.
I also think there will have to be a challenge to Swinney from somebody in SNP who still actually believe in Scots Indy and isn’t a fuckin Woke either.
I blame no one other than the SNP, its membership its politicians and the leadership anyone who was worth there weight in gold left the SNP because of the SNP. I to joined the SNP when I was ten I’m now 55yrs and left in 2015 when Sturgeon stated lets make Westminster work for Scotland that said it all.
The SNP has now won 5 elections and lost a referendum and Scotland is no further forward to leaving the UK now then it was when the SNP formed.
ou must be over the age of 16 to join the Scottish National Party (SNP). As a member, you are expected to endorse the party’s aims, abide by its policies, and pay a subscription fee.
Sturgeon joined when she was 14.
Joined when I was 13, having supported them from age 10/11. Now, it has to be 16, but, in the past, basically any age. These were youngsters who were politically aware, of course, a bit like that spotty Tory Boy sketch. It makes me shudder now that I was such an a**e.
I voted for Fergus as a representative of the old SNP before the lurch to the left wing and wokeism.
He could not stand on the list because it is a registered political party that picks list MSP’s and AFAIK there is a minimum membership number and registration needed to do so.
Maybe someone will correct this and they may be right but this is what I understand about the rules.
I saw somebody standing as an Independent on the Highland list. I would have voted for Fergus if he had been on the list and I think he might have got elected as well if he had done so.
2 Independents were on the H&I list – Duncan MacPherson got 4587 votes, 2.3%. Mick Rice got 226 votes.
The numbers for the whole region are on Highland Council’s site so the calculations can be done to check what number of votes Fergus would have needed to win a seat, if anyone has the time [I haven’t].
Championing Scots is an entirely justified and laudable enterprise. There is world-class literature in it. All Scottish children should become acquainted with its treasures via our education system. As they should be also with the profoundly insightful contributions of two millennia of Gaelic poetry, Scottish and Irish.
The linguistic wealth of Scotland is trilingual, though English has long been imposed (cf 1882 Education Act) as almost the exclusive literary medium with which Scots are made conversant.
But why does there continue to be fractious arguments on Wings regarding the PICTS, the language of whom our best linguists can hardly rustle up a dozen or so confirmed words?
Pictish was a Celtic sister to Gaelic. Scottish Gaelic was influenced in vocabulary and syntax by Pictish – that is partly why it differs from Irish. Gaelic and Pictish speakers rubbed shoulders and mingled. Presumably conversed somehow. Scots on the other hand has not the slightest linguistic relation to Pictish. Scots arises from Northumbrian, Middle English and Germanic roots.
So why do Northcode and Alf mention the Picts at all? Northcode has stated somewhere that “as a Pict” he simply chooses Scots as the current language of the (ongoing) Picts. Argue with that if you will. Of course anyone on the planet might well be beguiled by the merits of Scots and go on to shine in its usage.
So again, what has P-Celtic “Pictish” got to do with the promotion of Scots — particularly while minimal interest (if any) is shown in the nature of actual historic Pictish. The answer can only lie beyond linguistics. It would seem the Picts are simply being weaponised as an imagined indigenous DNA proxy. The argument for Scots is perfectly coherent without invoking the Picts.
Because the north of Scotland is different from the rest of the country. Just like every other part is “different” from the rest. The concerns of the industrialized Central Belt have little or no relevance in Caithness or Sutherland. It’s why Liberal Democrats keep getting elected – the politics are simply different.
The independence movement will need to carry the concerns of area like this. Simply exchanging indifferent rule from London with indifferent rule from Edinburgh isn’t exactly appealing. There’s plenty of indifferent rule from Inverness. Nobody is interested in more of the same.
A series of excellent posts, Fearghas – many thanks for bringing some genuine learning to bear.
I would simply like to add that your comment “though English has long been imposed (cf 1882 Education Act) as almost the exclusive literary medium with which Scots are made conversant” should be seen in the context of a sustained and deliberate campaign to eradicate Gaelic language and culture that started 250 years earlier with the 1616 Establishment of Schools Act. The Act actually stated that Gaelic was barbaric. The independent Scottish Parliament then passed several other Acts during the 1600s, all successfully intended to impose Inglis as the language of education in every parish in Scotland.
It has been that way ever since. The recent introduction of Gaelic into the curriculum is a welcome enrichment.
FC
You have the Protestant church to thank for that.
And..
The “cringe”..
I recall speaking with a structural engineer from Aberdeen many years ago. I have no reason to imagine things have changed any since.
Zero hint of an accent.
He explained this as (middle class of course) Protestant parents drumming the “Queens English” into their wains as they would never get a “proper job” with their local dialect.
Fact.
That’s how it came about, boosted by the churches Unionist underlying tenets and still exists to this day, heck just listen to the cringers on here!
Well, Fearghas, maybe if YOUR ancestors, the Scotti, hadn’t invaded Picatavia a thousand years ago and enslaved MY ancestors, the Picts, and forced them to speak in that awful Gaelic, maybe, just maybe, we might be on better speaking terms theday… just sayin’.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I remember my life as a Pict and recall some fragments of the language my people once spoke.
And that when we spoke of our gods, the words felt like mist rising aff the braes – half seen, half dreamt, but aye familiar, as if the land itsel wis trying tae speak throu oor mortal mooths.
And oor gods would warn us using words yont oor ken saying, “Do not trust thon English… thay be coloniZing pricks”.
If only we had understood the words of our gods and comprehended their meaning we
ScotsPicts might hae spared oorsels three hunner year o pain.Pictish was a Celtic sister to Gaelic.
========
Sorry to quibble, Fearghas, but it would surely be more accurate to describe Pictish as a Celtic cousin?
The actual Celtic sisters of Pictish were the Brittonic tongues of Old Strathclyde and of the.Gododdin – before the latter was replaced by the Anglo -Northumbrian ancestor of what some here acclaim as their “mither tongue.”
This in no way dishonours the Scots leid or diminishes the Picts whose victory at the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685 secured the Celtic character of what was to become Scotland over future centuries.
Quibble accepted. Your mention of the Gododdin brings to mind of course the epic poem referred to in a 1969 publication Professor Kenneth Jackson (perhaps rather mischievously) designated as “The Oldest Scottish poem”:
« Lastly, what is meant by calling the Gododdin ‘the oldest Scottish poem’? Is it not a Welsh poem? Certainly it exists in a manuscript written in Wales, in the Welsh language, in a Welsh library. At the same time, scholars are nowadays for the most part agreed that it or its nucleus must have been composed in Scotland, very likely in Edinburgh, in the northern dialect of Brittonic spoken in that region and often called ‘Cumbric’, which, at the date in question, is likely to have differed very little from contemporary Welsh; and if there were such differences, and if we had any means of recognising them, most of them would in any case have disappeared in the process of subsequent transmission for centuries in Wales. It is clear, further, that the heroes commemorated were almost all from Scotland, and there is reason to think that Aneirin, traditionally the author, was so too. As for ‘oldest’, the date about 600, if correct, naturally puts it centuries before anything generally regarded as a ‘Scottish’ poem.» (‘THE GODODDIN: The Oldest Scottish Poem’, Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, Edinburgh University Press, 1969)
Cynicus @ 5.26pm
“ it would surely be more accurate to describe Pictish as a Celtic cousin?”
——
Your quibble has force, but at the back of my mind was the following:
« Tá na seandálaithe ar aon intinn faoi phointe amháin, is é sin, gur cosúil gur beag difríocht a bhí idir an Q-Cheiltis agus an P-Cheiltis san am inar tháinig an chéad dream de lucht labhartha na Ceiltise go hÉirinn […] Dhealródh sé nach raibh, i dtosach ré na Críostaíochta, mórán difríochta idir an Q-Cheiltis a bhí á labhairt in Éirinn agus an teanga P-Cheilteach a bhí á labhairt sa Bhreatain. Leis an aimsir, áfach, d’éirigh difríochtaí suntasacha eatarthu. »
[« Archaeologists agree on one point, namely, that there seems to have been little difference between Q-Celtic and P-Celtic at the time when the first group of Celtic speakers came to Ireland […] It would appear that, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was little difference between the Q-Celtic spoken in Ireland and the P-Celtic language spoken in Britain. Over time, however, significant differences did arise between them. »]
(TRAIDISIÚN LITEARTHA NA nGAEL, J.E. Caerwyn Williams & Máirín Ní Mhuiríosa, An Clóchomhar Tta, Baile Átha Cliath, 1979, p xv)
“So why do Northcode and Alf mention the Picts at all?”
Quite simply, Fearghas, this is because the archaeological record prior to the 800s throughout Scotland is jammed full of Pictish sites, far less so Gael sites.
The Dalriada Scots Gaels takeover and re-naming of Pictland from the mid 800’s does not alter this one iota.
Neither does the mid-800s invasion of vikings from the north.
Over the subsequent period – 800-1200 approx – many if not most Picts (then called ‘Scots’) became neither Gaelic nor Norse speakers, they became Scots speakers.
Exactly so, Alf… succinctly put.
It’s a simple notion, the idea that the Picts became what we now think of as the Scots, but it seems to be an idea beyond the reach of some folk .
You two must hate Gaelic very much indeed to obsessively “other” it as you do.
You strongly champion the Scots language. Okay. That’s a tidy enough choice as such.
What’s with the Pictish fixation though? The Gaels and Picts were fellow Celts, but you promote a Germanic language. That’s a disjunction. A conundrum.
If I follow what you have just written, you consider this split a positive because by forsaking their own Pictish language and accepting the Northumbrian language your ancestor Picts body-swerved the Gaels.
At least that is one version. The other version is that your predecessor Picts were brutally incorporated by the original Scots, ie the Gaels (and therefore forced to call themselves Scots), then escaped into the benign arms of the invading Northumbrians and started to speak the latter’s language (but decided to keep calling themselves “Scots” after all…)
One way or another, a new (Teutonic) Scots language was engendered by the Picts while continuing to slag off the original (Celtic) Scots language and its speakers.
Yet, still, there is no actual continuity between the current Scots language and historic Pictish. And Gaelic is closer to Pictish by far. So why mention Pictish at all? Is DNA the subtext here?
I joined the Party in the days of Dr Malcolm Fraser Billy Wolfe and Wendy Wood. I have been to conferences when there wete only 3 men and a dog in a kilt attending. I truly believe in Scottish Independence and so far there is noine who comes near to deliveribg it but the SNP. Keep the faith. Alba gu snooker loopy!
Fuck the faith.
Sorry i mean Slessor
For anyone seriously investigating Pictish, a good resource online is the 2015 PhD thesis by Guto Rhys (direct link to 329 page pdf – takes a few moments to open):
‘APPROACHING THE PICTISH LANGUAGE: HISTORIOGRAPHY, EARLY EVIDENCE AND THE QUESTION OF PRITENIC.’
« 1.5 As we enter more deeply into the Enlightenment little credence was given to early origin myths, and a new critical approach, based on evidence and reason, emerged. The Picts were sometimes pressed into service to validate the personal and political agendas, or bias, of involved parties.
« Some Scots-speaking Lowlanders were placed in a quandary; just how Celtic should they consider themselves? Buying in to a Gaelic past would involve equating themselves with tribal, highland barbarians who were moreover descended from immigrant Irish, whose adherence to Catholicism in recent centuries evoked alarm. Imagining themselves as immigrant Saxons involved the danger of delegitimizing their claim, as first holders, to occupy and rule the land. Finding the means to portray Lowlanders as indigenous, in particular if this could trump Gaelic claims to the linguistically anglicised east, had great appeal.
« The Picts, details of whose language and culture were gradually emerging from the murky past, were becoming objects of increasing interest. They had left very little in terms of concrete evidence of their identity and they were ‘convenient blank sheets on which almost any tale could be written’ (Ferguson 1998, 185). »
link to theses.gla.ac.uk
The Pritenic Truth:
And remember, I was there… before the before.
Pritenic was the voice of the land before the Picts had a name.
A northern Brittonic tongue shaped by granite hills, cold rivers, the long shadow of the Moray Firth, and the quiet endurance of a people who left symbols on stone, but few words on parchment.
It was the root-voice, the under-song, the first Celtic breath of the north… the Pictish genesis.
Pictish was simply that same voice, later, clearer, carved into stone beasts and king lists.
REV STU@ 5.36. Oh dear you are better than that
Talking of Faith (Paloma stylée)… I think you’ll find with regard to your NuSNP; The truth of it is they should be better than this.
Paloma Faith : Better Than This
link to youtube.com
Sic a parcel of fuckin’ self-serving, gravy-slurping incompetent imbeciles in a nation.
They can’t even procure a couple of ferries for a reasonable sum and in a timely manner, and instead piss away years and hunners of millions of taxpayers quids on a couple of rafts of shite.
And there are numerous other matters that if we had a decent Media that had bothered its arse to scrutinise and shone some light on them then they would have been ousted many years ago.
So fuck the NuSNP any every brain dead-like twat that still supports them, for they are the reason Scotland is still held back and stuck in this political and constitutional skipfire.
Izzie,
The SNP will ask for a section 30 and it will be turned down and you’ll hear nothing more from the SNP until the Westminster election when SNP WILL use vote for the SNP for Independence.
We all know that JS has just made war with reform and reform will win the next Westminster election. Reform will win seats in Scotland for the Westminster election how many seats they will win we do not know, but what we do know Reform will shut Holyrood and the SNP will be dead and finished.
People aren’t going to continue believing a party who promises Independence with only one cure to deliver it (Gold Standard) the SNP time is running out and crying wolf on Independence is a rotten thing to do but the SNP does it well.
It’s competition time.
Who writes the most shite? The learned professor or his chum Northclown?
It looks pretty level to me.
Oh Northcode by some distance, the long rambling absurd posts with no obvious audience and which don’t communicate any useful information. Alf’s posts basically all say the same thing but at least they are quite short.
I think I can suggest a few more nominees – very particularly those who offer nothing but snipe stupidly from the sidelines.
I assume you are putting yourself forward for nomination? You will be hard pressed to usurp the aforementioned candidates.
Good luck.
I wouldn’t classified support for a political party as faith. Or to be more accurate their manifesto pledges and in the SNP case it was to deliver Independence, as Rob says above,and then disappear, to allow the people themselves to Govern for all. Example before the Election Swinney says he will Govern for the whole of Scotland. The day after the election Swinney says I will lock out Reform so that’s 380000 votes ignored. Or the Conservative success in the Borders or the Lib Dem success in their heartlands. And Swinney will receive the Seal of Scotland from the Court of Session this week. To think in historical terms what the Seal of Scotland actually meant.
Swinney has the numbers in parliament where he can pick and choose which of the other political parties he wants to speak to or want to do business with over the coming Holyrood term. in fact, he doesn’t need to actually talk to any of the other parties. He can go ahead and form a minority government on his own.
However, the act of publicly saying that he is locking out Reform in an negotiations is an act of stupidity. He could have just had meetings with the other parties and not invited Reform.
I know it’s wishful thinking but I hope this is just a one-off and not going to be how the next 5 years will be where they go into a fatal embrace with the toxic Greens and become more woke than Sturgeons tenure ever was.
Just been listening to the news. Presenters peeing themselves with excitement at the thought of all the ‘characteristics’ in suits and frocks stepping up to take their places in Holyrood: he/shes, they/thems/maybe he today/maybe she tomorrow; Indian/African/Zimbabwean/Tranadian whatever descent; and, to be fair, a puckle Scots. While they were all celebrating the diverse and inclusive nature of the intake, not one journalist thought to ask if anyone with a brain not contaminated by useless bulls**t rattling around inside his/her/their skull had been elected.
You know, because that might actually be a ‘characteristic’ worth having in a parliament where the chosen ones vote on issues that affect the daily lives of all the millions who don’t actually sit in there. Oh, and Honest John telling anyone who would listen that he will not treat with Reform while, out of the other side off his mouth, ranting a la Knox, about the fact that the Westminster government will not treat with the SNP. Well, one he/she presented himself/herself – the one with no visa – as a, and I quote, “global talent”, so we’re alright, then. No one mentioned that it was a self-ID-ed global talent, of course.
I had posted a comment earlier whether the election of the Indian Trans candidate was valid. It looks like it is as per link:
link to gov.scot
So there we have it. The Green Trans MSP called Q can legally stand as a MSP but if there are changes to his legal circumstances to reside in this country, he has to resign his post and a by-election needs to be called.
My thanks also, Fearghas for your posts. They’re teaching me a lot, which I do appreciate.
‘What of Philosopher King of the Picts, Nechtan (706-724, 728-9)?’ I hear you ask. Bede writes that relations between Northumbria and the Picts were peaceful at the time and that Abbot Coelfrid wrote to Nechtan on the subject of dating Easter, a letter apparently included in Bede’s ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’. I wonder what language Coelfrid wrote to Nechtan in? As well as providing Nechtan with guidance on the Easter controversy, Ceolfrid sent masons and craftsmen to aid in building stone churches. Bede claims that Nechtan dedicated his kingdom to St Peter.
But King Nechtan goes down in history for another reason: Holy Virgin and pious Greek, Triduana was invited by Nechtan in 710 to Pictland (from Jarrow at the time) and promptly fell in love with the great beauty, praising her beautiful eyes. She responded by plucking them out and sending them to him skewered on a twig.
This seems a little extreme and harsh on the albeit lecherous Pictish King but the Love of God clearly knows no bounds. She spent her later years in Restalrig, Lothian and healed the blind who came to her. Subsequently, after her Sainthood, St Tredwell (Triduana) became associated with curing eye disorders of which there are numerous records.
There is a ruined St Tredwell’s chapel on Papa Westray, Orkney (next to St Tredwell’s Loch which apparently appears like blood before any disaster befalling the Royal Family), and it became a pilgrimage site for those suffering from eye problems. I went there and was told if I crawled widdershins and bare-kneed around the ruin six times, it would cure my shortsightedness. Despite the thick nettles I did this but alas, my eyesight did not improve and so like Nechtan, my desires were thwarted by the capricious Triduana.
SB
At least you refrained from calling him the “venerable” Bede; father of history rewritten as Anglo Saxon (ie English) propoganda..
Should have been strangled at birth..
link to archive.is
Yes, selective quoting but it doesn’t inspire confidence, does it?
Maybe it is one of the reasons why Honest John is up in his pulpit giving it fire and brimstone against Reform?
Just found this article:
link to archive.is
Some good quotes:
Aye,
Transnational Capitalism.
Parasites.
Death to everything, cult.
No borders
No nationality.
No religion.
No biological sex.
No working for a countries best interests.
Ya to immigration.
The world is just one big commune.
The Greens are not environmentalists. That myth was busted when Slater introduced her failed bottle deposit scheme. Or did she fail? Someone made money out of it & that’s exactly what it does.
The people have spoken loud and clear against leftism and all that is inextricably associated with it. Today is most assuredly a delightful “popcorn day” and one to savour for those of us deemed to be on the “far right”(TM) by said lefties (in all likelihood regular mouthwash users and occasional launderers of our jackets/coats. Yes, lefties, you *do* need to occasionally stick outer garments into the washing machine or dry cleaners, HTH).
Like I said in response to one of your earlier posts the other day, my little halfling pal: “Ewww”.
The great reset is upon us, hopefully. 🙂
Stop being a dunce.
Transitional capitalism isn’t “Leftist”
It’s a Thatcher parasite where big business calls the shots & they don’t give a fck about yer immigration concerns. In fact, they tick all the boxes of Reform. A quick buck & fck everyone else. The bitcoin crew is a good example, you know, also like all the scammers who cashed in over government contracts with the government hotline over COVID. All conveniently written off but tax payers foot the bill.
So before you tuck intae yer popcorn – learn to finish reading the bottom of the post. Greens are not Leftist. Well, not the ones in Scotland anyway.
They’re dressed in another identity. That’s half the UKs problem right there – a labour party that’s not Labour, A Tory party that’s not conservative, An independence party that’s anything but indy..
“Like I said in response to one of your earlier posts the other day, my little halfling pal: “Ewww”.”
I don’t read 99% of your shite & yer diatribe above is a good example of why.
I was going to reply to yer other rambling nonsense the other day about the working class but I just deleted it & moved on.
It was rather apt that you claimed only people that live & work in the UK were prerequisites for understanding working class concerns.
That’s hilarious.
You seem blissfully unaware that the Tories allow all of the following:
None of them live & work in the UK.
Expats (IMMIGRANTS) a vote on UK general elections & referendums.
Foreigners can join the membership, from anywhere in the world, & vote on party leaders/Next PM.
Foreigners can donate to parties to influence policy.
& All pushed by a Foreign owned press.
Suck it up, buttercup.
“Greens are not Leftist. Well, not the ones in Scotland anyway.”
Against very stiff competition, that’s probably the most stupid thing you’ve ever said, pal. Yeah, those “right wing” characters in the Greens, eh!
Honestly, you’re pathetic. As I said the other day, you know fuck all about the plight of the British Working Classes since you neither work, nor live in the UK. You’re just some bitter moron angrily howling your unhinged garbage at the moon – best laughed and pointed at, as here.
WTF do you think you know about me, are you Mystic Meg reading yer tealeaves now? All this info you think you can gleam for a chat forum? LMFAO! ya fckn eejit. Behave!
I’m very much Scottish & live in Scotland.
I didn’t say the Greens were ‘right wing’. You’ve just made that shit up too. It seems to be a habit.
Off you pop now. To yer crypto king who has UK politics for £22 million in this democracy you think you live in. I’m sure they’ll care about the working class as he pockets £5million personal gifts.
Trumpton certainly doesn’t as he stiffed his own fan base over crypto coins & a fake iPhone that isn’t really a phone but a promise, maybe, sometime in the future, along with playing the stock markets & accepting wealthy gifts direct to his Trumpton account..& we all know fish face loves Trumpton so we can expect more of the same here.
I’m sure the working class keeps Fish Face awake at night…
“I didn’t say the Greens were ‘right wing’.”
Geri @ 09:36:
“Greens are not Leftist.”
Further comment is superfluous, really. One more revolution round the goldfish bowl eh? 😀
There are other players that have entered the arena, ya dip shit.
Left/right are so last century.
It’s all amalgamated.
A better term to use in the current climate is Nationalism Vs Globalism.
Rampant immigration is the Globalists best friend cause immigrants don’t give a shit for Nationhood & they certainly won’t die for it. They don’t much care about politics either which is handy cause cause it’s other best friend is corruption.
“Left/right are so last century.”
Yawn. “Left/right” hasn’t gone anywhere, “last century” or otherwise. Man alive, you’re stupid; you don’t get to invent and define your own class of facts, just because you’ve been called out and shown to be talking your usual ignorant, ill-informed, embarrassing mince.
FYI: The Greens are deffo “Left wing”.
Idiot.
identity politics (“wokeness”) is the leftwing of neoliberalism; it is the other arm of a pincer move, its sibling being freemarket economics
– if “woke” is of “the left”, then why does every corporation slavishly promote it; why is blackrock into it? why is larry fink “the godfather of woke”?
Because – you dumb fuck – it serves their interests, obviously. Either it does what they want, directly, or it slanders the left so badly no one will vote for it.
For contrast, consider how amazon behaves when anyone at their warehouse ant farms tries to unionise – they go MENTAL.
The modern “left” is NOT the LEFT; the left of old was miners, steelworkers, organising for better pay and conditions, health and safety, pension, all that; the modern left is all about queers and messing about with kids. If any “pride” person turned up at the labour party of my grandfathers, they would have had the shit kicked out of them for being “perverts”, then the cops would have arrived and kicked the shit out of them for good measure, then sent to a judge who would have sent them down. As is right.
Gen Z sit in starbucks, tweeting on an iphone after the pride march about “smashing capitalism” – but they are capitalism in its essence, the perfect subject, the uncritical consumer, of coffee, of product, of memes, of stupid ideas, of identity, everything is just a badge …
The old left organised around (socioeconomic) “class” – which is a unifying principle and the correct term of analysis for socio-economic matters; it is a unifier, a common identity for the people who do the work. Nowadays, identity politics balkanises everyone into this broken jigsaw of “identity” (and victimhood), all subtly set against one another, all vying against one another, in a zero sum game, for the crumbs off the table.
@Confused
Look, it’s really quite simple: the claim was absurdly made that the Greens “weren’t left wing” (self evidently bollocks: they are) and also “the left-right political spectrum is so last century” (again, self event bollocks: the “left” and “right” political descriptors haven’t gone anywhere and are just as valid now, as 30 years ago or whenever). The usual reckless, vacuous sweeping statements from the hard of thinking and usual suspects – y’know, the actual stuff that *I* was taking issue with.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m happy to briefly touch base on some of the “additional material” you are discussing.
You seem to be questioning whether “wokeism” is left wing, despite pretty much any recognised authority categorising it as such – which seems perverse. As to your motives, I can only assume that the woke left is an embarrassment to you, as a (presumed) avid subscriber of left wing politics, and that’s understandable. This type of conceited behavior from the Left is trademark; an unshakeable belief in their own moral superiority and abilities over their peers (often without a shred of justification), combined with a naïve inability to think more than even ONE move ahead (let alone ten), leading to unintended consequences/outcomes far worse than the “problem” trying to be fixed. But rather than acknowledging any deficiency/error even with the full benefit of hindsight – denial, crass revisionism (as in this case, somehow it is actually down to the Right) abound. Urgh.
If you even bother to think about what wokeism even entails in any pragmatic sense – “affirmative action” whereby specific groups are prioritised at everyone else’s expense (as opposed to the meritocracy of the Right, see grammar schools etc.). The deliberate use of “Cancel Culture” in stark contrast to the right wing libertarianism and sanctity of free speech as advocated by the Right. The use of puberty blockers/”gender affirming care” in stark contrast to the “traditional [family] values” of the Right, which looks to maintain the status quo (ergo Conservatism). I could go on, but you take the blindingly obvious point: wokeism harks from the Left and the Left needs to own whatever bad outcomes arise from its “brainchild”.
You also seem to conflate the changing demographics of “left” and “right” over the last five or more decades. Yes of course, the “left wing” of the 1970s comprised of working men in factories and pits, which largely don’t exist today so it is inevitable that those demographics will have changed.
You say (and I believe you) that your typical green-haired lefty wouldn’t have gone down too well in those tough working mens clubs – believe you me, they wouldn’t have done any better in right wing Essex, each of us “Sun” in hand and B&H Gold in the other. So what, what’s that got to do with the price of fish? Those 1970s lefties broke Britain, just as 2026 lefties are breaking it again: I want more, more, more for doing less, less, less. I have “ADHD” so give me a flat, a brand new Mercedes and btw don’t expect me to work, ever. We couldn’t afford 35% pay rises in 1976 and we can’t afford to have millions and millions not working in the 2020s.
Gen Z has been indoctrinated by left wing tutors in universities (bearing in mind that 50% of the youth goes to uni now, saddling themselves with a lifetime of debt for often near useless degrees, when for many of them, a plumbing or electrician apprenticeship would’ve set them up for a productive, lucrative and rewarding life). This metropolitan “cappuccino communism” makes me want to puke, just as much of the other stuff written about here. It’s bewildering and galling in equal measure.
Another article from the Scotsman which gives opinion on the pound of flesh that the Greens will extract from Swinney in return for their support:
link to archive.is
Say’s it all.
I would like to see some integrity in Scottish Institutions. So I am asking the Court of Session to rebuke Swinney on taking up the office of the Great Seal of Scotland. And to include all democratically elected MSPs going forward. They won’t of course and in the process will forfeit their right to provide legal remedies to Scotland. The Var of the Scottish Judiciary. It’s 2 tier in England and 3 tier in Scotland.
“Scottish Institutions”
Colonial institutions?
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
The SNP “wins” : who is voting for these non’entities?
I guess desperate still-holding-on-to-the-SNNP-is-an-indy-party fantasy.
Detestable squabble of devo-bitches.
“who is voting for these non’entities?”
Whoever they are, over 400,000 of them decided against doing so this time compared to last.
If that trend continues, a decade from now nobody will be voting SNP!
Every cloud…
LEONARD COHEN: THE PARTISAN
(World Tour 2008)
link to youtube.com
And meanwhile as the useless Scottish Parly shit show settles down to manage another 5 years of decline, the big shit show down south does precisely the same as it manages the big Westminster shit show.
Just look at the Labour government. Elected on a ticket to deliver prosperity it certainly isnt delivering that as cuts and taxes soar.
And here was me thinking that we were all living in our promised Great Britain post Brexit golden era. If this is a golden era of success and prosperity then somebody please wake me up.
But in truth we know the answer.The UK is a busted flush that produces little, and is crippled with public debt. With everything sold off and the Dell Boy elites filling their boots its not difficult to see how sold-out Starmer, Blair Brown were and are. Peter Mandelson was their man, and like Prince Andrew and others rgey were Jeffrey Epstein’s man.
And oh how the poor donkeys just love it. Swinney as he says has a tough time ahead with £5 billion of cuts to implement. Probably the best thing that ever happened to poor Jock. His aspiration for his country is so low it can only reinforce his station in life.
Poor Jock doesn’t even get the proverbial glass beads. But hey hoe, big day today, Sir Keir Starmer, friend of the Jeffrey Epstein circle,is having a cabinet meeting. No doubt his last before another sleaze bag weighed in by the corporate elites, is installed.
Ah well, its just the way it is. We wouldn’t have it any other way in what is fast becoming the economic slum of Northern Europe.
A Great British golden era. And we chose it too. Or am I I a proud mistaken Scot – eh? Have a great day.
I’m sure they’ll dig deep for War.
Bankrolled off the back of Scotlands resources (whichever baldy wins the hot seat) will hand over freely & gladly while doffing their cap.
The SNP should be marched through the streets in sackcloth. They’re a living horror film – has had at least five chances to escape but stays anyway, doesn’t think to put on a light, runs straight passed the door & goes upstairs instead.
“Scots is the Germanic language spoken in Scotland. It is closely related to English – both developed from the same Anglo-Saxon ancestor language – as well as to other West Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch, and the North Germanic languages of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
Inextricably connected to Scotland’s history and encounters as a nation, the Scots language also has a good dose of influence from Old Norse, Gaelic, French, and Latin, among others.
Despite their clear kinship, Scots and English are – like Swedish and Danish – ultimately different languages, with their own unique vocabulary, syntax and spirit.
The following is a wee oversight of ten of the trickiest lexical and syntactical examples of what makes Scots, Scots….”
link to languagereach.com
Yes, unlike English, Gaelic, Urdu, Arabic, or any other language, Scots is the only language actually developed by Scots in Scotland, and this is what makes Scots our indigenous language.
Sae mebbe we shoud lairn Scots tae oor bairns in schuils!
The oldest literary composition in old Welsh has its origins in the area around Din Eidyn aka Edinburgh.
Not many Scots know that or are even interested it seems.
The old British kingdom of Ystrad Clud aka Strathclyde survived for probably a 1000 years into the second millennium.
Wallace i.e Walas was «Welsh» a foreigner to the invading Northumbrians.
Effectively the inhabitants were northern Welsh before the arrival of Gaels, Norse and Angles.
SCOTTISH PLACE-NAMES: NORTHERN BRITTONIC
(Glasgow University video – 12 mins)
link to youtube.com
————
See also the following fascinating quality illustrated book which uncovers the unexpected Welsh and Gaelic roots of many Glasgow place-names:
‘GLASGOW’S GAELIC PLACE-NAMES’ (Birlinn 2023)
by Alasdair C. Whyte, Prof Katherine Forsyth) & Dr Simon Taylor
link to amazon.co.uk
T
Correct!
Remembering of course that the men of the “old north” actually referred to central Scotland..
It’s good to see historical sense being spoken here as opposed to Unionist (everything happened at Glasto) mythology/ fantasy..
Gerrit up ye Bede ya propogandist/ apologist..
Auchenshuggle > Achadh an t-Seagail (Field of Rye)
Cathkin > Coitcheann (Common Grazing)
Cessnock > Seasganach (Sedge-Place)
Clyde > Cluaidh (Noisy One)
Cowcaddens > Cua Calltainn (Hazel Hollow)
Crossmyloof > Crois MoLiubha (Crossing of St MoLiubha)
Garnkirk > Gart nan Cearc (Hen Enclosure)
Garscadden > Gart Sgadain (Herring Enclosure)
Garrioch > Garbhach (Rugged Place)
Gartnavel > Gart an Abhaill (Apple Enclosure/ Orchard)
Polmadie > Poll Mac Dè (Stream of the Sons of God)
Shettleston > Baile Nighean Sheadna (Estate of Seadna’s Daughter)
Yoker > Eochair (Waterside Borderland)
Auchenshuggle > Achadh an t-Seagail (Field of Rye)
Cathkin > Coitcheann (Common Grazing)
Cessnock > Seasganach (Sedge-Place)
Clyde > Cluaidh (Noisy One)
Cowcaddens > Cua Calltainn (Hazel Hollow)
Crossmyloof > Crois MoLiubha (Crossing of St MoLiubha)
Garnkirk > Gart nan Cearc (Hen Enclosure)
Garscadden > Gart Sgadain (Herring Enclosure)
Garrioch > Garbhach (Rugged Place)
Gartnavel > Gart an Abhaill (Apple Enclosure/ Orchard)
Polmadie > Poll Mac Dè (Stream of the Sons of God)
Shettleston > Baile Nighean Sheadna (Estate of Seadna’s Daughter)
Yoker > Eochair (Waterside Borderland)
Apologies for posting above Glasgow list twice. Here are some GAELIC FIFE names (from Iain Taylor’s book ‘Place-names of Scotland’) –
Markinch (Fife) > Marc Innis (Horse meadow)
Incharvie (Fife). > Innis na h-Airbhe (Meadow at the boundary wall)
Inchcolm (Fife) > Innis Choluim (St Columba’s island)
Inchgall (Fife) > Innis Ghall (Island of non-Gaels)
Abercrombie (Fife) > Obar Chrombaidh (Bent river mouth)
Aberdour (Fife) > Obar Dobhair (The mouth of the water)
Airbow (Fife) > Àird Bò (High point of cattle)
Auchtermuchty (Fife) > Uachdar Mucadaidh (The upland of the pig place)
Balbaird (Fife) > Baile a’ Bhàird (The poet’s farm”, or perhaps ‘meadow farm)
Balcruvie (Fife) > Baile Craobhaigh (Wooded farm)
Balgaverie (Fife) > Baile Geamhraidh (Winter farm)
Ballo (Fife) > Bealach (Pass)
Balmullo (Fife) > Baile a’ Mhullaich or Baile Mullach (Baile Mhullach in modern Gaelic) (The farm at the summit or summits)
Balrymonth (Fife) > Baile Rìmhinn > Baile Rìghmhonadh (The farm on the royal moor’. See St Andrews above)
Bassaguard (Fife) > Baile an t-Sagairt (The priest’s farm)
Cairngate (Fife) > Càrn nan Cat, Càrn na gCat (Cairn of the cats)
Cairns (Fife) > Ceàrnais (Corner place)
Callyons (Fife) > Coillean (Small wood)
Craiglumphard (Fife) > Creag / Longphort (The rock at the encampment)
Crail, earlier Caraile (Fife) > Cair Ail (Fort at the rock) (shows Pictish borrowing into Gaelic of ‘Cair’)
St Andrew’s (Fife) > Cill Rìmhinn > Cinn Rìmhinn (End of royal moor)
Etc. Etc.
And here (finally) are some GAELIC LOTHIAN NAMES (from Iain Taylor’s ‘The Placenames of Scotland’ Revised and updated, Birlinn, 2022)
Auchencorth (Mid L.) > Achadh na Coirthe (Field with the standing stone)
Balbardie (West L.) > Baile a’ Bhàird (The poet’s farm”, or perhaps ‘The meadow farm’)
Balgone (East L.) > Baile nan Con, earlier spelling Baile na gCon (Farm of the dogs)
Balgorney (West L) > Baile Gronnaigh (Miry farm)
Ballencrieff (East L, West L) > Baile na Craoibhe (Farm by the tree)
Barbauchlaw (East L) > Baile Bachlach (Farm of the crozier)
Broxburn, earlier Easter Strathbroc (West L) > Srath Broc (Badger srath)
Cockenzie (East L) > Cùil Choinnich (Kenneth’s secluded spot)
Colzium (Mid L) > Cuingleum (Narrow leap)
Craigengall (West L) > Creag nan Gall (Rock of the nan-Gaels)
Craigentinny (Mid L) > Creag an t-Sionnaich (Rock of the fox)
Drumbowie (West L) > An Druim Buidhe (The yellow ridge)
Ecclesmachan (West L) > Eaglais Mhachain (St Machan’s Church)
Echline (West L) > Eachlann (Horse paddock)
Edinburgh (Mid L) > Dùn Èideann, cognate with Brythonic Din Eidyn (Eidyn’s fort)(Pre-English language name)
Inch (Mid L) > Innis (Meadow/ island)
Kinneil (West L) > Ceann an Fhàil (End of the dyke, ie Antonine’s Wall)
Torphin (MidL) > An Tòrr Fionn (The white hill)
Etc Etc.
£1.5 billion!
£1.5 billion… and some change!
£1.5 billion?
Why £1.5 billion?
Well, I’ll tell you why.
There are roughly 50,000 Gaelic speakers living in Scotland… and for each one of them the promotion and teaching of Gaelic receives approx. £1,000 from the Scottish Government, £50 million in total (£30 million officially plus a further sneaky £20 million distributed through local councils).
There are at least 1.5 million speakers of the Scots language living in Scotland and so the equivalent sum of money required to fund the promotion and teaching of Scots to the same extent as Gaelic is around £1.5 billion.
Currently there is exactly £heehaw spent on the promotion and teaching of the Scots leid.
There’s a reason why the promotion of Gaelic and the teaching of it to a tiny minority of Scots (less than 0.01%) is allowed by Westminster.
There’s a reason why Gaelic is funded to the tune of £50 million and the funding of Scots is non-existent.
And there’s a reason why the Scots language is deliberately suppressed and disadvantaged while the promotion of Gaelic is favoured.
Can anyone guess what that reason is?
On a separate issue, although tangentially related, is this…
Multiple sources describe the Scottish arts ecosystem as being on the edge of collapse:
Poor auld Scotland… what a pickle she’s in, eh?
The art and literature of the Scots, the cultural heritage and identity of the Scots, and the Scots leid itsel… all of it ignored by a ‘Scottish Government’ complicit in the ongoing criminal plunder of Scotland and the annihilation of the indigenous Scots as a people.
Fearghas and Alf
Codeword is a puzzle where letters are represented by numbers and the goal is to find which letter is identified by which number.
I have found a chap who makes such puzzles and is interested in the possibility I raised with him of using Scottish Gaelic as a database. There could be a Gaelic Codeword. Possibly such a puzzle might be a fundraiser.
And Scots Codeword?