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How To Change People’s Minds 203

Posted on September 02, 2023 by

Some people (at the time of writing we have no idea how many) are marching in Edinburgh today, notionally in favour of Scottish independence although the event’s barely-concealed true purpose is to firmly establish Believe In Scotland as the official, SNP-approved “grassroots Yes movement”.

(It’s so grassroots that for just £1,800 you and some pals can hobnob with Humza Yousaf and, um, Janey Godley at their annual dinner at the Hilton later this month.)

For around 40 years of my life, I had an easy one-word answer to being asked if I was in favour of independence for Scotland, and that answer was “Yes”. If you’d pushed me to expand, I’d have said “Yes, obviously.

Even though my dad was employed by the SNP leader of the time – in his non-SNP capacity as a business owner – politics wasn’t discussed in our house. (These were the 1970s, so there wasn’t a vast amount of discussion full stop.) But I was raised, basically by default, with the view that Scotland was a country.

Of course it was a country. It had its own dialect and an identifiable culture, both things personified to my young self by Oor Wullie and The Broons, and our weekly visits to my granny’s wooden bungalow in a wee ancient village near Cumbernauld that may as well have been Auchenshoogle (weirdly, sometimes “Auchentogle”).

It had national football and rugby teams. It had a flag. Why would it be any less of a country than Germany or Italy or Holland or Brazil or Argentina? (My knowledge of geography was primarily World Cup-based.)

So as soon as I had even the vaguest notion of the concept of politics – probably around the age of 7 or 8 – it seemed straightforwardly axiomatic to me that it should be independent. There was never even a thought process, it was just mad and unnatural to think otherwise, like believing the sea was orange. Countries run their own affairs, right? And that was it for the next 40-odd years.

(Post-2007, when I started to seriously examine the idea, the feeling only solidified.)

But since 2018 or so, for the first time in my life, my answer is different. If you ask me now whether I believe in Scottish independence, I’ll say “Yes, in principle.

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Welcome aboard! 123

Posted on September 01, 2023 by

There’s a “new independence plan”, we hear.

Warning: readers of this site may not find it all that new.

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How Scotland Hates Women 137

Posted on August 31, 2023 by

Readers may have been baffled by a news story yesterday, in which an event where two men insulted each other in the street (“Deviant!”, “Bigot!”) has led to one of them, but not the other, being arrested and charged with an unspecified crime by police.

In particular, many people on social media have contrasted the situation with one from a month ago, when a large male transactivist violently assaulted a feminist woman at a “Women Won’t Wheesht” meeting in Aberdeen but merely received a recorded warning rather than being arrested and charged.

So we’re very grateful to Roddy Dunlop KC, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (the “trade” body of Scotland’s senior barristers), for posting an extremely informative, and disturbing, summary of the relevant laws on Twitter this morning.

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When they tell you who they are 97

Posted on August 30, 2023 by

Wings, a little under two years ago: “there is no “independence movement” any more, just an independence industry.

And then today:

You should believe them.

If there’s time 66

Posted on August 29, 2023 by

We’ve just come by the final agenda of the weekend’s meeting of the SNP National Council in Perth. (The National Council is an essentially toothless talking shop which the party abolished in 2018 but then reinstated this year in order to pretend members actually had any influence over policy.)

Click the pic to read the whole thing, but we’ve got the highlights.

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A plague of weasels 172

Posted on August 27, 2023 by

Scotland’s biggest cultural problem famously used to be with its alpha males: hard-working, hard-drinking men, often sexist and openly sectarian, with an easy propensity for violence. (The archetype cut right across every social class, from shipyard workers to high-ranking police officers and everywhere between and beyond.)

But times change, and thankfully those characters are now almost entirely a thing of the past. Less happily, though, they’ve simply been replaced by a breed that’s every bit as unpleasant, just in slightly different ways. Readers, meet the Beta Bullies.

Not literally, obviously. Nobody wants that.

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The Lasting Effect Of A Single Word 93

Posted on August 27, 2023 by

This is a Sunday Mail cover story today:

And it’s almost easy to dismiss it as meaningless. You can report to the police that aliens dug up your prize petunias and they’ll record it and give it a reference number and promise to investigate, before concluding that it was actually the neighbour’s cat.

But there’s one word in the 500-word piece that makes it much more interesting.

Can you spot it, readers?

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Somebody make it make sense 42

Posted on August 26, 2023 by

Humza Yousaf today:

So… his job is to get a legally binding referendum (something which doesn’t actually exist), but he knows that if we’re likely to win it we’re less likely to get it, so… we need to look like we’re going to lose one if it happens?

So presumably with support for the SNP already plummeting through the floor, the next phase of his grand strategy will be to drive support for independence down too? We suppose that’s a more rational explanation of the party’s actions in recent years than anything else we can think of, right enough.

Or of course, it might be that the guy’s just a complete gibbering idiot. You tell us.

The End Of The Enlightenment 487

Posted on August 19, 2023 by

Slacky The Holiday Boy is off for the next THREE weeks, gallivanting around the globe on the clearly excessive wages we’re paying him. We hope he does actually come back, because his home city is becoming a poisonously hostile place for the creative.

Around 300 years ago, Edinburgh was the birthplace and residence of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable period of intellectual and scientific accomplishment built around “the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason”, and which led to the city being famously dubbed “the Athens of the North”.

But those days are past now.

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The Ultimate Joke 174

Posted on August 17, 2023 by

Fair play to The National, the use of the word “HIS” in this banner on their front page today might be the single funniest thing ever printed by a Scottish newspaper.

Because everyone and his dug in Scotland knows whose strategy it actually is, and how many years Pete Wishart spent traducing it as nonsense and furiously venting his overworked spleen at anyone who advocated it – right up to the point where Nicola Sturgeon adopted it in a desperate last attempt to keep the indy faithful pushing the SNP gravy bus, at which point it became the greatest masterplan of all time.

But today’s piece in the indy equivalent of the Daily Express (albeit with only a tenth of the sales) is so jawdropping that we doubt even Robert Oppenheimer would be up to the job of putting a scorchmark on Wishart’s brass neck, so let’s spend five minutes having a look at it before we go out for a bit of sunshine.

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The Man Who Sold The Jerseys 127

Posted on August 16, 2023 by

We’ve used this video before, but it’s extra-apt today.

Humza Yousaf is played here by Morgan Freeman, the big plane carrying the bomb is the independence movement and Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are in the chopper.

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An old favourite 340

Posted on August 12, 2023 by

The word “NEW” is working pretty hard there, lads.

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    • Stuart on The Empty Hearse: “Never has a political party been so wilfully determined to sabotage its own chances. As you say Reverend, the gravy…Jul 30, 15:34
    • Hatey McHateface on From May To July: “Dinna fash, Confused. When the people of Scotland want and are ready for Indy, we’ll take it. Assuming you live…Jul 30, 15:29
    • Mark Beggan on The Empty Hearse: “They also drank hemlock. But that’s not the point. People don’t understand it and are too scared to ask. Meanwhile…Jul 30, 15:27
    • Mark Beggan on The Empty Hearse: “One Scot One Vote.Jul 30, 15:18
    • Hatey McHateface on The Empty Hearse: “Plus ca change plus ca meme chose. Is that Scots? Fa’s Northcode tae tell us?Jul 30, 15:18
    • Hatey McHateface on The Empty Hearse: “Not strictly true, Mark. A small segment of the people voted. Male, free (not slaves), property owning.Jul 30, 15:15
    • Mark Beggan on The Empty Hearse: “Long ago in Athens the people voted with a white pebble or a black pebble. Athens grew to become a…Jul 30, 15:02
    • Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Empty Hearse: “It couldn’t be simpler: No Votes SNP.Jul 30, 14:52
    • Mark Beggan on The Empty Hearse: “Vote 1 and 2 or don’t vote 1 and 1 don’t vote 2 and 1 don’t vote 2 for 1…Jul 30, 14:46
    • Stuart on From May To July: “Confused, aside from your posts being just a tad racist. What makes you think that the UK government won’t be…Jul 30, 14:13
    • James Cheyne on From May To July: “Shared National Debt?Jul 30, 13:49
    • James Cheyne on From May To July: “From 1694 the Bank of England established for England’s Government, continued as the Bank of England until WW11 in 1946,…Jul 30, 13:46
    • Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on From May To July: “Thank you to Andy Ellis @ 30 July 1.08 pm.Jul 30, 13:30
    • Andy Ellis on From May To July: “@Aidan 11.25am You’re being tendentious. The right to self determination (SD) is a jus cogens or peremptory norm in international…Jul 30, 13:08
    • Confused on From May To July: “Edinburgh Uni is apologising to Scottish students for the discrimination they have suffered at that institution https://archive.ph/hkuaT – reparations on…Jul 30, 12:11
    • Confused on From May To July: “why oh why, don’t all the whining, fuckwitted ANGLO CUNTS on this site forget about indy – it is no…Jul 30, 12:01
    • Confused on From May To July: “I think it’s appalling that our ex FM Humza-the-Useless has succumbed to anti-semitic conspiracy theories about the IDF “killing” “his…Jul 30, 11:55
    • Northcode on From May To July: ““The thought of Swinney mentioning any of this stuff to Trump directly is really quite amusing…” Donald, my first cousin,…Jul 30, 11:43
    • James on From May To July: “Right on cue.Jul 30, 11:25
    • Aidan on From May To July: “The rights of people to self determination does not mean the rights of people to form an independent state from…Jul 30, 11:25
    • Captain Caveman on From May To July: “@Stuart ‘… It’s time you faced facts, with just 18,000 members, which equates to a whopping 0.42% of the Scottish…Jul 30, 11:17
    • Alf Baird on From May To July: “All UN member states are signed up to the right of peoples to self-determination under the UN Charter. This is…Jul 30, 10:59
    • Stuart on From May To July: ““Alf Baird says: 30 July, 2025 at 6:38 am All Swinney had to do was ask President Trump to support…Jul 30, 10:52
    • diabloandco on From May To July: “And he used it again about Canada!Jul 30, 09:45
    • Scot Finlayson on From May To July: “God was making all the countries, Gabriel asked him why he favoured Scotland with such beauty so many natural resources…Jul 30, 08:51
    • Aidan on From May To July: “And the chance of that happened is 0% Alf, as you know, no government in a democratic country is going…Jul 30, 07:34
    • Alf Baird on From May To July: “All Swinney had to do was ask President Trump to support Liberation Scotland’s UN initiative to have Scotland recognised as…Jul 30, 06:38
    • Young Lochinvar on From May To July: “I’m sure they’ll manage just fine next day when all of the previous days unsold copy is returned prior to…Jul 30, 00:48
    • Young Lochinvar on From May To July: “Reply to P3nisbreath McP3nisbreathface @ 11.03 Is that it P3nisbreath?! Really?! Laugh a minute you.. Away and have a gargle…Jul 29, 23:55
    • Hatey McHateface on From May To July: “YL Sah! has regained consciousness. And there’s 50p in the leccy meter too.Jul 29, 23:03
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